Multiple sources told Liberation Times that during the Obama administration, senior intelligence figures James Clapper — then Director of National Intelligence — and Stephanie O’Sullivan — then Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence — oversaw a program relating to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. This has not been previously reported.
James Clapper served as DNI from 2010 to 2017. He is publicly known for having told a Senate committee in 2013 that the NSA did not collect “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans” — a statement he later acknowledged was “clearly erroneous.” He was at the top of the US intelligence hierarchy during a period when, Liberation Times sources indicate, ODNI was running a UAP program.
The Significance
The ODNI is the coordinating body above all 18 US intelligence agencies — the CIA, NSA, DIA, NRO, and all others report through ODNI to the President. If Clapper and O’Sullivan oversaw a UAP program at ODNI during the Obama years, this places UAP program awareness at the highest possible level of the intelligence community hierarchy.
This also directly contradicts Obama’s February 2026 podcast statement that he “saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us.” His own DNI was reportedly running a related program. Either Obama was not briefed — consistent with the documented pattern of Presidents being denied full UAP information — or his statement was carefully lawyered.
The ODNI Connection to AARO and AATIP
AATIP — the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program — was a DIA program running from 2007 to 2012. Its successor programs and the eventual establishment of AARO in 2022 all ran through congressional and executive channels. An ODNI program during the Obama years would represent a parallel track — intelligence-community-level UAP investigation running alongside the DIA programs, at a higher classification level, with broader IC coordination authority.
The ODNI program adds another institutional node to the documented UAP investigation architecture: DIA (AATIP), ODNI (Clapper/O’Sullivan), DOE (NNSA PFD reports), Navy (NURO/underwater), Air Force (AFRL/McCasland/Sullivan). The programs have never been singular — they are distributed, compartmentalised, and deliberately difficult to map in totality.
Source: Liberation Times, multiple sources (Christopher Sharp, January 2026). James Clapper public record. Stephanie O’Sullivan public record.