---
category: U.S. State
created: 2026-09-22
summary: Southwestern state of Los Alamos and the first atomic test, of Roswell, of
  Jeffrey Epstein's Zorro Ranch, and of an FBI counterintelligence file on Robert
  Maxwell that INSLAW tied to PROMIS.
tags:
- Place
- USState
- Nuclear
- PROMIS
- UAP
updated: 2026-09-22
---

### Los Alamos

[Los Alamos](/places/los-alamos/), the weapons laboratory of the [Manhattan Project](/programs/manhattan-project/) founded in 1943 under [J. Robert Oppenheimer](/people/j-robert-oppenheimer/), designed the first atomic bombs; the first nuclear test, Trinity, was conducted at the White Sands Proving Ground on July 16, 1945.[^1] The laboratory enters the [PROMIS](/events/promis-software-scandal/) literature twice. The former Canadian broker John A. Belton told the [Justice Department](/organizations/department-of-justice/)'s reviewers in 1994, without documents, that "Trans World Arms in Montreal and ORA" had sold [PROMIS](/programs/promis/) in 1983 to "a [Nuclear Regulatory Commission](/organizations/nuclear-regulatory-commission/) facility in New Mexico" he believed was Los Alamos; the reviewers found him "unbelievable." In February 1994 [INSLAW](/organizations/inslaw/) argued that twenty [FBI](/organizations/federal-bureau-of-investigation/) pages released under the [Freedom of Information Act](/events/freedom-of-information-act/) showed that the FBI's Albuquerque office had run a foreign counterintelligence investigation of [Robert Maxwell](/people/robert-maxwell/) and one of his companies, and that it must have concerned a PROMIS sale to a defense installation in New Mexico; the reviewers, having read the unredacted documents, called the inference "a remarkable leap" and wrote that "none of the documents in question even mentioned INSLAW or PROMIS."[^2] According to [Cheri Seymour](/people/cheri-seymour/), the RCMP investigator [Sean McDade](/people/sean-mcdade/) learned of a meeting of American, British, Israeli and Canadian intelligence chiefs at Los Alamos in December 1999.[^3]

### Roswell

The [Roswell Incident](/events/roswell-incident/) of July 1947 is the alleged crash of an unidentified object near Roswell. [Luis Elizondo](/people/luis-elizondo/) has written that [Hal Puthoff](/people/hal-puthoff/) told him an object did crash near a government test facility there in 1947, and the astronaut [Edgar Mitchell](/people/edgar-mitchell/), who grew up in the area, claimed his family had been among those threatened by the FBI afterwards.[^4] [Richard D'Amato](/people/richard-damato/), on the staff of Senator [Robert Byrd](/people/robert-byrd/) in the 1980s and 1990s, wrote that a senior Senate committee chairman had asked him "to conduct a preliminary inquiry into allegations that came to his attention regarding unidentified aerial crashes in the 1940's in New Mexico," and that he reported that the allegations "did not appear to merit any further" Senate action.[^5]

### Zorro Ranch

[Jeffrey Epstein](/people/jeffrey-epstein/) owned the [Zorro Ranch](/places/zorro-ranch/), about 10,000 acres near Stanley, one of the residences among which victims and associates were moved; *[The New York Times](/organizations/new-york-times/)* reported in 2019 that he had discussed using it for a plan to "seed the human race with his DNA." New Mexico reopened a criminal inquiry into the ranch in 2025.[^6]

[^1]: "Los Alamos National Laboratory," *Encyclopaedia Britannica.* https://www.britannica.com/topic/Los-Alamos-National-Laboratory
[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report on the Review of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua's Report on the Allegations of INSLAW, Inc.,* September 27, 1994, interview of John A. Belton and section on the FBI documents concerning Robert Maxwell. https://archive.org/details/doj-oip-inslaw-1993
[^3]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010.
[^4]: Elizondo, Luis. *Imminent.* William Morrow, 2024.
[^5]: D'Amato, C. Richard. "1980's Inquiry into Unidentified Aerial Crash in New Mexico," statement on his website, Wayback Machine capture of July 6, 2020.
[^6]: Stewart, James B., Matthew Goldstein, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg. "Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA." *The New York Times,* July 31, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/business/jeffrey-epstein-eugenics.html ; "New Investigation Launched into Epstein's Zorro Ranch." *Time,* 2025. https://time.com/7379228/epstein-zorro-ranch-investigation/