The Pentagon

The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense (DoD), in Arlington, Virginia. It was built by the United States Department of War at the outset of World War II,¹ and covers approximately 604,000 square metres, until recently the largest office building in the world.² Around twenty-two thousand people work inside it,³ and its eleven corridors are arranged like the spokes of a wheel, allowing any location within the building to be reached on foot in five minutes.⁴

The building’s central courtyard has attracted its own mythology. It is large enough to fit the US Capitol building inside it, with room to run laps around the structure.⁵ According to accounts recorded after the Cold War, the DoD discovered that the Soviet Union had targeted a small structure in the courtyard as a prime objective in the event of nuclear war, based on satellite imagery.⁶ Soviet analysts, working from early satellite photography, believed the structure was an elevator leading to a secret underground bunker.⁷ After the Berlin Wall fell, Russian and American personnel working together determined it was in fact a hot dog stand.⁸

The Pentagon’s institutional involvement with unidentified phenomena predates the programmes for which it later became known. In 1967 it channelled 512,000 US dollars to Edward U. Condon to fund the University of Colorado’s UFO Project.⁹ Major Murphy has said that General James Doolittle’s conclusions from his 1946 investigation in Sweden have never been revealed.¹⁰ According to Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults, a 1976 article in the Soviet youth newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, by writer Yeremei Parnov, implied that those who spread UFO stories were flirting with superstitions and religious impulses indirectly manipulated by the Pentagon.¹¹ Jacques Vallée has said that UFO enthusiasts trying to expose the government through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits may be playing into the hands of the manipulators of the phenomenon.¹²

The Pentagon later hosted the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), run by military intelligence official Luis Elizondo from an office on the fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring.¹³ Its funding was kept deliberately difficult to locate within the wider Department of Defense budget.¹⁴ A 2009 Pentagon Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) briefing summary, prepared by the programme’s director at the time, asserted that “what was considered science fiction is now science fact,” and that the United States was incapable of defending itself against some of the technologies discovered.¹⁵ According to The New York Times, Pentagon officials acknowledged in December 2017, in response to questions from the paper, that AATIP had existed, having begun as part of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).¹⁶ The same reporting stated that Pentagon officials insisted the programme had ended after five years, in 2012.¹⁷ Pentagon spokesman Thomas Crosson said in an email that other higher-priority issues merited funding, and that it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change.¹⁸ Backers of AATIP said that although Pentagon funding ended in 2012, the programme remained in existence.¹⁹ Harry Reid, discussing the Pentagon’s budget for classified programmes, said: “This was so-called black money. Stevens knows about it, Inouye knows about it. But that was it, and that’s how we wanted it."²⁰ The Pentagon has also publicly denied spending money on psychic research.²¹ Elizondo continued to work from his Pentagon office until October 2017, when he resigned, protesting what he characterised as excessive secrecy and internal opposition.²²

Elizondo’s Pentagon career had a personal dimension too. He was assigned a parking spot along the Pentagon’s River Entrance, alongside senior military staff including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the secretaries of each service, the undersecretaries, and the Secretary of Defense.²³ He was often asked to give personal tours of the Pentagon, taking visitors to areas not included on the standard tour.²⁴ In February 2012, while Elizondo was giving one such tour to a Japanese delegation of VIPs, the 2012-02 Jennifer Elizondo crosswalk accident occurred;²⁵ he was an hour and a half away at the Pentagon when it happened.²⁶ His Pentagon posting had marked an unusual period of stability for him and Jennifer, who had previously been military nomads travelling wherever he was stationed.²⁷

Elizondo’s later Pentagon dealings ran alongside the wider push for disclosure. James Mattis accepted the position of Secretary of Defense in the incoming Donald Trump administration.²⁸ Harold E. Puthoff suggested to Jay Stratton that they meet with Jim Semivan at the Pentagon.²⁹ Elizondo has said that Semivan had heard rumblings of a real Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) programme being run out of the Pentagon.³⁰ He has also said he considered Bryan Bender a shrewd reporter who knew the workings of the Pentagon better than most people who worked there,³¹ and that Bender did not come across as a believer in UAP but seemed interested in whether the Pentagon had a programme never disclosed to the public or Congress.³² According to a Politico article about AATIP, Pentagon spokesperson Dana White confirmed Elizondo’s role in the programme.³³ James R. Clapper told Elizondo he was surprised the Pentagon had admitted to having a UAP programme, and said he was proud of him.³⁴ Elizondo has said that someone within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI) authorised the deletion of all his electronic files, folders and emails, citing a Freedom of Information Act response from the Pentagon that stated they had no historic value.³⁵ At the 2022-05 Congressional Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) hearing, it was revealed, according to Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs, that the Pentagon had been unaware of UAP incursions near sensitive nuclear facilities, including instances of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) being taken offline.³⁶ Elizondo has said that had the Pentagon done even a cursory review of its own records, it would have realised it had already written reports on these incursions.³⁷ He has also said a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed to the media that he provides technical advice on classified topics for the United States Space Force.³⁸ In testimony given on 2024-11-13, Elizondo stated that the White House, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Pentagon, and the US Department of Energy all currently play a role in the UAP issue, but that no single entity is in charge.³⁹ Ross Coulthart has said that a slide from a Pentagon private briefing to one of its undersecretaries states that the phenomenon is able to manipulate human perception and can remotely interfere with what people see and experience.⁴⁰