The Pentagon UFO Program: Documents Released

Update: The AAWSAP - AATIP documents on the DIA website under the heading "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” were temporarily removed. After two weeks the folder was (mostly) restored under the new name, "Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program."

John Greenewald shared this statement on Twitter from Pentagon Spokesperson Susan Gough:

"DIA mistakenly selected UAP as the tab label for those documents.  We’re working with them to change it to a more accurate name. As we have said before, while the AAWSAP contract allowed for research drawn from a wide variety of sources, including reports of UAP, the examination of UAP observations was not the purpose of AATIP nor the AAWSAP contract."

As a result, the links below to the DIA site for the documents no longer lead to the intended results. They will be updated once the documents are re-posted by the DIA. For now, use the link to the collection hosted by The Black Vault at the end of the main article.

Documents recently released from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) provide more insight into the inner workings of the alleged Pentagon UFO program. The DIA’s FOIA Electronic Reading Room has been updated with a section for “"Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program." About 50 documents relating to AAWSAP/AATIP recently released under the Freedom of Information Act are now hosted there.

The disclosure finally makes it clear that the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Application Program (AAWSAP) and the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) were the same entity. AATIP was the “Unclassified Nickname” used by Senator Harry Reid when asking for Special Access Program status and funding for the project.

More than 30 of the documents are the subject studies, Defense Intelligence Reference Documents (DIRDs), subcontracted contracted by Bigelow Advanced Aerospace Space Studies (BAASS) to fulfill the requirements of the primary objective of their contract with the DIA. The other documents include the contract proposal, PowerPoint presentations on AAWSAP progress reports, and correspondence requesting and rejecting SAP status for AAWSAP/AATIP. As of this writing, there is no documentation that AATIP existed beyond the termination of the contract with Bigelow Advanced Aerospace Space Studies (BAASS) in 2012.


Was AAWSAP/AATIP a U.S. government UFO Program?

The 2021 book, Skinwalkers at the Pentagon was written by two participants of AAWSAP, James T. Lacatski and Colm A. Kelleher, along with journalist George Knapp. The authors state that AAWSAP was definitely a UFO program, but it also studied associated phenomena, such as the strange paranormal events reported at Skinwalker Ranch. In an appendix at the end of the book, it lists over a hundred reports BAASS produced under the contract, all supposedly delivered to the DIA. James Lacatski’s interest in the topic caused him to contact Robert Bigelow and work with Sen. Harry Reid to develop the program with the government.

The AAWSAP contractor bid form 

The BAASS contract with the DIA contains no reference to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, UFOs or any such terminology. If it was a UFO project, it was camouflaged. As a result, there has been speculation that AAWSAP was just what the language stated, a study into future developments in aerospace technology that could pose a threat to the US. It’s clear that Bigelow was conducting UFO research with funding under the contract, and that Lacatski approved it. The question is: Was the UFO research secret outside the program? Apparently, yes.

The newly released documents show that the DIA was aware of only the DIRDs and made their decisions about the program based on those studies. From the DIA visit with Senator Harry Reid, Nov. 19, 2009:

“To our knowledge, the senator did not receive copies of these draft reports [DIRDS], although he was aware of the general topic list. Thus, we can not find a direct link between the content of the reports and his letter.” [Later] “Senator Reid cites the ‘identification of several highly sensitive, unconventional aerospace-related findings' that will 'require extraordinary protection.’ Although most of the unclassified reports discuss unconventional aerospace technologies, DIA is unaware as to which ones the senator believes are sensitive.”

As a result, their conclusion was:

“Based on the content of the delivered FY09 and expect FY10 technical reports, DIA can not find sufficient grounds under DoD regulations to establish a restricted SAP.” 

They did state however, that if the project moved instead into technological “research, development and acquisition (RDA) effort that lies outside the DoD Intelligence Community's purview.”


Where Did the Money Go?

To the DIA, the DIRDs were all that AAWSAP produced, but there was something justifying further expenses for FY10 (fiscal year 2010). In the PowerPoint presentation from mid to late 2009, “Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Contract – Update,” slide 7 is “Option Year 1 (FY10) Deliverables.” At the bottom, it contains a box stating:

“FY10 $12M also covers BAASS overhead, staff, facilities, IT, security, databases, etc.”

