[Originally published on Medium.com on September 11, 2022]
On September 8, 2022, the Black Vault published the article “U.S. Navy says ALL UAP/UFO are classified and exempt from release.” In the article, John Greenewald describes a two and half year long FOIA effort to get the U. S. Navy to release all of its videos designated with UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or more commonly known as Unidentified Flying Objects, UFOs).
The response Greenewald received from the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations was:
The UAP Task Force has responded back to DNS-36 and have stated that the requested videos contain sensitive information pertaining to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) and are classified and are exempt from disclosure in their entirety under exemption 5 U.S.C. § 552 (b)(1) in accordance with Executive Order 13526 and the UAP Security Classification Guide…And furthermore:
The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities. No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.After listening to the Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence (ONI), Scott W. Bray, at the C3 subcommittee hearing on UAP/UFOs in May 2022, I was worried that the ONI had emulated the “Project Blue Book”-attitude toward transparency on the UFO issue. That is, little or no transparency at all.