Daniel Lavelle just published an article about UAP and Sean Kirpatrick.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/22/ufologists-sean-kirkpatrick-pentagon-report-uaps
He shared the audio of the interview with me, along with an AI transcript. I've edited the transcript to correct numerous AI errors (a combination of poor audio from Kirkpatrick and a Mancunian accent from Lavelle). The full (and very interesting) transcript follows, and the audio is attached. https://www.metabunk.org/data/audio/66/66193-97b80c85c98ee3eba4f2d4e3c8edda44.mp3
Note that because this a still largely an AI transcript, there's the possibility there are some errors I missed — so refer to the audio. There are also a few parts that are unclear in the original audio which I've tried to note inline. Please let me know of you find errors.
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Daniel Lavelle 00:00
Hey, how are you?
Sean Kirkpatrick 00:01
Doing all right.
Daniel Lavelle 00:06
Well, then, first of all, thanks so much for agreeing to talk to me. I know, you probably don't don't like doing interviews I gathered from the podcast you were on. So I'm grateful.
Sean Kirkpatrick 00:22
Ok
Daniel Lavelle 00:24
Can we just maybe start with your background? Like, what is your background academically? And what drew you to science in the first place?
Sean Kirkpatrick 00:36
So I have a PhD in physics. My background is mostly in condensed matter physics, lasers, optics, remote sensing, that sort of thing. I've always wanted to be a physicist. So, ever since high school, or even before, never known doing anything else. And as a physicist, got drawn into military and intelligence research, and from there moved over into the intelligence community for the last 25 some odd years.
Daniel Lavelle 01:16
And what was it about UFOs or UAPs, that interested you?
Sean Kirkpatrick 01:25
Nothing, actually, it was an assignment. So as senior Intel military officers get given assignments. This one I was asked to do, by the undersecretary, the undersecretary of intelligence. And when those kinds of people ask, it's usually a good thing to say yes, because generally, they don't like it if you say no. But, you know, truth be told, it's an interesting area only because it is a ... looking for something that is unknown is really the same thing in sciences, it is in the intelligence community, and you are trying to find unknown things and determine what they are. So as a physicist, and intelligence officer, that's sort of the sweet spot of things to go do. Which is interesting. Keeping in mind, you know, the, the office was asked to do two missions, both an operational mission and a historical research mission. And so the operational mission is where I would have preferred to spend most of my time. Historical mission was what's necessary by law.
Daniel Lavelle 03:03
So was it, is it unusual for you to collaborate with a civilian scientists like Avi Loeb.
Sean Kirkpatrick 03:11
So understand that one of the things that we were charged to do was normalise this research area and get it out of the conspiracy minded community and put it more into science and technology and national security and safety communities. This is where I think there was a big push to try to normalise this, get it away from the sensationalism and put some rigour behind it. So to put rigour behind something like that, we've got to get the science community involved. Scientific community doesn't want to be involved because of the conspiracy, laden baggage that comes with it. So part of this was working with select groups across the academic community to try to get them into putting some scientific rigour behind their thinking and getting some of them to put some scientific rigour into analysis and hypotheses. So the way the scientific method works, right, got a hypothesis. You get signatures and data that you expect to come out of that hypothesis. You go and you measure that. And if your data matches, then your theory is is correct. Your hypothesis is correct. If it doesn't match, then it's not. So part of the plan was to get the scientific community to start documenting, in peer reviewed journals, different aspects of the the hypothetical Extra Terrestrial hypothesis if you will. So, Avi, being one of the key scientific figures that is trying to prove advanced civilizations out in the universe. The purpose of engaging with him was to get him to put on paper, the signatures associated with his hypothesis, if you actually look through that paper which was never finished, because it was put out as draft before we finished writing it.
Sean Kirkpatrick 05:43
You'll see going to the back end of that, you know, the math and the physics of, okay, look, if there's something that's moving around, as quickly as people believe, it would leave very specific physical signatures. If those physical signatures are not there, when we go up to measure it, then that's probably not what that thing is doing. So that was the whole purpose of that exercise, was to get that documented, eventually put into a peer review journal. Now that one did not go. I did do another one with the University of Utah that came out around the holidays. And there's there's another one that we're finishing up right now that's looking at kind of statistical correlations of environmental factors, and other aspects of observations that have to be factored in to any good scientific theory you have to actually get through all that.
Daniel Lavelle 06:50
And the prevailing theory now is that it's, well, I say prevailing, it's the one that has the consensus, I suppose is that it's a comet, with, but, why are they why are they wrong about that?
Sean Kirkpatrick 07:04
You mean Avi's ...?
Daniel Lavelle 07:06
No. Avi thinks it's a artificial interstellar object. But I think other researchers suggested it's a comet that's emitting small amounts of gas from an icy core, which is why you don't see a tail because it's a small amount.
Sean Kirkpatrick 07:23
And if that's what fits the data, then that is, what is the scientific theory that is supported by the data. The paper that I was working with him on was to put math to his theory? So that it could either be proved or disproved? And it's been disproved.
Daniel Lavelle 07:46
And have you been following his expedition in the Pacific?
Sean Kirkpatrick 07:51
I did
Daniel Lavelle 07:52
And what do you make of the components of the Spherules? He's found that, he's he's his claim is that they're, they have a unique composition that you don't usually find on the Earth's surface.
Sean Kirkpatrick 08:07
I haven't read the scientific analysis. And I haven't seen the rest of the communities analysis and peer review at that. So I would leave it to the scientific community to do that, put it out in publication. And then I take a look at it.
Daniel Lavelle 08:23
Sure. So let's jump straight into the ARRO stuff. Can I talk about where this all started? I mean, for the public, this most recent spate of the UFO craze, if you like, with the New York Times article. So those three videos that came out, do we know what Gimbal is now? Because that's the one that everyone goes to the one that looks like a flying saucer that rotates? Do you now have an idea of what that is?
Sean Kirkpatrick 08:57
We have again, we have had a hypothesis of this is how the sensor operates on that particular platform. There are different types of sensors that do different things we were in, at least when I was there I was in the process of actually obtaining one of those to measure it. Because again, it's a [unclear] what can you recreate? We did not get around to doing that before I retired, so I don't know where they are on that. But that is most likely a senso, I won't say it's not an artefact, but that's just how the sensor operates. We see that in a number of different other sensors. But that needs to be proven. Prove it and get, actually go get that platform, put it in imaging chamber, and recreate it that [unclear]
Daniel Lavelle 10:02
One of the theories out there put forward by a sceptic called Mick West is that it's glare from a heat source. Is that accurate? Do you think? In the case of Gimbal,
Sean Kirkpatrick 10:16
You mean as what the source is source could be any number of things, right? The source, and even a weather balloon will give off that kind of glare if it's Mylar, it's got enough shiny [unclear] on it, the sun's just right. So all of that kind of analysis has to go into those kinds of videos. Unfortunately, there's not really enough, a whole lot of the information that we need to do that level of analysis is not in that video: the raw video, the raw data, and that raw data that's not available.
Daniel Lavelle 10:56
And that video cuts off for the public, but is the more of that video that you've seen.
Sean Kirkpatrick 11:03
No, there's no more.
Daniel Lavelle 11:04
It just cuts off where it cuts off.
Sean Kirkpatrick 11:07
That's when they stopped recording.
Daniel Lavelle 11:09
Okay. And what about go fast? I mean, again, debunkers would say it's not going fast at all, it's going quite slowly, and it's a lot higher than they think.
Sean Kirkpatrick 11:20
Yeah, so the Go Fast one was analysed with the NASA team. And it's definitely just parallax. Now that has to be verified with with AARO and then they will put it out on their website when they get to that. But that's not a ..., everything I saw from the NASA analysis was was accurate to everything else that we've seen parallax show up in.
Daniel Lavelle 11:53
And tic tac, what's your view on that?
Sean Kirkpatrick 11:59
My view on Tic Tac hasn't changed since the last time I talked about it. There's no data, there's not enough information to ever come to a conclusion. So we can speculate about it all we want. But you know, what's important for folks to understand is that these these trained military pilots, they do see things that they may not understand what they see any more than their sensors understand what they see. And that doesn't mean that it's unusual, or it's exotic, or it's extraterrestrial, it just means that they don't understand what they're looking at right then.
