Unveiling the Truth: Retired CIA Agent Reveals Decades-Long Cover-Up of Bigfoot’s Existence!

Chapter 1: The Final Confession

My name is Tony Carmichael. I turned 73 last month. Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. They gave me two weeks, maybe three. I worked for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1971 until I retired in 2003—32 years of classified assignments, foreign ops, and domestic surveillance. I signed papers that said I’d take certain secrets to my grave. But there’s one I can’t keep anymore. Not anymore.

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In the fall of 1973, I was stationed at a facility in northern Idaho that doesn’t appear on any map. We called it Site 17. What we guarded there, what the government has kept hidden for over 50 years, changes everything people think they know about Bigfoot. I saw them—multiple specimens, alive, intelligent, contained behind electrified fencing and armed patrols. I even spoke to one. This is what they don’t want you to know.

Chapter 2: The Assignment

I joined the agency fresh out of college in ’71, armed with a political science degree from Georgetown and recommendations from two professors with connections. They started me on desk work, analyzing Soviet communications, logging intercepts—the kind of tedious pattern recognition that weeds out anyone without patience. I was good at it. I kept my head down, followed protocols, and never asked questions above my clearance level.

By early 1973, I’d earned a reputation as reliable, the kind of agent you assign when discretion matters more than ego. That’s probably why they picked me for Site 17, though they didn’t call it that at first. My section chief called me into his office on a Tuesday morning in September. He closed the door and told me I was being reassigned to a long-term domestic posting. High security, extreme isolation, no communication with family for the first six months.

“Where?” I asked. He slid a file across his desk. Northern Idaho, wilderness area. You’ll receive a full briefing on site. I remember the way he wouldn’t meet my eyes when he said it, like he was apologizing for something he couldn’t name. I took the file. Inside was a single topographical map with a red circle drawn around nothing—just forest, no towns, no roads marked, grid coordinates, elevation data, and one handwritten note: Biological containment level five classification.

Chapter 3: Arrival at Site 17

I flew into Spokane three days later. A driver met me at a private hangar. No ID, no small talk—just a nod toward a black Suburban. We drove for four hours into the Bitterroot Range, the roads getting narrower and rougher until they weren’t roads at all, just gravel paths carved between Douglas firs. I remember rain—constant cold September rain that turned the windshield into gray static.

We stopped at a checkpoint I never saw coming—just a gate across the path with two guards in civilian clothes carrying M16s. They checked my credentials against a manifest and waved us through. Another hour of driving. The trees pressed in tighter. No signs, no markers, just the sense of going deeper into somewhere people weren’t supposed to be. Site 17 appeared suddenly—a cluster of prefab buildings surrounded by a 12-foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Generators hummed in the background, floodlights on poles every 30 yards. Even though it was barely afternoon, the perimeter stretched back into the forest farther than I could see, following the natural curve of a valley I hadn’t noticed until we were inside it.

The driver parked near the largest building and pointed. “Check in there. Commander Hackett will brief you.” I stepped out into the rain. The smell hit me immediately—something wrong, something organic and wild underneath the diesel fumes and wet metal. Like a zoo, but heavier, more primal. I’d never smelled anything quite like it.

Chapter 4: The Briefing

Inside, the building was standard military gray—concrete floors, flickering fluorescent lights, the kind of institutional blankness that said temporary, even though I’d learned later the site had been active since 1967. Commander Hackett was waiting in what passed for a conference room. Mid-50s, Marine Corps background, the kind of face that had stopped showing emotion years ago. He didn’t shake my hand, just gestured to a chair.

“You’ve been read into the existence of this facility,” he said, “but not its purpose.” I sat. “Biological containment.” I was all they told me. “Cryptid containment,” he corrected. “Specifically, specimens classified under Project Granite Shadow. You’re familiar with the term Bigfoot?” I thought he was joking. I actually laughed—a short bark of disbelief. Then I saw his face. “You’re serious? We currently house four specimens—two adult males, one adult female, one juvenile. They’ve been in captivity for periods ranging from 18 months to six years. Your job is perimeter security and specimen observation. You will not discuss what you see here with anyone outside this facility. You will not photograph, record, or document anything without direct authorization. Violation of these terms carries a minimum 20-year federal sentence. Do you understand?”

I understood the words. I didn’t understand anything else. “Where did they come from?” I asked. “The Pacific Northwest. We receive reports, sightings, encounters, physical evidence. When possible, we contain. When not possible, we suppress.”

