DODIG: Lack of UAP Plan May Pose a Threat
It’s been a busy few weeks! There were five UFO-related commercials at the Superbowl. The SOL Foundation dropped the videos from their UAP conference. Congress had a minor freakout directly after a UAP briefing by Lue Elizondo. The DODIG found that the DOD’s lack of a coordinated UAP plan leaves the US at risk. And Sean Kirkpatrick’s article drew a lot of pushback, questions about whether he followed the DOPSR process, and raising concerns that he may be a disinformation agent.
Super Bowl Commercials
- There were no less than FIVE commercials in the super bowl that involved aliens.
- The actor from So Help Me Todd claimed his show was about aliens before correcting himself.
- Oreos had an ad where opening an oreo summoned a UFO.
- Mountain Dew had an ad where Aubrey Plaza was abducted by aliens.
- Apartments.com had an ad where Jeff Goldblum interrupts a tense military standoff with aliens.
- And finally, Martin Scorsese directed a Squarespace ad showing a montage of real-world UFO-related footage, including crop circles, the Gimbal video, Congressional hearings, and even the Nazca mummies. Then it cuts to aliens in a flying saucer flying around trying to get humans to look at them, but they won’t look up from their phones until the aliens create a Squarespace website saying “Hello down there,” which finally gets everyone’s attention.
SOL Conference
- Speaking of videos, the SOL Foundation finally released all the videos from their conference. I haven’t had a chance to watch them yet, but I suspect that may be our next podcast, covering everything they talked about.
Congress freaks out about Russia/UFOs
- Rep Mike Turner, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, caused a bit of a frenzy in Washington when he issued a statement saying the panel “had information concerning a serious national security threat,” and calling on Biden to declassify it so Congress could openly talk about it.
- Turner’s statement didn’t say what it was, and the UFO community had a small moment of thinking that this might be Turner talking about UFOs, because that same day there was a Congressional briefing by Lue Elizondo about UAP and his time as the director of AATIP, a precursor of AARO..
- Lue was joined by a former member of the UAP Task Force, a former fighter pilot, and a former DARPA scientist.
- Liberation Times reported that attendees left the session “deeply concerned about the inability to openly discuss the national security implications of UAP due to classification.” Some members wanted to declassify UAP info to enable security discussions within the government and with allies.
- Rep Ralph Norman said “We've got a real problem. This isn't play land. He told us about the facts of the matter, about what's happening. That was concerning. He wouldn’t give any classified things, but my god. …This isn't political. This isn't politics. It affects all of us, young and old. …It's been portrayed by the media as crazies that are identifying UFOs, but it's not.”
- “He talked for twenty minutes, then we answer questions. …He brought in two pilots that had actually witnessed it. Seen it. He showed slides of it, which was unbelievable. He had a scientist, had a combat pilot that had flown missions and reported what he saw and took pictures. So this isn't some figment of our imagination. And you gotta realize that he has no he has no reason to do this. He's not getting paid. He comes up here free of charge and is sending us all the slides.”
- Rep Norman confirmed that Elizondo “absolutely” corroborated Grusch’s claims of illegal crash retrieval and reverse engineering programs.
- Rep Burlison echoed that: “Those guys, from what they presented — of course, this is not in a secure setting, they're not under oath — but what they presented is very similar to what David Grusch was presenting.”
DoD Inspector General Report
- In late January, the DOD Inspector General released an unclassified summary of a classified report from August of last year called the “Evaluation of the DoD’s Actions Regarding Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.”
- “The DoD OIG found that the DoD does not have a comprehensive, coordinated approach to address UAP. The DoD OIG also found that the DoD’s lack of a comprehensive, coordinated approach to address UAP may pose a threat to military forces and national security.”
- “Finding 1: The DoD Does Not Have a Comprehensive, Coordinated Approach to Address UAP:”
- “The DoD has not used a coordinated approach to detect, report, collect, analyze, and identify UAP. As a result, the DoD response to UAP incidents is uncoordinated and concentrated within each Military Department. Officials stated that they have been waiting for the DoD to issue comprehensive UAP guidance before developing their own guidance.”
- “DoD Components have largely excluded geographic combatant commands. which are responsible for detecting, deterring, and preventing threats and attacks against the United States and its territories, possessions, and bases in their respective areas of responsibility. Therefore, the combatant commands would be the logical organizations to detect, report, collect, and identify UAP incidents to AARO.”
