WASHINGTON
— In the $600 billion annual Defense Department budgets, the $22
million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program
was almost impossible to find.
Which was how the Pentagon wanted it.
For
years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects,
according to Defense Department officials, interviews with program
participants and records obtained by The New York Times. It was run by a
military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of
the Pentagon’s C Ring, deep within the building’s maze.
The
Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the
program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that,
while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the
program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say,
officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes
brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other
Defense Department duties.
The
shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and
initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada
Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has
long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an
aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and
longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working
with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space.
On
CBS’s “60 Minutes” in May, Mr. Bigelow said he was “absolutely
convinced” that aliens exist and that U.F.O.s have visited Earth.
Working with Mr. Bigelow’s Las Vegas-based company, the program produced documents that describe sightings of aircraft that seemed to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of lift.
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