Corporations Fight Congress To Keep Their UFO Research Secret

Defense contractors and their lobbyists aren't happy with aggressive UFO disclosure laws being pushed by congress. Now they are working behind closed doors to keep their secrets from coming out.

A lively debate about whether UFO’s made from a non human intelligence are real or not continues among the general public. But a much different debate is going on behind closed doors with defense contractors. Congress recent interest in UFO disclosure is making powerful corporate interests uncomfortable. Now corporations are scrambling for a way to keep their UFO research secret. 

A trail of evidence compiled over decades suggests private contractors have participated in secret UFO research. Statements from employees and executives. Publicly available but previously, top secret government documents. Legislation introduced by the senate majority leader Chuck Schumer. Now one of the most influential law firms in the world has sent out a newsletter advising their clients on how to lobby the government against laws to seize their UFO’s and publish research materials. 

Covington Burling is ranked the 34th highest grossing law firms in the world and 27th out of the top 100 firms in the US. According to their website, this corporate law firm represents clients in every major industry. For an idea of the pedigree of clients the represent, recently they represented covid vaccine manufacturer AstraZeneca in its $4.3 billion acquisition of its diabetes collaboration from Bristol Myers Squibb . The list of all the specific corporation that the firm represents in legal matters isn’t publicly available. But thanks to campaign finance laws, who the firms lobbying offices represents is.

Over the last few years notable names in the defense contractor community that have directly hired Covington for lobbyist services include Northrup Grumman, BAE Systems, and KBR (Haliburton). A name that stood out among the lobbying reports on Opensecrets was Advanced Technology International. Since 2020 this company has paid Covington over a million dollars. This company is what’s known as a Consortium Manager. The NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) always has a special carveout for what’s known as Other Transaction Agreements (OTA) which are organized by Consortium Managers or an individual contractor. The billions of dollars authorized under OT’s go specifically towards research and development projects done by groups (consortium) of defense contractors in service of different defense research offices. OT’s originate in NASA and DARPA. These awards of federal money are explicitly less regulated and monitored than grants, procurement contracts, cooperative agreements or cooperative research and development agreements.

DARPA’s website boasts that OTA’s have “no mandatory accounting system, no requirements to adhere to Cost Accounting Standards, and no audit requirements.” Apparently among defense contractors there’s a wide spread idea that OT’s aren’t bound by any laws or regulation. So much so that a government report describing OT’s had to clarify in a part of the FAQ’s/common myths section of the document labeled “None of the federal statutes or regulations apply to OT’s” that standard economic and criminal laws still apply to these awards.

An example of the work produced by one of many consortiums managed by Advanced Technology International was the first Directed Energy Weapon Laser capable of shooting down drones. A wide range of work for government top secret Special Access Programs. ATI lists 30 different consortiums working on a wide range of projects for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. Many of the groups at least list the defense contractors that are currently members on their public sites. These consortiums include every defense contractor you can think of, including the ones accused of being in possession of UFO materials and research: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Booze Allen Hamilton, Boeing, Radiance Technology and all the others who directly retained Covington Law named earlier. In total Advanced Technology International has facilitated billions in OT awards for research and development.

Is ATI Paying Lobbyist To Go After UFO Disclosure Laws?

Last year ATI hired several lobbyist from Covington and one in particular stands out in the context of this story. According to financial disclosures on the senate website, Stephanie Barna was hired to lobby for ATI’s interest specifically on the “NDAA and Other Transactions (OT).” According to her biography, Barna held high ranking positions in the army prosecutors and Army general councils office notably participating in high profile cases such as the Wikileaks investigation which led to the arrest of Chelsea Manning and the current prosecution of journalist Julian Assange. Eventually she became a Deputy Assistant at the DoD. Most relevant to this topic, Barna ended her career in government as General Council to the Senate Armed Services Committee from 2018-2021. Among many other duties, it was quite literally Barnas job to draft and finalize the legal language of the NDAA.