He stood and walked to a wall-mounted map showing the valley and surrounding wilderness. Red zones marked the containment areas. “You’ll start on perimeter duty tonight, 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. You’ll be briefed on protocols before your shift.” Questions? I had a thousand. I asked none of them, just nodded. “Good. Welcome to Site 17, Agent Carmichael.”

Chapter 5: The First Night

They issued me rain gear, a radio, and a sidearm. I was told never to fire near the containment zones. I spent the afternoon in a room watching orientation videos that felt like government training films from the ‘50s—grainy footage of forested perimeters, chain-link barriers, procedures for lockdowns, and breach responses. Not once did they show the actual specimens.

My shift started at dusk. I was partnered with an agent named Kowalski, who’d been at the site for nine months. We walked the northern perimeter, a path that ran parallel to the electrified fence line, just close enough to hear the hum of current through the wiring. “You’ll hear them at night,” Kowalski said, not looking at me. “Vocalizations. Don’t react. Don’t shine your light into the containment area unless you see a breach. They don’t like the lights.”

“What do they do?” I asked. “Scream. Howl. Sometimes it sounds like they’re talking to each other. Sometimes it sounds almost human.” He paused, adjusted his rain hood. “You’ll get used to it.”

We walked in silence for maybe 20 minutes. The rain had softened to mist, and the forest around us was alive with the small sounds of dripping water and wind through branches. Then I heard it—a low, resonant call from somewhere deep in the containment zone. Not quite a roar, not quite a moan; something between animal and human vocal range and so loud I felt it in my chest. Kowalski kept walking like he hadn’t heard anything. Another call answered the first, higher pitched from a different direction. Then a third—the juvenile, I’d learn later—with a sound that was almost plaintive. They were communicating, whatever language it was, it had structure, rhythm, intention.

“Jesus Christ,” I whispered. “Yeah,” Kowalski said. “That’s what everyone says the first night.” We completed the circuit without incident—four hours of walking in wet darkness, listening to sounds that shouldn’t exist. When our shift ended at midnight, I went to my assigned quarters, a small room in the barracks building with a cot, a desk, and a lamp. I lay there staring at the ceiling, hearing those calls echo in my memory. I kept thinking about Hackett’s words: “We contain. We suppress.” How many people knew? How long had this been going on? And what were we supposed to do with creatures that were clearly intelligent, clearly aware they were imprisoned?

Chapter 6: The First Encounter

I didn’t sleep that night. Not at all. The second week at Site 17, they moved me to day shift perimeter observation. That’s when I first saw them clearly—not through fence wire at night, but in full afternoon light. The main containment zone was a natural clearing ringed by old-growth forest, maybe three acres total, divided by internal fencing into separate areas for each specimen. The setup reminded me of a prison yard.

The adult male in zone A was massive. I’d read the briefing files—8 feet 2 inches, estimated weight 400 pounds. But numbers don’t prepare you for the physical reality. He sat near the fence line, back against a Douglas fir, watching the perimeter with dark, intelligent eyes. His fur was reddish-brown, matted in places from the constant rain. His hands were enormous, human-shaped but scaled up, resting on his knees in a posture that was disturbingly familiar.

I watched him for ten minutes from my observation post. He never moved, just sat there breathing, watching the guards walk their routes. There was something in his stillness that made my skin crawl—not because he seemed dangerous, but because he seemed aware. Aware of his captivity. Aware of us. Aware, maybe, that this would never end.

The logs called him specimen A1. Captured in October 1971 near the Oregon-Washington border after multiple sightings in the same area. The capture operation took six months of planning and a team of 12 agents. They used tranquilizer darts designed for elephants. It took four hits to bring him down.

Chapter 7: The Pattern of Existence

I started reading everything I could access about the specimens. The files were incomplete, sections redacted, entire pages missing. But what remained told a pattern. The government had been tracking Bigfoot sightings since the late ‘40s. The Patterson-Gimlin film in ’67 had triggered something—a decision at a level above my clearance. By 1968, there was a directive: Contain, don’t kill. Study, document, keep it quiet.

Site 17 wasn’t the only facility. There were references to locations in Washington, Northern California, Montana. How many specimens total? The files didn’t say. How many sightings were real versus misidentification? No data, just years of reports, field observations, blurry photographs marked authentic or hoax in red ink. Every few pages, the word appeared: Bigfoot, sometimes Sasquatch. The analysts used both terms interchangeably—clinically, like they were describing a known species—because to them, it was.

