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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]
His work has also appeared in The New Republic , The New York Times , [22] Los Angeles Times , [23] Jane's Defence Weekly, [24] among other publications. He is also frequent television and radio commentator on national security and foreign policy topics. [25] [26] [27]
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 use them 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 Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, 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. It 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.
Michèle Angélique Flournoy is an American defense policy advisor who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy under President Bill Clinton and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under President Barack Obama.
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 a retired United States Army four-star general who has served as the 28th and current United States secretary of defense since January 22, 2021.
The United States Department of Defense is an executive branch department of the federal government of the United States charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the U.S. government directly related to national security and the United States Armed Forces. As of June 2022, the U.S. Department of Defense is the largest employer in the world, with over 1.34 million active-duty service members, including soldiers, marines, sailors, airmen, and guardians. The Department of Defense also maintains over 778,000 National Guard and reservists, and over 747,000 civilians bringing the total to over 2.87 million employees. Headquartered at the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., the Department of Defense's stated mission is to provide "the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation's security".
KC-X was the United States Air Force (USAF) program to procure its next-generation aerial refueling tanker aircraft to replace some of their older Boeing KC-135 Stratotankers. The contest was for a production contract for 179 new tankers with estimated value of US$35 billion. The two contenders to replace the KC-135 aircraft were Boeing and EADS, following the elimination of US Aerospace, Inc. from the bidding process.
The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, or the JFK Records Act, is a public law passed by the United States Congress, effective October 26, 1992. It directed the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to establish a collection of records to be known as the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection. It stated that the collection shall consist of copies of all U.S. government records relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and that they are to be housed in the NARA Archives II building in College Park, Maryland. The collection also included any materials created or made available for use by, obtained by, or otherwise came into the possession of any state or local law enforcement office that provided support or assistance or performed work in connection with a federal inquiry into the assassination.
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 2022. 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. 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.
Ezra Cohen, also known as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, is an American intelligence official who served as the acting under secretary of defense for intelligence during the Trump Administration. He previously served as the acting assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, national security adviser to the United States attorney general and as a former senior director for intelligence programs for the United States National Security Council (NSC).
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.
Colin Hackett Kahl is an American political scientist who served as under secretary of defense for policy in the Biden administration from April 28, 2021, to July 17, 2023. Previously, he served as national security advisor to the vice president under then-Vice President Joe Biden (2014–2017). After the Obama administration, Kahl served as a Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow at Stanford University.
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 television 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.
The Pentagon UFO videos are selected visual recordings of Forward-looking infrared (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 MQ-9 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 civil servant 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 to have served in the United States Department of Defense.
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.