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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Richard Luscombe

Pentagon ex-UFO chief says conspiracy theorists in government drive spending

In a grass field are a series of wood cut-outs painted to resemble a flying saucer, a tall green alien, and a white family next to a car with the hood up smiling at the alien.
Roadside display outside Roswell, New Mexico, in an image taken 21 October 2013. Photograph: Luc Novovitch/Alamy

Conspiracy theorists working for and within the US government are perpetuating myths about UFOs that millions of taxpayer dollars are then spent looking into, a “self-licking ice cream cone”, according to the Pentagon’s former chief investigator of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).

Sean Kirkpatrick made the claim in a podcast this week after stepping down last month as the first director of the defense department’s all-domain anomaly resolution office (Aaro). It was set up in 2022 to collate military reports of UAP sightings and to be more transparent about what the government knows.

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