FBI Joins Search for Missing Retired Air Force Major General

William Neil McCasland, a retired Air Force major general with a career spent managing some of the Pentagon's most classified programs, walked out of his Albuquerque home on the morning of February 27 and did not come back. He left without his cell phone. He left without telling anyone where he was going. Nearly two weeks later, he remains missing, and the FBI has joined local authorities in trying to find him.

McCasland is 68 years old, five-foot-eleven, with white hair and blue eyes. He is known in his neighborhood as an active man—someone who hikes, runs, and cycles through Albuquerque's Northeast Heights and the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. The Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office issued a Silver Alert the day after he disappeared, citing an unspecified medical issue that gave the search an added layer of urgency. Authorities have since contacted more than 600 homeowners in the area, conducted extensive interviews, and coordinated search operations involving multiple agencies.

The scope of McCasland's career explains why the FBI became involved almost immediately. He held degrees from the Air Force Academy, MIT, and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. During his military service, he worked as chief engineer on the Department of Defense's Global Positioning System program, served as system program director of the Space Based Laser Project Office, and held the position of director of special programs at the Pentagon. He commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio—a facility that has long carried associations with classified aerospace research and, in popular lore, with the Roswell incident, though the Air Force has consistently denied any connection to extraterrestrial materials.

After retiring nearly thirteen years ago, McCasland took on work with To The Stars, Inc., a company co-founded by Tom DeLonge of Blink-182 that focuses on the study of unidentified aerial phenomena. This detail, combined with his military background and the timing of his disappearance—it came just days after President Trump announced he was directing the Pentagon to release government records related to extraterrestrial life and UFOs—has drawn considerable public attention and speculation online.

McCasland's wife, Susan McCasland Wilkerson, has been direct in addressing the theories circulating. In a Facebook post, she acknowledged that her husband had "a brief association with the UFO community" but emphasized that this connection should not be misinterpreted. She stated plainly that he does not possess special knowledge about extraterrestrial bodies or debris from Roswell, and that he does not have dementia. She noted that he was not confused or disoriented when he left. She also pointed out that he retired over a decade ago, making it "quite unlikely that he was taken to extract very dated secrets from him." With a touch of dark humor, she added that no mothership has been reported hovering over the Sandia Mountains.

Luis Elizondo, a former Department of Defense intelligence officer who now advocates for the release of classified UFO information, told CNN he hopes McCasland is found safe and healthy, while cautioning against premature speculation about the cause of his disappearance. He acknowledged that McCasland may have had involvement in UAP research but said he preferred to let law enforcement conduct their work without interference.

The search has been comprehensive. Wilkerson reported that dozens of searchers—official personnel, friends, and neighbors—have been deployed on foot. Horseback searchers have covered ground in the foothills. Drones with different capabilities, helicopters, and three different types of search dogs have been deployed. Ring doorbell footage and wildlife camera recordings from the neighborhood have been collected and reviewed. The sheriff's office has stated that it has uncovered no evidence of foul play but is still considering all possible scenarios. Authorities are asking anyone with information to contact them through a dedicated webpage where footage and other files can be submitted.

As of mid-March, McCasland remains missing. His family and the authorities continue to search. The medical issue that prompted the Silver Alert remains unspecified, but it underscores that time matters in cases like this. The question of what happened to him on that February morning—whether he became lost in terrain he knew well, whether his unspecified condition caused him to wander, or whether something else occurred—remains unanswered.