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In the last few months a formal, hitherto unknown US Department of Defence (DOD) program to study the UFO phenomena has been revealed. Located within the massive Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), began in 2007, and was dissolved in 2012. Beyond that, and yet to be formally admitted, the work of ATTIP was apparently migrated to an new interagency partnership where it is still ongoing today. The AATIP effort, for most of its existence, was headed by DOD staffer, Luis Elizondo, whose career has been spent in specialised defence intelligence, counter–intelligence and security roles. Since his departure, last year, from the DOD, Elizondo has appeared in numerous media interviews

By Paul Dean ufos-documenting-the-evidence.blogspot.com 3-3-18

regarding the AATIP program, but avoids detailing specific security classified information. Acres and acres of discussion about the AATIP issue has, unsurprisingly, taken place on social media and in the press. I do not aim here to further highlight what has already been revealed, or what hasn’t. My intention, as always, is to provide primary documentation, or other solidly sourced narrative.

On top of AATIP’s sudden exposure, two segments of airborne video footage were released that purport to show unidentified, airborne objects. The first piece of footage, and its wider story, was already known to researchers, and is generally referred to as the “Nimitz” or “Tic Tac” UFO case. The second piece of footage, which was entirely new, is known as the “Gimbal” event. The former occurred in 2004 off the coast of California, and involved multiple F/A–18 Super Hornets assigned to the USS Nimitz. The latter occurred in 2015 off the coast of Florida, and involved similar aircraft. Again, my aim is not to go over, ad nauseum, these two events, or their associated video footage. Others have done so, and work is ongoing.

One question that has arisen about these two videos, though, is the issue of DOD endorsement and formal release. Elizondo, and others, such as reporter Leslie Kean, have claimed that defence authorities formally permitted the open presentation of the material, and that a documented “chain of custody” was in existence. Again, it should be noted that the “Nimitz”, or “Tic Tac”, footage was already known, as it had been leaked to an online source, by USN personnel, quite a few years ago. Also, the newer “Gimbal” footage, as I have discovered, was also leaked by USN personnel, though not to an online server for all to see. Informal, isolated leaks aside, Elizondo understandably wished to see that these segments of unusual footage were as properly accounted for as possible, as did those he has confided in. Working with a number of interested parties, either directly or indirectly, which have included an unusual outfit known as the “To The Stars Academy” (TTSA), plus The New York Times, Bigelow Aerospace, and others, Elizondo has not, as yet, demonstrated exactly how he had the videos were declassified or otherwise released. Researchers, and the wider public, have yet to see copies of any “chain of custody” documentation.

Early on, I had assumed that Elizondo had utilised the US Freedom of Information Act (FIOA) to see that the videos were released, but my rather forceful enquiries with the DIA and Office of the Secretary of Defence and Joint Staff (OSD/JS) had demonstrated that this was probably not the case. Likewise, I engaged in lengthy telephone correspondence with staffers at the Assistant to the Secretary of Defence for Public Affairs (ATSD/PA), but they couldn’t shed any light on the matter either. Upon talking to someone heavily involved in this affair, I was able to recently learn that Elizondo had used an internal DOD records–release channel unrelated to the FOI Act. My confidant wasn’t entirely comfortable with telling me exactly what this method was without consulting with Elizondo himself, and I didn’t further push the matter. Put simply, I didn’t know how the videos were formally released, but that has now changed.

On the 25th of February, 2018, Elizondo was interviewed by reporter George Knapp for the radio podcast show “Coast to Coast”. In that presentation, Elizondo revealed that he used the services of the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR). In conjunction with that effort, Elizondo said he utilised a pair of DOD publications which govern the clearance and release of certain information to the public. Importantly, Elizondo stated that the actual document he used was a “DD Form 1910”.

