The Department of Energy is, in the words of UAP researcher UAP Gerb, “baked in at every level” of the UAP cover architecture. The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 grants DOE the authority to classify anything with nuclear adjacency — regardless of presidential decree, Congressional oversight, or any other authority. It is the ideal classification mechanism for a program that needs to stay hidden indefinitely.
And the NNSA’s own website confirms it has UAP files.
PFD Operations Reports — Confirmed
The NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration) hosts a UAP/UFO Resources and Documents page at energy.gov. That page links to a document collection labelled “20220809” containing multiple PFD Operations Reports spanning 2018 to 2021: March 2018, April 2019, June 2019, July 2019, October 2019, July 2020, and April 2021.
PFD stands for Persistent Flying Disk. These are NNSA operational incident reports documenting UAP events at or near nuclear facilities. Every single one is redacted under the (b)(6) FOIA exemption — the personal privacy exemption — meaning they contain identifying information about personnel involved in these incidents. NNSA filed privacy redactions on UAP incident reports. That is not standard procedure for weather phenomena or drone incursions.
The Classification Architecture
The Atomic Energy Act gives DOE a classification power that supersedes normal government hierarchy. If DOE decides something has nuclear adjacency, it classifies it — and there is no appeal mechanism that bypasses DOE’s authority. Programs nested inside DOE’s classification structure are effectively invisible to Congress, the President, and any standard oversight body.
Congressional testimony from the Shellenberger 2024 hearing confirms the mechanism: “For UAPs this is apparently not happening because the White House has a loophole for non-covert action waived programs.” SAPs and CAPs — Special Access Programs and Controlled Access Programs — can be waived from Congressional notification entirely. Under DOE’s Atomic Energy Act authority, the waiver architecture is even deeper.
Dick Cheney — The Post-1990s Patron
UAP Gerb’s research specifically identifies Dick Cheney as the “principal advocate” who facilitated UAP program funding through DOE’s legacy nuclear research infrastructure in the post-1990s period — the transition moment when programs moved from government to contractor control. As Secretary of Defense (1989-1993) and later as Vice President (2001-2009) running what researchers describe as a “shadow government,” Cheney had both the access and the institutional relationships to route funding through DOE channels invisible to standard oversight.
The DOE is connected to virtually every institution in the UAP network: JPL (DOE/Caltech), LANL (DOE direct), NNSA nuclear facilities, NEST operations, NURO’s DOE integration. This is the spine of the program architecture. Everything runs through energy.
Sources: energy.gov/nnsa/uapufo-resources-and-documents, NNSA 20220809 document collection, Shellenberger congressional testimony 2024, UAP Gerb research corpus.