A Note on the Majestic Documents

The Majestic Documents have long been a subject of debate among researchers. Critics have questioned their authenticity, and that skepticism should be acknowledged. However, in recent years a growing body of corroborating evidence has lent credibility to portions of the collection. Classification markings, document formatting conventions, and administrative metadata found in the Majestic holdings have since been validated by independently released government records, documents that were still classified at the time the Majestic materials first surfaced. This pattern of after-the-fact corroboration makes a blanket dismissal of the collection increasingly difficult to justify. With that context in mind, the following analysis draws on one such document and cross-references it against verified official sources wherever possible.

Origins of the Document

Among the materials in the Majestic Documents collection, sourced from the individual known as S-2, acquired by researcher Timothy Cooper, and indexed on September 16, 1999, is a document titled “Unidentified Aircraft Sightings Over the United States”. It is dated September 30, 1947, and is described as a re-typed “best available” version that S-2 was able to obtain.

On initial glance, the document appears to be a presidential intelligence briefing assessment prepared for President Truman. It was authored by the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC), in many ways the precursor to the National Security Council, which would not hold its first official meeting until weeks after this assessment was presumably delivered. In preparing the report, the SWNCC consulted with the Office of National Estimates within the Central Intelligence Agency.

The documents date can be independently corroborated. SWNCC 304/6, the Subcommittee on Special Studies and Evaluation’s foundational proposal for a national psychological warfare organization, was prepared and circulated through SWNCC channels on September 30, 1947, the same date as the Majestic document. This is official proof that the subcommittee was actively producing reports on the day the Majestic report claims to have been prepared. SWNCC 304/6 was not declassified until July 3, 2002, three years after the Majestic SSE report was indexed, making the date match another instance of after the fact corroboration.

Verification

This document can be substantially corroborated using metadata and circumstantial evidence from official sources.

The Psychological Warfare Subcommittee

The State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee Subcommittee on Special Studies and Evaluation was a real subcommittee born out of the need for an ad hoc committee to coordinate psychological warfare operations, as explained in the charter document SWNCC 304/1. This document describes an organization needed for both overt and covert psychological warfare tactics and plans "in the time of war (or in the threat of war as determined by the President)." A persistent threat from an unidentified source would appear to meet this threshold.

An intriguing thing to note is that the Special Studies and Evaluation (SSE) was a cover name for the Subcommittee on Psychological Warfare, formally adopted on June 5, 1947 as documented in SWNCC 304/6.

When the National Security Act of 1947 established the Air Force as a separate branch of the military, the SWNCC was reconstituted as the State-Army-Navy-Air Force Coordinating Committee, or SANACC. The SSE continued its work under this new parent body, and subsequent reports in the 304 series were issued under the SANACC designation.

Classification Authority Markings

The SSE report bears the following authority markings in the top right corner:

These are not routine classification stamps. NSCID 6, National Security Council Intelligence Directive No. 6, was the foundational directive governing all U.S. signals intelligence operations: the interception, processing, and analysis of foreign communications. This is the very directive the NSA was created to execute. When Truman issued his memorandum establishing the NSA on October 24, 1952, the agency's core mission was to consolidate and carry out the SIGINT functions defined by NSCID 6.

NIA Directive 9 coordinated intelligence on foreign atomic energy developments and potentialities, including nuclear programs and related threats.

While the existence of NIA Directive 9 was summarized in declassified historical compilations as early as 1996, full detailed versions (including original text and markings) from CIA holdings were not approved for public release until batches in 2006 and later. The SSE report’s inclusion of this authority, which surfaced in 1999 thus aligns with another instance of details corroborated by subsequently released government records.

The NIA's connection to the SSE's work is not speculative. SWNCC 304/6, circulated by the SSE on the same date as the majestic document report in question, quotes the subcommittee's charter as explicitly stating that "the National Intelligence Authority has an interest in the intelligence and certain other aspects of psychological warfare." The NIA was a named institutional partner of the SSE. The presence of an NIA directive on an SSE product is consistent with the subcommittee's own documented relationships.

Why classify a psychological warfare document about unidentified aircraft under both emerging SIGINT authorities and atomic energy intelligence? One plausible explanation: early assessments may have viewed the phenomena as potentially linked to atomic/nuclear matters, such as experimental propulsion, radiation signatures, or interest in U.S. atomic facilities. This aligns with later official assessments that UFO sightings clustered near atomic energy installations (e.g., Los Alamos). The dual markings tie the document to foundational authorities that overlapped in the early Cold War nuclear era, with SIGINT (NSCID 6) becoming central to the NSA.

An important nuance: NSCID 6 was first issued in 1948, while the SSE report is dated 1947. This is not a discrepancy. The document is a re-typed copy, and classification authority markings are applied or updated when documents are re-processed or re-filed, not only at the time of original creation. The document was re-processed on October 24, 1952, when NSCID 6 had been in effect for years. This actually strengthens the connection. It means the document was run through the SIGINT classification system, likely at the time of the NSA’s creation.

This selective updating, retaining original references to the long-defunct NIA (superseded in 1947) and SWNCC, later renamed SANACC (effectively dissolved by 1949) while incorporating post-1947 authorities like NSCID 6, is consistent with standard archival re-processing practices for legacy documents. Agencies preserve historical provenance during administrative transfers (e.g., to a new agency’s files) without retroactively rewriting superseded entities, even as newer elements (such as references to the CIA’s Office of National Estimates, established in 1950) appear in the re-typed version.

The Document Control Number Connection

The SWNCC document describing test flying of experimental German wing craft as a potential solution for "Unidentified Aircraft Sightings Over the United States," as the report's title implies, carries the markings of the National Security Agency. It also bears the same NSA Top Secret document control number as the official Truman memo forming the National Security Agency, a memo that was highly classified for decades.

The Truman memo was declassified in 1981 and its existence has been referenced in intelligence literature since the early 1980s, including in James Bamford's The Puzzle Palace. FOIA researcher Jeffrey T. Richelson obtained a copy in 1990 and included it in specialized microform collections. However, the first broad public release of the full document, including its scanned pages with specific control numbers and typed markings, did not occur until Richelson's National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 24, published January 13, 2000. The Majestic SSE report was indexed on September 16, 1999, months before the Truman memo's visual details became widely accessible.

Furthermore, a secondary number appearing in the top right corner of the Truman memo, which contains what appears to be an "S" in place of a "5" (likely an artifact of re-scanning or re-typing), matches a number on the SSE report positioned below the Top Secret control number.

This would indicate that the documents are related or filed together in some way. Here is what makes this significant: while the memo’s general content was known since the 1980s, the specific markings that match between the two documents were not available in any broadly published format at the time the SSE report surfaced. A forger would have needed access to Richelson’s FOIA materials or specialized academic collections to replicate those details, a significantly higher bar than working from public knowledge.

This lends further credibility, especially when paired with what appears at the bottom of the re-typed SSE report. Rendered in a cursive typeface consistent with the re-typing of the rest of the document, a note reads:

"I want the Director of NSA to have this for future reference," accompanied by the date October 24, 1952 (the same date as the Truman memo creating the NSA) and attributed to Harry Truman. As with the rest of the document, this appears to be a re-typed reproduction of a note from the original, not original handwriting.

Since this is a re-typed reproduction rather than original handwriting, forensic authentication of the note itself is not possible. However, the content of the note is internally consistent with every other verifiable element of the document: the correct date, the correct institutional reference, and the correct classification framework. The convergence of corroborating details makes fabrication an increasingly difficult explanation.

The NSIA: A Blueprint for the NSA

As it became more apparent to leadership and prominent thinkers in the upper echelon of government that a full time, large scale agency was needed for psychological warfare purposes going forward, even in peacetime, a formal proposal took shape. According to SANACC 304/12, documented in the official State Department record (summarized within SANACC 304/15), the National Security Information Agency or NSIA was to be the name of this new executive level agency. The name was explicitly designated as a "cover" for its real function.

An agency with this name and high level purpose to handle all psychological warfare problems, both foreign and domestic, at an operational level in both peacetime and wartime was urgently being pushed by high level members of the government. It may be noted that the name "National Security Information Agency" comes awfully close to the ultra secret "National Security Agency" established within the same Truman administration just a few years later. But the connections go far deeper than the name.

When you compare the NSIA proposal against the NSA that was actually created, the structural parallels are striking:

National Security Council oversight. The NSIA was to operate under NSC supervision: “It is assumed that the National Security Council will eventually supervise the activities of such an organization.” The NSA was likewise established within the NSC framework.

CIA liaison. The NSIA was to “establish and maintain close liaison with the Central Intelligence Agency” and “use established government intelligence activities to the degree consistent with essential operations.” The NSA has maintained this exact relationship with the CIA since its founding.

Unified foreign and domestic operations. The NSIA planned that “Domestic and Foreign Operations will be coordinated and administered in a single ‘Plans and Operations’ subdivision thereby preventing unnecessary duplication and waste of national effort.” The NSA similarly consolidated both foreign signals intelligence and domestic communications security under one roof.

Military command through the Joint Chiefs. The NSIA was to “communicate with theatre commanders through the Joint Chiefs of Staff only.” The NSA operates with the same command relationship.

Exploitation of existing intelligence. The NSIA would “use established government intelligence activities.” The NSA did exactly this, consolidating signals intelligence operations that were previously scattered across the Army Security Agency, the Naval Security Group, and the Air Force Security Service into a single unified agency.

The cover name principle. The NSIA designation was explicitly a “cover” name. The NSA itself operated under such extreme secrecy that its existence was not publicly acknowledged for years, earning the nickname “No Such Agency.”

Scope beyond the military. The NSIA was never envisioned as a military only body. It was to coordinate across State, Army, Navy, Air Force, and CIA, handling both foreign and domestic operations at the executive level. The Brownell Committee report that led directly to the NSA’s creation recommended an agency with coordination and direction “at the national level,” with a role that would “extend beyond the armed forces.” That language echoes the NSIA proposal almost directly.

The SSE did not merely propose this agency. According to SANACC 304/17, the subcommittee formally positioned itself as the institutional seed that would grow into it. In the event of war or threat of war, the SSE concluded that SANACC should "immediately request appropriate higher authority to designate formally the Subcommittee as the nucleus of the National Agency, as approved in SWNCC 304/6 and SANACC 304/12, and supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in SANACC 304/14." The SSE was not an advisory body making recommendations from the outside. It was the planned core of the future organization.

SANACC 304/16 (summarized through SANACC 304/19) further advanced this planning by establishing working groups to determine the operational requirements of the proposed agency, including groups focused on communications requirements, intelligence matters, research and development, logistics, training, personnel mobilization, and budgetary and legal issues. A psychological warfare planning body specifically studying communications requirements is yet another thread connecting this apparatus to the communications intelligence mission the NSA would later own.

SWNCC 304/6 also included among the SSE's planned studies "the management of information and propaganda with special reference to a situation in which a zone of combat exists within the Continental United States," and warned that "the risks associated with voluntary censorship may not be compatible with national survival in future war." The SSE was explicitly preparing for scenarios requiring domestic information control, a function that finds its direct echo in the Robertson Panel's 1953 recommendation to actively debunk and suppress domestic UFO reporting.

The Overt/Covert Split and the Disbanding of the SSE

In August 1948 the SSE was directed to confine its studies and plans to overt psychological warfare only. This restriction coincided with the establishment of the Office of Policy Coordination under Frank Wisner, which was being set up to handle covert operations for the CIA. The covert side of the SSE’s work was, in effect, redirected.

An internal debate also emerged within the subcommittee over the very definition of psychological warfare. SANACC 304/18 records two competing views. View A defined psychological warfare as it might be carried on “at any time and by any power.” View B limited it to operations conducted by the U.S. government “in time of war or threat of war.” The question of whether psychological warfare was a wartime only function or a permanent, peacetime activity was unresolved when the subcommittee was disbanded.

In March 1949 the National Security Council issued NSC-43, which created a new organization to plan for the wartime conduct of overt psychological warfare and directed that the SSE be formally discontinued. The subcommittee adjourned sine die, but not before preparing its final report (SANACC 304/19) documenting its “views and conclusions pertinent to peacetime planning for the wartime use of overt psychological warfare, based upon planning experience.”

The key word in NSC-43 is overt. The directive only addressed overt psychological warfare. It did not account for the covert functions the SSE had been working on before the August 1948 restriction, nor did it account for material classified under signals intelligence authorities, like the UFO report bearing NSCID 6 markings. Those functions and that material needed an institutional home.

The SSE’s overt functions were transferred to an interdepartmental group within the State Department. NSC status records confirm that this organization, established pursuant to NSC-43, prepared its first major output (NSC 43/1, “General Principles Governing the Conduct of Overt Psychological Warfare in the Initial Stages of War or Emergency”) by September 1949. It was not an intelligence agency. It had no signals intelligence capability, no covert operations mandate, and no access to material classified under NSCID 6 authority. The CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination absorbed covert operational functions, but it did not own the SIGINT mission. Neither successor body had the combined SIGINT and psychological warfare capability that the SSE’s NSIA proposal had envisioned.

The timing of this transition is notable. At the exact moment the SSE’s overt functions were being transferred to a visible State Department body, the National Security Council was simultaneously developing two directives under NSC 50, submitted by the Director of Central Intelligence. One addressed “Security of Information on Intelligence Sources and Methods.” The other was titled “Avoidance of Publicity Concerning the Intelligence Agencies of the U.S. Government.” Both were circulated for approval between August and November of 1949. While the overt side of psychological warfare was being made visible and accountable through the State Department, the institutional framework for hiding intelligence agencies from the public was being formalized at the same time.

