Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, Volume I

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• All the programs assessed to be authentic were or—if still active—continue to be,
appropriately reported to either or both the congressional defense and intelligence
committees.
Process for Protecting Sensitive Programs while Investigating Interviewee Claims
AARO instituted a secure process for handling information to allow interviewees to come
forward to provide their statements to AARO within secure facilities. AARO established a
partnership with the Special Access Program Control Offices for the DoD, IC, and DHS to
review programs identified in interviews by name or description to determine if the programs
correlated in time and location to historic SAP or Controlled Access Programs (CAP). This
agreement details how interviewee claims concerning the names and descriptions of the alleged
programs are handled, stored, and protected so that their veracity can be determined in a secure
manner. A key part of this agreement is that AARO investigators have been granted full access
to all pertinent sensitive USG programs.
• When industry partners were named, AARO interviewed senior level, appropriately-
cleared executives, department leads, senior scientists, and engineers.
Findings
One Private Program Mistaken for USG Program
AARO determined that the following alleged USG program name was portrayed
inaccurately by the interviewee:
• Virtual Institute for Satellite Integration Training–This program is not a USG-funded
and supported effort. It was a program operated by a private UAP organization and
had a NASA engineer as a participant. NASA verified that it did not sponsor the
project.113
KONA BLUE: A Proposed UAP Recovery and Reverse-Engineering Program
KONA BLUE was brought to AARO’s attention by interviewees who claimed that it was
a sensitive DHS compartment to cover up the retrieval and exploitation of “non-human
biologics.”114 KONA BLUE traces its origins to the DIA-managed AAWSAP/AATIP program,
which was funded through a special appropriation and executed by its primary contractor, a
private sector organization. DIA cancelled the program in 2012 due to lack of merit and the
utility of the deliverables. As discussed in Section IV of this report, while the official purpose of
AAWSAP/AATIP was to conduct research into 12 areas of cutting edge science, the contractor
team, and at least one supportive government program manager, also conducted UAP and
paranormal research at a property owned by the private sector organization.
When DIA cancelled this program, its supporters proposed to DHS that they create and
fund a new version of AAWSAP/AATIP under a SAP.115 This proposal, codenamed KONA
BLUE, would restart UAP investigations, paranormal research (including alleged “human
consciousness anomalies”) and reverse-engineer any recovered off-world spacecraft that they
hoped to acquire. This proposal gained some initial traction at DHS to the point where a