The Defense Department (DOD) issued a formal waiver intended to protect current and former personnel who want to disclose new information about the government’s involvement with unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) and related technologies. The waiver would protect personnel from certain legal and career-related consequences.
Under the Trump administration, the DOD was rebranded as the War Department.
“This targeted legal relief establishes an authorized pipeline for systematic review, security evaluation, and potential declassification of historical and ongoing UAP data in furtherance of national mission objectives,” DOD officials wrote in a Sept. 14 press release.
While commonly known as UFOs more broadly, UAPs are observed objects or events in the air, sea, or space that cannot be immediately identified or explained.
Under the directive, all current and former DOD service members, civilian personnel, and contractors who hold or previously held access to UAP-related information are authorized to disclose that information directly to official representatives of the PURSUE initiative.
PURSUE, or the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, is an interagency effort led by the DOD. Through PURSUE, the DOD has publicly released 375 UAP-related files. According to the DOD, WAR.GOV/UFO, the government website established to house the materials, has received more than 1.7 billion hits worldwide since launching May 8.
The DOD plans to release additional files on a rolling basis.
The waiver comes as UAPs have evolved over the past several years from a largely speculative topic to one increasingly treated by lawmakers and defense officials as a matter of national security. For lawmakers, a central UAP-related concern is lack of transparency from the Pentagon and the intelligence community.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., chairwoman of the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, which oversees Congress’ UAP-related investigations, called the waiver protection for whistleblowers.
Historically, according to the department, individuals with direct knowledge of UAP-related programs have cited concerns about potential legal liability, loss of security clearances, or administrative prosecution stemming from standard nondisclosure agreements and special-access program terms.
The waiver removes those barriers by authorizing covered disclosures to PURSUE representatives without triggering breach-of-agreement penalties or standard NDA violations.
“The waiver supersedes civil and administrative enforcement provisions contained within Non-Disclosure Agreements and Special Access Program Indoctrination Agreements previously executed within the United States, strictly for communications directed to the PURSUE team,” the waiver announcement states.
The waiver announcement does not address remedies for retaliation that has already occurred.