AARO: Historical Records Report and Failure of Trust

Following an off-camera briefing with undisclosed, select reporters Wednesday, AARO is releasing the first volume of their Historical Records Reports. Reporters with an interest in the subject of UAP, including Ross Coulthart (News Nation), Christopher Sharp (Liberation Times) and Matt Laslo (Ask a Pol), were denied access to the event. Given the days of silence and refusal to provide further details to outside reporters, there seems to have been an embargo on discussing and publishing details of the meeting. Adding to the point is the URL explicitly stating an embargo time: https://defensescoop.com/2024/03/08/embargo-10a-friday-dod-developing-gremlin-capability-to-help-personnel-collect-real-time-uap-data/. This could be to not compete with the State of the Union or to be buried under its news.

Steven Greenstreet, a controversial figure in the UAP field for his eagerness to debunk sightings, adds to the mystery of this event. On March 1, the week before the planned meeting, AARO’s website briefly displayed a link under their “Transcripts” section titled “AARO Acting Director Timothy Phillips Holds an Off-Camera Media Roundtable: March 6, 2024”. The link appeared to direct to an older article, so it is unclear if they were just premature in getting a page established or if they were somehow ready to publish a transcript for an event that had yet to take place.

Regardless of the accuracy of AARO’s reporting, it is clear that they’re failing their promise of transparency. For a subject engrained with conspiracy and mistrust of government handling, they have done nothing but fan the flames started with earlier investigations like Project Blue Book.

That said, given their official capacity, the content of their reports will be taken by the general public as fact without second thought. News outlets will state the synopsis, highlight a few key findings that back AARO’s claims and then shut the book on the topic until the next whistleblower or event stirs public interest.

The goal of this community, of the news, and of AARO should not be to prove an issue. Setting out to prove or disprove a belief is establishing a bias from the beginning. The goal is answers and transparency. And even if AARO does provide some answers, they have failed every step of the way in transparency. Answers are meaningless if there is no trust in how they were derived and if question additional agendas at play.

Please take all reports on any sides of the subject and weigh them against the trust you have in the reporting. This goes for all subjects in life. Seldom will you receive the full facts of any situation. That’s not to say that there is always ill intent, but reporting and documentation will never full encompass everything. Some topics, such as UAP, are also multifaceted and can’t be explained by just one answer. It is ok to accept that you only know some truths of a subject. Whether you wish to seek more facts is up to you. But, please, keep an open mind and take time and diligence to understand a subject instead of being handed an answer.

HM05_Me, (edited )
@HM05_Me@lemmy.world avatar

The report has finally been published: aaro.mil/…/AARO_Historical_Record_Report_Volume_1…

Edit: I love that a lot of the claims proving UAP are not Extraterrestrial are “backed” by citations that simply read “AARO case files”. Citations 84-115 are just “AARO case files” with no reference to which case or additional details. For an unclassified report, they are definitely showing how much they don’t want to elaborate.

Also, do note that it is hard to prove an unknown object is “Extraterrestrial”, which is why there has been a shift in regarding objects as from NHI (Non-human intelligence). Even that is difficult to prove, but it’s a broader scope that is harder to rule out. They could very well find a non-human body, but state there’s no evidence it’s not of this planet. The important thing is either proving it is tied to a specific individual or group of people or admitting that they can’t. This seems to be an attempt to resolve incidents by claiming they can’t assign it to specifically “Extraterrestrial”.

HM05_Me,
@HM05_Me@lemmy.world avatar

The goal of this report is not to prove or disprove any particular belief set, but rather to use a rigorous analytic and scientific approach to investigate past USG-sponsored UAP investigation efforts and the claims made by interviewees that the USG and various contractors have recovered and are hiding off-world technology and biological material. AARO has approached this project with the widest possible aperture, thoroughly investigating these assertions and claims without any particular pre-conceived conclusion or hypothesis. AARO is committed to reaching conclusions based on empirical evidence.

The word “extraterrestrial” appears 61 times in the 40 pages of actual report and “off-world” 29 times. For claiming to be focused on accurate, scientific study, the report is focused on specifically dispelling extraterrestrial claims. As I previously stated, it is hard to prove “extraterrestrial” or even “off-world”. Without interviewing an extraterrestrial or see an object make entry into our atmosphere, you’re left with an assumption on the source. The goal of the paper seems fixated on lack of evidence of “extraterrestrials” not that there aren’t objects we can’t attribute to human technology or even programs reviewing objects of unknown origin. The moment they can claim they can’t attribute something to extraterrestrials is the moment the research or discussion stops. It should be ok to state that there are objects being studied of unknown design and origin, but this paper fails to address that.

paraphrand,

It’s really frustrating that pedantic points like this are part of the discussion. They know how this sounds to your average person. They know you sound like you are reaching and desperate to push back on their conclusion.

But you’re right, this does leave room.

HM05_Me,
@HM05_Me@lemmy.world avatar

The pentagon just had a briefing and touched on the report. They only said a few sentences recapping it and even then it was specifically focused on extraterrestrials. That should not be the point of AARO and shouldn’t have been the focus of the report. Even if what they review isn’t extraterrestrial, hyper-fixating on disproving it is a failure of their publicly stated role. Instead of determining what things are, they’re trying to determine what they aren’t.

Thrillhouse, (edited )

I agree the wiggle wording here is so egregious! I shouldn’t be, but I’m actually surprised by the audacity.

There are many possibilities including but not limited to:

Terrestrial but living in oceans or underground

NHI that humans cannot physically perceive or that use cloaking / deception methods

Extra dimensional / can bend space/time

Plasma/ball lightning or a form of NHI living plasma

Actual foreign military tech that is decades more advanced than anything NATO has access to.

Saying “extraterrestrial” tucks the issue neatly into a box for media to pick up and regurgitate (NY Times on it already).

HM05_Me,
@HM05_Me@lemmy.world avatar

I’d be fine with a report that came back inconclusive compared to dismissing an unknown due to too narrow of a scope. If they truly were being scientific, they would admit that their research scope was not determining what UAP are, but determining they’re not specifically extraterrestrial. It’d be like going to a doctor and them saying you’re not sick because you don’t have cancer.

I don’t expect answers to a lot of UAP incidents or alleged programs, but I do want transparency. I’m sure that even the government has a lot that is left unknown on the subject, but there’s definitely information being buried. This report just serves to further muddy the topic.

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