---
alias:
- Immaculate Constellation
- IMMACULATE CONSTELLATION
- ImCon
- IMCON
category: Intelligence Operation
created: 2026-10-01
location: Washington, D.C.
relations:
- fn: 2
  reverse: true
  role: published the program's name in Public
  start: 2024-10-08
  type: participant_in
  with: '[[Michael Shellenberger]]'
- fn: 7
  reverse: true
  role: entered the document in the record of the joint hearing
  start: 2024-11-13
  type: participant_in
  with: '[[Nancy Mace]]'
- fn: 9
  reverse: true
  role: named by a forum poster, and in the video tags, as the document's author after
    the Weaponized episode
  start: 2025-04-29
  type: participant_in
  with: '[[Matthew Brown]]'
- fn: 8
  reverse: true
  role: provided the document to Congress months before the hearing, according to
    his podcast's description of the episode
  type: participant_in
  with: '[[Jeremy Corbell]]'
- fn: 11
  reverse: true
  role: filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the National Security Agency,
    answered with a refusal to confirm or deny
  start: 2024-12-03
  type: participant_in
  with: '[[John Greenewald]]'
start: 2024-10-08
summary: Name of an alleged unacknowledged special access program for UAP imagery
  intelligence, first published in October 2024, described in a 12-page document in
  the House Oversight record and denied by the Defense Department.
tags:
- Program
- UAP
- SpecialAccessProgram
- UnacknowledgedSAP
- Whistleblower
- HouseOversight
- Allegation
updated: 2026-10-01
---

Immaculate Constellation is the name of an alleged unacknowledged [special access program](/concepts/special-access-programs/) (USAP) of the [United States](/places/united-states/) [Department of Defense](/organizations/department-of-defense/) whose existence was asserted in a 12-page document that Representative [Nancy Mace](/people/nancy-mace/) entered in the record of a joint hearing of two subcommittees of the [House Committee on Oversight and Accountability](/organizations/house-committee-on-oversight-and-government-reform/) on November 13, 2024, at which Michael Shellenberger testified. The document states that the program collects imagery intelligence on [unidentified anomalous phenomena](/concepts/unidentified-anomalous-phenomena/) (UAP) and that it was established after [Luis Elizondo](/people/luis-elizondo/)'s 2017 disclosure of the [Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program](/programs/advanced-aerospace-threat-identification-program/). A Defense Department spokesperson, Sue Gough, stated that the department has "no record, present or historical," of a special access program by that name.[^1][^2][^3]

### The document

The document, which the hearing record lists as "Report, Pentagon, 'Immaculate Constellation'; submitted by Rep. Mace," describes itself as "the result of a multi-year, internal investigation" into UAP, "Technologies of Unknown Origin" and "Non-Human Intelligence." It states that the investigation was provided to Congress "through the UAP whistleblower mechanisms established by the FY 23 National Defense Authorization Act, and the FY 23 National Intelligence Authorization Act"; that its author obtained the information "while pursuing their lawful duties as an employee of the Department of Defense"; and that its public version "was reviewed and approved for public release by the Department of State, Bureau of Global Public Affairs." Its introduction states that "Elements of the U.S. Executive Branch have conspired to prevent the U.S. Legislative Branch from exercising its lawful powers of governance," that the executive branch "has been managing UAP/NHI issues without Congressional knowledge, oversight, or authorization for some time, quite possibly decades," and calls the situation a "criminal conspiracy."[^1][^4]

Section 1 states that "IMMACULATE CONSTELLATION is an Unacknowledged Special Access Program (USAP) established following the public disclosure of the AATIP/AAWSAP programs by Luis Elizondo in 2017," that "upon disclosure to Congress, it was determined that this USAP and its collateral information have not been lawfully reported to Congress," and that its "primary mission is collecting imagery intelligence on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) and ARV/RV (Reproduction Vehicles) utilizing tasked and untasked U.S. military-intelligence resources." It describes the program as a "parent" USAP over "child" SAPs, with collection platforms in low Earth orbit, the upper atmosphere, aviation altitudes and maritime environments, and with internal controls that detect, quarantine and transfer collected UAP incidents "before they are observed and circulated within the Military Intelligence Enterprise."[^4]

