Article by Jazz Shaw December 31, 2020 (hotair.com)
• Back in June, some big UFO news focused around a provision that was inserted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence into the Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA) that directed the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force to produce an unclassified report on what they know about UFOs. It directed that this report be released to the Senate committee within 180 days of the enactment of the IAA. Well, the IAA was included in the $1.4 trillion government funding package that was passed on December 27th along with a $900 billion COVID-relief fund. So the 180 day clock is ticking. So what can we expect to see when that clock runs out?
• Christopher Mellon is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and former staff Director of the United States Senate Intelligence Committee. Mellon played an integral role in the development of the committee’s UFO legislation. He points out that the UFO phenomenon enjoys the support of both parties in both Houses of Congress, and therefore it is more likely that some sort of report will be released. Any expectations of revelations of UFO incidents or discoveries under current investigation, however, are more unlikely.
• First of all, the Pentagon can respond by saying that they’ve not being given enough time and will need to postpone it – for a very long time. Second, this report specifically pertains to unclassified material. All of the juicy stuff will no doubt be deemed ‘classified’. Thirdly, back in September, after the Pentagon’s verification of the existence of the UAP Task Force, numerous reporters were contacting the Pentagon’s one and only spokesperson to handle UAP questions, Susan Gough. Gough began issuing a boilerplate refusal to any and all questions regarding details of UAP incidents under investigation. To wit: “To maintain operations security and to avoid disclosing information that may be useful to our adversaries, DOD does not discuss publicly the details of either the observations or the examination of reported incursions into our training ranges or designated airspace, including those incursions initially designated as UAP.” You can rest assured they have zero intention of starting to discuss it publicly now. Short of the President ordering specific documents from the UAP Task Force declassified (document that they somehow already know about), it seems obvious that the Pentagon intends to keep a lid on all of this.
• The military and the intelligence community routinely overclassify information, covering virtually every area of interest, not just UFOs. And once they lock something down it requires a herculean effort to bring it back to light. I can’t see those channels in our government sweeping away more than 70-years of obfuscation and deception with one sweep of a new broom. While cautiously hopeful about the pending release of this report, I’m definitely not getting my hopes up.
A lot of news came out of that massive COVID relief bill with bazillions of dollars in other spending 
wrapped up in it. One item that didn’t draw nearly as much attention was the fact that the annual Intelligence Authorization Act was rolled in as part of that mess. The IAA is obviously a necessary bit of housekeeping that Congress has to take care of on a regular basis, but this year’s version was of particular interest to people in the ufology community. I wrote about this when the measure was drafted back in June, specifically focusing on the provisions from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that made it so interesting to the saucerheads. It dealt with internal communications challenges for the UAP Task Force (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) and directed the UAPTF to produce an unclassified report on their progress within 180 days of when the measure was enacted. Well, now it’s enacted. And as The Debrief pointed out this week, that means that the clock is ticking. But what should we really expect to receive when that clock strikes midnight?
“Now, with the recent passing of the Omnibus, the clock has officially started ticking, and The Pentagon’s
UAP Task Force has 180 days to provide the Senate Intelligence Committee with their unclassified report detailing The Pentagon’s current investigations into UFOs.”
“The newly enacted Intelligence Authorization Act incorporates the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report language calling for an unclassified, all-source report on the UAP phenomenon. This was accomplished in the Joint Explanatory Statement accompanying the bill,” says Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and former staff Director of the United States Senate Intelligence Committee, who played an integral role in the development of the legislation.”
“Consequently, it’s now fair to say that the request for an unclassified report on the UAP phenomenon enjoys the support of both parties in both Houses of Congress,” Mellon told The Debrief in an email.”
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