As of Sunday, September 17, 2023, AARO interviewed approximately 30 individuals. AARO categorized these individuals into three tiers: Tier 1 interviewees are those who have spoken with congressional staff or Members of Congress and have been subsequently referred to AARO; Tier 2 interviewees are those who have been referred to AARO by Tier 1 interviewees; Tier 3 interviewees are AARO-generated interviewees that have a corroborating touchpoint to the principal integrated narrative of reports from Tier 1 and Tier 2 interviewees. Priority is given to those interviewees who claimed firsthand knowledge of government programs, events, or details about any resulting material. Interviewees relaying second or thirdhand knowledge are lower in priority, but AARO has and will continue to schedule interviews with them, nonetheless.
AARO generated random numbers and assigned one to each interviewee. AARO maintains the key, which is stored and handled in a secure manner to protect each interviewee’s privacy. In some instances, AARO assigned a random number to a person who has not interviewed with AARO but was referenced by interviewees as a key individual. AARO also assigned numbers to organizations mentioned by interviewees.
AARO assesses that two main narratives have emerged, with various and potentially unrelated offshoots:
The primary narrative alleges that the USG and industry partners are in possession of and are testing off-world technology that has been concealed from congressional oversight and the world since approximately 1964, and possibly since 1947, if the Roswell events are included. The narrative asserts that this UAP program possesses as many as 12 extraterrestrial spacecraft.
intact. The interviewee also stated that the CIA had a partnership with the company that ended in 1989 and wanted all material returned to the CIA. AARO discovered no empirical evidence supporting these claims.
unidentified flying objectat a U.S. military facility. The interviewee described the object as exhibiting a peculiar flight pattern.
reverse-engineering program of off-world technology. These accounts describe the NDAs as including “punishment by death” provisions should the signatory disclose 30 information about the program. Some interviewees claimed “verbal” and written NDAs were administered in several instances s12AARO case files.
The other narrative is that a cluster of UAP sightings that occurred in close proximity to U.S. nuclear facilities have resulted in the malfunctioning and destruction of nuclear missiles and a test reentry vehicle. AARO interviewed five former USAF members who served in and around U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos at Malmstrom, Ellsworth, Vandenberg, and Minot USAF bases between 1966 à 1977 s13AARO case files. Some of these individuals claim UAP sightings near the silos, while others claim UAP disruptions to ICBM operations. Specifically, they said the ICBM launch control facilities went offline or experienced total power failure. Additionally, one interviewee and a USAF videographer claimed to have observed and recorded a UAP destroying an ICBM loaded with a “dummy” warhead, mid-flight. AARO is researching U.S. and adversarial activity related to these events, including any U.S. programs that tested defensive ballistic missile capabilities.
AARO investigated and reached conclusions on the majority of the claims made in these narratives. In most cases, AARO was able to locate the companies, people, and programs that were conveyed to AARO through interviews. AARO will report the results of the unresolved allegations in Volume 2. AARO’s findings to date are as follows:
In the conduct of this review, and to meet the direction of Section 1673 of the NDAA for FY 2023, AARO sent guidance and requests to DoD, IC elements, DOE, and DHS to review and provide any NDAs pertaining to UAP (or its previous names). To date, AARO personnel have not discovered or been notified of any NDAs that contain information related to UAP. Also, apart from the standard NDA language contained in Title 18, Section 794 describing the death penalty or jail time for illegally disclosing information relating to the national defense, AARO has not discovered any NDAs containing threats to interviewees for disclosing UAP-specific information.
Historically, most if not all NDAs contained standard language stating that the death penalty can be applied for the crime of disclosing classified information. Title 18, Section 794, is referenced in typical NDAs in several places in relation to the transmission of classified information:
Whoever, with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation, communicates, delivers, or transmits…information relating to the national defense, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life….
AARO interviewed and obtained a signed statement from the former CIA official who was specifically named by AARO interviewees. The former official stated he had no knowledge of any aspect of this allegation s14AARO case files. The allegation included the claimed crash of the objects, the possession of the resultant material by the USG and the private sector, and the attempt to transfer material that was purported to be of off-world origin. This reverse-engineering program allegedly occurred at the named facility in the 2009 à 2010 time frame. Interviewees allege that a separate interviewee s15AARO case files from the facility attempted to set up a meeting to return material to the USG in 2010, but that the former CIA official stopped the transfer from industry to the USG. The interviewee alleged to have stopped the transfer denied these allegations s16AARO case files. The former CIA official stated that he had no knowledge of any extraterrestrial material in the possession of the USG or any other organization.102 The official signed a Memorandum for the Record (MFR) attesting to the truthfulness of his statements.