To come around full circle, Barna was specifically hired to lobby the interests of Consortium Manager ATI on the topic of the NDAA and OT research last year. Now in January of this year she’s the lead author of the newsletter published by Covington warning clients about the increasingly aggressive language in the NDAAs around seizing recovered UFO’s and publishing research in their possession. Clearly this wasn’t just some random current event newsletter to build SEO traffic to their website. The letter titled “The Implications of The (UFO) Amendment in The NDAA” was placed in the same part of their site where post about new regulations, rules changes and reporting deadlines that directly effect their clients in the defense contractor community.

Here’s an exert from the newsletter. “First, that amendment mandated that the Federal Government exercise eminent domain over any and all “recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence” held by private persons or entities.  This would have obligated commercial entities, including defense contractors, academic research entities, and private citizens to turn over to the government (UFO)-related material and information in their possession.” The very matter of fact admission that laws specifically referencing UFOs and non human bodies would require a response from defense contractors is just further confirmation from another credible source that they have them in their possession.

Barna goes on to highlight one of the defense contractors biggest points of contention. The law gives a very specific exemption to the President that private corporations want as well. In the UFO Disclosure Act all UFO record that are 25 years or older are to immediately be declassified. The only exception is if the president decides the release of specific record would “damage national security” and makes an appeal to keep that record classified until a later date. From the newsletter “Congress must be informed within 15 days of any decision to postpone public disclosure of a UAP record.  Although all records subject to postponement must be periodically reviewed for declassification and disclosure, public disclosure of such records is not mandated until 25 years after the record was first created, however.  Of note, the law provides that UAP-related records created by non-federal persons or entities are not eligible for postponement.”

Speaking for myself, personally I don’t have and records about reverse engineering UFO’s because I don’t have any UFO’s to reverse engineer. I certainly wouldn’t care either way if a law doesn’t give me the authority to redact such records. Same goes for almost anyone reading this. But if you’re a defense contractor with such records I can see why you’d be concerned about creating a mechanism to do your own redactions. Your ability to profit from proprietary research could end. You might even open yourself up to prosecution if crimes were committed. One things for sure, no one’s paying for the services of one of the most expensive law firms in the world to advocate for you unless this is a direct concern for you.

Another important quote from Barnas newsletter: “The government alone is tasked with determining what “government-funded” (UFO)-related information should be disclosed publicly; the law does not require that the government share its disclosure intentions with affected private sector entities or afford them an opportunity to rebut a proposed disposition or redact a record.  To the extent that private sector entities are concerned about disclosure of (UFO)-related information in their possession by virtue of work under a government-funded contract or project, they should approach the relevant government agency to discuss the provisions’ implications for their work.  Given the national security exception built into the law, as well as the long lead-time for disclosure, many contractors may have good arguments to support “postponing” the release of information they believe to be sensitive or protected.”

Barna seems to be advising her clients that if they have a problem with the law the should approach the government to change it. Further more towards the end is an admission that not only is she aware of many contractors in this position, but she’s also familiar with their rationale for not releasing their UFO research. This is a remarkable admission considering who her clients are and the fact that according to Barnas financial disclosures they specifically paid her to lobby on their behalf to change the NDAA.

Defense contractors play a crucial role in maintaining these secret UFO programs. It gives government officials a level of plausible deniability. As long as the technology and research materials are in the possession of the government there’s always a chance it get’s discovered by FOIA requests, congress or officials with higher authority in the executive branch. Put it in a corporation and create a new layer of secrecy. The government paper trail ends and you no longer can be caught with the physical materials. Unlike the executive branch which is bound by the constitution to inform congress about all their activities, there’s a legal grey area around what exactly congress has the right to know about the secret research being done by a private corporation. Corporations have there own legal structure and rules about records keeping and who gets to access information. Another added benefit, instead of having to facilitate inhouse research they can just write a blank check to outside experts to figure it out as is often the case with government research. For additional context here some examples of how defense contractors got the reputation of being involved in reverse engineering UFO tech.

