Atomic Energy Commission UFO materials claim

Atomic Energy Commission UFO materials claim

Made public	29 April 2020, in posts on Twitter
Relayed by	Tim McMillan, journalist and later founder of The Debrief
Source	Anonymous; said to be a former employee of Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS)
Claim	The Atomic Energy Commission held UFO crash materials from 1947 and transferred them to Lockheed in 1977
Related to	The disputed "Wilson–Davis notes"
Responses	Eric Davis called the source ill-informed; Harry Reid denied knowledge of any debris
Evidence	None offered; AARO (2024) found no verifiable evidence of such programs
Date	29 April 2020
Topics	Crashes & retrievals (topic), Nuclear & missile sites (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic)
People	Tim McMillan, David Grusch
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 196
Year	2020 in UFO history
Timeline	2020 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	16

The Atomic Energy Commission UFO materials claim is an unverified story first posted on social media in April 2020 by the journalist Tim McMillan. He said an anonymous source, who had worked for Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) on the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP), told him two things. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) had held material from crashed UFOs since 1947, and it had transferred that material to Lockheed in 1977.^[1][2][13] McMillan said he did not treat the story as fact, because there was no supporting evidence beyond the source's word.^[2] The story's own timeline does not fit the agency's history, since the AEC had been abolished before 1977.^[14][16]

Background

The claim surfaced in discussions of the "Wilson–Davis notes". These are fifteen pages said to have been found in the estate of the astronaut Edgar Mitchell and posted online in 2019. They describe an alleged 2002 meeting between the physicist Eric Davis and Admiral Thomas Wilson, recently retired as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).^[2] In the notes, Wilson says that in May 1997, as Vice Director of Intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he was refused access to a special access program at a major aerospace contractor, which he does not name. The program manager supposedly told him it was a reverse-engineering effort working on an intact craft that was "not of this Earth". Wilson has repeatedly and strongly denied that the notes are genuine.^[2]

AAWSAP was the DIA program set up in 2007–08 at the urging of Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, Reid's friend the billionaire Robert Bigelow, and Senators Ted Stevens and Daniel Inouye. It was later publicized as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).^[4][5] BAASS, a new division of Bigelow's company, submitted the only bid and won the contract (HHM402-08-R-0211). The program was funded for fiscal years 2009 and 2010 and studied both UFO reports and alleged paranormal events, including at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah.^[8][11] Its origins, including the DIA analyst James Lacatski's interest after reading Hunt for the Skinwalker in 2007, are described in the 2021 book Skinwalkers at the Pentagon. Lacatski wrote that book with Colm Kelleher and George Knapp, and it was cleared for publication after a review of more than a year.^[6][10] DIA records on the program have been released through FOIA.^[7][8]

The claim

On 29 April 2020 the researcher D. Dean Johnson noted on Twitter that Lockheed Martin, the AEC and 1977 were details not found in the Wilson notes, and asked how the AEC was supposed to have come by the material.^[1] McMillan relayed his source's account in a series of posts, which the blogger Joe Murgia later collected. According to the source:^[1][2]

• The 2002 Wilson–Davis meeting had "allegedly" been about crashed UFO material that the AEC transferred to Lockheed Martin in 1977.
• The AEC had held the material since 1947 because it was, and as the Department of Energy (DOE) still is, the most compartmentalized and secure branch of the government.
• Understanding any highly advanced craft depends on understanding its energy source, which made the AEC/DOE the natural owner.
• The transfer happened in 1977 because President Jimmy Carter wanted to make the AEC a federal branch, which would have brought government oversight. The source said Carter did this in 1979.
• This was the program Wilson was supposedly refused access to, held privately like AAWSAP itself.