- “DoD Components developed varying informal processes to collect, analyze, and identify UAP incidents. For example, the Air Force designated UAP as a “Special Interest Item,” which requires aircrews to document and report UAP observations within 24 hours using the Marauder system. Army personnel also use the Air Force’s Marauder system to document and report UAP observations because the Army has not developed its own UAP-specific processes. The Military Services have sent some UAP incident reports to AARO, but the DoD does not currently formally require them to do so.”
- “Finding 2: The DoD’s Lack of a Comprehensive, Coordinated Approach to Address UAP May Pose a Threat to Military Forces and U.S. National Security”
- “We determined that the DoD has no overarching UAP policy and, as a result, it lacks assurance that national security and flight safety threats to the United States from UAP have been identified and mitigated.”
- “Recommendation 1: We recommend a DoD policy to integrate UAP roles, responsibilities, requirements, and coordination procedures into existing intelligence, counterintelligence, and force protection policies and procedures.”
- “The Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security and the AARO Director, agreed with the recommendation.”
- “Recommendations 2-4: We recommend that the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force issue interim guidance for UAP while waiting for the DoD to issue policy. At a minimum, this guidance for UAP should: Integrate existing intelligence, counterintelligence, and force protection policies and procedures; Integrate procedures for coordinating with geographic combatant commands; Incorporate roles, responsibilities, and requirements for the Military Services and their respective Military Department Counterintelligence Organizations;”
- “The Secretary of the Army agreed in principle with the recommendation.”
- “The Secretary of the Navy did not provide official comments for inclusion in our final report,
- as requested. However, they responded after our final report, and agreed with the recommendation.”
- “The Secretary of the Air Force did not provide official comments for inclusion in this report, as we requested in our draft report. However they provided us informal comments saying ‘we concur without comment.’”
- “Recommendation 5: We recommend that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff issue guidance to the geographic combatant commanders regarding UAP detection, reporting, collection, analysis, and identification within their area of responsibility. At a minimum, the guidance should include tools to help commands determine the threats posed by UAP.”
- “The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not provide official comments for inclusion in our final report, as we requested. However, the Joint Staff issued guidance to the geographic combatant commanders on UAP detection, reporting, collection, analysis, and identification within their area of responsibility.”
- Liberation Times was able to confirm that only “one has been fully implemented the other ten are still being implemented.”
- “The lack of apparent urgency when faced with potential risks has been met with disbelief among Liberation Times sources. DoD and intelligence sources have told Liberation Times that the news represents an ‘utter failure’.”
- Ryan Graves’ group Americans for Safe Aerospace said “Unidentified objects in friendly airspace represent a clear and present danger to our pilots and soldiers. UFO stigma and a Cold War mentality are unforgivable excuses for ignoring the problem. Pilots have been trying to raise the alarm for over a decade and have unfairly borne the brunt of this stigma. As the DoD Inspector General makes clear, the U.S. Air Force and Army in particular need to institute first class solutions for detection, reporting, tracking and characterization of UAP. We note the Space Force also has a duty to report into the whole of government effort. And much more needs to be done in terms of data sharing and accountability. We hope the DoD Inspector General investigation will motivate Congress to raise the pressure to close this domain awareness gap and be transparent with the American people about its findings. The status quo is unacceptable.”
Reactions to Kirkpatrick
- We talked before about former AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick’s article in Scientific American, where he was broadly dismissive of UAP whistleblower claims: “none of them have any firsthand evidence or knowledge. They’re all relaying stories that they’ve heard from other people.” He argued that everything came from “a small group of interconnected believers” who misled Congress into believing there’s a coverup. He’s received quite a bit of pushback in the weeks since.
- Politico reached out to Kirkpatrick for comment after the DoDIG report dropped, and he said that he told Pentagon leadership that AARO needed to talk to the public more, but he always met internal resistance when trying to engage the media
- “There was a very strong concern to engage in the public discourse as often as I thought we needed to. The fact that they can’t figure out how to get at that message without concern for spillage into other areas has always been a frustrating point. …If there is a void in the information space, it will be filled with the imagination of the public and the conspiracies and these accusations.”
- Pentagon spokesperson Eric Pahon flatly denied Kirkpatrick’s claim that he was muzzled: “Standard procedure within the department is to have public engagements cleared by higher officials. To our knowledge, any media engagement Dr. Kirkpatrick recommended or requested was approved.”
- Liberation Times looked into whether Kirkpatrick’s article was submitted to the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review. After Grusch’s claims, we learned that DoD employees have a lifelong responsibility to submit any public disclosure based on protected information for review.
