Daniel K. Inouye was a United States Senator for Hawaii and, alongside Republican senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, one of the top members of a defense spending subcommittee in the United States Senate that supported the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).1 He died in 2012.2
Inouye was a World War Two war hero.3 He received the Medal of Honor, the highest US military award, for conspicuous gallantry,4 having lost an arm while serving in the war.5
He was well known for warning of the risks posed by covert government power.6 During the Senate investigations into the Iran-Contra scandal in 1985, concerning secret US military assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition, Inouye was very critical of those he held culpable for the scandal.7 Inouye said he decried the notion of a shadowy government with its own air force, navy and fundraising mechanism, able to pursue its own interests free from checks and balances and from the law itself, calling it an elitist vision of government that trusts no one.8
Harry Reid summoned Stevens and Inouye to a secure room in the Capitol.9 Reid later said the meeting was one of the easiest he ever had,10 and that none of the three senators wanted a public debate on the Senate floor about the funding for AATIP.11 Reid 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,” referring to the Pentagon budget for classified programs.12 Reid also approached Inouye and Stevens to secure $22 million in funding for a study into the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) mystery.13
The Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) was supported by then-Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Lieutenant General Michael D. Maples, and was funded through the efforts of Reid, Stevens and Inouye.14 Together, the three senators controlled congressional spending for black-budget programs at the Pentagon in Washington DC.15