Specifically, DOPSR is an office which resides within the Office of the Secretary of Defence (OSD) and is “responsible for managing the Department of Defense security review program, reviewing written materials both for public and controlled release”. They coordinate “official work products with Defense enterprise stakeholders to ensure that information being released is both accurate and represents the Department’s official position”. The two publications at the center of Elizondo’s video release efforts are “DOD Directive 5230.09, Clearance of DoD Information for Public Release”, which was certified as current on the 22nd of August, 2015, and “DOD Instruction 5230.29, Security and Policy Review of DoD Information for Public Release”, which was promulgated on August the 6th, 1999. As mentioned, the form Elizdono apparently used was a DOPSR–issued “DD Form 1910”. Its title is “Clearance Request for Public Release of Department of Defense Information”. Completed forms are submitted to the Chief of DOPSR, and a copy is sent for coordination with to the DOD’s Director for Freedom of Information and Security Review (DFOISR). Copies of whatever material, be it documents or audio–visual material, that the applicant wants released are submitted with the “DD Form 1910”, and processing can take weeks or months. A sample copy of the form, which is two sided, is imaged above top and below.


The DOPSR “DD Form 1910” is self–explanatory, for the most part. There are fields, or blocks, for a names, a signature, a date, subject matter areas, prior co–ordination of the subject material, office address information, etc. However, I am not exactly sure, at this stage, what information would be placed in some of the fields.

On the 1st of March, 2018, I submitted an FOI request to the Office of the Secretary of Defence and Joint Staff (OSD/JS) for a copy of this record. Explicitly, I stated, in part:

“This is a request for information under the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). I am requesting a specific document which were recently processed by Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR). The document is a “DD Form 1910”. It was utilised by a former DoD employee, Luis Elizondo, to see that some audio–visual clips (airborne FLIR videos from US Navy aircraft) be formally released to the public for educational or publication use. Elizondo headed up, some years ago, the much–discussed Advanced Aviation/Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). When he resigned from the DoD, he wished to utilise various DOD audio–visual material as part of a wider, civilian program. Thus, he used a DD Form 1910. Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR), or associated agencies, must have a copy of the DD Form 1910 in question.”

I was immediately furnished with an automatic reply from the DOD’s FOI Office. In it, I was given an FOI case number, which was “18–F–0601”. On the 2nd of March, 2018, I was furnished with a more formal, if interim, response from the same office. DOD FOI Specialist Sean Porter enclosed a scanned letter from Stephanie L. Carr, who is the long–suffering Chief of the DOD’s FOI Office. In it, Carr states, in part:

“This is an interim response to your enclosed March 1, 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, a copy of which is attached for your convenience. We received your request on March 1, 2018, and assigned it case number 18–F–0601. We ask that you use this number when referring to your request.

Although we have already begun processing your request, we will not be able to respond within the FIOA’s 20–day statutory time period as there are unusual circumstances that impact our ability to quickly process your request. The FOIA defines unusual circumstances as (a) the need to search for and collect records from a facility geographically separated from this office; (b) the potential volume of records responsive to your request; and (c) the need for consultation with one of more other agencies or DoD components having a substantial interest in in either the determination or subject matter of the records. At least one, if not more, of these scenarios applies or would likely apply to your request. While this office handles FOIA requests for the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the Joint Staff (JS), and other component offices, we don’t not actually hold their records and our office is not geographically located with these organizations. As we do not hold the records, until the required records searches are complete, we are unable to make a release determination.

Your request has been placed in our complex processing queue and is being worked based on the order in which the request was received. Our current administrative workload is approximately 2,246 open requests.”

