The New York Times - USA (2020-07-28)

A2 Y THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, JULY 28, 2020 K

We were part of The New York Times’s

team (with the Washington correspondent

Helene Cooper) that broke the story of the

Pentagon’s long-secret unit investigating

unidentified flying objects, the Advanced

Aerospace Threat Identification Program,

in December 2017.

Since then, we have reported on Navy

pilots’ close encounters with U.F.O.s, and

last week, on the current revamped pro-

gram, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon

Task Force and its official briefings —

ongoing for more than a decade — for

intelligence officials, aerospace executives

and Congressional staff on reported U.F.O.

crashes and retrieved materials.

We’re often asked by well-meaning

associates and readers, “Do you believe in

U.F.O.s?” The question sets us aback as

being inappropriately personal. Times

reporters are particularly averse to reveal-

ing opinions that could imply possible

reporting bias. But in this case we have no

problem responding, “No, we don’t believe

in U.F.O.s.” As we see it, their existence, or

nonexistence, is not a matter of belief.

We admire what the great anthropologist

Margaret Mead said when asked whether

she believed in U.F.O.s. She called it “a silly

question,” writing in Redbook in 1974:

“Belief has to do with matters of faith; it has

nothing to do with the kind of knowledge

that is based on scientific inquiry.... Do

people believe in the sun or the moon, or the

changing seasons, or the chairs they’re

sitting on? When we want to understand

something strange, something previously

unknown to anyone, we have to begin with

an entirely different set of questions. What

is it? How does it work?”

That’s what the Pentagon program has

been focusing on, making it eminently

newsworthy. And to be clear: U.F.O.s don’t

mean aliens. Unidentified means we don’t

know what they are, only that they demon-

strate capabilities that do not appear to be

possible through available technology.

In our reporting, we’ve focused on how

the Department of Defense, the Office of

Naval Intelligence and members of two

Senate committees are engaged with this

topic. Current officials are now concerned

about the potential threat represented by

the very real, advanced technological

objects: how close they can come to our

fighter jets, sometimes causing a near

miss, and the risk that our adversaries

may acquire the technology demonstrated

by the objects before we do.

So if U.F.O.s are no longer a matter of

belief, what are they and how do they do

what they do? And if technology has been

retrieved from downed objects, what better

way to try to understand how they work?

Our previous stories were relatively

easy to document with Department of

Defense videos and pilot eyewitness ac-

counts backed up by Navy hazard reports

of close encounters with speeding objects.

But our latest article provided a more

daunting set of challenges, since we dealt

with the possible existence of retrieved

materials from U.F.O.s. Going from data on

a distant object in the sky to the possession

of a retrieved one on the ground makes a

leap that many find hard to accept and that

clearly demands extraordinary evidence.

Numerous associates of the Pentagon

program, with high security clearances

and decades of involvement with official

U.F.O. investigations, told us they were

convinced such crashes have occurred,

based on their access to classified informa-

tion. But the retrieved materials them-

selves, and any data about them, are com-

pletely off-limits to anyone without clear-

ances and a need to know.

We were provided unclassified slides

showing that the program took this seri-

ously enough to include it in many brief-

ings. One slide says one of the program’s

tasks was to “arrange for access to data/

reports/materials from crash retrievals of

A.A.V.’s,” or advanced aerospace vehicles.

Our sources told us that “A.A.V.” does

not refer to vehicles made in any country

— not Russian or Chinese — but is used to

mean technology in the realm of the truly

unexplained. They also assure us that their

briefings are based on facts, not belief.

Inside The Times

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

A video image by Navy pilots of an interaction with “unidentified aerial phenomena.”

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, VIA AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Staying Grounded on U.F.O.s

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

and LESLIE KEAN

To read the article about the Pentagon program,

go to nytimes.com/by/ralph-blumenthal.

July 28, 1919.A riot erupted on Chicago’s South Side and became one of the worst racial

episodes in U.S. history. The violence was triggered by the death of a Black youth, who

drowned after his raft drifted into a “whites-only” area at Lake Michigan and a white

man threw rocks at him. Soon, battles were breaking out on the streets. “Stones and

rocks were tossed, and whites and blacks clashed in open combats,” The Times reported.

When fighting ended days later, 38 people were dead and over 500 had been injured.

Subscribers can browse the complete Times archives through 2002 at timesmachine.nytimes.com.

On This Day in History

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