'Drones,' docs, perjury, etc.

Is AARO beyond redemption?

The spooks don’t really want us to know what kinds of “drones” are making our air defenses look like Stone Age chimps — and what would they do if they actually captured one, anyway? [Sculpture by Mike Moffett]

On the eve of my return to the States, the newsfeeds were swamped with images of fully loaded Iranian drones and missiles attempting to rain fire on Israel. They fell in glowing arcs; some left meteoric trails, some were emberlike orange orbs, other blips evaporated in booms and white flashes. Voice-overs were calling the scale unprecedented – dozens of launches grew to scores, which grew to hundreds, in as official a declaration of war as it gets anymore. And all I’m thinking is, shit, does this mean my flight home gets postponed because there’s a British connection, and terrorist retaliation will shut down Heathrow?

As I learned later, yeah, of course the Brits were in on the action. As were France and Jordan and the United States, which dispatched two F-15 units from the 494^th Fighter Squadron at Lakenheath Royal Air Force Base to join their RAF counterparts in foiling Iran’s blitz. The Israeli Defense Force said the mullahs flung 350 drones, cruise and ballistic missiles at Israel’s fabled “Iron Dome” air shield. And what happened next looked like Tehran’s attack was all about purging its inventory of outdated hardware:

More than half the ordnance failed to reach Israeli air space due to technical malfunctions on launch or in flight. Of the remaining assault wave, U.S. Central Command reported half of those platforms were blown apart by American interceptors. Less than 2 percent actually struck their targets, and nobody got killed.

Anyway, leaders on both sides called off the dogs in time, and I made it home without a hitch. But there’s always a glut of matches and gasoline in the so-called Holy Land, and the unending tensions keep sticking it to us at the pump.

‘A dizzying maze . . . inflexible bureaucracies’

What’s new here is the startling contrast between how well American air defenses performed over the Middle East versus their impotent rendering over restricted air space on home court. This week, a month after the story broke about how “drone” swarms met zero resistance over Langley Air Force Base – coupled with an acknowledgement by the director of NORAD of “the potentially ubiquitous presence of UAP” over American military installations – two U.S. senators decided to go on offense.

Writing for the Washington Post, Senate Armed Services Committee leaders Jack Reed (D-RI) and Roger Wicker (R-MS) cited unimpeded “drone” incursions over nuclear facilities, western test ranges, and an estimated 1,000 monthly penetrations from Mexico as evidence of an obsolete security infrastructure. Even if we developed “adequate drone detection capability,” they warned, “a dizzying maze of overlapping jurisdictions and inflexible bureaucracies confuses, rather than clarifies, crisis response.” Too often, “government officials from an alphabet soup of agencies . . . spend hours if not days discussing who can take action when a UAS (uncrewed aircraft system) is identified.”

Their evaluation appeared on the heels of a lengthy and scalding takedown of the newest and most worthless addition to the Pentagon’s acronyms, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. Writing for The Debrief on April 12, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Chris Mellon served up additional information about what happened at LAFB in Virginia five months ago:

“. . . Fighter aircraft were transferred from Langley . . . to Naval Air Station Oceana after weeks of intrusions by unidentified drone-like craft. The Air Force seemed powerless to capture or deter these intruders and still has not been able to identify them. Similar incidents have been afflicting Navy warships and other bases around the country.”

In other words, anti-aircraft technology that enjoyed such resounding success in liquidating drones half a world away couldn’t prevent persistent surveillance of an air base whose pickets include F-22 Raptors. Couldn’t somebody downstairs have at least tried to scare them off with a shotgun, or maybe fired a bottle rocket, like they do in History’s “Secret of Skinwalker Ranch”? Anyhow, the intruders haven’t dropped cluster bombs or napalm on us (yet), so who cares.

AARO solves another one!

No doubt those repeated insults to the no-fly zone over Langley are also corroborated by multiple sensor data we’ll never see. However, in a recent report for NewsNation, author and investigative journalist Ross Coulthart scored an interview with a civilian eyewitness to the Langley security breach. And this guy did get footage.

