UFO Research Coalition (UFORC)

A collaborative effort in the 2000s by the three failing US UFO investigative organizations of the time with the stated goal “to share personnel and other research resources, and to fund and promote the scientific study of the UFO phenomenon.” The group was made up of MUFON, the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), and the Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR). The latter two, already being in the failed stage, meant that it was really just a public relations stunt - and possible money grab - by MUFON and the skeletons of the other two organizations. It is unknown why the group’s official website claimed the coalition was founded in 1994.¹ It first filed for non-profit status in 1999 and claimed a headquarters of Fairfax, VA. Mark Rodeghier, Director of CUFOS since 1986, was listed as the Principal Officer.¹⁴ Rob Swiatek, secretary-treasurer of FUFOR, later claimed to have been the Director of UFORC in 1997¹⁶, as well as a business board member of MUFON.¹⁵ NARCAP, NIDS, and NUFORC joined the coalition sometime later.

A December 4, 2003 Sci-Fi Channel press release² (corresponding to some UFO-themed shows premiering on US cable television³), announced the channel’s “UFO public advocacy initiative.” The exact investment amount was unknown, but they hired John Podesta’s government lobbying firm to meet with members of Congress (no list of meetings was ever made public), were in the midst of sponsoring an archaeological excavation at Roswell (The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence), and were asking the government to release the Kecksburg files.⁴ The UFORC website was first indexed in December 2003, as well. By 2009, Sci-Fi dropped the “science” portion of its brand, and presumably investments like this. The UFORC website went offline that year and did not come back until 2011 as a redirect to FUFOR.

Olsen claims that the group received “substantial financial support from Bigelow Holding Corp.”² Scoles in Wired confirms Robert Bigelow “helped initiate” the UFORC.⁹ Bigelow, founder of Bigelow Aerospace, was the first millionaire to begin sponsoring paranormal research during this time frame as part of his National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) (1995-2004) and later the Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) limited liability corporation (2008-2022). BAASS studies were often funded by the US government to the tunes of millions.⁵⸴¹⁰ Bigelow purchased the infamous Skinwalker Ranch in 1996 where it is presumed the NIDS and BAASS “researchers” worked out of.¹² NIDS and BAASS were notoriously secretative, as is generally the legally-required case when you’re working top secret Department of Defense contracts, leading to many unsubstantiated rumors over the years.⁶ Bigelow sold the ranch to another millionaire, Brandon Fugal, in 2016, where it continues to be investigated by folks associated with government UFO programs⁸ but now, presumably, funded by the History Channel. Bigelow Aerospace went out of business during COVID in 2020. However, BAASS may have been defunct since 2012, when their Defense Intelligence Agency contract expired.¹⁷ A biography of Colm A. Kelleher, who led NIDS and BAASS, lists him as shifting responsibilities to more tangible Bigelow Aerospace projects in 2012.¹²

“Around the same time Bigelow created [BAASS], he also hitched a star to MUFON … according to MUFON’s executive director Jan Harzan. ‘If we were able to fund you so you could put investigators on the ground faster,’ Harzan recalls Bigelow offering, ‘could you get better data on some of these reports?’ Together, MUFON and Bigelow supported investigators’ fact-finding expeditions, and shared data—though for less than a year.”⁹

“In 2008, James Carrion, Chuck Modlin and John Schuessler met with Robert Bigelow and his team to seek ways to establish cooperation between the organizations. Later, Carrion negotiated a contract with Bigelow Aerospace that allowed MUFON to organize a funded rapid-response effort that could put investigators in the field on high-value UFO cases within 24 hours. It also gave Bigelow Aerospace access to the MUFON Case Management System.”¹⁹

The MUFON Strike Team for Area Research (STAR) team was about as secretive as NIDS and BAASS, so this checks out. Jeremy Ray, STAR team member, later confirmed on Beyond Belief with George Noory that the team was active from 2008-2009.¹³ Chuck Zukowski confirms Bigelow’s funding of the STAR team and that he investigated a cattle mutilation case for them on December 12, 2009.¹⁸ This timeline aligns with UFORC disbanding in 2009, and it is plausible that Bigelow considered this underwriting to be part of his UFORC support.

Publications

Phillips, Ted. Delphos: A close encounter of the second kind (CE-II). UFO Research Coalition, Fairfax, VA. 2003. ISBN 13: 9781928957010

References

Epilogue

As you can tell by the number of references, there were a lot of rabbit holes to go down when revising this entry in 2025. One worth mentioning is BAASS connecting back to the 2002 Syfy Roswell dig by way of Chuck Zukowski. Chuck was one of the volunteers on the dig, and on the last night of taping happened to get into “a very animated” discussion with the University of New Mexico’s Dr. Bill Doleman, who was leading the dig, at 1am outside a Roswell restaurant. Chuck disagreed with Bill’s approach, and was granted permission to conduct a more proper “strip dig” in the center of the abnormality area on Mac Brazel’s ranch the following day. Chuck’s dig found the best artifact: a small, silver metallic, light weight piece of material similar to Mac Brazel’s descriptions. The Roswell UFO Museum’s investigator who invited Chuck on the dig brushed it aside as insignificant. Chuck disagreed, and in 2010 arranged for BAASS to receive the material from the University of New Mexico for additional scientific analysis. BAASS shared the results, but in 2011 went radio silent. The silence may have been due to BAASS losing their government funding and shutting down.

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