This is a standard response, no matter what the FOI request entails. I have received the exact same letter on other occasions. While it is certainly true that the OSD/JS FOI desk is inundated with requests for DOD material, I would argue that my request shouldn’t be placed in the “complex processing queue”. After all, I am asking for a copy of just one document, so the statement about the “potential volume of records responsive to your request” is hogwash. Searching for it shouldn’t be an issue, as the record was only generated last year. Also, I have given the OSD/JS FOI desk a very likely filing location, which is, of course, the DOPSR office. The statement about the record potentially being at “a facility geographically separated from this office” could be argued on technicalities either way. Both the OSD/JS FOI desk and DOPSR are located in the Pentagon though. One issue that may cause some complexity is the potential need for “consultation with one of more other agencies or DoD components” which have a “substantial interest in in either the determination or subject matter of the records”, but even this is debatable. Whatever the situation, my hands are probably tied. Short of me ringing the OSD/JS and reminding them of their responsibilities under the FOI Act, which is something I have done with varying degrees of success in the past, we are going to have to wait. Stephanie L. Carr’s letter is imaged below.

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Remember that riveting opening sequence in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” when air traffic controllers stared at their boards as airline pilots barely avoided colliding with something nobody wanted to talk about afterwards? A drama that unfolded over America’s northwest corridor in the early evening of Oct. 24, 2017, wasn’t quite that Hollywood. But whatever it was, the thing was flying. It had no transponder but got caught on radar. Then it erased itself and vanished from ATC screens. Immediately after that, at least three airline pilots reported seeing it. Jet fighters scrambled; by time they

By Billy Cox De Void 2-16-18

got airborne, whatever it was vanished for good, and the whole sequence probably left a few people who had to deal with it wondering if it was worth the effort.

We know all this thanks to some masterful work from Tyler Rogoway, a military aviation reporter at a non-UFO website called The War Zone. Armed with voluminous details harvested from a Freedom of Information Act request, Rogoway broke the story last November. And the updated results are so cool, De Void anticipates a Congressional suspension of FOIA laws any day now.

On Thursday, Rogoway posted audiotaped real-time chatter from eyewitnesses and official sources. It begins with the detection of an unknown flying object by Oakland Center air traffic control. It popped onto its screens at 37,000 feet, and for more than an hour, the speeding bogey drew swivels from both the Federal Aviation Administration and North American Aerospace Defense Command. It streaked for several hundred miles over northern California and Oregon, northbound. It ended when F-15s from the 142nd Fighter Wing out of Portland were dispatched on a fool’s errand to identify what at least one civilian pilot described as a big white unmarked aircraft, with few additional details.

Three months later, Rogoway has augmented his early reporting with a fascinating narrative presented in four separate videos, some syncing radar maps with recorded participant dialogue. The confusion among FAA operators is unambiguous: “You know that target south of the boundary there, that 0027 code moving very fast at 37,000?” “Yeah, look at that thing.” “Yeah, that’s, uh, crazy.” “Hmm, um, and you don’t have anything on him, huh?” “I got nothing.” “Well, we’ll look.”

Oblivious to requests for identification, the UFO merges into existing air traffic lanes and no longer expresses itself in radar pingbacks. But northbound airline pilots report seeing a distant white somethingorother that paces and maybe passes them, even as it resembles thin air to radar beacons. Although this potentially dangerous behavior fails to trip the planes’ Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems, it does alert a picket fence of other acronyms – DEN (the Domestic Events Network) and WADS (the Western Air Defense Sector, also nicknamed Bigfoot). Somewhere along the way, a command goes out to put F-15s in the sky to get some military eyes on the intruder. When an Alaska 439 pilot requests new info on the bogey, an ATC operator says it may have gone into “stealth mode or something.”

The F-15s hunted for the UFO “with the most capable air-to-air radar set in the world (AN/APG-63VC) and Sniper advanced targeting pods for long-range visual identification,” Rogoway states in his November report. “Their pilots are some of the best in the world and are highly trained in the homeland air defense mission. The fact that they ‘didn’t find anything’ is surprising to say the least. Maybe this was due to the nature of the aircraft being searched for, or the possibility that they launched long after it was first sighted, or that we simply aren’t being told the whole story.”

