The Government’s Civil War Over UFOs

While we all wait for the polls to close today, I thought I would circle back to a topic that hasn’t been generating as many headlines in the MSM lately as it did earlier this year, though there has certainly been activity taking place inside Congress and the Pentagon. The subject is the ongoing drama involving the Pentagon’s UFO investigation office, currently known as the AARO. (The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.) I say “currently” because that office has gone through a lot of name changes over the past 18 years, evolving from AAWSAP to ATTIP to AOIMSG and others, with yet another name expected to be announced later this year.

Congressional interest in the topic has surged since 2017, with many members of the House and Senate demanding answers from the Pentagon about strange objects seen in our skies, particularly in the vicinity of our military operations and nuclear sites. Do they pose any sort of national security threat? Or at least a flight safety hazard? What are they and where do they come from? Last year, the Pentagon released to Congress its first report on UFOs in more than half a century. Thanks to bipartisan legislation signed into law since then, more reports are due to be submitted annually, including reports intended for the public while also containing classified annexes intended only for the House and Senate committees dealing with intelligence and defense.

The next such report was due (perhaps appropriately enough) on Halloween, but it failed to show up, prompting significant consternation and debate among followers of the topic, particularly among the denizens of #UFOTwitter. Why was the report delayed? What are they trying to hide now? After the deadline had come and gone, reporters got hold of some of the information in the expected report, with a pair of dueling articles showing up recently, one in the New York Times and another in The Daily Mail. But as Marik von Rennenkampff points out at The Hill this week, the two reports couldn’t be more different in how they approached the subject, with the Times taking very much of a “nothing to see here” approach and The Daily Mail alluding to the possibility of something far more exotic.

Shortly before the release of the second government report on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in as many years, dueling narratives emerged in the media. A New York Times article poured cold water on theories of alien visitation and the extraordinary technology alluded to in a 2021 report on “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAP).

Citing government officials, the Times pointedly downplayed recent military UAP incidents as foreign drones, balloons or “airborne trash.”

A Daily Mail article, in contrast, struck a remarkably different tone.

Among several eyebrow-raising quotes, one source sharply criticized their Office of the Director of National Intelligence colleagues, stating, “They don’t want to talk about [UAP], because they really, really don’t know what the hell they are.”

The author of the New York Times article clearly framed the upcoming report as essentially being a denial that the catalog of UFO sightings by military service members and civilians could have any sort of exotic or even extraterrestrial explanation. The “majority,” according to anonymous government sources quoted by the author, could be explained by Chinese surveillance drones or simply aerial “trash” such as balloons.

Conversely, the Daily Mail article, written by Josh Boswell, cited what seemed to be obviously different sources inside of Congress and the Pentagon. His piece suggested that people inside the program have been critical of senior Pentagon officials who don’t want to talk about their findings because they are hesitant to admit that they have no idea what’s going on. Boswell claimed that the report will show that the Pentagon has examined no less than 150 reported UFO sightings in just the past year that they have no explanation for, earthly or otherwise. Those reports come in addition to the hundreds dating back to 2004 that were noted in the 2021 report.

None of this means that one reporter has the story “right” while the other is “wrong.” They simply seem to be relying on information leaked from different sources with very different attitudes about the UFO topic. As Boswell correctly notes, a brief look at the Pentagon’s history when it comes to UFO investigations will reveal that this tug-of-war has been going on since at least the 1940s. Stories abound in which some people inside the military-industrial complex have pushed for more openness and transparency while others believed that the entire matter should be off-limits for public discussion. The Air Force has been the most secretive of all the military branches and that pattern appears to be continuing to this day. (Most of the known UFO sighting reports have come from the Navy.)

If the former Pentagon officials who have spoken about and written books on the subject over the years are to be believed, UFOs have been a source of controversy and tension historically. Some officials have clearly thought the entire topic was nonsense. Others took the matter quite seriously, while still fearing the idea of admitting it publicly. There were even some who were convinced that the phenomenon was somehow religious in nature, with the unidentified objects potentially representing demons or other entities with which mankind should not be interacting.

Where the final truth lies may never be known. Or perhaps they will surprise many of us and come out with some startling admissions addressing some of the most significant questions that have gripped the imagination of humans for all of recorded history. Are we alone? Have we been visited by some form of intelligence that did not originate on Earth? Could these objects belong to another species from our own planet that remains concealed from us? Could “they” be time travelers? It’s all on the table and it’s being discussed in public forums today more than at almost any time in the past. When the report arrives, we’ll take a look at it for you if there’s anything included that merits examination.

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