Military and Spy Agencies ‘Stiff-Arming’ UFO Investigators

Article by Bryan Bender                                            March 25, 2021                                       (politico.com)

• The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the director of national intelligence and the Defense Department to provide a public accounting on unexplained sightings of advanced aircraft and drones that have been reported by military personnel or captured by radar, satellites and other surveillance systems by June 25th. The request came after revelations in 2017 that the Pentagon was researching a series of unexplained intrusions into military airspace, including high-performance vehicles captured on video stalking Navy ships.

• But those in the UAP Task Force advising the investigations are advocating for significantly more time and resources to retrieve information from agencies that have shown reluctance, if not outright resistance, to sharing classified information. They worry that without high-level involvement, it will be difficult to compel agencies to release what they have. “I know that the Task Force has been denied access to pertinent information by the Air Force and they have been stiff-armed by them,” said former Pentagon intelligence official Christopher Mellon. “That is disappointing but not unexpected.”

• The report due to Congress was to include “a detailed analysis of unidentified phenomena data” collected by a host of means, including imaging satellites, eavesdropping equipment and human spies. It was to include a detailed analysis of data collected by the FBI and a detailed description of an interagency process for “ensuring timely data collection and centralized analysis of all unidentified aerial phenomena reporting for the federal government, regardless of which service or agency acquired the information.”

• Gathering such information from across the national security bureaucracy is enormously challenging, Mellon said. “They have to repeat that painful process with scores of different agencies,” citing the Army, CIA, National Reconnaissance Office, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. A spokesperson for Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said that the report to Congress is in the works, but declined to offer further details. “We are aware of the requirement and will respond accordingly.”

• There is growing pressure from Congress for a more organized effort to compile what the government has learned and reveal how it is trying to solve the mysteries. “I can tell you it is being taken more seriously now that it ever has been,” said Florida Senator Marco Rubio who sits on the Senate committee who requested the UFO report. Rubio does not believe military and intelligence agencies have come to any solid conclusions about the origin of the UFOs. But he insisted that the reports demand a more comprehensive intelligence-gathering effort. “We have to try to know what it is,” said Rubio. “Maybe there’s a logical explanation. Maybe it’s foreign adversaries who made a technological leap?” Of course, any delay will be perceived by the public as another attempt by the government to hide what it knows.

• The pressure to disclose what the government is doing has only intensified after recent comments from the former top intelligence official. “We have lots of reports about what we call unmanned aerial phenomenon,” said John Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence under President Donald Trump. “When we talk about sightings, we are talking about objects that have [been] seen by Navy or Air Force pilots, or have been picked up by satellite imagery that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain.”

• Ratcliffe cited UFO/UAP “movements that are hard to replicate that we don’t have the technology for … or traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom.” One such case was recently revealed by The Drive website where a swarm of unidentified “drones” bedeviled a flotilla of Navy destroyers off the California coast in 2019.

• There has been enormous resistance inside the government bureaucracy to releasing findings on UFO/UAP. Lue Elizondo led research on UFOs/UAPs in the Pentagon until 2017 when he publicly resigned in frustration that the issue was not being treated seriously enough. “You have all the stigma and the taboo that is associated with it,” said Elizondo, who now serves as an informal adviser to the military. “There’s been so much public taboo about this for decades that no one wants to risk their professional careers and that of their bosses on a topic like this without being directed.” Elizondo describes military and government reluctance to cooperate as “passive resistance”. “[T]hey’re just not going to do anything to support it.”

• “One of the challenges that [the Defense Department] has had in the past is that a lot of these intelligence-gathering organizations, a lot of the military services’ organizations that gather data on intrusions, are all extremely stovepiped and federated,” said Ellen Lord, who served as Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment until January. “In reality, there is a lot of technology that has been leveraged by our adversaries and we have ways to deal with that.”

• The secrecy surrounding the effort has been demonstrated by the Pentagon’s refusal to even discuss any details of its UAP task force, not even how many personnel are assigned to it or what budget it has been given. Elizondo believes there is little chance such obstacles can be overcome by June and is advocating for an interim report that requests more time and resources. “We can do this right or we can do it right now,” he said. “It’s certainly not sufficient time to provide a comprehensive, government-wide report that Congress not only expects, but that Congress deserves and frankly, so does the American people,” Elizondo added.

• Mellon thinks the process could take months or longer. “In addition to the onerous job of trying get everyone to come clean, there will be a sensitive and probably difficult process of getting all the players … to agree on the language and approve it. That process alone could take weeks or months.” Mellon thinks that the direct involvement of senior executive branch officials “is likely to prove necessary to compel the cooperation needed to do the job properly.” However, Mellon does believe that “the leadership on both sides appear to be taking this issue seriously and are acting in good faith.”

The truth may be out there. But don’t expect the feds to share what they know

anytime soon on the recent spate of UFO sightings.

Some military and spy agencies are blocking or simply ignoring the effort to catalog what they have on “unidentified aerial phenomenon,” according to multiple current and former government officials. And as a result, the Biden administration will likely delay a much-anticipated public report to Congress.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the director of national intelligence to work with the Defense Department to provide a public accounting by June 25 on unexplained sightings of advanced aircraft and drones that have been reported by military personnel or captured by radar,

satellites and other surveillance systems.

The request came after revelations in 2017 that the Pentagon was researching a series of unexplained intrusions into military airspace, including high-performance vehicles captured on video stalking Navy ships.

But those advising the investigations are advocating for significantly more time and resources to retrieve information from agencies that in some cases have shown reluctance, if not outright resistance, to sharing classified information. And they worry that without high-level involvement, it will be difficult to compel agencies to release what they have.

“Just getting access to the information, because of all the different security bureaucracies, that’s an ordeal in itself,” said Christopher Mellon, a former Pentagon intelligence official who lobbied for the disclosure provision and is continuing to advise policymakers on the issue.

For example, he asserts that a Pentagon task force established last August and led by the Navy has had few personnel or resources and only modest success acquiring reports, video or other evidence gathered by military systems.

The Pentagon task force is expected to be the primary military organization contributing to the wider government report.
“I know that the task force has been denied access to pertinent information by the Air Force and they have been stiff-armed by them,” Mellon said in an interview. “That is disappointing but not unexpected.”

The Air Force, which is historically most associated with UFOs from its investigations during the Cold War, deferred all questions on the subject to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which has similarly said little publicly about the effort.

“To protect our people, maintain operational security and safeguard intelligence methods, we do not publicly discuss the details of the UAP observations, the task force or investigations,” said Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough, who declined to address the criticism.

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