Skinwalkers at the Pentagon
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The Premise
Skinwalkers at the Pentagon details the history, administration, and findings of the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP), a $22 million Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) initiative that ran from 2008 to 2012. Contracted to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), the program was established to investigate UAPs and assess their theoretical threat to national security.
The book’s central arguments challenge the mainstream perception of UFOs as strictly physical, extraterrestrial spacecraft:
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The Psychophysical Nature of the Phenomenon: The authors argue that UAP events rarely occur in isolation as purely kinematic aerospace anomalies. Instead, they are frequently accompanied by profound biological effects, consciousness alterations, and high-strangeness paranormal activity (including poltergeist activity, cryptid sightings, and floating orbs), specifically centered around locations like the Uinta Basin and Skinwalker Ranch in Utah.
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The “Hitchhiker Effect”: The book introduces the concept of an infectious, non-local intelligence. It argues that DIA personnel, scientists, and military intelligence officers who visited Skinwalker Ranch essentially “caught” the phenomenon. Anomalous and terrifying activity subsequently followed these officials back to their homes across the United States, manifesting around their spouses and children.
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Weaponization and Threat Analysis: The authors posit that the physics and biological manipulation demonstrated by the phenomenon represent a profound asymmetry in defense capabilities. The program sought to understand these mechanisms to prevent technological surprise by foreign adversaries who might be studying the same anomalies.
Primary Evidence
Unlike speculative UAP literature, the evidence in this book rests on the institutional authority and primary-source documentation of its authors. Dr. James Lacatski was the DIA intelligence officer who created and managed AAWSAP, while Dr. Colm Kelleher was the BAASS deputy administrator who oversaw the day-to-day scientific field investigations.
Their primary evidence includes:
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Declassified Defense Intelligence Reference Documents (DIRDs): A suite of 38 theoretical physics and aerospace papers commissioned by the program to model the advanced capabilities observed in UAPs (e.g., warp drives, metamaterials, cognitive manipulation).
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Epidemiological Tracking: Clinical interviews and medical tracking of the “hitchhiker effect” among deployed personnel and their families, treating the paranormal transmission almost like a viral outbreak.
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Internal Government Reports: Excerpts and summaries from the massive, multi-volume Data Identification and Management Reports that BAASS officially delivered to the DIA, confirming that the U.S. government actively funded research into poltergeists and cryptids under the umbrella of aerospace threat assessment.
Why's It's Important
Analytically, Skinwalkers at the Pentagon is a pivotal historical text because it fundamentally redefines the scope of the modern government UAP disclosure narrative.
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De-conflating AAWSAP and AATIP: The book corrects the historical record regarding recent Pentagon UAP efforts. It distinguishes AAWSAP—the original, heavily funded DIA project investigating extreme high-strangeness and biological effects—from the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which was a subsequent, narrowly scoped, unfunded Pentagon effort led by Luis Elizondo that focused strictly on the “nuts and bolts” of aerospace encounters (like the Nimitz Tic-Tac).
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Expanding the Paradigm Beyond “Nuts and Bolts”: By documenting a multi-million-dollar government program that treated paranormal activity, interdimensional hypotheses, and UAPs as interconnected facets of the same overarching intelligence, the book aligns modern military intelligence data with the complex psychophysical frameworks proposed decades earlier by researchers like Jacques Vallée and J. Allen Hynek.
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Establishing the Defense Context for High Strangeness: It reveals that the defense establishment viewed parapsychology and anomalies not as fringe pseudo-science, but as observable data points requiring rigorous theoretical physics modeling and counterintelligence protocols. It forces serious researchers to confront the fact that the U.S. intelligence apparatus found the bizarre, consciousness-altering aspects of the phenomenon credible enough to warrant continuous funding and epidemiological study.
Our Evaluation
This book tells the political side of the government’s AAWSAP program: How it was conceived, funded, and operated. The goes on to tell of the research done and the research results delivered. This is a historically important documentation of a government UAP program told by the operators of the program.
