Classified ‘brief’: Secret UFO report only 17 pages long
The real truth on UFOs is out there — and it’s only 17 pages long.
The nine-page preliminary US government report released last month did little to satisfy those seeking answers on whether alien life exists — and the classified version isn’t likely to provide much more depth with just eight additional pages, according to a report by The Black Vault, a website operated by author and podcaster John Greenewald.
Days after the June 25 report was released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, US officials declined to comment on the length of the classified version, but told Greenewald it was “substantively consistent” and had the same conclusions as the public document.
Greenewald tweeted Thursday that he had confirmed the length of the classified report, which led to much speculation online, with estimates ranging anywhere from 70 to 400 additional pages.
“The classified version of the report is 17 pages in length,” Sally Nicholson, from ODNI’s office that handles Freedom of Information Act requests, wrote to Greenewald in an email Thursday.
Greenewald, who specializes in obtaining declassified documents through FOIA requests, bills his site as the largest private online collection of declassified government reports.
Greenewald’s inquiry into the classified report, filed the morning after ODNI delivered it to Congress, initiated a “mandatory declassification review (MDR),” according to The Black Vault.
That’s a process in which an individual or entity can request any federal agency to review classified information for declassification, regardless of age or origin, with “certain limitations,” according to the Information Security Oversight Office.
The Black Vault also requested attachments to the classified report, “wherein members of Congress received additional videos or photographs outside of the seventeen pages and whether those are confirmed to exist,” Greenewald wrote.
“It must be stated that this answer may only come after the case is processed, closed, and a final determination is issued, since the current state of the report and/or attachments should they exist, are classified,” the report continued.
Greenewald said many MDR cases are ultimately denied, but have led to the unearthing of a CIA document that “supposedly justified the Iraq invasion” and a National Security Agency record revealing the list of classified documents aboard the USS Pueblo before its capture by North Korea in 1968.
Luis “Lue” Elizondo, the former head of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, told The Post last month that the ODNI report was merely the “first” of many to come.
Elizondo, who claims the Department of Defense has tried to discredit him, told The Post on Friday that the classified report — funded as part of a $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief and spending package enacted by President Donald Trump in December — is considerably longer.
“Understandably, there is some confusion, but rest assured the complete report, including end notes, is over 70 pages,” Elizondo said in a statement to The Post. “I do not care to speculate about why there is confusion, nor involve myself in the debate, but the fact remains that the full and complete report is significantly longer than what is currently being stated for the record.”
Elizondo did not clarify how he knew the length of the classified report. He said last month’s public release — which didn’t find “firm conclusions” on the 144 UFO sightings reported by government sources since 2004 — left more questions than answers. Just one reported UFO was identified as a large, deflating balloon.
“This conversation is only beginning,” Elizondo told The Post late last month.
