The Pentagon’s former chief UFO investigator has revealed a sensitive new government program to recover “suspected alien technology” in the event of a “shootdown.”
Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, a longtime CIA scientist who headed the U.S. military’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), admitted to the program’s existence when he was pressed during a new interview.
The recovery program’s protocols were for “any UAP recovery” involving “everything from balloons to drones to alleged alien technology,” as Dr. Kirkpatrick told podcast host John Michael Godier.
In recent years, Pentagon top brass, NASA experts, and academics have reframed what were once called “flying saucers” as “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAP).
The revelation is the first time the US government has officially recognized a UAP or UFO recovery program, despite decades of speculation and whistleblower testimony that the United States has already been in possession of extraterrestrial craft for decades. .
It also comes amid multiple federal investigations into “mothership” UFOs at key US military sites, releasing “drone swarm” UFOs that are difficult to identify, much less capture.
This week, the Pentagon’s North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) admitted that US military installations have been plagued, since 2022, by at least 600 incursions by so-called “drones”, many of them still without explanation.
This model of a sunken and deteriorated Soviet K-129 submarine was created by the CIA during its AZORIAN mission from 1971 to 1974, one of the most elaborate land-based “crash recovery” missions undertaken in secret by the US intelligence community. USA and now declassified.
The now-retired director of the Pentagon’s UFO office, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick (above), spent 2023 locked in heated public confrontations with UFO whistleblowers over alleged recoveries of extraterrestrial spacecraft dating back to the Cold War era.
The classified documents suggest that the new crashed UFO recovery program began in early 2023, focusing on “response, recovery and material transfer.”
Dr. Kirkpatrick initiated high-level meetings to formalize AARO’s version of a UFO crash recovery program in January and February 2023, according to redacted documents released last September through the US Freedom of Information Act. USA (FOIA).
As explained in a scheduling email: “The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the provision of funding in the context of the security implications of the UAP.”
Establishing “a receiving point” for any and all recovered UFO materials was a key issue that needed to be addressed, the meeting memo added.
“The problem is that those types of activities are already covered by the Collection and Analysis of Foreign Material,” as Dr. Kirkpatrick told Godier and his listeners Event horizon Thursday podcast.
“There are already processes and procedures for a lot of these things,” he continued. ‘So this conversation was really about starting (asking): How do we document that for the UAP? And what kind of procedures do we need to implement?’
At least since the dawn of the Cold War, the United States has had casualty recovery programs, led by the CIA, but involving all branches of the US military.
These programs were created primarily to acquire Russian and Chinese technology, including the CIA’s top-secret rescue of a sunken, nuclear-armed Soviet submarine in 1974.
“Equally important was recovering American fragments that had landed in foreign countries to prevent the Soviets from recovering and exploiting them,” according to the curator. James David from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
Dr. Kirkpatrick’s latest disclosure adds context to an intriguing 78-page publication of plans drawn up between AARO and US Space Command (above), where the physicist had previously served as deputy director of intelligence from 2019 to 2021.
Space Command was only the only one of the branches that AARO consulted.
The leadership of the White House Joint Chiefs of Staff also influenced the UFO recovery effort, including its intelligence (J2), operations (J3), strategy, and policy (J5) directorates.
“Congress directs AARO to submit not only standard reporting procedures, but also mitigation and response procedures in the event of a shootdown or collection of any type of UAP,” Dr. Kirkpatrick said.
“To do that, mitigation and response, as well as standardized reporting,” he added, “will be conducted across all combatant commands.”
“Because they already have people in place who would pick up (the accidents).”
‘For example, if we shoot down another Chinese high-altitude balloon, it would be that team that would go pick it up, right? “They are those procedures and processes about how it is notified and how we are going to look for it.”
Space Command records obtained through FOIA show that Dr. Kirkpatrick had meetings to establish AARO’s version of a specific UFO crash recovery program on April 10 with Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command.
General VanHerck, who led the mission to shoot down the infamous Chinese spy balloon in February 2023, has also taken a tough stance on domestic UFO cases.
“If there are unknown objects inside North America,” he said of the recent wave of puzzling drone swarms over U.S. bases, “go out and identify them.”
Air Force and intelligence agency veteran David Grusch (center) testified under oath before Congress in July 2023, alleging widespread illegalities stemming from a long-secret UFO “crash recovery” program. Grusch and Dr. Kirkpatrick publicly argued over these claims that summer.
Whistleblowers with knowledge of a classified UFO ‘reverse engineering’ program have chosen to testify before the Senate intelligence committee, in part because of their distrust of Dr. Kirkpatrick and his UFO office at the Pentagon. Above, a page from Project 1794 declassified in 2012
General VanHerck, who also plays a leadership role at NORAD, has pleaded with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to authorize more electronic listening equipment to solve serious national security mysteries related to unmanned UFOs.
But the general has also acknowledged that there are strict rules governing the use of this level of spy technology on American soil.
Although Dr. Kirkpatrick told Event Horizon listeners that he found no evidence that the US government had previously recovered an extraterrestrial spacecraft through its previous crash recovery programs, several of his predecessors have contradicted their statements.
Dr. James Lacatski, a former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst and missile expert who ran a program focused on UFOs between 2008 and 2012, has claimed that not only has the United States recovered extraterrestrial spacecraft but that officials have entered one.
‘United States’, as Dr. Lacatski wrote in a 2023 book about that program.“was in possession of a vessel of unknown origin and had managed to gain access to its interior.”
This craft, as he reported to then-US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2011, “had no intakes, no exhaust, no wings, no control surfaces (…) no engine, no fuel tanks, no fuel.”
Dr. Lacatski’s book, ‘Inside the US Government’s Covert UFO Program: Initial Revelations’, was co-authored with Las Vegas-based investigative journalist George Knapp and biochemist Dr. Colm Kelleher.
Dr. Kelleher had worked alongside Dr. Lacatski on the private contractor side of the DIA’s once highly secret UFO program, the Advanced Weapons System. Application Program (AAWSAP).
When asked by UFO documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell whether or not he himself had entered this recovered UFO, Dr. Lacatski responded: “I can’t answer that.’
DailyMail.com has contacted Dr Lacatski for comment and will update this article if he responds.