Tim McMillan
PersonJournalistTim McMillan
PersonJournalistTim McMillan is a retired police lieutenant and co-founder of The Debrief whose 2019–2020 Popular Mechanics reports covered Navy UFO cases and the Pentagon's AATIP program.
Tim McMillan is a retired police lieutenant and co-founder of The Debrief whose 2019–2020 Popular Mechanics reports covered Navy UFO cases and the Pentagon's AATIP program.
Tim McMillan is an investigative writer and retired police lieutenant who co-founded the science and defense news outlet The Debrief in 2020 and serves as its executive director. He is best known in the UAP field for a run of Popular Mechanics investigations in 2019 and 2020 into the Navy's UFO encounters and the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, and for an independent streak that has put him at odds with parts of the disclosure community.
McMillan spent nearly two decades in law enforcement, working as an investigator, behavioral analyst, criminal-intelligence analyst, instructor and, eventually, a senior police executive. He retired in 2019 and began a second career as an investigative writer focused mainly on the defense and intelligence communities, with bylines at Popular Mechanics, Vice News and The War Zone. A 2019 article in The Intercept described him as having a longtime interest in UFOs but having come to doubt Lue Elizondo's involvement with any government UFO program.
His Popular Mechanics work drew on interviews and documents. A November 2019 article gathered accounts from Navy personnel aboard USS Princeton and USS Nimitz who said they corroborated parts of the 2004 Nimitz encounter, including radar operators who described similar contacts over about a week. In January 2020 he traced the long, tangled history of the Navy's 2004 UFO video. His February 2020 article "Inside the Pentagon's Secret UFO Program" reported that Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies had been contracted under AATIP to study UFO reports and purported paranormal phenomena, described a 494-page report produced under the contract, and published one of the program's 38 commissioned studies, a paper by former CIA officer Christopher "Kit" Green on injuries attributed to alleged encounters.
In 2026 researcher Joe Murgia revived old disputes in a series of posts. He accused McMillan of trying to undermine physicist Eric Davis after Davis told the New York Times in 2020 that he had given classified briefings, and mocked a remark McMillan had made on SpacedOutRadio wondering whether someone resembling retired Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson could have been put in front of Davis, a reference to the disputed notes of a 2002 Davis–Wilson meeting. Murgia also said McMillan had privately told him he considered an alleged 1961 intelligence estimate fake.
McMillan's Popular Mechanics series placed AATIP contract material and Navy witness accounts in a general-interest science magazine at a time when the program's scope was still disputed, and the outlet he co-founded has carried UAP reporting since 2020. His willingness to question figures such as Elizondo and Davis has made him a skeptical voice within UAP journalism and a target of researchers who favor crash-retrieval accounts.
RT @TheUfoJoe: 👽 "A 3-Letter Agency Concerning Non-Human, Non-Terrestrial, Non-Natural UAP" - Plus, Is Tim McMillan CIA? 👽 “There has been…
Exclusive look at the Admiral Wilson imposter... https://t.co/ycMrZs9UJw [Quoted] Is this the Admiral Wilson imposter @LtTimMcMillan suggested/hypothesized Eric Davis was fooled by in 2002 during their Las Vegas meeting? When someone is charged (IMO) with controlling the narrative away from crash retrievals, they'll say stupid shit that they don't believe. https://t.co/321cYzgPhi
The preposterous theory... https://t.co/s4GCUnBy9z [Quoted] 1 Was Eric Davis fooled by an Admiral Wilson lookalike/imposter? Listen to the entire clip below & the extended clip in the last tweet. Glad @NicoleSakach asked @LtTimMcMillan this question last year. McMillan said if he had the chance to ask Davis https://t.co/hNXta6KHGq https://t.co/ysZReHzcZY
👽 "A 3-Letter Agency Concerning Non-Human, Non-Terrestrial, Non-Natural UAP" - Plus, Is Tim McMillan CIA? 👽 “There has been one leaked document – how it got leaked, I’ll never know – which is out there, that talks about some crashes that we were able to verify what was a real document.” ~Dr. Hal Puthoff (That comment from Puthoff set me off on a search to find out which document he was talking about. And it didn't take me long. I wrote about it in two, long blog pieces, which I'll link to i...
RT @LtTimMcMillan: Year after year, this continues to be the best 4th of July fireworks video out there… https://t.co/RAqEOUUoE6
RT @OurLadyOfBeasts: Didn't @LtTimMcMillan have information on David Grusch's ICIG case? Tim, do you think you could finally release that i…
If we're going to talk about people who were told to run interference on the crash retrieval-aspect of the phenomenon and attempt to control the narrative, let's make sure we include @LtTimMcMillan. Anybody who puts forth a preposterous theory that Dr. Eric Davis may have been fooled by an Admiral Wilson imposter should have their motives questioned. And if you talk to some folks behind the scenes, you'll see that it's not just me who feels this way. Now, if Lue (see my previous post) and Tim...
RT @LtTimMcMillan: WTF… did nobody bother to zoom in on the award in Kirkpatrick’s office?!?! 😂 lol https://t.co/bGkWQqUZv6
NOC, NOC, who’s there? https://t.co/wUv8NcK9wQ [Quoted] In 2020, Eric Davis told the NYT he gave classified briefings and Tim McMillan tried to undermine him with this crap. We also had Tim trying to scare me by bringing up the Espionage Act in relation to my work on the alleged 1961 SNIE. People need to wake up. When's the last time https://t.co/ffnuGDG4ZA
Is this the Admiral Wilson imposter @LtTimMcMillan suggested/hypothesized Eric Davis was fooled by in 2002 during their Las Vegas meeting? When someone is charged (IMO) with controlling the narrative away from crash retrievals, they'll say stupid shit that they don't believe. https://t.co/321cYzgPhi
