News sites have spent the days since the October 23 release reporting that the Pentagon’s UFO files reveal a secret underground vault built to hold alien hardware. The document is real and the passage is real. The headline claim goes further than the text.
What the document is
It is the June 2009 monthly progress report from Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, the Las Vegas contractor that worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program. It is one of nine contractor reports in the seventh PURSUE release. We have the full write-up on the June 2009 report page.
What it says about the vault
Under the heading “Underground Vault”, the report says the contractor saw a need for a highly secure underground facility. The stated reason was a priority to acquire “recovered hardware and biological samples” from “the corporate world and/or from private individuals and groups located elsewhere, including in Brazil”. It says BAASS had no secure place “to store exotic material or tissue that the organization could obtain.”
The administrator, it says, designed plans for a 5,000 square foot vault with three-foot-thick walls, ceiling and floor. A concrete tunnel would lead through several security doors, one of them a steel vault door. The vault would sit under 15 to 20 feet of earth at the Bigelow Aerospace site in North Las Vegas. Surface structures would be camouflaged. The report expected it to be usable in late 2009 or early 2010, subject to building permits.
What it does not say
The report describes plans, not a finished building. It does not say the vault was built. It does not say anything was ever stored there. It does not say what the “recovered hardware” or “biological samples” were, or whether any were obtained. A contractor expecting to collect such material is not evidence that the material exists.
The same section also records the purchase of five office buildings, including a laboratory with secure physical evidence storage and a secure conference room. That fits the report’s wider picture of a fast-growing contractor, which the other eight reports in the release fill out.
Why it matters anyway
The passage shows how the program’s contractor saw its job. It was not only collecting reports and writing papers. It planned to acquire physical samples from private owners at home and abroad. The Brazil reference sits alongside a deployment to Brazil recorded elsewhere in the same report. Together they show what the contractor hoped to do with the program’s money.
The vault is also a reminder to read the source. A plan to store exotic material is a long way from a vault of exotic material. The honest reading is the first one, and the documents are open for anyone to check. See the Bigelow program overview and the Utah ranch report for the rest of the contractor’s work.