Asked who would own the material now, McMillan answered that it would hypothetically be Lockheed Martin. He relayed that the material had allegedly been stored untouched since the early 1960s, when scientific understanding was judged too far behind to make use of it. He also said someone at Lockheed had supposedly worked with BAASS to try to restart analysis.^[2]

McMillan wrote that he was certain the person had worked for BAASS and AAWSAP, and that none of the AEC and Lockheed details came from Davis. He did not believe the AEC and Lockheed claims as fact, because beyond the source's account there was no supporting evidence. He called the story a "cool story" or myth and said it would be foolish to accept something so grandiose without a significant amount of evidence. He had kept it to himself until then because the source would speak only on background.^[2] McMillan, a retired police lieutenant, went on to found the science news site The Debrief.^[2][9]

Problems with the chronology

The Atomic Energy Commission was created by the Atomic Energy Act, which President Harry Truman signed on 1 August 1946. The act moved control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands from 1 January 1947, and gave the AEC control of the plants, laboratories and staff of the wartime bomb program.^[14] The AEC was abolished by the Energy Reorganization Act, passed on 11 October 1974. Its functions were split between the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), which was set up on 19 January 1975.^[14][16] Carter signed the Department of Energy Organization Act on 4 August 1977. The new department began operating on 1 October 1977 and absorbed ERDA and other agencies.^[14][15]

So in 1977 there was no Atomic Energy Commission to transfer anything, and the DOE was created in 1977, not 1979 as the source said. Carter's reorganization replaced ERDA, not the AEC.^[14][15][16] These errors do not by themselves prove the story false, since a source might have used "AEC" loosely for its successors.

Response

Murgia passed McMillan's posts to Davis. On the morning of 30 April 2020 Davis authorized a statement calling the source "quite ill-informed". He said the source was not in the know about the history of what he called the legacy UAP recovery and reverse-engineering program, because the topic was far above the source's pay grade and need-to-know. He said the source had either invented the claims about Lockheed, the AEC/DOE and Carter, or was repeating other people's uninformed opinions or old, unfounded rumors that circulate widely in ufology.^[2] Davis's statement rejected the AEC story itself, while implying that some such legacy program did exist.^[2]

Harry Reid gave mixed signals about Lockheed. In a New Yorker article and podcast published on 30 April 2020, he said he had been told for decades that Lockheed had some retrieved materials. He said he had tried to get Pentagon approval to look at them, without success, and that this was why he had sought special-access status for AATIP. A Lockheed Martin representative declined to comment.^[2] In an interview with Murgia, Reid said he did not believe the United States had material from a UFO.^[2] In July 2020, after a New York Times story about crash materials quoted him, Reid posted that he had no knowledge of, and had never suggested, that the government or anyone else held UFOs or debris from other worlds.^[2][5]

Assessment

The source is anonymous, the only witness to the source's words is McMillan, who himself called the story a myth, and no documents support it.^[2] Murgia, who believes the Wilson–Davis notes are genuine, argued that Lockheed should not be ruled out and suggested McMillan was biased against crash-retrieval stories.^[2]

The idea that the Energy Department or its predecessors held unusual material fed into broader allegations about hidden reverse-engineering programs, which were aired at a congressional hearing in July 2023.^[3] On 8 March 2024 the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) released the first volume of its historical report. AARO said it had reviewed all official investigative efforts since 1945, searched classified and unclassified archives, and worked with the officials who oversee special access programs. It found no verifiable evidence that the government or private companies had access to, or were reverse-engineering, extraterrestrial technology.^[3][12] It judged that the alleged hidden programs named by interviewees either did not exist, were real national-security programs unrelated to alien technology, or traced back to a program that had been shut down.^[12] AARO attributed such claims largely to circular reporting among a group of people who believe them.^[3]

People and topics

• Department of Energy — The U.S. department that runs the nuclear weapons laboratories.
• Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
• Tim McMillan — Journalist and co-founder of The Debrief.
• The Debrief — A news site covering UAP and science.
• BAASS — The Bigelow Aerospace division that carried out the AAWSAP contract.
• AAWSAP — The Defense Intelligence Agency's UAP research program of 2008–2010, carried out by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
• Los Alamos National Laboratory — The New Mexico laboratory where the atomic bomb was designed.
• David Grusch — Former intelligence officer who testified in 2023 that the U.S. has recovered non-human craft.

On the Timeline

• Sarfatti's slow-light Tic Tac theory (20 March 2020) — Physicist Jack Sarfatti suggests the Tic Tac used a metamaterial that slows light.
• Gradisher–Gough FOIA coordination emails (10 July 2020) — A Navy spokesman's email shows efforts to coordinate FOIA replies about UAP across agencies.

See every 2020 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP/AAWSAP)”, “United States Atomic Energy Commission”, “United States Department of Energy”, “Energy Research and Development Administration”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.