Sean Kirkpatrick 12:41
In the case of the tic tac, there's a lot of other hypotheses that's that are still there that people tend to gloss over, like submersible launched vehicles, other radar artefacts, I mean, one of the things that people, again, don't don't fully appreciate, is a lot of the stuff that we see in these ranges. And I don't want to speak to tic tac in particular, but all of them, come from when there's when there's these weird anomalous radar signatures. What people don't understand is that these are test wings. Test wings are testing new capabilities. And so new radars or new radar waveforms, get artefacts in them. And that's why you're out there testing them to try to figure out how do you optimise it so that it's working so that it can be used in regular operations. Some of these are just the fact that, hey, they're testing a new radar. And you don't know what what it's doing, and so you get it sorted out, and you have to dig into that data.
Sean Kirkpatrick 13:59
All that takes time, as far as Tic Tac is concerned. And there's a couple of other explanations that don't involve extraterrestrials that haven't been fully explored, but they aren't going to be able to because there's no data. You know, this is from years and years ago. None of that data was retained at the time, because there wasn't a data retention policy in place for the department. And the first thing ...
Daniel Lavelle 14:26
... is there one now?
Sean Kirkpatrick 14:28
There is. That was one of the first thing that I did when I stood up AARO was we put together a data retention policy and put it out to the Joint Staff. Joint Staff issued it along with the reporting requirements that we standardized last year. So all of that is out there. Now it's a question of what can they see and collect and how can they process all that data?
Daniel Lavelle 14:57
And how did it A typical day unfolds at AARO I mean, do you just reach out to witnesses? Do people reach out to you? How did you go about your daily business? You know,
Sean Kirkpatrick 15:10
Well, are you talking about the historical research? Or are you talking about operational mission?
Daniel Lavelle 15:15
Well, I'd say contemporary information. Yeah.
Sean Kirkpatrick 15:21
So, on the operational mission. So every day, all of the reporting from the services is collected and gone through and logged if there are any cases that are recorded as UAP, and turned into data files. And a lot of this is data processing and data manage and understanding what we have to work with. Now understand, you got to understand some of the new guidance that we had put out, takes time to implement. So other services have to figure out how they're going to retain all this data and how they're going to transmit it to AARO and to the relevant combatant commands. So the other thing is, you got all the combatant commands that need to also know what's going on in their area of responsibility. So all of that was in play.
But in a typical day, any of those reports that were coming in, from the different services would get logged, turned into cases, there'd be a quick look through on what, you know, what data was available, and whether or not it rose to a level of priority, where we would want to move that up in the list of analysis. That's just the reporting and analysis. And there's the collection management, align all of our collection capabilities to try and search and find any of these things. There's the S&T line of effort where we're looking at the science and the technology across the globe. Are there any new cutting edge technologies? Are there things that we can use for tracking and detection? Are there things that other people are working on that might meet some of these signatures that we're seeing?
Sean Kirkpatrick 17:27
You know, one of the things that I talked about last year was, you know, people, sometimes you know, these pilots say, Hey, I saw something that it looks like it was manoeuvring, and it doesn't look like it had any means of propulsion, there's no means of propulsion, visible means of manoeuvring? Well, there's lots of technologies that are state of the art today, and have been for the last decade or two that would present those kinds of signatures,
Daniel Lavelle 17:59
really!
Sean Kirkpatrick 18:00
And so just trying to understand what's the current state of the art of technologies that are out there is important piece of this right? Understanding how do..., what's advanced aerospace platforms look like? There are commercial drone companies that are that are pushing the state of the art that that people just need to understand and recognise, you know, this this whole thing about the cubes in a sphere?
Daniel Lavelle 18:32
Oh, yeah. Ryan Graves mentioned that didn't he.
Sean Kirkpatrick 18:35
Okay, right. Well, you know, there was, there were some academic articles that I, some of my research team found from a couple of years ago, back in 21, 22. With a Chinese in Singapore, group, two groups, where they were actually, they had built and were flying spherical drones that had cubes in them. And why would they do that? Well, according to the research, they were looking for, what's the what's the next gen of drones that's there? There's a lot of spherical drone work for a lot of good reasons. And how do you make a drone like that manoeuvre around without propellers that are visible? One of the reasons you make a spherical drone is for indoor use because it's safer. Or in stadiums, which is outdoor, because it's safer because if it crashes into the crowd, it's not going to cut people and hurt them. So these are basically you know, what they do is where the cube touches the sphere at all the corners, they fuse it, they it cut it out. And they stick either small turbo fans, or in some cases, different propulsion, jet propulsion, air propulsion systems. And so now I have eight of these around this sphere. And that gives you the greatest fidelity and manoeuvring the sphere around using a controller inside. Why is this important? Well, there is a there is an example of a cube in a sphere drone that exists today, you know, that doesn't require aliens.
Sean Kirkpatrick 20:46
Now, what people will say, and again, this goes back to people don't actually understand how the national security world works. People will say, Well, that was a couple of years ago, and what the pilots were saying was they saw this, you know, 15 years ago? Well, this is how the classified world works. If, if I am a nation state, and I have an advanced technology that I'm working on, I will classify it and I will not let my scientists say anything about it or publish on it, until I get to a point where I've got a capability that I feel comfortable with. And the rest of the semi academic world has started to catch up, or the scientific world is starting to catch up. At that point, then they may let some of the scientists or associated companies, you know, publish on some of the basics that don't give away their their secret sauce or their secret capabilities. So they'll see publications on these things, but it's usually a decade or two, after the fact.
Daniel Lavelle 22:05
So how far ahead is the US military than, how far ahead of the public is it, in terms of technological advances?
Sean Kirkpatrick 22:13
I couldn't say. And it all depends on on which areas you're looking at this, this is, this is how the military labs operate. Doe labs operate all the national the military labs are full of a bunch of sciences, I came out of one. This is what we do, right we do in research. And then we'll try to write some papers will write some papers on some of the basic physics. But you won't get any of the unclassified papers on on any of the more advanced stuff until much further down the line. Well, that's true in every country. And China's just there as bad as anybody else, if not worse than when they let their scientists publish, if at all. So it is not surprised me at all. But a capability like like that you would see today in an academic publication. I don't know that there is a country that had a classified programme, but it stands to reason in the national security world that that is a possibility. I'm saying is here's a possibility that does not have anything to do with aliens.
Daniel Lavelle 23:41
Excuse me, [coughs] Yeah, sorry. I'm just getting. I'm so sorry. Excuse me.
Daniel Lavelle 23:53
So some of these witnesses have described, you know, hypersonic speeds and, and turns at right angles that defy the laws of physics as they see it. I mean, does the government, does the US government or other governments have that sort of capability.
Sean Kirkpatrick 24:11
So I go back to my earlier statement, if you dig into all of those of the data that we have on those that it almost always turns out to be an optical illusion, a sensor or anomaly, or some other weird aspect of how that data was collected, and inevitably does not turn out to be that it's travelling in hypersonics and velocities or making right angle turns. My favourite one is the right angle turn that, you know, there was a video of that as, as we recreated, you know, here's the platform going around, and the sensor underneath it is turning at the same time and they're banking. And when you put all of that together and you recreated it, the object wasn't moving hardly It all was moving with the wind. But it appears that it's moving, you know, crazy because you are, you don't have a reference frame. It's it's just like relativity, you don't have a reference frame. And unless you have an inertial reference frame that you can pin it to. It's gonna look weird.
Daniel Lavelle 25:21
And pilots aren't infallible, are they? So they're just as vulnerable to optical illusions as the rest of us.
Sean Kirkpatrick 25:28
Absolutely they are. And it happens, I mean .... it happens.
Daniel Lavelle 25:38
So is AARO based out of the Pentagon, the building. And you worked in the building, the Pentagon? or was it.
Sean Kirkpatrick 25:47
So AARO is in a non disclosed location, because we don't need a lot of crazy people at the door.
Daniel Lavelle 25:56
Right. I get it. That's always made me wonder about area 51. If they really did have things there, then that there now are they because you don't want to attract all the crazies, like you said. But from a young boys perspectives someone who is interested in that topic. I mean, having a job at the Pentagon hunting aliens sounds really exciting. Is it exciting? Did you enjoy the work?
