The UFO Deadline Hidden in a Pandemic Relief Bill
In August 2020 the Navy was told to catalogue UAP that might threaten national security. Four months later, buried in a pandemic spending package, Congress gave the intelligence community 180 days to explain itself.
On August 4, 2020, Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist approved the establishment of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. The Navy would run it; it would report to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. 1
Its mission, as written: detect, analyse and catalogue UAP that could pose a threat to U.S. national security. 1 It formalised and strengthened an effort that had been running informally under the Office of Naval Intelligence since 2018. 25
The announcement drew broad coverage and almost no scepticism about its necessity, which was itself a change. 34
The clause nobody was meant to notice
The more consequential move came at the end of the year, and it did not look like a UFO story at all.
Senator Marco Rubio, then chairing the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, had secured language in the Intelligence Authorization Act requiring a detailed unclassified report on UAP. 9 That act was folded into the $2.3 trillion COVID-19 relief and government funding package signed on December 27, 2020. 78
The provision arrived as a committee comment attached to the intelligence authorisation rather than as text in the 5,593-page bill — which is why almost nobody spotted it. 6 It gave the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense 180 days to produce a report covering, among other things, a detailed analysis of data held by the Office of Naval Intelligence and the UAP Task Force, across signals, human and geospatial intelligence. 6
The single most important document in the modern history of this subject exists because a request for it was stapled to a pandemic relief bill and nobody objected.
The pressure that made it stick
Technically it was a request, not a statutory command, and commentators at the time warned the deadline could pass with nothing. 6 It did not. Rubio spent the following spring publicly warning the report might slip. 9
It arrived on June 25, 2021, and explained one case out of 144.
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.
- 1Establishment of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task ForceU.S. Navy
- 2Pentagon creates UFO task force to see if unidentified aerial phenomena pose threatMilitary Times
- 3Pentagon forms new task force to investigate UFOsCNBC
- 4Pentagon Launches New Task Force to Study UFOsNextgov/FCW
- 5Navy Tapped to Lead UFO Task ForceSeapower
- 6COVID-19 Bill Wants Unclassified UFO Report From UAP Task ForceSlashGear
- 7The Pentagon has 180 days to disclose UFO informationWILX
- 8UFO Report Could Be Published by Government Agencies in 180 DaysNewsweek
- 9Pentagon should release UFO report, Senate intelligence committee arguesSpace.com
