Vallée meets D'Amato on secret programs (1992)

Vallée meets D'Amato on secret programs (1992)

Date	22 May 1992
Topics	Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Government programs (topic), Congress & law (topic)
People	Jacques Vallée, C. Richard D'Amato, Robert Byrd, Christopher Mellon, Richard Doty
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 114
Year	1992 in UFO history
Timeline	1992 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	24

Vallée's 1992 meeting with D'Amato is a conversation recorded in the published journals of the UFO researcher Jacques Vallée. On 22 May 1992 he met C. Richard D'Amato, a counsel to the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee under Senator Robert C. Byrd.^[1][20] According to Vallée's entry, D'Amato said that the mysterious triangular aircraft of the kind reported over Belgium were human-made, and that the project building them was illegal. "No money was ever appropriated for it," he said. Intelligence groups such as the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) "continue to cover, distort, destroy data and generally make it impossible for the Congress to find out what's going on".^[1][20] Michael Shellenberger's 2024 UFO timeline, submitted to the House Oversight Committee, notes that this view conflicts with later statements by Christopher Mellon. Mellon also looked into black aerospace programs and the Belgian triangles for Byrd, and said there was no such U.S. program.^[20][21]

The journals

Vallée has published his private journals in a series called Forbidden Science, first self-published in hardcover and later reissued in paperback by Anomalist Books.^[2] The volumes are:

• Forbidden Science 1: A Passion for Discovery (1957–1969)
• Forbidden Science 2: California Hermetica (1970–1979)
• Forbidden Science 3: On the Trail of Hidden Truths (1980–1989)
• Forbidden Science 4: The Spring Hill Chronicles (1990–1999)
• Forbidden Science 5: Pacific Heights (2000–2009)
• Forbidden Science 6: Scattered Castles (2010–2019)

The D'Amato entries fall in the fourth volume. Its publisher describes it as a record of Vallée's private study of unexplained phenomena from 1990 to 1999, a period when he was travelling the world as a high-technology investor. It promises a look behind the scenes "to meetings with congressmen and intelligence officials". The volume's contents list a chapter beginning "Washington. 17 January 1992" and another beginning "Hyde Street. 4 May 1992".^[4] The Swedish researcher Håkan Blomqvist found the volume's many entries on venture capital somewhat frustrating. Publishers Weekly praised the series as a glimpse into "the mind of a scientist who seems to challenge every preconception".^[2] Reviewers of later volumes describe the journals as intimate portraits of the fringe "scenes" of each decade, and as records of Vallée's many contacts.^[14][15]

Vallée holds a master's degree in astrophysics and a PhD in computer science. He was a close associate of Project Blue Book's J. Allen Hynek, and later became a venture capitalist in San Francisco.^[4] Shellenberger's timeline describes him as a former Blue Book consultant and later a subcontractor to BAASS for the Pentagon's AAWSAP program.^[20] Popular Mechanics reported that a list of BAASS contractors with security clearances included Vallée.^[16]

D'Amato

A 2019 post on the UFOs Scientific Research blog collects what was then known about D'Amato.^[1]

• Name and role. A 1998 item on the "UFO Updates" mailing list named him as Charles Richard D'Amato. It said his boss was the Democratic Senator Robert C. Byrd, and that he had been minority clerk for the Military Construction Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
• Career. A 2010 account by Anthony Bragalia, quoted on UFO Chronicles, says D'Amato studied at Cornell and the Fletcher School of Diplomacy and earned his law degree from Georgetown. He taught at the U.S. Naval Academy, served on high-level congressional advisory bodies, and held Top Secret clearances. He was named chief counsel and investigator for the Senate Appropriations Committee, and later became national security specialist for Senate Majority Leader Byrd and a liaison member of the National Security Council.
• His résumé. The blog checked D'Amato's own website. His résumé shows him as senior staff counsel in the U.S. Senate from 1975 to 1998, and counsel to the Appropriations Committee under Byrd, leading on foreign policy, national defence intelligence and trade. From 1968 to 1998 he served in the U.S. Navy, five years on active duty and 25 in the reserve, retiring as a captain.
• Remote viewing. A Washington Post report by R. Jeffrey Smith, carried in MIT's newspaper The Tech on 1 December 1995, said four sources credited D'Amato, then an intelligence specialist on the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, with "almost singlehandedly" defeating repeated efforts by Defense Intelligence Agency leaders to kill a psychic program. D'Amato said he wanted it to continue because senators had asked him to. The report added that subcommittee chairman Ted Stevens and senior minority member Daniel Inouye were briefed every year on all intelligence programs, including the psychic one. The blog notes that Stevens and Inouye later supported AAWSAP.