Rogoway’s FOIAs also produced an after-action audio gem. In this segment, an unnamed Seattle Center ATC Manager In Charge of Operations reaches out to airline pilots and FAA officials to figure out what just happened. All spoken names, phone numbers and emails are literally beeped out; but then, curious stretches of silence punctuate some of those interviews.

We also get a peek into procedural tensions during an exchange between Seattle and the FAA Air Traffic Security Coordinator. Among other things, FAA wants to know who asked for jet-fighter support. Seattle says Oakland sounded the first alert and, as the UFO entered another coverage zone, Oakland told Seattle to call WADS. Seattle said he notified WADS, but he didn’t ask for air support. FAA reminds Seattle that a “request for military assistance has to come through FAA headquarters.” Again, Seattle tells FAA he never made such a request.

FAA: “I explicitly said over the line that headquarters was not in conference with requesting military assistance at that time because I was on the DEN … I had no radar, had no target, I had nothing –” Seattle: “Yeah, we had nothing, either.” FAA: “—from anybody. So I would not send the fighters to go up and, y’know, toodle around and –” Seattle: “Right, flying around. ‘Cause we don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

Afterwards, sounding slightly chastened, Seattle calls Oakland to compare notes. Oakland has Seattle’s back: “But there was definitely something out there.” Seattle: “There was definitely something there, there’s no question, because United 612, it was … off his 3 o’clock, and about 5 to 10 miles for about a hundred miles … so what we’re trying is to reach those pilots of all those aircraft to see if they can write us a little a report about what they saw …”

Oakland: “Our radar did pick up an intruder target coming in at a high speed right toward the southwest …” Seattle: “Southbound? Not northbound?” Oakland: “Southbound. And then it did an abrupt maneuver and just took off northbound. And we’re like, what? He was southbound, now he’s northbound. Weird …”

A new weapon system going out for a test spin? Hey, what if it was North Korean? They do sneaky secret stuff, right? Unfortunately, the FOIA material doesn’t get us anywhere close to an answer. The last audio clip finds Seattle talking with an official with the FAA’s Safety and Quality Assurance Group. She calls the incident “potentially significant,” says it’s “a weird enough thing that there is not a set procedure,” and “It’s not often we hear about an unknown guy up at that altitude.”

Maybe, as Skeptic James McGaha would reassure us, the mystery would solved by now if only the pilots and radar monitors had been astronomers. Anyhow, great reporting. Well done. Stay on it.
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Last November, The War Zone posted an exclusive story detailing a bizarre incident involving an unidentified aircraft that transited the skies of the Pacific Northwest in the early evening of October 25th, 2017. What started as a radar target moving at very high speed over

By Tyler Rogoway www.thedrive.com 2-20-18

Northern California turned into a series of eyewitness accounts made by nearby airline pilots traveling northward over Oregon. Even F-15 fighters were launched to intercept the mysterious intruder that quickly became invisible to radar.

Now, through the Freedom of Information Act, we present what could be one of the most insightful instances of official documentation surrounding such an encounter that had already been confirmed to have occurred by both the FAA and the USAF. These materials include fascinating audio recordings of radio transmissions and phone calls made as the incident was unfolding, as well as pilot interviews, and conversations between FAA officials made in the aftermath of the highly peculiar incident.
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LAS VEGAS - Science Writer Arthur C. Clarke once said that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." According to the Pentagon, something magical has been flying around the Las Vegas skies for a long time, now.

BY George Knapp I-Team 8 News Now 2-7-18

A secret study of Unidentified Flying Objects was made public last year. Much of the analysis was done in southern Nevada, and a main purpose of the study was to figure out how UFOs work.

The I-Team interviewed the man who ran the program at the Pentagon to ask about the physics of flying saucers.
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The force was asked in a Freedom of Information request how many 999 and 101 calls it had received during 2015, 2016 and 2017.

By BBC News 2-4-18

It reported three calls mentioning "alien" and three referencing "UFO". Two of the reported sightings took place in 2015 and four in 2016.
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LAS VEGAS - Remember the UFO videos released by the Pentagon late in 2017? It turns out there are even more videos lurking in the military files.

