Last month the U.S. government’s new UAP investigation office, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), submitted a report to Congress entitled, “Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena” (UAP, the new term for UFO). This new report is itself anomalous for several reasons.
First, who ever heard of a government report being submitted months before it was due? Especially one so rife with embarrassing errors in desperate need of additional fact-checking and revision? Was AARO Director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick rushing to get the report out the door before departing, perhaps to ensure that his successor could not revise or reverse some of the report’s conclusions?
Second, this appears to be the first AARO report submitted to Congress that the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) did not sign off on. I don’t know why, but Avril Haines and her Office were quite right not to in this case, having spared themselves considerable embarrassment in the process.
Third, this is the most error-ridden and unsatisfactory government report I can recall reading during or after decades of government service. We all make mistakes, but this report is an outlier in terms of inaccuracies and errors. Were I reviewing this as a graduate student’s thesis it would receive a failing grade for failing to understand the assignment, sloppy and inadequate research, and flawed interpretation of the data. Hopefully, long before it was submitted, the author would have consulted his or her professor and received some guidance and course correction to prevent such an unfortunate outcome.
Another irregularity worth noting is the fact that before its release, Department of Defense (DoD) Public Affairs sponsored a closed-door pre-brief on the report’s findings for a select group of press outlets on an invitation-only basis. Outlets like The Debrief, which closely follow the UAP issue, were excluded. Following the report’s release, most of the news agencies that had participated in the pre-brief went on to publish articles that uncritically parroted the report’s findings. Moreover, they seem to have done so without consulting any of the scholars or experts who have studied and written extensively on this topic as would normally be the case in another field.
What about consulting the famous scientist, author, venture capitalist, and UAP expert Dr. Jacques Vallee, who worked with Air Force astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek on Project Blue Book and lived much of the history this UAP report purports to cover? Neither AARO nor the press bothered to speak with him. How about Robert Powell, Director of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies and author of the outstanding new book UFOs: A Scientist Explains What We Know (and Don’t Know)? Or professor Alexander Wendt at the Ohio State University? I’m sure these and many other authors and scholars would have been happy to assist AARO or the press, had they been contacted.
That America’s leading press outlets missed the problems and issues identified below and failed to present an alternative perspective, is itself typical of the stigmatized history of UAP press coverage since WWII. Those interested in the role of the press on the UAP topic may want to read Terry Hansen’s provocative book, The Missing Times.
The disappointing lack of critical press coverage of this important report prompted me to begin compiling the insights of UAP scholars and experts who have studied the history of UAP and the US government. I hope the observations below will prove helpful to members of Congress and the public seeking to understand the history of the US government’s involvement with UAP. Perhaps, when AARO publishes Volume II of its report, some effort will be made by the mainstream press to consult UAP subject-matter experts before rushing their articles into print.
One of the other concerns I have about press coverage of this report is the tendency to conflate the UAP topic generally with allegations the government has recovered off-world technology. The UAP issue is distinct and critically important regardless of the truth about allegations of recovered extraterrestrial, nonhuman technology. Asking AARO to investigate that allegation was unfortunate since a subordinate DoD or IC office finding its superiors innocent was never going to satisfy the critics anyway.
Moreover, a disruptive secret of that colossal magnitude affecting every person on the planet would never be revealed in a report to Congress from a mid-level official or organization. Only the President, or an independent Congressional investigation, could reasonably be expected to reveal such a profound and transformative issue. If Congress wants to be confident it knows the truth, it needs to conduct its own independent investigation.
In the meantime, Congress and the public deserve a great deal more transparency and clarity regarding US government data on the UAP issue. Too many well-documented incidents are occurring at too many locations, a problem greatly exacerbated by the rise of sophisticated drone technologies. If you don’t think this is a serious issue, consider that just a few months ago fighter aircraft were transferred from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia to Naval Air Station (NAS) Oceana after weeks of intrusions by unidentified drone-like craft. The Air Force seemed powerless to capture or deter these intruders and has still not been able to identify them. Similar incidents have been afflicting Navy warships and other bases around the country.
If the Air Force can’t defend its own bases, how can it defend the rest of the country? Don’t we need to get on top
of this sooner rather than later? As journalist Tyler Rogoway (incidentally a skeptic of ET theories) said
in one of his many superb articles at The War Zone (emphasis added here and elsewhere below): The gross
inaction and the stigma surrounding Unexplained Aerial Phenomena as a whole has led to what appears to be the
paralyzation of the systems designed to protect us and our most critical military technologies, pointing to a
massive failure in U.S. military intelligence.
In sum, the number of UAP reports and the number of intrusions into US military airspace are both increasing, so we need to embrace the full range of UAP and drone issues and pursue them vigorously, rather than trying to diminish or trivialize the topic the way AARO’s historical report seeks to do.
Hopefully, Volume II of AARO’s history of UAP will be far more accurate and informative, and will also garner more serious, informed, and independent press coverage.