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High-ranking Pentagon insider to release UFO memoir

The Tic Tac UFO video was taken in 2004. (Department of Defense)

(NewsNation) — Another former Pentagon insider is coming forward in a new memoir with claims about the agency’s investigations into UFOs.

Jay Stratton is a former director of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, a predecessor to the current All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) that is tasked with investigating reports of UFOs, which the agency prefers to call “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” or UAPs.


In addition to a memoir, which will be published by William Morrow, producer Dan Farah has also secured the rights to produce a film or TV adaptation of Stratton’s work.

There’s no indication what Stratton plans to reveal, but other former officials have come forward recently to speak up about allegations the Pentagon knows more about UFOs than it is letting on. Whistleblower David Grusch came forward with claims the agency is running a secret UFO retrieval program, prompting a congressional hearing and renewed efforts from lawmakers to push for more transparency on the issue.

Most recently, former Pentagon employee Luis Elizondo released a book that said the Pentagon actually recovered a UFO in the famed 1947 Roswell incident as well as suggested the government is in possession of nonhuman remains and that he has seen evidence of alien implants. He said he was aware of this through his role leading the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which preceded the UAP Task Force.

The Pentagon has denied that Elizondo led AATIP and has consistently said there is no evidence that UAPs are extraterrestrial in nature. In a report, AARO stated most reports were the result of mistaken identity, identifying drones or top-secret projects as the source of unidentified objects.

The agency did acknowledge the existence of the Kona Blue program, which was intended to reverse engineer UFO technology. But it said the program never got off the ground because no such technology was ever recovered.

Stratton led UAP investigations during his time with the Pentagon, including investigations into the famous “Tic Tac” encounter in 2004, where Navy fighter pilots with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group encountered a strange object while training.

Video of the incident was later released, marking one of the first times the Pentagon acknowledged video of a UAP encounter.

Stratton’s memoir is expected to include information on his investigations as well as how they impacted him and his family. In his memoir, Elizondo said UAPs began appearing at his house after he began working on investigations.

Stratton would be the most senior former official to come forward with information on UFOs and nonhuman intelligence, having held the civilian equivalent rank of a two-star general after serving in government for more than 32 years.

His service included eight deployments and time spent in intelligence before working on UAP investigations in the first official effort to examine the phenomenon following the end of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book in 1969.