By George Knapp www.lasvegasnow.com 2-1-18

A man who spent 10 years working on the government's secret study of UFOs says there have been many dramatic encounters with unknown technology that is far more advanced than anything in the U.S. military.
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On Dec. 16, three experienced journalists posted a bombshell story on the New York Times website: The Pentagon had authorized a secret research project (2007-2012) to study unidentified flying objects.

By Dom Armentano tcpalm.com 1-16-18

Even more importantly, Luis Elizondo, the Pentagon project coordinator and a career intelligence officer, later asserted that in his opinion some UFOs were real objects and appeared to demonstrate a technology that the U.S. did not have and did not understand.


In short, the deep intelligence state has known for at least 70 years that some UFOs were real; yet it has chosen to keep the information in support of that conclusion either confidential or simply denied that it even existed. But a decades-long public policy of secrecy and denial on a subject as important and mind-bending as UFOs is foolish and dangerous in the extreme and puts our entire democratic process at risk.
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The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) provided an interim response for an FOIA request seeking clarification about the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP). The DIA indicated more time is needed to process the request. A letter dated Jan. 10, 2018, and composed by FOIA and Declassification Services Office Chief Alesia Y. Williams, stated in part: This is an interim response to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request dated December 23, 2017, requesting copies of all contracts pertaining to the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, (AATIP) this includes contracts undertaken and funding provided to Bigelow Aerospace...

By Jack Brewer The UFO Trail 1-20-18

We will be unable to respond to your request within the FOIA's 20 day statutory time period due to unusual circumstances. These unusual circumstances could be: (a) the need to search for and collect records from a facility geographically separated from this office; (b) the potential volume of records responsive to your request; and (c) the need for consultation with one or more other agencies which have substantial interest in either the determination or the subject matter of the records. For these reasons, your request has been placed in our queue and will be worked in the order the request was received. Our current administrative workload is in excess of 1,139 requests.

The body of the original Dec. 23, 2017, FOIA request contained the following:

Please provide copies of all contracts pertaining to the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program. This includes contracts undertaken with and funding provided to Bigelow Aerospace.

All paperwork is requested concerning the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, as recently reported by major news outlets to have operated no less than 2007 to 2012. Requested are all reports composed by personnel of the program, reports submitted by funding recipients of the program, lists of contractors and subcontractors, and any related files and information.

A second similar request was submitted, seeking "copies of all contracts undertaken with and funding provided to the National Institute for Discovery Science. Likely date ranges would include 1995 to 2004."

Chief Williams responded, indicating once again that more time was required for "unusual circumstances" listed the same as above. Both interim response letters were dated Jan. 10, 2018.
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The National Security Agency recently released the majority of a 1978 memo prepared by an assignee (see below) about his attendance at a UFO conference. The document was obtained following a Jan. 24, 2017, request for a Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR). The five-page memo contains the subject line, "Information request solicitation," and advises the NSA on such matters as likely fraudulent CIA letters showcased at the conference, activities of some specific researchers in attendance, relationships with the researchers, and potential problems that might arise through such relationships. The NSA Sep. 12, 2017, response to the MDR request and the partially redacted document may be viewed and downloaded at the link above.

By Jack Brewer ufotrail.blogspot.com 9-22-17

The NSA continues to withhold the name of the assignee who composed the memo, as well as identities of additional NSA personnel referenced, but the late writer and researcher Philip Klass confidently speculated the author to be Tom Deuley. Klass was probably correct, as we will explore later in this post.

The Aug. 29, 1978, message begins by providing its recipient with some context. The author explained how he informed proper NSA personnel of his interest in UFOs and his intention to attend the 1978 MUFON Symposium. He then described events which occurred at the conference and involved researchers Leonard Stringfield, Robert Barry and Todd Zechel.

