{"it":{"id":"REC-KONA","name":"KONA BLUE proposal","kind":"gov","sub":"Released record","place":"Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC, USA","lat":38.88,"lon":-77.02,"date":"c. 2012 (after DIA cancelled AAWSAP)","rep":"Proposed to DHS. The DHS program brief for KONA BLUE is dated 2011 (logged 11 October 2011).","off":"Never approved.","src":[{"t":"AARO, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Vol. 1 (Mar 2024)","u":"https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-CLEARED-508-COMPLIANT-HRRV1-08-MAR-2024-FINAL.PDF"}],"tags":["Records"],"sum":"Kona Blue was the code name for a proposal to the Department of Homeland Security, made after the Defense Intelligence Agency cancelled its advanced aerospace program in 2012. Everything known about it publicly comes from one account: AARO's 2024 history of government UFO work, which draws on the proposal package and on interviews.\n\nAccording to AARO, the proposal asked the department to fund a new version of the cancelled program as a special access program. Its plans included UFO investigation, paranormal research into 'human consciousness anomalies', and reverse-engineering any recovered off-world craft. Some interviewees described it as a cover for the retrieval of 'non-human biologics'. An oral history section aimed to gather 'information pertaining to the location of advanced aerospace technology and biological samples' from retired officials. AARO says the proposal package shows Senators Lieberman and Reid asked for it with a promise of more funding.\n\nWhat is hard to explain is how a proposal resting on material no one had shown to exist got as far as a formal request inside a federal department.\n\nAARO's answer is that department leaders rejected it for lack of merit, that 'no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected', that the material was only assumed to exist, and that nothing was transferred. The limits of that account matter: the proposal itself has not been published in full, its authors are not named in AARO's report, and no one who backed it has given a public account that was opened for this page (single source).\n\nThe open question is how far belief alone can move a government program, and what the full proposal file would show.","nsrc":1,"new":1,"qs":["A proposal sought a secret program covering 'non-human biologics'. Who inside government thought there was enough to justify that?","KONA BLUE was never approved and never reported to Congress. Should proposals like this have to be disclosed even when rejected?","If officials were seriously drafting language about non-human biologics around 2012, what does that say about what they believed?"],"yt":"Read AARO's account of the proposal.","rel":["REC-AATIP","GOV-AARO"],"hook":"Kona Blue: a proposal to Homeland Security to recover 'non-human biologics'. It was rejected.","why":"A proposal that shows how claims of hidden alien programs moved through the US government."},"S":{},"rec":{"id":"REC-KONA","qs":["Kona Blue assumed recovered craft existed. What would its backers have needed to show?","Two senators backed it. How should officials weigh political support against evidence?","Everything public comes from one AARO report. What would an independent record need to contain?"],"gal":[],"ms":[],"aa":[],"ac":[],"src":[{"t":"AARO, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Vol. 1 (Mar 2024)","u":"https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-CLEARED-508-COMPLIANT-HRRV1-08-MAR-2024-FINAL.PDF"}],"pts":[{"p":"Proposed to DHS after AAWSAP cancellation.","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","b":"S","t":"AARO, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Vol. 1 (Mar 2024)","u":"https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-CLEARED-508-COMPLIANT-HRRV1-08-MAR-2024-FINAL.PDF"},{"p":"Claimed cover for non-human biologics.","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","b":"S","t":"AARO, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Vol. 1 (Mar 2024)","u":"https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-CLEARED-508-COMPLIANT-HRRV1-08-MAR-2024-FINAL.PDF"},{"p":"Never established as a SAP.","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","b":"S","t":"AARO, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Vol. 1 (Mar 2024)","u":"https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-CLEARED-508-COMPLIANT-HRRV1-08-MAR-2024-FINAL.PDF"},{"p":"Not reported to Congress at that time.","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","b":"S","t":"AARO, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Vol. 1 (Mar 2024)","u":"https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-CLEARED-508-COMPLIANT-HRRV1-08-MAR-2024-FINAL.PDF"}],"sum":"The people who brought the name to the Pentagon's UFO office described it as a secret. KONA BLUE, they said, was a sensitive compartment inside the Department of Homeland Security, created to cover up the retrieval and exploitation of \"non-human biologics.\" When the office, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, went looking, it found something stranger and smaller: not a hidden program, but a proposal for one, written by people who were sure the hidden program already existed somewhere else.\n\nAlmost everything known in public about KONA BLUE comes from a single source, the first volume of AARO's historical review of government UFO work, published in 2024. AARO drew on the proposal package itself, on statements from its originator, and on interviews. The proposal has not been released in full, its authors are not named, and no public account from its supporters was available for this page. What follows is AARO's account, with its limits in view.