Sean Kirkpatrick 26:22
I enjoyed the operational mission.
Daniel Lavelle 26:25
Right.
Sean Kirkpatrick 26:26
I..., the historical research, while interesting, coupled with the allegations, became most of my time, which is not where I needed to be. And the rest of my team, you know, I kept them focused on the operational mission because that's where they needed to go. That was the most important part of AARO, and still is today, is the safety and security and the national security issues attendent to that. But the team of debriefers and I focused on the research, and again, while, interesting, at the end, we're spending a lot of time and effort because of a group of people that have lobbied into the attention of Congress to make this go.
Daniel Lavelle 27:38
Yeah, and you've talked about a circular reporting cycle that's going on. Can I just I'm just gonna read some names to you, right, George Knapp, Lou Elizondo, Jeremy Cobell, Christopher Mellon, Jay Stratton are those some of the names are involved in this self-repeating circle.
Sean Kirkpatrick 28:04
So, I can't name specific names, because the legislation wrote, extended the whistleblower protections to anybody that came to speak to us and anybody that we would call out there are, there are privacy act restrictions, there are whistleblower restrictions, which is why in the report, there are no names, just numbers
Daniel Lavelle 28:36
Is the Department of Defence embarrassed that it got duped by Robert Bigelow to get 22 million to investigate ghosts and skinwalkers and things.
Sean Kirkpatrick 28:46
So the reason that part is in there is because that's already out in the public domain. That's already been documented. And that's already out there. So I don't have anything to to add on to that. I think what you'll find is you can probably do the analysis and figure out who's who, and I'm sure there will be people that will try to do that. But that's not my job. And our job was to document everything, investigate it, and protect the identities. Now, interestingly enough, some of the legislation including the extension of the whistleblower protections to these these folks was actually ghost written by some of these same people who had lobbied Congress. So they, they managed to write themselves in their own protections to allow them to go do some of this stuff. So there's that's a that's an interesting thing that somebody needs to go investigate, but it's not AARO's job.
Daniel Lavelle 29:56
So when David Grusch testified in Congress that he had been told that the US government is in possession of alien spacecraft, which they're reverse engineering. And they not only that, but they have alien bodies. And he said, Somebody told, told him, someone he trusts. I mean, are we talking about that same circle?
Sean Kirkpatrick 30:18
Yes
Daniel Lavelle 30:19
Right. So that the people who lobbied for this program in the first place are the same people who told him that they that they have these things?
Sean Kirkpatrick 30:29
It's even better than that. So if you look, in the historical report on page 36, you'll see 1,2,3,4, 4 or 5 main bullets there that speak to this same group of people who had their hands in everything from [?comported?] material exploitation to congressional lobbying and writing of legislation, to expanding legitimate special access programmes or purportedly for alien, and extra terrestrial exploitation, which they weren't supposed to do. You know, there's a lot of things there that all of the same people were involved in, including some of the same ones were involved in the in the think tank study, that's, that's called out in there. It was just it's, it's all the same group.
Daniel Lavelle 31:52
Do you think this is a blemish on the Department of Defence, the fact that this was allowed to happen? does it speak to maybe the way you the department vets programmes and the way organises itself?
Sean Kirkpatrick 32:06
No, I think in this case, you know, look, once the department understood what was happening, they put a stop to it
Daniel Lavelle 32:19
Right.
Sean Kirkpatrick 32:21
And because of that, the Senator Harry Reid at the time, used some of these collaborated with some of these same people and went over to DHS to try to get that program stood up. That's really the new part of this is that DHS piece, which had been alleged, as being you know, one of the hiding places or extraterrestrial bodies, turned out to not be that it turned out to be this kind of same group of people trying to stand up a programme under DHS, because the Department of Defence shut it down. So there's, there's, you know, a little bit of investigative work that we have laid out, kind of put all these pieces together. That's what's all out there in that report. And the DHS package, I believe, is in its final review for public release. So that'll be put out.
Daniel Lavelle 33:35
When then, I'm looking at the other conspiracies like the JFK assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, who is undoubtably the shooter as far as I'm concerned. But he's often described as a patsy by conspiracy theorists. Do you think David Grusch is a patsy, of this UFO lobby that he's been told this stuff? Because he's a useful idiot, and he's gone forward with it?
Sean Kirkpatrick 34:00
I don't know. I don't want to speculate on on people's motivations, that, again, that wasn't our our remit. Our remit was to lay out the evidence and investigate the allegations. And the evidence is pretty conclusive. There's no evidence to support any of the allegations or any extraterrestrial reverse engineering or non human biologics or whatever you want to call it. But what's interesting is that some of the language that was used in the open testimony like Mr. Grush, and others, is actually the same language that was in the original story back in the 60s, and then again in the 80s, 90s. So if you look at this story, historically, and some of that is in historical record, it's online now. You see this story crop up every, every couple of decades and it's same pretty much it's the same story.
Daniel Lavelle 35:07
Bit like the virgin birth and different religious texts. Has David Grush ever been in touch with you during your time at AARO
Sean Kirkpatrick 35:20
Not at AARO, we tried to reach out to him four or five times to get him to come in. And as of the time that I left, he had not, and had refused to come, for a variety of reasons that we tried to answer. And [unclear] at this point
Daniel Lavelle 35:38
point, and can you disclose those reasons he gave?
Sean Kirkpatrick 35:43
I think you should wait until the FOIA come out.
Daniel Lavelle 35:46
Okay. Um, yeah, a few things. A lot of these people involved in this UFO lobby are quite scathing of you. And quite, you know, abusive, you know, you've been called a liar or a spin doctor. And, you know, there's some sinister overtones to all, I mean, how has that affected you?
Sean Kirkpatrick 36:14
Well, it's been much worse than that. I've had people come to my house, I've had people threaten my wife and daughter, and try to break into our online accounts, a lot more than, far more than I ever had as the deputy director of intelligence. I didn't have China and Russia trying to get on me as much as these people are. And and, you know, does it bother me, it bothers me when they come after my family. It does not bother me to the point of caring that much, other than every one of them have been turned over to the FBI for investigation. So, you know, they can make all the threats they want. I just turned it all over for OSI and FBI to go and law enforcement to go investigate.
Daniel Lavelle 37:23
I'm guessing you can't tell me who the individuals are. But can you speak around that in the sense that are the people prominent in this whole UFO community?
Sean Kirkpatrick 37:34
So there's certainly a number of really true believers in the conspiracy. Obviously, there's a lot of people that that are never going to believe anything that AARO is going to come up with. I had one one person, you know, send an email about, you know, why would anybody believe you know, the Pentagon, and Congress is not going to believe that the Pentagon and so why even bother? And the answer is simple. But if Congress didn't want to believe us, then Congress shouldn't have written into law for us to go investigate. I mean, Congress writes the laws, Congress should have done it.
Now, here's the other piece of this that I just want to make sure we're all clear. Right? There are a lot of good people in Congress that are trying hard to get to the truth of this, and most of them were on the Senate side. You know, the Intel and defence committees in particular, are very, very, very concerned about the safety and security aspects of this mission space and rightfully so. Right. You don't want this to be an intelligence surprise. You don't want this to be a technology surprise. That being said, there's a handful of folks that are, you know, in Congress, but are mostly on the House side, very true-believing, Pentagon's lying, there's a government conspiracy and a cover up and, you know, why would we ever believe that? Well, you know, the first thing I would say and I've said this before, like I said, this is my first op ed. You know, those folks. They never ever asked for a briefing from AARO in the entire time I was there. They never asked for an update. They never even bothered to inquire about anything that they put out into the public space. Before they did It
Daniel Lavelle 40:01
is this Tim Burchett, et al.?
Sean Kirkpatrick 40:04
This is, yeah, this is the house side. Predominantly, this is the House side, right? So that, you know the thoughts of, hey, you know, if you guys want to get it the head, the truth is, first of all, Congress stood us up to go investigate. And you should make use of the tools you stood up to get to answers that you want. Or at least the truth that you want to find out and may not be the answer you want. And often, that's the case.