Stringfield did a presentation, during which he introduced Barry, who shared two letters he allegedly received from the CIA (Further research revealed Stringfield's presentation was on crashed flying saucers, so we might reasonably assume Barry's letters were related to the topic). The memo author/NSA assignee indicated he suspected the letters to be fraudulent, and proceeded to interact with the researchers in order to investigate the authenticity of the docs. He went on to explain he contacted CIA personnel who verified the letters to be frauds, and that the CIA wrote Barry and informed him that was the case.

The memo author described his suspicions of the origin of the purported CIA letters, as well as his concerns about the activities of researchers involved, including Todd Zechel (who founded Citizens Against UFO Secrecy, or CAUS):


This leads us to the bulk of the body of the memo, and the purpose of its subject line, "Information request solicitation." The memo author describes a nearly hour long telephone conversation with Zechel in which the NSA man clearly developed a sense of responsibility to inform the Agency of its contents. The author explained Zechel was requesting he "watch out for UFO related information within NSA" and "that I pass on what I could." The NSA assignee added he had "to some degree" checked on Zechel's character "with some people who have worked with him more closely."

"There is some thought," he continued, "that he would be capable of being behind the CIA letter fraud and that he is apt to go to most any length to collect information or to bend facts to fit his needs."

The author further wrote, "I personally have some fear that now that he has made contact with me, he may, either privately, or worse, publicly attempt to make it look as if I am an inside NSA contact for him. Or, on the other hand, he may elude to having such a contact for years, then when he feels it appropriate or when cornered, hope to produce me as that contact."

The memo concludes with mentioning "a chance of building a productive working relationship" with Zechel, whatever that's supposed to mean, and committing, "Any further contact or requests for information will be reported.":



The trail of the 1978 memo can be followed back to the Yeates affidavit. The sworn statements of NSA man Eugene F. Yeates were recorded in the early 1980's when CAUS sued the NSA for its UFO files.

Yeates stated some 239 documents responsive to the FOIA request submitted by CAUS were located in NSA files. One of the docs, he noted however, should not be considered relevant to UFOs: the 1978 memo. As Yeates explained in the affidavit, "It is an account by a person assigned to NSA of his attendance at a UFO symposium and it cannot fairly be said to be a record of the kind sought by the plaintiff."

In other words, it didn't really have anything to do with UFOs. Yeates' statements further suggested the NSA was reluctant to fully release the rest of its files for similar reasons: the info therein had less to do with the plaintiff's UFO-related interests than matters of national security, particularly communications intelligence (COMINT) and signals intelligence (SIGINT).

Philip Klass explored the topic in his Jan., 1997 newsletter. Klass obtained some 156 formerly Top Secret COMINT "UFO documents" spanning the years 1958 to 1979 and previously withheld from CAUS by the NSA. While the docs were "heavily censored," Klass concurred they primarily revealed matters of national security, such as NSA eavesdropping on Russian military sites and similar circumstances.

Klass further wrote that he strongly suspected the author of the then-withheld memo by the assignee at the UFO conference (referenced in the Yeates affidavit) to be Tom Deuley, a former NSA man and longtime MUFON board member. Klass continued that Deuley explained in a 1987 paper he was assigned to the Agency in mid-1978, just prior to attending the MUFON annual conference held that year in Dayton, Ohio. Deuley reportedly also wrote, "Before making that trip I felt it was necessary to let NSA know that I had an interest in UFOs. I took the matter up with my immediate supervisor, suggesting that the fact be put on the record."

It can be reasonably surmised that Klass was likely correct about the identity of the memo author, as both the date, 1978, and location, Dayton, of the conference are corroborated in the now largely released document. The sponsor of the event, the Mutual UFO Network, is also corroborated, as is the description by the memo author that he was then-recently assigned to the NSA and desired to keep his employer properly informed of his activities.


