It has come to my attention that the AARO Report bears some similarities to the Condon Report. By this I mean, of course it seems that the main purpose of the report was just to provide headlines saying there’s nothing there, yet some of the actual contents of the report might actually be at variance with that conclusion.
The first item that really blew me away was what it said about Project Grudge. Now, it seems fairly obvious to me that AARO is a Grudge/Blue Book redux. It’s a public relations outfit that doesn’t actually deal with really compelling cases and always reduces the things it does deal with to mundane explanations. So, I was astonished to read that the report admits that Grudge was run in a way that disallowed anything but prosaic explanations.
AARO is essentially admitting their own operating parameters here, but through the admission that an office which in many ways could be seen as their predecessor operated in the same way. This seems to me a bit like the CIA’s admission in 1997 that they had utilized disinformation on the UFO topic.
The second rather astonishing surprise I’ve come across so far is the acknowledgment that the “Estimate of the Situation” was a real report that actually existed. To my knowledge this had never been officially acknowledged by the US government until now. If anyone has knowledge of another reference I’d love to know it. I’m only aware that it had been reported on before this by some of the relevant officers involved with it or who had read it, such as Keyhoe.
It was never published, all we know of the basic contents is that it concluded that some UFOs were likely off world craft. The military (specifically Vandenberg) considered this conclusion too sensational and it was buried.
AARO’s info on it in this report is fairly consistent with what had already been revealed about it by Keyhoe et al, which is a bit surprising to me because the existence of a report bearing that conclusion sort of undermines AARO’s overall goal in this report, which is to state that the government has never had evidence of such or had any studies conclude that. It provides further evidence of another key document of that period saying this is a real thing, alongside the Twining memo, the 1950 FBI memo, etc.
AARO seems to have made it sound in this report like this rejected analysis is actually helping them in their assertion that there’s really nothing to all this just because it was buried and rejected. But imo, acknowledging it at all actually weakened their hand because it highlights again how much this was discussed seriously as a reality within government right from the start of that period. And by corroborating Keyhoe on this, it implicitly enhances his credibility with respect to his other statements.
For this and other reasons I do believe this report will at least be of historical value on this topic, just as the CIA’s 1997 report was, even though the purpose of neither report was to advance disclosure.
submitted by /u/Ok_Breakfast4482
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