Sean Kirkpatrick 40:42
The the other piece of that is, you know, they really need to, spend some time listening to what has been found before they jump out into the public space and decry the Pentagon is hiding something from them. What, what certainly many of the American people don't recognise, and I put this in my second Op Ed. And what certain that most of the [global? gullible?] community has never paid attention to is, and I wouldn't expect them to is how the US Congress works when it comes to access to classified information. Classified information is controlled by the Defence and Intel committees for defence and Intel classified information.
And so if a congressional member who is not on those committees, wants, you know, shows up at a military base and wants access to classified information, they're not going to get it unless their own congressional defence and Intel committees gives them access, that's not the department or the IC's call or responsibility. They have to go to their own committees to request access and justify that. And then those committees will tell the department or the IC, yes, you may brief, you know, member so and so on whatever it is they're asking about. But if they don't say that, if they don't do that, the department and the IC can't really do anything if it's a security violation. But you know, most people don't know that. And instead, you get members that go, "Oh, they're hiding information from us?" Well, yeah, get cleared.
Daniel Lavelle 43:08
Were any of the witnesses you interviewed under oath?
Sean Kirkpatrick 43:13
So all of them put, we transcribed their testimony to us. And then they signed a piece of paper that that attested to the accuracy, they were able to change or write or edit whatever they wanted. And then they signed it and said this was accurate to the best of their knowledge.
Daniel Lavelle 43:34
In fairness to true believers, I suppose, if you go to a private company, or decompartmentalize part of government and ask them about reverse engineering projects and what and whatnot, if they want to keep that secret, they're gonna lie to you, aren't they? I mean, how? How did how do you know that you're not being lied to? I suppose you just as it just on trust alone, or is there empirical?
Sean Kirkpatrick 43:56
So it's a couple of things. One, we were cleared to everything that those industry partners were working on, before we showed up. Two, most of the people at the senior level that I interacted with, certainly, and many of my team are people that have worked with the Department for many years. We've known them, we know who they are, we know what programs they have, we know what they're doing. And there is a you know, there's a relationship between the industrial base and the department. Because if they, if they aren't being truthful there, that that hurts their chances with the department and future acquisition that you're talking about. And then we cross-check.
Sean Kirkpatrick 44:52
So, you know, I know there's a there's a favourite part of this story of, you know, hey stuff was abandoned with an industry partner, and they're hiding it. Well, no, they're not. And I went and checked with those people. And here's where this gets really interesting is some of that same core group of individuals that we were talking about earlier. Right, had reached out to one of these industry partners and convinced them to take a look at a piece of material that they claimed was part of a crashed UFO. And then turned around to point to that company and say, hey, they're exploiting, you know, that reverse engineering crashed UFOs? Well, they were the ones that gave it to them.
Daniel Lavelle 45:43
That is ridiculous.
Sean Kirkpatrick 45:47
And then once we actually got control of that little project and took a look at it, it turns out, that's not really a UFO, it's most likely a piece of a missile casing from an Air Force test back in the 60s or 50s. So so this is the kind of circular accusations that have been going on. You got a group of people that that start something? And then they go out and say, they're doing this? Right. So the same group of people who expanded this special access programme that, they weren't supposed to, then go out and say there's a hidden special access programme that has UAP/UFO stuff? Like, Well, yeah, 'cause you expanded it, [unclear].
Daniel Lavelle 46:42
I mean, by setting fire to a building call in the news, or better yet filming the news and sending it off? That's, can you tell me who that private company was? Like, who they sent this material to? No, that's a shame.
Sean Kirkpatrick 46:58
Yeah, well, I mean, we have to protect companies as much as we protect the individuals. So all of that has been given to the appropriate oversight folks in Congress. So there's, the senior leadership and Congress are the ones that get access to all of the actual data at that level.
Daniel Lavelle 47:23
Again, I'm gonna ask you to speculate, but what do you think their motivation is? I mean, are they grifters? in the purest sense of the word, they know they're lying that they're trying to fool people? Or do they genuinely genuinely believe this stuff and just a bit irrational about it?
Sean Kirkpatrick 47:40
So much like UAP, there's no one explanation. Right? It comes to motivations, that people and I don't know why individuals do the things they do. You know, I'm a, as an intelligence officer and physicist, I'm a, I'm a technical collector, not a human collector. That is a different type of intelligence officer. So I don't know motivations, and we weren't asked to to find out. But what I have told people in the past, including Congress, you know, there's there's generally a handful of motivations that that you can think of, right?
So there's, there's clearly monetary value, there's a huge market to keep this kind of conspiracy going. Everything from TV shows the, you know, movies and whatever. Companies that are stood up to go investigate things. There's fame. There's, there's influence in the sense of, hey, if I can get some, some people on the Hill excited about this, whether it's staffers and members, and they want to keep talking to me, then there's a there's a, it's not really a power but an influence, motivation. There's, there's the absolute true-belief, which I wouldn't, I would, I would suggest is more akin to a religion than an actual factual thing. And those are the people that you're never going to convince, no matter what you put in front of them. I can lay out, you know, I can lay out the pictures of the classified programs that they mistook and they still wouldn't believe it. They would say no, that was derived from alien technology.
And then there, you know, there's people that have there are some that unfortunately have clear issues. I've got a person that communicates with me often trying to come to grips with something that that they think they've seen and they're working through, what can only be described as mental health issues. So I mean, you know, take your pick, it could be any of those, it could be none of those, it could just be: "I want to go do this".
Interestingly, and I'll have to to start wrapping up here in a moment, interestingly, you know, what I would leave you with on that topic is, you know, there is the potential for intentional disinformation misinformation, you know, relative to this kind of missionary, because it's so divisive. It's just another example of how, you know, somebody could could use this in a system in a societal divide, to exacerbate, you know, anger against the government, anger against me, anger against other aspects of this mission space. Because people want to believe they want to believe in things like alien technology, because they don't want to be alone in the universe, and they want to be I want to believe that there's a reason things are the way they are. That's not necessarily where you want to put your focus. But I don't speak for people, right, I just speak what we've found; what's the evidence and what are the facts?
Daniel Lavelle 51:52
Sure. I'll let you go in a second. I am I am asked them, you ufologists in the interests of balance if they had any questions for you. So I've just selected a few. If you don't mind, if I could put those to you. One of the interesting ones I thought was, if the government had found evidence of aliens and spaceships and whatnot, would they have disclosed it to the public by now? Or is it the kind of thing they would keep secret?
Sean Kirkpatrick 52:24
They wouldn't keep that secret, because it's not, it's not their job, right? I mean, if there was, first of all, if the Department of Defence or the intelligence found evidence of any sort of extraterrestrial, it's not their job, it would immediately get turned over to NASA. And NASA would immediately disclose to everybody. It's that's their job. That's why we had a partnership with NASA for, one, for investigating advanced aerospace technologies that already exist. But, two, I mean, that's their job. Right. That's why there was the UAP independent study from NASA.
Daniel Lavelle 53:06
On this is from one of your critics, Jeremy Cabell. He said there are many small errors in the report, such as Senator Reid representing New Mexico, if these are wrong, how can we trust rigour of work conducted when it comes to the major allegations?
Sean Kirkpatrick 53:23
Well, that would be a technical editing review question that I would have to put back to AARO.
Daniel Lavelle 53:32
And finally, do you think your report will stand up to the test of time?
Sean Kirkpatrick 53:37
I think all of the evidence that's been put in place and laid in front of Congress will certainly stand the test of time.
Daniel Lavelle 53:48
Great. Thanks, Sean. Do you have anything else to add? Do you think we've covered everything?
Sean Kirkpatrick 53:54
I think that's pretty much it.
Daniel Lavelle 53:56
Great. Well, once again, thanks so much for agreeing to talk to me. I know you don't have a lot, you're very busy. And you don't like doing these? You know, I don't blame you because I wouldn't want to do doing them either. But can I email you any further questions? If anything occurs to me while I write this up? Would that be alright?
Sean Kirkpatrick 54:15
That would be fine. That, you can email to me. I don't know how timely I can get to them or even if I can, but I'll try to get to them.
