Is US on the verge of ‘catastrophic’ UFO leak? What we know

A retired U.S. Army Colonel has said continuing to hide information about UFOs could have “catastrophic” consequences for America, amid new claims that government officials agreed to hold back top-secret research 20 years ago.

Colonel Karl E. Nell called on a Stanford University conference for a “campaign plan” that would force greater transparency and a “Manhattan project” to reverse engineer recovered UFOs or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.

Washington insiders also heard how in 2004, a CIA thinktank, the Defence Intelligence Agency, and the Pentagon, broadly agreed that information about UFOs should not be declassified, deeming the societal risks too great.

The Mail based its report on the first symposium of the Sol Foundation, a nonprofit calling for “serious, well-funded, and cutting-edge academic research into the nature of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and their broad cosmological and political implications.”

The event on Saturday heard from Col. Nell and former CIA scientist Hal Puthoff. Puthoff made the allegations about the 2004 thinktank discussions, which he said had erred toward not disclosing UFO research details to the public.

Slides presented by Col. Nell and published by the Mail showed Nell’s hopes that disclosure about UAP would be achieved by October 1, 2030, admitting there was “risk” that his timeline targets could fall behind.

In the slides, Nell argued his plan, if achieved, would see “Proper Oversight Restored,” “Catastrophic Disclosure Avoid,” and “Scientific Understanding Advanced.”

More specifically, Nell advocated for “restoration of proper Federal government oversight over all UAP legacy (and ongoing) program efforts” and “transformative” research and technology programs.

On LinkedIn, Nell lists his most recent position as “Modernization Advisor to Vice Chief of Staff of the Army.” In response to a Newsweek comment request, the Army Futures Command said in an email that Nell is no longer assigned to the Army Futures Command.

Among the Sol Foundation’s other speakers were former U.S. Air Force veteran David Grusch, who testified before Congress earlier this year under oath that “the U.S. government is operating with secrecy—above Congressional oversight” over UAP.

Grusch told the symposium: “Let us advocate for transparency, not for ourselves, but for the generations to come, as we embark on a journey toward a more enlightened and interconnected world.”

A June 2023 article by The Debrief stated that Nell worked with Grusch on the National Reconnaissance Office’s UAP Task Force from 2021 to 2022, and referred to him as “beyond reproach”.

The Mail’s report on the Sol Foundation event did not directly quote Nell’s concerns around “catastrophic disclosure” but summarized that preventing the release of information could sow discord from the likes of independent actors or U.S. foreign rivals.

Newsweek has contacted the Sol Foundation and the Pentagon via email for comment.

Witnesses testified to Congress during a session of the House Oversight Committee in late July that the government had been aware of non-human activity since the 1930s.

A congressional probe was launched after Grusch told NewsNation, following an article on the same subject in The Debrief, that the government had retrieved several “non-human origin technical vehicles,” some of which contained “dead pilots.”

What the Pentagon Has Said

Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough has said, however, that it has “no information that any individual has been harmed or killed as a result of providing information” about UFO objects.

Gough added the Pentagon had not discovered “any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.”

Despite the renewed optimism and the increasing number of disclosures from the U.S. government, data shared so far has been, in some cases, underwhelming.

Pentagon official Sean Kirkpatrick said in June that the U.S. Defense Department had a database with 800 reports of “anomalous” objects it had recorded over decades.

Many of those reported sightings remain unresolved, owing to technology and circumstances under which these sightings have been caught on film.

As was stated in a recently published Pentagon report, while there have been occasions where UAP had “concerning performance characteristics” such as “high-speed travel or unusual maneuverability” these were connected to a “very small percentage of UAP reports,” with the majority of objects in the sky demonstrating “ordinary characteristics of readily explainable sources.”

Many sightings, it added, remained “technically unresolved” because of a lack of data. It added that it hoped that with an increase in the quality of data, the unidentified nature of most UAP “will likely resolve to ordinary phenomena and significantly reduce the amount of UAP case submissions.”

UFOs Are Back in the Spotlight

The renewed interest has also led to misleading testimonies elsewhere in the world, from speakers whose work has been discredited.

In an unusual presentation in September, a pair of “non-human” corpses said to be at least 1,000 years old were displayed to Mexico’s Congress, with suggestions the bodies could be from another planet.

However, they were found to have a remarkable similarity to a set of “Nazca Humanoid Mummies,” subject of a 2020 documentary on the website Gaia, which is known for its pseudo-scientific and conspiratorial content.

The documentary followed the discovery of several sets of remains said to have been found in Peru between 2015 and 2016, which included what looked like the smaller, infant-like artifacts shown at the Mexican Congress.

During the documentary, x-rays of the remains appear; however, skeptics Scientists Against Myths found they contained a mixture of human and non-human bones, with joints incorrectly positioned to the extent that if these creatures were to attempt to stand or walk, they would fall apart.