10/8/24, 1:13 PM Pentagon Is Illegally Hiding Secret UFO Program From Congress, Whistleblowers Allege
Pentagon Is Illegally Hiding Secret UFO
Program From Congress, Whistleblowers
Allege
New government whistleblower reveals, for the first time, the name of the
Unacknowledged Special Access Program (USAP) for Unidentified Anomalous
Phenomena (UAPs)
MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER
OCT 08, 2024 ∙ PAID
General Lloyd Austin testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee
during his confirmation hearing to be the next Secretary of Defense on
January 19, 2021. (Photo by GREG NASH/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
One of Congress’ most important responsibilities is oversight of the executive branch in general
and the military and Intelligence Community (IC) in particular. The first article of the United
States Constitution specifies this responsibility. This role ensures that powerful governmental
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entities operate within the bounds of the law, uphold democratic principles, and remain
accountable to the American people.
This responsibility extends to classified programs like Special Access Programs (SAPs). By law,
the Department of Defense (DOD) must notify the “Gang of Eight” (the chairpersons and
ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, and the majority and
minority leaders of the House and Senate) and/or the relevant congressional committees about
their existence.
The National Security Act of 1947 requires that covert operations and Compartmentalized
Access Programs (CAPs) by intelligence agencies, including the military intelligence community,
be reported to Congress. Specifically, the President must provide a written finding that justifies
covert action and submit it to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
While the military and IC may limit the amount of detail shared with Congress, the
Constitutional and legal responsibility remains. Sunshine remains the best disinfectant. Readers
are, of course, welcome to disbelieve the whistleblowers and the evidence they provide of UAPs. I
do not claim to know what they are.
There is, however, a growing body of evidence that the government is not being transparent
about what it knows about UAPs and that elements within the military and IC are in violation
of their Constitutional duty to notify Congress of their operations.
Over the last four days, a Pentagon spokesperson repeatedly promised to respond to Public’s
questions but did not do so. We will update this article with their response should they decide to
provide one.
— Michael
There is no evidence that any non-human or extra-terrestrial intelligence has visited
Earth, according to a May 2024 report by the office the Pentagon created in 2022 to
study unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), formerly called UFOs.
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The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) “assesses that the
inaccurate claim that the USG is reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology and is
hiding it from Congress is, in large part,” the report concluded, “the result of circular
reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of
any evidence.”
The former Director of AARO has since resigned his position and has repeatedly
dismissed and ridiculed the topic, claiming that talk of the phenomenon is due mainly
to a small group of individuals in the grip of a rumor-based religion.
But critics say that AARO’s 63-page history of the US government’s investigation into
UAPs since the end of World War II was riddled with factual errors and poor
referencing, including to Wikipedia. And the document was missing historical
information that appeared in the 117-page “UAP Timeline” document created by a
former or existing US government intelligence officer that Public published last year.
Christopher Mellon, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President
George H. W. Bush, wrote a lengthy rebuttal, concluding, “this is the most error-ridden
and unsatisfactory government report I can recall reading during or after decades of
government service.”
And major political figures, including Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump,
Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and both Democrats and Republicans
in Congress, have vouched for the credibility of UAP witnesses and whistleblowers.
“I’ve interviewed solid people,” said former president Donald Trump in September,
“great pilots for the US Air Force, et cetera, they’ve seen things that they cannot
explain.”
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Former President Donald Trump interviewed by his son Don Trump, Jr.
about UAPs
Trump has said repeatedly that the government has information about UAPs that it has
not released. In 2020, during a podcast with his son, Donald Trump, Jr., Trump said, “I
won’t talk to you about what I know about it, but it’s very interesting.”
In June of this year, Trump said that the government has information about UAPs that it
has not released. "I have access,” he said, “and I speak to people about it. I've had
actually meetings on it. And they will tell you there's something going on.”
In 2021, former CIA Director John Brennan said, “I think some of the phenomena we
may be seeing continue to be unexplained and might be some type of phenomenon that
results from something that we don’t yet understand and could involve some type of
activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life.”
The same year, the current Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, said UAPs
could constitute non-human intelligence (NHI).
In 2023, a high-ranking former intelligence officer named David Grusch testified to
Congress that the US government had retrieved spacecraft of nonhuman origin and
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bodies, which US government insiders told Public was accurate.
In July 2022, the Intelligence Community Inspector General concluded that Grusch’s
complaint that “elements” of the IC had withheld or hidden UAP-related information
from Congress “to purposely and intentionally thwart legitimate Congressional
oversight of the UAP Program” was both “credible” and “urgent.”