Section 2 lists imagery examples by command: a formation of about twelve metallic orbs skimming the ocean in the area of United States Central Command; an equilateral triangle hovering over intelligence vessels in the Pacific in the area of United States Indo-Pacific Command; a saucer shape emerging from a cloud bank on infrared imagery; a swept-boomerang shape that emits a sphere of light; an irregular "jellyfish" shape crossing the southern border in the area of United States Northern Command; and a "Tic-Tac" detected by a space asset in the area of United States Southern Command. Section 3 states that it draws on "over 400 defense HUMINT reports on encounters with UAPs/UFOs by USG personnel" from about 1991 to 2022, with tables of reported shapes, behaviors and biological effects. Section 4 states that "Discrepancies found throughout the internal records of AARO and DoD interactions with Congress" show "a pattern of trivialization, obfuscation, and outright denial," lists among the examples known to the author the denial of "multiple Compartmented Access Programs (CAPs) owned by a Military Intelligence Agency," the denial of joint Special Access Programs, and "the denial of the existence of IMMACULATE CONSTELLATION by DoD representatives to appropriate Congressional members and their staff," and adds that non-public documents "confirm the claims of Mr. Lue Elizondo regarding AATIP/AAWSAP's mission, activities, and findings," including letters of commendation, award nominations and archived email chains. Section 5 cites a 1978 [NSA](/organizations/nsa/) report on Soviet research on parapsychology and the biological effects of UAP; Section 6 refers to signals intelligence from other countries; Section 7 states "From mouth to ear."[^4]

Section 3 gives examples drawn from the HUMINT reports. In one, flight deck personnel on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific saw "a small orange-red sphere" descend from high altitude to "approximately 100-200 yards" above the deck, match the carrier's speed for "an uncertain period," emit a light that did not illuminate the ocean or the flight deck, and then "shot into the air," after which the observers "felt as if they 'snapped out of a trance'." In another, an F-22 on an air surveillance and control mission in the Eastern Air Defense Sector met multiple metallic orbs slightly smaller than a sedan, was "intercepted and boxed in by approximately 3-6 UAPs," and "was forced out of the mission area under the escort of the UAP formation." In a third, ground personnel at an Eastern Seaboard military airfield reported a small spherical object crossing the runway and floating toward a sensitive area, with eyestrain, headaches and "a feeling of unease or dread," for 10 to 15 minutes.[^4]

### The statutes the document invokes

50 U.S.C. 3373b, enacted in the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, directs the Secretary of Defense, acting through the head of the [All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office](/organizations/all-domain-anomaly-resolution-office/) (AARO), to establish a secure mechanism for authorized reporting of "any activity or program by a department or agency of the Federal Government or a contractor of such a department or agency relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena, including with respect to material retrieval, material analysis, reverse engineering, research and development, detection and tracking, developmental or operational testing, and security protections and enforcement." It provides that an authorized disclosure "shall not be subject to a nondisclosure agreement," prohibits reprisal, and requires the Secretary to report to the congressional defense and intelligence committees and congressional leadership within 72 hours of determining that a disclosure relates to a restricted access activity, special access program or compartmented access program "that has not been explicitly and clearly reported" to those committees. A companion section, 50 U.S.C. 3373(j), required the AARO director to submit a historical record report on the period from January 1, 1945, including "any program or activity that was protected by restricted access that has not been explicitly and clearly reported to Congress."[^5]

