CAPCO Memo Authorizing NDA-Bound Witnesses to Talk to AARO, 2023

Claims of hidden UAP programs usually come with a standard reason why no one has spoken up: the people involved signed nondisclosure agreements. This memorandum was written to remove that obstacle, at least for anyone willing to talk to the Pentagon’s own UAP office.

What this record is

This is a two-page PDF. The first page is a release cover sheet. The second is a one-page memorandum from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, numbered CAPCO-23-003 and signed by the Director of the Controlled Access Programs Central Office. The National Archives catalog titles it “SAPCO CAPCO MFR” and describes it as a memorandum for record dated 8 March 2023. The Department of Defense prepublication office cleared it for open publication on 25 March 2024. When AARO reviewed it on 14 February 2025 under the FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act, it was “Released in Part,” citing section 1843(a)(3) of that act, as AARO case number 330UAP000006. The catalog title refers to both SAPCO, the Defense Department’s Special Access Program Central Office, and CAPCO. The memo transferred to the National Archives is the ODNI CAPCO one. An automatically generated placeholder entry on this site, drawn from AARO’s public document set, refers to “memos” in the plural.

What it says

The subject line is “Authorization to Provide Information to Personnel Representing the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).” It cites section 1673 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023. The memo makes three points.

First, AARO representatives may speak to and interview people who have or had access to sensitive U.S. government information, activities or materials. Second, individuals with current or past access to UAP-related or “presumed relevant” information covered by a government nondisclosure agreement may give that information to AARO. Doing so “constitutes an authorized disclosure” as long as it is given and received only for AARO’s mission as defined in section 1683 of the FY2022 act, as amended by section 6802 of the FY2023 act. Third, the protections still apply. Any such conversation must take place in suitably secure spaces and be handled at whatever classification level the person claims. If someone says their information is TOP SECRET//SCI or part of a Special Access Program, AARO must treat it at that level from the start until its real classification is established. Witnesses stay bound to protect classified information from anyone else, and the memo states that an authorized disclosure to AARO “in no way impacts” that duty.

Context

This is a procedural document, but its timing gives it weight. It was issued a few weeks before AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick’s first open Senate testimony in April 2023, and months before the House hearing in July 2023 where a former intelligence officer alleged a concealed crash-retrieval program (see the 2023 whistleblower hearing). Those allegations raised the question of whether potential witnesses were legally free to come forward. This memo is the intelligence community’s written answer for AARO. Such people could speak to AARO without breaking their agreements, provided they did so through AARO’s secure channels. In its Historical Record Report of February 2024, AARO said it had conducted about 30 interviews and found “no empirical evidence” for claims of government or corporate reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial technology. The same report said it found no evidence of any authentic UAP-specific nondisclosure agreement, which is a reminder that the agreements this memo covers are ordinary security agreements for classified programs, not special UAP secrecy oaths. Whether every potential witness was willing to use AARO as the channel is a separate question. The memo shows only that the channel was legally open.

Status

This memo documents a legal authorization. It reports no incident and contains no UAP data. It establishes that, from March 2023, a nondisclosure agreement did not legally prevent anyone from telling AARO what they knew about UAP. It does not show who used that route or what they said. The release is marked as partial, but the body of the authorization reads through without gaps. The name on the signature line does not come through legibly.

Sources

• National Archives catalog entry: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/499915938
• PDF of the record: https://catalog.archives.gov/medialz/electronic-records/rg-615/493468580/06_SAPCO_CAPCO_MFR.pdf
• Series: Records from the Office of the Secretary of Defense Relating to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/493468580
• National Archives, Record Group 615 UAP records: https://www.archives.gov/research/topics/uaps/rg-615