At the time, Charles McCullough III, the first Inspector General of the Intelligence
Community, who the US Senate had confirmed for his job in 2011, represented Grusch.
That does not mean that extraterrestrial beings occupy or are operating the UAPs, nor
that the US government and military contractors are hiding crashed alien spacecraft or
bodies, as some former astronauts, former IC officers, and former military leaders claim.
There are other explanations for UAPs. Current dominant alternative theories,
including those put forward by AARO, are that UAPs are some kind of natural
phenomenon we don’t yet understand, like ball lighting or plasma. They could also be
part of some new US or foreign government weapons program, such as drones, aircraft,
balloons, CGI hoaxes, or birds.
Other UAP skeptics say that some combination of government disinformation and
social contagion, like the Satanic panic of the 1980s or the Salem witch trials, among
UAP believers in the US military are driving the phenomenon.
Is it possible that the Pentagon and CIA are still playing disinformation games with the
American people to cover up unacknowledged programs? Or that intelligence and
security agencies, as well as politicians, are creating a UAP hoax to frighten the public?
And is it possible that whistleblowers are fabricating parts or all of their testimony?
The US Air Force allegedly used disinformation against a UFO buff in the past to cover
up a weapons program. Something similar could be happening today.
However, no available evidence supports that theory. And so, while this possibility
should not be ignored, for it to be true, it would require a complicated conspiracy with
unclear motivations.
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As Senator Rubio noted last year, “Most of [the UAP whistleblowers] have held very high
clearances and high positions within our government. So, you do ask yourself: What
incentive would so many people with that kind of qualification – these are serious
people – have to come forward and make something up?”
Rubio also said that individuals in “high clearances and high positions within our
government” with “firsthand knowledge” of UAPs were “fearful of harm coming to
them.”
Grusch and other UAP whistleblowers say the government retaliated against them and
tried to stop them from going public.
Last year, Senator Gillibrand said, “There's a lot of fear and so I don't know if we'll ever
get to the bottom of it. I don't know if we'll ever get the information about Special
Access Programs that are ‘need to know,’ only that Congress has not [been] read in on.
I'm trying to get to the bottom of it.”
The training and experience of many UAP witnesses and whistleblowers, including in
the US IC and military, undermine facile dismissals of all these individuals as cranks
and grifters.
In 2021, John Ratcliffe, the Director of National Intelligence under former President
Trump, said that UAP demonstrated “technologies that we don’t have and, frankly, that
we are not capable of defending against.” And, Ratcliffe said, U.S. intelligence analysts
had “high confidence” that foreign adversaries were not behind the famous “Tic Tac”
UAP that four Navy Pilots encountered over the water.
Last October, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the DOD published
their 2023 Annual Report on UAPs. It said that “many reports from military witnesses
do present potential safety of flight concerns, and there are some cases where reported
UAP have potentially exhibited one or more concerning performance characteristics
such as high-speed travel or unusual maneuverability.”
Finally, many videos and photographs cannot be easily dismissed, and people have
reported similar UAPs before drones, aircraft, and CGI existed or were widespread.
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And now, existing and former US government officials have told members of Congress
that AARO and the Pentagon have broken the law by not revealing a significant body of
information about UAPs, including military intelligence databases that have evidence of
their existence as physical craft.
One of these individuals is a current or former US government official acting as a UAP
whistleblower. The person has written a report that says “the Executive Branch has been
managing UAP/NHI issues without Congressional knowledge, oversight, or
authorization for some time, quite possibly decades.”
Furthermore, these individuals have revealed the name of an active and highly secretive
DOD “Unacknowledged Special Access Program,” or USAP. The source of the
document told Public that the USAP is a “strategic intelligence program” that is part of
the US military’s family of long-standing, highly-sensitive programs dealing with
various aspects of the UAP ‘problem.’”
Public is revealing its name here for the first time.
“Immaculate Constellation”
Photograph of UAP (“Mosul Orb”) over Iraq released by AARO in 2023
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The new UAP whistleblower claims that the US military and IC database includes
videos and images taken using “Infrared (IR), Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR), Full
Motion Video (FMV), and Still Photography.” The government whistleblower made their
claims in a report provided to authorized Committees of Congress and their staff.
The whistleblower alleges that the DOD created the USAP, called “Immaculate
Constellation,” in 2017 after the New York Times published an article describing an
informal Pentagon UAP program called “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification
Program,” or AATIP.
The report shared with Congress says, “IMMACULATE CONSTELLATION serves as a
central or 'parent' USAP that consolidates observations” of UAPs and “by both tasked
and untasked collection platforms.”
