Pentagon official addresses UFOs before leaving post

WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — The Pentagon’s UFO boss is calling it quits in a few weeks, but during what may have been his last public event, Sean Kirkpatrick took questions on everything from aliens to debunking what is truly unidentified to what is fairly easy to explain.

Kirkpatrick also addressed claims made on NewsNation by former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch about a secret UFO retrieval unit.

NewsNation’s Joe Khalil asked Kirkpatrick, the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) at the U.S. Department of Defense, this: Given his high level of authority, couldn’t he have already found a way to either refute or verify Grusch’s claims?

“I can’t comment on anything he’s told other people. The only way we can get anything that he has shared to other people is if he gives permission to them to share it because he’s protected under those same laws,” said Kirkpatrick. “But I have a whole range. I’ve got almost 40 other people that have come in and provided a lot of rich information that we’ve been investigating and crossreferencing and researching and trying to figure out the truth. And again, that’s what I’m saying.”

Grusch testified before Congress the Pentagon has in its possession crashed UFOs it has retrieved. He claims the Pentagon has long been running a covert program to study and reverse engineer those alleged crafts.

AARO’s official stance is that it is “not aware of any such programs.”

Since Grusch has come forward, however, AARO has not definitively said he is wrong, nor has Kirkpatrick verified any of the claims.

Kirkpatrick said 40 additional people have provided UFO-related information that has been investigated in response to Grusch’s claims. Kirkpatrick said AARO plans to publish the first part of a two-part report in which the agency will discuss much of this.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., in July introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would “mandate government records related to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), more commonly known as UFOs, carry the presumption of disclosure.”