What “TOP SECRET” video is the government hiding?

TO THE STARS ACADEMY OF ARTS & SCIENCE

• In response to a FOIA request, a Navy spokesperson says releasing additional materials related to the Navy’s 2004 encounter with a UFO, including a “TOP SECRET” video, would “cause exceptionally grave damage to the National Security of the United States.”
• The videos concern the infamous Nimitz encounters, where Navy fighter pilots spotted a strange, Tic Tac-shaped UFO off the coast of San Diego.
• Nimitz witnesses told us they’ve seen longer, clearer videos of the encounter than the ones released to the public.

Last year, the U.S. Navy confirmed the validity of three grainy videos purportedly showing Navy pilots’ bizarre encounter with UFOs. The service said the infamous videos, which leaked in 2017 and 2018, do in fact show “unexplained aerial phenomena,” but also said the public was never meant to see the clips in the first place.

Naturally, such a statement fueled increased speculation that the Navy had much more it wasn’t telling us—and a new statement from the service indeed suggests that’s the case.

A quick refresher: In 2004, Navy fighter pilots with the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group spotted a strange, Tic Tac-shaped UFO—“around 40 feet long and oval in shape”—about 100 miles off the coast of San Diego. The videos of the encounter, including the one below, were released for public viewing by The New York Times and To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, a UFO research group from former Blink-182 member Tom DeLonge.

Last fall, Popular Mechanics interviewed several Nimitz witnesses, who said they saw a longer, better video of the encounter than the ones released to the public. One witness, for example, told us he “definitely saw video that was roughly 8 to 10 minutes long and a lot more clear.”

Exclusive: Navy UFO Witnesses Reveal What They Saw

Not long before we published our story, UFO researcher Christian Lambright sent a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request to the Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) for records surrounding the Nimitz encounter at the center of the videos. From Lambright’s request:

This request is to include all releasable portions of records and reports related to investigation of the detection of and encounter(s) with Anomalous Aerial Vehicles (AAVs) by personnel involved with the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group (CSG) operations off the western coast of the United States during the period of approximately 10-16 November, 2004. The designation ‘AAVs’ is used here because it appeared in a summary of these events, so there may also be other terms used in the material I am requesting.

Information supportive of my request comes from a former pilot and now writer who has publicly stated he was allowed to see an exhaustive classified ONI report on these events prior to an article he published in 2015. Other supportive information comes from a contractor/analyst who has stated that an investigation had been conducted by a “GS-15” with the Office of Naval Intelligence.

Two months after submitting the request, Lambright heard back from Camille V’Estres, the ONI’s FOIA/PA Coordinator.

“Our review of our records and systems reveal that ONI has no releasable records related to your request,” V’Estres told Lambright on behalf of the Navy. “We have discovered certain briefing slides that are classified TOP SECRET. A review of these materials indicates that are currently and appropriate Marked and Classified TOP SECRET under Executive Order 13526, and the Original Classification Authority has determined that the release of these materials would cause exceptionally grave damage to the National Security of the United States.”

The letter continues:

Specifically, under Section 1.4, the materials would trigger protections under subcategory c), the Intelligence Activities of the United States, as well as the Sources and Methods that are being used to gather information in support of the National Security of the United States. In addition, the materials would trigger protections under subcategory e), Scientific and Technological Matters related to the National Security of the United States. For this reason, the materials are exempt from release under the (b) (1) Exemption for Classified Matters of National Defense. As a result these records may not be released and are being withheld.

You can read the full note at Paul Dean’s UFOs – Documenting the Evidence blog.

Motherboard’s MJ Banias, a Popular Mechanics contributor, independently verified the FOIA response with the Navy.

“The Department of Defense, specifically the U.S. Navy, has the video,” Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough told Motherboard. “As Navy and my office have stated previously, as the investigation of UAP sightings is ongoing, we will not publicly discuss individual sighting reports/observations. However, I can tell you that the date of the 2004 USS Nimitz video is Nov. 14, 2004. I can also tell you that the length of the video that’s been circulating since 2007 is the same as the length of the source video. We do not expect to release this video.”

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Later this week, we’ll examine the convoluted history of the video that’s become the standard-bearer of the Nimitz event—and for the first time, we’ll shed light on who, exactly, is at fault for the videos not cleared for public consumption. Stay tuned.