Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI)

The Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) is the criminal investigative and counterintelligence service of the United States Air Force (USAF). Its founding director, Joseph F. Carroll, was a devout Catholic who had originally intended to enter the seminary before moving into intelligence work instead.¹ Within the Pentagon, AFOSI investigates internal matters pertaining to counterintelligence,² and it is one of the Military Department Counterintelligence Organizations (MDCOs), alongside Army Counterintelligence and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), which together provide counterintelligence support to their respective Military Services, assigned DOD components, and assigned combatant commands.³ It also provides investigative support to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, including investigation of assigned personnel.⁴

AFOSI’s involvement with UFO-related matters dates to the early Cold War. In late 1949, the organisation was investigating green fireballs seen over military sites.⁵ According to “In Plain Sight,” AFOSI confidentially reported at the time that the continued occurrence of unexplained phenomena near sensitive installations was cause for concern.⁶ Harry Turner said that in 1953 AFOSI persuaded the USAF to use the Project Blue Book investigation as a means of publicly debunking UFOs.⁷ AFOSI later attacked the credibility of Charles Halt’s sighting during the 1980 Rendlesham Forest incident.⁸ According to “Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs,” the servicemen who witnessed the incident were called to the base’s AFOSI office the day after it occurred,⁹ and the same source recounts that a speaker who had personally spoken to some of the servicemen said a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) representative was present in the room with the AFOSI investigators.¹⁰

AFOSI featured prominently in the internal Pentagon scrutiny of Luis Elizondo following his 2017 departure from the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Garry Reid, of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI), requested an informal AFOSI review of Elizondo’s conduct after a YouTube video surfaced,¹¹ and Reid said that in late November 2017 AFOSI advised it did not have enough information to open a formal case absent more tangible indicators of misconduct.¹² The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence separately referred the timing and circumstances of Elizondo’s resignation to AFOSI for immediate counterintelligence review,¹³ and on 2017-12-21 Reid met with AFOSI agents to initiate a formal inquiry into Elizondo’s possible mishandling of classified materials.¹⁴ Reid said that AFOSI’s informal assessment did not find any wrongdoing by Elizondo, and that absent indicators of misconduct they were unable to open a formal investigation.¹⁵ Elizondo testified that two AFOSI agents once told him that a walk-in contractor claiming he could make aircraft invisible actually worked for the Air Force on one of its most sensitive technologies, and requested Elizondo’s file on the man.¹⁶ Separately, Reid initiated an AFOSI inquiry into how the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena videos had been released;¹⁷ that inquiry extended into the following spring and found no impropriety in Elizondo’s actions,¹⁸ and AFOSI’s investigation into the video-release allegation was ultimately adjudicated favourably to Elizondo.¹⁹ Colleagues loyal to Elizondo who remained at OUSDI told him, according to Elizondo, that Reid planned to launch a criminal inquiry with AFOSI.²⁰ Elizondo also testified that while in Philadelphia with Leslie Kean, he noticed two individuals with tight military-style haircuts watching them on the street, whom he believed were most likely an AFOSI surveillance team.²¹

AFOSI’s counterintelligence role has continued to draw scrutiny in later oversight work. The Inspector General, U.S. Department of Defense, in its evaluation of the department’s actions regarding unidentified anomalous phenomena, interviewed senior officials and requested UAP-related data and organisational policies from OUSDI, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the Military Services, and the Military Department Counterintelligence Organizations, among other defense intelligence agencies.²²

AFOSI also appears in accounts unconnected to the 2004 USS Nimitz UAP encounter era of Pentagon programmes. Michael Horn said that during his handling of the Billy Meier Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) contact case, a man who identified himself only as “Joe” - a retired AFOSI and Department of Defense case supervisor and investigator - questioned him about the case.²³ Jesse Mitchells said AFOSI recurs throughout UFO lore as an organisation that arrives after sightings at nuclear bases to seize radar data and silence witnesses.²⁴