\n\nThe story begins with an earlier program. At the direction of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Congress set aside $22 million in the defence appropriations for the 2008 and 2010 fiscal years for the Defense Intelligence Agency to study long-term, \"over-the-horizon\" foreign aerospace threats. The agency set up the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, AAWSAP, in 2009, and hired a private-sector organisation to run it. Officially, the work covered 12 areas of cutting-edge science, such as advanced lift, propulsion and signature reduction. But the contractor, with the support of at least one government program manager, also investigated UFO cases and conducted paranormal research at a property in Utah then owned by the contractor's head, including reports of \"shadow figures\" and \"creatures.\" In June 2009 Reid asked the deputy secretary of defence to make the program a special access program. On the advice of the then intelligence under secretary, James Clapper, the request was declined.\n\nThe agency cancelled AAWSAP in 2012. AARO gives two descriptions of why: in one place, concerns at the agency and the Defense Department about the project once its deliverables were complete; in another, a lack of merit and of usefulness in what it had produced. Either way, the program's supporters did not give up. They went to Homeland Security and proposed that the department create and fund a new version of the program, this time as a special access program. That proposal was codenamed KONA BLUE.\n\nIts plans mirrored the work the contractor had done before. It would restart UFO investigations, resume paranormal research, including what it called \"human consciousness anomalies,\" and reverse-engineer any recovered off-world spacecraft that its backers hoped to acquire. One section, the Oral History Initiative, set out how they would find that material. It would collect data \"from an already identified and calibrated list of retired, previously highly placed government, armed services, contractor and intelligence community individuals,\" and gather \"all information pertaining to the location of advanced aerospace technology and biological samples, including records, files, reports, photographs, as well as physical samples.\"\n\nThe reasoning behind it, according to AARO, was simple. The advocates were convinced that the government was hiding UFO technology. If a properly constituted program existed at Homeland Security, they believed, the technology and knowledge of those hidden efforts could be moved under it, where congressional committees could oversee it properly. AARO says this belief was foundational to the proposal, based on the documents themselves and on several interviewees who told the same story to AARO and to Congress.\n\nThe proposal went further than one might expect. It gained enough traction that a prospective special access program was formally requested inside the department. According to AARO, the proposal package and the originator's statements show that Senators Lieberman and Reid asked for it to be established, with the promise of additional funding. Then department leaders rejected it for lacking merit.\n\nAARO's conclusion is blunt. \"It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected,\" the report says; the material \"was only assumed to exist\" by KONA BLUE's advocates and the contractors they expected to hire, the same assumption made by the same people during the earlier program. The program was never approved or stood up, and no data or material was ever transferred to Homeland Security. Because it never became a special access program, it never met the threshold for reporting to Congress at the time. When AARO identified it, the deputy secretary of defence sent Congress a notification anyway.\n\nThe report places KONA BLUE inside a larger pattern. It found that modern claims of a government cover-up of off-world technology largely trace back to one group of people with ties to the cancelled program and to the contractor's paranormal research, who have worked together on such efforts for years. It lists them by number rather than name, and says they have not provided it with any empirical evidence. In the same section it records that a separate intelligence program was expanded in 2021, without evidence or mission need, to include a UFO reverse-engineering mission. That program never recovered anything, and it too was shut down for lack of merit.\n\nThere are loose threads even in AARO's own telling. The documents it cites for the senators' support include Reid's 2009 letter about the earlier program and Clapper's memo of the same year, which predate the Homeland Security proposal. And the official account comes from the office whose task was to test the claims, with the full proposal still unpublished.\n\nWhat is left is a small, revealing episode: a group of people who believed so firmly in craft and bodies no one had shown them that they drafted the paperwork to take custody of them, and found senators willing to help. If belief alone could carry a proposal that far inside a federal department, what would it take for the public to see the file and judge it for themselves?"},"img":null,"md":{"h":"img/m/REC-KONA-16x9.webp","w":1600,"hh":900,"alt":"Illustration: setting associated with KONA BLUE proposal, Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC, USA","by":"Illustration made for The Nommo","lic":"","lu":"","p":"","g":true,"ct":false,"cap":"","sec":[]},"hh":null,"hs":{}}