In a previous article, The Pentagon UFO Money Trail, we tried to trace how the $22M was used by BAASS. That’ll give a more comprehensive look at what was treated as miscellaneous associated expenses.

There’s No Such thing as Bad Publicity

Media focus has centered on the 38-page DIRD authored by Dr. Christopher "Kit" Green, “Anomalous Acute and Subacute Field Effects On Human Biological Tissues.” It’s the only of the documents that explicitly refers to UFO research. “Appendix A: Schuessler Catalog of UFO-Related Human Physiological Effects (Frequency Distribution)” relies on data from a UFO book:

“The Schuessler catalog, UFO-Related Human Physiological Effects, was complied in 1996 by MUFON's past Director, John F. Schuessler. Covering the time period 1873 - 1994, the catalog comprises a summary of 356 selected cases of UFO-induced physiological effects on humans during close encounters.”

The appendix included a frequency listing of over 50 physiological effects allegedly experienced in UFO encounters and abductions, ranging from skin discomfort to electromagnetic effects on vehicles. The tabloid media focused on the sensational and quoted the passage mentioning the case of an “unaccounted-for pregnancy.” 

As Dr. Adam Kehoe noted in a series on Twitter, Schuessler’s book UFO-Related Human Physiological Effects, 

“… is a catalog that is derived from reports in ‘newspapers, magazines, UFO organization journals,’ etc… The quality of sources is often poor, including publications like National Enquirer… Flying Saucer Review… The problem is structural. This is not data: it is a collection of stories.”

Kehoe concluded by discussing Green’s paper and the other DIRDs:

“Returning to the DIA paper, the use of the MUFON material is not a throwaway reference… Because these documents were produced as the result of a DIA contract, they have an aura of mystery and authority. However, chasing the references shows weak underpinnings.”

Of the 1500 or so documents released, Dr. Green’s paper represents just about 2.5% of them. Yet the sensational UFO material within has gotten all the press. John Schuessler was a key member of Robert Bigelow’s National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), and in his leadership role in MUFON, the facilitator for their contract with BAASS to provide UFO data and investigations. It’s poetic justice that Schuessler’s work is responsible for the AATIP story getting tabloid press. It's the kind of sketchy data that Bigelow’s project was founded on, so in that sense, maybe the most accurate portrayal yet.

The documents are available for now for us to read and judge for ourselves.

You can find the AAWSAP/AATIP documents at:

The Defense Intelligence Agency’s FOIA Electronic Reading Room, section: “"Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.”

The DIA’s publication of the AAWSAP/AATIP documents is a bit jumbled. John Greenewald at The Black Vault has published a page that is more user-friendly organized f, arranging the documents in chronological order and displaying both the DIA file name and title or description. The Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) Documentation.


For a deeper examination into the AAWSAP and AATIP saga, see the earlier articles at Blue Blurry Lines, many of which were co-authored by Roger Glassel:

Part one uncovered a trove of information about the origins of AATIP, about the contract between the Pentagon and Robert Bigelow (BAASS), and secret subcontracts with the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) to produce technical papers and furnish them with case files and access to investigation sites. Documents were reproduced from the MUFON Advanced Technology Establishment (MATE) and the contracts between the group and Bigelow.

The Pentagon UFO Program’s Secret Partner March 17, 2020

In the second part of the article, participants of the secret MUFON contracts spoke about their involvement and the fact that most of them were unaware that Bigelow’s sponsor was secretly the US government.

Breaking the Silence: AATIP's Secret Partner Speaks March 23, 2020

Continuing the examination, we probed the $22 million government funding for Robert Bigelow’s company under the AAWSAP contract. We attempted to trace where the money was spent.

The Pentagon UFO Money Trail April 23, 2020

A related article examined Dr. Kit Green's DIRD from the perspective of the Cash-Landrum UFO case. 