Hoping to film the Geminid meteor showers shortly after 7 p.m. on December 14, Jonathan Butner, who lives across the James River from Langley, got more than he bargained for. He videotaped arrays of reddish-orange orbs approaching the air base in threes, as if coming off “a conveyor belt.” Distinguished by intermittent flashing, from orangish to white, the things were “car-sized,” said Butner. They circled north of the base, returned, and appeared to hover over it as searchlights swept the sky. Butner also said he counted maybe 40 smaller drones, which he described as “anomalous,” appearing at higher altitudes. The sightings peaked around 8:15, and by 9 p.m., he called it a night.

Factoring hugely into this systems failure is AARO, the target of Mellon’s recent broadside.

On Wednesday, AARO released a case-closed assessment of an in-flight UFO mystery that compelled a frustrated pilot – or maybe a flight crew – at Eglin Air Force Base to contact Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). Gaetz directed national attention to the incident during last summer’s House National Security subcommittee hearing on UAP, whose witnesses included controversial former senior intelligence officer/whistleblower David Grusch. Gaetz talked about how he and two other lawmakers responded to the airman’s appeal by traveling to the base to see the evidence. But they were stonewalled in their quest for more information by EAFB brass.

Well, AARO tells us the suspense is over now. The agency claims the bogey encountered on 1/26/23 over the Gulf of Mexico turns out to be just another run-of-the-mill high-altitude balloon, likely commercial. The Pentagon agency released two photos allegedly acquired by the plane (make unidentified) and said the images lined up with the configuration of a “large commercial lighting balloon.” Two unnamed outside “independent partners” agreed that “no confirmed anomalous behavior” was involved. As for that onboard radar malfunction reported by the pilot as he or she closed to within 4,000 feet of the target? The plane’s circuit breaker had a faulty track record and “the malfunction likely was not caused by or associated with the object.”

The 63-page scandal

Gaetz blasted the AARO explanation Friday. Implying the released UFO images weren’t the same as what he was shown in 2023, “This report by AARO is incomplete,” he charged on X, “and does not reflect all of the information that I was shown.” He called for full disclosure, including the release of radar records.

AARO’s summary might well be accurate — too bad the agency has no credibility to spare. Mellon’s single-spaced 19-page diagnosis of a broader attempt by the agency to win hearts and minds reads like a master’s class in deconstructing shoddy propaganda. In fact, we should call what AARO attempted to sell Congress in March exactly what it is – a scandal.

Chartered in 2022 by law to demystify and mitigate the unending UFO problem, AARO was ordered last year to produce a formal historical record of the military intelligence community’s relationship with UAP. Lawmakers specifically ordered the agency to reveal “any efforts to obfuscate, manipulate public opinion, hide or otherwise provide incorrect or classified information about” UFOs.

AARO responded last month with its 63-page Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, which was roundly lambasted by historians and researchers even as the mainstream press swallowed the Pentagon spin hook, line and sinker.

Beset with “hundreds of unfortunate errors and absurdities” – e.g., blaming the Manhattan Project, the U-2 program, and NASA’s Apollo missions for creating a surge of UFO reports – “this is the most error-ridden and unsatisfactory government report I can recall reading during or after decades of government service,” Mellon writes. In fact, AARO’s Historical Record appears to have shed mere incompetence for direct participation in the sort of obfuscation, manipulation and concealment it was tasked with unmasking.

The Grusch conundrum

While ignoring or underplaying tens of thousands of officially logged UFO sightings dating back to the 1940s, AARO declared from the outset it had “no evidence” the phenomenon “represented extraterrestrial technology.” Fair enough, since that’s pretty much impossible to prove without control samples from Planet X. However, its historical narrative quickly swerved into a counterpunch to David Grusch, who dropped the bomb on Congress last summer. While researching classified UFO intrigues for the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency from 2019-22, the Air Force veteran testified he had discovered deep-black reverse engineering UFO programs and the recovery of “biologics.”

