James T. Lacatski is a retired Defense Intelligence Agency engineer and analyst whose name is now inseparable from AAWSAP, the most ambitious government funded inquiry into unidentified anomalous phenomena in recent memory.
A nuclear engineer by training who later managed and contracted advanced aerospace research for DIA, he moved UAP from “lights in the sky” toward a broad, effects driven inquiry that took seriously claims of measurable technology and human impact.
Through internal memoranda, cleared publications, and rare interviews, he has contended that the United States gained access to the interior of a craft of unknown origin. His books and recent podcast appearances have forced policymakers and the public to confront a sharper, and to many a more unsettling, picture of the phenomenon and of what the government may know. (SAM.gov)
Early life and scientific training
Before intelligence work, Lacatski published in the technical literature of fusion engineering, with studies on compact torsatron and stellarator reactor concepts.
He coauthored papers with Oak Ridge researchers include Assessment of a Compact Torsatron Reactor, ATFSR and an ORNL technical analysis of a small torsatron system. These show a career ground floor in plasma physics and reactor engineering, not speculative fiction. (American Nuclear Society)
That academic spine appears again in later biographical notes associated with his public talks and book tours, which describe him as holding a BS, MS, and Doctor of Engineering in nuclear engineering, with experience in fusion plasmas and directed energy systems.
Although those summaries are not official government bios, they align with the peer reviewed record from the 1980s. (Coast to Coast AM)
From DIA analyst to AAWSAP architect
By 2007, while working within DIA’s Defense Warning Office, Lacatski became convinced that certain “high strange” cases demanded directed study. He visited Robert Bigelow’s Skinwalker Ranch in Utah that summer.
In Skinwalkers at the Pentagon, coauthored by Lacatski, Colm Kelleher, and George Knapp, the authors describe a close-range observation of a yellow tubular, semi opaque device in a ranch house kitchen, an event later echoed in mainstream coverage. That moment and allied intelligence concerns seeded the program that would follow. (The Guardian)
With support from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, AAWSAP was established inside DIA in 2008 and funded through congressional direction.
Public contracting records confirm the solicitation and award under number HHM402-08-R-0211, and related FOIA releases show contemporaneous correspondence and the Reid letter requesting Special Access Program protections. These documents fix AAWSAP as a formally constituted DIA effort, not a rumor. (SAM.gov)
AAWSAP’s prime was Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies.
The program’s remit was expansive: threat identification, sustained field investigations, biomedical casework, historical data aggregation, and forward leaning theoretical studies.
In two years and three months, the team produced a body of deliverables that included dozens of Defense Intelligence Reference Documents, more than one hundred technical white papers, and the ingestion of more than two hundred thousand case files into a warehouse overseen by Jacques Vallée.
A later statement to Congress by Knapp summarized the scale, while a cleared synopsis of Skinwalkers at the Pentagon adds detail on a functioning prototype of an autonomous UAP surveillance platform and a 149-page analysis of Soviet and Russian UAP study.
A related DIA FOIA release in 2019 publicly listed thirty-eight technical study titles funded on the contract, ranging from advanced propulsion concepts to metamaterials.
However, that list became a point of confusion in later AATIP versus AAWSAP debates. It is now clear that the DIRDs did not capture the entirety of AAWSAP’s output, which included case investigations and biomedical studies that were not reflected in the 38-paper list. (Federation of American Scientists)
Publications that changed the conversation
Skinwalkers at the Pentagon (2021) was the first insider account of AAWSAP, cleared by the Department of Defense for public release.
It reframed the modern official study of UAP as both a technology problem and a “human effects” problem, documenting what the authors called a hitchhiker effect that sometimes followed military personnel home.
The book also insists that aerospace cases and so-called paranormal effects often arise together, an inconvenient data pattern AAWSAP chose not to ignore.
Inside the U.S. Government Covert UFO Program: Initial Revelations (2023) pushed further, detailing internal mechanics of the program and revealing a meeting in 2011 where Lacatski stated to a U.S. senator and an agency undersecretary that the United States possessed a craft of unknown origin, and had accessed its interior, which lacked observable propulsion or control surfaces. Subsequent reporting and Lacatski’s own cleared statements on a podcast confirmed that the book’s brief passage was precise. (Amazon)
Inside the U.S. Government Covert UFO Program: New Insights (2025) continued that track, presenting additional technical interpretations and program history, and was released alongside a new round of interviews.