Earlier meetings

• January 1990. In a 2019 tweet quoted by the blog, the blogger summarised an entry from the new Forbidden Science volume. On 21 January 1990 Vallée met D'Amato, then counsel for international and national security on the Appropriations Committee. D'Amato had read Vallée's book Confrontations, and said: "I intend to find out what's going on." The blog places this meeting on page 45.^[1]
• June 1991. In an entry dated 12 June 1991, on page 94, Vallée wrote of "four hours of intense conversation" with D'Amato.^[1]
• 1991 warning. Shellenberger's timeline quotes D'Amato telling Vallée in 1991 that what "that stealthy group" was doing was a felony. It was a jailable offence, he said, for a government employee knowingly to spread false information to the public. The government could not spend appropriated money on projects Congress did not know about, and it was worse still to spend private money doing so. Whatever the project, it must be "controlled by an incredible level of fear because nobody dares talk about it. I find no leaks anywhere." (See C. Richard D'Amato's warning to Vallée (1991).)^[22]

The 22 May 1992 meeting

The blog quotes Vallée's entry for 22 May 1992, on page 122 of the journal.^[1] The main points are these.

• Setting. D'Amato arrived on time, "ebullient and dapper", and commented cheerfully on the media circus. "This city thrives on chaos," he said.
• Washington's interest. He said a TV miniseries about abductions had put people to sleep, but that Senator Claiborne Pell remained fascinated by UFOs.
• The "mystery planes". He told Vallée of "a group within the American Federation of Scientists" that investigated "mystery planes" of the Belgian type.
• Human and illegal. Vallée recorded that "Dick is convinced those are human and the project that makes them, illegal". D'Amato said no money had ever been appropriated for it. Intelligence groups like AFOSI, he said, continued to cover up, distort and destroy data, and to make it impossible for Congress to find out what was happening.
• Vallée's question. Vallée replied that he could understand a rogue group keeping the lid on data in the United States, but asked: what about other nations?

Shellenberger's timeline summarises the same entry, saying that D'Amato told Vallée he had looked into triangular UAP like those seen in Belgium in 1989–1990.^[20]

The Belgian triangles

According to the Wikipedia account, large triangular UFOs were reported over Belgium in 1989 and 1990.^[3] On 30 March 1990 at least one silent, low-flying black triangle was reported in a mass sighting and tracked by NATO radar and jet interceptors. The Belgian military at first assumed it was a secret American aircraft. The then recently declassified F-117 was considered, but former Belgian defence minister Leo Delcroix later judged that unlikely. The account mentions one notable photograph and says someone came forward about it 21 years later; the sentence is cut off in the text read here.^[3] (See Belgian UFO wave.)

The 1998 UFO Updates item said D'Amato visited Belgium in 1992, a few months after the wave, and met General De Brouwer, the chief Belgian Air Force official involved. On 9 July 1992 he also met members of the Belgian civilian UFO group SOBEPS.^[1]

Mellon's contrasting account

Shellenberger's timeline sets D'Amato's view against that of Christopher Mellon, a former staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.^[20][21]

• Mellon's inquiry. Mellon said in 2021 that he too had looked into U.S. black aerospace programs for Byrd, and into the Belgian triangle wave for the intelligence committee. Byrd, as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, had ordered him to investigate claims that the government was building the black project "Aurora". The timeline cites an image of Mellon's statement, which could not be read here.^[17]
• His conclusion. On the record, Mellon said: "there is no such [secret U.S. triangular craft] program, we don't have anything like that… it was not something we had on the books."
• Television. On the History Channel series Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation, in an episode titled "The Triangle Mystery", Mellon said of triangular UAP: "I don't believe these are ours". The episode reached the same conclusion. It was co-produced by To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science, of which Mellon was an adviser.^[18][19][21]
• Unknown conclusions. The timeline notes that it is not known what conclusions were given to Byrd in classified settings, given that his counsel D'Amato believed the triangles were human-made.^[21]

Other accounts of D'Amato

• Jesse Marcel Jr. Jesse Marcel Jr., son of the Roswell intelligence officer, described a meeting with an unnamed official in his 2009 book The Roswell Legacy. According to the researcher David Rudiak, the official was D'Amato. Rudiak said D'Amato took Marcel to a secure room deep in the Capitol's basement. There D'Amato said he was charged with investigating the "black government" and a black budget being used, without oversight, to cover up Roswell, and that his job was to report to the Appropriations Committee on where the money went. He gave Marcel contact details in case his family were ever threatened. In a 1995 talk at Helena, Montana, as reported on UFO Updates, Marcel dated the meeting to July 1991. He said D'Amato asked him to describe the Roswell debris, showed him Whitley Strieber's novel Majestic and said "This is not an invention". When Marcel asked where the 1947 wreckage was, D'Amato said the NSC had no idea. Stanton Friedman reportedly said he was also present.^[1]
• Timothy Good. The British author Timothy Good wrote that he met the same official in the early 1990s, once in London and several times in Washington, after an introduction from Whitley Strieber. He described the official as having the clearances and budget authority to oversee the whole range of intelligence and special access programs. Good put him in touch with people he hoped could help. In a later book, Good quoted a 1992 letter from the counsel to Karl Pflock, asking to talk to anyone who could shed light on unidentified airborne vehicles and any government relationship with them. Pflock did not reply. Good concluded that the official "amassed a great deal of hearsay evidence, but was never able to gain access to the most sensitive information".^[1]
• Steven Greer. In the Disclosure Project's 2001 briefing document, Steven Greer wrote that D'Amato told him in 1994 that between $40 billion and $80 billion was going into projects that could not be penetrated, even with a Top Secret clearance and a Senate subpoena. Greer said D'Amato was sure some of the money was going into UFO-related projects, and told him: "you are dealing with the Varsity Team of all black projects – good luck".^[23][24] (See D'Amato and untraceable black budgets.)
• Grant Cameron. In 2018 Grant Cameron wrote that, at Byrd's request, D'Amato concluded that UFO information should be released, but that "an incredibly powerful black arm of the government" was keeping it secret and spending huge sums illegally. The blog notes that Cameron gave no source for the quotation.^[1]