The whistleblower’s report includes seven categories of evidence. It describes in detail
various UAP sightings collected by technical assets and US military personnel. “The
multitude of wavelengths collected by these sensors,” the report says, “have captured
UAP characteristics that are difficult or impossible to observe with the human eye
alone. Subtle atmospheric effects associated with UAPs are also visible through the
sensors employed by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies.
“The verifiable chain of custody for UAP IMINT [-quality Imagery Intelligence]
collected by U.S. military assets,” the person wrote, “ensures a high level of confidence
in the accuracy and integrity of the data gathered.”
The report concludes that “the existence of IMMACULATE CONSTELLATION
demonstrates the extant capability to detect, quarantine, and transfer UAP and ARV
[Alien Reproduction Vehicle] collection incidents before they are observed and
circulated within the Military Intelligence Enterprise, thus serving as a means of
enforcing internal information security.”
A former IC official confirmed to Public the existence of Immaculate Constellation,
“That program is run out of SEC DEF [Office of the Secretary of Defense],” the person
said. “They don’t want to acknowledge it’s real.”
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The same person warned that simply printing the name “Immaculate Constellation”
could trigger government surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA) of whoever publishes it. “They won’t comment on it, but talking about it will put
you in the danger zone. They enforce the secrecy with a lot of vigor.”
The whistleblower’s report said that “A significant volume of intelligence reports
documenting first-hand encounters with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs)
or Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) by DOD personnel exists within defense
HUMINT [Human Intelligence] databases accessible to the Intelligence Community.”
Immaculate Constellation ”includes high-quality Imagery Intelligence (IMINT) and
Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT) of UAPs,” the whistleblower’s
report adds. “The sources of this intelligence are a blend of directed and incidental
collection capabilities positioned in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), the upper atmosphere, as
well as military and civilian aviation altitudes and maritime environments.”
The report to Congress describes in detail various UAPs. “From 1991 to 2022, the most
common UAP shapes reported in this USG dataset were spheres/orbs, discs/saucers,
ovals/tic-tacs, triangles, boomerang/arrowhead, and irregular/organic.”
The report describes various incidents found in the HUMINT databases.
One involved orbs surrounding and forcing an F-22 out of its patrol area. “The F-22
broke trajectory and attempted to evade but was intercepted and boxed in by
approximately 3-6 UAPs,” according to the report.
“One UAP maneuvered in proximity (>12 meters) to the area directly starboard of the
cockpit; there the UAP established a rigid spatial relationship with the F-22,
maintaining its exact position and orientation parallel with the F-22’s cockpit despite
multiple evasive rolls and maneuvers. Surrounded by the presumed hostile UAPs, the F-
22 was forced out of the mission area under the escort of the UAP formation.”
In another incident, the crew of a Navy aircraft carrier watched a “small orange-red
sphere” rapidly descend from a high altitude to 100-200 yards directly above the flight
deck of the CVN [aircraft carrier].
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“The UAPs appeared to emit a soft orange-red light which, bizarrely, did not illuminate
the ocean or the flight deck of the CVN despite the visual appearance of intense
luminosity. The surface of the UAP was observed to be dynamic, ‘roiling like the surface
of the sun.’”
UAP Disinformation and Disclosure
Reps. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and James Comer, R-Ky., attend the House
Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on National Security, the
Border, and Foreign Affairs hearing titled "Unidentified Anomalous
Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and
Government Transparency," in Rayburn Building on Wednesday, July 26,
2023. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
The Pentagon has changed the names of its UAP investigations. From 2009 to 2017, the
Pentagon had a program called Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications
Program (AAWSAP) to investigate UAP reports. After funding ran out, the informal
program, AATIP continued in its wake. From 2017 to 2022, the Pentagon called its study
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of UAPs the “U.A.P. Task Force.” Starting in 2022, by order of Congress, the Pentagon
has had the public-facing program AARO to study reports of UAP and release
information to the public.
One possibility is that AARO’s work is a continuation of the US government’s UAP
public relations, not its UAP investigations, since 1953, when the CIA’s Robertson Panel
recommended a strategy of using experts to dismiss and ridicule UAP witnesses and
government whistleblowers.
A declassified 1971 Australian government memo about UAPs claims that the CIA
urged the debunking of UFO sightings as cover of its efforts to develop craft powered by
anti-gravity.
The CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) wrote an Australian military officer,
“acting through the Robertson-panel meeting of mid-January 1953, persuaded the USAF
[US Air Force] to use Project BLUE BOOK as a means of publicly ‘debunking’ UFO’s,
and at a later stage to allocate funds for the Avro advanced ‘saucer’ aircraft and the
launching of crash programme into anti-gravity power.”
