If AARO Exists, Why Do We Need a New Law?
AARO, the Pentagon’s office for unidentified anomalous phenomena, has a legal right to UAP data held across the defense and intelligence agencies, and no way to make any of them hand it over.
When advocates ask Congress for UFO disclosure legislation, they often hear that the job is already being done. Congress created the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office for exactly this purpose, the argument goes, so why build anything new?
On paper, AARO’s authority is real. Its statute, codified in Title 50 of the U.S. Code alongside the laws governing the intelligence community, directs the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense to require every intelligence agency and defense component holding UAP data to make it available to the office “immediately.” It also gives government and contractor personnel a protected channel for reporting what they know.
What the statute does not give AARO is any way to enforce those rights on its own. It has no subpoena power. Its access depends on two senior officials enforcing a mandate that is qualified, in its own text, by the need to protect “intelligence sources and methods.” And the kinds of programs that would be hardest to find, covert actions and waived special access programs, report to Congress through channels that never pass through AARO at all.
The UAP Disclosure Act proposed a body with the powers AARO lacks, an independent Records Review Board able to subpoena witnesses and records. Congress stripped the board from the final law in 2023. In July 2026 the House voted to create one. It now needs the Senate.
Sources: 50 U.S.C. § 3373, as amended · 50 U.S.C. § 3373b · Burlison amendment (House, July 2026)
I had reservations about AARO due to assessments they were reporting publicly at that time as a “misrepresentation” of the truth. Because of these concerns, I did not share sources and methods information to protect current and former federal personnel who had firsthand exposure to “technologies of unknown origin.”
What the law gives AARO
More than most people assume.
Congress required the office in the defense bill for fiscal year 2022, and the Defense Department stood it up under its current name on July 20, 2022. In December 2022 Congress rewrote its charter. Today its director reports to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence on operational matters, and to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security on administrative ones.
Two provisions matter most. The first is a data mandate.
“The Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense shall jointly require that each element of the intelligence community and component of the Department of Defense with data relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena makes such data available immediately to the Office in a manner that protects intelligence sources and methods.”
50 U.S.C. § 3373(f)(1)(A), as amended through December 2025
Congress strengthened that language in the defense bill it passed in December 2025.
The second is a reporting channel. Under 50 U.S.C. § 3373b, a disclosure made through it “shall not be subject to a nondisclosure agreement,” is not a violation of the laws on disclosing classified information, and cannot be the basis for reprisal, including the revocation of a security clearance. The same section requires the Secretary of Defense to notify Congress within 72 hours when a disclosure concerns a special access program that “has not been explicitly and clearly reported” to the defense or intelligence committees.
That last clause is easy to read past. Congress wrote into AARO’s own statute a procedure for programs Congress itself had not been told about.
What AARO doesn’t have
A way to make anyone comply.
Nothing in AARO’s statute gives it subpoena power or any other compulsory process. If an agency or contractor does not hand over records, AARO cannot order it to. Enforcing the mandate falls to the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense.
AARO’s 2024 historical report states its conclusion on reverse-engineering claims this way:
“AARO determined, based on all information provided to date, that claims involving specific people, known locations, technological tests, and documents allegedly involved in or related to the reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial technology, are inaccurate.”
Two kinds of classified program report to Congress on tracks of their own. Neither involves AARO.
A covert action requires a written finding by the President. The finding goes to the House and Senate intelligence committees, ordinarily before the action begins. In what the statute calls “extraordinary circumstances affecting vital interests of the United States,” the President may limit notice to as few as eight members of Congress: the four party leaders of the House and Senate and the chairs and ranking members of the two intelligence committees. AARO has no role in this process.
Source: 50 U.S.C. § 3093(c)
The Defense Department reports its special access programs to the congressional defense committees. When the Secretary of Defense determines that including certain details “would adversely affect the national security,” the statute allows those details to be left out of the full report and given instead to the chair and ranking minority member of each defense committee. Defense Department policy calls these waived programs. AARO is not part of this process either.
Source: 10 U.S.C. § 119(e)
When a disclosure made through AARO’s protected channel concerns “a restricted access activity, a special access program, or a compartmented access program that has not been explicitly and clearly reported to the congressional defense committees or the congressional intelligence committees,” the Secretary of Defense must report it to those committees and to congressional leadership within 72 hours. The provision only works if someone inside such a program comes forward first.