Without mentioning Grusch by name, and under the apparent guidance of Sean Kirkpatrick — the equally controversial AARO director — “AARO found no empirical evidence for claims that the USG and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology,” the Historical Record states. “AARO determined, based on all information provided to date, that claims involving specific people, known locations, technological tests, and documents allegedly involved in or related to the reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial technology, are inaccurate.”

In fact, Grusch’s credibility came under fire last week when Black Vault researcher John Greenewald secured, through FOIA, a batch of emails and correspondences from the Defense Department. While under oath on Capitol Hill last July, Grusch told lawmakers he had alerted Kirkpatrick to his recovered UAP-tech leads in 2022, shortly before SK took the reins at AARO. Kirkpatrick, Grusch charged, never contacted him for a followup interview. But the correspondences released by the DoD appear to repudiate that.

Beginning last June, a month before the hearing on the House floor, according to the Pentagon’s just-released timeline, AARO reached out to “known associates” of Grusch, then ultimately to Grusch himself, in hopes of getting him on the record about clandestine UFO research. Having already filed a complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General about harassment and reprisals over his presumably aggressive spadework, Grusch finally accepted an invite to meet with AARO personnel in November. Then, according to an email trail, he was a no-show for the appointment — without bothering to notify AARO. According to the DoD’s paper trail, Grusch rebuffed subsequent invites.

Before stepping down at the end of December, Kirkpatrick repeated, for a small claque of hand-picked reporters on October 31, how AARO had invited Grusch “four or five times” over last year to share his information, but without success. Within hours, Grusch responded to Kirkpatrick on NewsNation: “I have zero emails or calls from them. That is a lie.”

‘They do not trust the process’

Grusch’s NewsNation accusation wasn’t sworn testimony, but implicit in the Pentagon documentation is a possibility that Grusch could’ve put himself in legal jeopardy with his remarks to Congress. However, it’s difficult to imagine the Deep State or whatever trying to hang Grusch on perjury charges. The discovery motions for classified material his lawyer(s) would need to prepare a proper defense might well threaten the secrets the spooks want to protect. And consider this:

Also included in the Pentagon’s FOIA response to Greenewald were back-channel and somewhat prickly text exchanges between Kirkpatrick and Mellon himself in the weeks prior to Grusch’s testimony on Capitol Hill. Acting as Grusch’s liaison to Kirkpatrick, Mellon sought assurances that AARO was legally empowered to take Grusch’s classified testimony. Despite documentation explicitly authorizing AARO to handle secret UFO-related info, Grusch remained suspicious and declined to cooperate.

Surprised by the Pentagon’s release of his correspondence with Kirkpatrick, Mellon nevertheless offered more context last Monday in a Substack post. In it, Mellon actually upped the ante by sharing a partially redacted email with an unnamed “senior government official” (with “higher ranking” credentials than Grusch) who is currently pursuing evidence on a crash-retrieval incident outside Kingman, Arizona, from May 1953. Mellon says his source has declined to go on the record. Like Grusch and at least one other “very compelling witness,” he writes, they “still refuse to meet with AARO because they do not trust the process.”

Who could blame them? For starters, AARO’s “history” made no mention of the nuclear incidents of the 1960s and ‘70s, or the University of Colorado’s foundational effort to skew the data in 1968, or even the more recent and well-documented 2004 Tic Tac incident, the disclosure of which by the New York Times ultimately led to the creation of AARO. Hey, how about a movie about Willy Wonka without all that stupid chocolate?

Meanwhile, the folks at Langley and elsewhere apparently have no clue about who or what is creating traffic hazards in off-limits airspace, or what to do about it. And without an independent oversight committee – an aspiration rejected by the DoD two years ago in negotiations with lawmakers – AARO will continue to play us for idiots, stall for time, and steer taxpayers farther away from disquieting realities for as long as legislators write the checks. At this point, it looks like we’re facing a binary choice:

Do we keep spending money for this PR disaster to crank out more bullshit? Or would the truth be better served by stone-cold silence?