Chapter 8: The Weight of Silence

The secret wasn’t whether Bigfoot existed. The secret was that we’d been catching them, studying them, hiding them for years, and the public had no idea. By my third month at Site 17, I’d been rotated through every position on the duty roster—perimeter patrol, observation post, supply check, maintenance oversight. They wanted everyone cross-trained in case of emergency.

I learned the rhythms of the place. Morning feeding at 0600—raw fish, berries, vegetation brought in from outside the immediate area, veterinary checks every week, behavioral documentation every shift. The specimens had patterns, too. The adult male in zone A walked the fence line exactly twice per day, morning and evening, always the same route. The female in zone C spent hours building structures from branches and stones, crude arrangements that looked almost like shelters or markers. The juvenile stayed close to the female, rarely venturing to the far side of his enclosure.

They were adapting. That was what disturbed me most—not resisting, not trying to escape, just adapting to captivity like any intelligent creature would. I watched the male learn which guards would look at him and which wouldn’t. I watched the female test the fence current with a stick before touching it. I watched the juvenile mimic guard movements during patrols, walking the same routes we walked, stopping where we stopped.

Chapter 9: The Breaking Point

One afternoon in late November, I was manning the observation post overlooking zone A when the male approached the fence directly below me. He’d never done that before. Usually, he kept his distance, maintaining the careful buffer between himself and human presence. He stood there maybe 15 feet away and looked up at me. Direct eye contact, unblinking. I saw intelligence in those eyes—not animal cunning, but something deeper: understanding, recognition of his situation, maybe even judgment.

I should have reported it. That was protocol. Any unusual specimen behavior got logged immediately, but I didn’t move. We just stared at each other for what felt like minutes but was probably 30 seconds. Then he made a sound—low, controlled, absolutely clear. No. The room went silent. I saw it on the video feed, heard it through the speakers. A single English word spoken with perfect enunciation, deliberate, conscious, intentional.

Yates was scrambling for her recorder. “Did you—did everyone hear that?” The Bigfoot spoke again. Let go. Two words, subject-verb construction, imperative mood—not mimicry, comprehension, grammar, language.

Chapter 10: The Dilemma

Cordova approached closer. “Can you understand me? Do you know what I’m saying?” The Bigfoot turned his face away toward the wall and said nothing else. They tried for another two hours—questions, prompts, recordings, images. He gave them nothing. Complete silence. Like he’d used his quota of words and refused to give them more. They returned him to zone A that evening. I watched him walk back to his spot by the Douglas fir, settle into his usual position. He’d proven he could speak English, proven he was intelligent, aware, linguistically capable, and we still kept him in a cage.

I threw up in the bathroom that night, just stood there dry heaving over the toilet, thinking about what we’d done, what we were still doing. After the isolation chamber tests, security protocols tightened—no unauthorized approaches to the fence line, no extended observation periods, no direct eye contact with specimens during feeding or maintenance. They were worried about attachment, about guards or researchers developing empathy that might compromise operational security.

But I’d already developed it. I couldn’t look at zone A without remembering that voice: Let go. Two words that proved everything I’d been denying for eight months. These weren’t animals. They weren’t specimens. They were people. Different, yes. Nonhuman, technically, but people.

Chapter 11: The Turning Point

That night, I heard the vocalizations again—the female’s lullabies, the male’s low calling, the juvenile’s small sad responses—a family separated by fencing and protocol. I made my decision then, but it would be 49 years before I could act on it. My direct encounter with the Bigfoot came in August of 1974, almost a year into my assignment. There was a perimeter breach—not a specimen escape, but a civilian intrusion. Hikers who’d wandered too far off established trails and stumbled onto the outer security zone.

We went to lockdown procedures. All specimens secured in their shelters. All external patrols doubled. A containment team deployed to intercept the civilians before they got close enough to see anything. I was assigned to zone A security during the lockdown. Standard protocol: stand watch outside the shelter. Ensure the specimen remained contained. Wait for the all-clear signal.

The male had gone into his shelter without resistance. I could hear him inside, moving occasionally, breathing. The structure was basic—reinforced walls, a locked door, ventilation grates near the roof. Then the radio crackled. Security breach at checkpoint 4. All units respond. Agent Carmichael, maintain position at zone A. I heard gunfire—brief, scattered—then silence, then Hackett’s voice. Breach contained. Stand down. Return to standard protocols.

