QUEUE Reports : The DIA UFO Files ?
While looking for records about US Government UFO programs, I noticed a detail in Bryan Bender’s 2017 Politico article that I had initially missed. The article « The Pentagon’s Secret Search for UFOs » was published on December 16th, 2017, and revealed that the US government had funded a UFO investigation program for many years. This program, known as Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was run by the Office of the Secretary Defense, and had likely started in 2008 as a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) project under the name "Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Program" (AAWSAP). According to the Department of Defense, AATIP was shut down in 2012.
In February 2019 DoD spokesperson Susan Gough told Swedish researcher Roger Glassel “After an OSD/DIA review in late 2009, it was determined the reports were of limited value to DIA and there was a recommendation that upon completion of the contract the project could be transited to an agency or component better suited to oversee it. Funding for the program at the DIA ended in 2012 and DoD elected not to continue the program after the work contracted under the FY2010 NDAA was completed.” So officially, AATIP ended in 2012.
A new lead : the QUEUE Reports
I had read Bryan Bender's article back in 2017 but at the time, I missed something important. When describing the purpose of the AATIP, Bender wrote "The program also drafted a series of what the office referred to as "queried unverified event under evaluation," QUEUE reports, in which pilots and other personnel who had reported encounters were interviewed about their experiences."
This specific type of report was unknown to me. Thanks to Australian researcher Keith Basterfield, I was able to locate one of those reports. This particular QUEUE report was part of the documents that were found on Christopher Mellon's website by Twitter user Jay09784691 back in August 2018. As Jay explained, "While searching around his site, I came across a section titled "Miscellaneous" that included several documents on the AATIP, the group within the US Pentagon that was researching the same phenomena that DeLonge's new company was looking into." Among those documents were "Five pages of a full unredacted report from the Nimitz incident". I had seen those documents a couple of months ago, but I was focused on the content of the report and I didn't pay attention to the title "QUEUE Report".
FOIA request reveals DIA records
I googled "QUEUE report" and "queried unverified event under evaluation", but I was not able to find anything relevant. On June 18th 2020, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Department of the Navy, Naval Safety Center (NSC). On the same day I also sent a FOIA request to the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) based in Patuxent River, MD. To my surprise, I received a reply less than a week later. On June 23rd 2020, the Naval Safety Center replied that they found no relevant records. But the NAWCAD did. In my FOIA request, I had requested a copy of all QUEUE reports, and of records containing any reference to QUEUE reports. The FOIA coordinator wrote : "During our search for records responsive to your request, we identified documents that originated with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). We have referred this request to them for processing and direct response to you."
I have not received any reply from the DIA, the Office of the Secretary of Defense or the Office of Naval Intelligence yet, and I don't expect to receive any reply for months, maybe years. But the fact that the US Navy found relevant documents that originated from the Defense Intelligence Agency was a big surprise. It is worth noting that in 2018 the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) looked into a possible unauthorized release of classified documents when the 3 US Navy UFO videos went viral. In their report, they mention that those videos were at one point submitted to the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division to evaluate whether they contained sensitive information. The NAWCAD was involved in the 2004 Nimitz UAP video release, and they probably tried to get more background information about the event. Did they request documents from other agencies ? Probably so.
Examining a 2017 QUEUE report
I examined closely the content of the QUEUE report that was downloaded from Christopher Mellon's website by Twitter user Jay09784691. There is no header, no indication of the agency or department that wrote that report.
However, we know that the pilot's interview was conducted by two government officials (Government Lead 014 and 015) and two contractor personnel (Industry Lead 005 and 006). The interview that is reported in this QUEUE report was conducted on September 7th, 2017. The source is the "Female Pilot", as Dave Beaty revealed on his website thenimitzencounters.com. OK-2 is Dave Fravor, the pilot who engaged the Tic Tac UFO. There is no classification marking, only "SENSITIVE" and "contains PII (Private Identifying Information)". This report is referenced as #20170024A, so it is likely the 24th report of the year 2017. That means there are probably others reports out there that we can get through FOIA.
