By KEN KORCZAK
What is it with the Department of Homeland Security? I mean, are these guys interested in UFOs or not?
These questions surfaced for me again as I observed the latest UFO controversy surrounding a recently declassified top-secret government “almost program” with the sexy name of KONA BLUE.
It may sound like a trendy, high-end beverage selection at Starbucks or someone’s favorite blend of marijuana at an artisan weed shop — but Kona Blue, if it had been funded, would have been a remarkable undertaking.
Indeed, just funding it may have been at least a tacit admission (or maybe full admission?) that our government has a crashed UFO in its possession, including “non-human biologics” — you know, what the rest of like to call “aliens.”
Unfortunately, Kona Blue ended up like a fetus conceived in the womb of the Pentagon UFO research uterus but was aborted in the bowels of a bureaucratic boardroom before it could emerge as a fully viable baby.
Before I discuss Kona Blue further, let me back up and retell a strange tale of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its UFO connections.
Hang with me. You are going to want to hear this. Why?
Because it involves Men-in-Black!
MEN-IN-BLACK WORK FOR THE DHS!
For those familiar with UFO literature, the Men-in-Black (MIB) trope has been a recurring aspect of the phenomenon since the beginning of the modern UFO era.
Indeed, the very first sighting of UFO as reported by private pilot Kenneth Arnold in 1947 later produced a subsequent complicated and strange series of events heavily laced with an intensive MIB element.
Long before Hollywood introduced a farcical version of MIBs to a wider public with the blockbuster 1997 movie starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, Men-in-Black have been turning up repeatedly in UFO encounters since the late 1940s.
Now enter the famous $22 million Pentagon UFO project that was famously outed by the New York Times as “AATIP” in a 2017 front-page story. Of course, what the New York Times mistakenly identified as AATIP was, in reality, a program called AAWSAP, the Advanced Aerospace Weapons Application Program.
AAWSAP was directed by Dr. James Lacatski and the № 2 man was Dr. Colm Kelleher. The purpose of AAWSAP was multifaceted and included studying UFOs along with sundry weird phenomena at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah. The study cranked out hundreds of reports on a wide array of paranormal-type activities.
One of those paranormal activities was the Men-in-Black phenomenon.
Lacatski, Kelleher and journalist George Knapp co-authored a book about the AAWSAP study titled Skinwalkers at the Pentagon. Lacatski said the U.S. Department of Defense reviewed the book “line by line” and approved it only after an intense 14 months of review in which much was redacted or not allowed in print.
THE GEORGIA UFO INCIDENT
One of the stories in the book involved a northern Georgia man by the name of Derek Jones. (His real name apparently). On May 8, 2009, Jones was alerted by the sudden raucous barking of his two dogs in his backyard. He stepped out to see what the fuss was about.
The fuss was a large triangular craft of about 300 feet in length moving in total silence above his house. The object sported a yellowish light at each of its three points and a bluish-white light in the middle. This gigantic craft was followed by four smaller UFOs — two were egg-shaped and two were round.
The black triangle and its companion crafts were a mere 60 feet above his property!
The details of the sighting are involved and complex, but to make a long story short, Jones opts to get out a million-candle-power spotlight and shine it at the craft.
The silent black triangle swiftly “retaliated” by sending down a bluish-white beam of light that struck Jones directly.
The beam resulted in Jones falling ill, including headaches, nausea and weakness, symptoms akin to radiation exposure. He reported the event to MUFON — and MUFON, in turn, reported the incident to the AAWSAP team. AAWSAP had set up a data-sharing partnership with MUFON. (Note: MUFON is the Mutual UFO Network.)
The morning after the black triangle incident, Derek Jones heard loud and urgent rapping at his door. It was 7:30 a.m. Sure enough, he was about to be accosted by two classic MIBs — Men-in-Black!
MEN-IN-BLACK DO THEIR THING
Itwas the whole bit with all the now well-known archetypical elements of a MIB encounter. The Men-in-Black were tall, scary-looking guys with pasty skin and odd mannerisms. Large and intimidating, Jones said they both looked to be 200-pounders. They were wearing black suits, black ties and white shirts. They drove a late-model black SUV.
As per usual in MIB encounters, the two weird men peppered Mr. Jones with questions about what he had seen. They not-so-subtly made it clear to him that they were armed. They issued thinly veiled threats.
The MIBs told Jones to “keep his mouth” shut about what he had seen and that telling anyone could result in “serious consequences.”
Naturally, Mr. Jones was baffled and nonplussed by the MIB encounter. What had he done wrong? What the hell? Is seeing a UFO — and getting zapped by it — somehow against the law now?
Who were these guys and who do they work for? Jones wondered.
After a harrowing and hostile “interview,” the MIBs left the Jones resident, but he was to encounter them again a few days later near a gas station. They seemed to be following him. This time, however, Mr. Jones had the presence of mind to write down the license plate number of the “MIB vehicle.”
This information was supplied to Lacatski and Kelleher’s AAWSAP team via MUFON. Researchers with the team managed to run a successful trace on the MIB vehicle plates.
Are you ready for the results? Well, get this:
The MIB car plates were traced to the motor pool of the Department of Homeland Security!
That’s right!
The famous and notorious Men-in-Black who have been part of the modern UFO narrative since the beginning now seem to be at least associated in some way with the Department of Homeland Security!
Keep in mind that DHS is a relatively new governmental agency. It was created in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City. DHS opened for business on November 25, 2002 — while the MIBs have been around for at least seven decades.