The Post-SSE Failure and the Psychological Strategy Board

The post-SSE arrangement proved inadequate almost immediately. With overt functions at the State Department and covert operations at the CIA, and no coordinating authority above them, the bureaucratic fragmentation the SSE and the Joint Chiefs had warned about materialized. Internal memos from this period reveal significant tension between State and CIA over control of intelligence coordination, with CIA arguing that under the National Security Act it held responsibility for coordinating intelligence support of all interdepartmental programs, and State attempting to set up its own parallel committees.

When the Korean War began in June 1950, the government lacked a unified body to direct psychological operations. This was the exact scenario SANACC 304/17 had anticipated when it concluded that the SSE should become “the nucleus of the National Agency” in the event of war. The SSE had been disbanded. The nucleus did not exist. The system failed.

In April 1951 Truman established the Psychological Strategy Board to fill this gap. The PSB was a high level coordination body with representation from State, Defense, and CIA, reporting to the NSC. It was, in effect, an acknowledgment that disbanding the SSE had left a void in the government’s ability to coordinate psychological warfare.

But the PSB was a policy and strategy board, not an operational agency. It could coordinate among agencies but could not execute operations itself. It had no staff for running programs, no communications infrastructure, and no signals intelligence capability. The operational capability that the SSE’s NSIA proposal had envisioned, an agency that could actually run combined SIGINT and psychological warfare programs at the national level, still had no institutional home.

The official catalyst for the NSA’s creation came from CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith, who sent a memo to NSC Executive Secretary James Lay on December 10, 1951, observing that “control over, and coordination of, the collection and processing of Communications Intelligence had proved ineffective.” This led to the Brownell Committee, authorized on December 28, 1951, whose report was completed on June 13, 1952. The committee recommended the creation of a new national level signals intelligence agency. Smith’s role here is significant, as discussed in the timeline section below.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff had already added their own urgency years earlier, warning in SANACC 304/14 that “the national security will be adversely affected if a working nucleus for the planning and coordination of psychological warfare is not brought into existence prior to war.” They pushed for immediate creation as a permanent peacetime organization, the same kind of expedited executive action Truman took when he created the NSA by presidential memo rather than through Congress.

The full review of the SSE’s studies, SANACC 304/15 and its supplement SANACC 304/19, are available through declassified government records for anyone to verify.

Corroboration: The Authors

We can further test the SSE report's credibility by examining its stated authors. The report was supposedly written in conjunction with the CIA's Office of National Estimates. Official CIA records include an Appendix K listing the members of the Subcommittee on Special Studies and Evaluation — but the two CIA representatives are redacted.

However, Open Source Anomalous was able to locate the same document within Record Group 353 of non-digitized State Department files, where the names remain intact.

Both individuals listed were involved in Soviet operations within the CIA, but one name stands out: John Maury. According to his publicly available biography, Maury worked under Ludwell Lee Montague at the Office of National Estimates during precisely the timeframe in which this report was produced. Records indicate he was assigned to the SSE from May 1947 through just weeks before the final report would have been presented to Truman.

The fact that Maury's role, assignment period, and organizational placement all align with the SSE report's claims adds another layer of independent corroboration.

A Broader Pattern: UFOs, Truman, and Psychological Warfare

This would not be the first time that the Truman administration, UFOs, and psychological warfare were linked in an official capacity.

The Psychological Strategy Board (1952). A Truman era Psychological Strategy Board report from June 1952, the PSB having effectively replaced the SSE's coordinating and policy functions, mentions reports of flying saucers and discusses sending a representative to determine whether civilian photographs of the objects were "authentic." The fact that UFOs appear in PSB records confirms that the psychological warfare dimension of the phenomena persisted through every institutional successor to the SSE.

The CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence (1952): A report on the phenomena of “flying saucers” from the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence further reinforces this pattern. Key excerpts include:

The OSI consulted with the Air Force’s Special Study Group and reached specific conclusions about the nature of the sightings.

The OSI team concluded that the phenomena represented both an air superiority issue and a psychological warfare issue.

One of the primary operational takeaways was the potential to leverage the phenomena for psychological warfare purposes and public perception.

The report also raised the question of why Soviet broadcasts contained a press blackout on the subject of flying saucers. This strongly implied that U.S. intelligence believed the objects were not Soviet in origin, and that the Soviets may have been adopting the same strategy of downplaying the phenomena to avoid exposing a shared national security vulnerability.

The question this raises is straightforward: if these objects were neither American nor Soviet, whose were they?

The urgency of this problem was such that it was elevated to the National Security Council to establish a community wide coordinated effort toward a solution.

A copy of the assessment, along with a memo specifically for the director of the Psychological Strategy Board, was transmitted. The PSB was the policy coordination body for psychological warfare. It received the assessment. But it could not execute the operational response. That required an agency.

The 1952 Timeline

When you step back and look at the sequence of events, the pace is striking. This is not a slow bureaucratic evolution. This is a crisis response sequence:

June 13, 1952. The Brownell Committee report is completed, recommending the creation of a national level signals intelligence agency. The study had been commissioned by CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith, the same individual overseeing the CIA’s engagement with the UFO problem and the very agency producing the psychological warfare assessments described above.

July 1952. The Washington D.C. UFO flap. Unidentified objects are tracked on radar over the nation’s capital on two consecutive weekends (July 19 through 20 and July 26 through 27). Fighter jets are scrambled. The incidents generate massive national media coverage, prompting the largest Pentagon press conference since World War II. This is not a fringe sighting. These are unknown objects over restricted airspace above the White House and Capitol, confirmed on multiple independent radar systems.

September 1952. The CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence, operating under Smith’s authority as Director of Central Intelligence, produces its assessment. It concludes the phenomena are both an air superiority and psychological warfare problem. It notes the Soviet broadcast silence. It escalates to the National Security Council and transmits a copy to the Psychological Strategy Board. The PSB, as a policy board, could coordinate the response. But it could not execute it.

October 24, 1952. Truman signs the memorandum creating the National Security Agency, implementing the Brownell Committee’s recommendations. On that same date, per a note reproduced on the SSE document and attributed to Truman: “I want the Director of NSA to have this for future reference.”

January 1953. The CIA convenes the Robertson Panel, which reviews the UFO evidence and concludes that the primary risk is not the objects themselves but the public reaction to them. The panel’s core recommendation? A coordinated campaign to debunk and downplay UFO sightings, to strip the subject of its “special status” and reduce public interest. That is, by definition, a psychological warfare operation directed at the domestic population.

The Brownell report lands in June. The D.C. crisis erupts in July. The CIA, under the same director who commissioned the Brownell report, assesses the UFO situation as a dual SIGINT and psychological warfare problem in September. The PSB receives the assessment but cannot act on it operationally. The NSA is created in October. The Robertson Panel launches the domestic psychological warfare campaign in January. All under the watch of a single Director of Central Intelligence who had a hand in both the intelligence assessment and the institutional response.

It is worth noting that the SANACC 304/15 document lists among the SSE’s active work items: “Determination of the scope of a Domestic Information Branch of a National Psychological Warfare Agency” and “Determination of possible themes for propaganda based upon estimated national objectives.” The Robertson Panel’s output reads like a direct execution of these exact functions.

Circling Back

So if we can put all of these threads together:

• The SSE, the government's sole psychological warfare coordinating body, authored a report on unidentified aircraft dated September 30, 1947, the same date it circulated SWNCC 304/6, its foundational proposal for a national psychological warfare agency. That document was not declassified until 2002, three years after the Majestic SSE report surfaced.

• The report is classified under NSCID 6, the foundational signals intelligence authorities that the NSA was created to execute.

• The report carries the same NSA Top Secret control number as the 1952 Truman memo creating the NSA. While the memo’s existence was known since the 1980s, its specific markings were not broadly published until months after the SSE report surfaced.

• A re-typed note attributed to Truman directs the NSA Director to retain the document, dated the same day the agency was officially created.

• The SSE proposed the NSIA, an agency whose organizational structure, NSC oversight, CIA liaison, unified foreign and domestic operations, JCS command channel, and intelligence exploitation mandate are virtually identical to the NSA. The name was explicitly a “cover.” The SSE formally designated itself as the “nucleus” of this future agency.

• When the SSE was disbanded in 1949, only its overt psychological warfare functions were transferred to the State Department. The covert functions and any material classified under signals intelligence authorities, including the UFO report, were left without an explicit institutional home. The post-SSE arrangement failed, requiring the creation of the Psychological Strategy Board in 1951 to restore coordination. But the PSB was a policy board, not an operational agency. The operational gap persisted.

• The report’s authors can be independently verified through unredacted State Department records, with John Maury’s role and timeline matching the claims.

• Multiple Truman era documents confirm the UFO situation was treated as both a defense and psychological warfare problem at the highest levels, with Soviet broadcast monitoring (a SIGINT function under the same authority stamped on the SSE report) as a key intelligence component. The CIA’s assessment was transmitted to the PSB, which could coordinate but not execute.

• The official process to create the NSA was initiated by CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith, who simultaneously oversaw the CIA’s UFO assessments and the escalation to the NSC. The Brownell Committee report he commissioned was completed just weeks before the D.C. UFO crisis, and the NSA it recommended was designed to “extend beyond the armed forces,” matching the national level, cross agency scope of the NSIA proposal.

• The 1952 timeline, from the Brownell report in June, to the D.C. crisis in July, to the CIA’s dual threat assessment in September, to the NSA’s creation in October, to the Robertson Panel’s psychological warfare recommendations in January 1953, follows a clear crisis response pattern.

• The NSA was created as an agency meant to collect, analyze, and exploit communications intelligence. But if it was additionally created, covertly, as the institutional successor to a psychological warfare apparatus that had been managing the UFO situation since 1947, wouldn’t having control of all communications be the best way to do both?

Further FOIA requests targeting NSA founding era records, SANACC archival materials, and Psychological Strategy Board files could help confirm or refute these connections. The primary sources referenced in this article are linked where available. We encourage readers to examine them and reach their own conclusions.

In the early 1990s, a small inspection team from the Department of Defense Inspector General (DoD IG) walked into Fort Meade to do something no one had tried before: a full‑spectrum inspection of the National Security Agency. It was the first time the NSA’s internal machinery—its management controls, budgeting, and above all its most sensitive classified programs—had been treated as something that could be audited like any other defense component.

What they found was quietly devastating. In a 1996 inspection report, the IG concluded that the NSA “does not effectively monitor the Special Access Programs it operates or supports.” [1]

This is the bureaucratic terrain on which we have to read Dan Sherman’s account of Project Preserve Destiny (PPD)—an alleged NSA‑managed operation nested inside a U.S. Air Force SAP, dedicated to codifying telepathically received reports of abductions by a non‑human intelligence. Sherman describes an “onion effect” of classification: alien missions at the core, wrapped in black projects that soak up all scrutiny and paperwork.

The IG’s report, the U.S. Air Force’s own SAP doctrine, and the surviving fragments of the NSA’s classification practice together show how that onion could have been engineered in the real system. They do not prove that PPD existed; however, they do give us the wiring diagram for how “above black” programs—ones managed by the NSA, nested under the auspices of official Air Force black projects—could have operated with almost no meaningful oversight.

NSA’s Mission and the Rise of a Hidden Compartment

The National Security Agency was created in 1952, formalizing American signals intelligence—SIGINT—as a permanent, centralized mission. From the beginning, NSA’s job was to capture and exploit emissions and signals that could be turned into foreign intelligence: communications intelligence (COMINT), electronic intelligence (ELINT), telemetry, radar signatures, and, in time, any signal‑like phenomenon that could be measured, encoded, and fed into the analytic machinery of the U.S. intelligence community.

SIGINT’s most sensitive output has long been handled under Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) rules. SCI is not itself a classification level; it is an overlay that carves out compartments—codeword circuits—inside which only specially indoctrinated personnel may see or even know of particular sources and methods. Air Force Instruction (AFI) 16‑701 circa 1995 defines SCI as information bearing “special community controls indicating restricted handling within present and future community intelligence collection programs and their end products,” capturing this idea of a second‑layer control system sitting atop standard classification. [2]

Within this world, NSA built its own micro‑architecture of sensitivity. In November 1974, the Director of NSA authorized creation of the Very Restricted Knowledge (VRK) system “to limit access to uniquely sensitive COMINT activities and programs,” administered as a sub‑control system under the SIGINT (SI) banner. VRK was not about classifying finished intelligence product; it was about controlling access to the programs themselves—collection platforms, analytic techniques, special operations. An open‑source analysis of declassified manuals summarizes VRK as an interagency sub‑control system. [3]

By the time the DoD IG arrived in 1991, VRK was a mature, cross‑agency platform housing the most sensitive SIGINT activities the U.S. ran. It sat at the point where NSA’s traditional SIGINT mission blurred into something structurally indistinguishable from a Special Access Program.

What the DoD IG Found

The 1991 DoD IG inspection was intended as a management audit, not a UFO investigation. But its findings on classified programs are directly relevant to any attempt to reconstruct how “grey” operations could hide inside military structures.

The IG summarized its overall conclusion starkly: NSA had corrected only six of sixteen major problem areas from the original inspection. Ten remained inadequately corrected. Among the unresolved issues: manpower planning, internal management controls, SIGINT integration, collection oversight—and Special Access Programs. [1]

On SAPs, the “original issue statement” pulled no punches:

“The NSA does not effectively monitor the Special Access Programs it operates or supports.”

