It’s been almost two and a half years since the United States Navy officially confirmed and released three videos showing unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP, or UFOs as some of us still call them) performing confounding maneuvers in the vicinity of some of our warships. That was only one step in an ongoing process that we’ve known of since December of 2017 wherein the American government has slowly but surely expanded the conversation on this subject and the Pentagon has stepped up its investigation of the phenomenon, largely under the directions of the United States Congress. The most recent development was the announcement of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
But three videos really weren’t enough to quench anyone’s appetite for more information. Within 24 hours of the official release, John Greenewald jr., the proprietor of The Black Vault, filed a FOIA request with the Navy. If there were three videos collected over a space of at least seventeen years, there should be more, right? So John asked the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) for all of them. That began a journey of nearly two and a half years, during which Greenewald would see denials, the rejection of appeals, and transfers from one office to another. That latest disappointing step in this saga came on Thursday of this week when John finally received an answer from the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. You won’t be getting any more of our UFO videos because they “contain sensitive information pertaining to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) and are classified and are exempt from disclosure…” Read the full response and history of this quest here.
A new case was filed DON-NAVY-2022-010360 to N2/N6, and only two months after that was filed on July 11, 2022, The Black Vault received the official denial.
“The UAP Task Force has responded back to DNS-36 and have stated that the requested videos contain sensitive information pertaining to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) and are classified and are exempt from disclosure in their entirety under exemption 5 U.S.C. § 552 (b)(1) in accordance with Executive Order 13526 and the UAP Security Classification Guide,” Gary Cason, Deputy Director, DON FOIA/PA Program Office, said in the response letter. “The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities. No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.”
Along with their standard response, the Navy provided what Greenewald described as an “uncharacteristic” supplemental explanation for the denial, explaining why they previously released three videos but were not going to release the rest of them nor even tell him how many more they had. The original three had already been out in the public through unofficial channels, but the rest have not. You will also find the details of that rather dubious-sounding explanation at the link.
So what’s the real story? What might be in those videos that could turn out to be such a dire threat to national security? A friend of ours, Dan Zetterström, offered a couple of possibilities this week.
So why would they harm national security? Because they show sensitive equipment…or because they show holes in US defence capabilities that could exploited? Maybe a bit of both? #ufotwitter #UFO #UFOs #UAP #UAPtransparency #UAPtwitter https://t.co/eZDu9SXbm8
— Dan Zetterström (@TheZignal) September 10, 2022
I don’t know about that, though I suppose anything is possible. But it’s difficult to imagine what sort of technical details or other data might be revealed in the rest of the videos. The original three, GOFAST, GIMBAL, and FLIR, all had the Head Up Display data (HUD) included in the videos. That should have been the part that might have revealed the most military information. I have long argued that they could easily trim all of the HUD data from any other videos and just show us whatever it was they were filming. But the Navy clearly disagrees.
One thing to note here has less to do with what the Navy is saying and a lot more with what they’re not saying. They aren’t denying that they have more videos and likely photos and pilot reports as well. They’re not claiming a specific threat that might be posed if the information were to be made public. They’re not even suggesting that they couldn’t edit the videos in some fashion to make them less likely to reveal anything harmful. They’re simply telling everyone to shut up and sit down and the reasons why are none of your business.
We should not be satisfied with this answer and I definitely won’t be. Greenewald is appealing this latest refusal and the rest of us should continue to ride herd on the members of Congress conducting hearings into this matter and overseeing AARO. They can do better than this and they work for us. We should make them do better.
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