But here I have established at least one indirect connection between the legendary Men-in-Black and our sainted Department of Homeland Security.
AAWSAP MAXES OUT ITS BUDGET
Lacatski and Kelleher spent the $22 million allotted to the AAWSAP study by 2012 and reported an array of super-bizarre phenomena including:
–> UFO encounters
–> 7-foot-tall “wolfmen”
–> Blue orbs that attacked people
–> Hitchhiker orbs
–> Poltergeist activity
–> Shadow people
–> An invisible “alien” observed via remote viewing
–> Observation of a possible interdimensional dinosaur
–> A bizarre tube-like object floating inside a Skinwalker Ranch building
–> Portals that opened up in the middle of nowhere
–> Men-in-Black incident
–> And more
IMPORTANT NOTE: I’m not making any of this up! It’s all in the official Pentagon report and the book! Again, all of it was approved for public release after the Department of Defense reviewed every line!
Whatever the case, now the money was spent and Lacatski and Kelleher felt they had just scratched the surface and were eager to obtain more funds to continue the study of these amazing phenomena.
Thus, they went shopping around the massive labyrinth of U.S. federal agencies for a new sponsor for continued research. They wrote up a new proposal.
That new program was to be called Kona Blue.
KONA BLUE: ENTER “THE ILLOGICAL ZONE”
An enormous amount of effort went into designing a new project. It included a heavily detailed tally of everything Pentagon scientists wanted to study. One might say it was a plan to continue looking into all the amazing things uncovered by AAWSAP.
A three-year, multimillion-dollar proposal was drafted. It was incredibly ambitious and detailed. It involved multiple years and tens of millions of dollars for a proposed budget. Here is a brief summary:
Fiscal year 2012: Minimum of $12 million
Fiscal years 2013: Minimum $25 million
Fiscal year 2014: Minimum $35 to $50 million
Fiscal years 2015–17: (Budget to be announced).
Kona Blue was designated as a PSAP — Prospective Special Access Program. I want to reiterate that the proposal stated — in no uncertain terms — that it wanted to:
“Protect the retrieval and exploitation of “non-human biologics.”
HOW KONA BLUE WAS OUTED
We now know about the once-classified Kona Blue proposal by way of AARO, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office established by Congress in 2022. It now operates within the U.S. Department of Defense.
One of the first tasks of AARO was to conduct a thorough “historical review” of everything the government had on UFOs. Through this process, “multiple interviewees” identified KONA BLUE as a Department of Homeland Security sensitive compartment established to protect the retrieval and exploitation of “non-human biologics.”
Christopher Sharp is the former editor of Liberation Times, and he is now a Senior Contributing Journalist with the Daily Mail in the U.K. He wrote in the April 23, 2024, edition of the Liberation Times:
According to insiders involved in establishing a UAP/UFO-related Prospective Special Access Program (PSAP) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), DHS staff emerged from meetings with two other U.S. government agencies, rumored to possess advanced non-human materials, ‘convinced that advanced technology was sequestered under government supervision at aerospace contractors’ facilities.’ (Source)
KONA BLUE GETS CANNED
To keep my article short, I’m skipping over tons of stuff, but suffice it to say that Kona Blue was never funded, despite having the support of the brilliant Dr. Tara O’Toole. She was serving at the time as the Undersecretary for Science and Technology at the Department of Homeland Security.
Both Lacatski and Kelleher said that “they had engaged with Dr. O’Toole” and “persuaded her” to establish a new program that was to be Kona Blue. Apparently, Dr. O’Toole had seen or heard plenty and may have been convinced that somewhere in the catacombs of the Military Industrial Complex there was a retrieved UFO crash vehicle along with “non-human biologicals.”
And why shouldn’t she believe that? For example, Dr. Lacatski himself has made no effort to hide from the public the reality that he had direct discussions — including with a U.S. Senator and an Undersecretary of Defense — about an alien or non-human spacecraft that is currently in the possession of either the U.S. government or one of its hired private defense industry contractors (which is possibly Lockheed Martin).
Lacatski has blabbed about it in his new book and also spoken about it frankly on podcasts streamed on at least one YouTube channel. Furthermore, Lacatski is just one “insider” who has spoken out about what the government has.
Nevertheless, and for whatever reason, Kona Blue was rejected and never funded. The rest is history — or history interrupted.
Now, however, the official line of AARO is that the crashed UFO alluded to in the Kona Blue proposal does not exist for the very reason that the project was never funded!
That’s right!
This bizarre circular logic has prompted a lot of brilliant people, scientists and former government insiders to call out the illogicality of it all. One example is Dr. Bob McGwier, a Ph.D. mathematician and engineer who spent years working for the CIA and is now retired. Here is what he recently tweeted (Xed) in response to the Kona Blue government position:
None of this stopped the former director of AARO, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, from making the idiotic statement in a March interview with the National Security Space Association:
“We had several interviewees come in who named Kona Blue as the program that was housing the reverse engineering and non-human intelligence bodies of this craft, and that is absolutely not the case.”
But, of course, Kona Blue only never existed because it was never funded but was predicated on solid, multiple-sourced information that reverse engineering programs do exist. Dr. Kirkpatrick’s statement caused an exasperated George Knapp to comment:
“Does Dr. Kirpatrick assume that everyone other than himself is a total nitwit?” (Source)
LOL.
And around it goes. So, it is probably now time to move on from Kona Blue and for UFO advocates to press forward, write letters to their Congressional representatives, voice support for future Kona Blue-like programs and … and … do whatever we all do every day in the UFO community.