In response to earlier recommendations, NSA claimed it had implemented DoD SAP policy by attaching DoD Directive 5205.7 as an enclosure to an internal regulation. But then it insisted it had “no SAP or SAP‑like programs reportable under Directive 5205.7,” because all of its programs were COMINT or SIGINT SCI activities under the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI).

At the time, the DCI was a dual‑hatted position: the head of the CIA and the overall coordinator of the U.S. intelligence community, responsible for setting policy for national foreign intelligence and for controlled‑access programs within that realm. That role existed until 2004, when the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act created the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and separated the CIA directorship into its own position. [4]

On this basis, NSA argued that nothing it ran or supported was a DoD SAP. Everything was already fenced off inside SCI compartments directed by the DCI. As far as NSA was concerned, its most sensitive programs fell under intelligence‑community authority, not under the Pentagon’s.

When the IG compared that argument to what NSA was actually doing with VRK, their conclusion was blunt:

“We believe that the definition of SAPs under EO 12958 encompasses the VRK programs currently operating at the NSA.”

In other words: VRK programs were SAPs in substance, whatever NSA chose to call them, and should be subject to formal accounting and annual review by the Pentagon.

Yet at the time of the 1996 DoD final verification report, the IG found that NSA had still not developed a proper SAP policy, had not established an effective SAP coordinator, and had not built a list of supported SAPs that would let anyone see how NSA compartments nested inside other components’ black programs.

The IG’s conclusion on the issue remained unchanged:

“This issue remains open because the NSA still does not effectively monitor the SAP it operates or supports.”

By NSA’s own argument, every VRK program was a DCI‑directed SCI compartment, not a DoD SAP. By the IG’s reading of the law, every VRK program was, functionally, a SAP‑equivalent that should have been tracked and reviewed—but wasn’t. That ambiguity becomes crucial when we look at how the Air Force actually manages its own SAPs.

The Air Force SAP Shell: How Nested Compartments Are Supposed to Work

Air Force Instruction (AFI) 16‑701 is the governing document for how the U.S. Air Force runs its Special Access Programs. It describes SAP security controls—tightened access lists, tailored security guides, special investigative criteria—but it also defines the SAP as the activity being protected, distinct from the security mechanisms around it. [2]

In AFI 16‑701, a SAP is the protected activity or program—the “core secret.” Around that core sit “special access security controls”: limiting personnel to the minimum number necessary, imposing stricter investigative or adjudicative criteria, using nicknames and codewords to label the information, and creating tailored security procedures and oversight infrastructures.

Several provisions of 16‑701 matter directly when we think about a nested NSA program:

• Every Air Force SAP, and every SAP the Air Force operates “for other agencies or activities,” must be formally registered with SAF/AAZ, the Air Force SAP Central Office (SAPCO).

• The Secretary or Deputy Secretary of Defense must formally approve SAPs in writing and report on them annually to Congress under 10 U.S.C. §119.

• SAPs that contain Sensitive Compartmented Information or SIOP‑ESI (Single Integrated Operational Plan – Extremely Sensitive Information) “may have other security control systems, such as SCI,” layered inside them, with SCI directives governing protection of the SCI material.

• Programs involving SCI or “intelligence community participation” require review by HQ USAF/IN—the Air Staff’s senior intelligence directorate (historically the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, now A2).

Taken together, this gives us a layered construct. At the outer level, you have a legally defined SAP—an acquisition effort, an operational activity, or some other black project the Air Force has agreed to protect. SAPCO registers it; DEPSECDEF and the Air Force leadership approve it; Congress receives an annual, highly sanitized summary.

Inside that shell, you can have nested control systems: SIOP‑ESI channels, compartmented operational data, and SCI overlays—such as NSA‑controlled SIGINT compartments—that AFI 16‑701 simply treats as “SCI” for security purposes. Those inner compartments are governed not by the SAP rules, but by intelligence‑community directives: Director of Central Intelligence Directives (DCIDs) at the time, and Intelligence Community Directives (ICDs) today.

The instruction is explicit that inside Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFs), the SAP is just a tenant, while the host SCI sets the rules. In practice, that means the outer program is accountable to Air Force SAPCO, DEPSECDEF, and congressional SAP staff. The inner compartments are accountable to the intelligence agency that owns the SCI system.

The NSA’s VRK structure sounds eerily familiar to the architecture Dan Sherman describes in his book: an Air Force SAP as the outer shell, with a more restrictive NSA‑run compartment nested inside, answerable only to people who have a need‑to‑know. [8]

A Staggering Encounter

It is against that backdrop that Dan Sherman’s account slots into place.

Sherman was a U.S. Air Force ELINT specialist—an “Electronic Intelligence Specialist,” in his own description—responsible for “analyzing electromagnetic energy for intelligence value.” ELINT is a subset of SIGINT that deals with emissions from radars, guidance systems, and other non‑communications electronics. That work routinely falls under NSA’s umbrella, where Sherman recounts spending part of his career on assigned missions.

His story takes a sharp turn when an Air Force captain at the National Cryptologic School reads him into an additional program, Project Preserve Destiny, described as a “genetic management” effort to cultivate “intuitive communicators” for a future crisis in which all electromagnetic communications would fail—where he would communicate with non‑human entities on behalf of the president.

The regimen is conducted at a facility he identifies only as the “PPD school.” To get there, he is collected by a blue Air Force van with heavily tinted windows; he cannot see the route, the driver, or the location. The van delivers him to an underground parking area where he is escorted through a sequence of access control points—first a metal hand‑shaped plate at waist level, then a retina scanner—before being taken into an unmarked elevator with a single button.

The elevator opens onto a windowless space with internal glass walls. On the far side is a small room containing two workstations and wall‑mounted monitors. This is where his intuitive‑communications training begins: tones and sine waves displayed on a screen, exercises in flattening or altering their amplitude by will alone, and controlled drills in “hearing” information that is not presented through any normal sensory channel.

After this course, Sherman is assigned to what he calls PPD Base #1 and later PPD Base #2. At each site, his Preserve Destiny duties are routed through what appears, on the surface, to be an ordinary ELINT terminal on the classified network. The workstation sits in a SCIF‑like environment. To anyone walking past, it is just another console in a signals squadron.

The difference lies in what happens when he opens a particular interface.

With specific keystrokes, he can bring up a hidden reporting window. This is the PPD channel. During scheduled “comms” sessions, he focuses, establishes “remote” contact with the non‑human entity he nicknames “Spock” (and later a second entity, “Bones”), and begins receiving structured data—numbers, phrases, and technical parameters—that he keys directly into the concealed interface.

By the time he reaches PPD Base #2, the data has settled into a highly standardized format. Each session begins with what looks like a preamble: his three‑digit operator ID “118” and a five‑digit code he interprets as a kind of internal routing or “zip code.” That is followed by fields that look less like narrative and more like entries in a technical report.

Holistically, what Sherman describes is a human operator sitting at an NSA‑linked SIGINT terminal, keying structured event records into a concealed compartment. The records are formatted with identifiers, dates, times, geocoordinates, and numeric indicators that lend themselves naturally to database analysis and longitudinal tracking—exactly the sort of schema one would expect from a quietly segregated intelligence feed. However, the context surrounding those data points suggests a far more troubling narrative.

He recalls repeated field labels such as “Potentiality for recall,” “residual pain level,” “nerve response curve,” and “body normalization,” each followed by a two‑digit number. There is an eleven‑digit subject identifier, date and time fields, and latitude/longitude coordinates.

Sherman reconstructs an example of a report as it would have appeared on his screen:

118/23576/Subject10023202036/940107/0430/PotentialityforRecall72/ResidualPain21/NerveResponseCurve63/BodyNormalization97/03835N14503E///

One day, Sherman double‑checks the coordinates, and the latitude and longitude strings correspond to locations within the continental United States. When he recalls the information relayed in the initial PPD briefing, the nature of what he has been recording becomes obvious.

By his own count, he logs more than twenty such abduction reports before he reaches a moral and psychological breaking point and begins looking for a way out of the program.

Inside the Onion

Sherman’s description of how Project Preserve Destiny actually functioned is unusually technical for an alleged alien‑contact narrative. It reads less like a mystical experience and more like someone explaining an additional data feed inside a familiar SIGINT workflow.

In his indoctrination, Sherman is told there is a special classification concept called “Level 1,” a category used to compartmentalize “any and all grey information”—the captain’s term for alien‑related material.

Sherman is then given an explanation of what his handler calls the “onion effect.” The outer layer is unclassified; beneath that lies For Official Use Only, then Secret (Level 4), then Top Secret (Level 3). At Level 2 sit the black missions, and at Level 1 the alien missions—the core of the onion.

The key part of the briefing is how Level 1 hides behind Level 2:

“Black missions, which we call Level 2, are what the alien projects are effectively hidden behind… Wherever an alien project is located there must be a black mission to cover its existence from prying eyes. It creates a highly sophisticated shield designed to mask the grey project’s existence from high level officials who have no need‑to‑know.”

Sherman is told that only a handful of members of Congress and the President are aware of the true alien projects; that “nosy” officials can be briefed into the black mission, “made to feel important,” and sent away satisfied without ever learning about the Level 1 program underneath.

He is also told that when someone is assigned to an alien project, they are also assigned to the covering black mission. If they talk, they can be prosecuted for revealing the black project, allowing the government to “effectively silence and discredit someone without ever having to acknowledge the existence of the alien project.”

Stripped of the alien content, what Sherman is describing is a classification overlay very much like what the IG was seeing in VRK: a small, highly controlled inner compartment hidden behind an ordinary, though highly classified, DoD program.

Mapping the Layers

At this point, the parallels between Sherman’s “onion effect” and the IG’s VRK findings become hard to dismiss as coincidence.

A SIGINT‑centric core.

The DoD IG makes clear that VRK was created specifically for “uniquely sensitive COMINT activities and programs,” and that NSA regarded these as falling under DCI authority rather than DoD SAP rules. Sherman’s day job is ELINT—electromagnetic intelligence, a subset of SIGINT. His PPD terminal sits on that same technical backbone and uses the same sorts of structured, coded reporting conventions one would expect from a specialized SIGINT channel.

In both cases, the core mechanism is the same: a control overlay, an inner ring of access restrictions, that can be dropped inside many different host programs and facilities.

A black‑program shell that absorbs scrutiny.

AFI 16‑701 describes SAPs as the protected activities surrounded by special access controls—small access lists, special investigative criteria, security guides, codewords, and nicknames—intended to isolate “core secrets” from routine information flows. Sherman’s handler tells him, in almost plain English, that wherever there is an alien project, “there must be a black mission to cover its existence,” and that curious officials can be briefed into the black mission, “made to feel important,” and sent away satisfied without ever touching the alien core.

Translate Sherman’s terminology into doctrinal language and the mapping is straightforward. The black “Level 2” missions look like Air Force SAP outer shells. The alien “Level 1” missions look like nested SCI/VRK compartments sitting inside those shells.

Oversight diverted into incompatible channels.

AFI 16‑701 requires that each Air Force SAP, and each SAP the Air Force operates for other agencies, be registered with SAF/AAZ and reported annually, in sanitized form, to DEPSECDEF and Congress. NSA’s VRK list, by contrast, is maintained internally and reviewed annually by the Director of NSA, with reporting expected to flow—if at all—into the DCI’s Controlled Access Program Oversight Committee under DCID 3/29. [9]

The IG explicitly flags this bifurcation when it notes that NSA “has not developed and implemented an Agency SAP policy” and does not maintain a list of the SAPs it supports, even though it supports SAPs for other organizations.

Put more bluntly: the outer SAP is visible to Air Force SAPCO and to those congressional staff cleared into that SAP’s cover story. The inner VRK compartment is visible only to NSA’s internal registry and to the DCI’s controlled‑access apparatus. There is no single oversight body below the very top of the system that sees both halves of the onion at once, with the program’s true purpose spelled out.

Sherman’s account of being assigned both to a black mission and to a grey mission—the alien project hiding beneath a conventional military program—is exactly the kind of layering this architecture is built to support.

FOIA Footprints: Who Owns Project Preserve Destiny?

The open‑source record contains a handful of small but telling signals about where officialdom believes Project Preserve Destiny “belongs.”

A 1998 NSA FOIA log released via Government Attic shows that on January 2, 1998, the Agency logged case 11716 as “UFO – Project Preserve Destiny.” The disposition is listed as “Admin Closure,” with no further detail. This does not prove that records existed, but it does confirm that outside requesters were already asking NSA specifically about PPD in the late 1990s.

More recently, independent researcher Noah Hradek filed a FOIA request with the U.S. Air Force specifically seeking information on Project Preserve Destiny. The Air Force initially responded that it had no responsive records, then sent a follow‑up stating that “the information you are seeking falls under the purview of the NSA” and that his request had been referred to NSA for direct response. [5]

When NSA finally responded, it did so with a classic “neither confirm nor deny” reply—the so‑called Glomar response—citing Executive Order 13526 and asserting that even acknowledging the existence or non‑existence of responsive records would reveal classified information. Hradek published the relevant language from that response: NSA’s position that any further detail about whether PPD records exist is itself exempt from disclosure because the fact of existence or non‑existence remains classified. [6]

That sequence—Air Force disclaims ownership and kicks the request to NSA; NSA refuses even to confirm whether responsive records exist—is exactly what you would expect if PPD were an NSA‑owned compartment nested inside an Air Force SAP.