AFOSI and disinformation

D'Amato's charge that AFOSI distorted and destroyed data echoes the agency's best-documented UFO episode, the Bennewitz affair. The Albuquerque businessman and physicist Paul Bennewitz reported strange lights and signals near Kirtland Air Force Base and the Manzano weapons storage area. AFOSI responded with a counterintelligence operation. According to later accounts, agent Richard Doty fed Bennewitz disinformation, including software that "decoded" alien signals into messages about an imminent invasion. One concern was that Bennewitz might have been monitoring classified signals tests or drone programs.^[5][8][9] The affair is the subject of Greg Bishop's 2005 book Project Beta and the 2013 documentary Mirage Men.^[6][7]

Later official findings

No public finding of an unauthorised triangle program came out of D'Amato's inquiries, as far as the sources read here show. In March 2024 the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) released Volume I of its historical record report. AARO said it had reviewed all official U.S. government investigations since 1945, searched classified and unclassified archives, and worked with officials responsible for special access program oversight.^[13] AARO found no evidence of any hidden "UAP reverse-engineering programs" in government or industry. It attributed such claims largely to "circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case". Christopher Mellon, quoted by Space.com, said the report would not satisfy critics because many witnesses did not trust AARO and would not speak to it.^[12] AARO's report concerned extraterrestrial technology, and did not address whether human-made triangular aircraft were flown without congressional funding.

The prepublication review of Skinwalkers at the Pentagon (2021), the account of AAWSAP by James Lacatski, Colm Kelleher and George Knapp, offers a smaller example of how such programs are handled. Records obtained by The Black Vault show that the review took more than a year, though the DIA, Air Force and Department of Homeland Security all cleared the manuscript with amendments.^[10] The skeptic Robert Sheaffer's review describes AAWSAP's study of paranormal phenomena "collocated" with UAP.^[11]

Notes on the earlier version

• Name of the scientists' group. The earlier version said D'Amato described a group within the "Federation of American Scientists". Vallée's entry, as quoted, says "American Federation of Scientists".^[1]
• "I intend to find out." The earlier version placed D'Amato's statement that he intended to find out what was going on in the May 1992 meeting. The blog's summary attaches it to the first meeting, in January 1990.^[1]
• De Brouwer. The earlier version named the Belgian officer as "Gen. Wilfried De Brouwer" and said he "had publicly discussed" the wave. The sources read here name him only as General De Brouwer, the chief Belgian Air Force official involved, so his first name and public statements are not covered in the sources read here.^[1]
• Scale of the Belgian wave. The earlier version described "thousands of reports", a much-publicised F-16 chase, and skeptics disputing many reports. The Wikipedia summary read here mentions NATO radar and jet interceptors and the contested photograph, but not the number of reports. That figure is not covered in the sources read here.^[3]

People and topics

• Jacques Vallée — Computer scientist and astronomer, author of the Forbidden Science journals and a central figure in UFO research.
• C. Richard D'Amato — Senate Appropriations Committee counsel who looked into black budgets for Sen. Robert Byrd.
• Robert Byrd — Senate leader for whom C. Richard D'Amato and Christopher Mellon investigated black programs.
• Special access program — A U.S. classified program with access limited beyond normal secrecy rules.
• Christopher Mellon — Former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence who helped release the Navy UAP videos.
• U.S. Navy — The U.S. naval service, whose pilots reported the UAP encounters revealed in 2017.
• Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
• To The Stars Academy — The company founded by Tom DeLonge in 2017 that released the Navy UAP videos.
• Air Force Office of Special Investigations — The Air Force's criminal investigation and counterintelligence agency.
• Richard Doty — Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent who fed disinformation to UFO researchers in the 1980s.
• Disinformation — False information spread deliberately to mislead.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.

On the Timeline

• Riconosciuto backdoor claim (1992) (13 May 1992) — Michael Riconosciuto, a witness in the Inslaw lawsuit, says he was hired to build a secret software backdoor.
• Southaven Park crash claim (24 November 1992) — A book says locals believed a UAP crashed near Brookhaven Lab on Long Island.

See every 1992 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “UFO sightings in Belgium”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.