I just received a message from friend and fellow researcher Paul Dean from Australia. If you don’t know, Paul is one of the world’s best UFO document researchers, as expert in filing FOIA requests as anyone out there. Moreover, he is a virtual encyclopedia when it comes to the arcane world of military acronyms, nomenclature, and especially the labyrinthian maze of the U.S. national security bureaucracy. This is important if you want to file a FOIA request to the right agency, using the right language, and with an expectation that you will get a response.

Paul and I communicate fairly regularly. Today he told me that the famous UFO program of the Pentagon, recently written about in the New York Times and elsewhere, actually has gone under a different name. Publically, we have been told that the name of the program was the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). In reality, Paul has learned from an impeccable source that the original contractual name for it was the Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program (AAWSAP).

This is very important. Reason: you may have heard that all FOIA requests relating to AATIP have come up empty. The total number of requests by now might well be in the hundreds, but it’s certainly quite a lot. People have been wondering, why can’t this program be found via FOIA requests when the ultra-establishment New York Times itself outed it? The word is that there definitely was such a program — actually multiple programs. So why was AATIP invisible?

This may well be the answer. It’s under a different name.

Getting FOIA documentation on AAWSAP is critical to learning more about the details of the program, since no one seems to be talking. Not Elizondo, not Tom DeLonge, not Robert Bigelow, not Harry Reid, not anyone. There are many unanswered questions about this program and it’s becoming frustrating for UFO researchers to feel like they are flailing in the wind with no new tangible information.

Paul has filed some fresh FOIA requests to agencies that he believes are appropriate and good bets to get some answers. You can find his blog here.

By the way, I chatted with Paul about the significance of the name. “Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program.” This might seem to indicate that the objects caught on video were not actual UFOs, but weapons systems developed by the U.S. military. Paul doesn’t seem to think so, and I myself would have my doubts as well. The few qualified individuals I have spoken to about the released videos (and the longer versions which have not been shown to the public) have deemed the objects to be unexplainable as far as they can see.

So we are still dealing with a great mystery. Not only the objects themselves and who is responsible for them, but penetrating the layers of secrecy and bureaucracy that surround the information we are seeking.