### Publication of the name

On October 8, 2024 Shellenberger's newsletter Public published "Pentagon Is Illegally Hiding Secret UFO Program From Congress, Whistleblowers Allege." The article's free section states that existing and former officials had told members of Congress that AARO and the [Pentagon](/organizations/pentagon/) had broken the law by not revealing a significant body of information about UAP, that one of them was a current or former government official acting as a UAP whistleblower who had written a report, that these individuals "have revealed the name of an active and highly secretive DOD 'Unacknowledged Special Access Program,' or USAP," and that "The source of the document told Public that the USAP is a 'strategic intelligence program' that is part of the US military's family of long-standing, highly-sensitive programs." The article states "Public is revealing its name here for the first time," and Shellenberger added that readers "are, of course, welcome to disbelieve the whistleblowers" and that he does "not claim to know what they are." The Pentagon's response is attached at the foot of the article, which is otherwise behind a paywall that was not opened for this page.[^2]

Gough told NewsNation in a statement that evening, reported by Ross Coulthart: "The Department of Defense has no record, present or historical, of any type of SAP called 'IMMACULATE CONSTELLATION.'" NewsNation reported that Shellenberger had withheld the source's role and gender and had said that the source did not share the intelligence imagery because of fear of what could happen if the source were identified.[^3]

In written testimony to the committees, Shellenberger reported further statements from sources he did not name. He wrote that after publication a source told him the program is "controlled by the White House and executed and administrated by the DOD to avoid compliance with Title 10 of the United States Code"; that a "former IC official" said, "That program is run out of SEC DEF," adding "They don't want to acknowledge it's real"; and that a source warned that printing the name could draw surveillance of the publisher under the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act](/concepts/foreign-intelligence-surveillance-act/). He cited 10 U.S.C. 119 and 50 U.S.C. 3093 as the statutes requiring notice of special access programs and covert action to Congress, wrote that the [White House](/places/white-house/) has "a loophole for non-covert action waived programs," and noted that AARO is housed in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, which he called "troublingly close to the organizations running the alleged programs." The same testimony describes a proposed DHS program, released by the Pentagon in April 2024 and "intended to take possession of and reverse-engineer retrieved UAPs," which DHS leadership "ultimately quashed" (see [KONA BLUE](/programs/kona-blue/)).[^6]

### The hearing of November 13, 2024

The joint hearing "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," held before the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation (chaired by Mace) and the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs (chaired by Glenn Grothman), heard retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, Elizondo, Shellenberger and Michael Gold. At the end of her opening remarks Mace said Representative Tim Burchett had the document and would enter it, that it was "the original document from the Pentagon about Immaculate Constellation that Michael Shellenberger delivered to Congress today," and "12 pages about this unacknowledged special access program that your government says does not exist." Later she entered it into the record herself, "without objection," and recounted that Representative Anna Paulina Luna had told her that saying the name could put her "on some list. Maybe a FISA warrant."[^7]

Asked by Grothman for the evidence supporting the document, Shellenberger said the committee had it, that he had checked it and "did not find it based on existing cases; it was new cases for me," that this answered whether it was circular reporting, and that more than one additional source had confirmed the program's name. Asked by Mace whether his sources were credible, he answered: "They are current or former government officials." He added: "I did not specify that they were Defense Department employees. I did not specify the agency nor the gender." He declined to say whether any was employed by a private contractor ("I would rather not say"). Representative Clay Higgins asked about the author: Shellenberger answered that the person "is a current or former U.S. Government employee," that he knew the author, that he did not know where a non-public version of the author's report might be found or whether it was held by the Defense Department, and, when asked whether the sources were within the Department of Defense, "I will not say."[^7]

Elizondo said he had never read the article. Asked by Mace whether he had been read into Immaculate Constellation, he said he "would not be authorized to confirm nor deny the existence of any ongoing or past program, especially as it relates to a special access program, either by name or trigraph." Asked by Mace whether the government had conducted secret UAP crash retrieval programs, he answered "Yes," and whether they were designed to identify and reverse engineer alien craft, he answered "Yes"; asked whether any contractors had the same, he said he would prefer to answer in closed session. Gallaudet testified that in January 2015 he received a Navy email headed "URGENT SAFETY OF FLIGHT ISSUE" with the "Go Fast" video attached, that it disappeared from his account the next day, and that he concluded the information "must have been classified within a special access program managed by an intelligence agency." He told Mace that [Christopher Mellon](/people/christopher-mellon/) had contacted him about 2017 satellite imagery of a UAP, that the analyst's term for it was "the button," that it was a disc-shaped object, and that he could give its location and the agency that wrote a report on it only in a closed setting. Gold, a former [NASA](/organizations/nasa/) associate administrator who testified that he was then Chief Growth Officer at Redwire Space and speaking only for himself, addressed stigma and NASA's role. Burchett asked unanimous consent to enter into the record documents "provided to us regarding legacy UAP programs and psychological operations," and thanked Jeremy Corbell for "providing these documents and access to some whistleblowers."[^7]