From the Air Force perspective, AFI 16‑701 compels SAPCO to register the SAP itself and to handle SAP‑related oversight and FOIA triage. But nothing in the instruction requires the Air Force to treat a nested SCI/VRK compartment run by NSA as its own SAP, or to maintain a paper trail under the nickname “Project Preserve Destiny” if that nickname exists only on NSA’s SCI/VRK side.

PPD—if it exists—may be one entry in the internal VRK registry, reviewed by the Director and reported up through controlled‑access program mechanisms under DCID 3/29, not through DoD SAP structures. That is precisely the split the IG was warning about when it said NSA “still does not effectively monitor the SAP it operates or supports.”

Layered classification does not just limit what the public can see under FOIA. Used this way, it actively fractures oversight: DoD SAP reviewers see the outer shell; intelligence‑community controlled‑access reviewers see the inner core; no one below the very top is structurally required to see both views at the same time.

What, If Anything, Changed After the IG Report?

The IG’s recommendations on VRK and SAP oversight were straightforward. NSA was instructed to review all Special Access Programs, SAP‑like programs, and VRK programs it had established or supported; to establish an effective oversight mechanism to ensure “proper coordination, monitoring, and tracking” of those programs; and to ensure that all such activities were reported annually to DoD or to the DCI, as appropriate.

NSA partially concurred. It continued to maintain that it did not have SAPs as defined by the DoD SAP directive, because its programs were SCI under DCI authority, and it pointed out that DoD Directive 5205.7 explicitly excluded SCI programs established by the DCI. The Agency promised instead to develop oversight mechanisms consistent with DCID 3/29 and to work with the DCI’s Controlled Access Program Oversight Committee. It anticipated implementing DCID 3/29 by early 1996.

The IG accepted those comments as “responsive,” essentially deferring to the intelligence‑community‑centric controlled‑access system so long as some form of oversight existed somewhere.

In the years that followed, VRK appears to have been phased out in favor of Exceptionally Controlled Information (ECI), a more general framework for highly sensitive SIGINT compartments. Open‑source analysis of classification manuals and leaked NSA materials notes VRK as a COMINT/SI sub‑control system active from 1974 to roughly 2003, with ECI taking over its function thereafter. [3]

What did not change is the basic structural split the IG identified:

• NSA’s most sensitive SIGINT programs are fenced inside SCI‑based control systems—VRK, then ECI—that behave like SAPs but are not reported as DoD SAPs.

• NSA continues to support SAPs for other components—the Air Force, NRO, and others—without any outwardly visible NSA SAP registry that links those outer programs to their inner SIGINT cores.

If a program like Project Preserve Destiny exists, there is nowhere in this architecture that requires its true nature to be spelled out simultaneously to the Secretary of Defense, the DCI (or DNI), the Air Force SAPCO, and congressional SAP overseers. Instead, knowledge converges at a handful of gatekeepers: the Director of NSA, a small circle inside the DCI’s controlled‑access program structure, and whatever “Level 1” personnel are actually running the thing.

The Director of NSA as Gatekeeper

One detail in the IG report deserves particular attention. Although NSA claimed not to have SAPs, it did maintain “a list of VRK programs, which are annually reviewed by the Director of NSA.”

Nothing in the IG materials indicates that this annual VRK review was shared above the Director of NSA in a form that would label individual programs in a way visible to DoD SAP oversight or congressional SAP staff. DCID 3/29 placed ultimate responsibility for controlled‑access programs on the DCI, assisted by the Controlled Access Program Oversight Committee, but the mechanics of how individual agency VRK lists were integrated into that process remain opaque in open sources.

In practical terms, this means the Director of NSA sits at a nexus point. VRK programs are visible in operational detail only to the Director and a small cleared staff. Air Force SAPs are visible in operational detail only to SAF/AAZ, relevant Air Staff elements, DEPSECDEF, and a constrained set of congressional overseers. Those two views—the SIGINT inner core and the SAP outer shell—overlap fully only in the minds of a very small number of people at the top.

If Project Preserve Destiny is what Sherman says it is—a long‑term program to cultivate “intuitive communicators” and have them relay structured intelligence about abductions and other non‑human activity—then the VRK/ECI architecture the IG describes is precisely the kind of system that could keep it controlled and unseen.

From the outside, even an experienced staffer would see only an Air Force SAP of unknown purpose with a SIGINT flavor—perhaps an advanced ELINT or “noise‑cancellation” program, the sort of cover Sherman himself speculates about when he notes that his PPD school seems to be co‑located with a black project involving exotic acoustic and electromagnetic technologies.

From the inside, PPD would be an NSA‑owned VRK or ECI entry, one line on a Director’s list of “uniquely sensitive COMINT activities and programs,” existing entirely within the SCI world and never labeled as a SAP.

Those two realities meet only in the hands of someone who can review these nested programs. In practice, that means the Director of NSA—and perhaps the Director of National Intelligence or the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

For researchers trying to piece together the truth about non‑human intelligence programs, that is where the IG report leaves us. It does not confirm Project Preserve Destiny. It does something subtler and, in some ways, more important: it shows that the classification and oversight architecture needed to hide such a program is not speculative at all. It is spelled out in black and white in the government’s own oversight history.

The onion, in other words, is real. The question that remains is what, exactly, sits at its core.

Sources:

[1]: https://irp.fas.org/nsa/oig_ir_96-03.htm “Final Report on the Verification Inspection of the National Security Agency”

[2]: https://irp.fas.org/doddir/usaf/16-701.htm “Air Force Instruction 16‑701”

[3]: https://www.electrospaces.net/2013/09/the-us-classification-system.html “Electrospaces.net: The US Classification System”

[4]: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB144/index.htm “From Director of Central Intelligence to Director of National Intelligence”

[5]: https://medium.com/%40noahhradek/dan-sherman-and-project-preserve-destiny-confirmed-8b3b6bf4898d “Dan Sherman and ‘Project Preserve Destiny’ Confirmed”

[6]: https://medium.com/%40noahhradek/an-update-on-project-preserve-destiny-foia-2e4a04ec86e1 “An Update on Project Preserve Destiny FOIA”

[7]: https://www.governmentattic.org/43docs/NSAfoiaLogs_1998.pdf “FOIA Logs for the National Security Agency, 1998”

[8] https://www.aboveblack.com/index.html “Above Black: Project Preserve Destiny”

[9] https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/dcid3-29.html “Controlled Access Program Oversight Committee”

Among these responses was a revealing detail about a building designed to facilitate the transfer of UAP materials by both air and sea.

Question: “Can you confirm or deny the attempt to transfer non-human technology to Bigelow Aerospace from Lockheed Martin during your time at AATIP?”

Response: Yes. I can confirm that specific facilities were identified to enable Bigelow Aerospace to acquire and securely store recovered UAP materials as the new custodian, following their transfer from Lockheed Martin. These facilities included locations in the Las Vegas area and a newly built hanger at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station (“PAX”). Specifically, the PAX River hanger was designed to facilitate the transfer of future materials via air and river. The hanger was purpose-built to meet the requirements of a Special Access Program Facility (“SAP-F”) and was capable of accommodating materials at any classification level. I was informed that funding for the hanger, approximately $10 million, was allocated at the request of then-Representative Steny Hoyer. I have visited this facility; however, as it was a new construction at the time, no materials had yet been transferred.

Elizondo served in AATIP as its Director from 2008 to 2012, and his mention of Representative Steny Hoyer provides a precise timeframe and reference point for identifying this facility.

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The Aircraft Prototype Facility

In 2008, Rep. Steny Hoyer helped secure $17 million for a new facility at Pax River: the Aircraft Prototype Facility (APF). Construction, which included a small hangar, was completed in 2010. This connection is further supported by Elizondo’s description of the hangar as a newly constructed site during his visit, likely in 2010–2011, just a year or so before AATIP’s dissolution in 2012.

Information about this facility is scarce online. However, a 2021 report from the Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Washington (NAVFAC), which investigated the historical use of fire-retardant chemicals amid emerging environmental concerns, identifies a specific hangar building number and pin-points it on a map.

This can be cross-referenced with historical satellite imagery to confirm that the hangar was indeed constructed during the 2008-2012 period.

2008

2009

2011

Additionally, the same NAVFAC report describes how investigators conducted an exterior inspection of the facility and surrounding grounds but were unable to access the interior due to "access restrictions." This is the only building or hangar in the entire report noted with such a restriction.

2.1.2 Hangar 2905 Background

Hangar 2905 is located in the south-central portion of the installation (Figures 2-2 and 2-4). The site is flat and is at an elevation of approximately 30 feet above mean sea level (msl). Hangar 2905 is an aircraft hangar used for research, test, and development purposes. Construction of the facility was completed in 2010 (Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, 2010). The facility is protected by a 750-gallon capacity trench-mounted AFFF fire suppression system. The system is charged with Chemguard 3 percent AFFF concentrate. The interior of the hangar was not observed during site visits due to access restrictions. The suppression system is equipped with automatic diversion to a 25,000-gallon AFFF retention tank. Reportedly, AFFF has never been released from the system within the hangar (CH2M, 2018).

As a final point of confirmation, the construction contractor who built the facility advertises the hanger as being a Special Access Program Facility (SAP-F), aligning with Lue’s testimony.

Fast Turnaround, Contractor-Run Operations

A 2022 contract proposal for the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division's Aircraft Prototype Systems Division (APSD), which is the overarching division that includes the hanger mentioned above and additionally a new larger hanger built next to it as part of Phase II, explicitly designates it as a top-secret experimentation facility where research, analysis, and reverse engineering take place.

APSD provides the people, processes, technologies, infrastructure, facilities, tooling, skills, knowledge, and abilities necessary to develop aircraft integration designs and certify critical airworthiness artifacts, engineering data, and technical data packages with associated manufacturing and installation activities for programs and activities as part of the prototype maturation process leading up to low-rate initial production. This is inclusive of project management, systems engineering, research and analysis, electrical/electronic engineering, mechanical/structural engineering, reverse engineering, airworthiness analysis and documentation, mechanical and electrical fabrication, and flight certification coordination in support of the installation of these tests, systems, and capabilities into military and commercial derivative aircraft.

The proposal also highlights the use of contractor-owned and operated aircraft within the facility for reverse-engineering efforts.

The performance location, scale and complexity of contract support are expected to increase along with APSD organic capabilities. This includes an increased focus on early phase experimentation, demonstration, and technology maturation support including the utilization of Contractor Owned Contractor Operated aircraft and the expansion of APSD's mission and capabilities related to obsolescence and reverse engineering airframe and avionics component and systems levels.

This aligns closely with Elizondo's testimony, in which he described Lockheed Martin's desire to transfer a craft of unknown origin to another contractor, Bigelow Aerospace, and noted that the facility was built, at least in part, for that purpose.

Congress should gain access to this facility and obtain records and recordings of all aircraft housed there since its opening in 2010.

Relation to UAP

The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) is a key component of the U.S. Navy’s research and development ecosystem, operating under the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR). It focuses specifically on naval aviation systems, including aircraft, weapons, and related technologies. NAVAIR has recently been brought to the forefront in Open Source Anomalous’ FOIA efforts as likely being the custodian of the full-length GIMBAL video. obtained the following FOIA response:

The Department of the Navy (DON) received your request, enclosed, for the following document(s):

“Full length footage of the GIMBAL UFO/UAP Incident”

These records have been identified as possibly residing at Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR). Once the documents are received from NHHC, DON will conduct a Mandatory Declassification Review in accordance with Section 3.5(c) of Executive Order 13526 and prepare a final response to you.

NAVAIR is headquartered at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, the same site of the Aircraft Prototype Facility Hanger mentioned above as being the location of the AAWSAP/AATIP technology transfer attempt (and likely used for future UAP material transfer) so this seems notable.

Other witnesses and researchers within the topic have recently made accusations to Navy research and development sites as well. Researcher UAPGerb has pointed to several US Navy locations as being involved with UAP reverse engineering and test & evaluation. One such specific instance that is pointed to is the testimony of US Special Forces Green Beret Randy Anderson who went to special weapons training at Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane (NSWCC). Randy was pulled to the side and told that he was going to check out some foreign weapons with a small group of individuals, and took an elevator deep underground. He claims to have seen exotic and potentially non-human material such as a perfect metal sphere with potentially telepathic properties and a gauntlet within a highly secured lab run by defense contractor personnel in a room called the “off-world technology” division.

Navy R&D Structure

Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane is a component of NAVSEA which is the Navy’s primary organization responsible for the design, development, acquisition, maintenance, and modernization of ships, submarines, and associated combat systems, ensuring the fleet’s surface and undersea capabilities.

The Navy has 8 System Commands (SYSCOMS) which each serve a specific purpose in the overall Navy support structure, however the two we are going to focus on are NAVSEA and NAVAIR.

Essentially, NAVSEA and NAVAIR are similarly functional commands, just with NAVSEA focusing on surface and undersea domains and NAVAIR on flight and air domain. This is important as it would explain why NSWC Crane seemed to contain just some UAP artifacts while the NAVAIR facility is purported to be capable of holding an entire UAP craft.

The Larger Picture

In 1996, Section 342(b) of the Fiscal Year 1995 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA, Public Law 103-337) authorized the Secretary of Defense to conduct personnel demonstration projects at designated Department of Defense (DoD) laboratories. This legislation aimed to enhance recruitment, retention, and performance of scientific and technical personnel by granting exemptions from certain civil service rules. These exemptions enabled pay-for-performance systems, streamlined hiring processes, and collaborative agreements, prompting the U.S. Navy to consolidate and modernize its Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) infrastructure into streamlined Science and Technology Reinvention Laboratories (STRLs). These STRLs were designed to "re-imagine" DoD labs, fostering innovation and agility in defense research.