Daniel Lavelle 54:27
Okay Sean. Well, thanks very much and have a enjoy the rest of your week. Thank you. Take care.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/22/ufologists-sean-kirkpatrick-pentagon-report-uaps
He shared the audio of the interview with me, along with an AI transcript. I've edited the transcript to correct numerous AI errors (a combination of poor audio from Kirkpatrick and a Mancunian accent from Lavelle). The full (and very interesting) transcript follows, and the audio is attached. https://www.metabunk.org/data/audio/66/66193-97b80c85c98ee3eba4f2d4e3c8edda44.mp3
Note that because this a still largely an AI transcript, there's the possibility there are some errors I missed — so refer to the audio. There are also a few parts that are unclear in the original audio which I've tried to note inline. Please let me know of you find errors.
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Daniel Lavelle 00:00
Hey, how are you?
Sean Kirkpatrick 00:01
Doing all right.
Daniel Lavelle 00:06
Well, then, first of all, thanks so much for agreeing to talk to me. I know, you probably don't don't like doing interviews I gathered from the podcast you were on. So I'm grateful.
Sean Kirkpatrick 00:22
Ok
Daniel Lavelle 00:24
Can we just maybe start with your background? Like, what is your background academically? And what drew you to science in the first place?
Sean Kirkpatrick 00:36
So I have a PhD in physics. My background is mostly in condensed matter physics, lasers, optics, remote sensing, that sort of thing. I've always wanted to be a physicist. So, ever since high school, or even before, never known doing anything else. And as a physicist, got drawn into military and intelligence research, and from there moved over into the intelligence community for the last 25 some odd years.
Daniel Lavelle 01:16
And what was it about UFOs or UAPs, that interested you?
Sean Kirkpatrick 01:25
Nothing, actually, it was an assignment. So as senior Intel military officers get given assignments. This one I was asked to do, by the undersecretary, the undersecretary of intelligence. And when those kinds of people ask, it's usually a good thing to say yes, because generally, they don't like it if you say no. But, you know, truth be told, it's an interesting area only because it is a ... looking for something that is unknown is really the same thing in sciences, it is in the intelligence community, and you are trying to find unknown things and determine what they are. So as a physicist, and intelligence officer, that's sort of the sweet spot of things to go do. Which is interesting. Keeping in mind, you know, the, the office was asked to do two missions, both an operational mission and a historical research mission. And so the operational mission is where I would have preferred to spend most of my time. Historical mission was what's necessary by law.
Daniel Lavelle 03:03
So was it, is it unusual for you to collaborate with a civilian scientists like Avi Loeb.
Sean Kirkpatrick 03:11
So understand that one of the things that we were charged to do was normalise this research area and get it out of the conspiracy minded community and put it more into science and technology and national security and safety communities. This is where I think there was a big push to try to normalise this, get it away from the sensationalism and put some rigour behind it. So to put rigour behind something like that, we've got to get the science community involved. Scientific community doesn't want to be involved because of the conspiracy, laden baggage that comes with it. So part of this was working with select groups across the academic community to try to get them into putting some scientific rigour behind their thinking and getting some of them to put some scientific rigour into analysis and hypotheses. So the way the scientific method works, right, got a hypothesis. You get signatures and data that you expect to come out of that hypothesis. You go and you measure that. And if your data matches, then your theory is is correct. Your hypothesis is correct. If it doesn't match, then it's not. So part of the plan was to get the scientific community to start documenting, in peer reviewed journals, different aspects of the the hypothetical Extra Terrestrial hypothesis if you will. So, Avi, being one of the key scientific figures that is trying to prove advanced civilizations out in the universe. The purpose of engaging with him was to get him to put on paper, the signatures associated with his hypothesis, if you actually look through that paper which was never finished, because it was put out as draft before we finished writing it.
Sean Kirkpatrick 05:43
You'll see going to the back end of that, you know, the math and the physics of, okay, look, if there's something that's moving around, as quickly as people believe, it would leave very specific physical signatures. If those physical signatures are not there, when we go up to measure it, then that's probably not what that thing is doing. So that was the whole purpose of that exercise, was to get that documented, eventually put into a peer review journal. Now that one did not go. I did do another one with the University of Utah that came out around the holidays. And there's there's another one that we're finishing up right now that's looking at kind of statistical correlations of environmental factors, and other aspects of observations that have to be factored in to any good scientific theory you have to actually get through all that.
Daniel Lavelle 06:50
And the prevailing theory now is that it's, well, I say prevailing, it's the one that has the consensus, I suppose is that it's a comet, with, but, why are they why are they wrong about that?
Sean Kirkpatrick 07:04
You mean Avi's ...?
Daniel Lavelle 07:06
No. Avi thinks it's a artificial interstellar object. But I think other researchers suggested it's a comet that's emitting small amounts of gas from an icy core, which is why you don't see a tail because it's a small amount.
Sean Kirkpatrick 07:23
And if that's what fits the data, then that is, what is the scientific theory that is supported by the data. The paper that I was working with him on was to put math to his theory? So that it could either be proved or disproved? And it's been disproved.
Daniel Lavelle 07:46
And have you been following his expedition in the Pacific?
Sean Kirkpatrick 07:51
I did
Daniel Lavelle 07:52
And what do you make of the components of the Spherules? He's found that, he's he's his claim is that they're, they have a unique composition that you don't usually find on the Earth's surface.
Sean Kirkpatrick 08:07
I haven't read the scientific analysis. And I haven't seen the rest of the communities analysis and peer review at that. So I would leave it to the scientific community to do that, put it out in publication. And then I take a look at it.
Daniel Lavelle 08:23
Sure. So let's jump straight into the ARRO stuff. Can I talk about where this all started? I mean, for the public, this most recent spate of the UFO craze, if you like, with the New York Times article. So those three videos that came out, do we know what Gimbal is now? Because that's the one that everyone goes to the one that looks like a flying saucer that rotates? Do you now have an idea of what that is?
Sean Kirkpatrick 08:57
We have again, we have had a hypothesis of this is how the sensor operates on that particular platform. There are different types of sensors that do different things we were in, at least when I was there I was in the process of actually obtaining one of those to measure it. Because again, it's a [unclear] what can you recreate? We did not get around to doing that before I retired, so I don't know where they are on that. But that is most likely a senso, I won't say it's not an artefact, but that's just how the sensor operates. We see that in a number of different other sensors. But that needs to be proven. Prove it and get, actually go get that platform, put it in imaging chamber, and recreate it that [unclear]
Daniel Lavelle 10:02
One of the theories out there put forward by a sceptic called Mick West is that it's glare from a heat source. Is that accurate? Do you think? In the case of Gimbal,
Sean Kirkpatrick 10:16
You mean as what the source is source could be any number of things, right? The source, and even a weather balloon will give off that kind of glare if it's Mylar, it's got enough shiny [unclear] on it, the sun's just right. So all of that kind of analysis has to go into those kinds of videos. Unfortunately, there's not really enough, a whole lot of the information that we need to do that level of analysis is not in that video: the raw video, the raw data, and that raw data that's not available.
Daniel Lavelle 10:56
And that video cuts off for the public, but is the more of that video that you've seen.
Sean Kirkpatrick 11:03
No, there's no more.
Daniel Lavelle 11:04
It just cuts off where it cuts off.
Sean Kirkpatrick 11:07
That's when they stopped recording.
Daniel Lavelle 11:09
Okay. And what about go fast? I mean, again, debunkers would say it's not going fast at all, it's going quite slowly, and it's a lot higher than they think.
Sean Kirkpatrick 11:20
Yeah, so the Go Fast one was analysed with the NASA team. And it's definitely just parallax. Now that has to be verified with with AARO and then they will put it out on their website when they get to that. But that's not a ..., everything I saw from the NASA analysis was was accurate to everything else that we've seen parallax show up in.
Daniel Lavelle 11:53
And tic tac, what's your view on that?
Sean Kirkpatrick 11:59
My view on Tic Tac hasn't changed since the last time I talked about it. There's no data, there's not enough information to ever come to a conclusion. So we can speculate about it all we want. But you know, what's important for folks to understand is that these these trained military pilots, they do see things that they may not understand what they see any more than their sensors understand what they see. And that doesn't mean that it's unusual, or it's exotic, or it's extraterrestrial, it just means that they don't understand what they're looking at right then.