Defense Contractors Outed For UFO Research

The official government explanation for a UFO crash in Roswell back in 1947 has changed a number of times over the decades. As of the 90’s, the official story is a weather balloon crashed in New Mexico and if anyone saw any unusual bodies it’s because they sent crash test dummies up with the balloon although the military didn’t start using dummies until years after the crash. The original story from the military on that day was after initial analysis, they found a crashed UFO. A story run by a local paper said “The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment Group at Roswell Army Air Field announced at noon today, that the field has come into the possession of a Flying Saucer.”

Then the very next day after the story exploded the military changed the official narrative, and suggested that the intelligence officer from the only nuclear bomber squad in the entire world at the time couldn’t tell the difference between a crashed UFO and a weather balloon. Despite the official narrative well over a dozen former military employees involved, from office secretaries to an officer who retired as a Brigadier General signed sworn legal affidavits about their version of events confirming there was a coverup. Some explicitly detail a scheme to do a press conference with a broken weather balloon to mislead the public while the real crash materials were shipped to Wright Patterson Air Field for examination. An internal document from the FBI confirms that a disk recovered that day was sent to Wright Field.

In comes the defense contractors. 2 years after the crash Wright Patterson sent materials to Battelle Memorial Institute for further analysis. Much of the research they did was on a titanium nickel alloy described as a memory metal with the ability to regain it’s original shape on it’s own when exposed to temperature changes. This is how witnesses described the debris that crashed near Roswell. This metal known as nitinol wasn’t officially discovered until 1961. It’s been confirmed that this discovery was the result of reverse engineering.

Credit to the Youtube channel UAP Gerb who provided more context on the materials from Rosewell that were being studied by Battelle. In his video he highlights that MUFON a citizens UFO research group interviewed an informant named EJ Center who claimed to have done research on UFO materials while at Battelle. This account was published in 1992. EJ Center was a named scientist in the Battelle report on nitinol. The classified study from Battelle wasn’t released through FOIA until 2009. It’s impossible for MUFON to have had such a detailed account about Centers work history unless they were informed by him directly since there were no public records of this analysis until 2009.

Lockheed Martin

At the peak of his career Senate Majority leader Harry Reid was the top ranking senator in the entire country. In this position he was a member of the Gang of 8. This group is made of congressional leadership and it exists to allegedly provide oversight to the most secret intelligence programs that are said to be so sensitive that it would be a “ threat to national security” if the rest of congress is briefed. Even in such a position Reid was repeatedly denied access to UFO programs. "I was told for decades that Lockheed had some of these retrieved materials. And I tried to get, as I recall, a classified approval by the Pentagon to have me go look at the stuff. They would not approve that. I don’t know what all the numbers were, what kind of classification it was, but they would not give that to me.”

Convinced of a coverup Reid and Sen Inouye who chaired the Iran Contra hearings went to the Department of Homeland Security for a solution. They went to the Under Secretary for Science & Tech to create a program with the highest level of secrecy known as a Special Access Program in an attempt to force their way into existing SAPs that have access to UFOs and research data. The Under Secretary then directed the creation of a 50+ page top secret proposal for an SAP called KONA BLUE. The proposal was drafted over 6 months with at least 10 documented meetings held by DHS leadership.

In the 2011 KONA BLUE proposal DHS made some remarkable statements of facts. In a section where they explain the need for this to have SAP status one of the points listed was “ Recovered UFO technology exists in and is only accessible within a SAP construct.” Further into the proposal, one of the stated objectives of the program would have been “First to gain access to and inventory all existing caches of Advanced Aerospace Vehicle (UFO) materials and documentation within CONUS, whether residing in archive storage or under active program investigation in National Laboratories, government organizations and/or contractors.” It’s clear that during the 6 months it took to draft this proposal DHS leadership came to some understanding about which entities were doing reverse engineering programs, among them defense contractors.

