December 8, 2021- Last evening The House of Representatives voted to pass the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act providing 770 billion dollars to mitigate threats to the United States by bad actors such as China and Russia. The Bill now goes to the Senate where it is expected to pass. Buried within that Bill is the Amendment introduced by New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand which seeks to establish an office for UFO studies that would seek input from civilian organizations such as MUFON and whose findings would be available to the public. Last month, MUFON began a letter writing campaign to our elected representatives encouraging them to pass the Gillibrand Amendment and to suggest MUFON be the new office’s civilian liaison given our vast report database and cadre of trained field investigators. On November 23rd, things took an intriguing turn when the Pentagon announced that it was creating its own program for studying UAP called the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG).
The prestigious and objective news magazine U.S. News & World Report contacted MUFON originally seeking comment on the Gillibrand Amendment but contacted us again for our position on the new Pentagon Program. The correspondent, Paul Shinkman, wrote a follow up article for his outlet after interviewing representatives in various worldwide UFO related organizations asking their opinions. MUFON’s position was stated emphatically by Executive Director David MacDonald who said ” There is nothing civilian about the Pentagon!” This was the shared opinion of the other organizations including The Archives for The Unexplained (AFU) in Sweden which houses the largest collection of UFO and paranormal literature in the world. Our organizations agreed this appeared to be an end around by the military to limit the effectiveness of Gillibrand’s efforts for civilian participation. Mr. Shinkman’s initial article must have caused quite a stir at the Pentagon and in a rare show of being flustered, the D.O.D issued a clarification. It seems even small victories like this help to keep civilian participation in the study of this important phenomenon viable. Our military now asserts their program will only pertain to threats to National Security and Flight Safety. This is fine as far as MUFON is concerned. National Security should be the territory of the Pentagon and it is understood some information will always remain classified! However, kudos go out to Senator Gillibrand for her efforts to include the American public in the quest for answers that do not fall under the umbrella of National Security! Kudos also to other organizations studying the UAP phenomenon who agree with MUFON’s position. Lastly, kudos to responsible news outlets like U.S. News & World Report for getting the facts out!
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