Former UFO leader says: Pentagon needs to be less secretive

According to Sean Kirkpatrick, the Defense Department would have benefited by addressing the public about unknown aircraft.

• Former UFO leader says: Pentagon needs to be less secretive

Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, delivers a presentation at a public meeting of NASA’s unidentified anomalous phenomena independent study committee on May 31, 2023, at the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building in Washington. | Joel Kowsky, NASA

Sean Kirkpatrick, the Pentagon’s top man in charge of tracking UFOs, complained to his superiors that the department wasn’t disclosing enough information to the public about the unexplained aircraft or the government’s efforts to investigate them.

Kirkpatrick, who served as the first director of the Pentagon unit dedicated to researching UFO reports from July 2022 to December, was afraid that conspiracy theorists would exploit the public’s lack of information to advance their objectives.

Pentagon secrecy surrounding UFOs resurfaced last year, when retired Maj. David Grusch, a former Air Force intelligence official, accused the government of concealing a decades-long program to recover and reverse-engineer alien craft. Kirkpatrick took to social media at the time to dispute the claims in a personal memo, with the proviso that it reflected his opinions, not those of the US government.

Kirkpatrick added in the interview that his former boss, Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks, was supportive of his efforts as UFO chief. Still, his attempts to engage the media always met internal resistance in the staffing process, he said. Kirkpatrick did only two on-camera interviews during his 18 months in office. He also conducted two print interviews, including with POLITICO, and two off-camera media briefings.

Eric Pahon, a Pentagon spokesperson, disputed Kirkpatrick’s claim that the department shot down the UFO chief’s media requests.

“Standard procedure within the department is to have public engagements cleared by higher officials. To our knowledge, any media engagement Dr. Kirkpatrick recommended or requested was approved,” Pahon said. “Dr. Kirkpatrick’s commitment to transparency with the United States Congress and the American public on UAP leaves a legacy the department will carry forward as [the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office] continues its mission.”

Kirkpatrick said the Pentagon is reticent to engage on the subject because it’s concerned about getting caught up in a web of conspiracy theories that has long existed surrounding the issue of UFOs. He argued that staying silent just exacerbates the problem.

“If there is a void in the information space, it will be filled with the imagination of the public right and the conspiracies and these accusations,” Kirkpatrick said.

Instead, he argued the Pentagon should be “more forceful” in explaining and defending AARO and its mission — which is to investigate these unexplained phenomenon that may pose a threat to U.S. operations, he said, not “to go and find extraterrestrials.”

While he said Pentagon leadership generally was reluctant to talk publicly about UFOs, he praised Hicks for her support of the AARO mission.

“She was the catalyst that made us get to where we were,” Kirkpatrick said. “I could not have done it without her.”

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