Sean Kirkpatrick 12:41
In the case of the tic tac, there's a lot of other hypotheses that's that are still there that people tend to gloss over, like submersible launched vehicles, other radar artefacts, I mean, one of the things that people, again, don't don't fully appreciate, is a lot of the stuff that we see in these ranges. And I don't want to speak to tic tac in particular, but all of them, come from when there's when there's these weird anomalous radar signatures. What people don't understand is that these are test wings. Test wings are testing new capabilities. And so new radars or new radar waveforms, get artefacts in them. And that's why you're out there testing them to try to figure out how do you optimise it so that it's working so that it can be used in regular operations. Some of these are just the fact that, hey, they're testing a new radar. And you don't know what what it's doing, and so you get it sorted out, and you have to dig into that data.
Sean Kirkpatrick 13:59
All that takes time, as far as Tic Tac is concerned. And there's a couple of other explanations that don't involve extraterrestrials that haven't been fully explored, but they aren't going to be able to because there's no data. You know, this is from years and years ago. None of that data was retained at the time, because there wasn't a data retention policy in place for the department. And the first thing ...
Daniel Lavelle 14:26
... is there one now?
Sean Kirkpatrick 14:28
There is. That was one of the first thing that I did when I stood up AARO was we put together a data retention policy and put it out to the Joint Staff. Joint Staff issued it along with the reporting requirements that we standardized last year. So all of that is out there. Now it's a question of what can they see and collect and how can they process all that data?
Daniel Lavelle 14:57
And how did it A typical day unfolds at AARO I mean, do you just reach out to witnesses? Do people reach out to you? How did you go about your daily business? You know,
Sean Kirkpatrick 15:10
Well, are you talking about the historical research? Or are you talking about operational mission?
Daniel Lavelle 15:15
Well, I'd say contemporary information. Yeah.
Sean Kirkpatrick 15:21
So, on the operational mission. So every day, all of the reporting from the services is collected and gone through and logged if there are any cases that are recorded as UAP, and turned into data files. And a lot of this is data processing and data manage and understanding what we have to work with. Now understand, you got to understand some of the new guidance that we had put out, takes time to implement. So other services have to figure out how they're going to retain all this data and how they're going to transmit it to AARO and to the relevant combatant commands. So the other thing is, you got all the combatant commands that need to also know what's going on in their area of responsibility. So all of that was in play.
But in a typical day, any of those reports that were coming in, from the different services would get logged, turned into cases, there'd be a quick look through on what, you know, what data was available, and whether or not it rose to a level of priority, where we would want to move that up in the list of analysis. That's just the reporting and analysis. And there's the collection management, align all of our collection capabilities to try and search and find any of these things. There's the S&T line of effort where we're looking at the science and the technology across the globe. Are there any new cutting edge technologies? Are there things that we can use for tracking and detection? Are there things that other people are working on that might meet some of these signatures that we're seeing?
Sean Kirkpatrick 17:27
You know, one of the things that I talked about last year was, you know, people, sometimes you know, these pilots say, Hey, I saw something that it looks like it was manoeuvring, and it doesn't look like it had any means of propulsion, there's no means of propulsion, visible means of manoeuvring? Well, there's lots of technologies that are state of the art today, and have been for the last decade or two that would present those kinds of signatures,
Daniel Lavelle 17:59
really!
Sean Kirkpatrick 18:00
And so just trying to understand what's the current state of the art of technologies that are out there is important piece of this right? Understanding how do..., what's advanced aerospace platforms look like? There are commercial drone companies that are that are pushing the state of the art that that people just need to understand and recognise, you know, this this whole thing about the cubes in a sphere?
Daniel Lavelle 18:32
Oh, yeah. Ryan Graves mentioned that didn't he.
Sean Kirkpatrick 18:35
Okay, right. Well, you know, there was, there were some academic articles that I, some of my research team found from a couple of years ago, back in 21, 22. With a Chinese in Singapore, group, two groups, where they were actually, they had built and were flying spherical drones that had cubes in them. And why would they do that? Well, according to the research, they were looking for, what's the what's the next gen of drones that's there? There's a lot of spherical drone work for a lot of good reasons. And how do you make a drone like that manoeuvre around without propellers that are visible? One of the reasons you make a spherical drone is for indoor use because it's safer. Or in stadiums, which is outdoor, because it's safer because if it crashes into the crowd, it's not going to cut people and hurt them. So these are basically you know, what they do is where the cube touches the sphere at all the corners, they fuse it, they it cut it out. And they stick either small turbo fans, or in some cases, different propulsion, jet propulsion, air propulsion systems. And so now I have eight of these around this sphere. And that gives you the greatest fidelity and manoeuvring the sphere around using a controller inside. Why is this important? Well, there is a there is an example of a cube in a sphere drone that exists today, you know, that doesn't require aliens.
Sean Kirkpatrick 20:46
Now, what people will say, and again, this goes back to people don't actually understand how the national security world works. People will say, Well, that was a couple of years ago, and what the pilots were saying was they saw this, you know, 15 years ago? Well, this is how the classified world works. If, if I am a nation state, and I have an advanced technology that I'm working on, I will classify it and I will not let my scientists say anything about it or publish on it, until I get to a point where I've got a capability that I feel comfortable with. And the rest of the semi academic world has started to catch up, or the scientific world is starting to catch up. At that point, then they may let some of the scientists or associated companies, you know, publish on some of the basics that don't give away their their secret sauce or their secret capabilities. So they'll see publications on these things, but it's usually a decade or two, after the fact.
Daniel Lavelle 22:05
So how far ahead is the US military than, how far ahead of the public is it, in terms of technological advances?
Sean Kirkpatrick 22:13
I couldn't say. And it all depends on on which areas you're looking at this, this is, this is how the military labs operate. Doe labs operate all the national the military labs are full of a bunch of sciences, I came out of one. This is what we do, right we do in research. And then we'll try to write some papers will write some papers on some of the basic physics. But you won't get any of the unclassified papers on on any of the more advanced stuff until much further down the line. Well, that's true in every country. And China's just there as bad as anybody else, if not worse than when they let their scientists publish, if at all. So it is not surprised me at all. But a capability like like that you would see today in an academic publication. I don't know that there is a country that had a classified programme, but it stands to reason in the national security world that that is a possibility. I'm saying is here's a possibility that does not have anything to do with aliens.
Daniel Lavelle 23:41
Excuse me, [coughs] Yeah, sorry. I'm just getting. I'm so sorry. Excuse me.
Daniel Lavelle 23:53
So some of these witnesses have described, you know, hypersonic speeds and, and turns at right angles that defy the laws of physics as they see it. I mean, does the government, does the US government or other governments have that sort of capability.
Sean Kirkpatrick 24:11
So I go back to my earlier statement, if you dig into all of those of the data that we have on those that it almost always turns out to be an optical illusion, a sensor or anomaly, or some other weird aspect of how that data was collected, and inevitably does not turn out to be that it's travelling in hypersonics and velocities or making right angle turns. My favourite one is the right angle turn that, you know, there was a video of that as, as we recreated, you know, here's the platform going around, and the sensor underneath it is turning at the same time and they're banking. And when you put all of that together and you recreated it, the object wasn't moving hardly It all was moving with the wind. But it appears that it's moving, you know, crazy because you are, you don't have a reference frame. It's it's just like relativity, you don't have a reference frame. And unless you have an inertial reference frame that you can pin it to. It's gonna look weird.
Daniel Lavelle 25:21
And pilots aren't infallible, are they? So they're just as vulnerable to optical illusions as the rest of us.
Sean Kirkpatrick 25:28
Absolutely they are. And it happens, I mean .... it happens.
Daniel Lavelle 25:38
So is AARO based out of the Pentagon, the building. And you worked in the building, the Pentagon? or was it.
Sean Kirkpatrick 25:47
So AARO is in a non disclosed location, because we don't need a lot of crazy people at the door.
Daniel Lavelle 25:56
Right. I get it. That's always made me wonder about area 51. If they really did have things there, then that there now are they because you don't want to attract all the crazies, like you said. But from a young boys perspectives someone who is interested in that topic. I mean, having a job at the Pentagon hunting aliens sounds really exciting. Is it exciting? Did you enjoy the work?
