Why UFO Secrets May Be Hidden in Private Companies, Not Government Files

When George Knapp spoke at the recent congressional hearing on UFOs, he made a claim that went beyond the usual discussion of sightings and military reports. He said much of the government’s UFO research has been handed over to private companies. The effect, he explained, is that the work is now out of reach of the Freedom of Information Act.

That difference is important. FOIA, or the Freedom of Information Act, allows the public and the press to request records from government agencies. Even with delays and denials, it has forced out documents that officials would rather have kept buried. But FOIA does not apply to private companies. Once research is outsourced, the files, data, and materials belong to contractors. Private firms cannot be compelled to respond to requests in the same way federal agencies can. Moving projects into corporate hands creates a gap in accountability that FOIA cannot close.

Knapp later pointed to Lockheed, a company with a long record of secretive work. Its Skunk Works division produced the F-117 stealth fighter, an aircraft so advanced that it was often mistaken for a UFO in the skies over Nevada. More recently, it has been confirmed that Lockheed tested a piece of metal said to come from the Roswell crash. The fragment had passed through private hands before landing on their desk, and when they analyzed it, it turned out to be material from a World War II project. In the end, it was ordinary. But the path it took tells the story Knapp was warning about: from a fringe group to a private company, and then into a Pentagon investigator’s report. At no point in that process was FOIA of any use.

Robert Bigelow’s organisations show the same pattern. His National Institute for Discovery Science investigated UFOs in the 1990s, and later Bigelow Aerospace built facilities to hold materials linked to government studies of unexplained aerial phenomena. Housing them in a private warehouse meant they were effectively sealed off. Whatever was stored there could not be reached by a FOIA request. For researchers who have spent decades filing those requests, combing through declassified records, and piecing together fragments of the story, it is a bitter realisation. The trail may not have gone cold because the records don’t exist, but because they were rerouted into places the law cannot reach.

Other defence contractors, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Boeing, are often mentioned as possible players. Their long histories of classified aerospace projects and experimental research make them natural candidates. Even if the rumours of exotic technology remain unproven, these companies have the resources and the security structures to handle it if asked.

Officially, the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office insists that no evidence has ever been found showing the U.S. government, or any contractor, has recovered alien technology. That may be the truth. But it also may be a limitation of the system itself. If materials have already been moved into corporate labs, then AARO would have nothing to find. FOIA would not uncover it, and congressional inquiries would be stonewalled by contracts and classification.

Congress has shown signs it understands this problem. In the 2024 defence bill, lawmakers included language giving the federal government eminent domain over any recovered UFO materials or biological evidence, even if those are held by private contractors. The wording makes it clear that they know the trail may lead outside government walls, and they want a way to bring it back under their control.

The U.S. government has outsourced research and development before. During the Cold War, the CIA turned to Lockheed to build the U-2 spy plane and the SR-71 Blackbird. By outsourcing the work, the agency gained both advanced engineering and a level of secrecy that kept the projects hidden from public view. The same approach appears to be used today. What once concealed reconnaissance aircraft may now be concealing UFO research from the public.

If the research has been moved into private hands, then the truth isn’t locked in government files at all, it’s hidden behind doors the public has no legal right to open. If secrecy has shifted into the private sector, then government disclosure alone will never be enough. Until that is addressed, the frustration of researchers and the mystery itself will only deepen.