In December 2017, the New York Times published its landmark story on the Pentagon’s secret UFO program — AATIP, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, $22 million, Harry Reid, Luis Elizondo. It was accurate in some ways and wrong in others. The confusion was not accidental. The Black Vault’s John Greenewald Jr. spent years on the FOIA trail untangling what was actually funded, who ran it, and why the public record contains so many contradictions.
AAWSAP: What the DIA Actually Funded
In late 2008, the Defense Intelligence Agency awarded a $22 million contract to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) for the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP). This is the program the NY Times money came from. But AAWSAP was not AATIP.
AAWSAP studied UAP sightings, but also: poltergeist activity at Skinwalker Ranch, cattle mutilations, interdimensional entities, and physiological effects on witnesses. Its 38 research reports covered topics from warp drive to consciousness to the biology of UAP-related injuries. Most remain classified.
AATIP: Elizondo’s Program
Luis Elizondo headed something he called AATIP — a different program that he says evolved from AAWSAP but was not the same thing. The NY Times reported AATIP began in 2007. Elizondo stated it started in 2008, and was renamed from AAWSAP. The Pentagon later stated Elizondo had “no responsibilities” related to AATIP — a claim Elizondo denied, producing documentation to support his account.
The Greenewald Documentation
Greenewald’s multi-year FOIA investigation found systematic contradictions in the official record. The NY Times’ original reporting described AATIP contracts starting in 2007, but the contracts that were actually awarded — which Greenewald obtained — were for AAWSAP, not AATIP, and were awarded in late 2008. If AATIP and AAWSAP were the same program, the official timeline is wrong. If they were different programs, then the $22 million story is about AAWSAP, and AATIP was something else entirely — potentially unfunded, or funded through different mechanisms.
Why the Confusion May Be Deliberate
AAWSAP studied things that the government could never publicly acknowledge studying: poltergeists, interdimensional beings, consciousness effects, a ranch in Utah that BAASS’s owner purchased specifically for UAP research. AATIP, as described by Elizondo, studied conventional UAP threats — advanced aerospace technology, flight performance characteristics, national security implications.
If you conflate the two, you obscure both. AATIP sounds credible and defensible. AAWSAP sounds like it belonged in a science fiction novel. Calling everything “AATIP” makes the $22 million sound like conventional threat analysis. Acknowledging AAWSAP would require explaining what the government was doing at Skinwalker Ranch on taxpayer money.
The 38 AAWSAP research reports remain classified. They are legally required to be in Record Group 615. They are not there yet.
Sources: The Black Vault, John Greenewald Jr. NY Times, December 16, 2017. Defense Intelligence Agency FOIA releases. Skinwalkers at the Pentagon.