An interviewee s17AARO case files brought to AARO’s attention the existence of an alleged Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE), dated 5 Sunday, titled: “Critical Aspects of Unidentified Flying Objects and the Nuclear Threat to the Defense of the United States and its Allies.” Through open-source research, AARO obtained a copy of the document. After discussions with the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI), the NSA Scientific Studies Board (one of the alleged authors), and research comparing this document to a number of known SNIEs and National Intelligence Estimates, AARO concluded the document is not authentic. NSA archives were searched because “the NSA Scientific Advisory Board” purportedly was one of the document’s authors. CIA/CSI and NSA did not possess nor have knowledge of the document. AARO found the document lacked IC tradecraft standards and possessed significant inconsistencies with SNIE’s and National Intelligence Estimates of the general time period. These inconsistencies included: the document’s short length, incorrect formatting, inconsistent branding, lack of a dissemination block and coordination language, loose narrative style, convoluted logic, imprecise and casual language, and its superficial treatment of globally significant issues.
AARO determined this account most likely amounted to a misunderstanding. The conversation likely referenced a test and evaluation unit that had a nickname with “alien” connotations at the specific installation mentioned. The nature of the test described by the interviewee104 closely matched the description of a specific materials test conveyed to AARO investigators.
An interviewee s18AARO case files stated that a former military member, who was also an interviewee, had stated that he had touched an off-world aircraft. AARO contacted and interviewed the former military member s19AARO case files who denied any knowledge of off-world technology in possession of the USG, a private contractor, or any other foreign or domestic entity. The former military member attested that he could not remember if this encounter with the original interviewee had ever occurred, but opined that if it had happened, the only situation that he might have conveyed was the time when he touched an F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter at a facility. The former military member signed an MFR attesting to the truthfulness of his account.
AARO was able to correlate this account with an authentic USG program because the interviewee was able to provide a relatively precise time and location of the sighting which they observed exhibiting strange characteristics. At the time the interviewee said he observed the event, DoD was conducting tests of a platform protected by a SAP. The seemingly strange characteristics reported by the interviewee match closely with the platform’s characteristics, which was being tested at a military facility in the time frame the interviewee was there. This program is not related in any way to the exploitation of off-world technology.
An organization s20AARO case files in Northern Virginia did conduct a study between 2004 à 2007 on the societal effects should the United States or other world governments disclose they have evidence of extraterrestrial life. Interviewees believed the White House sponsored it. AARO confirmed through two former White House senior officials108 that the White House did not request it, nor were they aware of any such study.
AARO met with high-ranking officials, including executives and chief technology officers, of the named companies. All denied the existence of these programs, and attested to the truthfulness of their statements on the record.
AARO learned through an interviewee that a private sector organization s21AARO case files claimed to have in its possession material from an extraterrestrial craft recovered from a crash at an unknown location from the 1940s or 1950s. The organization claimed that the material had the potential to act as a THz frequency waveguide, and therefore, could exhibit “anti-gravity” and “mass reduction” properties under the appropriate conditions. The organization that owned the material negotiated an agreement in 2019 with the U.S. Army to analyze the samples. With permission from the stakeholders, AARO acquired this sample to conduct more in-depth analyses.
AARO assesses that a separate private sector organization’s recreation of this metallic sample was almost certainly conflated with claims that the aerospace industry was attempting to reverse-engineer off-world technology. Prior to AARO’s acquisition of the sample, the organization fabricated a replica of the sample to determine if it could be done s22AARO case files.
Like all historical UAP cases, very little actionable data exists beyond limited firsthand narrative accounts. Nevertheless, AARO continues to investigate these cases due to the sensitive nature of these events potentially impacting the readiness of the U.S. nuclear program. Although AARO has not been able to recover the alleged film of the ballistic missile reentry vehicle being shot down by a UAP in 1964, AARO was able to correlate the general time and location with an antiballistic missile test, which could have been the genesis for this observation.