In his oral statement Shellenberger described a second source who "told me that they saw a roughly 13-minute long, high-definition, full-color video of a white orb UAP coming out of the ocean approximately 20 miles off the coast of Kuwait," filmed from a helicopter and found on the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network. He also relayed the account of John Greenewald that the Defense Department had denied the existence of UAP and AATIP records on multiple occasions and acknowledged them only after appeals. Questioned by Representative Lauren Boebert, he said the program "covers both terrestrial and oceanic" cases and that he had other sources who were not comfortable having their information shared. Questioned by Mace about funding, he said only that its mission "is to document UAPs."[^7]

### The author

On April 29, 2025 Corbell and George Knapp released the first of three parts of an episode of their podcast Weaponized titled "Immaculate Constellation - UFO Whistleblower Goes Public." The episode description states that a report on the program, "written by an unknown policy advisor, was provided to Congress by Jeremy Corbell months prior to the start of a 2024 public hearing before a House subcommittee," that the author "had been surreptitiously introduced to key House members by Corbell," that at the hearing "the origin of the report itself was grossly distorted by members," and that ImCon "was supposedly a highly secretive program that relied on artificial intelligence to secretly scour classified servers used by the U.S. military and its intelligence agencies." The video's tags include "matthew brown." A forum post at Metabunk by Kyle Ferriter of the same day wrote that the author "is named as Matthew Brown and he appears on camera."[^8][^9] The hearing transcript records Mace saying that the document Burchett held was the one "that Michael Shellenberger delivered to Congress today," and Burchett thanking Corbell for documents and access to whistleblowers.[^7]

### Responses and records

AARO's Historical Record Report, Volume I (February 2024) states that AARO "confirmed the existence of one IC CAP that was unnecessarily expanded in 2021 to include a UAP reverse-engineering mission," that the expansion occurred "despite the lack of any evidence or mission need," that the appropriate congressional committees were notified, that the program "never recovered or reverse-engineered any technology," and that it "was disestablished due to its inactivity, absence of mission need, and lack of merit." The same report states that Persons 4, 7 and 8 and Interviewees 1, 3 and 13 "investigated UAP on their own and were responsible for successfully expanding the remit of an existing IC program to include UAP exploitation language," and that AARO obtained "full access to all pertinent sensitive USG programs" through partnerships with the special access program control offices of the Defense Department, the intelligence community and the [Department of Homeland Security](/organizations/department-of-homeland-security/).[^10]

On December 3, 2024 Greenewald of The Black Vault asked the National Security Agency under the [Freedom of Information Act](/events/freedom-of-information-act/) for intelligence records on Immaculate Constellation. According to Greenewald's account of September 17, 2026, the agency answered on December 6, 2024 that it could neither confirm nor deny the existence of the records, citing Exemptions 1 and 3 and stating that the existence or non-existence of the records was classified under Executive Order 13526; he appealed on December 9, 2024; and the appeal authority wrote that "Another agencies' acknowledgement of the existence or non-existence of records regarding an alleged program does not require NSA to acknowledge the existence or non-existence of records about the same program." Greenewald also wrote that an [Office of the Director of National Intelligence](/organizations/director-of-national-intelligence/) document released in case DF-2025-00021 calls the program a "supposed unacknowledged Special Access Program" and records the Defense Department's denial, that no primary program documentation establishing it has been publicly produced alongside the report, and that the imagery and reporting it describes have not been made available for independent examination.[^11]

