[NEWS and ANALYSIS]
Government Knowledge: UAP’s & UFO’s
NewsNation recently posted a video titled: “Top Secret UFO research grips Washington: Here’s what they’re saying” https://youtu.be/z8ZdqE6jz-k?si=yIRujTrDxN5UYzji. In these polarized times one can take heart in two things about this video: (1.) that there appears to be bipartisan support amongst Democrats and Republicans to force the government to be more forthcoming about what it knows about UFOs (now referred to a UAPs) and Unidentified Submerged Objects (USOs); and (2.) that according to the video, the government is supposed to reveal “everything it knows” about UAPs by October 20, 2024. Upon release, the “unclassified” portion of the records will be made available on line to the public by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
Unfortunately, however, if one examines the situation further one cannot help but to feel a little skeptical that much, if anything, will actually change regarding government disclosure of UAP related information. Why should one be so skeptical? Because, essentially, the law that was ultimately passed requiring disclosure gutted a key provision of the proposed new law that would have established a new committee that would have been appointed by the President to review attempts to vet, redact or stop the disclosure of required information by the very same unseen military, intelligence and bureaucratic forces that have kept the truth from the public in the past. [The new law is known as the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Disclosure Act of 2023 and/or the UFO disclosure amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)].
Currently the public servants who do much to restrict public disclosure of UAP information reside in the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). See “Reps outraged by stripping of UAP bill…” by Stacy Liberatore for Dailymail.com at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/reps-outraged-by-stripping-of-uap-bill-we-got-ripped-off/ar-AA1lzaF8. AARO was created in July of 2022 and operates within the Defense Department. It is supposed to coordinate the efforts of the intelligence agencies, the Defense Department and other relevant government agencies in studying and disseminating information regarding UAPs. [ Prior to the establishment of AARO the primary organization that studied UAPs was Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) which was created in 2007 and also operated in the Department of Defense. However, AATIP’s existence was not well known and in fact AATIP terminated operations in 2012 apparently, without much public fanfare. In fact, the New York Times only discovered AATIP’s existence in 2017. Then in 2020 AATIP’s functions were largely taken over by Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), which in turn operated until AARO was created in 2022. {Disclosure: ChatGPT did assist in some of the research on this last point.]
Regarding the more recent legislative attempt to establish a new review committee (other than AARO), according to Ms. Liberatore’s article:
“Mike Turner (R-Ohio), Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) are said to be among those who pushed back on the bill.
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on his show on X in late November that Rogers and Turner ‘have been instructed to violate, in letter and in spirit, federal law, and to hide the truth about UFOs.’
Carlson later called out Speaker of the House Johnson and McConnell for being among those looking to ‘shut [the bill] down.’”
For more information on this subject the relevant U.S. Code Sections are 50 U.S.C. Section 3373 et seq. Here’s the link for that: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/3373
For other articles see: Matthew Phelan, The Dailey Mail, “Proof Aliens Exist…” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13430771/us-law-federal-agency-ufo-reports-public-disclosure.html (May 17, 2024) and Kendra Stacy, the Science Times “UAPs Declassified?…” https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/50246/20240519/uaps-declassified-federal-agencies-submit-ufo-reports-public-disclosure-creation.htm; National Archives “Guidance to Federal Agencies on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection” https://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/uap-guidance and President’s Executive Order 13526 (2009)
Senator Chuck Shumer, a Democrat, says that the government’s policy regarding what it discloses about UAPs has, in the past, bread mistrust in government. If that is true then if the government comes clean and reveals what it actually knows this will go along way towards reducing the mistrust in government. [We, at reasonandbalance.com, have repeatedly emphasized the paramount need for maintaining and increasing the trust that the public has for our courts, the system of justice and the rule of law. Naturally, the public must also trust all of the other branches of government as well and this includes the Pentagon and Intelligence community. Thus, anything that increases that trust is much needed and should be roundly applauded.]
However, in order for that trust to be preserved and/or increased, the public must somehow be convinced that what the government tells us by October 20th is truthful and that its disclosure is full. History and the realities of the situation, however, make one pause to consider how likely it will be that the government will, in fact, actually provide the public with full disclosure about what it knows about UAPs. While there may be new provisions in the law that require that reasons by specified in writing by the withholding agency if any information is withheld, alas, it would seem that without the new review committee originally proposed that the government’s approach of withholding information will be much the same that it always has been in the past.
Putting aside, the traditional concern of possibly creating public hysteria and civil disorder over having the government publicly acknowledge the existence of aliens, if that’s true (and we’re not saying it is), one has to acknowledge that requiring full government disclosure on this issue raises some exceedingly important practical concerns that probably will, at least to some extent, limit what the government is willing to tell us. The trick will be for the government to somehow convince the public that whatever it discloses and whatever is being withheld does not overly distort the facts, gives the country a reasonably accurate idea of what’s going on, all without revealing critical top secret information or cause hysteria and/or aid potential adversaries. This will be a very challenging task to say the least, especially since no new review committee has been established as was originally proposed. Simply put, there is still no real way for the public to know that it is getting an accurate picture of what the government knows. And in this is likely to remain the case unless the government acknowledges (assuming that it is true) that aliens have visited planet Earth and are zipping around in both our skies and oceans. And even then, there will still always be doubt as to whether the government is somehow in cahoots with the aliens. [Here again, we are not saying that we at reasonandbalance.com have concluded that the existing evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt that aliens are visiting us.]
Thus, if Congress is serious about increasing the public’s trust it should reconsider and then enact legislation establishing an independent review committee outside of the defense department and/or the intelligence community. This is emphatically not to say that the intelligence and defense department should not have significant input in any disclosure decisions, only that public trust can only be built if the reviewing entity has a staff with a significant degree to both expertise and independence to make correct and trustworthy decisions.
Here again, Senator Schumer of his original proposal for a new committee has said:
‘The measure I championed with Senator [Mike] Rounds would create a board, just like we did with the [John F Kennedy] assassination records, to work through the declassification of many government records on UAPs,’ he said earlier this month.
‘This model’s been a terrific success for decades.’”
[Note: The committee that reviews JFK assassination records Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) consists of 5 members appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. The current members consist of a federal judge, an archivist and several professors.]
It remains a little unclear as to whether and/or how a private citizen can challenge a determination by AARO to withhold information from public scrutiny under the present law. Presumably, however, this would be done through a typical Freedom of Information Act request, but again this unclear.
Here is the link for the AARO website: https://www.aaro.mil/.
The current Acting Director of AARO is Mr. Timothy A. Phillips. According to the AARO website Mr. Phillips:
“… assumed the duties of the Deputy Director All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in October 2023. He is a Senior National Intelligence Service executive appointed in 2006 with over 40 years of government experience serving in a variety of senior Intelligence Community assignments in the field and at agency headquarters. Mr. Phillips is a retired United States Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel serving in peacekeeping, humanitarian, or combat operations in Lebanon, Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, Joint Task Force Bravo, and JTF 510.”
Mr. Phillips stepped in for Sean Kirkpatrick, PhD who headed AARO until last October. The remaining membership, and how and who gets selected remain somewhat ambiguous.