Who wrote the 2017 QUEUE Report #20170024A ?
Another interesting detail is that the "actions taken" section contains the following : "Tentative meetings with OK-2 and OK-3 have been initiated and are tentatively scheduled for Octobre, 2017". OK-2, namely David Fravor, was a first-hand witness to the USS Nimitz UAP. In January 2019, Fravor told this story on The Fighter Pilot Podcast : "I had got a call from the other pilot and they said, ‘Hey, have you been talked to about the Tic Tac lately?’ And I said, ‘No.’ They said, ‘Well… you know, I’ve been asked to go to the Pentagon like five times.’ You know, and they said, ‘Well you had, you know, the most ACM’ cause I was actually the one that engaged it. And I said, ‘Well, just give ’em my name and I’ll talk to them.’ So that was Lue Elizondo, who was running the AATIP program at the Pentagon. So he had called me up and said, ‘Hey, we’re gonna come up and talk to you.’ I said, ‘Great. No problem.’ [...] So about, um, I don’t know, probably a month later I had gotten information on the, “To The Stars” that was coming out with Tom DeLonge and I’m watching this clip that guy had sent me and Lue’s on it. So I call Lue. I go, ‘What’s going on?’ He goes, ‘I left the Pentagon.’ I said, well he goes, ‘We’ll be there like this weekend to talk to you.’ I said okay." This phone call happened shortly before Elizondo joined To The Stars Academy, so in September 2017. Elizondo sent his resignation letter to the Secretary of Defense on October 4th. So there is a strong possibility that the 2017 QUEUE report that was downloaded from Mellon's website was written by Elizondo or someone on his team. He was still with the DoD when he met the Female Pilot "The Source" on September 4th 2017.
Why did the US Navy, and specifically NAWCAD, find QUEUE reports within DIA records ?
It is unlikely that the DIA was still investigating reports of UFOs as late as 2017 but it is possible. However there is no evidence to support that a UFO program was run from the DIA after 2012 to my knowledge. Another possible theory may be that this "queried unverified event under evaluation" reporting channel may have originated when AAWSAP/AATIP was still under the supervision of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and was subsequently retained when the program was transferred to the OSD. Another possibility is that those QUEUE reports are a generic kind of US Government document, used informally by several agencies. This would be consistent with the "task force" model, in which multiple agencies within the Department of Defense collect and exchange information about those incidents. I submitted several FOIA requests to the Office of Naval Intelligence regarding those reports.
Circumstantial evidence and David Fravor's statement on the Fighter Pilot podcast strongly suggest that the QUEUE report found on Mellon's website by Jay09784691 in 2018 was written by Luis Elizondo. One question remains : why did NAWCAD only mention the DIA in their reply to my FOIA request, and not the Office of Secretary of Defense, which was in charge of the AATIP ?
In any case, we now know that that those QUEUE reports exist, that they are most likely UFO-related. Thanks to researcher Paul Dean's outstanding work, we know that US Air Force documents known as OPREP may be a reporting channel for UFO sightings. Can we expect to find a treasure trove of UFO "QUEUE" reports in DIA records ? Who knows. Hopefully, other researchers will spend some time looking for those precious documents.
Feel free to send any comment or suggestion to uapparallax(at)outlook.com
References
« The Pentagon’s Secret Search for UFOs », by Bryan Bender - Politico
"ADVANCED AEROSPACE THREAT AND IDENTIFICATION PROGRAM (AATIP)", by Jay09784691
"NAVIGATING THE TWISTED MAZE OF THE AATIP TIMELINE", by John Greenewald, Jr. – The Black Vault
"Female F/A-18 Pilots official statement on incident", thenimitzencounters.com
"OPREP-3" - A Classified US Military Reporting Channel For UFO Incidents?
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