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Pentagon ex-UFO chief says conspiracy theorists in government drive spending::Sean Kirkpatrick, the first director of the all-domain anomaly resolution office, blames ‘core group’ of government workers

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[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 8 points 9 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Conspiracy theorists working for and within the US government are perpetuating myths about UFOs that millions of taxpayer dollars are then spent looking into, a “self-licking ice cream cone”, according to the Pentagon’s former chief investigator of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).

Aaro’s first comprehensive historical record report, which has been submitted to Congress and is set for publication later this year, contains no evidence of the existence of alien life, or any government cover-up, Kirkpatrick says.

Kirkpatrick declined to identify the people by name, but agreed with Bergen’s observation that “the actual conspiracy is being carried out by a group of true believers themselves to get the government involved in the business of investigating aliens”.

Kirkpatrick said in a resignation essay published by Scientific American last week that he feared lawmakers had succumbed to “conspiracy-driven decision-making” and sensationalism in their rush to “uncover the cover-up”.

He said his department’s mission to use a “rigorous scientific framework and a data-driven approach” to collate and evaluate UFO reports and sightings going back decades had been hampered by misrepresentations, half-truths and other snippets of misinformation from unreliable sources.

What his team was able to deduce, Kirkpatrick said, was that at least 90% of recorded UFO sightings, including some videos of military encounters declassified by the Pentagon in recent years, have a perfectly logical explanation.


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