Background

Senior US Air Force intelligence officer. Deputy Director of the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — the same installation that has been the centre of UAP material storage allegations since 1947 and where Maj. Gen. Neil McCasland later commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory. Worked alongside David Grusch.

The Pattern

According to Rep. Eric Burlison, the UAP caucus contacted Sullivan and asked him to come in for an interview. He was being prepared as a whistleblower in a federal congressional inquiry into UAP. He did not attend the interview. He was dead within two weeks.

Sullivan’s death was initially characterised as a suicide. The medical examiner’s detailed cause-of-death determination has not been publicly released. The Inspector General of the Intelligence Community deemed the case «urgent and credible» — the same legal language applied to David Grusch’s Protected Disclosure — and referred it to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Burlison formally asked FBI Director Kash Patel to open a foul-play investigation.

Why He Matters

Sullivan is the clearest documented instance of the testimony pattern: a credentialed insider with high-level clearance, contacted by Congress for UAP testimony, dead before he could speak. Whatever he was going to say is now in the medical examiner’s sealed file and his survivors’ private memory. His death is the mechanism. McCasland’s disappearance — days after Trump’s 2026 UAP announcement and following two contacts from Burlison — is the same mechanism in motion.

Connections

• Worked alongside David Grusch — Grusch is now driving the investigation into Sullivan’s death
• Wright-Patterson AFB — same installation as McCasland’s AFRL command
• Burlison-Patel correspondence requested foul-play investigation
• Part of the broader 13-name missing/dead scientists cluster under House Oversight Committee jurisdiction
• Listed on the April 20 2026 Comer/Burlison letter to FBI, NASA, DOE, DoW

Open Threads

• Detailed cause-of-death determination remains unreleased
• The full content of his planned UAP testimony has never been disclosed
• Congressional April 27 2026 deadline for FBI briefing on the cluster passed without response

Sources

• House Oversight letter, April 20 2026
• Burlison interviews on Fox News and NewsNation
• CNN, «Deaths and disappearances of scientists spark federal probe», April 21 2026
• Public obituary, May 2024 (cause of death not stated)