WASHINGTON - It is almost impossible to find the unremarkable $ 22 million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threats Program in the Pentagon's $ 600 billion budget.
It was this kind of secrecy that the Ministry of Defense needed.
Over the years, this program has studied reports of unidentified flying objects, as evidenced by statements by Pentagon officials, interviews with program participants, and those documents that The New York Times managed to obtain. The program was run by military intelligence officer Luis Elizondo, and its members' offices were on the fifth floor of Ring C, deep in the Pentagon's labyrinth.
The Department of Defense has never previously acknowledged the existence of such a program, stating that it was closed in 2012. However, its supporters say that although the Pentagon cut its funding at the time, the program continues. For the past five years, they said, participants in this program have continued to study all cases reported to them by the military. In parallel, they carry out other official duties in the Ministry of Defense.
The mysterious program, which is still hidden under a veil of secrecy, was launched in 2007. It was initially funded at the request of Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, who was then Senate Majority Leader. This person has long been interested in this phenomenon. Most of the money allocated went to an aerospace research company run by billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Reed Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to create a self-deploying spacecraft that people can use while in space.
Speaking on 60 Minutes in May, Bigelow said he was “absolutely sure” that aliens exist and that UFOs are coming to Earth.
Working with Bigelow, headquartered in Las Vegas, participants in the program have prepared a series of documents describing cases of detection of aircraft moving at high speed with no visible signs of propulsion systems, as well as hovering in the air as if they were not on the force of gravity acts.
Participants in the program also studied video recordings of encounters of unidentified objects with US military aircraft. One of these recordings appeared in August. It shows two F / A-18F fighters from the aircraft carrier Nimitz pursuing a whitish oval object the size of an airliner. It happened off the coast near the city of San Diego in 2004.
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Reed, who retired from Congress this year, said he was proud of the program. “I’m not ashamed or sorry to launch it,” Reed said in an interview in Nevada recently. - I think this is one of those useful things that I did while working in Congress. I did something that no one else has done before."
The program was supported by two other former senators and senior members of the defense spending subcommittee. They are Alaska Republican Ted Stevens and Hawaii Democrat Daniel K. Inouye. Stevens died in 2010, and Inuye in 2012.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology astrophysicist Sara Seager says that while we don't know about the origin of the unidentified flying objects, this does not mean that they are from another planet or from another galaxy. Without saying anything about the merits of this program, she says: "When people claim to have seen some unusual phenomenon, sometimes it deserves serious study." At the same time, adds Seeger, "people sometimes do not understand that there are often phenomena for which science has not yet found an explanation."
Former NASA space shuttle engineer James E. Oberg has written 10 books on space travel, in which he frequently debunks UFO sightings. Such meetings raise great doubts in him. “There are many prosaic events and human perceptions that explain these stories,” Oberg said. - A lot of people are doing something in the air and don't want others to know about it. They happily hide behind this noise, remaining unnoticed, and even use it as a disguise."
Nonetheless, Oberg says he is positive about the study. “It is possible that there is an important clue here,” he notes.
In response to questions from The New York Times, Pentagon officials this month acknowledged the existence of the program, which was initiated by the Defense Intelligence Agency. However, they stressed that the program lasted for five years and was completed in 2012.
“It was decided that there were other, more urgent priorities for funding and that the Department of Defense should change its plans,” said Pentagon spokesman Thomas Crosson in an email.
However, Elizondo said that only government funding for the program ended in 2012. He gave an interview in which he noted that he continued his work together with representatives of the Navy and the CIA. He worked in his office at the Pentagon until October, after which he resigned in protest of excessive secrecy and due to internal opposition.
"Why aren't we spending more time and effort to address this issue?" - wrote Elizondo in his letter of resignation addressed to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. According to him, work under the program continues, and another person has been appointed in his place, whose name he refused to name.
The United States has been studying UFOs for decades. The American military was also engaged in this. In 1947, the Air Force began a series of studies, examining more than 12,000 cases of detection of unidentified flying objects. In 1969, research was officially terminated. The leaders of this project, which included a study codenamed "Blue Book", which began in 1952, concluded that in most cases, not UFOs were seen, but stars, clouds, conventional airliners and reconnaissance aircraft. True, 701 cases did not find their explanation.
Robert C. Seamans Jr, then Secretary of the Air Force, noted in a memo on the termination of the Blue Book project that it could no longer be justified by national security and scientific interests.
According to Reed, Bigelow instilled in him an interest in UFOs. In an interview, Reed said that in 2007 Bigelow told him about a conversation with a Defense Intelligence Agency spokesman who wanted to visit his ranch in Utah, where Bigelow was doing his research.
