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UFOs & UAP

AARO Found the UAP Records Congress Asked About. Then It Withheld Every Page

In a FOIA letter dated Sept. 30, 2026, the Pentagon said its UFO office had located written records on encounters named by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna's task force, and was withholding all of them as classified, partly under a statute covering 'sensitive information of foreign governments.' The Black Vault made the letter public Oct. 5.

WASHINGTON By Dead of Night Dispatch

Location The Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia

Illustration: a government records room at night, rows of grey file boxes stamped with blank red classification bands, one folder open on a table with every page blacked out under a desk lamp
Developing Part of an ongoing series: The Pentagon UFO Files

WASHINGTON (Sept. 30, 2026): The search worked. That’s what makes the letter unusual.

VideoDOW-UAP-PR052, "UAP USO Formation [CALLSIGN] (Mission)"Department of War, via DVIDS. Watch on DVIDSOne of the five encounters whose written records were withheld, as the Pentagon published the video in May. The Pentagon says this file was digitally altered before it was uploaded to a classified network.

The poster is our story illustration, not a frame from the video. Pressing play loads the video from DVIDS, which may set cookies.

Where it started

The original social media post

  1. The Black Vault (John Greenewald) u/blackvault

    AARO Says It Found Records on UAP/USO Cases Requested by Congress, Withholds Them in Their Entirety as Classified

    Image of the FOIA determination letter

    Greenewald's own post of the letter, five days after it was dated.

    556 points · 81 comments as of Oct 10, 2026

    View original on Reddit

    From the conversation

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When John Greenewald of The Black Vault asked the Pentagon for the paperwork behind a list of UAP encounters that Congress had named, the answer, dated Sept. 30, 2026, didn’t say the records were missing. It said the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) “conducted a search of their systems and located records determined to be responsive to your request.”

Then it said none of them would be released.

What we know

On the record: documents, statements, dates and places. Sources below.

  • The list. On March 31, 2026, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s House Oversight task force on declassification wrote to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth asking for 46 UAP video files by name. According to UAP Globe, which quotes the letter, the task force said whistleblowers had told it AARO held more video, and that AARO’s responses had been “less than adequate.” The titles printed military callsigns in the clear, such as “Spherical UAP pulsing over water Jacker 2X.”
  • The request. On April 1, Greenewald filed a Freedom of Information Act request, not for the videos, but for the written records behind the same encounters.
  • The answer. The determination letter, case 26-F-1892, says the records “are withheld in their entirety” under FOIA’s national-security exemption, citing Executive Order 13526 sections 1.4(a), military plans, weapons or operations, and 1.4(g), vulnerabilities or capabilities of national-security systems. It also cites 10 U.S.C. 130c, covering certain “sensitive information of foreign governments” and international organizations. It then points Greenewald to the public PURSUE page at war.gov/UFO.
  • The five cases. Greenewald posted the letter on r/UFOs on Oct. 5. The five cases it covers, he wrote, include the “Wiley 2X Zinc” USO formation, spheres near a submarine “entering and exiting water” on March 25, 2022, and a Coast Guard “Tic Tac” on April 24, 2024. Other requests are still pending.

What’s public, and what isn’t

UAP Globe tested the Pentagon’s pointer against the PURSUE manifest of 450 published records. The videos, it found, are mostly there: 13 of the 14 listed encounters it checked have a matching public video, all from Release 2 on May 22, 2026. The video above, PR052, is the “USO formation.”

But none of those videos is paired with a written mission report. Across the whole collection, UAP Globe counted 100 of 134 video records with no paired document. “The visual imagery released with very little context is a facade of transparency,” Greenewald wrote.

UAP Globe also ran the 23 callsigns and codewords Congress printed against the published titles and found none of them. The Pentagon masks them as “[CALLSIGN].” In one case, a Lake Huron shootdown on Feb. 12, 2023, the published title also hides the weapon as “[Weapon System],” while the House letter names both the callsign and the missile.

What’s claimed

Accounts, testimony and theories, as told by the people who tell them.

  • Concealment. Many readers saw a cover-up. “So much for AARO saying ‘better data needed’. When ‘better data’ is found, it is buried,” wrote u/silv3rbull8.
  • Routine. UAP Globe’s own assessment pushed the other way: a FOIA office withholding records in full as classified is “the single most routine outcome in the system,” and mission reports carry platform, altitude, sensor and squadron details classified for what they reveal about U.S. capabilities, “not because of what crossed the frame.” Nothing in the letter says what any of the objects were.
  • The foreign angle. UAP Globe called the foreign-government citation “the most interesting line in the letter,” saying it suggests at least some of the material didn’t originate with the United States alone. It doesn’t say which encounters or which government, and the letter doesn’t either.

The Pentagon’s own caveat

The PURSUE manifest carries a note on these records that cuts in yet another direction. It says AARO found the materials “on a classified network” and that “Many of these materials lack a substantiated chain-of-custody.” For PR052, the Pentagon says a user uploaded it to a classified network in June 2024 and that it “was digitally altered prior to its upload.” Who shot it, where and when isn’t in the public record.

What’s next

Greenewald says his other requests remain open, “though the same response is likely.” He can appeal. We found no public response to the denial from Luna’s task force as of Oct. 10. And the next PURSUE release, whenever it comes, will show whether any paperwork follows the pictures.

Sources

  1. AARO Found the UAP and USO Records Congress Asked For and Withheld Every Page: FOIA Case 26-F-1892 (30 September 2026) · UAP Globe Reads the determination letter from the image The Black Vault posted, and checks the House list against the Pentagon's PURSUE manifest.
  2. AARO Says It Found Records on UAP/USO Cases Requested by Congress, Withholds Them in Their Entirety as Classified · r/UFOs (Reddit), posted by The Black Vault's account
  3. Task force letter to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth requesting UAP video files (March 31, 2026) · House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform As quoted by UAP Globe; we did not open the PDF.
  4. PURSUE UAP file portal · U.S. Department of War