Office Which ‘Lied’ And ‘Persecuted Whistleblowers’ Sidelined By Congress From U.S. UFO Investigation
Written by Christopher Sharp - 23 December 2022
President Joe Biden today signed the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act into law, which has been shaped by Congress over previous months.
Of note, the legislation contains new provisions relating to what is now known as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).
Provisions include protections and reporting mechanisms for potential whistleblowers involved in alleged UAP retrieval and reverse-engineering programs, and the requirement for a new report detailing the historical records and documents belonging to the intelligence community relating to UAP from 1 January 1945 onwards.
Of note, the legislation also means that Dr Sean Kirkpatrick, Director of the UAP office known as the AARO, will now report directly to Deputy Secretary of Defense, Kathleen Hicks, and the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, Stacey Dixon, on all operational and security matters relating to the AARO.
Only administrative matters will now be reported to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security (OUSDI&S), where a UAP office has been located since 2021, meaning that it would effectively be sidelined on the most important elements of UAP investigations.
Speaking to Liberation Times, Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough commented:
‘Per the FY23 NDAA enacted today, as Director of AARO, Dr Kirkpatrick will continue reporting to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security for AARO administrative matters.
‘He will report to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence on operational and security matters.
‘I refer you to Congress regarding why they made that change.’
Liberation Times has contacted the office of Senate Intelligence Committee Chair, Senator Mark Warner, for further comment and is awaiting a response.
Former Director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), Lue Elizondo, has previously warned of the involvement from OUSDI&S, stating:
‘Please, please, please contact your representatives and let them know this is unacceptable and not in the best interest of the American people. The USDI is the one single office that has continuously lied about this topic and persecuted whistleblowers.’
In an open letter published in November 2021, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon was scathing of OUSDI&S, writing:
‘As a former OSD staffer myself, I'm shocked that the DepSecDef would assign the UAP function to an oversight staff with no UAP funding, line authority, contracting, command, or technical capabilities.
‘Indeed, the inability of USDI to engage effectively on the UAP issue is why so little has changed or been accomplished since 2004.’
The confirmation of this move comes six days after Ronald Moultrie, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, hosted an AARO press roundtable with Dr Kirkpatrick.
At that roundtable, Moultrie commented:
“As I said to congressional leaders in May, we are fully committed to the principles of openness and accountability to the American people.
“We are committed to sharing as much detail with the public as we can. With that, I’d like to turn this over to Dr Kirkpatrick to share some of the progress that we’ve made since AARO’s establishment.”
Going forward, Moultrie will be less involved in the day-to-day running of the AARO.
Eyebrows were raised in April 2021, when it was confirmed that Director of Defense Intelligence, Garry Reid, was Executive Secretary of the OUSDI&S UAP office previously known as AOIMSG. That was despite Lue Elizondo making a complaint accusing Reid of playing a central role in obfuscating information regarding the UAP topic.
In his complaint, Elizondo accused Reid of ‘malicious activities, coordinated disinformation, professional misconduct, whistleblower reprisal, and explicit threats.’
Elizondo told The Debrief:
“He was one of the biggest obstacles to the DoD’s investigations and public transparency of unidentified aerial phenomena.”
Despite being removed from his position, in July 2022, Pentagon spokesperson, Susan Gough, confirmed that Reid was a Senior Advisor to the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Scott Berrier.
From now on, OUSDI&S and Reid’s former colleagues will be removed from the operational and security facets of the AARO - the most significant aspects of its efforts, meaning Moultrie’s office will no longer play a pivotal role in its operations.