Retired Air Force Technical Sergeant Dan Sherman claims that in the early 1990s, while serving as an electronics intelligence (ELINT) specialist, he was recruited into an ultra-classified NSA program called Project Preserve Destiny (PPD). The program’s purpose was to use genetically altered human “intuitive communicators” to telepathically receive and decode alien signals—specifically, transmissions related to alien abduction events across the United States. Sherman says the aliens themselves coordinated with elements of the U.S. government to create these communicators by abducting and genetically modifying his pregnant mother in the early 1960s, altering his fetal DNA so he would develop the ability to communicate telepathically as an adult. The NSA allegedly tracked him from childhood through military service until he was formally read into the program during a routine continuation course at NSA headquarters in Maryland.
Sherman’s Background and Path to the Program
Sherman grew up in extreme poverty, attending 27 schools between kindergarten and 12th grade due to his father’s itinerant work as a welder and a broken home environment. His mother had suffered reproductive damage from a childhood accident and been told she could never carry a baby to term; after many miscarriages, Sherman was the only one who survived—a fact he later correlated with possible alien protection.
As a fourth grader in 1974, he met an Air Force major who piloted the SR-71 Blackbird. This encounter sparked both his patriotism and his desire to serve in the Air Force, specifically in a technical capacity.
He enlisted at 18 as a security policeman, then cross-trained into ELINT after four or five years. His first ELINT assignment was at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska. ELINT work involved collecting and analyzing enemy electronic emissions—radar, communications, lasers—to build jamming packages that would allow the U.S. to control airspace.
He was selected for a continuation course called EA280, which sent him to the NSA complex in Laurel, Maryland, in the early 1990s. It was there that the real purpose of his visit was revealed.
The NSA Briefing: Project Preserve Destiny
While at the NSA complex for his EA280 course, Sherman was contacted by an Air Force captain (whom he pseudonymously calls “Captain White” in his book Above Black) and summoned to the NSA headquarters building—a large black glass structure in Laurel, Maryland. His security clearances had not yet transferred, so the captain had to sign him in personally.
In the captain’s office, Sherman was told he had been selected for Project Preserve Destiny, a program that began in 1960, rooted in first contact with an alien species in 1947. The program’s purpose was to genetically manage human fetuses so they would develop heightened intuitive communication (IC) abilities.
Sherman’s mother had been abducted before his conception (around 1961–1962) for testing, and then abducted again in 1963 while pregnant with him. During this second abduction, the aliens performed what the captain called “genetic management” on the fetus—altering Sherman’s DNA to develop IC capabilities.
The captain explained that the aliens and the U.S. government were working together on this program. Demographic targeting was used: families likely to produce offspring who would join the military were selected, so the subjects could be tracked and controlled throughout their lives. Sherman’s impoverished, mobile background fit this profile.
The program was structured using the “onion effect”: layers of classification where a “black” (highly classified but acknowledged) project served as cover for a “gray” (off-the-books, alien-related) project. Only select individuals within the black project knew about the gray project above it. All funding, manpower transfers, and logistics for PPD were hidden under the umbrella of the black project.
When Sherman asked why intuitive communicators were needed, the captain said it was for a future event where IC ability would be critical for military command and control, but he provided no details about the nature of this event.
Sherman was told he would never speak about PPD to anyone outside the program. At each new base, his previous contact would introduce him to his next contact through pre-arranged signals—at one point, a phone call to a dormitory phone, with the next contact identified by standing with his arms folded in front of a facility.
The Training: Unlocking Intuitive Communication
After the briefing, Sherman was transported in a blue van with blacked-out windows to an underground facility—he descended in an elevator with only one button, entering a room with two computer consoles and a table. He was told another student would be there simultaneously, but they were forbidden from speaking to each other.
Each day, after completing his regular EA280 ELINT coursework, Sherman would be picked up from his Holiday Inn hotel and driven to the facility. He would take pills (initially two, later reduced to one—he was never told what they were for, and forgetting them did not prevent him from working), sit at his console, and put on headphones.
The training began with ten green LED boxes on the computer screen, each displaying a sine wave. The instructor told Sherman to mentally hum a tone played through the headphones—without using his vocal cords—and to concentrate on the first box, watching for the sine wave to move in response to his mental effort.
After days of what Sherman described as mentally torturous practice, he experienced a “click”—a moment when the sine wave visibly moved in response to his mental humming, like a camera coming into focus. He could then affect the sine wave at will. He progressed through all ten boxes, each associated with a different tone.
Once the clicking was established, the training evolved: the instructor began feeding Sherman numbers, colors, letters, and concepts, and his mind would intuitively associate these with the sine wave patterns. The boxes served as visual feedback for Sherman, but the actual pattern-matching was happening on the monitoring end—the NSA (or the aliens) were testing whether his mind could accurately convey semantic information through this modality.
