William Lynn III was a United States Deputy Secretary of Defense at the United States Department of Defense (DoD) in 2009, when he became the recipient of a series of communications from Senator Harry Reid concerning the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).
On 2009-06-24, Reid wrote to Lynn, in correspondence recorded as the Senator Harry Reid Letter to Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn III, requesting that the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) and AATIP be made a DoD Special Access Program (SAP).1 According to reporting by The Black Vault, a follow-up memo dated 2009-07-24 - recorded as the Harry Reid memo to William Lynn III on Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) Special Access Program status (2009-07-24) - set out Reid’s request and his reasoning for it, again addressed to Lynn.2
In correspondence recorded separately as the Reid letter to William Lynn III (2009), Reid told Lynn that much progress had been made in identifying several highly sensitive, unconventional aerospace-related findings, and asked that AATIP be designated a “restricted special access program” limited to a few named officials.3
Reid’s request was denied.4 According to the Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), Volume I, Lynn declined to designate AAWSAP/AATIP a DoD Special Access Program, acting on the recommendation of then-Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence James R. Clapper - set out in the 2009-11-17 Memorandum from James Clapper to the Deputy Secretary of Defense - that such a designation was not justified.5