AATIP's UFO Medical Study and the Cash-Landrum Case February 14, 2020

UFOs: The Long Black Road

Dreams have provided inspiration for the creation of both fiction and physical inventions. From time to time, I have what I call OC-Dreams (for obsessive-compulsive) where a thought or situation replays in a loop while I try to solve it. Sometimes it’s about writing or editing a UFO article. When I woke from the last one, I was left with a powerful urge to make the article real, but as in many dream-inspired ideas, additional ingredients from the real world are required to make it work.

It began with a statement that most UFOs reported could be identified or explained, with only a small subset left as unknowns. Dr. J. Allen Hynek cited the unknowns from Project Blue Book as 23%, but his colleague Allan Hendry at the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), concluded in The UFO Handbook, that of the 1307 reports made to them, only 8.6% remained unidentified after analysis. Often, the unknown status is given chiefly due to insufficient information. However, this void is exploited by promoters who portray it as evidence of physics-defying performance from anomalous aerial vehicles made by no civilization on the earth.

The King of the World? - Amazing Stories, May 1946

The problem is that such notions about UFOs are often based on something other than facts. Take the extraterrestrial hypothesis for the origin of UFOs. Long before Kenneth Arnold’s famed flying saucers sighting, spiritualism and science fiction spread ideas and beliefs about extraterrestrial beings coming to earth and interacting with humans, with or without spaceships. When the summer of saucers came along in 1947, some followers pointed to the news and said, “toldja so!” The spiritualists used the saucers as the proof behind their cosmic gospel for a new age. 

Kenneth Arnold’s UFO that was not like the other 8.

Others factions championed UFOs as extraterrestrial based on a science-flavored belief system. In the absence of tangible evidence, they became convinced that the elusive saucers represented physical structured technological craft made by an intelligence from another world. The tenets of their faith stated that flying saucers are extraterrestrial spacecraft, and that their reality is covered up by the U.S. government. But someday soon, the truth would be known. 

The Flying Saucer Are Real, True magazine, Jan. 1950.

Opportunists, hucksters, and frauds mixed the spiritual humbug with the pseudoscientific humbug into a message that the 10% or so of UFO unknowns represent spaceships of extraterrestrial origin, and there are far more of them that are never observed or reported. There are more they say, since many explained cases are just cover-ups. Lack of evidence is evidence – of the cover-up.

Vickie Landrum

Bringing that fantasy-based baggage into a UFO case virtually guarantees the investigation will be doomed to myth-building, such as what happened in the Cash-Landrum case and countless others before and since. As Vickie Landrum said in 1981: 

"I don't want no more (UFO) investigators having me go over the deal... I don't, and there's a lot of quacks, there really is, that's supposed to be big UFO dealers and wheelers, and they're not after hunting the truth, they're after something, proving something that's unreal." 

Anyone rationally interested in the UFO mystery must become aware of the history of the topic and the unscientific beliefs that were baked into the topic from the start. Seek out primary documents and put away the notions from books and TV shows produced for entertainment. UFOs are real, but very little of what’s believed and said about them is. The beliefs are interesting to folklorists, but otherwise, they need to be left in the past. The hard question to ask is: What does the actual evidence show and where does it lead?

In my dream, the article was only one paragraph long, which prompted me to find a song quotation that served as a coda, cautioning that the work to finding UFO solutions was more of a grind than a glamorous endeavor - and it provided no guarantee of a happy ending. From Jeff Lynne’s “Long Black Road” for Electric Light Orchestra (ELO):

“You gotta get up in the morning, take your heavy load

And you gotta keep goin' down the long black road.”

. . .

 

For more information on the foundational fantastical UFO concepts and their promoters, see these articles from The Saucers That Time Forgot.

Pre-saucer beliefs:

Theosophy and Spiritualism - The UFO Prophecy of Frederick G. Hehr

Meade Layne and the Occult - 1946, Before Saucers, Kareeta: UFO Contact in California

Charles Fort and the ETH - The 1st UFO book? Forgotten Mysteries by R. DeWitt Miller

Science-flavored beliefs:

 Frank Scully’s Conspiracies - Operation Hush-Hush: The UFO Crash and ET Bodies Cover-Up

Mixing science with fantasy - The UFO Evidence of Robert C. Gardner

From fact to fantasy - Tracing the UFO Mothership Connection