Jim Semivan

CIA Career

Jim Semivan is the highest-ranking active CIA officer to publicly advocate for UFO/UAP disclosure. He spent 25 years (1982–2007) in the CIA's National Clandestine Service, the agency's directorate responsible for human intelligence and covert operations. By retirement, he held the rank of Senior Intelligence Service member, one of the most senior civilian ranks in the intelligence community.

During his career, Semivan served in multiple overseas and domestic assignments, specializing in foreign weapons systems and counterproliferation measures. He rose to positions including Chief of Operations to the National Clandestine Service and chief of a key operational unit, responsible for high-level strategic management of CIA clandestine activities. For his service, he received the CIA's Career Intelligence Medal.

Transition to Disclosure Work

After retiring in 2007, Semivan founded JimSem1, a consultancy that continued training intelligence leaders and teaching CIA tradecraft to government and allied organizations, while advising programs on weapons of mass destruction counter-measures. However, his most significant post-retirement move came in 2017 when he co-founded To The Stars Academy alongside pop musician and producer Tom DeLonge, retired Air Force officer Lue Elizondo, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Christopher Mellon, and physicist Harold Puthoff.

To The Stars was explicitly designed as an entertainment and investigative platform to accelerate public disclosure and mainstream understanding of UAP. Semivan served as Vice President of Operations, bringing his intelligence tradecraft and organizational expertise to a previously unthinkable civilian disclosure effort. The platform released declassified military footage (the now-famous "Gimbal" and "Go Fast" videos) and hosted high-profile interviews with military witnesses and researchers.

Consciousness and Interdimensional Theories

In recent years, Semivan has become known for a distinctive position within disclosure circles: he proposes that UAP entities may not be extraterrestrial aliens at all, but rather interdimensional intelligences operating from dimensions or states of reality adjacent to our own.

According to Semivan, these hypothetical entities possess the ability to:

• Interact directly with consciousness and subjective human experience
• Manipulate perception in witnesses and observers
• Access and influence the human mind directly

This framework bridges classical UFO witness accounts with parapsychology, consciousness studies, and theoretical physics. Rather than viewing UAP as purely physical aerial objects, Semivan's model incorporates high-strangeness phenomena (missing time, telepathic contact, synchronicity) as evidence of non-physical interaction.

Current Platform: The Sol Foundation

Since 2024, Semivan has been active as an advisor and guest at The Sol Foundation, a research and discussion platform focused on UAP, consciousness, and institutional secrecy. In interviews with philosopher Peter Skafish and other researchers, he articulates how UAP secrecy likely originated in the 1940s (the Roswell era) and how government compartmentalization has prevented even high-ranking officials from accessing the full picture.

Disclosure Strategy: Limited vs. Catastrophic

Semivan is notably careful about the form of disclosure. He distinguishes between:

• Limited disclosure: Acknowledging some UAP reality without full revelation of entity nature or technological capability
• Catastrophic disclosure: Sudden, complete revelation that could destabilize institutions, religions, and geopolitical order

He argues that the potential benefits of full disclosure—new academic disciplines, revolutionary advances in physics and consciousness studies, and genuine understanding of non-human intelligence—may outweigh institutional risks, but that the transition must be managed thoughtfully.

Credibility and Influence

Semivan's credibility rests on his government rank and operational experience rather than claimed encounters or whistleblower revelations. He offers the perspective of a career intelligence professional who has seen classified compartments and understands how secrecy is maintained. His synthesis of consciousness studies with UAP phenomena represents a bridge between government-insider skepticism and fringe speculative theory—neither dismissing UAP nor uncritically endorsing all accounts.

He has published works through Simon & Schuster and appears regularly on disclosure-focused podcasts and platforms, making him one of the most publicly visible government-insider advocates in the disclosure era.