In my opinion, the declassified memo represents important yet largely under reported aspects of the UFO community: the significance of espionage and counterespionage operations, investigations (unrelated to UFOs but overlapping with the UFO community) conducted by the intelligence community, and the effects the circumstances have on the genre as a whole. This appears to have particularly been the case in the 20th century, when standard methods of operation seem to have included fabricating tales of crashed flying saucers and circulating unsubstantiated reports of aliens via fraudulent documents. The dynamics are reflected in the 1978 memo, whatever may have been the actual agendas of the parties involved.

Paul Bennewitz

The time of the memo, 1978, was just a few short years before Richard Doty gaslighted Paul Bennewitz and shared unverified extraordinary documents with Linda Moulton Howe. The Bennewitz Affair contained entirely unsubstantiated rumors that nonetheless continue to be recycled and continuously accepted throughout UFO circles.

At that same point in time, the early 1980's, a young airman stationed in Nevada and holding a Top Secret clearance was slipped none other than a likely forged smoking gun doc. She had a preexisting relationship with MUFON and interest in UFOs. As explored in my book, The Greys Have Been Framed: Exploitation in the UFO Community, Simone Mendez was subjected to grueling interrogations before being cleared of potential espionage charges and any wrongdoing. It is reasonable to suspect she and others may have been provided such docs for the purpose of following their trails through the UFO community, somewhat like throwing a dye pack in a sinkhole and seeing where the dye emerges.

Barry Greenwood of CAUS would later assist Mendez in obtaining documentation of her circumstances from the FBI and USAF Office of Special Investigations via the Freedom of Information Act. He also provided me with documents and information requested for inclusion in the chapter on the Mendez case contained in my book.

Also noteworthy was the 1980's case of the late Vincente DePaula. He apparently held security clearance in his employment in the defense industry, working on satellite systems. DePaula, who had an interest in UFOs and traveled ufology social circles, was reportedly interrogated at length by the Defense Investigative Service about his ufology associates.

The activities of the intelligence community within ufology stand to substantially alter and subsequently form popularly held perspectives, and the activities often have nothing to do with unusual phenomena. The interests of intelligence agencies at least some of the time include circumstances as reported by Klass, protecting the sensitive details of such circumstances, and keeping a sharp eye on those who express unusually deep interests in them.

The UFO topic has in at least some instances been used as a vehicle to gain the trust of individuals holding security clearances in employment capacities. It is then used in attempts to extract information. It should be understood and taken into consideration that the accuracy of stories passed among such people is extremely suspect, even as they gain wider attention throughout the UFO community at large. What's more, the intent of such architects of deception, at least some of the time, is not to mislead the public, but such manipulation is simply a byproduct of other objectives. They just don't care what the public thinks about UFOs.

Bushman showing a highly questionable photo of an alleged alien reportedly obtained from his network of contacts

In the end, a valid point can be made that it is not only the IC games that contribute to the deterioration of the genre and the topic, but the very presence of individuals who partake in such games. This goes much further than a simple warning of 'buyer beware'. The fact is the Mutual UFO Network has long been inundated with byproducts of the intelligence community, and many will recall it was Tom Deuley who served as front man for the ill fated Ambient Monitoring Project, an initiative which involved placing various data-gathering sensors and equipment in the homes of self-described alien abductees. The project was ultimately strongly criticized due to its lack of completion, lack of transparency, and general incompetence. Maybe the IC had nothing to do with the lack of adequate explanations for its failure, or the lack of resolution surrounding Skinwalker, or any number of similar circumstances, but if its members weren't so deeply involved in such cases while simultaneously harboring classified agendas, we wouldn't have to wonder.

Whatever the objectives may have been that were furthered by such events spanning from a 1947 press release in Roswell to the cultivation of the MJ-12 meme and all the way to the adventures of Tom Delonge - and virtually countless more cases potentially involving the IC along the way - their significance in shaping public perception should be recognized. The reasons may be as diverse as the dates and cases, but their relevance should be understood and incorporated into assessments.
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