According to Reed, he met with officials from the department shortly after talking with Bigelow. He learned that they want to start a UFO study program. After that, Reed spoke with Stevens and Inuye to provide support on Capitol Hill.
“I had interviewed John Glenn a few years earlier,” Reed said, referring to the astronaut and former Ohio senator who died in 2016. According to Reed, Glenn believed that the federal government should seriously study the problem of UFOs, turning to the military, first of all, to the pilots, who reported on unknown aircraft, the actions of which they could not explain.
According to Reed, the military often did not report to the command about the facts of the discovery of strange objects, fearing that they would be laughed at or subjected to public censure. Reed said the meeting with Stevens and Inouye "was very easy and simple."
He added: "Stevens said he had been waiting for this moment since his time in the Air Force." (The Senator from Alaska was an Army Air Force pilot and flew transport planes over China during World War II.)
According to Reed, during the meeting, Stevens told him that he was sometimes pursued by strange aircraft of unknown origin, flying after him for many kilometers.
None of the three senators wanted to start a public debate in the Senate about funding for the program, Reed said. "It was the so-called 'black money" - he said. - Stevens knew about it, Inuye knew about it, and nobody else. This is the kind of secrecy we needed to carry out this program."
The New York Times received information that from the end of 2008 to the end of 2011, Congress allocated about $ 22 million for the UFO study. This money was spent on managing the program, for conducting research and preparing analytical assessments of the threats posed by unidentified flying objects.
Funding came from Bigelow Aerospace, which hired subcontractors and researchers to work on the program.
At Bigelow's direction, his company rebuilt several buildings in Las Vegas to accommodate metal alloys and other materials that Elizondo and contractors said were found in areas where unknown aerial objects and phenomena were encountered. The researchers also interviewed people who stated that encounters with these objects had some kind of physical effect on them. Scientists studied these people looking for physiological changes. In addition, they talked to military personnel who reported encounters with strange aircraft.
“We found ourselves in the position of Leonardo da Vinci, who opened the doors of a modern auto repair shop,” said Harold E. Puthoff, an engineer who conducted ESP research for the CIA and then worked as a contractor for the program. "First of all, he would try to find out what kind of plastic is stored there, because he could not know anything about the electromagnetic signals that are responsible for its functioning."
Program participants collected video and audio recordings of UFO incidents. Among other things, they got a recording from an F / A-18 Super Hornet. It shows how some kind of aircraft, surrounded by a flickering glow, flies at high speed and at the same time rotates. On the recording, you can hear the pilots trying to understand what they saw. "Yes, there is a whole armada of them!" one pilot exclaims. Defense Ministry officials declined to provide the location and date of the incident.
“Internationally, we are the most backward country in the world in studying this issue,” Bigelow said in an interview. “Our scientists are afraid of being ostracized. And our media are afraid of universal condemnation. China and Russia are much more open in this regard, and they are working on this with serious organizations that they have. Smaller countries like Belgium, France, England, and South American states like Chile are also showing openness. They are ready to discuss this topic, not wanting to limit themselves to silly taboos."
By 2009, Reid decided that the program had made outstanding discoveries that needed additional protection and appropriate secrecy. “Much progress has been made in explaining a number of unusual aerospace phenomena,” Reed said in a letter to the then Undersecretary of Defense, William Lynn. In this regard, he asked to restrict access to this program, increasing its degree of secrecy.
In 2009, the program director prepared a short report on the program for the Pentagon. It stated: "What was previously considered science fiction is now a science fact." In addition, the author of the report stated that the United States is unable to defend against some of the detected technologies. However, Reed was denied a request to increase the secrecy of the program.
Elizondo, in his October 4 resignation announcement, noted that it is necessary to take more seriously “the numerous reports from sailors, pilots and other members of the armed forces about unusual aircraft interfering with the operation of our weapons systems and demonstrating the incredible capabilities that we can have. appear only in the distant future. " He expressed dissatisfaction with the restrictions imposed on the UFO research program. Elizondo told Mattis that "it is in the interests of the military and the entire country to ascertain the capabilities and intentions of these facilities."
Elizondo is now supported by Puthoff and another former Pentagon chief, Christopher K. Mellon, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. They formed a new business venture called To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science. They talk openly about their efforts and that their company is raising funds for UFO research.
In his interview, Elizondo said that in the course of the work carried out, he and his colleagues found out one important thing. Apparently, the devices they study do not belong to any country. “No state, no department should classify these facts, hiding them from the people,” he said. Reed, for his part, noted that he did not know where these objects came from. “If someone says he knows about it, he’s fooling himself,” he said. "We don't know that."
At the same time, Reed noted, "But we need to start somewhere."
Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, Leslie Kean
See also: American pilots filmed a UFO as part of the secret Pentagon program
