XPost: alt.ufo.reports, sci.skeptic, sci.military.naval   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: area18@cnn.com   
      
   WASHINGTON — In the $600 billion annual Defense Department   
   budgets, the $22 million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat   
   Identification Program was almost impossible to find.   
      
   Which was how the Pentagon wanted it.   
      
   For years, the program investigated reports of unidentified   
   flying objects, according to Defense Department officials,   
   interviews with program participants and records obtained by The   
   New York Times. It was run by a military intelligence official,   
   Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring, deep   
   within the building’s maze.   
      
   The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the   
   existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012.   
   But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for   
   the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. For   
   the past five years, they say, officials with the program have   
   continued to investigate episodes brought to them by service   
   members, while also carrying out their other Defense Department   
   duties.   
      
   The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in   
   2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of   
   Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority   
   leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space   
   phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research   
   company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of   
   Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA   
   to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space.   
      
   On CBS’s “60 Minutes” in May, Mr. Bigelow said he was   
   “absolutely convinced” that aliens exist and that U.F.O.s have   
   visited Earth.   
      
   Working with Mr. Bigelow’s Las Vegas-based company, the program   
   produced documents that describe sightings of aircraft that   
   seemed to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of   
   propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of lift.   
      
   Officials with the program have also studied videos of   
   encounters between unknown objects and American military   
   aircraft — including one released in August of a whitish oval   
   object, about the size of a commercial plane, chased by two Navy   
   F/A-18F fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Nimitz off the   
   coast of San Diego in 2004.   
      
   Mr. Reid, who retired from Congress this year, said he was proud   
   of the program. “I’m not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got   
   this thing going,” Mr. Reid said in a recent interview in   
   Nevada. “I think it’s one of the good things I did in my   
   congressional service. I’ve done something that no one has done   
   before.”   
      
   Two other former senators and top members of a defense spending   
   subcommittee — Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, and Daniel K.   
   Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat — also supported the program. Mr.   
   Stevens died in 2010, and Mr. Inouye in 2012.   
      
   While not addressing the merits of the program, Sara Seager, an   
   astrophysicist at M.I.T., cautioned that not knowing the origin   
   of an object does not mean that it is from another planet or   
   galaxy. “When people claim to observe truly unusual phenomena,   
   sometimes it’s worth investigating seriously,” she said. But,   
   she added, “what people sometimes don’t get about science is   
   that we often have phenomena that remain unexplained.”   
      
   James E. Oberg, a former NASA space shuttle engineer and the   
   author of 10 books on spaceflight who often debunks U.F.O.   
   sightings, was also doubtful. “There are plenty of prosaic   
   events and human perceptual traits that can account for these   
   stories,” Mr. Oberg said. “Lots of people are active in the air   
   and don’t want others to know about it. They are happy to lurk   
   unrecognized in the noise, or even to stir it up as camouflage.”   
      
   Still, Mr. Oberg said he welcomed research. “There could well be   
   a pearl there,” he said.   
      
   In response to questions from The Times, Pentagon officials this   
   month acknowledged the existence of the program, which began as   
   part of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Officials insisted that   
   the effort had ended after five years, in 2012.   
      
   “It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues   
   that merited funding, and it was in the best interest of the DoD   
   to make a change,” a Pentagon spokesman, Thomas Crosson, said in   
   an email, referring to the Department of Defense.   
      
   But Mr. Elizondo said the only thing that had ended was the   
   effort’s government funding, which dried up in 2012. From then   
   on, Mr. Elizondo said in an interview, he worked with officials   
   from the Navy and the C.I.A. He continued to work out of his   
   Pentagon office until this past October, when he resigned to   
   protest what he characterized as excessive secrecy and internal   
   opposition.   
      
   “Why aren’t we spending more time and effort on this issue?” Mr.   
   Elizondo wrote in a resignation letter to Defense Secretary Jim   
   Mattis.   
      
   Mr. Elizondo said that the effort continued and that he had a   
   successor, whom he declined to name.   
      
   U.F.O.s have been repeatedly investigated over the decades in   
   the United States, including by the American military. In 1947,   
   the Air Force began a series of studies that investigated more   
   than 12,000 claimed U.F.O. sightings before it was officially   
   ended in 1969. The project, which included a study code-named   
   Project Blue Book, started in 1952, concluded that most   
   sightings involved stars, clouds, conventional aircraft or spy   
   planes, although 701 remained unexplained.   
      
   Robert C. Seamans Jr., the secretary of the Air Force at the   
   time, said in a memorandum announcing the end of Project Blue   
   Book that it “no longer can be justified either on the ground of   
   national security or in the interest of science.”   
      
   Mr. Reid said his interest in U.F.O.s came from Mr. Bigelow. In   
   2007, Mr. Reid said in the interview, Mr. Bigelow told him that   
   an official with the Defense Intelligence Agency had approached   
   him wanting to visit Mr. Bigelow’s ranch in Utah, where he   
   conducted research.   
      
   Mr. Reid said he met with agency officials shortly after his   
   meeting with Mr. Bigelow and learned that they wanted to start a   
   research program on U.F.O.s. Mr. Reid then summoned Mr. Stevens   
   and Mr. Inouye to a secure room in the Capitol.   
      
   “I had talked to John Glenn a number of years before,” Mr. Reid   
   said, referring to the astronaut and former senator from Ohio,   
   who died in 2016. Mr. Glenn, Mr. Reid said, had told him he   
   thought that the federal government should be looking seriously   
   into U.F.O.s, and should be talking to military service members,   
   particularly pilots, who had reported seeing aircraft they could   
   not identify or explain.   
      
   The sightings were not often reported up the military’s chain of   
   command, Mr. Reid said, because service members were afraid they   
   would be laughed at or stigmatized.   
      
   The meeting with Mr. Stevens and Mr. Inouye, Mr. Reid said, “was   
   one of the easiest meetings I ever had.”   
      
   He added, “Ted Stevens said, ‘I’ve been waiting to do this since   
   I was in the Air Force.’” (The Alaska senator had been a pilot   
      
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