Danny Sheehan

Daniel "Danny" Sheehan (born 1945) is an American public-interest attorney whose career includes the Pentagon Papers case support work, the Karen Silkwood case, the La Penca/Iran-Contra litigation, and the Christic Institute. Since the 2000s he has been the UFO disclosure movement's chief legal theorist and whistleblower counsel.

A Harvard Law graduate with divinity training, Sheehan built a career on institutional-misconduct litigation. His UFO involvement dates to 1977, when, he recounts, while assisting a Library of Congress review for the Carter era he was shown classified-adjacent material including photographs he describes as a crashed craft, an account that rests on his testimony alone.

Sheehan represented John Mack in the Harvard inquiry, has counseled Luis Elizondo and David Grusch on whistleblower law, founded the New Paradigm Institute to lobby for disclosure legislation, and campaigns for the restoration of the UAP Disclosure Act's review board. He teaches and lectures on what he frames as a constitutional crisis: technology and truth allegedly held outside democratic oversight.

His documented contribution is legal architecture: protective strategies that let cleared witnesses reach Congress, and draft statutory language circulating through the UAPDA fights. His personal claims (the 1977 photographs among them) are unverified testimony he has repeated consistently for decades.

Critics from his mainstream career called his litigation style crusading (the La Penca case's dismissal and sanctions were a professional blow), and skeptics treat his cosmic framing (he speaks openly of ET contact as fact) as advocacy outrunning evidence. Admirers, including opponents, credit his genuine role in the whistleblower pipeline that produced the 2023 hearings.

In his 80s as of 2026, Sheehan continues through the New Paradigm Institute, working the PURSUE-era legislative angles.