Kash Patel is an American lawyer and former federal prosecutor who has served as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation since February 2025. His connection to unidentified anomalous phenomena is institutional: under his leadership the FBI contributed decades of UFO-related files to the government's 2026 declassification releases, and he publicly backed the effort.

Born in Garden City, New York, in 1980, Patel earned his law degree from Pace University in 2005 and worked as a public defender before joining the Justice Department's National Security Division as a prosecutor. In 2017 he became a staff member on the House Intelligence Committee under Chairman Devin Nunes and was the principal author of the 2018 Nunes memo on the FBI's Russia investigation. He then served as a senior counterterrorism director on the National Security Council, as principal deputy director of national intelligence in 2020, and as chief of staff to the acting defense secretary at the end of President Trump's first term.

The Senate confirmed him as FBI director by a 51-49 vote in February 2025. His tenure has drawn scrutiny over his use of FBI aircraft for personal travel, a lawsuit by senior officials he fired, and a 2026 magazine report about his conduct that he called false and answered with a defamation suit; in March 2026 an Iran-linked hacking group leaked material from his personal email, which the bureau said contained no government information.

His UAP role came into focus in 2026. In early May he told Sean Hannity that UFO information would be released very soon, that "we are all for it," and that the president had set up an interagency process led by the Department of War. The first release that week included dozens of FBI files, among them a case file on flying-disc reports from 1947 to the 1960s, and Patel said the bureau remained committed to the rolling declassification. In April he also confirmed that the FBI was examining the deaths and disappearances of roughly a dozen people with classified access, including missing retired general Neil McCasland, while saying the cases were state matters and that no link had been established. A claim by former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino that Patel's February trip to Milan involved briefings on drones and UAP was not supported by Patel, who told senators he went to take custody of a Chinese cybercrime suspect.

Patel's significance in the UAP record is as the head of the agency whose historical files make up a large share of the government's released UFO material. His public support helped frame the 2026 PURSUE releases as an administration-wide priority.