Although AAWSAP ended in 2010 as a DIA line item, the controversies and claims surrounding its legacy have only intensified since these volumes appeared. (Amazon)
AAWSAP, AATIP, and the “KONA BLUE” afterstory
The public learned of an “AATIP” program in 2017 news coverage. Subsequent clarifications showed that AATIP was often used as a label encompassing parts of AAWSAP, and that internal and external actors disagreed over naming, scope, and who did what when the funding stopped in 2010–2012.
The Federation of American Scientists archived the 38-paper list DIA supplied to Congress, which many media outlets initially conflated with the entire program. The in-house history compiled later by the Pentagon’s All domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) sought to disentangle some of these threads, while simultaneously drawing sharp conclusions at odds with claims of recovered technology. (Federation of American Scientists)
One pivotal chapter in that history is “KONA BLUE,” a proposed Prospective Special Access Program within DHS during 2011–2012 that AARO traces to former AAWSAP personnel advocating a follow-on effort under Homeland Security stewardship.
AARO’s public documents state KONA BLUE never became an approved SAP, never received material, and was terminated by DHS leadership for lack of adequate justification.
In congressional testimony, Knapp recounts that during preparatory discussions about what became of KONA BLUE, Lacatski delivered the now famous statement about a craft of unknown origin and interior access.
The official AARO narrative and the AAWSAP insider narrative thus sit in stark and unresolved tension. (AARO)
Claims and counterclaims
The craft of unknown origin.
The claim that U.S. officials had accessed the interior of a nonstandard, apparently engine less craft has been repeated in a book passage cleared by DoD prepublication review, in subsequent interviews, and in testimony referencing the event.
The description is terse, deliberately so, and omits location, custody, and technical provenance. It is among the most consequential statements made by any former government program manager on the topic.
Anomalous “hitchhiker” effects.
AAWSAP consciously tracked physiological and psychological aftereffects in personnel and families following close encounters. The team interpreted these as part of the phenomenon’s full profile, not noise on the line. This is documented in Skinwalkers at the Pentagon and has been summarized in mainstream outlets that covered the broader debate over AARO’s historical report in 2024. (The Guardian)
AARO’s findings.
In March 2024, AARO’s Historical Record Report stated it found no verifiable evidence that the U.S. government possesses extraterrestrial technology or has run a covert crash retrieval and reverse engineering program. The report also said AAWSAP deliverables lacked utility for DIA’s mission and that related efforts drifted into paranormal research.
That conclusion has been strongly disputed by AAWSAP principals and sympathetic investigators who argue AARO relied on incomplete archives and mischaracterized outputs. The clash frames much of the current discourse about Lacatski and the program he led. (AARO)
AATIP role disputes.
Separate but related is the continuing public disagreement over AATIP’s management, particularly the scope of Luis Elizondo’s responsibilities.
Pentagon public affairs statements have at different times minimized or rejected his role, while others, including Senator Reid, later affirmed it.
This yearslong dispute helped fuel broader confusion about AAWSAP versus AATIP and illustrates how bureaucratic stove pipes obscure program histories. (Defense Logistics Agency)
What AAWSAP actually did
The AAWSAP solicitation and SOW are public. The record shows a formal DIA contract, a rapid standing up of an investigative staff, and production of both theoretical and field driven studies. The 38 DIRD titles included traversable wormholes, metamaterials, advanced propulsion, and invisibility concepts.
AAWSAP also produced program specific products beyond the 38, collected a multinational case warehouse, and attempted to engineer a surveillance prototype tuned to UAP observables.
Although many of these outputs remain unreleased, the fact of their production is documented by multiple independent sources. (The Black Vault Documents)
Critics have argued that some AAWSAP work veered into poltergeists and werewolves rather than threats from aerospace platforms. That framing, however, misunderstands the program’s starting hypothesis. Lacatski and team treated the “paranormal” as part of the operational picture, because that is where the data led.
To reduce the phenomenon to only lights, radar, and airframes would have been to willfully ignore consistent witness and biomedical patterns that intelligence customers needed to understand. The disagreement is fundamental and philosophical, not simply political. (Military.com)
Recent podcast appearances
Since releasing Initial Revelations in late 2023 and New Insights in 2025, Lacatski has granted very few public interviews. The notable exceptions are multi part sit downs on the WEAPONIZED podcast hosted by Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp, where he is a direct source, as well as a 2023 episode where he and Kelleher first previewed key claims from the book series.
