Undisclosed 2018 Meeting by Former AARO Head Sean Kirkpatrick with Skinwalker Ranch Researchers Calls Government Transparency into Question

When Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick was appointed head of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in 2022, he was touted as being neutral on the topic of UAP, allegedly having no interest or involvement in the subject prior to his posting. However, it has recently come to light that Dr. Kirkpatrick did indeed have prior involvement with UAP issues, with newly-released documentation showing that that the former AARO head not only attended a Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on Skinwalker Ranch in 2018, he “was at the head of the table,” according to current Skinwalker Ranch owner Brandon Fugal. The Department of Defense is unable to reconcile this discrepancy, an unfortunate situation for a major institution that is under fire for a perceived lack of transparency with the public.

During his tenure as Director of AARO, Kirkpatrick courted a great deal of controversy, prompting many in the UFO community to question his ability to remain objective in his role as the Pentagon’s lead UAP investigator: AARO investigators were reportedly dismissive of witnesses to high-level incidents such as the 1966 UFO incursion at Minot Air Force Base, and Kirkpatrick capped his tenure with the release of Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Volume I, widely criticized for ignoring large swaths of UFO history and basic factual errors to arrive at the controversial conclusion that there was “no evidence that… UAP represented extraterrestrial technology” and that there was no “evidence for claims that the USG and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology.”

While being interviewed by New York Post reporter-turned-UFO-debunker Steven Greenstreet on May 8, an evasive Kirkpatrick stated that he had no interest in UFOs, “not beyond the occasional movie,” and that he did not “perform any duties regarding UFOs or paranormal phenomena” prior to taking the helm of AARO.

However, when asked whether or not he had attended an April 19, 2018 Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on Skinwalker Ranch—a location famous for its UAP and paranormal activity—Kirkpatrick replied “no, I attended a briefing at the request of Senate Armed Services Committee on what was at that time associated with the AATIP/AAWSAP research that was going on as an independent outside reviewer, and I gave them my opinions at that time.”

However, during an earlier visit to Skinwalker Ranch, Greenstreet said that the ranch‘s owner, Brandon Fugal, told him that he had attended the same SASC meeting as Kirkpatrick; however, instead of being the “independent outside reviewer” that the former AARO head claimed to be, Fugal said that Kirkpatrick informed the attendees that “the reality of UFO phenomena is real”.

Kirkpatrick denied having said this during the briefing, and in a follow-up email he also claimed that he didn’t know that the briefing was about Skinwalker Ranch until after the briefing had concluded.

When confronted with what Kirkpatrick claimed, Fugal replied that the material he had provided Greenstreet with earlier was “an accurate account of the meeting, and have video, photos and witnesses.” To back that claim, Fugal posted on his X/Twitter account a photo taken during the meeting, clearly showing the assembled attendees, Fugal delivering his presentation, and Dr. Kirkpatrick sitting near the head of the table.

“On April 19, 2018, my team from Skinwalker Ranch was asked to provide a confidential briefing in Washington D.C. to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence & United States Armed Services Committee,” Fugal stated in the May 9 tweet. “Sean Kirkpatrick was at the head of the table. It lasted 2.5 hrs.”

In a June 22 article, Liberation Times founder and editor-in-chief Christopher Sharp posted the official response he received regarding his queries about the lack of disclosure of Kirkpatrick‘s prior involvement in UAP-related matters: the DoD confirmed that Kirkpatrick attended the SASC meeting in question, stating that “Dr. Kirkpatrick had no involvement with Skinwalker Ranch. He attended one meeting on it on the Hill in 2018, which he has publicly acknowledged.”

When prompted as to why Kirkpatrick‘s involvement in the meeting wasn’t previously disclosed to the public, the spokesperson replied that: “We cannot comment on the interviews that occur during the hiring process, including what was or was not discussed during them.

“We do not comment on internal discussions and deliberations between a director and his staff nor between a director and senior officials above him.”

The Pentagon’s inability to reconcile this discrepancy comes at a time when public trust in the Department of Defense’s claims of transparency on the issue of UAP has been steadily eroding, with many commentators referring to AARO as “Project Blue Book 2.0”, referring to the role of the Air Forces’ infamous UFO program as a debunking platform.