UFO expert blasts Congress members for believing «alien conspiracies»

In a farewell letter after leaving his post as the first director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Dr. Sean Fitzpatrick criticized members of the US Congress for believing baseless UFO conspiracy theories. In the withering letter that was published in Scientific American, Fitzpatrick, whose former role involved investigating reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena sightings, outlined his reasons for leaving the job.

Fitzpatrick articulating his frustrations comes amid a raft of UFO-related news. Last week, under the stipulation of secrecy, members of the US House Oversight Committee attended a secret UFO briefing. The briefing came after political pressure stemming from UFO whistleblower David Grusch testifying in front of Congress last year that the United States government had been engaging in a program of reverse engineering recovered extraterrestrial crafts since the 1930s.

One element of frustration that Fitzpatrick emphasized was that congressional leaders believed in conspiracy theories, despite no evidence to back up their beliefs. According to the laser and materials physicist, this influenced the public discourse surrounding extraterrestrials.

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“Our efforts were ultimately overwhelmed by sensational but unsupported claims that ignored contradictory evidence yet captured the attention of policy makers and the public, driving legislative battles and dominating the public narrative,” he wrote.

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which Kirkpatrick headed, was formed after a research group published videos that reputedly showed UFOs that were recorded by Navy personnel. The incident took place in 2017. The New York Times reported on the encounters and then the Pentagon declassified the clips.

The videos were authentic, but people debated whether or not they depicted UFOs or if they were something else. “AARO discovered a few things, and none were about aliens,” Kirkpatrick admitted in his resignation letter. Instead, the American said that they uncovered a group of Congress members who believed in strange conspiracy theories relating to UFOs and we prepared to pledge public money to investigate them.

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“The U.S. has been hiding and attempting to reverse engineer as many as 12 UAP/UFOs from as early as the 1960s and perhaps earlier,” he said. “This great cover-up and conspiracy failed to produce any salient results, and consequently the effort was abandoned to some private sector defense contractors to continue the work.

«Sometime later, the story continues, those private sector contractors wanted to bring the whole program back under U.S. government (USG) auspices. Apparently, the CIA stopped this supposed transfer back to the USG.”

Kirkpatrick said the AARO probed these allegations. However, they found no evidence. “No record exists of any president or living DOD or intelligence community leader knowing about this alleged program, nor any congressional committee having such knowledge,” he said.

Despite the best efforts of AARO, conspiracy theories that they say they have debunked, continue to be be bandied around. Grusch’s testimony in front of Congress last year brought a renewed focus on extraterrestrials, but Kirkpatrick said that, despite his and the AARO’s best efforts, he will not speak to them.

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“As of the time of my departure, none, let me repeat, none of the conspiracy-minded ‘whistleblowers’ in the public eye had elected to come to AARO to provide their ‘evidence’ and statement for the record despite numerous invitations,” he said in Scientific American. “Some members of Congress prefer to opine about aliens to the press rather than get an evidence-based briefing on the matter.»

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