D'Amato and untraceable black budgets
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 10
| Claimed date | 1994 |
|---|---|
| People | C. Richard D'Amato (1942–2026), Senate Appropriations Committee counsel; Steven M. Greer |
| Claim | $40–80 billion was going into projects Congress "could not penetrate", some UFO-related |
| Source | Greer's note in the Disclosure Project Briefing Document (2001) |
| D'Amato's public position | His inquiry into 1940s New Mexico crash claims did not merit a Senate investigation |
| Status | Unverified, second-hand recollection |
| Date | 1994 |
| Topics | Government programs (topic), Congress & law (topic) |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 118 |
| Year | 1994 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1994 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 6 |
Steven Greer wrote in the Disclosure Project's 2001 briefing document about a 1994 conversation with C. Richard D'Amato. D'Amato was then senior counsel to the Senate Appropriations Committee under its chairman, Senator Robert Byrd. According to Greer, D'Amato told him that between $40 billion and $80 billion was going into projects that Congress could not penetrate, "even with a top secret clearance and a Senate subpoena".[1][6] D'Amato later said publicly that his inquiry into UFO crash claims had found nothing meriting a Senate investigation.[2][5] Jacques Vallée's journals, however, record him speaking privately in the early 1990s of an illegal secret project.[3]
Greer's account
Greer's account appears as a bracketed note after the testimony of Denise McKenzie, a former employee of the defense contractor SAIC in San Diego.[6] McKenzie described contract files worth "sometimes millions of dollars" that held only two or three backdated form letters and showed no activity. She said: "It's like a front, a front for something".[6]
Greer used her account to illustrate how, in his view, Unacknowledged Special Access Projects (USAPs) "hide money in dummy projects" while real money goes to projects hidden from Congress and the President. He then recalled the conversation. According to Greer, D'Amato said he was "sure money was going into UFO-related projects but they could not penetrate them". D'Amato is said to have told him: "SG, you are dealing with the Varsity Team of all black projects - good luck..."[6] In the same note Greer called SAIC "one of the crown jewels of the super-secret, black project world". He said the former NSA director Admiral Bobby Inman, who was involved with SAIC, had rebuffed a 1994 request for help with disclosure made through Senator Barry Goldwater.[6]
C. Richard D'Amato
D'Amato (1942–2026) was a lawyer and Navy Reserve captain educated at Cornell, the Fletcher School and Georgetown.[5] His career:[5]
- He worked for Robert Byrd from 1980, first as director of policy during Byrd's time as majority leader.
- He was chief counsel (1988–1995) and then minority counsel (1995–1998) of the Senate Appropriations Committee, managing defense, intelligence and foreign-affairs funding.
- He played a key part in funding the Stargate remote-viewing program until it closed in 1995.
- He later served in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1999 to 2003 and chaired the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission.
The UFO writer Timothy Good said D'Amato "amassed a great deal of hearsay evidence" but never gained access to the most sensitive information.[5] George Knapp said D'Amato was tasked by Byrd, and by the future majority leader Harry Reid, to look into crash claims in the early 1990s.[2] According to Knapp, D'Amato:[2]
- visited Area 51
- met Alfred O'Donnell, a senior manager of the contractor EG&G, who told him nothing
- could not verify the crash stories
- thought it "entirely feasible" that a cover-up existed inside a private company such as Lockheed Martin, EG&G or Northrop Grumman
In Vallée's journals
Vallée's fourth volume of journals, as excerpted by the researcher Keith Basterfield, records several meetings with D'Amato:[3]
- 18–21 June 1990. Introduced by Whitley Strieber, D'Amato said the intelligence community had been "hiding their UFO data from the legislative branch for years". He said they were not authorized to fool the public or create hoaxes "using the taxpayer's money".
- 24 May 1991. D'Amato called a "stealthy group" disseminating false information a felony. He asked whether a private contractor, "a Batelle or a Lockheed", was "deciding the fate of the nation". He said he found "no leaks anywhere".
- June 1991. At a meeting with Vallée and the CIA physician Kit Green, the three concluded that the secret project was illegal, small, outside any government agency, and "hidden in a contractor's basement somewhere".
- 1992. After meeting the Belgian Colonel De Brouwer, D'Amato concluded that the Belgian flying triangles were "very plain human craft". He said "no money was ever appropriated" for the project that built them.
- November 1994. D'Amato cut a remote-viewing contract from $2 million a year to $500,000 after a site visit.
Basterfield noted that Vallée's diaries give no evidence for D'Amato's statements.[3]
D'Amato's public statement
Around 2013 D'Amato posted a statement on his website. He said he had helped manage the budgets of the Defense Department and the National Foreign Intelligence Program. A "senior Senate Committee chairman" had asked him to make "a preliminary inquiry" into allegations of "unidentified aerial crashes in the 1940s in New Mexico".[2][3][5] He continued: "I reported my conclusion to the Senator that the basis for such allegations did not appear to merit any further Senate investigation." He said he had "no personal opinion on the matter" and considered the inquiry closed for over twenty years.[2][3] The statement does not mention black budgets or the figure Greer attributed to him.[3]
Context
For comparison, the only Pentagon UFO-related funding of the 2000s that is documented is far smaller. The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program began in the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2007 at the urging of Harry Reid and Robert Bigelow, and was budgeted $22 million over five years.[4] Reid told The New Yorker in 2021: "I was told for decades that Lockheed had some of these retrieved materials."[2] Legislation later signed by President Joe Biden protected whistleblowers who reported on alleged UAP programs, including those working for private contractors as well as government.[2]
Assessment
The $40–80 billion figure rests only on Greer's recollection of a private conversation, published seven years later.[6] D'Amato's own public account is far more cautious. His private remarks recorded by Vallée suggest he did suspect hidden, unappropriated projects, but he offered no evidence of their size or of any UFO connection.[3][5]
People and topics
- C. Richard D'Amato — Senate Appropriations Committee counsel who looked into black budgets for Sen. Robert Byrd.
- Steven Greer — Physician who founded CSETI and the Disclosure Project.
- Disclosure Project — Steven Greer's campaign for UFO disclosure, best known for its May 2001 press conference.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- AAWSAP — The Defense Intelligence Agency's UAP research program of 2008–2010, carried out by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies.
On the Timeline
- Project Condign (2 December 1993) — A UK Ministry of Defence memo discusses a proposed UAP study.
- Puthoff pitches vacuum energy (1994) (1994) — Hal Puthoff says he pitched vacuum energy technology to oil companies.
See every 1994 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- U.S. congressional hearings on UFOs — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- Disclosure Project Briefing Document (2001), Internet Archive (PDF) · archive.org · archived copy
- Christopher Sharp, "Former chief for defense contractor that ran Area 51 claimed knowledge of recovered 'flying saucer' and 'live being'", Liberation Times (Feb 2023) · liberationtimes.com · archived copy
- Keith Basterfield, "More on C. Richard D'Amato and 'black' UAP programs", UFOs – scientific research (Apr 2019) · ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com · archived copy
- Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- C. Richard D'Amato — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Disclosure Project Briefing Document (2001), full text — Internet Archive · archive.org · archived copy
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program”, “C. Richard D'Amato”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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