What is Project Aqua? UFO “leak” touted on Joe Rogan Podcast

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson mentioned a mysterious government scheme called “Project Aqua,” linked to UFOs, during a recent interview on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast in which Carlson talked at length about extraterrestrial life.

Carlson, who now regularly broadcasts from X, formerly Twitter, spoke to Rogan about his theories on alien life and new information the U.S. government has begun to reveal on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).

Interest in UAPs among the American public has increased in the past two years, with the Pentagon establishing its All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in July 2022 to investigate “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” elsewhere confirming the existence of a government database with at least 800 reports of “anomalous” objects.

Joe Rogan has had multiple guests on his podcasts to discuss UAPs including, among others, David Grusch, the Air Force veteran who told a House Oversight Committee hearing in July 2023 that “the U.S. government is operating with secrecy—above Congressional oversight.”

During Tucker Carlson’s recent appearance on the show, he referred to a leak of something called “Project Aqua” released by the U.S. government “apparently by accident.”

Carlson called the details of it “crazy,” before reaching for his phone to read out what “someone had just sent me.”

However, searching for “Project Aqua” from search results before the podcast was posted online revealed the name of no such U.S. government scheme.

The name nonetheless led to speculation on social media about the project. One TikTok post by user spacetok369, viewed 1.7 million times in two days, included a clip from the show with the headline “US gov leaked Project Aqua accidentally.”

Another TikTok by user worldly.unexplained, viewed 86,000 times, appeared to treat the name as something far more significant, heading its video “REMOTE VIEWING COMMS PROJECT AQUA EXPOSED Tucker Carlson on the release of Project Aqua.”

However, it appears that the name was simply a misquote by Carlson. Carlson went on to provide details about Kona Blue instead, a project related to UFOs mentioned in a recently declassified Pentagon document.

Release of Official Information

In March, the AARO released information about UFOs and UAPs dating back to 1945.

One portion of the report said that the Pentagon previously considered a program that sought to reverse-engineer any extraterrestrial space crafts that were found on Earth. The report showed that the program was never fulfilled.

“In 2021, without sufficient justification, the scope of an IC [Intelligence Community] Controlled Access Program was expanded to protect UAP reverse-engineering. This program never recovered or reverse-engineered any UAP or extraterrestrial spacecraft. This IC program was disestablished due to its lack of merit,” the report said.

The program, called Kona Blue in 2012, was brought to the Department of Homeland Security to possibly “reverse-engineer any recovered off-world spacecraft that they hoped to acquire.”

“It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected—this material was only assumed to exist by KONA BLUE advocates and its anticipated contract performers,” the report said.

On the Joe Rogan podcast, Tucker Carlson referred to another declassified document that gave more details about this ultimately failed project.

The document, published on the AARO website and provided by the Department of Homeland Security, included “relevant information associated with KONA BLUE” adding that “KONA BLUE was a DHS prospective special access program (PSAP) terminated on February 10, 2012.”

Carlson quoted a section of the document that stated that Kona Blue would include a “medical division” that would “organize data into a threat analysis based on medical findings including but not limited to: (a) deaths and injuries as a result of interaction with advanced aerospace vehicles, (b) medical injuries as a result of other anomalies (c) collateral injuries/physiological effects to family members.”

Carlson then said to Rogan “So they’re admitting that people are dying”. Carlson didn’t clarify what he meant and went on to concede Rogan’s suggestion that it may all be “disinformation.”

He then explained his belief that there was “enough going on in the skies, but not just the skies underwater, that the US military has been forced to respond to it” and that “there is a real effort and has been underway for a long time to keep the public from knowing about it.”

Regardless, “Project Aqua” does not appear to be a real UAP or UFO project and the other information Carlson referred to was a program shut down years ago amid an apparent lack of merit.

Newsweek has contacted a representative for Tucker Carlson via email for comment.

In October 2023, an updated AARO report, covering sightings between the end of August 2022 and April 30, 2023, and any other previously omitted cases, said the U.S. government received a total of 291 reports in those eight months. AARO is now investigating more than 800 cases, Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told the media.

While the Pentagon has denied accusations about the reverse-engineering of “extraterrestrial material,” Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett told Newsweek in March that he believed “we have recovered a craft at some point and possible beings.”

“I think that a lot of that’s being reverse-engineered right now, but we just don’t understand it,” he said.