Recently, independent journalist and author Michael Shellenberger published an article on his subscription news site, Public, alleging that a new, unnamed government whistleblower had come forward.
The whistleblower asserts that a highly classified program exists dedicated to unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), including the potential recovery and reverse-engineering of UAP technologies.
This isn’t the first time a former or current government official has made similar claims.
In 2023, The Debrief was the first media outlet to report that David Grusch, a former Air Force officer and intelligence specialist with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), had filed an official complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) alleging a DoD cover-up of UAP information and the recovery of alien technologies.
According to Grusch, the U.S. government has recovered several vehicles “of exotic origin—attributed to non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or otherwise unknown—based on their unique vehicle morphologies, material science analyses, and distinctive atomic arrangements and radiological signatures.”
Grusch later reiterated these claims under oath in testimony before the Congressional Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs.
However, in Shellenberger’s recent article, the purported whistleblower went a step further, revealing the name of a highly secretive Pentagon “Unacknowledged Special Access Program” (USAP) codenamed “IMMACULATE CONSTELLATION.” Reportedly, this program involves investigating, recovering, and attempting reverse engineering of alien technologies.
While interesting, in the grand scheme of things, this new whistleblower’s claims leave us in a familiar situation—a fascinating story that is nearly impossible to verify. However, this doesn’t mean the underlying theme of these whistleblower claims isn’t worth exploring.
In his article, Shellenberger quotes the unnamed source as saying, “The Executive Branch has been managing UAP/NHI issues without Congressional knowledge, oversight, or authorization for some time, quite possibly decades.”
This statement raises a crucial question: is the U.S. government even capable of maintaining a program under such extreme secrecy, hidden even from Congressional oversight?
Given incidents like the Snowden leaks, the Vault 7 disclosures, and revelations about the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques“ during the war on terror, it seems likely that if conclusive evidence of “non-human intelligence“ existed, it would have surfaced by now.
Furthermore, the sheer amount of bureaucracy involved in any government operation makes the idea of hiding a secret UFO program not only from the public but also from Congress seem nearly impossible.
However, the truth might be more surprising…
In the last two years, I received unsolicited phone calls from two different high-ranking government officials. Since these conversations were mutually agreed to be “off the record“ and this is an opinion piece, I’m not bound by The Debrief’s formal editorial policy requiring attribution that preserves their anonymity while confirming their credibility.
That means I will keep details like the agencies they worked for and the positions they held private. This information is also not germane to my overall point.
I will share that these individuals reached out because I had apparently gained a reputation in certain circles as an “outsider“ with a deep understanding of the intricacies, nuances, and bureaucracy of national security. Additionally, I’d previously reported on the government’s involvement with UAP matters.
In both cases, these individuals sought my opinion on whether I believed the U.S. government could maintain a UAP program with the level of secrecy described by alleged whistleblowers.
My response was “maybe“ and pointed out that historical and legal precedent supports it.
In the mid-1990s, several former employees of the infamous Area 51 in Nevada sued the U.S. government, claiming exposure to toxic chemicals from the burning of classified equipment and materials at the secretive test site had caused them a host of deadly health issues.
While they sought financial compensation, the former employees’ primary goal was to force the government to disclose the chemicals they had been exposed to so they could receive proper medical treatment.
The plaintiffs argued that the Air Force had violated federal law, specifically the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which governs the handling of hazardous materials.
In response, the government invoked the State Secrets Privilege, refusing to release information that could help with their medical care and testifying in federal court that Area 51 did not even exist.
U.S. District Court Judge Phillip Pro rejected the government’s argument, stating that disclosing the chemicals to the plaintiffs and their doctors did not threaten national security. This ruling legally required the government to provide the necessary information for medical treatment.
However, in the 11th hour, President Bill Clinton signed an Executive Order exempting “the Air Force’s Operating Location Near Groom Lake, Nevada“ from federal environmental disclosure laws. With the stroke of a pen, Area 51 was placed above the law, forcing federal courts to dismiss the workers’ lawsuit.
Tragically, the two primary plaintiffs, Wally Kasza and Bob Frost, later died from debilitating skin and respiratory illnesses. An autopsy on Frost revealed “unidentifiable and exotic substances that one of the nation’s premier scientists could not recognize.”