Sherman theorizes that IC works by encoding information on the carrier wave of human bioelectric energy—a different modality from speech or thought, operating at a level below symbolic language, perhaps closer to raw perceptual or mimetic content.
He also had to practice “flattening” the sine wave—reducing its amplitude to the center of the box—which he describes as a concentration exercise to strengthen his mental control, analogous to weightlifting.
Corroborating Details: The White Van and Noise Cancellation Technologies
On one occasion, while waiting in the blue van, Sherman saw headlights from a second vehicle and, curious, looked around to find a white van parked nearby with an identifying dent in its bumper. On a later trip, he spotted a white van with the same dent at a highway exit and followed it to a company called Noise Cancellation Technologies (NCT) in Linthicum, Maryland.
NCT had documented government and military contracts: in June 1991 (exactly when Sherman was in training), the Washington Post reported NCT won a $210,000 DARPA contract for R&D. The company also had ties to the Office of Naval Research and NASA. NCT’s work involved active wave management—manipulating sound and electromagnetic waves to reduce noise and improve signal-to-noise ratios—technology plausibly relevant to filtering alien signals.
Sherman also notes that NCT’s location was a short drive from Fort Meade, where the government historically ran its psychic spy program (the Stargate program), and that extended electromagnetics researcher Hal Puthoff—who ran the CIA’s psychic spy program—has patents in exotic wave propagation (scalar potentials) that could enable communication attenuating at 1/r rather than 1/r², potentially explaining how telepathic signals could work over vast distances.
First Assignment: Overseas Base and “Spock”
After three months of training, Sherman returned to his regular ELINT duties. Several months later, he received orders to an overseas base (later identified as San Vito dei Normanni Air Station in southern Italy, which was subsequently closed). His security clearances were delayed, leaving him in limbo for about 30 days.
Once cleared, he was contacted by phone and introduced to his new PPD contact—his unit commander, a captain. He was taken to a C-van (communications van) that served as the black project’s workstation. The van had two seats: the left seat for conventional classified ELINT work, the right seat for Sherman’s gray project work. His colleague had no idea what Sherman was doing.
Sherman’s workstation had a monitor, mouse, and a bottle of pills (one per day). He was told to wait—communications would start when they started. There were no headphones in the van; the communication was entirely internal.
When the first communication came, Sherman experienced it as a “colorful tapestry” in his mind’s eye—a felt sense in a discrete area of his brain (not localized precisely, but clearly distinct from his own thoughts). The communication had a different quality from his own thinking: foreign, external in character, but not experienced as coming from outside his head.
He would receive a concept—a number, an image, a feeling—focus on it in the tapestry, and then type it into the computer, separating each “bite” of communication with a slash. The first communications were strings of numbers preceded by a code (118, which was his PPD code name “Staunch 118”, followed by a five- or six-digit number he called a “zip code”).
Sherman eventually began receiving visual imagery: a rocket blowing up (possibly correlating with a Chinese launch failure), troop movements, nature scenes, and other content. He believes these were tests of his ability to convey different types of information.
The alien communicator he interacted with at this base he nicknamed “Spock” (a private joke with a friend, referencing Star Trek). Spock’s communications were highly logical, structured, and linear—his “tapestry” appeared as a straight line of sequential information. Sherman sensed male energy. Spock communicated primarily in numbers and structured data, not imagery.
Sherman eventually discovered he could communicate on a different plane—a closer, more informal modality—by which he could ask direct questions. Both he and Spock seemed surprised this was possible. Spock permitted it but was not interested in casual conversation.
Sherman asked Spock several questions:
How do they travel? Spock said they go “around time,” not forward or backward, because time is relative with no fixed reference point. Sherman interprets this as higher-dimensional temporal navigation, possibly involving wormholes or scalar wave propagation.
What about the sun? Spock expressed reverence for the sun, saying humanity does not yet understand its value and will eventually. Sherman notes that some UFO researchers have speculated the sun may function as a portal to other star systems.
How long have they been here? Spock indicated they have been present for a very long time, intersecting with humanity at various points, but that advanced human civilization made it harder for them to maintain distance.
Second Assignment: “Bones” and Abduction Reporting
After the overseas base closed, Sherman was reassigned to a second base (likely Offutt AFB in Nebraska, where researcher Richard Geldridge confirmed Sherman lived nearby in 1993–1994). This base was much larger, multi-service, and his workstation was in a big air-conditioned room rather than a van.
His new alien communicator was qualitatively different—more colorful, emotional, and image-rich. Sherman nicknamed him “Bones”, continuing the Star Trek theme. Bones’ communications included vivid imagery: rocket failures, grocery stores, troop movements, forests, and animals.
