John B. Alexander

John B. Alexander (born 1937) is a retired United States Army colonel. An infantry officer for much of his career, he is best known as a leading advocate for the development of non-lethal weapons and of military applications of the paranormal. He has written and lectured on UFOs. He characterizes his career as having "evolved from hard-core mercenary to thanatologist". Alexander figures prominently in journalist Jon Ronson's book The Men Who Stare At Goats (2004), which was later made into a Hollywood film starring George Clooney (2009). Ronson continued to draw on Alexander's former status and knowledge in several related Channel 4 documentaries, where Ronson examined the subject of New Age ideas influencing the U.S. military. Biography Alexander was born in New York in 1937. He enlisted in the Army as a private in 1956, ultimately retiring as a colonel in 1988. A "mustang," Alexander was selected to attend Officer Candidate School as a sergeant first class. While on active duty, he received degrees from the University of Nebraska (B.G.S. with a concentration in sociology, 1971), Pepperdine University (M.A. in education, 1975) and Walden University (Ph.D. in education, 1980). His assignments include: Commander, Army Special Forces Teams, US Army, Thailand, Vietnam, 1966–69; Chief of Human Resources Division, US Army, Ft. McPherson, GA, 1977–79; Inspector General, Department of Army, Washington, 1980–82; Chief of Human Technology, Army Intelligence Command, US Army, Arlington, VA 1982-83; Manager of Tech. Integration, Army Materiel Command, US Army, Alexandria, VA, 1983–85; Director, Advanced Concepts US Army Lab. Command, Aldelphi, MD 1985-88. Alexander describes his assignment in 1971 as an infantry officer at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, during which time he went diving in the Bimini Islands in search of the mythological continent of Atlantis. During his career in the army he showed exceptional interest in esoteric techniques explored by Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon in his First Earth Battalion manual. An example is neuro-linguistic programming, with which he hoped to create "Jedi warriors" (according to his own account in his 1990 book The Warrior's Edge). He has published another book, UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities.