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Bryan Bender (born May 18, 1972) is a communications executive and former award-winning national security reporter and editor who advises tech companies, nonprofits and research universities for SMI, [1] a Washington, DC, government affairs firm, and is an adjunct professor [2] at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
He is former senior national correspondent and defense editor for POLITICO, [3] where he authored the Morning Defense newsletter and edited POLITICO Space. [4]
He previously served as the Pentagon correspondent for The Boston Globe and Washington Bureau Chief for Jane’s Defence Weekly .
Bender has covered U.S. military and diplomatic operations in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Latin America, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has reported on a range of topics such as domestic and international terrorism; the international arms trade; veterans affairs; military training; nuclear arms control; [5] the anti-war movement; the nexus between climate change and national security; [6] government secrecy; [7] and newly declassified government files on Cuba, Vietnam, the Kennedy Administration, and unidentified anomalous phenomena, [8] or UAP.
He is author You Are Not Forgotten, [9] the story of an Iraq War veteran’s search for a missing World War II fighter pilot in the jungles of New Guinea. He has also extensively covered the U.S. military ongoing search for missing personnel [10] from past conflicts. [11]
Bender is researching a book on the early political careers of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in the House of Representatives. [12]
Bender is a native of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and attended the United Hebrew Institute in Kingston and Wyoming Valley West High School in Plymouth. He earned undergraduate degrees in Political Science and English Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. [13]
In 1998, Bender was named the Washington bureau chief for Jane's Defence Weekly , a London-based magazine.
In 2007, Bender was a finalist for the Scripps Howard Foundation's Washington Reporting Award for an investigation into an Army cheating scandal. [14] [15]
In 2011, he was a finalist for the Gerald R. Loeb Award for Distinguished Business Reporting for a probe into the growing role of retired generals and admirals in defense companies and as private consultants. [16] [17]
In 2013, he was awarded the National Press Foundation's Everett Dirksen Award [18] for Distinguished Reporting of Congress for an investigation of the growing role of think tanks in partisan politics.
In 2023, he was the recipient of the European Press Prize for Investigative Reporting for an investigation into a global teenage network of neo-Nazis in collaboration with the German newspaper Welt. [19]
Bender serves as a member of the advisory board of Americans for Safe Aerospace, a non-profit advocacy organization led by military pilots that is dedicated to securing American aerospace and greater government transparency about UFOs. [20]
He is also former president of Military Reporters and Editors Association, the professional association for journalists covering the U.S. military. [21] [22]
His work has also appeared in The New Republic , The New York Times , [23] Los Angeles Times , [24] Jane's Defence Weekly, [25] among other publications. He is also frequent television and radio commentator on national security and foreign policy topics. [26] [27] [28]
Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation that originated within the US Department of Defense of the United States government in 1962. The proposals called for CIA operatives to both stage and commit acts of terrorism against American military and civilian targets, blame them on the Cuban government, and would be used to justify a war against Cuba. The possibilities detailed in the document included the remote control of civilian aircraft which would be secretly repainted as US Air Force planes, a fabricated 'shoot down' of a US Air Force fighter aircraft off the coast of Cuba, the possible assassination of Cuban immigrants, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, blowing up a U.S. ship, and orchestrating terrorism in U.S. cities. The proposals were rejected by President John F. Kennedy.
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled The History of U.S. Decision-Making in Vietnam, 1945–1968, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1968. Released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study, they were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971. A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated, among other things, that Lyndon B. Johnson's administration had "systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress."
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is a member of the United States Intelligence Community and an agency of the United States Department of Defense which designs, builds, launches, and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the U.S. federal government, and provides satellite intelligence to several government agencies, particularly signals intelligence (SIGINT) to the NSA, imagery intelligence (IMINT) to the NGA, and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) to the DIA. The NRO announced in 2023 that it plans within the following decade to quadruple the number of satellites it operates and increase the number of signals and images it delivers by a factor of ten.
The military budget of the United States is the largest portion of the discretionary federal budget allocated to the Department of Defense (DoD), or more broadly, the portion of the budget that goes to any military-related expenditures. The military budget pays the salaries, training, and health care of uniformed and civilian personnel, maintains arms, equipment and facilities, funds operations, and develops and buys new items. The budget funds six branches of the US military: the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Air Force, and Space Force.
Lloyd James Austin III is an American politician and retired United States Army four-star general who is serving as the 28th United States secretary of defense since January 22, 2021. Before retiring from the military in 2016, Austin served as the 12th commander of United States Central Command (CENTCOM), beginning in March 2013. Prior to that he served as the 33rd vice chief of staff of the Army from January 2012 to March 2013, and as commander of United States Forces – Iraq from September 2010 to December 2011. He is the first African American to hold each of these positions. After retiring from the armed services Austin joined the boards of Raytheon Technologies, Nucor, Tenet Healthcare, and Auburn University. On December 7, 2020, he was nominated for defense secretary by then-President-elect Joe Biden and was confirmed by the United States Senate on January 22, 2021, by a vote of 93–2.
