THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE TALKS UAP
With additional input from Adam Goldsack
JUST WHEN EVERYONE thought we were heading for another period in the doldrums in respect of official statements on UAP, along came the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, with a lot more than a simple soundbite. Haines was speaking at the “Our Future in Space” forum held at Washington National Cathedral on Wednesday 11th November 2021.
Ordinarily, an event of this nature may have stimulated some passing interest, as there may have been a question thrown in about UAP which going by previous Washington press conference statements, was either batted away with a pithy reply or saw the President of the United States suddenly realise he had an appointment elsewhere and hurriedly left the stage. One could therefore have been forgiven for thinking that there would not be too much to look forward to in terms of what was said.
However, the “Our Future in Space” forum promised to be different from the get-go. NASA administrator Bill Nelson, who has already gone light-years further than any of his predecessors in speaking on the UAP topic, was listed as an attendee. Avi Loeb, who stirred up controversy back in December 2017 with his theories regarding the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua’, was then added to the panel of speakers.
If those two were not enough to stimulate a serious amount of interest, then the inclusion at the eleventh hour of the Director of Intelligence, Avril Haines, certainly grabbed people’s attention. Among the topics this event promised to cover was the prospects of extra-terrestrial life, future methods of travel in space – and the thorny question (at least for government representatives) of UAP. If Haines was willing to speak on the subject in such a setting, away from closed-door meetings and classified briefings, then that truly was something to sit up and take notice of.
Add the fact that Senator Kirsten Gillibrand had recently submitted an amendment for inclusion in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, one which recommended the establishment of something called the “Anomaly Surveillance & Resolution Office” (ASRO), and the level of interest in the “Our Future in Space” forum suddenly grew a lot larger. Would Haines dance around the subject, or would there be some actual detail in what she said?
“We were pretty sure we weren't going to be able to characterise every single one of these reports in the various categories that we'd identified because frankly, we were not able to understand everything about it.” – Avril Haines, US Director of National Intelligence
Referring to the categories of unknown objects listed in the Preliminary Assessment on UAP that was issued on 25th June 2021, Haines freely admitted that there was a lack of understanding regarding the phenomenon. She also conceded that there was no consistent method of either reporting or collecting information relating to UAP:
“And a large portion of that is based on the fact that we don't have a consistent way of reporting this information. We need to integrate, frankly, a lot of data that we get, we need to get better at collecting information that's useful to us from different sensors that are available to us, and we have to deepen our analysis in these areas.” – Avril Haines, US Director of National Intelligence
Haines stopped short of going into detail about how “normal” intelligence-gathering work was carried out, but the inference was there. To investigate UAP more accurately and thoroughly, any organisation tasked with such a course of action would have to draw data from a number of different platforms and organisations. Whilst not outwardly stating UAP pose a threat to the US, it seemed clear from what Haines said that various agencies would have to share knowledge to shed light on the mystery, in the same way that organisations pooled information in times of a national crisis, e.g. 9/11.
For those hoping that the Director of National Intelligence would go just a little further than the “we don’t know what they are, but they might well be Chinese drones” argument that has pervaded social media for many months now, Avril Haines did not disappoint. Yes, she used the “E” word:
“And that's something that you know, frankly, probably also doesn't surprise you in the sense that that's how we typically approach our intelligence work, and the main issues that Congress and others have been concerned about are basically safety of flight concerns, encounter intelligence issues, but of course, there's always the question of, is there something else that we simply do not understand that might come extra-terrestrial, extra-terrestrially?” – Avril Haines, US Director of National Intelligence
David Ignatius from the Washington Post, who was interviewing Haines, asked a follow-up question about what the tradecraft of UAP detection represented. He admitted that it was something that many people had asked him in the lead-up to the forum.
“How would we know if we were being observed for example?” – David Ignatius, Washington Post
The question referred to Haines’s previous reply. Rather than bat it away, she elaborated by confirming that tradecraft for investigating UAP was no different to any other work that was done by the intelligence community. There was a need to collect all the data they could through a variety of sensors and then try to understand what it actually represented. What were the witnesses seeing? Can we link this to details we already know about? She conceded that they had to think about separate reporting that might otherwise be believed to be unconnected to the UAP issue. Once everything possible was gathered, the information had to be contextualised, characterised and only then could any determination be hinted at in terms of an explanation.
“All of that is sort of the standard way in which you work, but it doesn't mean that that we are definitely going to be able to tell if we're being observed under the circumstances. I mean, I think there's a lot of different ways in which that might be revealed. But certainly, we're working to make sure that we understand what we do see and what phenomenon is identified.”
– Avril Haines, US Director of National Intelligence
Haines also suggested that those interested in such information would “wait for Bill’s science work”, a reference to what NASA may bring to the table in terms of additional possibilities in UAP investigation. In recent weeks Bill Nelson has advocated concern over the issue of UAP and spoken openly about their extreme capabilities, although he has held back from offering conclusions on their origin. This is also a tactic we see deployed by the current Director of National Intelligence.
Obviously the Director of National Intelligence was not going to sit there and declare that aliens are visiting this planet. No-one in their right mind would have expected her to. However, in terms of a frank admission that the intelligence world need to up their game if the UAP mystery is to be solved, then she certainly delivered. Additionally, one of the more notable and encouraging aspects, is that Avril Haines’s statements on UAP technology are now the first ever to be made by a sitting Director of National Intelligence. Her predecessor, John Ratcliffe (a Trump administration appointee) famously spoke in March 2021 about the extreme, unexplainable characteristics and observed movements which had been witnessed by military pilots and captured by satellite sensors. The comments by both Directors have added to an increasing list of high ranking, credible people within the United States government who have reportedly received briefings in recent years. Whilst we still have no access to all important UAP gun camera footage and the “‘23 minute military video”’, we can still take solace in the fact that acknowledgment of this radical technology is occurring.
Those of us looking for intelligent statements and a methodical, fact-based approach to investigating UAP would have been pleased by Avril Haines’s appearance at the Washington Cathedral. However, we have to maintain pressure on elected officials to ensure that these words are followed up on, and that any forthcoming results are not simply locked away in classified briefings, which allow the Susan Goughs of this world to plausibly deny that there is indeed an issue to address.
