A retired U.S. Army intelligence specialist who spent years inside America’s secret remote-viewing program has made a series of extraordinary claims involving alleged alien bases on Earth, human-looking beings connected to extraterrestrials, UFO technology inside a military facility, and a mysterious part of a DNA chart labeled “other.”
Lyn Buchanan, one of the best-known figures associated with the U.S. military’s remote-viewing effort, discussed the claims during a nearly three-hour interview with Jesse Michels on American Alchemy. The episode, published on May 28, 2026, moved from the documented history of Cold War psychic-intelligence experiments into far more controversial territory, including Buchanan’s alleged encounters with non-human intelligence and what he says he personally saw during and after his military career.
Buchanan is described as a “CIA psychic spy,” served in the U.S. Army and became involved in the military remote-viewing program associated with organizations including Army intelligence and the Defense Intelligence Agency. The CIA did conduct and fund research into remote viewing at different periods, and the agency now openly acknowledges that intelligence services investigated whether individuals could obtain information about distant targets through alleged extrasensory perception. CIA records also contain large numbers of declassified remote-viewing sessions from this period.
During his conversation with Michels, however, Buchanan described experiences that went far beyond conventional intelligence collection.
Buchanan Says He Remote Viewed Four “Alien Bases” On Earth
One of Buchanan’s most striking claims involved four locations that he believes were being used as extraterrestrial facilities on Earth. He identified Mount Hayes in Alaska, Mount Ziel in Australia, a location he called Secret Mountain near the Bradshaw Ranch area of Sedona, Arizona, and Mount Inyangani in Zimbabwe.
Buchanan linked the story to an earlier remote viewer, Pat Price, who had reportedly been assigned to examine unusual sites during what later became known among remote-viewing researchers as Project 8200. Buchanan said that when he joined the program, Skip Atwater had viewers revisit some of these locations in an effort to determine whether anything had changed.
At Mount Hayes, Buchanan claimed earlier viewers had perceived humans and non-human beings working together at what appeared to be an intelligence-gathering installation inside the mountain. When Buchanan later viewed the site, he said the equipment appeared to have become automated, with little need for personnel to remain there.
His description of Mount Ziel was different. Buchanan said he interpreted the Australian location as something resembling a “port of entry,” where supposedly friendly extraterrestrial groups could arrive before traveling elsewhere. He claimed that while viewing the location, he sensed that whatever intelligence occupied it was aware of his presence but allowed him to continue examining the facility.
The Strange Story Behind The DNA Chart Marked “Other”
Buchanan recounts an encounter he says happened in El Paso, Texas. According to him, he had stopped at a restaurant and was returning to his vehicle when two men approached him. He emphasized that they looked human. The men apparently already knew who he was and asked whether he could discover who inside the U.S. government was interested in what they described as the wedge of a DNA chart marked “other.”
Buchanan said he initially had no idea what they meant. He said that he contacted investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe, whom he knew personally, because he thought she might have information about people in government examining unusual DNA.
Buchanan says the two men subsequently gave him was far stranger. They allegedly claimed that extraterrestrials had removed humans from Earth centuries ago and used them as slaves on another planet. After hundreds of generations away from Earth, they said, the descendants’ DNA had changed as they adapted to that other environment.
According to Buchanan’s retelling, some of these humans were eventually brought back to Earth to perform work connected with alleged extraterrestrial bases. A number of them supposedly escaped. The two men claimed they were among those escapees and had no interest in political power, intelligence work or influencing governments; Buchanan said they simply described themselves as people who wanted to remain free and were afraid that genetic testing could identify them.
When Michels asked whether the men were physiologically indistinguishable from ordinary humans, Buchanan replied that the two individuals he met appeared human. He also stopped short of presenting the story as something he could prove, telling Michels that he did not know whether what they told him was true.
How 23andMe And Ancestry Entered The Story
Philosopher and author Jason Reza Jorjani told Michels during a recent American Alchemy appearance that Buchanan described human-looking beings often associated with the “Nordic” category in UFO literature. Jorjani claimed these beings had fled an oppressive society, found refuge on Earth, and established families whose later generations might have little or no knowledge of their unusual ancestry.
Jorjani went further, claiming Buchanan had told him that former CIA scientist Christopher “Kit” Green was connected to a capability for accessing genetic information held by consumer services such as 23andMe and Ancestry. Jorjani alleged that the purpose was to search for a genetic variation that differed from the normal Homo sapiens population and could reveal descendants of these beings.
No document proving such a CIA program has been produced publicly, and no genetic marker recognized by mainstream genetics has been demonstrated to identify extraterrestrial-human ancestry. The claim therefore remains an allegation traveling through a chain of testimony: Jorjani says Buchanan told him the information, while the publicly available evidence does not establish the existence of the alleged database access.
There is also an interesting difference between the two accounts. In Buchanan’s direct 2026 interview with Michels, the men associated with the “other” DNA story are described simply as human-looking escapees whose ancestors had supposedly been taken from Earth. Buchanan does not identify them in that section as Nordics living in Colorado. Jorjani’s version contains those additional details, making it important not to treat every element as though Buchanan made all of the claims publicly in the same interview.
What 23andMe And Ancestry Say About Government Access
23andMe says it scrutinizes government requests and requires legally valid process before considering disclosure. Its customer information currently states that it has not released customer information to law enforcement. The company also says it does not voluntarily provide personal information to law enforcement without valid legal authority such as a court order, subpoena or search warrant.
