Peter Davenport at the National UFO Reporting Center, now at Atlas Missile Site No. 6, an abandoned U.S. Air Force nuclear missile site in rural eastern Washington that he bought two years ago. (Ingrid Barrentine / Associated Press)
While Davenport stores his UFO files underground in the abandoned missile silo, the complex is not yet ready to be inhabited, so he keeps an office at his apartment in nearby Harrington, Wash. (Ingrid Barrentine / Associated Press)
Davenport’s UFO files are in a very safe place: The ceilings in the missile site are 16 feet high, the walls 18 inches thick. The complex, made of 3 million tons of concrete, can withstand a blast 50 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb at a distance of 1.6 miles. (Ingrid Barrentine / Associated Press)
Davenport has run the National UFO Reporting Center since 1994. He says that 90% of sightings can be discounted, but that the rest defy an easy explanation. “The work of studying UFOs is of immense consequence to every living thing on this planet,” he says. (Ingrid Barrentine / Associated Press)