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40 - EVENTS/MODERN_INCIDENTS/December 2017 New York Times AATIP Report.md
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@ -41,11 +41,11 @@ On June 1, 2019 Pentagon spokesperson [[Christopher Sherwood]] told Keith Kloor
### The placement, in sequence
In 2016 [[Tom DeLonge]] cold-called [[Christopher Mellon]], who told Bender in 2021: "Tom called me up out of the blue and then through him I met Jim and Hal," meaning [[Jim Semivan]] and Puthoff. Mellon, who had kept his security clearance, then met Elizondo at a Pentagon briefing.[^6] In an email from August 2017, reviewed by Politico, Elizondo described a plan for an unclassified "community of interest" database of unidentified aerial phenomena reports. Politico reported that the [[Washington Headquarters Services]] declassification division approved three Navy videos "for unlimited distribution" within the government, and that Mellon, Elizondo and "others now in DeLonge's orbit" concluded that this was not enough and "needed to kick up a media firestorm."[^6] The Office of the Secretary of Defense file released to [[The Black Vault]] under the Freedom of Information Act in August 2019 contains an August 23, 2017 email in which [[Luis Elizondo]] asked Michael Russo of the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review to "consider our request for unrestricted release"; an August 24, 2017 reply from Russo that if the service-level classification authority verified that removing the metadata made the videos unclassified, "please feel free to move forward with release"; and a DD Form 1910 whose publication-data block reads "Not Applicable. Not for publication. Research and analysis ONLY and info sharing with other USG and industry partners for the purposes of developing a database to help identify, analyze and ultimately defeat UAS threats." Joseph Gradisher, a Navy spokesman, said in 2019 that neither the cognizant Navy offices nor the review office had a record of correspondence responding to a request for unrestricted release of the videos in 2017.[^7]
In 2016 [[Tom DeLonge]] cold-called [[Christopher Mellon]], who told Bender in 2021: "Tom called me up out of the blue and then through him I met Jim and Hal," meaning [[Jim Semivan]] and Puthoff. Mellon, who had kept his security clearance, then met Elizondo at a Pentagon briefing.[^6] In an email from August 2017, reviewed by Politico, Elizondo described a plan for an unclassified "community of interest" database of unidentified aerial phenomena reports. Politico reported that the [[Washington Headquarters Services]] declassification division approved three Navy videos "for unlimited distribution" within the government, and that Mellon, Elizondo and "others now in DeLonge's orbit" concluded that this was not enough and "needed to kick up a media firestorm."[^6] The Office of the Secretary of Defense file released to The Black Vault under the Freedom of Information Act in August 2019 contains an August 23, 2017 email in which Luis Elizondo asked Michael Russo of the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review to "consider our request for unrestricted release"; an August 24, 2017 reply from Russo that if the service-level classification authority verified that removing the metadata made the videos unclassified, "please feel free to move forward with release"; and a DD Form 1910 whose publication-data block reads "Not Applicable. Not for publication. Research and analysis ONLY and info sharing with other USG and industry partners for the purposes of developing a database to help identify, analyze and ultimately defeat UAS threats." Joseph Gradisher, a Navy spokesman, said in 2019 that neither the cognizant Navy offices nor the review office had a record of correspondence responding to a request for unrestricted release of the videos in 2017.[^7]
Elizondo resigned from the [[Department of Defense]] effective October 4, 2017 per the Pentagon; his resignation letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis cited "bureaucratic challenges and inflexible mindsets" (Kloor, 2019), and *The Intercept* noted the letter does not mention AATIP or Elizondo's role as its director.[^2][^8] On October 4, 2017, at Mellon's request, Kean was called to a meeting in the bar of a hotel near the Pentagon, where Puthoff and Semivan introduced her to Elizondo, whose last day at the Pentagon had been the previous day, according to the account Kean gave [[Gideon Lewis-Kraus]] of *[[The New Yorker]]*. Over three hours she was taken through documents. Lewis-Kraus wrote that Kean "was told that she could have the videos, along with chain-of-custody documentation, if she could place a story in the Times."[^4] Kean later gave "all the credit to Elizondo and Mellon for coming forward."[^4]
After Elizondo left the Pentagon he and the other AATIP participants named above joined [[To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science]]. At the company's launch event in October 2017 DeLonge invited Elizondo onstage and Elizondo announced that the group was "planning to provide never-before-released footage from real [[U.S. government]] systems."[^4]
After Elizondo left the Pentagon he and the other AATIP participants named above joined [[To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science]]. At the company's launch event in October 2017 DeLonge invited Elizondo onstage and Elizondo announced that the group was "planning to provide never-before-released footage from real [[United States|U.S. government]] systems."[^4]
Kean telephoned Blumenthal, an old friend and former Times staffer then at work on a biography of the [[Harvard University|Harvard]] psychiatrist [[John E. Mack]]. Blumenthal e-mailed executive editor [[Dean Baquet]] to say they wanted to pitch "a sensational and highly confidential time-sensitive story" in which a "senior U.S. intelligence official who abruptly quit last month" had decided to expose "a deeply secret program, long mythologized but now confirmed." After a meeting with representatives of the Times's Washington bureau, the paper agreed and assigned Cooper, its Pentagon correspondent.[^4] Bender wrote in 2021 that Mellon, "by then also a paid adviser to DeLonge's TTSA," acted as Elizondo's "unofficial public relations manager" and "started dangling the story to the New York Times, POLITICO and several other mainstream outlets," over several months; that reporters were shown the videos and unclassified documents on Bigelow's contracts; that the Times "was granted permission to broadcast the videos"; and that Politico "was shown the videos but not provided copies."[^6]