That was it. No explanation of what contained meant. No mention of the hikers’ status. I stood there in the fading August light, listening to my own pulse, wondering if we’d just killed American civilians to protect a secret. Then I heard the voice from inside the shelter. Low, careful, unmistakably the same voice from the isolation chamber. Dead. I froze. He was asking about the hikers. He’d heard the gunshots and understood their meaning.

Chapter 12: The Consequences

“I don’t know,” I said before I could think better of it. I was violating every protocol—direct communication with a specimen—but I was so tired of pretending they weren’t people. Silence for a moment, then you. No. No. What? Wrong. A pause. This wrong. I felt something break open in my chest. He was right. It was wrong—all of it. The containment, the experiments, the secrecy, the casual violence to protect that secrecy. Wrong from the first capture to this moment.

“Yes,” I whispered. “It’s wrong.” Help. I can’t. I looked around, checking for other guards, for observation cameras. “I’m sorry,” I said again. He made a sound—not a vocalization, just a long exhale that sounded unmistakably like disappointment. Then silence. No more words. He’d tried reaching across the species barrier, tried appealing to whatever conscience I had, and I’d failed him.

The all-clear came 20 minutes later. I opened the shelter door. The Bigfoot walked past me without looking, returned to his spot by the tree, never spoke to me again. I found out later the hikers had been detained, not killed—held for 72 hours, debriefed, released with a cover story about classified military exercises. But the Bigfoot didn’t know that. He’d assumed the worst about us. And he wasn’t entirely wrong.

Chapter 13: The Burden of Knowledge

The months after that conversation, I was hollow. I did my job, walked my patrols, filed my reports, but I’d crossed some internal threshold. I wasn’t protecting national security anymore. I was participating in organized cruelty. The distinction mattered. In October, they transferred the juvenile from zone D to a facility in Montana. The paperwork said it was for expanded research opportunities. I watched them sedate him, load him onto a truck, drive him away, while the female in zone C paced her fence line for six hours straight, calling and calling into the empty forest.

I requested a transfer in November. Hackett approved it without argument. I think he knew I’d reached my limit. They reassigned me to a desk position in Langley—intelligence analysis, pattern recognition, the same work I’d started with. I never went back to Site 17, but I carried it with me every day for the next 29 years through new assignments and promotions and eventually retirement. I carried the knowledge of what we’d done, what we were still doing.

Chapter 14: The Legacy of Silence

I’d see news reports about Bigfoot sightings, people mocked, dismissed, called crazy for reporting exactly what I knew was real. I’d see documentaries about the search for Sasquatch, experts explaining why the creature probably didn’t exist. And I’d sit there knowing we had physical proof locked in cages across the Pacific Northwest. The secret became part of my identity. I couldn’t separate myself from it. I was the person who knew Bigfoot was real and said nothing. The person who heard one speak and walked away. The person who chose his career over their freedom.

I retired from the CIA in 2003, thinking maybe the guilt would fade once I wasn’t actively part of the system anymore. It didn’t. If anything, it got worse. I had no excuse now—no security clearance to maintain, no career to protect, just an old man with a terrible secret and no good reason to keep it anymore. Except fear. Fear of being dismissed. Fear of legal consequences. Fear that telling the truth would accomplish nothing except destroying what remained of my credibility and peace.

Chapter 15: The Reckoning

So I stayed silent, moved to Maryland, lived quietly, watched the years pass. The guilt didn’t fade. It accumulated. Every time I saw a documentary, every time someone mentioned Bigfoot and got laughed at, I felt the weight of complicity. I was protecting the lie through my silence. Then came the diagnosis. Pancreatic cancer, stage 4, terminal—six months maximum, more likely three. And suddenly all those fears seemed trivial compared to the prospect of dying with this secret locked inside me.

I thought about the male in zone A. Wondered if he was still alive, still contained. Wondered if he ever thought about the guard who said, “I’m sorry,” but did nothing. I decided I wouldn’t die protecting that legacy. So, I’m telling you now: the United States government has been capturing and containing Bigfoot specimens since at least 1967. They’re real. They’re intelligent. They can speak, and we’ve been lying about it for over 50 years. This is the truth they tried to bury.

Chapter 16: The Call to Action

I know what this confession will cost me. The agency will deny everything. They’ll call me senile, delusional, a disgraced agent spreading conspiracy theories. They might even threaten legal action, though I doubt they’ll follow through. Prosecuting me means admitting the classification level existed in the first place. Safer to discredit and dismiss.

