Welcome back to Signs of Life, PARADIGM’s weekly briefing tracking all things UAP and NHI (UFOs and aliens).
Subscribe below to get future editions delivered straight to your inbox.
THE BIG PICTURE
The UFO subject is so sprawling and so mystifying that it is easy to lose sight of the important through lines.
One of those through lines is the nearly 20-year fight that has divided lawmakers, as well as the military and intelligence bureaucracies, over two simple questions:
Is there good reason to believe that Lockheed Martin or other private contractors possess alien technology?
Should the federal government move to take possession of any such technology?
The outlines of this fight have emerged gradually, and in fragmentary form, over the past nine years, in leaks, podcast interviews, congressional proceedings and tell-all memoirs.
The memoir published last week by Jay Stratton, a former military intelligence official who investigated UFOs extensively for the Pentagon, is full of strange tales that provide plenty of fodder for skeptics of the whole subject.
But — for anybody trying to make sense of this fight from the outside — Stratton’s account of his alleged interactions with a late Lockheed Martin executive also provides what appears to be an especially useful piece of the puzzle.
Close followers of this subject should already be well-acquainted with the contours of this fight. But I think it’s a clarifying exercise to lay out, chronologically, some basic facts and allegations.
Even as attention has turned to the Trump administration’s activities in the executive branch, this fight is still playing out in Congress, which will have to resolve a big part of that fight between the midterm elections and the end of the year.
So, to get you up to speed…
The background: For years, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid holds a belief that a private contractor possesses alien technology (“I was told for decades that Lockheed had some of these retrieved materials,” Reid told the New Yorker before his death.) Reid’s friend Robert Bigelow, an aerospace magnate with a longstanding interest in UFOs, encourages the senator’s inquiries.
2008: Aided by colleagues, Reid secures funding for a Pentagon program to study advanced aerospace threats. The contract for the program, AAWSAP (pronounced “AH-sap”), goes to Bigelow’s aerospace company.
Early 2009: According to Stratton’s memoir: senior Lockheed Martin executive Jim Ryder, who died in 2018, briefs him at length, saying the government has been retrieving and reverse-engineering alien craft since the 1940s. According to this account, Ryder says the program is overseen by the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, and is supported by Lockheed and other contractors, who have collectively pried some control of the program away from the government over time.
Ryder, according to this account, says that Lockheed possesses a dozen alien craft, complains that technical progress is slow, and offers to deliver one of them out from CIA oversight and into the hands of the military.
If true, Stratton’s account of these interactions sheds light on some of the evidence underpinning this long-running political fight.
June 2009: Reid sends a letter – allegedly ghost-written by Stratton – to Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn III requesting that AAWSAP be granted the status of a Special Access Program. Proponents believed such a change would provide the higher level of security needed to take possession of an alien craft.
November 2009: The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) rejects Reid’s request.
2011-2012: Veterans of AAWSAP resurrect the effort, pitching the Department of Homeland Security on a program called Kona Blue. Kona Blue would create a Special Access Program for taking receipt of “advanced aerospace vehicles.” DHS provisionally approves the proposal before ultimately rejecting it.
In both cases, people pushing for these programs have blamed the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology for allegedly using its influence to block the transfers, though the official rejections cited other reasons.
July 13, 2023: six senators co-sponsor an amendment that would assert eminent domain over any “biological evidence of nonhuman intelligence” and “technologies of unknown origin” in private hands.
The amendment defines “Legacy Program” to mean any government program that might have been charged with reverse-engineering alien technology. To this day, it is disputed whether “the Program,” as believers refer to it, is real or mythical.
The amendment passes the Senate, but after encountering resistance from House members, the eminent domain provisions are ultimately stripped from it. Subsequent attempts to revive those provisions have, to date, failed.
July 26, 2023: David Grusch, a former military intelligence official, testifies to the House that the government has been secretly retrieving and reverse-engineering craft for decades.
March 2024: The Pentagon publishes a report finding no basis for claims about government programs involving alien technology. The report suggests that such claims arose from various misunderstandings. It also states that a former CIA official accused of blocking the material transfer signed a statement denying doing so.
2025-Present: A growing chorus of former government insiders make public claims about “the Program,” other alleged government UFO activities, and a host of more mind-bending subjects like telepathy and fights between different “species” of aliens.
June 2026: Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds, two co-sponsors of the original 2023 bill, propose a new amendment to the annual defense authorization bill that revives the eminent domain provisions.
July 2026: The House passes an amendment to the defense authorization bill that also includes eminent domain provisions.
The fate of this new attempt to assert eminent domain over purported alien technology will likely remain unresolved until after the election, when Congress finalizes the annual defense authorization bill during the lame-duck session.
In Washington, people love to debate whether the earnest drama The West Wing or the satirical comedy Veep better captures official life in the capital.
This saga raises a different question: Is this Seinfeld, a comedy that is famously, in the end, about nothing? Or is this a proper mystery about something?
More than any eyewitness reports or videos of things seen in the sky, it was the human and institutional behavior around this fight that triggered my political journalism instincts.
The fight strikes me as too big and too enduring to, at its root, be about a misunderstanding over nothing.
For what it’s worth, I spoke recently to somebody who spent a lot of time looking into this for the government and enjoyed an extraordinary level of access. This person is outside the well-known cast of former government insiders with high-profile memoirs and podcast interviews. They were clearly weary of the spectacle and antics that this issue has attracted.
And despite their access and considerable effort, the person has not been able to corroborate that “the Program” exists.
But they also were clearly not satisfied that “the Program” does not exist. They said the subject remained worthy of investigation, though they were not optimistic that I would crack the case.
Their message to me: “Good luck.”
****
ICYMI: I appeared on the UAP Files podcast to talk about PARADIGM and the reporting so far. Jimmy is an excellent, well-informed interviewer. I recommend giving it a watch.
OF NOTE
The War Department released its seventh tranche of UFO records on Friday. It includes an account of a quiet, triangular UFO observed by law enforcement officials in the Western U.S. in June.
What do you think of Signs of Life? Respond to this email with your thoughts.
Need more context? Read “Reality Shock: A beginner’s guide to UFOs, Aliens and Disclosure.”
Know something? Tips@Paradigm.news
Want to sponsor Signs of Life? Email Business@Paradigm.News
PARADIGM is free during its launch period. If you’d like to support independent reporting and help build the publication, become a paid subscriber or Paradigm Patron.
Song of the week