A December 2024 “special presentation” episode on another show also amplified the “breached the inside of a UFO” line, but the WEAPONIZED conversations remain his most substantive recent outings. (Player.fm)
WEAPONIZED, Oct 2023: “Inside the DIA’s Secretive UFO Investigation.”
This episode introduced a broader audience to AAWSAP as a DIA program, described the case warehouse scale, and previewed the “craft of unknown origin” assertion that the 2023 book would formalize.
The hosts pressed for specifics, and Lacatski stayed scrupulously within cleared language, emphasizing the distinction between anecdote and what AAWSAP documented across multiple modalities. Tone: cautious, matter of fact, and consistent with someone trained to treat every word as a record. (Player.fm)
WEAPONIZED, Nov 2025: “He Ran the Pentagon’s Secret UFO Program” (Part 1) and “The Government UFO Boss” (Part 2).
These back-to-back episodes are the closest the public has to a short course in the program from its manager.
Part 1 is framed as what he would say under oath to Congress. He outlines the origin story from Skinwalker Ranch through the DIA contract award, the scope of investigations, the intelligence customer set, and the KONA BLUE episode’s history.
He restates, without embellishment, that a craft interior was accessed and that the description in his 2023 book is exact.
Part 2 widens to what he views as disinformation pressures, the persistence of data sets that policy offices have ignored, and why he believes the “human effects” angle is central to understanding UAP.
The shows’ notes and syndication blurbs make clear that these were intended as high impact disclosures timed with his new book. (Global Player)
How credible and how new?The value of these appearances is less in “never before heard facts” than in attribution.
For years, a rotating cast of intermediaries asserted dramatic claims.
Here, an identified former DIA program manager repeats a constrained but extraordinary statement and connects it to an official meeting. That moves the claim category from rumor to disclosed allegation with provenance.
It is fair that AARO, designed to adjudicate evidence, reached very different conclusions. It is equally fair to note that AARO’s own KONA BLUE declassification admits the proposal existed, tracks the AAWSAP connection, and records internal disagreements about merit, which speaks to a live policy controversy rather than a settled question.
These episodes therefore matter because they place a named official on the record, and because they explain the program’s guiding analytic choices better than any press conference ever has.
Contributions and impact on the UAP field
Institutionalizing a wide aperture.
Under Lacatski, AAWSAP treated UAP as a multi-domain problem with measurable physical and human signatures.
That made the work messier and, in retrospect, more honest. It also created the only large-scale U.S. government program that assessed “attachment” effects on personnel and families alongside radar returns and pilot narratives. Even critics concede AAWSAP’s scope was unique.
Deliverables that altered the literature.
Beyond the DIRDs, AAWSAP’s gray literature and internal reports seeded later narratives, from KONA BLUE to biomedical case histories now referenced across podcasts, books, and hearings.
The program’s internal scale, captured in congressional statements, has set a benchmark for what serious UAP study looks like inside government.
Forcing a policy fork in the road.
AARO’s 2024 report aimed to close chapters by concluding that no verifiable evidence supports claims of recovered craft.
Lacatski’s books and interviews pry those chapters open by adding an on the record allegation with specific time, place, and audience.
Whether one agrees with his interpretations or not, he has made it harder to keep UAP inside a narrow “misidentifications and drones” box. (AARO)
Controversies
Use of funds and focus.
Detractors argue that public money meant for aerospace threats funded poltergeist hunts on a ranch.
AAWSAP defenders counter that the ranch was simply one field node, and that the phenomenon itself does not respect our topical silos. Mainstream coverage has emphasized the culture clash between AAWSAP’s wide aperture and later offices that favored a narrower remit. (Military.com)
AATIP branding and personalities.
Media introduced AATIP first, often tying the program to a single personality, which created friction and public confusion.
FOIA emails and press exchanges show months of sparring over names, authorities, and histories, with official statements sometimes contradicting each other. That noise has obscured the clarity of the AAWSAP record and, ironically, amplified suspicions. (Defense Logistics Agency)
KONA BLUE declassifications.
AARO’s release of KONA BLUE documentation in 2024 portrays the DHS proposal as unapproved and empty of material. The very existence of the PSAP proposal nevertheless corroborates that senior officials took the subject seriously enough to try to move it under new authority. Lacatski’s on the record statements about what was asserted in those rooms further polarize interpretation. (AARO)
AARO’s “no evidence” conclusion.
Supporters of AARO say its historical review is the most comprehensive to date.
