Politico "Skull and Bones" faction report
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 6
Politico "Skull and Bones" faction report
| Date | 16 May 2022 |
|---|---|
| Outlet | Politico (reporter Bryan Bender) |
| Headline | "'A Skull and Bones-type vibe': Spy agencies grapple with how much to share at UFO hearing" |
| Sources | Unnamed intelligence and Defense Department officials |
| Claim | A group inside government "fetishize their secret society", hold detailed UAP knowledge and have "no accountability" |
| Next day | House Intelligence subcommittee hearing, 17 May 2022 |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 206 |
| Topics | Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Government programs (topic), Congress & law (topic) |
| Year | 2022 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2022 on the UAP Timeline |
On 16 May 2022, the day before the first open congressional hearing on UAP in more than fifty years, Politico reported that unnamed officials had described a faction inside the Pentagon and intelligence agencies that guarded UFO information with "a Skull and Bones-type vibe" and "no accountability. Zero." Skull and Bones is a famous secret society at Yale University.[1][4] The anonymous UAP timeline in Michael Shellenberger's 2024 congressional testimony notes that the reporter, Bryan Bender, has not revealed who his source was.[5]
The report
- The article was headlined "'A Skull and Bones-type vibe': Spy agencies grapple with how much to share at UFO hearing".[1] The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.[1]
- One intelligence official said: "They fetishize their secret society. It's kind of a Skull and Bones-type vibe. They take it seriously but they have no accountability. Zero. There is a whole group of us that know in great detail this subject, a lot of which has not been reported to Congress because of security issues."[1]
- Officials said some people in the Pentagon were "protecting very interesting information" from release. A Defense Department official said it would take some kind of "forcing mechanism" to get the gatekeepers to share even part of what they knew with Congress.[1]
- According to the timeline's summary, the official also said that people from older ventures and programmes had not yet come forward to the Pentagon's inspector general, to Congress or to other oversight bodies because they had no "mechanism" to speak without reprisal.[5]
- A more mundane concern. Other officials worried that genuinely unexplained sightings were being lumped together with the many reports that turn out to be nothing. One said true UAP might be just "five things out of 5,000", and that superiors seemed to treat them all as "air trash".[1]
Context
- The push for disclosure began with the strategic release of information in late 2017 and led to a public-facing UAP office in November 2021.[1] On 23 November 2021 the Pentagon set up the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group to succeed the Navy's UAP Task Force.[2]
- The hearing. On 17 May 2022 the House Intelligence Committee's Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation, chaired by André Carson, heard from Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie and Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray. It was the first public congressional hearing on UFOs in more than 50 years.[2] Futurism called it the first of its kind since 1966. Another account dates the previous public hearing to 1969, with the hearings' origins in 1966.[1][2]
- Carson said the "stigma associated with UAPs has gotten in the way of good intelligence analysis". Bray said reports had grown to about 400, that nothing indicated an extraterrestrial origin, and that there had been at least 11 near misses. A classified session followed the public one.[2]
- At the hearing, Representative Mike Gallagher asked Moultrie about the "Admiral Wilson memo". Moultrie said he was "not personally aware" of it, and Gallagher said he would enter the memo into the Congressional Record.[6]
Assessment
- The officials were anonymous, and Politico did not name anyone in the alleged faction.[1][5]
- The idea of a hidden group controlling UFO secrets has a long history. The best-known example is "Majestic 12", which appeared in faked documents circulated among ufologists in 1984. The FBI called those documents "completely bogus", and people involved later admitted inventing MJ-12 lore to deceive researchers.[3]
- The earlier version of this article also linked the report to the "Collins Elite" stories and to the 2023 claims of the whistleblower David Grusch. Neither is covered in the sources read here.
People and topics
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- MJ-12 — Disputed documents describing a secret committee managing crashed saucers.
- Collins Elite — Collins Elite
On the Timeline
- USS Ronald Reagan orange orb (9 May 2022) — USS Ronald Reagan crew members report a fiery orange UAP above the deck.
- 2022 House UAP hearing (17 May 2022) — Rep. Mike Gallagher asks a Pentagon official about the 'Admiral Wilson memo' at a hearing.
See every 2022 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- "UFO 'gatekeepers'", Futurism (16 May 2022), summarising Politico · futurism.com · archived copy
- 2022 United States Congress hearings on UFOs — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Majestic 12 — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- politico.com · politico.com · archived copy
- Michael Shellenberger, written testimony to the House Oversight Committee (13 November 2024), p. 206 · oversight.house.gov
- Shellenberger testimony, p. 206 (17 May 2022, Gallagher and Moultrie) · oversight.house.gov
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “2022 United States Congress hearings on UFOs”, “Majestic 12”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
Categories: 2022 | Collins elite | Congress law | Government programs | Mj-12 | Secrecy cover-up | Timeline event | Unidentified anomalous phenomena | Unidentified flying object
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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