Sean Kirkpatrick 26:22
I enjoyed the operational mission.
Daniel Lavelle 26:25
Right.
Sean Kirkpatrick 26:26
I..., the historical research, while interesting, coupled with the allegations, became most of my time, which is not where I needed to be. And the rest of my team, you know, I kept them focused on the operational mission because that's where they needed to go. That was the most important part of AARO, and still is today, is the safety and security and the national security issues attendent to that. But the team of debriefers and I focused on the research, and again, while, interesting, at the end, we're spending a lot of time and effort because of a group of people that have lobbied into the attention of Congress to make this go.
Daniel Lavelle 27:38
Yeah, and you've talked about a circular reporting cycle that's going on. Can I just I'm just gonna read some names to you, right, George Knapp, Lou Elizondo, Jeremy Cobell, Christopher Mellon, Jay Stratton are those some of the names are involved in this self-repeating circle.
Sean Kirkpatrick 28:04
So, I can't name specific names, because the legislation wrote, extended the whistleblower protections to anybody that came to speak to us and anybody that we would call out there are, there are privacy act restrictions, there are whistleblower restrictions, which is why in the report, there are no names, just numbers
Daniel Lavelle 28:36
Is the Department of Defence embarrassed that it got duped by Robert Bigelow to get 22 million to investigate ghosts and skinwalkers and things.
Sean Kirkpatrick 28:46
So the reason that part is in there is because that's already out in the public domain. That's already been documented. And that's already out there. So I don't have anything to to add on to that. I think what you'll find is you can probably do the analysis and figure out who's who, and I'm sure there will be people that will try to do that. But that's not my job. And our job was to document everything, investigate it, and protect the identities. Now, interestingly enough, some of the legislation including the extension of the whistleblower protections to these these folks was actually ghost written by some of these same people who had lobbied Congress. So they, they managed to write themselves in their own protections to allow them to go do some of this stuff. So there's that's a that's an interesting thing that somebody needs to go investigate, but it's not AARO's job.
Daniel Lavelle 29:56
So when David Grusch testified in Congress that he had been told that the US government is in possession of alien spacecraft, which they're reverse engineering. And they not only that, but they have alien bodies. And he said, Somebody told, told him, someone he trusts. I mean, are we talking about that same circle?
Sean Kirkpatrick 30:18
Yes
Daniel Lavelle 30:19
Right. So that the people who lobbied for this program in the first place are the same people who told him that they that they have these things?
Sean Kirkpatrick 30:29
It's even better than that. So if you look, in the historical report on page 36, you'll see 1,2,3,4, 4 or 5 main bullets there that speak to this same group of people who had their hands in everything from [?comported?] material exploitation to congressional lobbying and writing of legislation, to expanding legitimate special access programmes or purportedly for alien, and extra terrestrial exploitation, which they weren't supposed to do. You know, there's a lot of things there that all of the same people were involved in, including some of the same ones were involved in the in the think tank study, that's, that's called out in there. It was just it's, it's all the same group.
Daniel Lavelle 31:52
Do you think this is a blemish on the Department of Defence, the fact that this was allowed to happen? does it speak to maybe the way you the department vets programmes and the way organises itself?
Sean Kirkpatrick 32:06
No, I think in this case, you know, look, once the department understood what was happening, they put a stop to it
Daniel Lavelle 32:19
Right.
Sean Kirkpatrick 32:21
And because of that, the Senator Harry Reid at the time, used some of these collaborated with some of these same people and went over to DHS to try to get that program stood up. That's really the new part of this is that DHS piece, which had been alleged, as being you know, one of the hiding places or extraterrestrial bodies, turned out to not be that it turned out to be this kind of same group of people trying to stand up a programme under DHS, because the Department of Defence shut it down. So there's, there's, you know, a little bit of investigative work that we have laid out, kind of put all these pieces together. That's what's all out there in that report. And the DHS package, I believe, is in its final review for public release. So that'll be put out.
Daniel Lavelle 33:35
When then, I'm looking at the other conspiracies like the JFK assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, who is undoubtably the shooter as far as I'm concerned. But he's often described as a patsy by conspiracy theorists. Do you think David Grusch is a patsy, of this UFO lobby that he's been told this stuff? Because he's a useful idiot, and he's gone forward with it?
Sean Kirkpatrick 34:00
I don't know. I don't want to speculate on on people's motivations, that, again, that wasn't our our remit. Our remit was to lay out the evidence and investigate the allegations. And the evidence is pretty conclusive. There's no evidence to support any of the allegations or any extraterrestrial reverse engineering or non human biologics or whatever you want to call it. But what's interesting is that some of the language that was used in the open testimony like Mr. Grush, and others, is actually the same language that was in the original story back in the 60s, and then again in the 80s, 90s. So if you look at this story, historically, and some of that is in historical record, it's online now. You see this story crop up every, every couple of decades and it's same pretty much it's the same story.
Daniel Lavelle 35:07
Bit like the virgin birth and different religious texts. Has David Grush ever been in touch with you during your time at AARO
Sean Kirkpatrick 35:20
Not at AARO, we tried to reach out to him four or five times to get him to come in. And as of the time that I left, he had not, and had refused to come, for a variety of reasons that we tried to answer. And [unclear] at this point
Daniel Lavelle 35:38
point, and can you disclose those reasons he gave?
Sean Kirkpatrick 35:43
I think you should wait until the FOIA come out.
Daniel Lavelle 35:46
Okay. Um, yeah, a few things. A lot of these people involved in this UFO lobby are quite scathing of you. And quite, you know, abusive, you know, you've been called a liar or a spin doctor. And, you know, there's some sinister overtones to all, I mean, how has that affected you?
Sean Kirkpatrick 36:14
Well, it's been much worse than that. I've had people come to my house, I've had people threaten my wife and daughter, and try to break into our online accounts, a lot more than, far more than I ever had as the deputy director of intelligence. I didn't have China and Russia trying to get on me as much as these people are. And and, you know, does it bother me, it bothers me when they come after my family. It does not bother me to the point of caring that much, other than every one of them have been turned over to the FBI for investigation. So, you know, they can make all the threats they want. I just turned it all over for OSI and FBI to go and law enforcement to go investigate.
Daniel Lavelle 37:23
I'm guessing you can't tell me who the individuals are. But can you speak around that in the sense that are the people prominent in this whole UFO community?
Sean Kirkpatrick 37:34
So there's certainly a number of really true believers in the conspiracy. Obviously, there's a lot of people that that are never going to believe anything that AARO is going to come up with. I had one one person, you know, send an email about, you know, why would anybody believe you know, the Pentagon, and Congress is not going to believe that the Pentagon and so why even bother? And the answer is simple. But if Congress didn't want to believe us, then Congress shouldn't have written into law for us to go investigate. I mean, Congress writes the laws, Congress should have done it.
Now, here's the other piece of this that I just want to make sure we're all clear. Right? There are a lot of good people in Congress that are trying hard to get to the truth of this, and most of them were on the Senate side. You know, the Intel and defence committees in particular, are very, very, very concerned about the safety and security aspects of this mission space and rightfully so. Right. You don't want this to be an intelligence surprise. You don't want this to be a technology surprise. That being said, there's a handful of folks that are, you know, in Congress, but are mostly on the House side, very true-believing, Pentagon's lying, there's a government conspiracy and a cover up and, you know, why would we ever believe that? Well, you know, the first thing I would say and I've said this before, like I said, this is my first op ed. You know, those folks. They never ever asked for a briefing from AARO in the entire time I was there. They never asked for an update. They never even bothered to inquire about anything that they put out into the public space. Before they did It
Daniel Lavelle 40:01
is this Tim Burchett, et al.?
Sean Kirkpatrick 40:04
This is, yeah, this is the house side. Predominantly, this is the House side, right? So that, you know the thoughts of, hey, you know, if you guys want to get it the head, the truth is, first of all, Congress stood us up to go investigate. And you should make use of the tools you stood up to get to answers that you want. Or at least the truth that you want to find out and may not be the answer you want. And often, that's the case.
