FOIA Case 20-F-0163: AATIP Emails, Elizondo's Role, and a 20

FOIA Case 20-F-0163: AATIP Emails, Elizondo's Role, and a 2009 SAP Request

A newly released FOIA response from the Office of the Secretary of War includes internal emails and a 2009 letter from Senator Harry Reid requesting a Restricted Special-Access-Program for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).

Published

September 18, 2026

Declassified

Date not listed

Source agency

The Black Vault (FOIA archive)

foiaaatipcase0163emailselizondorole2009

FOIA Case 20-F-0163 and Its 416 Responsive Pages

The paper Vault submitted a Freedom of Information Act request that the Office of the Secretary of War/Joint Staff (OSW/JS) FOIA Requester Service Center received on October 30, 2019, assigning it case number 20-F-0163. The letter instructs the requester to cite that number in all future correspondence — a small procedural detail that anchors everything that follows to a single, traceable file. What emerged years later was not a clean disclosure but a negotiated one.

The Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of War for Public Affairs (OATSW(PA)), a component of OSW, searched its records systems and located 416 pages determined to be responsive. C. C.

§ 424, which protects an organization or any function of an organization, and certain information pertaining to employees of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; (b)(5), covering inter- and intra-agency memoranda that are deliberative in nature…

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Based on the official release at https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/new-emails-reveal-pentagon-effort-to-align-messaging-on-aatip-and-luis-elizondo/

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