Meta-Analysis of the May 8th UFO Release
A yearly tally of the incidents contained in the first Dept. of War file drop
The first release of files responsive to, “…identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs)”1 went live on the Department of War website on 8 May 2026. In the release were hundreds of UAP incidents recorded in roughly 160 files—images, videos, and PDFs.
Takeaways
When looking at the release as a whole, some takeaways become immediately obvious:
There’s a distinct gap between 2001 to 2020 with only 3 released incidents.
Incidents after 1974 rely heavily on the COMETA Report2, and prosaic launch records.3
Without COMETA and yearly launch records, the gap in reporting extends back to 1974.
Anomalies
The two reports, “Modeling Unlikely Space-Booster Failures in Risk Calculations” and “Vandenberg AFB Launch Summary 1958-2000” remain anomalies from the May 8th release. Within each are no records of UFO/UAP. Historically of course, these launches include previously reported incidents, such as Dr. Bob Jacobs filming a UAP targeting and firing upon a dummy warhead as it sped through the atmosphere.4 Yet no such specific incidents are highlighted within these reports or separately in the other files released.
Influences
As for reasons behind the decline in reporting between 1974 and 2020, the passing of the Privacy Act Amendments (1974) and the Church Committee investigation (1975-1976) likely served notice to the intelligence community (IC) to bury UAP/NHI records and privatize domestic counter-intelligence efforts. In fact, the very next day after the Senate closed the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (The Church Committee) on April 29, 19765 a new, private committee formed on April 30, 1976: The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.6 Perhaps domestic counter-intelligence efforts are easier to quietly run when they’re part of a marketing plan rather than a federal IC initiative.
Challenges
A very granular detail from the May 8th release could be a preview of the hurdles put in place to prevent disclosure. Found in an FBI file7 covering an incident—the recovery of metal fragments which seemed to have previously been a cylindric shape—from July 29, 1947:
Within this document is a person tagged with “CONF. INFT” i.e. a confidential informant that has their name redacted while informing during the investigation. The most notable feature of this redaction—(b)(7)(D)—is that it has no expiration. Not in time passed, nor in the death of the person being redacted:
It has long been recognized that Exemption 7(D) affords the most comprehensive protection of all of the FOIA's law enforcement exemptions. Indeed, both Congress and the courts have clearly manifested their appreciation that a “robust” Exemption 7(D) is important to ensure that “confidential sources are not lost through retaliation against the sources for past disclosure or because of the sources' fear of future disclosure.”8
While such protections help reassure people at risk when providing information to criminal investigators, both this specific instance—an “informal report”—and the closed loop of this investigation, make the use of Exemption 7(D) seem spurious. The report concludes that there, “has been no speculation that a guided missile originating in a foreign land landed in New Hampshire.”9 A foreign-borne guided missile would certainly be cause for a national security concern, but since it was eliminated at the time, the fragments were inert and scheduled to be destroy by the FBI in Boston10, the only ongoing national security element in this memorandum is what is written in the margin, “Flying Discs”.
This redaction is due an appeal for several reasons:
The confidential informant is likely deceased of natural causes.11
The information provided by the confidential informant was “similar in all major details” as the unmasked informant in the report, Dean Bunker.
The memorandum is responsive to PURSUE which specifically targets “unsealing and reporting”.
Finally, the name is likely already released.
The Confidential Informant
In the referenced teletype dated July 18, 194712 an MIT professor L.H. DeWald—described as an “outstanding metallurgist”—stated the fragments may be from a jet turbo plane. Next, the redacted confidential informant from the July 29, 1947 memorandum has a 10 character redaction based on the fixed-width type used. As was the convention with abbreviations at the time by the FBI, spaces were not added after period punctuation, so the confidential informant is very likely:
Since the FBI has published both the teletype and follow-up memorandum, the redaction using a (b)(7)(D) exemption should be removed.
Conclusion
At both ends of the spectrum—from spurious single name redactions in documents over 75 years old to multiple decades of missing files—it will be a continuing struggle to get forthright disclosure of the government’s involvement in the programs associated with UAP/NHI. It will be even more tenuous to get the fulsome details of the formerly government-led initiatives that were moved to the private sector in the mid-1970s onward. Yet it’s critical that the effort is made for a full accounting to learn and safeguard against coverups of such magnitude being repeated.
https://www.war.gov/ufo/pursue-initiative/ Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE)
https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/255_413270_ufo’s_and_defense_what_should_we_prepare_for.pdf [Note: The COMETA Report made up the bulk of a scanned PDF file labelled “Carol Rosin and Jon Cypher 4/30/2001 78078”]
“Modeling Unlikely Space-Booster Failures in Risk Calculations” and “Vandenberg AFB Launch Summary 1958-2000” https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/dow-uap-d48-report-september-1996.pdf and https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/dow-uap-d49-launch-summary-february-2000.pdf respectively.
https://www.senate.gov/about/resources/pdf/church-committee-full-citations.pdf “A History of Notable Senate Investigations prepared by the United States Senate Historical Office” U.S. Senate Historical Office “After holding 126 full committee meetings, 40 subcommittee hearings, interviewing some 800 witnesses in public and closed sessions, and combing through 110,000 documents, the committee published its final report on April 29, 1976. ‘Intelligence agencies have undermined the constitutional rights of citizens,’ the final report concluded, ‘primarily because checks and balances designed by the framers of the Constitution to assure accountability have not been applied.’”
https://skepticalinquirer.org/history-of-csicop/ “History of CSICOP” Skeptical Inquirer Magazine “CSICOP was established April 30, 1976, at an international symposium at the Amherst campus of SUNY-Buffalo on the topic of ‘The New Irrationalisms: Antiscience and Pseudoscience.’”
PDF file: https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/65_hs1-834228961_62-hq-83894_section_3.pdf “Class 0062, Case 83894” FBI - CENTRAL RECORDS CENTER pp. 26-28 “It is interesting to note that the examination at MIT was actually conducted by (b) (7)(D) who furnished the Boston Office with an informal report similar in all major details to that supplied by Dean Bunker above.”
https://www.justice.gov/archive/oip/foia_guide09/exemption7d.pdf “Department of Justice Guide to the Freedom of Information Act” Department of Justice 2009 p. 603
PDF file: https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/65_hs1-834228961_62-hq-83894_section_3.pdf “Class 0062, Case 83894” FBI - CENTRAL RECORDS CENTER
ibid “Unless advised to the contrary by August 15, 1947the Boston Office will destroy these specimens.”
https://www.justice.gov/archive/oip/foia_guide09/exemption7d.pdf “Department of Justice Guide to the Freedom of Information Act” Department of Justice 2009 “But see Homick, No. 98-0557, slip op. at 4 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 27, 2004) (concluding that Exemption 7(D) is inapplicable to deceased source).” p. 635
https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/65_hs1-834228961_62-hq-83894_section_1.pdf “Class 0062, Case 83894, Vol. 1 Ser. 1” FBI - CENTRAL RECORDS CENTER pp. 106-109