Initial STRL designations and personnel demonstration project plans were implemented in the mid-1990s, with a key milestone on November 27, 1996, when the Air Force Research Laboratory published its STRL personnel management plan in the Federal Register. For the Navy and Army, this period marked the formal designation of their key R&D laboratories as STRLs, enabling the adoption of these flexibilities starting around 1996–1997.

This restructuring laid the foundation for the modern R&D frameworks of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army, which support both conventional and advanced technology development. For example, investigations, such as those by Open Source Anomalous, have reported that the U.S. Army’s Ground Vehicle Systems Center (another STRL) received materials associated with UAP from To The Stars Academy (TTSA). This suggests a potential pathway for analyzing such materials, if they exist, within these R&D structures. Notably, multiple witnesses and circumstantial evidence have linked STRLs across both the Army and Navy to UAP material analysis.

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This request was prompted by recent congressional hearings where David Grusch testified under oath that the US has recovered craft of non-human origin; the intent of this FOIA was to verify these claims through official channels. The Navy’s final response stated:

no records responsive to your request were located.

However, the response included a significant revelation: confirmation of the existence of UAPTF electronic record holdings. This marks the first official acknowledgment of such records, providing a potential avenue for future FOIA requests. See the response below:

This confirmation is intriguing given statements from Sarah Gamm, a former National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency representative, who said AARO refused UAPTF data, stating:

We would try to share our data… with them. We'd finally get in touch with somebody and they'd say no we have our own database

This suggests bureaucratic silos or intentional withholding in UAP investigations, fueling speculation about hidden evidence.

Additionally, the FOIA response disclosed that “one of the former leads of the UAPTF” was consulted during the search for these records, raising additional questions about the scope and accessibility of UAPTF data.

Could AARO be refusing UAPTF materials to downplay Grusch’s claims? Future FOIA requests may hold the key.

You can view the FOIA appeal in its entirety here: 2025-NavyAPPEAL-000072.pdf

Recently, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) responses were received confirming that Riggs was indeed investigated by Army CID for disclosing sensitive information. Furthermore, this article will aim to convey why these allegations are most likely true and warrant investigation by an independent congressional or executive body.

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This is a parallel article based on some of the supplemental investigation done in the following series. Reading these articles is not required to understand this piece but is encouraged for a deeper context.

Allegations

According to notes from Dr. Steven Greer's DPI Archive, a published website hosting numerous witness and whistleblower documents and testimonies, an individual who claimed to be part of the U.S. Army's CID was allegedly "read-in" to a portfolio consisting of 16 Special Access Programs (SAPs)/Unacknowledged Special Access Programs (USAPs) and 2 Controlled Access Programs (CAPs). These programs purportedly dealt with exotic technology, some of which was reportedly of non-human origin. The testimony and related documentation associated with this individual were cataloged in the archive under a witness number that corresponds to a description provided in their witness list.

Was in the US Army for 28 years. Was a Special Agent Army Criminal Investigation Division Command (Army CID). Has detailed knowledge of SAP’s (acknowledged and unacknowledged). Knows about the underground basement at the Pentagon which is a SCIF and known as the Technology Management Office (TMO). Involved in the investigation of General John Riggs who showed his un-cleared girlfriend a USAP near Fort Seal Oklahoma. At this location, they had a cloaking device that they reversed engineered from an ET craft. Also has knowledge of a radar system that can disable aircraft, causing them to crash. Was cleared baseline clearance Space TS-S CIA. Has knowledge 18 USAPS.

This individual was involved in an investigation concerning a three-star General accused of fraud related to U.S. Government contractors within the Objective Force Task Force, the units with which some of these programs were operationally coordinated at the time. The General allegedly breached multiple laws by disclosing sensitive information to an unauthorized assistant, with whom he was also suspected of having an affair. This assistant was inappropriately granted access to technology described as non-human within one of these highly classified programs.

Army CID Investigation

The Army CID investigation began in 2002 after the submission of Target Analysis File 0050-2002-CID186, which outlined potential fraud within several Special Access Programs.

A target analysis file is essentially a record kept on individuals or entities under investigation or considered suspects for criminal activities within Army CID.

The specific Target Analysis File for this case, obtained by Open Source Anomalous through a FOIA request, indicates that the file was opened due to allegations of Procurement Integrity Act violations and was designated for investigation by "CID Only." The only entities explicitly named in the unredacted portion of the file were the OFTF and Sy Technology (Sy Tech).

Army CID Special Agent Sergeant Thomas Barnes was assigned to probe these fraud allegations within defense programs at the CID office in Laguna Niguel, California. His involvement is substantiated by the article 'Suspension and Debarment of Soldiers: Can We Do It? Yes, We Can,' available on the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School website. The article confirms his presence at the same office during the investigation period, as noted on the first page of the Army CID final report, which was obtained by Open Source Anomalous through a FOIA request.

Authors Note:

The link for the article in the paragraph above responds with an error, this was not the case during the drafting of this article. A copy obtained prior to the removal off of the official Army website is below.

Army Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School Article

Further, Barnes's role is confirmed by notes in the DPI Archive, which, link him directly to the investigation.

Sgt. Thomas Barnes's role as the assigned CID Special Agent on this case is confirmed by a chapter in his book, 'SISU: Tales of the Zombie Squads - An Inside View of Army Military Police and Army CID Solving Crimes Worldwide.'

In Chapter 35, titled ‘Senior General Officer Investigation,’ Barnes recounts his work on a high-profile, sensitive case involving a General accused of multiple felonies, including employing an assistant for unauthorized tasks and an alleged inappropriate relationship, in cooperation with the FBI out of the Los Angeles office.

Barnes describes traveling internationally to investigate locations linked to the programs or individuals involved.

Another layer of verification comes from DPI archive, which includes what appears to be a pre-reviewed version of the same chapter, tagged with the same witness number as the notes related to Barnes. This version initially includes the name of the FBI Special Agent involved (later redacted by Greer’s team) and specifies the General's rank, reinforcing that Barnes was indeed the witness associated with these records and his discussions with Dr. Steven Greer.

Targets and Outcome of CID Investigation

Lt Gen. John M. Riggs and a contractor for Sy Tech were the focus of a joint Army CID and FBI investigation from December 9, 2002, to March 7, 2005.

The final report, numbered 0012-2003-CID186-34232, concluded that there was sufficient evidence to believe both Lt Gen Riggs, listed as Director of the OFTF, and his contractor assistant, listed as Special Assistant to the Director, were guilty of several crimes:

Contractor Assistant

• Conspiracy

• Disclosure of Procurement Sensitive Information

• Obstruction of Justice

John Riggs

• Conspiracy

• Disclosure of Procurement Sensitive Information

• Obstruction of Justice

• Statement and Dereliction of Duty

It was also found that the contractor influenced Riggs into favoring Sy Tech over Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) for contracts.

The contractor performed personal tasks for Riggs deemed inappropriate by the OFTF legal counsel, who advised Riggs to stop this relationship.

These personal services, which included involvement in the procurement process, positioned the contractor to gain access to highly sensitive Special Access Programs (SAPs)/Unacknowledged Special Access Programs (USAPs) related to the Army's Future Combat Systems.

Testimony from DPI archive notes that this exposure would have happened near Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, where the contractor assistant was briefed on a USAP involving reverse-engineered cloaking technology.

Despite the evidence supporting these crimes, the case against General Riggs did not proceed to prosecution because the U.S. Attorney was not granted clearance ("read-on") to review the evidence. Consequently, Riggs was only demoted and forced out of the Army, essentially receiving a minor punishment for offenses that could have led to significant prison time.

Link to the “Legacy Program“

According to notes by Sgt. Thomas Barnes on the DPI Archive, the programs he investigated were so sensitive that he spent three months in the Pentagon at the Technology Management Office (TMO) to be indoctrinated. This office appears responsible for managing and controlling these SAPs/USAPs, with security officers re-validating his clearance every time he transitioned between different programs.

This claim can be verified by one report from the CIA reading room, which documents TMO on the transfer of the Army’s SAP CENTER LANE, focused on remote viewing, from the Army to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

For more detailed exploration of this office and its connections, refer to this previous article.

The TMO additionally appears to be managed by the CIA, hosting various branches or entities to manage their respective USAP/SAPs. Official mentions of TMO largely come from CIA reports in their reading room. Government phone book records confirm that multiple departments and agencies were located in the same office room number within the Pentagon. However, this specific location, was destroyed during the September 11, 2001, attacks by Flight 77.

In the phone book records for the TMO located in the Pentagon's basement, one name particularly stands out.

Office of the Secretary of the Air Force for Space

Jack Kimberly - System for Award Management Registration Division

Jack Kimberly was associated with the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force for Space - System for Award Management Registration Division when the phone book was published in 1996.

More recently, he served as the Director of Legacy Programs at Northrop Grumman until a few months ago.

His LinkedIn profile now shows employment at his own consulting firm but still lists Northrop Grumman in his work history, with no employment history detailed prior to 2017.

The term "Legacy Program" has gained significance with its recent appearance in an official legislative context.

The UAP Disclosure Act of 2023 was an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2023, proposed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and re-introduced in 2024 by Senator Mike Rounds. Co-sponsored by senators on the Senate Intelligence or Armed Services Committees, this amendment passed in the Senate but was later blocked by the House. Page 6 of this amendment defines:

LEGACY PROGRAM.—The term ‘‘legacy program’’ means all Federal, State, and local government, commercial industry, academic, and private sector endeavors to collect, exploit, or reverse engineer technologies of unknown origin or examine biological evidence of living or deceased non-human intelligence that pre-dates the date of the enactment of this Act.

Exotic Technology

During the investigation, Sgt. Thomas Barnes alleges, within the DPI Archive documents, that one of the programs he was briefed on had origins tracing back to the Eisenhower administration but was only fully realized during the Reagan administration. This program was part of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), popularly known as "Star Wars," which officially never achieved its goal of launching laser-equipped satellites but allegedly involved the development and successful deployment of a nuclear-powered laser weapon capable of targeting and destroying any object, including non-human craft.

This might sound far-fetched, but Barnes claims this program was operational under the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) as part of its mission mandate.

Interestingly, in 2002, Sy Tech advertised on their website that they were involved with programs linked to SMDC, the U.S. Space Command (which later became U.S. Space Command or USSPACECOM), and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BDMO), which evolved into the Missile Defense Agency (MDA).

The U.S. Army's SMDC supports USSPACECOM, which is also a partner to the MDA. The Army CID report previously mentioned details coordination with the MDA as part of the investigation's exhibits for interviews.

Moreover, the DPI Archive documents name a Waived Unacknowledged Special Access Program (WUSAP) and include drawings of the craft associated with this program.

This program, named 'Hanger Bully,' is focused on reverse engineering a craft of non-human origin, specifically studying its stealth technology.

Conclusion and Next Steps

Did Lt Gen. John Riggs actually disclose reverse-engineered Non-Human technology to his contractor girlfriend, and was Special Agent Thomas Barnes truly “read-in” to 16 Special Access Programs related to exotic technology of non-human origin? While there isn't a definitive "smoking gun," the connections and information presented here provide ample grounds for further investigation by an authority with the right clearance.

This quote from Barnes' book, mentioned previously in this article, also raises questions.

In the chapter ‘Senior General Officer Investigation’ on page 281, we find:

As a side note and one of significant mention, the AUSA, through USDOJ in Washington DC, attempted to get “read on” to the specific SAPs/USAPs the investigation pertained to. After a long, two-year period, the Department of Defense issues the final denial for the “read on” request, citing the SAPs/USAPs were so vital to the Nations National Security that details could not be further released. The spooky technology at hand in the matter was apparently so sensitive our government had decided to deep six it. But USDOJ was furious. And to my surprise there was nothing USDOJ could do. The request, and the ensuing conversations regarding the “read on” were at the highest levels of our government. TJAG and the Attorney General of the US discussed the matter several times. And it was way above my pay grade. In the end, the AUSA was more than upset and declined to prosecute the General for any criminal offense. The AUSA cited access was required for all materials for proper evaluation and assessment. Without access to all the information there would be no prosecution, just a declination.

Another intriguing excerpt from page 282 in the same chapter reads:

But the funny thing was that my supervisors did not even know the details of the USAPs. At the time, there were only three people in Army CID who were “read on” to the various SAPs/USAPs. Our Army CID Commanding General at the time, my Director and myself.

This revelation suggests that, beyond Thomas Barnes and John Riggs, two additional individuals should be subpoenaed to testify publicly in a hearing by the recently established House Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets:

Army CID Commanding General from 2001-2006, Donald J Ryder.

Director, Major Procurement Fraud Unit, 701st MP Group from 1998-2005, David Allen .

The following questions could be asked to each person down the line under oath

• Were you “read in” to programs involving technology of non-human origin?

• Was “Hanger Bully” a name belonging to a legitimate program?

• Did “Hanger Bully” involve a craft of non-human origin?

• Is it true that SDI resulted in a laser weapon being deployed capable of harming or destroying UAP?

• Who is in control of deciding who gets “read in” to these programs?

• Is killing or execution a means of enforcement within these SAPs/USAPs?

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Special thanks to Matt Laslo for edit suggestions to this article. Check out his outlet for incredible reporting on this topic!

Through FOIA, documents related to the John Riggs investigation were obtained. These FOIA documents provide numerous details that can be further corroborated, and they offer leads for additional FOIA requests and research.

