Tristan Traviolia
Professor Traviolia had a distinguished career in covert government paramilitary operations involving various vaguely described activities to which there are no witnesses, as well as frequent missions to an area of Nevada north of Las Vegas where there are no alien bodies whatsoever. Further details will result in bad things happening to the casual inquirer, their families and goldfish.
Following his work as an operative, he went to perfectly respectable institutions of higher education, receiving an MA from CSUN and is enrolled in the doctoral program at UCLA, where he works on various historical matters, and where he met the web-diva of Pierce, who pieced together this entirely plausible story of his background.