Thompson, Robert

Thompson, Robert “Bob” –

First went public via TheDebrief.org and SCU in 2022… NOT in 2025 via NewsNation.

“Even more recently, calling back to my previous frustrations with Ross Coulthart, yet another whistleblower alleges incredible anomalous phenomenon. This time it is Bob Thompson, a former Customs and Border Protection agent, who talked with NewsNation about studying strange events such as drones, portals, and other aerial anomalies at the U.S. border.11 Putting aside the obvious (at this point rote) national security concerns these allegations draw up, the timing is again curious: As the border, CBP, and DHS have become remarkably sensitive topics nationwide, what good does bringing UFOs into the conversation do? It dredges up paranoia, obfuscates the day-to-day material concerns that remain unaddressed, and leaves only science-fictional thrills in a newsroom that certainly has better things to do. As time passes, I am left feeling that Coulthart is the most opportunistic ghoul in a subject matter overrun with opportunism.”

The Debrief‘s Exclusive Reporting on “Bob” Thompson Circa May 2022

“Now in an exclusive to The Debrief, a former CBP agent is breaking his silence, offering significant details about his own experience with UAPs while patrolling the Mexican-American border. This, along with experiences and videos shared with him by fellow CBP and Department of Homeland Security officials, and his efforts to set up a process within the CBP for pilots and agents to report their sightings.”

. . .

“In an interview with The Debrief, Thompson recounted how one of the roles he took on as a federal agent with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector Special Operations Group involved establishing the reporting requirements for Unexplained Aerial Phenomena within the Tucson Sector. 

According to Thompson, just like the military, a number of these bizarre incidents involving UAP have been captured on sophisticated government systems, normally tasked with catching drug smugglers or staving off the flow of illegal immigration. 

“We have guys out there 24/7 with their eyes to the sky looking for smuggling, but they see other stuff,” said Thompson. “I talked to dozens and dozens of agents that all had similar stories of seeing bizarre stuff, of having encounters with UAP.”  

 . . .

“Captured by one of the U.S. military’s flagship attack helicopters close to midnight on November 6, 2018, roughly 40 miles northwest of Tucson, Arizona, the video appears to show several unidentifiable objects maneuvering unlike any known aircraft.“

 . . . “To reinforce the need for a UAP task force within DHS, Thompson provided a copy of another 40-minute long UAP video to the nonprofit Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU), an organization comprised mainly of scientists from various fields who are engaged in the study of aerial phenomena. 

Popularly referred to as the “Rubber Duck,” the video taken from a DHS surveillance aircraft shows a misshapen object steadingly flying along near America’s southern border with Mexico. 

Records reviewed by The Debrief verified Thompson had made supervisors at DHS aware of his UAP related side-project, as well as the fact that he had provided the purported UAP footage to the SCU for analysis.” 

 . . .

“Skeptic Mick West has expressed the view that the object in the “Rubber Duck” video might nonetheless be a drone or runaway mylar balloon, although he acknowledges that conclusive identification based on information in the video alone would be difficult. 

“We really don’t know what it is and we probably won’t ever know what it is,” West said in a video on his YouTube channel. 

The Debrief reached out to the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies for comment about the footage, and although the video was pending analysis by an SCU team member, the results of that study had not been completed and made publicly available at the time of publication.”

 . . .

“More than any personal interest he had in UAP, Thompson says what drove him to begin collecting information about what his fellow DHS employees were seeing had been a lack of any formal reporting structure for such sightings.

<snip>

Speaking on background, three separate U.S. defense officials familiar with the government’s current UAP investigations said the encounter by the Apache pilots in 2018 was not reported to either the UAP Task Force, or its sucessor program, the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG).” 

 . . .

 

NewsNation 2025 Reporting