For years, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program spent $22 million on investigating reports of unidentified flying objects, but that money was impossible to find in the $600 billion annual Defense Department budgets. The New York Times interviewed Defense Department officials, program participants and reviewed records of the mysterious program, which was run by a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring. The Defense Department has never before acknowledged that this program existed, and says it shut down in 2012 (it was started in 2007). But others say that though the Pentagon ended funding that year, the program itself remains in existence. Officials within the program have continued to investigate episodes that are brought to them, while also completing their other Defense Department duties.
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