Tim Gallaudet is not alone.
Literally, with his five dogs scampering underfoot at his Annapolis home on this particular day, but also cosmically: He believes extraterrestrials fly among us.
That Gallaudet is a retired rear admiral of the Navy and former acting and deputy administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, arguably adds credence to a belief that, while not uncommon, tends to draw eye-rolls. Gallaudet has testified before Congress on the subject and is among a group of prominent scientists and former governmental officials pushing for legislation to increase disclosure of videos and other evidence of UFOs, or what is now more officially known as UAPs, for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.
A graduate of the Naval Academy, Gallaudet has a master’s degree and Ph.D in oceanography from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. After a public service career in which he served in posts including Oceanographer of the Navy and acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, he is now CEO of Ocean STL, a marine technology and management consulting company.
He and his wife, Caren, a Naval Academy graduate and former Navy diver, have three daughters, including one who just completed her first year at the academy. He’s written a memoir that is undergoing Pentagon review and is slated for publication later this year.
In an interview with The Baltimore Sun that has been condensed and edited for clarity, Gallaudet spoke about his close encounters with evidence of UAPs, the “palace intrigue“ of the first Trump administration and the cutbacks of the second, and other phenomena of the natural world.
What do you know about UAPs, and why would the government not come clean about them?
That they’re real and that the government has a trove of UFO videos and materials that they’ve been hiding from the public and Congress for decades. There’s a partial national security imperative to not reveal everything we know about UFOs, but to reveal the fact that we’re not alone in the universe … that I believe is something the American people should know. The American people have a right to know the nature of reality.
It’s just not good policy for the government to say, we can’t control our airspace or water space, because they occur in the water too. I know people who’ve seen classified video of these things underwater… They’re afraid of admitting that we are not in total control, and that is a whole paradigm shift, right?
What I do really know is that there’s more than just one type, species, whatever you want to call them, so it’s not just one ET… And we don’t know where they come from. It could be the other parts of the universe or another dimension.
Why did you write a memoir and title it, “Holding Fast in Heavy Seas: Leadership for Turbulent Times”
The Navy [is] an organization that imbues you with the values and characteristics of good leadership, from day one at the Academy. And so I learned a great deal about leadership in the Navy. That’s what the Navy does. I came to the civilian agency, which I loved because I was an oceanographer in the Navy and a meteorologist. I did so many things that NOAA does… I absolutely loved working there. And a lot of people came to me and they said, ‘Hey, Tim, you were a Navy admiral. No one’s ever taught me about leadership. What do you think about leadership? What would you do in this situation that happened to me?’
They wanted to know what it was, what it took to be a good leader, because they wanted to positively influence people. And that’s exactly what I want this book to do. I wanted to positively influence people who want to be better leaders, and I do it by sharing my story.
Half the book is about my Navy experience… And then it was about leading NOAA under Trump… It was not easy. That’s why the subtitle is, “Leadership for Turbulent Times.”
Did serving in the first Trump administration teach you something about leadership during turbulent times?
Absolutely, yes, trying to lead on issues and advance an issue, for example, about ocean stewardship, or coral reef conservation, or ocean mapping, improving America’s weather model, all those things — how to do it, and thread the needle of making it attractive to an administration that maybe might not be receptive to environmental and science applications, right? So, ultimately, the title, “Holding fast in heavy seas.”
And then there [were] times after January 6, you name it, where I thought about quitting, resigning in protest. There were many times, and I didn’t because I realized, well, if I left, there’d be a vacuum they’d fill with some political hack who had no appreciation for these people and their mission… There were times when I thought about leaving, and people asked me to stay because they felt like I was having a positive influence on them and the agency.
What do you think about the NOAA cutbacks under the second Trump administration?
Ultimately, I think government efficiency is good. Our national debt, the interest we’re paying on it, is exceeding the Pentagon’s annual budget. That’s not a very good place to be. We need to cut back. I do see a lot of inefficiencies in government… though I don’t think the cuts for NOAA are good, because they’re not targeted. They’re just across the board. And so you’re seeing a decline… the skill of the American weather model actually dropped in a metric… That’s bad, especially as hurricane season approaches.
These weather balloon data are not coming in because they don’t have the staff. So that’s just not a purposeful cut. So they didn’t think about what they were doing.
The employees of NOAA are dedicated, especially the Weather Service. They’re much like the military. They view their job as a no-fail mission, and I think that’s true, so they are going to do whatever it takes… When a bunch of tornadoes were predicted to occur, they just brought everybody in, and they worked long hours and they made it happen. So they’re going to do that. But the trouble is… the models need data, and right now that we can’t staff all the data collection that we want to do.
What are you anticipating for this year’s hurricane season, and are storms becoming more intense?
There’s a possibility that that’s an outcome in several climate projections. However, climate projections have a great deal of uncertainty… They depend on people, and people are even harder to predict than storms. When you look at what has happened compared to what has been projected, we’re not seeing all that doom and gloom… We have to be more disciplined and precise about how we talk about climate. I am no denier… but when we start getting so astray from the science… That’s why it’s so polarized.
What was it like for someone with your deep knowledge of oceanography and meteorology to lose your home in Hurricane Katrina while living in coastal Mississippi and based at Stennis Space Center?
That was a really traumatic thing for our family. We knew it was coming. And we had evacuated so many times that year that we kind of got jaded. We said, OK, let’s just put everything in the second story of our house — we know that the bottom [floor] will get flooded, the top will get shredded by wind, and maybe that stuff will stay safe. The Weather Service did a great job. We evacuated on time. Others in our neighborhood who didn’t die… It was like the arm of God just… took out every home and reduced it to a slab and pushed it all against Interstate-10, and we came back to that. And it was very emotional.
You were ready to walk away from the wreckage, but Caren wanted to search the rubble, where you found, amazingly enough, some family china and other treasures.
She still had some hope. I was so done. I felt violated. We found a lot of things — my academy ring. And so that comes out when I was leading NOAA because that became my job… to inspire hope. I learned that from Caren.