Army Target Analysis File can be viewed in full here: fa25_0839_Emailed_Release.pdf

Army CID final report can be viewed in full here: fa25_1635_Emailed_Release.pdf

Additional Reference Docs: Open Source Anomalous

Disclaimer: There has been no direct communication with any individuals mentioned in this article, and all source material for this case is based on information or documentation that is or was publicly available.

Supplemental article showing provenance: DPI Proof

Established in 1943 as the Technical Data Section of the U.S. Army Air Forces and located at Wright Patterson AFB Ohio, the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) has evolved into a cornerstone of U.S. military intelligence. Originally focused on analyzing captured enemy aircraft during World War II, its mission expanded rapidly to include a wide array of intelligence operations.

The Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was formally established on May 21, 1951, to centralize these efforts under the U.S. Air Force. Renamed the Foreign Technology Division (FTD) in 1961, the organization deepened its focus on foreign materiel acquisitions and exploitation, setting the stage for cutting-edge analysis during the Cold War.

With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1993, FTD transitioned into the National Air Intelligence Center (NAIC), reflecting a broader strategic intelligence mission. By 2003, the center embraced space-based threats and opportunities, becoming NASIC, and later developed advanced capabilities like its Signals Exploitation Division, ensuring relevance in a new era of global threats.

Squadrons and Specialized Missions

NASIC’s structure today is built around 18 squadrons operating under four management groups, each with unique missions that are as classified as they are critical. Among these, the Foreign Materiel Acquisition and Exploitation squadrons play a pivotal role. Using cutting-edge tools and a legacy of expertise, these teams dissect foreign aircraft, weapons systems, and technologies, unlocking critical intelligence for military planners and policymakers. This reverse-engineering process offers the U.S. a strategic advantage in countering adversarial advancements and understanding vulnerabilities.

Mysteries in the Details

The emblems and patches of NASIC’s squadrons provide a rare glimpse into their secretive work. Each design tells a story—albeit cryptic—hinting at missions far beyond public knowledge. From allusions to space-based reconnaissance to symbols of foreign technology exploitation, these insignias raise compelling questions:

• What technologies have these squadrons acquired and analyzed?

• Could they be working on materials or systems from beyond Earth or our Dimension?

As whispers of reverse-engineered Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) technology only continue to grow in public discourse, NASIC’s storied history and its covert missions make it a prime candidate for such investigations. Diving into the emblems of its squadrons, the connections to both the CIA and the possibility of UAP research becomes a thread too fascinating to ignore.

Author’s Note:
During the research for this article, I was able to locate up-to-date information and emblems for 17 of NASIC’s 18 squadrons. However, two emblems remain elusive, adding yet another layer of mystery to the organization’s already classified operations.

Global Exploitation Intelligence Group (GX)

Aircraft Analysis Squadron

Foreign Materiel Exploitation Squadron

Signals Analysis Squadron (GXS)

Global Activities Squadron (GXA)

Future Threats Analysis Squadron

Regional Threats Analysis Squadron

Space and Missiles Analysis Group

1 Space Analysis Squadron under Space Force Command (Formerly Space Analysis Squadron)

2 Space Analysis Squadron under Space Force Command (Formally Counterspace Analysis Squadron)

Ballistic Missiles Analysis Squadron

Air and Cyberspace Intelligence Group

35 Intelligence Squadron (Formally Cyber Analysis Squadron)

Electronic Analysis Squadron

Engineering Analysis Squadron

Integrated Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Analysis Squadron (Formally Integrated Air Defense Systems Analysis Squadron)

Geospatial and Signatures Intelligence Group

Geospatial Intelligence Measurements and Signatures Intelligence Production Squadron

Geospatial Intelligence Measurements and Signatures Intelligence Analysis Squadron

Emblem not found

Imagery Analysis Squadron

Emblem not found

Information Exploitation Squadron

The HUMINT Connection

While NASIC’s core mission revolves around technical intelligence (TECHINT), its operations extend into the realm of human intelligence (HUMINT) through strategic collaborations with the CIA. These clandestine efforts leverage human sources and collectors to access critical insights, from adversaries’ intentions to emerging threats and advanced technologies. This synergy between HUMINT and TECHINT enables a more comprehensive intelligence picture. NASIC’s HUMINT operations are conducted under Title 10 authorities, emphasizing military oversight while accommodating joint operations with civilian agencies.

At the heart of NASIC’s HUMINT efforts is the Global Exploitation Intelligence Group (GX), which oversees the Global Activities Squadron (GXA). Operating detachments worldwide, GXA conducts missions that blend traditional military intelligence with covert human-centric operations.

Within GXA units, CIA agents often embed to augment these missions, further enriching the HUMINT-TECHINT collaboration. The unit’s emblem, encapsulated in its challenge coin, reveals intriguing details about its mission and symbolism.

The GXA challenge coin, emblematic of the squadron's mission, contains rich symbolic elements:

• Ultramarine Blue and Air Force Yellow: Reflect the Air Force colors, symbolizing the sky and excellence in operations.

• The Polestar and Dagger: Represent the squadron's readiness and military preparedness for global missions.

• The Rose: A subtle nod to the human factor in intelligence, highlighting the interpersonal nature of HUMINT.

• Eight Fusils (Diamonds): Signify travel and labor, emphasizing the unit’s worldwide reach and relentless efforts.

• Motto—'Loqueris Fabulam': Translating to 'Tell Me Your Story', the motto reinforces the squadron's focus on uncovering narratives and intelligence through personal engagement.

This emblem’s design embodies the integration of human and technical intelligence, offering a glimpse into the specialized and covert missions of GXA. The coin, along with the unit’s operations, underscores the depth of collaboration between NASIC and the CIA.

This could have some overlap to a previous article "Blue Border" with certain CIA HUMINT being classified to that level:

Fitting the Pieces Together

To better understand NASIC’s and the CIA’s importance in the context of UAP, it’s essential to examine historical documents that shed light on the integration and purposes of their programs and units.

Foreign Materiel Program & The 1127th Field Activities Group

The 1127th Field Activities Group, headquartered at Fort Belvoir, VA, during the 1960s and 70s, played a critical role in intelligence operations involving foreign technology. This squadron appears repeatedly in Project Moon Dust records and communications, especially concerning the recovery of unknown objects in foreign territories.

A declassified historical document details how the 1127th facilitated Air Staff efforts to deploy Foreign Technology Division (FTD) personnel to foreign sites for the exploitation of crashed aircraft. These recovered craft were often transported to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for further analysis.

The document also notes that personnel from these units were granted access to denied areas for “on-site conference exploitation.” This terminology suggests involvement from additional agencies, such as the DIA and CIA, in these operations.

Given that Project Moon Dust specifically targeted objects originating from space, it stands to reason that the same recovery and exploitation methods could be applied to UAP crashes. A State Department memo explicitly mentions both the FTD and the 1127th Field Activities Group as participants in Moon Dust, emphasizing their dual role in recovering and analyzing unknown space objects and handling crashed aircraft under Project Blue Fly.

Further corroboration of the 1127th’s connection to Moon Dust comes from an official document outlining the group’s functions. It specifies their role in the recovery and exploitation of unknown space objects. Notably, it mentions an incident where Soviet scientists examined an unidentified object but failed to determine its origin—an event that would have likely involved the 1127th if diplomatic conditions had allowed.

Many of the 1127th’s functions appear to have been absorbed into NASIC, particularly within the Global Activities Squadron, the Foreign Materiel Exploitation Squadron, and the Aircraft Analysis Squadron.

CIA Integration

As observed on the historical document mentioned earlier, the CIA maintained a close partnership with the 1127th, embedding personnel during exploitation missions and housing 1127th collectors in field offices to support aerospace accounts.

The CIA’s role in Project Moon Dust extended beyond recovery logistics. For example, in one case involving metallic fragments suspected to be from a non-U.S. satellite, both the FTD and the CIA’s Office of Weapons Intelligence (OWI) sought to analyze the material.

This historical involvement aligns with recent reporting suggesting that the Weapons and Counterproliferation Mission Center (WCP)—the modern successor to the OWI—plays a significant role in UAP and non-human intelligence (NHI) matters.

OWI and OSI Evolution:

• 1950s: The Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) was deeply involved in UFO research, as noted in several reports referencing the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC)—a precursor to NASIC.

• 1980: OSI and OWI merged into the Office of Scientific and Weapons Research (OSWR).

• 2001: OSWR restructured into WINPAC (Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control).

• 2015: WINPAC became the Weapons and Counterproliferation Mission Center (WCP).

These transitions illustrate a continuum of intelligence expertise that persists today, linking NASIC’s predecessors with modern efforts in analyzing UAP phenomena.

Jonathan Gray and UAP Analysis

This lineage ties directly to individuals like Jonathan Gray, reportedly based at NASIC, who specializes in UAP analysis. Gray's work underscores NASIC's enduring focus on foreign technology and unexplained aerial phenomena, suggesting its continued involvement—alongside the CIA—in UAP recovery and analysis.

The military's black budget has long been shrouded in secrecy, closely guarded by the clandestine hands of the United States. However, a surprising discovery emerged in the form of a 1986 National Journal exposé on the Black Budget, flagged and recorded by the CIA. This document, with budgetary numbers and certain project codewords intact, sheds light on the extent of spending on various projects and the level of secrecy surrounding certain budget items.

Special Technical Unit Detachment: An Enigma

Within this document lies a curious entity known as the Special Technical Unit Detachment, operating out of the enigmatic "Dreamland," more commonly recognized as Area 51. This unit's official purpose remains hidden, though it falls under the 'Operations and Maintenance' category in the budget.

The capitalization of the Special Technical Unit Detachment, abbreviated as S.T.U.D in this document, underscores its significance. Notably, a unit named S.T.U.D.S. is specifically mentioned in the Majestic Documents dump, suggesting a possible connection.

The unit is mentioned as being created in the late 1980s. Operating out of Area 51, it is tasked with the recovery and security of top-secret aircraft, specifically the "S" aircraft mentioned here as being a craft on loan from what is today called Air Force Materiel Command located at Wright-Patterson AFB. The "S" craft was supposedly reverse-engineered by German scientists from one craft that crashed in southwestern Missouri and another captured in Louisiana. There's an implication within the Majestic Document that these units also handled cover stories for the test operations or flights that went awry of these "S" aircraft.

The Official Record

To prove that the Special Tactical Unit Detachments are the same S.T.U.D.S. referenced in the Majestic Document, there is another connection to these S.T.U.D.S units in official documentation linking the name directly to the abbreviation, within the same time frame specified in the Majestic Document. This 'Department of Air Force Justification of Estimates for Fiscal Year 1987', hosted on the Library of Congress website, shows a line item listed with the exact name and abbreviation as in the Majestic Document. The budget for these units is shown as $138 million in 1985, which closely aligns with the $158.7 million mentioned previously in the black budget article for a 1987 increase. These documents clearly are referring to the same units.

It is additionally confirmed through this official Air Force budget document that the program these units attach to is classified. These units also typically have 15 aircraft assigned to it and performed 4,349 flight hours in 1985.

A Famous Crash

The following sentence within the black budget document mentions the famous crash of Lt. Gen. Robert M. Bond at Area 51, which ties into another fascinating point.

Robert M. Bond was killed in a high-speed ejection from what was purported to be a MiG-23BN. It is worth noting that, according to the Majestic Document, one of the biggest issues with the "S" aircraft is that test pilots kept being killed during high-altitude and high-performance test flights.

Following this lead...

I'm not trying to draw any conclusions, and truthfully, I'm not sure what to make of these points. However, it's well known that test operations of highly secretive craft employ cover stories for incidents or inadvertent exposure. I also find it fascinating that the budget for these S.T.U.D.S. is rather high compared to many of the other budget items for the "Tactical Intelligence and Special Activities" activity group. This point would seem to indicate that whatever these S.T.U.D.S. do is rather significant.

Moreover, the lack of information online about these units adds additional intrigue, and I would bet that this thread would yield some serious fruit if it is pursued as a line of inquiry to the USAF from reporters and researchers. This is a lead I intend to continue following.

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Note:

The legitimacy of many of the Majestic Documents has been in question since they were dumped on the internet. However, I believe interesting points like this, which can be referenced to potential connections in legitimate documents, should prompt researchers to revisit some of these documents with an open mind. It seems possible that at least some of the documents are legitimate, and fakes could have been thrown in to spoil the entire batch.

That was until recently when I stumbled across this tweet from @ChrisUKSharp in the context of why David Grusch had been unwilling to go into detail with DoD's AARO about what he knows regarding the UAP/UFO programs. He seemed to be concerned about how extremely sensitive intelligence information would be handled if divulged to them.

This immediately stands out as likely being in reference to the "Blue Border" series of documents within CIA DDO (Directorate of Operations), reserved for extremely sensitive HUMINT intelligence. Chris also mentions that this is "non-UAP related but adjacent."

"Blue Border" is a special compartmentalized access for the highest sensitivity intelligence obtained from Human Sources within the CIA. This is somewhat similar to how BIGOT listing would function when placed onto certain special access programs to compartmentalize information, except in this case, it is even more restrictive than a BIGOT list control system.

"Blue Border" series reports have a blue stripe on them and are personally signed by the CIA director. These are also provided in the PDB (President's Daily Briefing) from time to time.

It seems clear that the contents of the "Blue Border" reports themselves don't necessarily have to do with UAP in order to be labeled as such. So, what did Grusch find that was "non-UAP related but adjacent" within this "Blue Border" intelligence that would still be relevant to the topic in a HUMINT capacity? Especially at a level where he needed assurances from AARO to handle it properly?