Ancestry publishes its own government-request transparency reports. Its report covering 2025 says it received zero valid requests for access to customers’ DNA data during that year. More significantly for claims involving intelligence agencies, Ancestry states that as of December 31, 2025, it had never received a classified request under U.S. national-security laws, including a National Security Letter or a request under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The company says DNA disclosure requires, at minimum, a court order or search warrant and that it may challenge legal demands involving genetic data.
Those statements cannot logically disprove an allegation specifically built around an unknown covert “backdoor,” because the allegation itself assumes access outside normal legal channels. They do, however, show that there is currently no public evidence supporting the claim and that the companies’ documented policies describe a very different access process.
Buchanan Claims He Recognized A UFO Control Panel Inside A Military Hangar
Michels also asked whether he believed the U.S. government possessed recovered UFO technology. Buchanan answered yes and described an incident he says occurred while visiting a military hangar used to investigate aircraft accidents. According to him, the facility contained piles of wreckage that investigators were attempting to reconstruct following midair collisions.
As Buchanan walked through the building, he says he suddenly recognized an unusual control panel among the debris and announced that it had come from a UFO. The statement apparently echoed through the metal building, after which, according to Buchanan, the officer in charge quickly had him removed.
Buchanan said he recognized the panel because he had encountered the same kind of technology during what he believes was a physical alien abduction.
He Says A Small Grey Being Showed Him How To Operate A Craft
Buchanan told Michels that the alleged abduction happened while he was serving as a Methodist minister in East Texas. He recalled hearing something arrive outside his home before finding himself in an unfamiliar white room.
Among the beings he described were very tall humanoid figures and a much smaller grey being. Buchanan said the small being eventually took him toward the front of a craft, where it appeared to function as the pilot.
The control system he remembered was unlike a conventional aircraft cockpit. Buchanan described a surface containing a hand-shaped area in which individual finger positions corresponded to different functions. He claimed the craft responded to the user and that he was allowed to try operating it.
Years later, he said, seeing what appeared to be the same style of control panel among wreckage in a military facility immediately triggered his recognition.
A “Mantis” Being Working Alongside Humans
Michels also asked Buchanan whether he had ever physically seen humans and non-human beings working together rather than merely encountering them during remote viewing.
Buchanan answered that he had seen what he described as an “insectoid.” He compared the being to the mantis-like entities sometimes reported in UFO and paranormal literature and said it was seated alongside humans who were operating equipment.
He refused to identify the location or surrounding circumstances, saying those details were connected with information he would not disclose.
Mars, Rendlesham And UFO Crash Retrievals
The interview continued through several other well-known mysteries in the remote-viewing and UFO world. Buchanan said he had experienced what remote viewers call “bilocation” or “perfect site integration,” in which the viewer becomes so absorbed in a target that the environment seems physically present.
He recalled one session in which he believed he found himself in the Cydonia region of Mars, feeling sand beneath his feet, experiencing the cold and seeing an orange-red landscape. He later claimed that imagery shown to him matched portions of what he had perceived during the session.
Buchanan also discussed the famous 1980 Rendlesham Forest incident in England. He claimed to have remotely examined a triangular craft associated with the case and drawn what he interpreted as its internal layout, including a reddish interior, a control area and a compartment that appeared to hold samples.
Asked directly whether he believed the United States has operated a UFO crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering program, Buchanan said he did. He nevertheless drew an interesting distinction, telling Michels that he did not believe the military remote-viewing unit was formally part of such a program because, according to him, his unit was not normally tasked with UFO crash retrieval.
The Government Really Did Study Remote Viewing, But That Does Not Verify Buchanan’s UFO Claims
The U.S. intelligence community genuinely spent years investigating remote viewing. Declassified CIA records document experiments, operational sessions and efforts to determine whether anomalous perception could have intelligence value. The CIA says the research eventually passed to the DIA and became associated with the program widely remembered as STARGATE.
However, the government’s acknowledgment that remote-viewing research existed should not be confused with confirmation of every extraordinary story told by people who participated in that world.
A CIA-commissioned review by the American Institutes for Research in 1995 concluded that although some experimental results appeared difficult to dismiss as simple randomness, remote viewing had proven too inconsistent and ambiguous to produce dependable actionable intelligence. The reviewers concluded that continued operational use was not warranted.
That leaves Buchanan’s latest interview in an unusual place. Parts of his biography are tied to a genuine and once-classified chapter of American intelligence history, while his claims about alien installations, non-human beings, UFO technology and altered extraterrestrial-linked DNA remain unsupported by publicly verifiable physical evidence.
The connection to 23andMe and Ancestry is even more indirect. Buchanan’s own interview gives a detailed account of two apparently human men asking about a mysterious “other” category in DNA analysis, while Jorjani is the source publicly connecting Buchanan’s story to an alleged CIA backdoor into major commercial genetic databases.
Whether those stories eventually lead to documentation or remain part of the strange mythology surrounding America’s psychic-intelligence programs is an open question. What can be established is that the U.S. government really did spend decades studying remote viewing, Buchanan really was part of that world, and more than thirty years after those programs emerged from secrecy, some of their former participants are still telling stories considerably stranger than anything contained in the declassified files.