The original 1995 presidential declaration, which allowed a roughly 575-square-mile tract of land to operate above federal law, was renewed annually by Executive Order for over a decade by Presidents Clinton and Bush. The order was finally allowed to expire in 2004.
The case of Area 51 effectively being granted presidential immunity is hardly the only example of the Executive Branch’s easily overlooked power.
In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102, making it illegal for U.S. citizens, banks, or private companies to own gold coins, bullion, or certificates. Numerous individuals and companies were prosecuted under Roosevelt’s order, including a San Francisco jeweler, Gus Farber, for selling $260 worth of gold coins.
It wasn’t until 1974, when President Gerald Ford signed a bill into law, that U.S. citizens were once again legally allowed to privately own gold currency.
In 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security to “relocation centers.“ This effectively authorized the U.S. Government to incarcerate nearly 83,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry in internment camps during World War II.
In 1973, the War Powers Resolution Act was passed to curb a president’s unilateral authority to deploy military forces. The act mandates that the president can only send American forces into combat after a formal declaration of war by Congress or in the event of “a national emergency caused by an attack on the United States, its territories, possessions, or armed forces.”
Yet, presidents have consistently pushed the boundaries of their powers as Commander-in-Chief, often acting without congressional oversight or approval.
In 1998, during the Kosovo War, President Clinton ordered U.S. military forces into action through an executive order, bypassing Congressional authorization.
A more extreme example occurred in mid-December 1989, when President George H.W. Bush ordered the invasion of Panama, deploying the equivalent of two military divisions to overthrow the country’s de facto leader, Manuel Noriega. President Bush not only bypassed prior legislative approval but also delayed providing Congress with a formal report justifying the military action until the second day of the invasion.
Similar actions have been taken by other presidents in various conflicts, such as the intervention in Libya under President Obama and airstrikes in Syria under President Trump.
In each of these cases, the Executive Branch maintained that it had not violated federal law, arguing that the actions fell within the president’s authority to defend the United States in times of national emergency or in response to attacks on American interests.
Although these justifications have been highly controversial and sparked numerous legal debates, no president has ever faced legal action for violating the War Powers Act. The constitutional question of how far a president can exercise military power independently of Congress remains unresolved to this day.
Some have argued that the Executive Branch managing an unacknowledged, top-secret program without congressional oversight violates Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which outlines Congress’s enumerated powers.
In theory, these critics have a valid point. However, they often need to pay more attention to Article 2 of the Constitution, which grants the president broad executive and enforcement authority. This allows the president considerable discretion in enforcing laws and managing the resources and personnel of the Executive Branch. In practice, this executive power enables the president to operate with significant autonomy, even in areas that are at odds with congressional oversight.
The president’s executive power extends even further when it comes to classified material and national security information (NSI).
The authority to classify and declassify information stems solely from the president’s executive power. In fact, the entire U.S. classification system is based on an Executive Order issued by the president, currently E.O. 13526, signed by President Obama in 2009.
This means that the president holds the unilateral power to determine what information or programs are classified and can just as easily decide to declassify them at will. Unlike legislative or judicial oversight, this authority operates with few checks, allowing the president to shield sensitive programs or information from public and congressional scrutiny.
This arbitrary control over classified material amplifies the president’s influence, especially in matters of national security, intelligence, and covert operations, where secrecy is paramount. As a result, the president could technically manage highly classified programs with minimal external interference, further expanding executive power in largely unseen ways.
Given this, could the Executive Branch theoretically manage “UAP/NHI issues“ in total secrecy, without Congressional knowledge, oversight, or authorization, as Shellenberger’s alleged whistleblower described? Sure!
To be clear, this does not confirm the whistleblower’s claims, nor does it suggest that the U.S. government, through the Executive Branch, is indeed involved in covert programs focused on UAP or the recovery of technologies from “non-human intelligence.”
I’ll simply state that my personal stance is that no conclusive evidence has yet emerged to support the existence of secret alien technology programs—at least not to the level required to substantiate such extraordinary claims.
However, the bureaucratic mechanisms are in place, and the historical record shows that highly secretive programs, with limited oversight, could very well exist.
This brings up another aspect of the whistleblower’s accusation, that the Executive Branch has been managing this secret “UAP/NHI“ program “for some time, quite possibly decades.”