Supporters of AAWSAP argue the review misunderstood or ignored archives and oral histories. The Guardian’s coverage captured how AARO’s document became a lightning rod, particularly among those who point to AAWSAP’s unpublished corpus and to named officials like Lacatski making claims in parallel. (The Guardian)
Selected publications by Lacatski
- Fusion and plasma engineering
- Houlberg, W. A., Lacatski, J. T., & Uckan, N. A. (1986). Assessment of a Compact Torsatron Reactor, ATFSR. Fusion Science and Technology, 10(2), 227–235. (American Nuclear Society)
- Lacatski, J. T., Houlberg, W. A., & Uckan, N. A. (1985). Plasma engineering analysis of a small torsatron reactor. ORNL analysis referenced in later fusion reviews and IAEA INIS. (IAEA INIS)
- UAP and government programs
- Lacatski, J. T., Kelleher, C. A., & Knapp, G. (2021). Skinwalkers at the Pentagon: An Insiders’ Account of the Secret Government UFO Program. Cleared for public release by DoD.
- Lacatski, J. T., with Kelleher, C. A., & Knapp, G. (2023). Inside the U.S. Government Covert UFO Program: Initial Revelations. RTMA, LLC. (Amazon)
- Lacatski, J. T. (2025). Inside the U.S. Government Covert UFO Program: New Insights. RTMA, LLC. (Amazon)
Timeline, at a glance
- 1984–1986: Publishes technical work on torsatron and stellarator reactors with Oak Ridge collaborators. (American Nuclear Society)
- Mid 2000s: Senior roles within DIA’s Defense Warning Office.
- July 2007: Visits Skinwalker Ranch with Robert Bigelow; reports a close range “tubular” observation later described in Skinwalkers at the Pentagon and mainstream reporting. (The Guardian)
- Sept 2008: AAWSAP contract awarded under DIA solicitation HHM402-08-R-0211; BAASS named prime. (SAM.gov)
- 2009: Sen. Reid sends letter urging Special Access protections for AATIP operations, reflecting AAWSAP’s sensitivity and progress. (Defense Intelligence Agency)
- 2008–2010: AAWSAP operates for 27 months, produces extensive outputs and data warehouse.
- 2011: Meeting in a Capitol facility where, per later cleared text, Lacatski states the U.S. has accessed the interior of a craft of unknown origin.
- 2011–2012: KONA BLUE proposed inside DHS as a PSAP; later terminated and declassified, with no materials transferred. (AARO)
- 2021–2025: Publishes Skinwalkers at the Pentagon, Initial Revelations, and New Insights; appears on WEAPONIZED to restate key claims. (Player.fm)
Why his story matters
The most difficult problem in the UAP debate has been attribution. Sensors collect ambiguous data. Witnesses report extraordinary performance. Analysts infer possibilities.
What is rare is a named, cleared former program manager making a compact, specific claim about a craft interior and then standing by that language on air. You do not have to accept every inference that AAWSAP drew to recognize the policy weight of that disclosure.
It is also consequential that AAWSAP treated human effects as signal, not noise, and designed a surveillance prototype to capture observables beyond conventional radar and electro optical signatures.
That choice set a new standard for what a national level UAP assessment could include. And it underscores the central contribution of James T. Lacatski to the field: a willingness to follow the data where it leads, and to insist that any workable UAP theory must accommodate both hard tech and high strangeness in the same frame. (Audible.com)
Final assessment
Measured by outputs, scale, and insistence on following the data across domains, James T. Lacatski’s AAWSAP reset the bar for government UAP inquiry.
Measured by the turbulence that followed, he also helped trigger a long overdue policy debate about how the United States studies the unknown.
His recent interviews do not attempt to prove the extraordinary in a single show. They do something subtler, and arguably more consequential. They pin extraordinary claims to a name, a date, and an office, then challenge the rest of government to meet that standard of specificity.
That is the contribution of a career analyst who believes the phenomenon is real, that its manifestations matter for national security and human health, and that we should study all of it, not just the parts that fit comfortably within aerospace engineering. (Global Player)
References and further reading
After each reference we provide a direct link.