Shellenberger's testimony quotes Gough on AARO's files: "AARO's files contain all available data related to each UAP case, regardless of modality or classification. I refer you to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence concerning Intelligence Community databases."[^6]

[^1]: Report submitted by Rep. Nancy Mace and entered in the record of "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, joint hearing, November 13, 2024, Serial No. 118-135, list of documents submitted for the record: "Report, Pentagon, 'Immaculate Constellation'; submitted by Rep. Mace." https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-118hhrg57440/html/CHRG-118hhrg57440.htm
[^2]: Shellenberger, Michael. "Pentagon Is Illegally Hiding Secret UFO Program From Congress, Whistleblowers Allege," Public, October 8, 2024 (free section as served by the publication's post API; the paywalled remainder was not opened). https://www.public.news/p/pentagon-is-illegally-hiding-secret
[^3]: Coulthart, Ross. "Report names 'Immaculate Constellation' UAP program: Journalist," NewsNation, October 8, 2024 (copy at Yahoo News), quoting Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough's statement to NewsNation on the evening of Tuesday, October 8, 2024. https://www.yahoo.com/news/report-names-immaculate-constellation-uap-185114329.html
[^4]: "Immaculate Constellation" document, 12 pages, introduction and Sections 1 to 7, submitted in the record of the hearing of November 13, 2024 (HHRG-118-GO12-20241113-SD003; the pages are images and were read by optical character recognition). https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/117721/documents/HHRG-118-GO12-20241113-SD003.pdf
[^5]: 50 U.S.C. 3373b (unidentified anomalous phenomena reporting procedures), subsections (a)(1), (a)(4)(B) and (b), and 50 U.S.C. 3373(j) (historical record report), text of the Legal Information Institute; the cross-reference to section 1673(b) of the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 (50 U.S.C. 3373b(b)) appears in Section 9010(e) of S. 2226 as passed by the Senate. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/3373b and https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/3373
[^6]: Shellenberger, Michael. "The United States Department Of Defense And The Intelligence Community Are Withholding Information About Anomalous Phenomena From Congress," written testimony, hearing of November 13, 2024, pp. 1 to 7. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO12/20241113/117721/HHRG-118-GO12-Wstate-ShellenbergerM-20241113.pdf
[^7]: House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," joint hearing, November 13, 2024, Serial No. 118-135, transcript pp. 3, 8 to 10, 11, 16 to 20, 24 to 28, 44 to 45. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-118hhrg57440/html/CHRG-118hhrg57440.htm
[^8]: Corbell, Jeremy, and George Knapp. "Immaculate Constellation - UFO Whistleblower Goes Public : PART 1 : WEAPONIZED : Episode #74," YouTube, uploaded April 29, 2025, episode description and tags. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAxI-LDrDqA
[^9]: Ferriter, Kyle (Metabunk forum, post of April 29, 2025), "Matthew Brown: Immaculate Constellation Report Author/Whistleblower." https://www.metabunk.org/threads/matthew-brown-immaculate-constellation-report-author-whistleblower.14170/
[^10]: Department of Defense, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), Volume I, February 2024 (cleared March 6, 2024), Section VI, "Process for Protecting Sensitive Programs while Investigating Interviewee Claims," "Unnecessary IC Program Expansion" and "Nexus of Proponents of the USG UAP Reverse-Engineering Allegation." https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-2024-0263-AARO-HISTORICAL-RECORD-REPORT-VOLUME-1-2024.PDF.
[^11]: Greenewald, John. "Pentagon Says It Has No Record of 'Immaculate Constellation': NSA Denies Appeal and Won't Say Whether It Does," The Black Vault, September 17, 2026, reporting the NSA response of December 6, 2024 to the request of December 3, 2024, the appeal of December 9, 2024, and ODNI FOIA case DF-2025-00021 (the ODNI document itself, at archive.dni.gov, could not be retrieved). https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/pentagon-says-it-has-no-record-of-immaculate-constellation-nsa-denies-appeal-and-wont-say-whether-it-does/