The Legacy Program is the name given to a larger effort, involving elements of the United States government and American defence contractors, to retrieve and reverse-engineer crashed craft of nonhuman origin.1 The program, and the wider Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) issue itself, date to 1947.2 Luis Elizondo, a former Pentagon UAP programme director, has called it the most secretive (‘black’) program he is aware of.3 Eric Davis attended several senior-level meetings with branches of the US military at which he detailed the program’s long-running efforts.4
The program is distinct from the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP): the Legacy Program existed separately from AAWSAP,5 which began in 2008.6 Eric Burlison has said the two are not necessarily the same thing.7 Even under Kona Blue, a follow-on effort intended to operate as a Special Access Program (SAP), the AAWSAP team never gained access to the program.8 Security personnel involved in Kona Blue located the program’s gatekeepers, who said access would not be granted until Kona Blue itself had been given SAP designation.9 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) security officers likewise located the gatekeepers but could not gain access, because Kona Blue had not yet been made an approved SAP.10 In its later years, AAWSAP attempted to obtain craft materials and data from the program through the now-deceased Dr Jim Ryder.11 Harold E. Puthoff has said that Jay Stratton, while leading the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), encountered gatekeepers controlling access to the program.12 According to Puthoff, these gatekeepers are unelected security personnel whose role is to ensure the program is not exposed.13 Burlison has said the gatekeeper structure protecting it still exists today.14 One gatekeeper has been named as Steve Cantrell, identified as the Special Assistant to the Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force.15 According to UAP Gerb, David Grusch testified that the program’s control group involves a cadre of senior officials, many at the Senior Executive Service (SES) level, including Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Special Access Program Central Office (SAPCO) personnel and senior figures within the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force.16 UAP Gerb has described this control group as having functioned as a weaponised body providing programme protection and exposure mitigation.17
Elizondo has said senior officials repeatedly and confidentially told him that major aerospace and defence companies had been part of the effort to retrieve and reverse-engineer crash materials.18 Those officials named Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, BAE Systems and the Aerospace Corporation to him as companies involved.19 He has also said Monsanto, a biotechnology company absorbed by Bayer in 2018, may historically have been involved, most likely dealing with biological specimens.20 Elizondo has said a defence contractor associated with the program was reported to be in possession of UAP materials of nonhuman origin, made by a civilisation from a distant planet.21 He has said Jay Stratton contacted that contractor to inquire about the materials on behalf of his team, and the contractor acknowledged possessing them.22 Elizondo has concluded the US Air Force had long been a key player in efforts related to the program.23
The program and its associates blocked funding that United States Congress had appropriated to the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force.24 From the moment the task force became official, the program began quietly pushing back on Jay Stratton and the task force, creating bureaucratic hurdles.25 Elizondo has said James Lacatski and his team ran the United States’ official program on UAP, while the Legacy Program worked at cross-purposes to that effort.26 Elizondo sought a letter from James Mattis to secure access to the program’s UAP materials,27 and looked into the program’s retrieval systems but did not get very far.28 At the time, the program was in possession of advanced technology made off-world by nonhuman intelligence (NHI), existing in the shadows unknown to elected officials or the Pentagon.29 David Grusch told Congress and an inspector general what he knew about the program,30 and gave a series of public interviews about it.31 Elizondo has said the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Disclosure Act shows Congress is aware of the program’s possession of nonhuman bodies and advanced technology not made on Earth or by human beings.32 He has said the Act’s language is a direct result of whistleblowers briefing members of Congress and their staff at the classified level, and under oath, about nonhuman intelligence (NHI) and the program’s efforts to capture, collect and reverse-engineer nonhuman-origin vehicles and, in some cases, nonhuman specimens.33 Elizondo has said Congressman Mike Turner is supported by defence contractors involved in the program.34 He has also said the Act makes it illegal for the program or anyone else to use taxpayer money on UAP-related matters unless approved by Congress.35 Elizondo has said that, according to Puthoff and others involved in the program, US presidents briefed on UAP are not given every detail because a president does not have a need to know everything and will only temporarily hold office.36 He has said the existence of the program would mean there is a deep conspiracy within the US government to keep the truth from US citizens,37 and that a programme like this would require huge resources, with security costs alone being obscene.38
The program had access to crash material and biologics.39 Puthoff has said its main problem was that it lacked the right scientists to properly understand the material it had access to,40 and considers it unlikely that its participants actually have the answers about UAP, because they too are hamstrung by a lack of access to the best scientists.41 The program was shut down because no progress had been made, since its participants could not get materials in front of scientists able to properly evaluate them.42 Puthoff has since clarified that the program itself was not shut down; rather, it was the attempt to make progress via AAWSAP that was halted.43 A specific component of the program involving defence contractors was halted, not the program as a whole.44 Puthoff bases his account of a shutdown on statements from the people who ran the effort and had it shut down, who were subsequently denied access to their own reports and materials.45 UAP Gerb has said Eric Davis and Christopher K. Mellon have stated that the program ceased in 1989 due to lack of progress.46 UAP Gerb has said Puthoff’s references to a specific element of the program being shut down in 1989 caused confusion, because it was not the entire programme.47 UAP Gerb has said the secrecy apparatus around the program, largely established as a centralised effort in 1947, has compounded and grown out of control.48 Some of the papers Puthoff commissioned on behalf of Bigelow Aerospace came from authors known to be involved in the program.49 Puthoff has said he was never himself part of the program,50 though he suspects its personnel share information selectively, based on whether doing so helps them accomplish their own objectives.51 He has also said Jay Stratton, as head of the UAP Task Force, involved around 16 different defence contractors and intelligence units in an effort to move UAP investigation forward beyond the program, but that the effort was not successful.52
Ross Coulthart has said people speaking to him from within what is called the Legacy Program convey that suppressed technological breakthroughs exist, and that there is deep frustration among them that Americans and the rest of the world are not being told the full truth.53 Coulthart wrote letters to people he assumed might know something about the program, and the responses were the most significant thing that changed his mind about UFOs.54 Nat Kobitz introduced him to people who had direct knowledge of the program.55 Coulthart has said Kobitz told him he had been read in - that is, national security briefed - into the program,56 and that the United States has recovered multiple non-human craft.57 Through Kobitz’s instigation and introductions, Coulthart met people inside the program who put everything on the line to tell him what they knew.58