Pentagon / AARO denial of “Immaculate Constellation” (Oct 2024)
What: the U.S. government’s official response to the “Immaculate Constellation” report. When: October 2024 (issued days after Michael Shellenberger’s Oct 8, 2024 Public story; before Rep. Mace entered the document into the Congressional Record on Nov 13, 2024). Sourcing: DoD spokesperson statement reported contemporaneously by NewsNation and others; summary capture via The Confessionals (2024-10-14, https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-blog/read-pentagon-denies-existence-of-secret-ufo-program-reportedly-called-immaculate-constellation). Captured: 2026-06-05. Analysis: immaculate-constellation.
The related ODNI FOIA primary — DF-2025-00021 (ODNI’s internal “Description of Alleged ‘IMMACULATE CONSTELLATION’ Program,” approved for release 6 Nov 2024) — is now captured at odni-foia-immaculate-constellation-description-2024 (recovered via Wayback after dni.gov Akamai-blocked the direct PDF). It carries the verbatim Gough denial and the ODNI’s own neutral framing of the allegation.
The official position
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Pentagon (DoD spokesperson Sue Gough): the Department of Defense “has no record, present or historical, of any type of SAP [Special Access Program] called ‘IMMACULATE CONSTELLATION’.” DoD asserts that all classified UAP programs are properly disclosed to Congress and that no such unreported program exists. (DoD also characterized the circulating document as not being an official DoD/ODNI document.)
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AARO (the Pentagon’s public-facing UAP office) has, more broadly, attributed longstanding “secret UAP program” claims to “circular reporting” among a group of people who believe the rumor despite a lack of evidence — and has stated it found no evidence of extraterrestrial technology or reverse-engineering programs. AARO frames the allegations as misinformation circulating in the UFO-believer community.
The claims being denied (for reference)
Per the report (Shellenberger / the Mace-record document), Immaculate Constellation was allegedly a DoD program formed in 2017 (after the NYT AATIP story) to consolidate UAP observations from tasked and untasked collection platforms, operating outside congressional oversight, and citing specific encounters — an F-22 intercepted by orbs, Navy personnel observing an orange-red sphere, etc. The full document text is captured at immaculate-constellation-mace-document-2024-11-13.