The memo describes the CIA’s strategy to discredit UAP witnesses and whistleblowers.
“By erecting a facade of ridicule, the U.S. hoped to allay public alarm, reduce the
possibility of the Soviet taking advantage of UFO mass sightings for either
psychological or actual warfare purposes, and act as a cover for the real U.S.. programme
of developing vehicles that emulate UFO performances.”
Other documents support this picture of the US government disinformation. Brigadier
General Carroll H. Bolender signed a 1969 memo stating that the Air Force had
withheld UAP sightings from the Air Force’s UAP research program, Project Blue Book,
and that it had continued to track UAPs afterward.
AARO’s former head, Sean Kirkpatrick, has disparaged UAP whistleblowers and
speculated that a “Tic Tac”-shaped UAP that four Navy pilots in 2004 reported had
evaded their approach could have been backyard lighting balloons.
Finally, others speculate that the US government is already engaged in a “controlled
disclosure” of the reality of UAPs through strategic leaks of photos, videos, and
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documents. Under this theory, the US military and IC are playing a double game,
officially denying the existence of NHIs while also approving the release of
photographs, videos, and information from whistleblowers.
The New York Times reported that former Pentagon official and UAP whistleblower
Lue Elizondo “got Pentagon approval to publish his [new] book [Imminent] partly by
attributing some of the information to other sources whose comments had previously
been approved. Elizondo also said he was not approved to discuss his involvement in any
other secret projects beyond the program he once led.”
However, Elizondo says he resigned after religious military officials who view UAPs as
demonic undermined his work. A leading UAP researcher who utilizes the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) to find out what the government knows, John Greenewald, told
Public last year that the US government had been increasingly denying his requests for
UAP information.
And now, in a forthcoming documentary, “The Program,” about the US government’s
alleged UAP retrieval program, by James Fox, Kirk McConnell, a 37-year Congressional
staffer for the U.S. Senate and House Select Committees on Intelligence, describes the
testimony that members of Congress and staffers have heard.
“We have sources who have asserted not only that there have been crashes,” said
McConnell, “but there have been crash retrievals.”
The US government appears to know significantly more about UAPs than it is revealing.
But even those who believe the US government has revealed all that it knows should
have no objection to Congressional demands for greater disclosure.
Individuals have told Public that many within the DOD, IC, and military contracting
community oppose further disclosure.
In April of this year, the Pentagon released declassified documents showing that a
proposed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program was intended to take
possession of UAPs and attempt to reverse-engineer retrieved UAPs, if they exist.
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While the Department’s then-top scientist advocated for the program and said there was
“very serious science involved with” it, DHS leadership ultimately quashed the proposal
despite support from former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and former Sen. Joe
Lieberman. According to the declassified minutes from the meeting, Reid and
Lieberman advocated for this proposed UAP reverse-engineering program “with some
sense of urgency.”
In late September, in answer to the question, “is there actual recovered NHI tech?”
Harold Malmgren, a former advisor to presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson,
and Richard Nixon, said on X, “The answer is yes, in several different hands, both
government and private hands.”
Since 2021, members of Congress have expressed growing frustration over the military
and IC’s refusal to reveal concrete information to them. The Intelligence Authorization
Act for Fiscal Year 2025 would cut off funding for “any activity involving [UFOs]
protected under any form of special access or restricted access limitations” not reported
to Congress, as required by law.
“In other words,” notes analyst Marik Von Rennenkampf, “despite AARO’s sweeping
denials of secret, unreported UFO activities, the Senate Intelligence Committee believes
that such programs do indeed exist.”
Congressional leaders are seeking to expand upon UAP disclosure legislation passed
last year. They want to force the US military, IC, and contractors to turn over crashed
UAPs and reveal what else they know. Rep. Nancy Mace has announced Congressional
hearings on the topic on November 13 and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand announced that
she will chair a Senate Armed Services Committee subcommittee hearing on UAPs
sometime this year.
The legislation would also expand protections for whistleblowers and require the
Government Accountability Office to review AARO’s work. “This formal review by
Congress’s in-house investigative agency is a stark demonstration of the Senate
Intelligence Committee’s lack of confidence in AARO,” said Von Rennenkampf.
It appeared that the UAP disclosure legislation had died last month, but Senator Mike
Rounds told journalist Matt Laslo, “Let me put it this way: it’s not out yet,” and that
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NDAA’s “negotiations continue.” Even so, few expect the legislation to succeed in its
current form.
Whatever happens with the legislation, the historical evidence, whistleblowers, and
critics of AARO have put its legitimacy in question. While UAPs remain mysterious, it’s
clear that the US government is not being transparent about what it knows about them.
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