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EXCLUSIVE
STRATTON BOOK FOLLOW-UP
A new book by a former senior defense intelligence official accuses one of the military’s most prominent UFO investigators of covering up a top-secret program that has allegedly tried to reverse-engineer alien craft.
In a message to PARADIGM, the investigator, Sean Kirkpatrick, has responded by accusing the book’s author of violating an unspecified “national security law.”
The exchange of accusations between former high-ranking military intelligence officials adds to the spectacle created in recent weeks as veterans of government UFO queries have made a series of shocking claims about aliens.
On Tuesday, Jay Stratton, who served as the first director of the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force, published his UFO-hunting memoir, Out of the Shadows. The book makes a slew of extraordinary new claims, including that strange beings and lights haunted Stratton’s family at their home for years.
Many of the book’s most consequential claims relate to a purported “Legacy Program” that allegedly spanned decades of government and private-sector efforts to retrieve and reverse-engineer alien craft.
PARADIGM tracked down context and comment from relevant sources to make sense of some of Stratton’s key claims about the alleged program.
In the book, Stratton claims that he learned of “Legacy Program” activity from at least three different sources.
Late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who allegedly confided in Stratton that he had once mistakenly received a briefing about the program.
CONTEXT: Before his death, Reid championed UFO investigations and said he’d been told that Lockheed possessed alien material, but never said he was formally briefed on a program.
In an email, Susan McCue, who served as Reid’s chief of staff from 1999 to 2006 and now works as an advisor to the UAP-focused advocacy group Americans for Safe Aerospace, wrote of the briefing claim: “I’ve heard that a few times but am not able to confirm as [Reid] didn’t relay it to me and I don’t recall him discussing.”
An unnamed “very senior member of the special operations community,” who allegedly told Stratton he was part of a team that was scrambled to retrieve radioactive alien technology.
CONTEXT: Two people who dealt with Stratton as they investigated UFOs for the Senate said they did not recall Stratton providing them with any information about alleged retrievals or reverse-engineering of alien tech.
One of them, retired Senate staffer Kirk McConnell, who now advocates for UFO transparency, wrote in an email: “I do not recall Jay ever sharing this information with staff from the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees. As the lead for the Navy-led UAP task force, I expect Jay was not in a position to reveal such information at that time, given the likely repercussions. The environment and his situation are different now. I welcome his statements.”
Jim Ryder, a former Lockheed Martin executive who led the company’s Advanced Technology Center. He allegedly told Stratton that the aerospace giant, in cooperation with the Central Intelligence Agency, possessed a dozen downed alien craft and offered to arrange delivery of one of them to the Department of Defense.
CONTEXT: Ryder died in 2018. In a podcast interview released in August, Eric Davis, a scientist who collaborated with Stratton on UFO inquiries, said that a person matching Ryder’s description also confided in him about such a program.
Towards the end of his life, Ryder gave public presentations that dealt with unusual subjects such as consciousness, UFOs and plasma physics. Writing last year, journalist Nick Cook speculated that Ryder’s late-in-life musings about the nature of reality may have been prompted by encounters with mind-bending classified technologies.
Despite the lack of public proof, Stratton makes clear that he believes the program exists and exerts considerable power. Throughout the book, he repeatedly attributes setbacks in his investigation to the “hidden hand” of the “Legacy Program.”
The author singles out Kirkpatrick, who served as the founding director of the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which succeeded Stratton’s task force as a military clearinghouse for studying UAP.
AARO, which has proposed mundane explanations for several UFO incidents and produced a 2024 report finding “no empirical evidence” for claims about a program to reverse-engineer alien craft, has long drawn the ire of UFO believers who suspect it of perpetrating a cover-up.
Stratton, in his book, goes further, alleging that Kirkpatrick “was compromised and controlled by the Legacy Program” and that lawmakers had access to classified intelligence that proved it.
In a message to PARADIGM, Kirkpatrick, who led AARO from its 2022 founding until late 2023, responded:
“That’s the most absurd thing I’ve heard today. I’m sure Jay offers no evidence of this allegation, although he clearly has a lot to gain by making it because it makes people buy his book. The only classified information Congress has on this fictitious program is the information I and others presented them on what violations of national security law Jay and his band of pseudo-scientists have committed. However, since they also managed to ghost write the whistleblower protection legislation for themselves, no one can prosecute them. There is no legacy program, and apparently the lack of critical thinking skills is culturally pervasive now.”
CONTEXT: Kirkpatrick did not immediately respond to follow-up questions. Anwesha Basu, the publicity contact for Stratton’s publisher William Morrow, did not respond to a request for comment sent Thursday morning.
One of the people who investigated the subject in the Senate and dealt with both men said he was not aware of evidence being presented for either of their claims. “They all hate each other,” this person said. “There was deep distrust of Kirkpatrick all around and suspicion he was there to cover for the program. I have not seen any evidence.”
This is a developing story. PARADIGM has additional queries out about Stratton’s claims.
FOR YOUR RADAR
Sen. Mark Warner said that a 17-day UAP incursion over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia “mostly ended up being Chinese drones.” (Ask a Pol UAP)
Rep. Eric Burlison said he was exploring whether intelligence officials who witnessed a 2025 UFO incident involving luminous orbs could testify to Congress. (NY Post)
The Liberation Times tracked down a 2025 podcast interview involving a fantastical, second-hand tale about Area 51. The story could shed light on the basis for David Grusch’s claims about a deadly confrontation between U.S. personnel and “reptilian” aliens. (Liberation Times)
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Song of the week
Tremendous reporting as usual, Ben! I'm very happy we finally have a legit reporter in this space.
Good article, Ben. I lucked across you on X today. I’ve been a Chris Sharp subscriber for years and if you keep up real journalism like this, I’m going to be happy to subscribe to your work as well.