New York Times reveals the Pentagon's AATIP program
Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean publish a front-page New York Times investigation revealing the existence of the Department of Defense's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. The story includes a release of the 'FLIR1' video and on-the-record statements from former AATIP director Luis Elizondo.
- Record type
- Report
- Primary source
- linked
- Named witnesses
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- Media
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On 16 December 2017, the New York Times published a front-page investigation by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean revealing the existence of the Department of Defense's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which between 2007 and 2012 used approximately $22 million of Pentagon funding to investigate reports of unidentified aerial phenomena.
The story included on-the-record statements from former AATIP director Luis Elizondo, who had resigned from the Department of Defense two months earlier in protest of what he characterized as excessive secrecy around the program. The Times release also included the 'FLIR1' gun-camera video of the 2004 USS Nimitz encounter, which the Department of Defense later officially declassified in April 2020.
The story is widely credited as the inflection point that moved the modern U.S. UAP conversation from the periphery to mainstream national-security reporting and that led directly to the legislative and oversight activity of the following five years.
- Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOsLuis Elizondo
- Skinwalkers at the PentagonJames Lacatski, Colm Kelleher & George Knapp
- Out of the Shadows: Revealing the Truth About Non-Human Intelligent LifeJay Stratton
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