TMO

Following my previous entry's initial investigation and report on Source 0's testimony, I was particularly intrigued by Source 0's reference to working in the basement Pentagon office known as the TMO (Technology Management Office). It was claimed that they dealt with SAPs (Special Access Programs) and USAPs (Unacknowledged Special Access Programs) related to exotic technologies there.

Information on this supposed office is sparse but not impossible to find. Interestingly enough, much of the documentation on TMO comes from the CIA reading room.

Exhibit A: Center Lane/Dragoon Absorb

One of the first documents where TMO is mentioned concerns the Center Lane SAP under US Army INSCOM control, which was later transferred to a new SAP within the DIA.

The Center Lane program under INSCOM was a DoD psycho-energetic program involving remote viewing and telepathy, continuing practices developed by SRI (Stanford Research Institute) in the 70s. Notably, a recent study from last year has drawn renewed interest in this field.

A noteworthy point in the CIA document is the inclusion of the INSCOM HUMINT office in a memorandum to this status report. Does this suggest that PSI intelligence abilities are categorized as HUMINT within the USG?

This connection could align with previous reports on "Blue Border" and why UFO whistleblower David Grusch might be cautious about disclosing certain HUMINT information.

Furthermore, this document highlights that the Dragoon Absorb initiative (the official name for transferring the Center Lane program to the DIA) was presented to staff of the Senate Intelligence and House Intelligence Committees and approved by Congress.

The presentation of this program to staff (albeit only 2 staff across both committees) is confirmed in this document.

The last page of the Center Lane document includes significant handwritten notes about the efficacy of PSI within the existing Center Lane program at INSCOM/CIA. These notes appear to guide presenting the findings of the Center Lane program to a higher-up DoD official to gain approval for the program's continuation and transfer. Key points from these notes include:

Demonstrate for him that Product helps Intell w/o Nuts & Bolts how

examples need to be concrete

Key demonstrate it works

Exhibit B: "Focal Point"

Another mention of TMO within CIA documentation is this weekly report from 1987.

The TMO is mentioned alongside something called the 'Focal Point System' within the US Army. Interestingly, the USAF has its own Focal Point Office. Is this name alignment indicative of some sort of information-sharing/centralized network for specific types of requests related to sensitive programs?

A place where both 'Focal Point' and TMO come up again is in this CIA document referring to a situation where the CIA was upset about some loss of funds related to US Army support for CIA programs. The reply to this situation is from Major General W. H. Rice, the Director of the Joint Special Operations Agency.

Major General W. H. Rice mentions that records within the TMO office were reviewed, suggesting that the program in question was managed through there in some capacity. This letter from the Joint Special Operations Agency is noteworthy as the agency later became the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). JSOC is mentioned as being involved with Crash Retrievals (along with the CIA Office of Global Access) in this article from last year.

https://x.com/JoshTBoswell/status/1729519539363410039

Exhibit C: Private Industry Pipeline

Another document that has mention of TMO is this report from 1988, which discusses changes in the supply group structure and activities.

Within this excerpt, we find an unredacted name: Colonel Fisher, the head of TMO at the time. This is key for tracking and understanding the affiliations and career trajectory of key personnel involved in TMO, especially if this office is connected with the USAPs that Source 0 mentioned.

Colonel Fisher was appointed director of the Technology Management Office in 1988 and held this position until 1990. Upon leaving TMO, he was promoted to Brigadier General, and by 1993, he was a Major General commanding the 25th Infantry Division. From 1995 to 1997, he served as Chief of Staff for the Army's Forces Command. In 1997, he was promoted to Lieutenant General and commanded the First United States Army until his retirement in 1999. Notably, the next commander after Fisher was John M. Riggs, who later headed up the "Objective Force," likely coordinating with the TMO for Science & Technology programs.

After retirement, General Fisher took a position as Director of Advanced Technologies - Eastern Region within Lockheed Martin's recently formed Energy Systems division. This division emerged from the Martin Marietta/Lockheed merger and managed Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 1996 to 2000. Interestingly, Fisher's work email provided in a west point class of 1964 article was for ORNL (Oak Ridge National Lab), but things get strange from there.

Fisher stated his reason for accepting the position was to "help leverage the scientific and technological power of the 'Manhattan Project' to the advantage of the private sector."

Another perplexing point from the West Point article was that both his house and Lockheed Martin Energy Systems were listed at a residential address (he no longer lives there if he ever did in the first place, as it was sold in 2010). Fisher mentioned living in Atlanta and building a home in the area, which is over three hours from ORNL by car, suggesting he wasn't commuting daily. How then did he hold a high-level position within the lab?

According to Wikipedia, Fisher worked at Lockheed Martin Energy Systems at ORNL from 1999 to 2012, but this does not make sense as Lockheed Martin lost the contract to manage and operate ORNL in 2000 to UT-Battelle (an agreement between The University of Tennessee and Battelle Memorial Institute).

An archived Rotary Club article from 2011 shows Fisher held the title Director of Department of Defense Programs within the Global Security Directorate at ORNL, indicating he was brought onto the lab directly after the contract change.

A potential theory connecting back to the first article involves GTRI (Georgia Tech Research Institute), a UARC with locations nationwide. One of GTRI's locations is in Marietta, GA, home to Dobbins ARB, an Air Reserve Base serving as a research and manufacturing hub for the Air Force and Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin's presence is so large that they have their own zip code within the base. Lockheed Martin additionally conducts advanced technologies and lab development at this reserve base for Skunk Works programs alongside GTRI. GTRI has buildings within the Lockheed campus in Dobbins.

In addition to GTRI working with Lockheed, they also collaborate with ORNL, with Georgia Tech students making trips to ORNL or ORNL studies being conducted from facilities in Georgia. It is likely Fisher worked at the Lockheed Martin campus in Marietta, overseeing sensitive ORNL-related programs, explaining his ORNL email. When Lockheed lost the ORNL contract, Fisher continued working at Lockheed or GTRI facilities in Dobbins, making occasional trips to Oak Ridge.

This collaboration of military higher-ups, national labs, UARCs, and private industry on sensitive programs parallels previous reporting. The involvement of someone who oversaw US Army interests in USAPs related to exotic technology suggests a deliberate career trajectory.

There is another significant connection to ORNL that we'll explore later in the article.

Exhibit D: 9/11 Connection?

You read that heading correctly. While searching for TMO mentions, I found a reference in a book unrelated to NHI or UAP, dealing instead with covert program oversight post-Iran-Contra.

TMO appears to have controls and oversight over all "black" programs.

Furthermore, while researching this book, I came across this review on goodreads.com for it from 2008.

We can verify that the room mentioned in this review is in fact the room of the TMO office with this document.

This led to a search for the specific parts of the Pentagon destroyed in the 9/11 attack, revealing that TMO was indeed impacted.

Given that Source 0 worked with TMO from at least 2002-2005, the office still exists but changed locations post-9/11. The room number 1C460 stops appearing in documents after 1996, indicating this office was taken out in the attack.

Room 1C460

According to mentions of the TMO room extracted from this DoD phone book from 1996, there were many other agencies or branches housed in this location as well:

NCTS  WNY  Bgl96 202  6852154
Cantey  Samuel  COL  SARD  1C460  PNT

SAF/AQU  5D230  Pnt 703  695-6146
Hale  Diane  SARD  1C460  PNT 703  614-0152 

OUSDRE  301067  PNT 703  697-4813 
Keelihg  Jesse  C LTC  SARD  1C460  PNT

OASA(MRA)  2E591  PNT 703  697-1502
KezarChasASARD  1C460  PNT 703  614-0152 

SAF/SD  4C953  PNT 703  697-8594
Kimberly  Jack  MAJ  SARD  1C460  PNT 

AFPOA/DPD  5C266  PNT 703
Lee  Eleanor  C OACS  1C460  PNT 703  697-7411 

NRL  231  Bg58 202  767-1893
Lichtenberger  Cheryl  SARD  1C460  PNT

NSEA  7W54  NC3 703  602-80%
Schneller  George  LTC  SARD  1C460  PNT

Dir  Aviation  &IEW  Sys
Dir  Spec  Progs  COL  S E Cantey  1C460 703-614-0152

Here's a best effort translation of all of these acronyms:

Naval Computer and Telecommunications Station Western Hemisphere

Samuel Cantey - System for Award Management Registration Division

Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics

Diane Hale - System for Award Management Registration Division

Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering

Jesse Keelihg - System for Award Management Registration Division

Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs

Chas Kezar - Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Development

Office of the Secretary of the Air Force for Space

Jack Kimberly - System for Award Management Registration Division

Air Force Personnel Operations Agency, Directorate of Personnel Data Systems

Eleanor Lee - Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff

Naval Research Laboratory

Cheryl Lichtenberger - System for Award Management Registration Division

Naval Sea Systems Command

George Schneller - System for Award Management Registration Division

Directorate of Aviation and Intelligence, Electronic Warfare, and Sensors

Samuel Cantey - Director of Special Programs

So, it appears that all these people work for the agencies/branches listed above their names, with the roles listed after their names, coordinating within TMO.

Where in the World is Kirkpatrick?

Circling back to ORNL, there's no direct documentation on the transition of the Director of DoD Programs in the Global Security Directorate. However, it seems this position evolved into the Director for Defense and Homeland Security Programs in the National Security Sciences Directorate, currently held by Craig C. Moss II, a 21-year Army veteran.

The Global Security Directorate likely became the National Security Sciences Directorate, as suggested by an article mentioning an appointment to the Global Security Directorate while tagged with the National Security Sciences Directorate. This also indicates that the change happened recently as well.

Interestingly, recently appointed to a high-level position in the same directorate for the same defense programs is none other than Sean M. Kirkpatrick, the former Director of AARO.

Looking into recent reporting by Politico on the released "Kona Blue" prospective USAP to study crashed non-human craft "if they ever were to crash on earth" as the prospective USAP implies. We can see an additional connection in plain sight.

It's likely that this partnership with AARO involves ORNL and GTRI as the other entities.

What are the odds that the former director of AARO would secure a position in the same directorate as previous TMO directors, overseeing programs partnered with the very office he recently left at the Pentagon?

Conclusion

The TMO is clearly relevant to Source 0's testimony, connecting several significant points. It appears to function as an Army office supporting CIA, DOE, USAF, and Navy programs, as indicated by CIA documents referencing the 'Center Lane' INSCOM program. This suggests that the Army's role in exotic USAPs may be more extensive than previously understood, pointing to a broader and intricate network of secret research and development.

This reveals crucial details that bring us closer to understanding 'The Program' as a cohesive entity.

The Claims

While exploring the new Steven Greer archive at dpiarchive.com, I came across a witness listed as #101432 within the database.

Upon further investigation, I located related documentation tied to this witness number, which allowed me to identify the individual behind it.

To shield their identity, I will not include their name anywhere directly in this article. I will simply refer to them as "Source 0."

Source 0's Credentials

Source 0 claimed that they worked for the US Army CID (Criminal Investigation Division) as a Special Agent and participated in an investigation of a Army Lieutenant General. They also provided some background documentation to prove that they were who they said they were.

Source 0's Testimony and Investigation

Source 0 claims that from 2002 to 2005, they were assigned to an investigation directly by the Director and Commanding General of Army CID. They were tasked with leading an investigation alongside the FBI into a Lieutenant General regarding potential felonies within an extremely sensitive USAP. They had to travel with the FBI Special Agent between Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and other locations worldwide for this case. One of the alleged incidents occurred within Source 0's judicial jurisdiction, giving source 0's office a venue for prosecution. This is one of the reasons why the case ended up in their hands (Source 0 also provided proof of their work in Los Angeles). The investigation became highly political and stressful, with Army CID HQ wanting the case closed as quickly as possible.

During the investigation, Source 0 and the FBI agent confronted the Lieutenant General in Hawaii during an official trip. They cornered him in his hotel room to question him about an inappropriate relationship with a contractor from BAE Systems, who was his personal aide. They were also trying to determine if this contractor had access to highly sensitive material she was not cleared to see, at the direction of the Lieutenant General, which would constitute a felony.

The supposed end of this investigation was that the UAP-related SAPs were so important to national security that the DOJ was not able to get the access needed to retrieve the necessary material and evidence to prosecute. This meant the UAP-related SAPs were effectively "above the law." The DOJ was furious about this, eventually leading to some deal being made in 2004 where the US Army agreed to "retire" the Lieutenant General early and that he’d lose a rank. That would be his only punishment for the felonies he allegedly committed.

Source 0 claims that they were read into 18 SAPs that were all related. He was only the third person from all of Army CID to be read into all the programs individually (which had an access list of 6,000 personnel) and all the programs together (out of only 2,500 personnel from the initial 6,000 that had access to the different SAPs), giving him access to all the SAPs in this group related to UAPs, non-human intelligence, and exotic technology. This makes him a firsthand witness and likely one of the individuals who spoke to the Senate Intelligence Committee and the ICIG. He stated that security was so tight that every time he wanted to access a different SAP within the web of UAP SAPs, his clearance had to be moved and re-checked by the Security Manager at each SAP.

This access was crucial for investigating the potential criminal acts committed by the Lieutenant General. One specific incident mentioned was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where the Lieutenant General allegedly demonstrated cloaking technology on a UAP in a large SCIF to his contractor aide, who did not have the necessary clearance for these programs. Source 0 also mentioned specific offices, task forces, and locations, which will be explored in more depth later.

