The Pentagon’s UFO office has a new vacancy: its director, Sean Kirkpatrick, has announced his retirement after facing media attention over whistleblower reports.
Politics reports that Kirkpatrick, who has headed the Defense Department’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) since its creation in 2022, will be succeeded by his deputy, Tim Phillips, until a permanent replacement is found.
Kirkpatrick’s departure comes shortly after he admitted that some of the allegations made by whistleblower David Grusch, who accused the government of covering up evidence of alien encounters and reverse-engineered alien technology, might have some validity.
Kirkpatrick had previously dismissed Grusch’s claims as “offensive” and said they were based on “misinformation and speculation.”
“We investigate them all [Grusch’s claims],” the now-resigned AARO director said during the off-camera Halloween meeting with the press. “We compare them with each other. There are pieces of information that turn out to be things and events that really happened.”
“A lot of it is still under review,” Kirkpatrick continued, “and we’re putting that all together in our historical report.”
Kirkpatrick, who delayed his retirement to take charge of the AARO, the department responsible for investigating and analyzing reports of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), also co-authored a paper with Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb , who is known for his controversial views on aliens. to live.
The article, which was leaked to the public, suggested that a mysterious object discovered by astronomers in 2017 could be an “alien mothership.”
Kirkpatrick told Politico that the article was a draft not intended for publication, but that he did not regret working on it. He said he was interested in exploring all possible explanations for UAPs, and hoped the AARO would continue to do so in the future.
“The best thing that can come out of this job is proving that aliens exist,” he told the magazine. “If we don’t prove they’re aliens, then we’ll find evidence of other people doing things in our backyard, and that’s not good.”
