Former Pentagon UFO Investigator: ‘UFOlogists Tried to Break into My House’

“People have threatened my wife and daughter and tried to hack into our online accounts,” claims Sean Kirkpatrick. “China and Russia didn’t try to influence me as much as these people.”

And so, writes The Guardian, after 18 months of work, Kirkpatrick announced his resignation in December last year. Then, last week, the Pentagon’s All Areas Anomaly Resolution Office released the first part of a report it had been working on, concluding that there was no evidence “that any U.S. government investigation, academically sponsored research or official expert commission confirmed that any UAP observation [неопознанного воздушного явления] was extraterrestrial technology.”

The findings of the Anomaly Resolution Office in all areas of the Pentagon have plunged the world of ufology – the science of UFOs, whose practitioners are known as ufologists – into a stupor, writes The Guardian.

After all, just last July, former intelligence officer David Grush told a packed Congressional hearing that for decades the US government had been collecting crashed alien spaceships and trying to reconstruct them. True UFO believers thought we were closer than ever to full disclosure; it’s only a matter of time before the government rolls out flying saucers onto the White House lawn.

Kirkpatrick observed this hearing. Over the course of three hours and through testimony from two former US Navy pilots, David Fravor and Ryan Graves, Congress learned of unknown flying objects performing impossible maneuvers, or that the government had “non-human biological agents” recovered from crashed spacecraft. At one point, Representative Tim Burchett asked Grush if he had any personal knowledge of people being harmed in attempts to hide extraterritorial technology. Grush replied: “Yes.”

Burchett then asked Grush if he had heard that anyone had been killed. The former intelligence officer responded: “I have referred people with this information to the appropriate authorities.” Grush also claimed that the men in black were pursuing his case and harassing other witnesses.

It is important to note that Grush said that he did not see the spaceships and “biologics” with his own eyes; but someone in the intelligence community told him the story, The Guardian notes.

Naturally, Kirkpatrick tried to talk to him. But although Grush had dropped much of the scoop months earlier on cable channel NewsNation, when he was asked to discuss it with the only person in the US government who really needed to hear the story, he was a no-show. “We tried to contact him four or five times to get him to come,” Kirkpatrick says. “And at the time I left, he refused to come for a number of reasons.”

Shawn Kirkpatrick says the evidence against Grush’s claims is overwhelming. “There is no evidence to support any of the claims or any extraterrestrial reverse engineering or ‘human biologics’ or whatever you want to call it,” he states. “You see this story come up every couple of decades, and it’s almost the same story.”

And this comes, he says, from the ufologists who caused him so much grief – a group of people who can only be described as America’s new ufology lobby, writes The Guardian.

The 21st century UFO craze began on December 16, 2017, after the New York Times reported that the Pentagon had created something called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). Supposedly, it was a secret unit investigating Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAP (the US Department of Defense’s preferred acronym for UFOs). That article also included three videos, the most compelling of which showed an eerily flying saucer-like object moving with no visible means of propulsion.

The story went viral and UFOs became mainstream. Serious people now took the little green men and their spaceships very seriously. Barack Obama said in an interview with The Late Late Show with James Corden that there are things happening in our skies that the US government simply cannot explain.

However, not everything in the New York Times article was accurate, writes The Guardian. Yes, the Pentagon did have a UFO program, but it was called the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP), not AATIP, and it had a different beginning.

Sitting next to Grush at those congressional hearings was George Knapp, a journalist who co-wrote a 2006 book called Hunting the Werewolf. Knapp’s book tells stories of disappearing livestock, “invisible objects emitting magnetic fields,” and flying orbs circling the eponymous Changeling Ranch, a sprawling property in Utah.

The book turned out to be useful for modern ufology. She found her way to James Lakatsky, an intelligence officer for the US Department of Defense, who was smitten by her and contacted aviation billionaire Robert Bigelow, owner of the Changeling Ranch at the time. Bigelow allowed Lakatsky to visit the ranch and investigate; one evening Lakatsky claimed to have seen an apparition in the kitchen, described in Knapp and Lakatsky’s 2021 book as an “unearthly technological device” that took the form of “a complex translucent, yellowish, tubular structure.”

Lakatsky and Bigelow reported their findings to the late Harry Reid, a Nevada senator who also had a keen interest in UFOs. Bigelow had long been a sponsor of Reed’s campaigns and convinced him that the time had come to take on UFOs and related phenomena.

There was one problem: a defense program focused on UFOs would not ease any of the Pentagon’s financial obligations, so James Lakatsky hid the true purpose of his research under an unremarkable acronym: AAWSAP, which quickly launched a search for poltergeists, aliens, and “a bizarre hybrid of a small dinosaur and big beaver.”

The Pentagon gave $22 million to AAWSAP in 2007—and AAWSAP gave the funds to none other than Bigelow and his company Bigelow Aerospace, who used the money to pursue UFOs and paranormal activity at Skinwalker Ranch.

In 2012, the Pentagon got wind of what was really going on and shut down AAWSAP. There is no evidence that AAWSAP has detected spaceships or aliens. But the myth took root, continues The Guardian.

Kirkpatrick’s report said that all of the stories about alien bodies and crashed spaceships that Grush circulated in Congress “came largely from the same group of individuals who are associated with the AAWSAP/AATIP program” and “have consistently worked with each other.” friend in various UAP-related efforts.”

He now says their beliefs are as cyclical as their associations with each other. “Some of the same core group of people approached one of these industry partners and convinced them to look at a piece of material that they claimed was part of a crashed UFO. And then they turned around and pointed at this company and said, “Hey, they reverse engineer crashed UFOs?” Well, they were the ones who gave it to them.” However, he and his team at AARO looked into it. “It turns out that this is not actually a UFO. Most likely, this is a fragment of a rocket body used in Air Force tests,” he says.

What about leaked UFO footage like the one published in the New York Times? Kirkpatrick says there isn’t enough data to make a definitive analysis of any of them, but insists that, like all the stories that have crossed his desk, they have mundane explanations that don’t involve space aliens. The spinning flying saucer-shaped object is likely a reflection from a distant heat source. “The source can be anything. Even a weather balloon will emit such a glare if there is enough shiny metal on it and the sun is in the right place,” he claims.

But it’s not about the evidence—some people can never be swayed. “There is an absolute true belief that suggests that it is more like a religion than an actual fact,” Kirkpatrick says. “And these are the people you will never convince, no matter what you offer them.” I can post photos of classified programs that they mixed up, and they still won’t believe it. They would say, “No, it was produced by alien technology.” And what if the government eventually gets their hands on the aliens and their flying saucers? It’s not their job to keep it a secret. It will be passed on to NASA immediately, and NASA will immediately will reveal it to everyone. That’s their job.”