The document gets even more specific about who’s involved in these UFO recovery programs. “Over past decades a number of high-level individuals in the military, intelligence, and even political sectors of our government have had various level of exposure/access to this subject area. This has included agency directors, members of the JCS and very senior individuals in the Executive Branch. To this can be added certain foreign heads of state, as well as select members of the government contractor community in the electronics and aerospace sectors. Oral histories from individuals of the caliber referenced above are critical to this mission.” Although DHS stops short of naming names they clarify that they have “identified and curated a list of individuals.”

Ultimately the program was never approved for SAP status. The reason given seemed to be bureaucratic and procedural. From the information available, including the minutes of a meeting with DHS leadership towards the end of the proposal process no one challenged the premise of the KONA BLUE program. In fact there were mentions of specific databases, documents and other source materials that DHS had access to that have not been released yet.

The Non-Denial Denials

Defense contractors don’t always comment on UFO allegations, but for some reason when they do it’s never just a simple no. In response to requests for statements about the MUFON EJ Center revelation and their involvement in other UFO projects Battelle said in 1993 “ The research Battelle undertakes is done with integrity and an ethical regard for the confidentiality of its clients, both governmental and industrial (commercial). Battelle will not discuss with others the work it does for its clients. Because of this ethical approach to its work, including due regard to matters of national security, Battelle will not respond to inquiries about Blue Book or any of its other work...This should not be seen as proof of cooperation in any sort of imagined cover up. It is part of the ethical tradition that has been part of the Battelle business philosophy since its founding in 1929."

The day after David Grusch testified that during his investigation he had 40 witnesses provide evidence of their involvement in a secret UFO retrieval program NewsNation reached out to Lockheed Martin for comment. Instead of ignoring reporters or flat out denying the allegations of they said “Questions about UFO’s are best addressed by the US government.” This surely wasn’t some light hearted off hand comment. A high ranking former government official had just testified under oath that defense contractors were defrauding the government to fund these secret UFO programs. Certainly not a time to play coy about your involvement in such programs to get a good laugh out of the public.

Lobbyists & Politician Are Making Decisions For The Public

Earlier I mentioned the raging debate about whether or not UFO’s are real going on among the general public. While that’s happening the military industrial complex and their lobbyists are throwing their weight around to manipulate the most important development in human history in a way that best serves their corporate interests. Prioritizing corporate profits, covering up possible crimes committed or anything in between; the objectives of the war machine have never been aligned with those of the public. Currently defense contractors and their lobbyists are actively working against the public interest to keep what they know about UFO’s secret. The closest we have to anyone representing the will of the public in this fight for disclosure is Congress and a faction of the national security state who want to tell the public the absolute bare minimum because that’s what serves their own agenda at the moment. Truly a sad state of affairs.

Relying on Congress to stand up to corporate donors and lobbyists without pressure from the public, historically has always been a losing game. What I see as the correct position isn’t even an option on the table. The defense contractors want to put the lid on disclosure. Politicians want to tell the public just enough to give a vague understanding of the UFO phenomenon without shifting power away the major industries and institutions involved in the coverup. I’m for full disclosure. Publish all the files. If there’s technology that produces free clean energy and disrupts energy markets release it. If organized religion can’t stand up to the reality that there are more advanced beings than us, let it fall. And if it turns out like many are suggesting that there’s a shadow government working against the interest of the public to pursue their own, air it out and let the people react as they find necessary.

Sitting on our hands hoping for an extraordinary event like a whistleblower risking their lives to violate their security oath by publish classified documents like Snowden, Manning, Daniel Hale or Daniel Ellsberg is quite literally wishful thinking. Waiting for congress, national security officials, corporate donors and lobbyists to hash it all out behind closed doors and hope at some point the best interest of the public is factored in to the decision making process isn’t an advisable option either. Just like any other important issue regular citizens will have to be the ones to force necessary change in UFO transparency. And independent news media should keep pulling at the threads until we can paint a full picture of what’s actually going on.