Considering the extreme polarization in modern politics, the idea that multiple presidential administrations would agree to act as guarantors of such an extraordinary secret seems even less likely than the existence of a crashed alien spacecraft.
During my prior phone conversations, one government official posed this very question: “What would motivate multiple presidential administrations to keep such an extraordinary revelation—that humans are not alone in the universe—hidden?”
To me, the answer makes more sense than half of what already happens in government.
Since the focus is on the government’s ability to maintain extreme secrecy, not the likelihood that non-human intelligence has visited Earth, suspend rationality for a moment and imagine: what if something of “exotic“ origin was actually recovered sometime in the late 1940s?
Consider the era in which this would have occurred—right after World War II, the deadliest conflict in human history, and during the rise of the Second Red Scare, McCarthyism, and the early stages of the Cold War. These were the formative, “wild west“ days of what would become the U.S. Intelligence Community when covert activities like human experimentation and mind control research were underway.
Think about the men who led the country during this period, from 1945 to 1961. Harry Truman, a World War I veteran, assumed the presidency after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death in 1945. Truman oversaw the end of World War II, including authorizing the only use of nuclear weapons in history, and later formalized how the U.S. managed classified information through legislation like the Atomic Energy Act (AEA), which regulated nuclear technology.
Following Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower served as president from 1953 to 1961. As Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and a General of the Army during World War II, Eisenhower is widely regarded as one of the greatest military leaders in American history.
In an era defined by paranoia and the lingering trauma of war, it’s not hard to imagine leaders like Presidents Truman or Eisenhower using their Executive Authority to keep the discovery of something “exotic,“ or even “alien,“ under the strictest secrecy.
Regardless of when it happens, it only takes one executive administration to decide to keep such an extraordinary discovery hidden for future administrations to continue doing the same.
“But why not reveal it at some point, cementing the legacy of your presidency for all eternity,“ the official quizzed me. “Because,“ I replied, “I don’t think people really understand the ramifications of making that kind of revelation.“
Announcing that the Executive Branch had concealed the most significant discovery in human history would trigger a constitutional crisis of unprecedented magnitude.
In an instant, the American public would come to a stark realization of the immense power held by the Commander-in-Chief. Faith, respect, and trust in the presidency would be catastrophically, and likely irreversibly, shattered.
Political adversaries in Congress would quickly unite, crossing party lines to pass bipartisan legislation to curb and restrict the president’s ability to act with such unchecked authority. In the United States, the office of the presidency would likely be reduced to a formal tradition like the modern English Monarchy.
Lest we forget, as U.S. leadership descended into chaos, America’s foreign adversaries like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea would be dancing with glee and flooding the information space with disinformation to deepen the discord.
Even the most altruistic political leaders still possess a significant degree of self-interest and would view dismantling the power of the office they worked so hard to attain as not just a step too far but as utterly unthinkable and abhorrent.
This alone leads me to believe that if such a secret program under the Executive Branch existed, any president—regardless of political affiliation or ideology—would likely follow the precedent set by their predecessors, swiftly signing off with the same pen and saying, “never speak of this to me again.“
Once again, I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting a program managing “UAP/NHI issues“ actually exists, nor am I implying that the Executive Branch is overseeing any ultra-secretive program beyond the reach of Congressional oversight.
I’m simply pointing out that the notion of such a program’s existence isn’t entirely outlandish—it’s certainly more plausible than, say, a pack of werewolves living on the Moon.
“So, if you wanted to reveal this kind of information, could you ever do it without causing a government collapse?“ the official asked me after I had presented the above scenario.
“Sure, but unfortunately, you’d have to cover up big lies with even more lies,“ I replied. “Which isn’t inherently a bad thing. People claim they want the truth, but sometimes they really want a comforting lie. For instance, when your wife or girlfriend asks if she looks fat in those jeans, she definitely doesn’t want an honest answer.”
To cover up past lies, you’d have to fabricate a story about suddenly “recovering“ some “exotic“ technologies rather than admitting you had concealed them for decades. Sure, some people would remain suspicious that information had been hidden, but the sheer magnitude of such a revelation would overshadow most of that mistrust.
I’m not saying this is the right answer, and it’s certainly not the most ethical one. However, it would be effective in the given hypothetical synopsis.
“Thanks for your time,“ the official replied after a pause. “That’s probably the most plausible scenario I’ve heard.”
Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan. Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com