I’ve thought about what proof I could offer. I don’t have photographs. Cameras were forbidden outside authorized research documentation. I don’t have files. Everything I accessed was classified and remained on site. I have my testimony, my memory, and the names of other personnel who were stationed at Site 17 between 1973 and 1975. Whether any of them will corroborate is doubtful. Most are probably still bound by secrecy oaths and fear of prosecution.

But I have details—specific verifiable details about the facility’s location, structure, operational protocols, grid coordinates that anyone could verify with satellite imagery, though I’m sure by now the site has been decommissioned or moved. The valley was too exposed, too close to civilian hiking areas. They’ve probably relocated to somewhere more remote—Alaska, maybe northern Canada, somewhere the specimens can be contained without risk of accidental discovery.

Chapter 17: A Hope for Change

What I hope for, what I’m asking for, is that someone with more courage than I had will investigate. Someone will demand congressional oversight. Someone will force declassification of Project Granite Shadow and whatever it’s been renamed in the decades since because those creatures deserve better than I gave them—better than captivity and experiments and institutional denial.

The male who spoke to me, who asked why when I said I couldn’t help, deserves recognition as a person, not a specimen. The female who sang lullabies deserves acknowledgment as a mother. The juvenile who screamed for three days deserves to be remembered as a child taken from his family.

Bigfoot isn’t a myth. It’s not a legend or folklore or mass delusion. It’s a species we’ve systematically hunted, captured, and hidden because admitting the truth would force uncomfortable questions about our relationship with intelligence, consciousness, and what defines personhood. I betrayed them 49 years ago when I walked away from zone A and said nothing. I betrayed them every year after when I cashed my pension checks and kept quiet.

Chapter 18: The End of Silence

This confession doesn’t absolve me. Nothing can. But maybe it can start forcing accountability. Maybe someone will listen who has the power to do something I couldn’t. Maybe this confession reaches someone at a level high enough to demand answers. Maybe, and this is probably naive, someone in the government will realize the moral cost of this program exceeds any security benefit and shut it down.

Or maybe I’ll be dismissed as a dying man seeking attention. Maybe this statement disappears into the noise of internet conspiracy theories, and nobody with authority takes it seriously. Either way, I’ve said it now. The truth I’ve carried for half a century is recorded, documented, public. Whatever comes next isn’t something I’ll live to see. But at least I won’t die protecting the lie. I just hope the Bigfoot in zone A, wherever he is now, knows someone finally tried to speak for him.

It’s been three days since I recorded that initial confession. My lawyer thinks I’m insane. My daughter won’t return my calls. The hospice nurse keeps asking if I want to revise my statement while I’m still clear-headed, implying I’ve already lost my grip on reality. Maybe I have. Cancer does strange things to the mind. They say pain medications can cause delusions.

But I know what I saw. I know what I heard. I lived at Site 17 for 11 months. I walked those fence lines. I watched those specimens—those people—live in captivity. I heard one speak English and ask me for help. These aren’t delusions. They’re memories—terrible, clear, undeniable memories.

Chapter 19: The Legacy

I’ve been thinking about Hackett’s question: “Are you experiencing moral complications with this assignment?” The phrasing was deliberate—moral complications, not moral objections. Like having a conscience about imprisoning intelligent beings was a malfunction to be corrected rather than a reasonable human response. That’s how institutions maintain terrible secrets. They reframe morality as operational liability. They select for people who can compartmentalize, who can separate personal ethics from professional duty.

And for those who can’t, they transfer them out before they become problems. I was transferred out, but I never told. Even after leaving, even after retiring, I maintained the compartmentalization. I told myself it wasn’t my responsibility anymore, that I’d done my part just by walking away. But silence is complicity.

I see that now at the end. The cancer is moving faster than they predicted. Days now, not weeks. I’m in and out of consciousness. The morphine pulling me under for hours at a time. When I surface, I think about the forest in northern Idaho, the sound of rain on the perimeter fence, the smell of Douglas fir and something wild underneath. I think about the male Bigfoot in zone A sitting by his tree, watching the guards walk their routes, waiting for something that would never come—freedom, maybe, recognition, justice.

I hope he survived. I hope he’s not still in that cage. I hope the program ended, the facilities closed, the specimens released back to whatever wilderness could still hide them. But I don’t believe it. These programs don’t end. They just get reclassified, renamed, moved deeper into the black budget.