Source: 50 U.S.C. § 3373b
Title 10 of the U.S. Code governs the armed forces. Title 50 covers war and national defense, including most of the law that governs the intelligence community. AARO’s own statute is codified in Title 50, and its data mandate reaches every element of the intelligence community. What it lacks is a way to enforce that mandate on its own.
Source: 50 U.S.C. § 3373, as amended
What Congress has heard
Witnesses and members of Congress have challenged AARO’s findings on the record.
At a House Oversight hearing on July 26, 2023, Rep. Virginia Foxx read former intelligence officer David Grusch a line from the AARO director’s Senate testimony that spring: that the office had found “no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity.”
Rep. Foxx: To your knowledge, is that statement correct?
David Grusch: It is not accurate. I believe Dr. Kirkpatrick mentioned he had about 30 individuals that have come to AARO thus far. A few of those individuals have also come to AARO that I also interviewed. And I know what they provided Dr. Kirkpatrick and their team. I was able to evaluate that information.
In November 2024, at a joint Oversight hearing, Rep. Nancy Mace turned to the office’s own opacity.
“I am disturbed that AARO itself lacks transparency. Even its budget is kept from the public. So, if there is no there ‘there’, then why are we spending money on it, and by how much? Why the secrecy if it is really no big deal and there is nothing there? Why hide it from the American people? Because I am not a mathematician, but I can tell you that does not add up.”
Dylan Borland, the Air Force veteran quoted above, told the committee in September 2025 that he met with AARO in March 2023 and withheld sources and methods information to protect the people involved. Opening that hearing, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who chairs the Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, addressed AARO’s former director by name.
“Recently, the former AARO director known as Sean Kirkpatrick attacked our witnesses and members on this Committee. It should be noted that he is a documented liar and brings into question what his purpose at AARO really was if it was not to followup on investigations and disclose his findings to Members of Congress.”
Moments later she described what an oversight office must not become.
“If we set up offices and oversight bodies only to let them become graveyards for testimony or, worse yet, ruses for pretending to investigate when in actuality there was no followup, then we are not doing our jobs.”
Kirkpatrick left AARO in December 2023 and has defended its work. Writing in Scientific American in 2024, he described the claims of hidden programs as “a textbook example of circular reporting, with each person relaying what they heard, but the information often ultimately being sourced to the same small group of individuals.”
Sources: hearing transcript, July 26, 2023 · Nov. 13, 2024 · Sept. 9, 2025 · Borland written testimony · AARO Historical Record Report, Vol. 1 (2024) · Kirkpatrick, Scientific American (2024)
What would close the gap
A body that can compel what AARO can only request.
The UAP Disclosure Act, introduced in 2023 by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Mike Rounds and modeled on the law that opened the JFK assassination records, proposed an independent, Senate-confirmed Records Review Board. It would have had the power to hold hearings and subpoena witnesses and documents, which is precisely what AARO lacks.
The defense bill Congress passed that December kept a collection of UAP records at the National Archives and dropped the board along with its subpoena power. Decisions about what stays classified went back to the agencies that created the records, and to the President.
In July 2026 the House adopted an amendment from Rep. Eric Burlison to the 2027 defense bill that would create “an independent, Senate-confirmed UAP Records Review Board with subpoena authority to review records, hear testimony, and determine whether information should remain protected.” The Senate has not yet acted.
Sources: DefenseScoop on the 2023 bill · Burlison amendment
The short answer
Citizens for Disclosure volunteers meet with members of Congress and their staff, and “AARO already handles this” is an objection they hear often. Here is the answer in four sentences.
AARO can request records but can’t compel them. It has no subpoena power. The most tightly held programs report to Congress through channels that bypass it entirely. A Records Review Board with subpoena authority would close that gap, and the House voted for one in July 2026.
Want to be the one making this case? Citizens for Disclosure is NPI’s volunteer network, with local and state chapters. It’s free to join, no donation required, and our team will help you find your place in it.
Related
- Who Decides What UAP Records Get Released? · Full Disclosure, episode 4
- Should the White House Control UFO Disclosure? · Full Disclosure, episode 12
- How Protected Are UAP Whistleblowers, Really? · Full Disclosure, episode 3
- What Would Actually Protect a UAP Whistleblower? · Full Disclosure, episode 5
- AARO and the 2024 UAP Report · The Disinformation Series
- Tell the Senate to Pass the UAPDA · Take action
- Join Citizens for Disclosure · Take action
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