The Pentagon’s new historical review of UFOs picks and chooses its history

A Department of Defense report released March 8 demonstrates that a seven decade-long trend of official obfuscation and deflection on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) continues unabated.

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office’s (AARO) report, a congressionally mandated historical review of U.S. government involvement with UAP, found no evidence of “extraterrestrial technology.” While that may be technically accurate, the Pentagon’s lengthy report deliberately obscures a critical fact: Official records and public reporting are littered with evidence of unknown craft exhibiting what appears to be extraordinary technology.

In addition to critical omissions and at least one major misrepresentation, AARO’s report must be scrutinized for its treatment of Capt. Edward Ruppelt. Ruppelt was the first director of the Air Force’s decades-long UAP analysis (and, later, debunking) effort known as Project Blue Book.

Despite citing Ruppelt more than any other individual, AARO’s report ignores the countless cases, including many involving simultaneous radar and visual observations, that left Ruppelt and the Air Force thoroughly baffled.

In one July 1952 incident, for example, a ground radar station scrambled an F-94C fighter jet to intercept a UFO. As Ruppelt recounts in his 1956 book, “The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects,” “the radar operator in the ‘94 locked on to it, and as the airplane closed in the pilot and [radar operator] saw that they were headed directly toward a large, yellowish-orange light.”

“For several minutes,” Ruppelt continues, the fighter jet “played tag with the UFO. Both the radar on the ground and the radar in the F-94 showed that as soon as the airplane would get almost within gunnery range of the UFO, it would suddenly pull away at a terrific speed.”

“Then,” according to Ruppelt, “it would slow down enough to let the F-94 catch it again.”

Ruppelt debriefed the aircrew following that incident. Both the pilot and the radar operator “felt as if this were just a big aerial cat-and-mouse game — and they didn’t like it.”

Another July 1952 incident, according to Ruppelt, “was one of those that even the most ardent skeptic would have difficulty explaining. I’ve heard a lot of them try and I’ve heard them all fail.”

As Ruppelt describes it, a ground radar station tracked a UFO “coming straight south across Saginaw Bay on Lake Huron at 625 miles an hour.”

The pilot and radar operator aboard an F-94 fighter jet directed to intercept the object “saw that they were turning toward a large bluish-white light, ‘many times larger than a star.’” Like the UAP in the preceding incident, the object soon “took on a reddish tinge.”

Once again, “the radar operator in the back seat [of the fighter jet] got a good radar lock-on,” stating, “It was just as solid a lock-on as you get from a B-36 [bomber].”

For 10 minutes, the jet pursued the UAP. “At times,” Ruppelt recounts, “the unidentified target would slow down and the F-94 would start to close the gap.”

“Just as the ground controller was telling the pilot that he was closing in,” Ruppelt continues, “the light became brighter and the object pulled away.” According to Ruppelt, “the target would put on a sudden burst of speed and pull away from the pursuing jet” at speeds up to “1,400 miles an hour.”

It did not take long for the fighter to run low on fuel. As soon as it turned around to return to base, “the target slowed down to 200 to 300 miles an hour.”

According to Ruppelt, many in the Air Force’s intelligence division “were absolutely convinced this report was the key — the final proof. Even if all of the thousands of other UFO reports could be discarded on a technicality, this one couldn’t be.”

These analysts, in short, believed that “this report in itself was proof enough to officially accept the fact that UFO’s were interplanetary spaceships.”

In fact, Air Force intelligence analysts had come to the same extraordinary conclusion four years earlier.

As Ruppelt notes, the U.S. government’s initial formal intelligence estimate of UFOs assessed that the objects were of “interplanetary” origin. This, naturally, is of significant relevance to any historical review of U.S. government involvement with UAP, yet is pointedly downplayed AARO’s report.

Of equal importance, Ruppelt describes an abrupt and profound change in the intelligence analysis process for UFOs, occurring in the early 1950s, after Air Force chief of staff Hoyt Vandenberg had decided to reject the “interplanetary” explanation for UAP.

As Ruppelt puts it, analysts subsequently “tried a new hypothesis: UFO’s don’t exist. In no time they found that this was easier to prove and,” critically, “it got recognition.”

Ruppelt continued, “Before, if an especially interesting UFO report came in and the Pentagon wanted an answer, all they’d get was an ‘It could be real but we can’t prove it.’ Now such a request got a quick, snappy ‘It was a balloon,’ and feathers were stuck in caps from [Air Force intelligence] up to the Pentagon.”

In other words, Ruppelt revealed that top Pentagon officials — not “unbiased evaluation” — were driving analytic conclusions about UAP.

Following a “purge” of intelligence analysts who did not toe the Air Force’s new line, Ruppelt described the rise of an “anti-saucer faction,” which sought to please higher-ups by debunking even the most perplexing incidents. Based on compelling contemporaneous UFO reporting, Ruppelt thought that “skeptics should have been changing to believers,” but that the reverse was occurring based on improper influence on the analytic process.

At one point, according to Ruppelt, “[e]verything was being evaluated on the premise that UFO’s couldn’t exist.”

AARO’s historical review largely mirrors the tone and conclusions of the “anti-saucer faction,” itself a product of undue interference with the analytic process.

Remarkably, Ruppelt was so taken aback by the sharp “change in the operating policy of the UFO project” that he wondered if it was all “an effort to cover up the fact that UFO’s were proven to be interplanetary and that this should be withheld from the public at all cost to prevent a mass panic.”

At the same time, Ruppelt describes how the Pentagon withheld information on the most compelling UFO incidents and purposefully shaped the UAP narrative in the media.

According to Ruppelt, “I was continually being told to ‘tell [reporters] about the sighting reports we’ve solved — don’t mention the unknowns.'”

History is repeating itself. Of the more than 1,200 UAP reports that AARO has received to date, it has released just four videos and three “case resolution reports.” This astounding lack of transparency puts the government’s historical obfuscation on UFOs to shame.

Marik von Rennenkampff served as an analyst with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, as well as an Obama administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Defense.