Pentagon’s UFO Program confusion and how the New York Times got it wrong

There has been much confusion about the alleged secret Pentagon UFO program the New York Times exposed in 2017, and the problems stem from factual errors and omissions in the article.

According to the contract solicitation, the Pentagon created the Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP) under the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to research “advanced aerospace weapon system applications” to understand “the foreign threat out to the far term.”

In 2009, then-Nevada Senator Harry Reid tried to get Special Access Program (SAP) status for AAWSAP. In the request, he used the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) as a nickname. James Lacatski, the DIA program manager for AAWSAP, confirmed this in his book Skinwalkers at the Pentagon, co-written by Las Vegas journalist George Knapp and AAWSAP lead scientist Colm Kelleher. 

Regarding Reid’s SAP request, the book states: “A new unclassified nickname, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), was created for use within the unclassified letter because it was decided for security reasons not to use the AAWSAP acronym.”

The Pentagon denied the SAP request.

Despite selling the program to the Pentagon as a future aerospace tech analysis program, Reid, Lacatski, and Nevada real estate tycoon Robert Bigelow intended to conduct paranormal investigations. Lacatski outlined AAWSAP’s work in his book. It does not align with the objectives outlined in the contract, nor do his tales of the alleged paranormal adventures AAWSAP engaged in. From the Pentagon’s perspective, AAWSAP was delivering on the non-paranormal research they were tasked to do.

I received the official AAWSAP files delivered to the Department of Defense in this FOIA request. All of them are within the scope of the contract. 

For those of us who followed UFOs before the 2017 New York Times article, it was shocking to see that the Pentagon awarded the AAWSAP contract to Bigelow’s fledgling company, Bigelow Aerospace. The surprise was not only due to Bigelow’s involvement with AAWSAP’s inception but also because we knew what Bigelow had been up to, and UFO research was not the whole story.

At the time, Bigelow also owned Skinwalker Ranch, where a group of scientists investigated alleged paranormal activity. In 2005, Knapp (a close associate of Bigelow’s) and Kelleher wrote a book on this investigation called Hunt for the Skinwalker. The ranch now has a new owner and is the subject of a TV show on the History Channel.

We also knew that around 2008, Bigelow had changed the name of his Skinwaler and paranormal research group from the National Institute of Discovery Sciences (NIDS) to a department in his new Bigelow Aerospace company called Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS). At this time, I was in a leadership position with a non-profit called the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). We had created a partnership with BAASS. They provided us with resources for our UAP investigations. I handled public relations and was the only one in a leadership position who did not sign an NDA with BAASS. I didn’t want the liability.

I don’t know who knew what at MUFON, but Knapp later reported that Bigelow created BAASS solely to win and manage the AAWSAP contract. The MUFON partnership was short-lived and ended in less than a year.

Another thing many of us UFO enthusiasts knew was that despite their claims the numerous paranormal phenomena they investigate are real, Bigelow’s researchers have never been able to prove any of it.

In December 2017, the infamous NYT article claimed that a program called AATIP, run by an agent in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security named Lue Elizondo, received $22M to investigate UFOs. This conclusion has not aged well.

We know now:

• AAWSAP got the contract, AATIP was a nickname for AAWSAP
• Lacatksi and one of the lead scientists for BAASS deny Elizondo was involved with AAWSAP/AATIP – the program that was budgeted the $22M
• The Pentagon did not create AAWSAP to investigate UFOs – Although AAWSAP did investigate UFOs, it was one of the least fringy things they took it upon themselves to look into, which is an important context the authors of the New York Times article left out.
• Elizondo has claimed he was both part of AAWSAP and that he had nothing to do with AAWSAP

In 2018, a senior manager of BAASS, potentially wanting to set the record straight, gave a strange statement to KLAS, the news outlet Knapp works for, claiming “the [UFO] phenomenon also involved a whole panoply of diverse activity that included bizarre creatures, poltergeist activity, invisible entities, orbs of light, animal and human injuries and much more.”

The NYT article seemed to confuse the Pentagon, and its initial messaging was muddled. However, after further investigation, the Pentagon acknowledges the history I just covered. Volume 1 of the historical report created by the current Pentagon UAP program, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), states, “The primary purpose of AAWSAP/AATIP was to investigate potential next generation aerospace technologies in 12 specific areas—such as advanced lift, propulsion, the use of unconventional materials and controls, and signature reduction.” 

“Although investigating UFO/UAP was not specifically outlined in the contract’s statement of work,” the report continues. “The selected private sector organization conducted UFO research with the support of the DIA program manager [Lacatski].”

The report also clarifies that the “DIA did not seek, nor specifically authorize, this work though a DIA employee set up and managed the contract with the private sector organization.”

In 2019, I asked one of the authors of the NYT article most familiar with the UFO topic, Leskie Kean, about the omission of AAWSAP. She said, “at the time, our focus was AATIP. This was the name on the documents that we had, and this is what Lue Elizondo had talked to us about in interviews with him, as did others associated with the program.” 

Elizondo told me his involvement was primarily with AATIP and the UFO side of things, he did not feel at liberty to share AAWSAP information with the New York Times.

So what did Elizondo do? These details are less clear. I say this despite having interviewed him several times here on OpenMinds.tv. It appears he started a group of interested parties inside the intelligence community to look at the most interesting military UFO cases collected by AAWSAP. An effort I appreciate. Elizondo and his associates adopted the AATIP name to conduct this non-funded and apparent non-official work. Department of Defense spokesperson Susan Gough recently told News Nation, “Luis Elizondo had no assigned responsibilities for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) while assigned to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security.”

The successor to AAWSAP, the UAP Task Force (UAPTF), was set up in 2020 and included AAWSAP personnel in leadership roles. Like Bigelow’s previous efforts, members of the UAPTF continue to make extraordinary yet unsupported claims. These claims come after a 2021 UAPTF report concluding that “the limited amount of high-quality reporting on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) hampers our ability to draw firm conclusions about the nature or intent of UAP.” UAPTF was short-lived and ultimately replaced by AARO. Some former UAPTF members now appear on the The Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch TV show.

For a more comprehensive analysis of this topic, I recommend you read: “On the AAWSAP-AATIP Confusion” by V.J. Ballester-Olmos and Luis Cayetano.