Sworn to Silence on UAP? The Pentagon Just Said You Can Talk. To It.
A legal waiver now lets current and former defence personnel break their nondisclosure agreements to describe UAP programmes — but only to PURSUE, not to Congress, and not to the public.
The Department of War announced on Monday that it has issued a legal waiver authorising current and former service members, civilian employees and contractors to disclose UAP-related national defence information to the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters. 12 The waiver supersedes the civil and administrative enforcement provisions of nondisclosure and special access programme agreements for those communications. 34
The department calls it an authorised, legally protected disclosure mechanism. 3 In practice it removes the two things that have kept people quiet: the threat of losing a clearance, and the threat of being sued or sanctioned for breaking a signed agreement. 25
What it is not
The limits are drawn tightly, and they matter more than the headline.
The waiver covers disclosure to authorised PURSUE representatives, inside the United States. 4 It does not grant immunity from criminal prosecution, it does not authorise unrestricted release of classified material, and it does not permit anyone to take what they know to a journalist or post it online. 3 Information handed over still goes through security review and may stay classified. 3 It is a waiver of secrecy toward one listener, and that listener is the executive branch.
It also does not run to Congress. 6 The whistleblowers who have testified over the past three years went to the inspector general and to the House and Senate precisely because they did not trust the Pentagon to receive the information and act on it. A channel that terminates inside the department does not answer that objection; it restates it.
The people who have been waiting for permission to speak have been given permission to speak to the same institution they say has been keeping the secret.
Why it is still a step
Three years ago, officers who raised the subject risked their careers. A written instrument from the department stating that an NDA cannot be used against someone for describing a UAP programme to the government is new, and it expands a July directive ordering the department and the intelligence community to let former employees come forward. 2
The department says it confirms no extraterrestrial craft and no recovery programme. 3 What the waiver confirms is narrower and more concrete: the government believes there are people under secrecy agreements with something to say about this subject, and it has decided it wants to hear it. 1
SOURCES
This report was written by UFONN from the reporting and primary documents below. Numbers in the text correspond to this list. Every link goes to the original publisher.
- 1Department of War Issues Legal Waiver to Authorize Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Disclosures to PURSUEDept. of War
- 2Pentagon creates legal waiver allowing personnel sworn to UFO secrecy to come forwardGlobalSecurity
- 3Pentagon Creates 'Legally Protected' Route for Military-Connected Insiders To Disclose UFO InformationIBTimes UK
- 4Pentagon Waives UAP Secrecy Pacts So Insiders Can Talk To PURSUEDallasexpress
- 5UFO Waiver: Pentagon Opens Door for Personnel to Reveal Alien SecretsUsaherald
- 6State of PlaySubstack