- An anonymous defense source told them: “This is troubling for two reasons. If Dr. Kirkpatrick did not have it reviewed, it is a serious breach of standing DoD policy and could result in another Inspector General complaint against the Department. On the other hand, if he did have it reviewed and they approved it, this is also problematic because in his article he provides a summary of the results of a study for Congress and the DoD that has not been completed yet or provided to the U.S. government. One then must ask questions. Who gave him authority to release the results of a report before they were even provided to Congress? If the study is ongoing, where is the analysis? If he is biased, why is he still being used by the Department of Defense as an "unpaid consultant" to advise the Deputy Secretary of Defense?”
- Chris #UFODaddy Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, said:
- “The stark contradiction between sources approaching Capitol Hill on the UAP issue, some of whom I know personally, and the claims of former AARO Director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, remains frustratingly unresolved.”
- “I was astonished by one of the central claims made by Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick in his recent article in Scientific American blasting UAP 'conspiracists.' Specifically, his claim that: ‘As of the time of my departure, none, let me repeat, none of the conspiracy-minded 'whistleblowers' in the public eye had elected to come to AARO to provide their 'evidence' and statement for the record despite numerous invitations.’”
- “I’m baffled because, in an effort to assist his investigation, I introduced Dr. Kirkpatrick to the former Director of the AATIP program, Lue Elizondo, as well as Dr. Eric Davis and Dr. Hal Putoff. Each of these prominent voices associated with the AATIP program spent hours briefing Dr. Kirkpatrick in a classified setting. None have received any feedback. Hopefully, the pending report to Congress on the alleged UAP recovery program will describe the specific claims made by these and dozens of other witnesses and what AARO did to evaluate them.”
- Lue Elizondo reiterated: “Many, let me repeat, MANY people who I know personally have spoken to AARO and provided detailed information to Kirkpatrick and his office for the record. If AARO isn't willing to tell the truth to Congress...we are!”
- An anonymous former government official familiar with Kirkpatrick told the Liberation Times: "Now we see why whistleblowers didn’t trust Kirkpatrick. It will be very difficult for the Department of Defense to regain faith and trust with new whistleblowers given the behavior and deceitfulness of Kirkpatrick. His article appears to be written from the perspective of someone who failed at their job and is now throwing a child's fit of rage"
- Marik von Rennenkampff, a former DoD appointee and analyst, said a Senate source told him “Kirkpatrick appears to be a disinformation agent. He is not being honest about what he heard from the whistleblowers that were referred.” He also claimed that AARO shared no information on these UAP whistleblowers with Congress, and that Deputy Secretary of Defense Hicks may have fired Kirkpatrick.
- We’ve heard similar claims from Matthew Pines, director of security advisory at SentinelOne, said a highly cleared source in the DoD Senior Executive Service claimed that AARO is “entirely a disinformation activity” designed to “cover and distract” with “no qualms about misleading Congress.”
References
- 5 Super Bowl Alien Commercials
- Liberation Times: From Super Bowl To White House - UFOs Have Entered The Political And Entertainment Mainstream
- SOL Foundation youtube channel
- CNN: Russia attempting to develop nuclear space weapon to destroy satellites with massive energy wave, sources familiar with intel say
- Liberation Times: Future of Representative Turner in Question After Rare Public Statement on National Security Threat, Later Deemed Underwhelming, Amid Continued Dismissal of UFOs Despite Growing Alarm Within Congress
- Ask a Pol: Rep. Norman says Lue Elizondo "absolutely" corroborated David Grusch
- Ask a Pol: Post-SCIF Burlison says Intel Chair overreacting but agrees on declassification
- DOD: Unclassified Summary of the DODIG’s Evaluation of the DOD’s Actions Regarding UAP
- Liberation Times: Department Of Defense’s Alarming Inaction: Only One of Eleven UFO Recommendations Implemented, Posing Risk to National Security
- Americans for Safe Aerospace:“UFO stigma and a Cold War mentality are unforgivable excuses for ignoring the problem.”
- Politico: Former UFO boss: Pentagon needs to be less secretive
- The Hill: What has happened to the Pentagon’s former UFO hunter?
- Liberation Times: Former UFO Office Director's Opinions Draw Scrutiny on Impartiality and Investigation Handling
- Chris Mellon: “Contradiction between sources and Kirkpatrick’s claims remains unresolved.”
- Chris Mellon: “I introduced Kirkpatrick to Elizondo, Davis, and Puthoff”
- Lue Elizondo: “Many people have provided detailed info to Kerkpatrick.”
- Marik von Rennenkampff: “Kirkpatrick appears to be a disinfo agent.”
- Matt Pines: “AARO is entirely a disinfo activity.”
Episode 38, posted on