All domain Anomaly Resolution Office. (2024, March 6). Historical Record Report, Volume 1. Department of Defense. https://www.aaro.mil/Portals/136/PDFs/AARO_Historical_Record_Report_Vol_1_2024.pdf (AARO)
All domain Anomaly Resolution Office. (2024, Feb 5). History and Origin of KONA BLUE (declassified). https://www.aaro.mil/Portals/136/PDFs/UAP_RECORDS_RESEARCH/History_and_Origin_of_KONA_BLUE_FINAL_508.pdf (AARO)
Defense Intelligence Agency. (2008). AAWSAP solicitation HHM402-08-R-0211 (SAM.gov notice and DIA FOIA copy). https://sam.gov/opp/3e296242a761cf77a54ca4e4981c97c7/view; https://www.dia.mil/FOIA/FOIA-Electronic-Reading-Room/FileId/170057/ (SAM.gov)
Defense Intelligence Agency. (2009, Nov 17). Under Secretary of Defense memo regarding Senator Reid’s request for SAP status (FOIA). https://www.dia.mil/FOIA/FOIA-Electronic-Reading-Room/FileId/170015/ (Defense Intelligence Agency)
Federation of American Scientists. (2019, Jan 17). Aftergood, S. More Light on Black Program to Track UFOs; includes link to list of 38 DIA sponsored studies. https://fas.org/publication/aatip-list/ (Federation of American Scientists)
Guardian, The. (2024, Mar 22). Lavelle, D. He quit heading the Pentagon’s UFO office. Now a report of his has shaken up ufology. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/22/ufologists-sean-kirkpatrick-pentagon-report-uaps (The Guardian)
Houlberg, W. A., Lacatski, J. T., & Uckan, N. A. (1986). Assessment of a compact torsatron reactor, ATFSR. Fusion Science and Technology, 10(2), 227–235. https://www.ans.org/pubs/journals/fst/article-24974/ (American Nuclear Society)
IAEA INIS. (1985). Plasma engineering analysis of a small torsatron reactor [record]. https://inis.iaea.org/records/560s0-6qd74 (IAEA INIS)
Knapp, G. (2025, Sep 9). Written testimony to the U.S. House Oversight Task Force (includes AAWSAP outputs and craft interior claim). https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/George-Knapp-Written-Testimony.pdf
Kelleher, C. A., Lacatski, J. T., & Knapp, G. (2021). Skinwalkers at the Pentagon: An Insiders’ Account of the Secret Government UFO Program [Audiobook page with cleared summary]. https://www.audible.com/pd/Skinwalkers-at-the-Pentagon-Audiobook/B0BT6MKSKK (Audible.com)
Lacatski, J. T., Kelleher, C. A., & Knapp, G. (2023). Inside the U.S. Government Covert UFO Program: Initial Revelations. RTMA, LLC. https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Government-Covert-UFO-Program/dp/B0CKP3YQRM (Amazon)
Lacatski, J. T. (2025). Inside the U.S. Government Covert UFO Program: New Insights. RTMA, LLC. https://www.amazon.com/Inside-U-S-Government-Covert-Program/dp/B0FT4V8NDC (Amazon)
Military.com. (2022, Mar 7). Tritten, T. How believers in the paranormal birthed the Pentagon’s new hunt for UFOs. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/03/07/how-believers-paranormal-birthed-pentagons-new-hunt-ufos.html (Military.com)
New Yorker. (2021, Apr 30). Kean profile and the modern Pentagon UAP turn. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/10/how-the-pentagon-started-taking-ufos-seriously (The New Yorker)
U.S. House Oversight. (2024–2025). Records and hearing documents mentioning AAWSAP and KONA BLUE. Example DHS letter and AARO compiled release: https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/osd/konablue-release1.pdf (The Black Vault Documents)
WEAPONIZED with Jeremy Corbell & George Knapp. (2023, Oct 17). Inside the DIA’s Secretive UFO Investigation (guests: Dr. James Lacatski & Dr. Colm Kelleher). https://player.fm/series/weaponized-with-jeremy-corbell-george-knapp-3480257/inside-the-dias-secretive-ufo-investigation-guests-dr-james-lacatski-dr-colm-kelleher (Player.fm)
WEAPONIZED with Jeremy Corbell & George Knapp. (2025, Nov). He Ran The Pentagon’s Secret UFO Program… Dr. James Lacatski (Part 1); The Government UFO Boss… (Part 2). Examples of episode listings: https://www.globalplayer.com/podcasts/episodes/7Drv65V/ and https://podbay.fm/p/weaponized-with-jeremy-corbell-and-george-knapp/e/1762876800 (Global Player)
Note: Many AAWSAP technical reports remain unreleased.
Where public sources conflict, this biography favors primary documents and cleared statements, while clearly labeling areas of dispute.
The AARO report provides the principal official counterpoint, while the WEAPONIZED interviews and the authors’ books provide the primary AAWSAP insider narrative.
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