Jennifer Griffin is an American journalist who works as Chief national security correspondent at the Pentagon for Fox News. She joined Fox News in October 1999 as a Jerusalem-based correspondent. Prior to the posting, she reported for three years from Moscow for Fox News.
Christopher Karl Mellon, is a private equity investor, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and later for Security and Information Operations. He formerly served as the Staff Director of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He is a member of the influential Mellon family out of the Greater Pittsburgh area. Mellon has lobbied for U.S. government investigations into UFO/UAP.
John William Raymond is a retired United States Space Force general who served as the first chief of space operations from 2019 to 2022. The first guardian, he served as commander of the United States Space Command from 2019 to 2020.
John F. Kirby is a retired United States Navy rear admiral serving as White House National Security Communications Advisor since 2024. He previously served in the Biden administration as Pentagon Press Secretary and Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs from 2021 to 2022 and as Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council in the White House from 2022 to 2024. He worked as a military and diplomatic analyst for CNN from 2017 to 2021. He served in the Obama administration as Pentagon Press Secretary from 2013 to 2015 and as the spokesperson for the United States Department of State and Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs from 2015 to 2017.
James Charles McConville is a retired United States Army general who served as the 40th chief of staff of the Army from 2019 to 2023. He previously served as the 36th vice chief of staff of the Army from 2017 to 2019. Prior to that, he served as the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel (G1).
The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was an unclassified but unpublicized investigatory effort funded by the United States Government to study unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP). The program was first made public on December 16, 2017. The program began in 2007, with funding of $22 million over the five years until the available appropriations were ended in 2012. The program began in the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
Luis Elizondo is a media personality and former U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent and former employee of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.
Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation is a History Channel TV series purportedly exposing the US government's secret programs investigating unidentified flying objects (UFOs). It features former military counter-intelligence officer Luis Elizondo, who directed the Defense Intelligence Agency's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, and Christopher Mellon, former United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Elizondo says that he resigned after he became frustrated that the government was not taking UFOs, which he considered to be a national security threat, seriously enough.
To the Stars Incorporated, formerly known as To The Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences (TTSA), is a San Diego-based company co-founded by Tom DeLonge, Harold E. Puthoff (physicist), and Jim Semivan. The company, which is composed of aerospace, science, and entertainment divisions, has produced music recordings, books, television shows and films. A focus of the company is the promotion of UFOs and other fringe science.
The Pentagon UFO videos are selected visual recordings of FLIR targeting from United States Navy fighter jets based aboard aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt in 2004, 2014 and 2015, with additional footage taken by other Navy personnel in 2019. The four grainy, monochromic videos, widely characterized as officially documenting UFOs, have received extensive coverage in the media since 2017. The Pentagon later addressed and officially released the first three videos of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) in 2020, and confirmed the provenance of the leaked 2019 videos in two statements made in 2021. Footage of UAPs was also released in 2023, sourced from MQ9 military drones.
The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is an office within the United States Office of the Secretary of Defense that investigates unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and other phenomena in the air, sea, and/or space and/or on land: sometimes referred to as "unidentified aerial phenomena" or "unidentified anomalous phenomena" (UAP). Its first director was physicist Sean Kirkpatrick, and its current acting director is Tim Phillips who reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks.
Kathleen Anne Holland Hicks is an American government official who has served as the United States deputy secretary of defense since 2021. She is the first Senate-confirmed woman in this role and is the highest ranking woman currently serving in the United States Department of Defense. Hicks previously served as the principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy during the Obama administration. By 2020 Hicks was an academic and national security advisor working as a senior vice president and director of the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Mara Elizabeth Karlin is an American foreign policy and defense advisor. In April 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Karlin to serve as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans and Capabilities. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate by voice vote on August 9, 2021. Previously, she served as the Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. In her role, she served as the main advisor to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on U.S. security policies related to every country in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Eurasia, and the Western Hemisphere. Her portfolio included shaping U.S. defense policy related to NATO.
On 17 May 2022, members of the United States House Intelligence Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation held congressional hearings with top military officials to discuss military reports of unexplained aerial phenomena (UAPs). It was the first public congressional hearing into UFO sightings in the US in over 50 years.
Investigation and analysis of reported UFO incidents under the federal government of the United States has taken place under multiple branches and agencies, past and current, since 1947. In spite of decades of interest, there remains no evidence that there are any purported UFOs with extraordinary provenance and, indeed, those identified all have been shown to be natural phenomena, human technology, misapprehensions, delusions, or hoaxes.
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