Sean Kirkpatrick 40:42
The the other piece of that is, you know, they really need to, spend some time listening to what has been found before they jump out into the public space and decry the Pentagon is hiding something from them. What, what certainly many of the American people don't recognise, and I put this in my second Op Ed. And what certain that most of the [global? gullible?] community has never paid attention to is, and I wouldn't expect them to is how the US Congress works when it comes to access to classified information. Classified information is controlled by the Defence and Intel committees for defence and Intel classified information.
And so if a congressional member who is not on those committees, wants, you know, shows up at a military base and wants access to classified information, they're not going to get it unless their own congressional defence and Intel committees gives them access, that's not the department or the IC's call or responsibility. They have to go to their own committees to request access and justify that. And then those committees will tell the department or the IC, yes, you may brief, you know, member so and so on whatever it is they're asking about. But if they don't say that, if they don't do that, the department and the IC can't really do anything if it's a security violation. But you know, most people don't know that. And instead, you get members that go, "Oh, they're hiding information from us?" Well, yeah, get cleared.
Daniel Lavelle 43:08
Were any of the witnesses you interviewed under oath?
Sean Kirkpatrick 43:13
So all of them put, we transcribed their testimony to us. And then they signed a piece of paper that that attested to the accuracy, they were able to change or write or edit whatever they wanted. And then they signed it and said this was accurate to the best of their knowledge.
Daniel Lavelle 43:34
In fairness to true believers, I suppose, if you go to a private company, or decompartmentalize part of government and ask them about reverse engineering projects and what and whatnot, if they want to keep that secret, they're gonna lie to you, aren't they? I mean, how? How did how do you know that you're not being lied to? I suppose you just as it just on trust alone, or is there empirical?
Sean Kirkpatrick 43:56
So it's a couple of things. One, we were cleared to everything that those industry partners were working on, before we showed up. Two, most of the people at the senior level that I interacted with, certainly, and many of my team are people that have worked with the Department for many years. We've known them, we know who they are, we know what programs they have, we know what they're doing. And there is a you know, there's a relationship between the industrial base and the department. Because if they, if they aren't being truthful there, that that hurts their chances with the department and future acquisition that you're talking about. And then we cross-check.
Sean Kirkpatrick 44:52
So, you know, I know there's a there's a favourite part of this story of, you know, hey stuff was abandoned with an industry partner, and they're hiding it. Well, no, they're not. And I went and checked with those people. And here's where this gets really interesting is some of that same core group of individuals that we were talking about earlier. Right, had reached out to one of these industry partners and convinced them to take a look at a piece of material that they claimed was part of a crashed UFO. And then turned around to point to that company and say, hey, they're exploiting, you know, that reverse engineering crashed UFOs? Well, they were the ones that gave it to them.
Daniel Lavelle 45:43
That is ridiculous.
Sean Kirkpatrick 45:47
And then once we actually got control of that little project and took a look at it, it turns out, that's not really a UFO, it's most likely a piece of a missile casing from an Air Force test back in the 60s or 50s. So so this is the kind of circular accusations that have been going on. You got a group of people that that start something? And then they go out and say, they're doing this? Right. So the same group of people who expanded this special access programme that, they weren't supposed to, then go out and say there's a hidden special access programme that has UAP/UFO stuff? Like, Well, yeah, 'cause you expanded it, [unclear].
Daniel Lavelle 46:42
I mean, by setting fire to a building call in the news, or better yet filming the news and sending it off? That's, can you tell me who that private company was? Like, who they sent this material to? No, that's a shame.
Sean Kirkpatrick 46:58
Yeah, well, I mean, we have to protect companies as much as we protect the individuals. So all of that has been given to the appropriate oversight folks in Congress. So there's, the senior leadership and Congress are the ones that get access to all of the actual data at that level.
Daniel Lavelle 47:23
Again, I'm gonna ask you to speculate, but what do you think their motivation is? I mean, are they grifters? in the purest sense of the word, they know they're lying that they're trying to fool people? Or do they genuinely genuinely believe this stuff and just a bit irrational about it?
Sean Kirkpatrick 47:40
So much like UAP, there's no one explanation. Right? It comes to motivations, that people and I don't know why individuals do the things they do. You know, I'm a, as an intelligence officer and physicist, I'm a, I'm a technical collector, not a human collector. That is a different type of intelligence officer. So I don't know motivations, and we weren't asked to to find out. But what I have told people in the past, including Congress, you know, there's there's generally a handful of motivations that that you can think of, right?
So there's, there's clearly monetary value, there's a huge market to keep this kind of conspiracy going. Everything from TV shows the, you know, movies and whatever. Companies that are stood up to go investigate things. There's fame. There's, there's influence in the sense of, hey, if I can get some, some people on the Hill excited about this, whether it's staffers and members, and they want to keep talking to me, then there's a there's a, it's not really a power but an influence, motivation. There's, there's the absolute true-belief, which I wouldn't, I would, I would suggest is more akin to a religion than an actual factual thing. And those are the people that you're never going to convince, no matter what you put in front of them. I can lay out, you know, I can lay out the pictures of the classified programs that they mistook and they still wouldn't believe it. They would say no, that was derived from alien technology.
And then there, you know, there's people that have there are some that unfortunately have clear issues. I've got a person that communicates with me often trying to come to grips with something that that they think they've seen and they're working through, what can only be described as mental health issues. So I mean, you know, take your pick, it could be any of those, it could be none of those, it could just be: "I want to go do this".
Interestingly, and I'll have to to start wrapping up here in a moment, interestingly, you know, what I would leave you with on that topic is, you know, there is the potential for intentional disinformation misinformation, you know, relative to this kind of missionary, because it's so divisive. It's just another example of how, you know, somebody could could use this in a system in a societal divide, to exacerbate, you know, anger against the government, anger against me, anger against other aspects of this mission space. Because people want to believe they want to believe in things like alien technology, because they don't want to be alone in the universe, and they want to be I want to believe that there's a reason things are the way they are. That's not necessarily where you want to put your focus. But I don't speak for people, right, I just speak what we've found; what's the evidence and what are the facts?
Daniel Lavelle 51:52
Sure. I'll let you go in a second. I am I am asked them, you ufologists in the interests of balance if they had any questions for you. So I've just selected a few. If you don't mind, if I could put those to you. One of the interesting ones I thought was, if the government had found evidence of aliens and spaceships and whatnot, would they have disclosed it to the public by now? Or is it the kind of thing they would keep secret?
Sean Kirkpatrick 52:24
They wouldn't keep that secret, because it's not, it's not their job, right? I mean, if there was, first of all, if the Department of Defence or the intelligence found evidence of any sort of extraterrestrial, it's not their job, it would immediately get turned over to NASA. And NASA would immediately disclose to everybody. It's that's their job. That's why we had a partnership with NASA for, one, for investigating advanced aerospace technologies that already exist. But, two, I mean, that's their job. Right. That's why there was the UAP independent study from NASA.
Daniel Lavelle 53:06
On this is from one of your critics, Jeremy Cabell. He said there are many small errors in the report, such as Senator Reid representing New Mexico, if these are wrong, how can we trust rigour of work conducted when it comes to the major allegations?
Sean Kirkpatrick 53:23
Well, that would be a technical editing review question that I would have to put back to AARO.
Daniel Lavelle 53:32
And finally, do you think your report will stand up to the test of time?
Sean Kirkpatrick 53:37
I think all of the evidence that's been put in place and laid in front of Congress will certainly stand the test of time.
Daniel Lavelle 53:48
Great. Thanks, Sean. Do you have anything else to add? Do you think we've covered everything?
Sean Kirkpatrick 53:54
I think that's pretty much it.
Daniel Lavelle 53:56
Great. Well, once again, thanks so much for agreeing to talk to me. I know you don't have a lot, you're very busy. And you don't like doing these? You know, I don't blame you because I wouldn't want to do doing them either. But can I email you any further questions? If anything occurs to me while I write this up? Would that be alright?
Sean Kirkpatrick 54:15
That would be fine. That, you can email to me. I don't know how timely I can get to them or even if I can, but I'll try to get to them.
Daniel Lavelle 54:27
Okay Sean. Well, thanks very much and have a enjoy the rest of your week. Thank you. Take care.
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