Sherman again used the informal plane to ask questions:
Religion and creation: Bones said humans and aliens are part of the same creation—the “intelligent” creation (as opposed to the non-intelligent creation, like plants). He implied humans have something like a soul, which Sherman interpreted as self-agency or self-awareness.
Interbreeding: Bones indicated they had experimented with interbreeding with humans in the past, but did not confirm whether hybrid populations exist on Earth today.
Other alien races: Sherman asked if they were the only alien species. Bones’ response conveyed that the question was silly—of course there are many.
Gender and biology: They have male and female sexes but do not procreate exactly like humans. They also eliminate waste, which Sherman sensed was a source of humor for Bones—a surprisingly relatable moment.
Mode of travel: Bones described manipulation of electromagnetic energy and time, which Sherman later compared to the Alcubierre drive (creating a void in front of the craft and falling into it) and to Bob Lazar’s descriptions.
Human nature: Bones consistently referred to humans as “water beings” or “water vessels”, likely because of humans’ high water content and conductivity.
International involvement: Bones indicated that more than one country is involved in the alien presence on Earth.
Toward the end of his time at the second base, the nature of Sherman’s communications shifted dramatically. He began receiving data that appeared to be alien abduction reports: fields indicating “potentiality for recall,” “pain levels,” and other metrics associated with abduction events. He was essentially serving as a telepathic readout system for alien abductions occurring across the United States, reporting data back through the NSA.
Sherman was not told this was happening. He had assumed all communications were training exercises. When he realized he was functioning as an operational asset reporting on what might be non-consensual abductions, he felt morally compromised. He raised concerns with his captain contact, who said he had no authority or knowledge to address the issue and could not confirm or deny what Sherman was communicating.
Getting Out
Sherman was around 30 years old, in the prime of his life, with no romantic or social life due to the isolation imposed by the program. The moral qualms about the abduction reporting, combined with the drudgery and isolation, led him to want out.
His captain contact told him he likely would not be allowed to leave—even when his enlistment term ended, they would probably keep him.
At the time, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was in effect. Sherman, who was bisexual, wrote a letter to his regular (non-PPD) chain of command admitting homosexuality, knowing this would trigger discharge proceedings. He deliberately bypassed the PPD chain of command, which might have suppressed the request.
The strategy worked. He was discharged and left the program. He felt relief but also regret at not completing his service, given his patriotism. He has not been able to communicate with aliens since leaving—the ability appears to have been closed off.
Post-Program: Threats, Corroboration, and Legacy
About two years after publishing his book Above Black, Sherman received a call on his cell phone from someone claiming to be a Howard Stern Show producer, interested in booking him. Within a minute of hanging up, he received a second call from an unknown number: “Drop the story. Don’t go on Howard Stern and stop talking about it.” The caller hung up. Stern’s show never followed up.
Sherman interprets this as evidence that his story is being monitored, but that the government’s strategy is to ignore rather than confront him—because arresting or silencing him would validate his claims. He believes he has “slipped through the cracks” and that his story is self-concealed by the noisy, stigmatized UFO conference circuit, where it gets lumped in with less credible claims.
Noah Hradek, an independent researcher, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records on Project Preserve Destiny. The Air Force initially responded that the program fell under the NSA’s purview and forwarded the request. The NSA then responded that the existence or non-existence of such material was classified under Executive Order 13526 (national defense classification), effectively neither confirming nor denying the program’s existence. To Sherman and many researchers, the Air Force’s referral to the NSA is itself a strong indicator that PPD is real.
Sherman’s NSA training certificate for the EA280 course corroborates his presence at NSA headquarters during the relevant period.
In July 2025, the Italian weekly L’Espresso published an article claiming that Project Preserve Destiny is real and that Trump’s inner circle has been in closed-door meetings with Pentagon officials about moving special access programs like PPD out of Pentagon oversight and directly into the White House. The article describes six levels of secrecy and a “gray program core above black” dealing with the alien issue—matching Sherman’s account.
Another figure, Scott Andrews, has come forward claiming he was taken from school as a child to an Air Force base with a space command center and used for intuitive alien communications—suggesting PPD or a successor program may have continued with new subjects.
Sherman has been approached about congressional testimony under whistleblower immunity and has said he would testify openly and under oath, revealing everything he knows about the gray project.
He believes the aliens he communicated with—Spock and Bones—were essentially soldiers or functionaries following orders, not policymakers. He sensed no malice or nefarious intent toward humanity. He speculates they may follow something like Star Trek’s Prime Directive—minimally interfering with pre-warp civilizations—and that their restraint is a choice, not a limitation.
Sherman is skeptical that full disclosure will ever happen, though he supports incremental revelations. He has largely withdrawn from the UFO community, finding it plagued by narcissism and credulity, and is content to let his book speak for itself. He has tried to reactivate his IC ability since leaving the program but found it completely closed off.
