Ralph Blumenthal is an American journalist and author who served as a staff reporter for The New York Times from 1964 to 2009. Renowned for investigative reporting on corruption, organized crime, and major events like the World Trade Center bombing, he transitioned to UAP/UFO disclosure. In 2017, he co-authored a New York Times article revealing the Pentagon's $22.5 million Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) investigating UFOs. In 2023, with Leslie Kean, he reported whistleblower David Grusch's claims of a secret U.S. UFO retrieval program possessing non-human vehicles and dead pilots. Blumenthal authored 'The Believer: Alien Encounters, Hard Science, and the Passion of John Mack' (2021), a biography of Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, detailing his UFO abduction research and providing UFO history.