Leon Davidson

Leon Davidson (October 18, 1922 – January 1, 2007) was an American chemical engineer and scientist who contributed to the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos. A Columbia University alumnus (B.A. 1942, B.S. 1943, M.S. 1947, Ph.D. 1951), he worked with IBM and Union Carbide. In the 1950s, Davidson investigated UFOs as a civilian at the White Plains Civil Defense Filter Center, rejecting the extraterrestrial hypothesis. He argued UFO sightings were CIA-orchestrated disinformation via electronic countermeasures (ECM) to conceal U.S. military tech, famously stating 'ECM+CIA=UFO' in a 1959 Saucer News article on the 1952 Washington incident. Key achievements include securing Congressional approval to publish Air Force Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 in full and obtaining Pentagon access to Tremonton films. He amassed a vast UFO collection donated to Columbia University and pressured CIA for Robertson Panel declassification.