Based on some of the notes, it seems that the actual identity of the BAE Systems contractor was relayed to The Disclosure Project, which would be extremely vital in referencing events surrounding what supposedly happened here. If this contractor was assigned to the same organization or command unit as the Lieutenant General and was suddenly reassigned or fired in 2004-2005, it would go a long way in verifying the veracity of this information.

The General

During the course of this research, I identified the Lieutenant General who was the subject of the investigation: John M. Riggs. He was the Director of the Objective Force Task Force at the time of his retirement, responsible for creating a high-tech Army for the 21st century and transforming the US Army. Riggs served on active duty with the US Army for over 39 years before becoming an Aviation & Strategic Defense Consultant. He retired in 2005 with a loss of rank due to "misuse of contractors."

This can all be verified with this consultant company bio

Reading a Baltimore Sun article about his "retirement", things that we can officially reference get even more interesting.

According to the article, Riggs was told by senior Army officials that he would be retired with a reduced rank because of "infractions considered so minor that they were not placed in his official record." The fact that a three-star General was abruptly and unceremoniously retired, losing a rank over something not even documented in his official record, suggests there may have been more significant underlying issues.

Additionally, Riggs was effectively told to leave immediately and was denied the traditional parade or celebration ceremony usually awarded to retiring Generals. The article notes how unusual this treatment was for an officer of his caliber, suggesting that the US Army does not typically punish and force high-ranking officers to retire over 'minor infractions.' It is more likely that whatever occurred was severe enough to demand action but sensitive enough not to be officially recorded.

The stated reason for his loss in rank was that he 'allowed outside contractors to perform work they were not supposed to do, creating an adverse command climate.' This could align with the claim of having an inappropriate relationship with a contractor subordinate and/or exposing her to extremely sensitive USAP material against security protocols.

Fascinatingly, there are more explosive reasons given further down the article for why the Lieutenant General could have been so aggressively administratively punished.

Furthermore, the article explicitly mentions that allegations of misconduct between the General and a contractor were being investigated by multiple entities. Although the claims were never substantiated by either Army CID or the Army Inspector General, Source 0 asserts that the Army CID was not primarily interested in the inappropriate relationship but needed additional information to build their case regarding other allegations. The article also notes that Riggs was questioned in a related criminal investigation, which corroborates Source 0's claims. Ultimately, the DOJ was unable to obtain the necessary access to the USAPs to gather the evidence required to prosecute Riggs, ending the investigation with no charges brought against him.

The involvement of the Army Criminal Investigation Division in investigating an alleged consensual relationship raises further questions. According to Army Regulation 195-2, the Army CID only involves itself in allegations of 'Adult Private Consensual Sexual Misconduct' (APCSM) when there are aggravating circumstances; otherwise, such matters would typically be investigated by the Army Inspector General.

What were the General's Assignments?

The Lieutenant General was tasked with transforming the US Army into a more high-tech fighting force, utilizing armored vehicles, drone aircraft, and sensors. It would make sense that a person tasked with such innovation for the largest military unit in the world would need access to the best and latest technology, wouldn't it? Source 0 suggests that this Objective Force Task Force (OFTF) was directly tied into the UAP-related SAPs, and that once Lieutenant General Riggs was retired, the unit name was changed. According to Source 0, the current name of this unit is the Multi-Domain Task Force. Source 0 also claims that during the course of his investigation, he discovered that exotic, advanced technology was being studied all over the world by labs, many of them being University Affiliated Research Centers (UARC). The implication is that the OFTF somehow integrated with these labs, performing analysis and engineering work or doing retrieval of craft/material.

Objective Force

According to a technical report hosted on the DTIC website titled Training Chrysalis: Applications of Special Forces Training in the Development of the Objective Force, the purpose of OFTF was to lead the development of the Objective Force and its FCS (Future Combat Systems).

Further documentation and information are available on the official record in the form of a report on the Objective Force and its importance in the Army Transformation campaign. This report, published in the Army AL&T magazine on the Objective Force and signed off by Lieutenant General John M. Riggs himself while Director of the OFTF, starts to connect a lot of dots.

The Army's main vision for the Objective Force was to create a force that was 'responsive, deployable, agile, versatile, lethal, survivable, and sustainable' anywhere in the world. Achieving this would require innovative technology developed from Army Materiel Command (AMC), Research, Development, and Engineering Centers (RDECs), and the Army Research Laboratory (ARL).

Furthermore, the article states:

"To focus on the Objective Force, the AMC Commanding General has established a Technology Integration Board (TIB) and an AMC OF Integrated Product Team (IPT). The TIB is composed of the Technical Directors from the AMC RDECs, the ARL Director, the AMC Deputy Chief of Staff for Research, Development and Acquisition (DCSRDA), and the Assistant DCSRDA/Science and Technology (S&T) Advisor. The TIB provides broad guidance to the AMC OF IPT."

and also

"Future Combat Systems (FCS) are essential to the Objective Force, and the AMC OF IPT is engaged in advancing three efforts to facilitate technology transfer between the AMC RDECs and FCS industry teams. These are a technical library, an overarching Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), and a risk-management program. The following paragraphs describe each of these."

This describes setting up an umbrella, overarching CRADA to allow for inter-program transfer of technology and material from industry teams (private contractors) to the Army Materiel Command and then to research labs. This is expanded upon in more detail further on:

"The second effort is the overarching CRADA (Figure 2). The purpose is to standardize and streamline the business arrangements between the AMC RDECs and the FCS industry teams. The overarching CRADA will include corporate business arrangements common to all RDECs, yet will still provide flexibility to accommodate individual industry teams. Potential common business arrangements include exchange of data, trademarks, patents, inventions, joint inventions, and proprietary and protected information. Under the umbrella of the overarching CRADA, cooperative projects will be negotiated between the RDECs and FCS industry teams in coordination with AMC Headquarters. The cooperative projects will include business arrangements specific to the RDECs. Potential specific business arrangements include scope of work, personnel resources, transfer of funds, testing, and test facilities. The overarching CRADA will encourage government and industry teaming and will ensure equitable treatment for all participants."

The following diagrams are provided to help illustrate how this CRADA-AMC-Objective Force relationship would work.

It is important to note that the names of some of the Army's Research and Development commands have changed since the publication of this magazine article.

For example, TARDEC is now CCDCGVSC which stands for United States Army CCDC (Combat Capabilities Development Command) Ground Vehicle Systems Center.

The University Connection

Source 0 mentions that at least some of these Unacknowledged Special Access Programs are integrated within the University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs), and that these exotic technologies are being studied and analyzed in nondescript commercial buildings. This connection can be officially referenced. The universities designated as UARCs to the Army specifically at the time of Source 0's investigation were:

• University of Southern California: Institute for Creative Technologies

• Georgia Institute of Technology: Georgia Tech Research Institute

• University of California at Santa Barbara: Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies

All of these institutions boast that they are directly integrated with the Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Army Materiel Command (AMC), and other Army Research Centers:

MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies

Georgia Institute of Technology: Georgia Tech Research Institute

University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies

University of California Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies

There is even a direct mention of one of these University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs) in the context of the Objective Force within the Army AL&T magazine article.

If there were Objective Force Science and Technology (S&T) programs that were highly sensitive, involving exotic technologies, it would seem likely they would be within University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs), according to the Army's own admitted organizational structure.

Another official reference point to Source 0's claim is mentioned: one of the locations of this exotic technology is at Research Triangle Park. That is the location of the Army Research Office (ARO), under the auspices of the Army Research Laboratory.

This is what the main building looks like at ARO: a normal-looking office building on the outside. However, all other buildings attached to the complex are interconnected with elevated walkways.

The building seems to have a high level of security based on the visit requirements and controlled infrastructure:

"Visits to ARL’s Army Research Office by U.S. and non-U.S. citizens must be sponsored by an ARL employee and coordinated by their sponsor with the ARO Security Office prior to the visitor’s anticipated arrival. All visitors will be escorted by their sponsor while at the facility except for those DoD military, DoD civilian, and DoD contractor personnel who have undergone at least a National Agency Check (NAC) type personnel security investigation."

Bringing the UAPs In

We've established through official documentation the following:

1. John M. Riggs was retired at a loss of rank, likely due to more severe reasons than stated on his official record.

2. The Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) was involved in its own investigation of General Riggs for alleged felonies involving a contractor.

3. General John M. Riggs was assigned to the Director of the Objective Force Task Force (OFTF) at the time of his retirement.

4. OFTF was tasked with leading Army Transformation and Future Combat Systems (FCS) integration from Army Research Centers, Army Research Laboratory, and Army Materiel Command.

5. Army Research Centers are intertwined with private contractors and University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs).

6. Objective Force Science and Technology (S&T) programs would have been embedded within the same research center/UARC structure.

7. There's a nondescript office building run by ARL's Army Research Office in Research Triangle, NC, that aligns exactly with Source 0's description and has a high level of security.

The last part of this story is that the actual material in which General Riggs exposed his contractor aide (that he may or may not have been having an affair with) was something of non-human origin. How could we possibly officially reference something like this? These programs are supposedly above the law and deeply classified. One way is to look at where something that was publicly alleged to be potentially "non-human" went when the government obtained it. This brings in TTSA (To The Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences). They obtained a piece of material that they believed to be of non-human origin, and through government contacts, former AATIP Director Lue Elizondo facilitated the transfer of this material into the US Army's hands.

We get a rare glimpse of what the US Government might do (normally in secret) when they get a chance to acquire exotic material.

Where did this Material get transferred to?

That's right, this material went (via CRADA) to the US Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command's Ground Vehicle Systems Center (CCDC GVSC). This research command was mentioned in connection with the Objective Force and, therefore, the Objective Force Task Force. This was handled under the same cooperative agreement umbrella. This suggests that this system and research structure were still in use as of at least 2019 and that it involves exotic material.

Taking it a step further, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, which is a University Affiliated Research Center (UARC), works directly with this Army Research Center:

"MIT Lincoln Laboratory is working with the Army Ground Vehicle System Center to prototype and demonstrate autonomy concepts that leverage recent advances in computation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. A key element of this research effort, called Autonomous Mobility Through Intelligence Collaboration (AMIC), is adopting a data-driven approach to autonomy development."

There is another extremely relevant and important connection.

These research centers and their organizational structures have undergone several reworkings, updates, and consolidations since the time of the Objective Force Task Force. We can track a lot of this.

Army Research, Development, and Engineering Centers were originally under REDCOM (Research, Development, Engineering Command). The management of this Command then transitioned from Army Materiel Command (AMC) into the newly formed Army Futures Command in 2019:

"ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. -- The Army Materiel Command (AMC) and Army Futures Command (AFC) held a ceremony on Jan. 31, transitioning the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) from AMC to AFC. The official date of the transfer is Feb. 3, during which RDECOM will be renamed the Combat Capabilities Development Command."

This transition was part of a move to modernize the army and mentions Multi-Domain. According to Source 0, MDTF (Multi Domain Task Force) is the new OFTF name.

"CCDC joining AFC is the next step in the Army's effort to transform its approach to modernizing critical core capabilities that will give Soldiers and allies a decisive edge in battle. As the modernization strategy focuses on delivering capabilities to support Multi-Domain Operations by 2028, CCDC will maintain a balance between scientific research to support MDO and technology that may not be developed until 2050 or beyond."

Next, the article states the following:

"To prepare for the move to AFC, CCDC S&T advisors engaged with the Modernization Task Force, which became the AFC Headquarters, and the Cross Functional Teams to help drive the modernization process. The CFTs are composed of subject matter experts from the requirements, acquisition, science and technology, test and evaluation, resourcing, contracting, cost and sustainment communities."

Coronel Karl Nell became Modernization Advisor to Army Futures Command in 2018. It is likely he was part of this Modernization Task Force as Nell himself asserts he was a 'key contributor' to the process and reported directly to the Vice Chief of Staff. Karl Nell was then chosen for a position on the UAPTF in 2021-2022 as the US Army liaison.

Why was he chosen out of all individuals in the US Army? Was it because he had direct access to the programs under the Army Futures Command (which included all of the University Affiliated Research Center embedded Objective Force Task Force, now Multi Domain Science and Technology programs)?

Karl Nell now publicly states that he has Zero Doubt that non-human intelligence exists and asserts that on video and in print.

“His assertion concerning the existence of a terrestrial arms race occurring sub-rosa over the past eighty years focused on reverse engineering technologies of unknown origin is fundamentally correct, as is the indisputable realization that at least some of these technologies of unknown origin derive from non-human intelligence,” said Karl Nell, the retired Army Colonel who worked with Grusch on the UAP Task Force.

One of the reporters of @Debriefmedia article has gone on the record saying that Nell had first-hand information to UAP reverse engineering programs.

Conclusion

The case of Source 0 and their testimony about the investigation into Lieutenant General John M. Riggs unveils a complex web of classified military programs, advanced technologies, and potential felonies hidden under the guise of national security. The documentation and testimonies support the notion that highly sensitive Unacknowledged Aerial Phenomena (UAP)-related Special Access Programs (SAPs) exist and are protected to the extent that they may be above standard legal and judicial processes.

The involvement of University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs) in studying these advanced technologies highlights the extensive collaboration between the military and academic institutions, reinforcing the credibility of these claims. While the specifics of the technologies and incidents remain classified, the connections drawn from official records, witness testimonies, and investigative reports provide a compelling narrative of deep, possibly non-human, technological advancements being shielded from public and legal scrutiny.

Respecting the anonymity and privacy of witnesses like Source 0 is paramount, as their revelations contribute significantly to understanding these hidden aspects of military research.