A Two-Page Answer
John Greenewald Jr., who runs the document archive The Black Vault, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in early December 2019 for any record of an Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) inquiry into three widely seen UFO videos. He wanted to know whether the agency had found the footage was leaked without authorization or cleared for public release. The request was logged as FOIA Case 2020-02456-F. What eventually came back, in full, ran to two pages.
Three Videos, One Persistent Question
Nobody disputes that the recordings are real. “Gimbal” and “GoFast” were filmed on January 21, 2015, by a Navy F/A-18F’s infrared targeting pod off the Atlantic coast, one near Florida and one near Virginia. “FLIR1,” the clip known as the Tic Tac video, dates to November 14, 2004, off San Diego. All three had already been circulating for years, shared publicly by Tom DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy, “Gimbal” and “FLIR1” in December 2017 and “GoFast” in March 2018. In September 2019, a Navy spokesman, Joseph Gradisher, said the footage still had not been cleared for official release. That changed on April 27, 2020, when the Naval Air Systems Command posted all three clips on its own website, available for download under FOIA, after the Department of Defense determined the unclassified material revealed no sensitive capability. What that announcement settled was whether the public could legally have the videos. It did not settle how they got out in the first place, which is what AFOSI had reportedly been asked to look into.
Reading the Two Pages
The Black Vault’s archive lists the resulting file under the title “AFOSI Investigation #3290517356125 Into Unauthorized Release of Three UFO Videos, 2018.” The two pages confirm that an investigation by that name existed. The release letter attached to them states that one additional document was withheld, without describing what it is. Separately, the records refer to a presentation that was supplied as an attachment to something, though no presentation accompanied what Greenewald received. These are two distinct gaps, a withheld document and a missing presentation, and nothing in the file says they are the same item.
Where the Conclusion Isn’t
Reporting done outside this FOIA request describes what AFOSI’s investigation is supposed to have found. Tim McMillan of Vice News reported on December 20, 2019, that Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough had confirmed AFOSI looked at the classification of the videos, and that an earlier finding held the footage technically still classified because a declassification request had been filed but never approved. McMillan later reported that by April 2018, AFOSI and the Air Force’s Unauthorized Disclosure Program Management Office had reversed that finding, declared the videos unclassified, and closed the matter. A Pentagon statement drew a further distinction: being unclassified does not mean a video is approved for public release. None of that appears in the two pages Greenewald obtained. The letter confirms an investigation and confirms a withholding. It contains no summary of findings and no closing memo of its own. That absence is a fact about what was produced in response to this particular request, not proof of what the investigation actually decided.
Where the Story Started
McMillan’s December 2019 article is the earliest public report that AFOSI had investigated the videos’ release at all, a claim made in journalism, not something drawn from any document in Greenewald’s file. Greenewald built his FOIA request on the Pentagon statement McMillan had obtained. McMillan published a second article on the subject, titled “The Pentagon’s ‘Real Men in Black’ Investigation of Tom DeLonge’s UFO Videos,” on April 14, 2020, the same date printed on the release letter that would eventually reach Greenewald. Nothing from either of McMillan’s articles is part of the official file produced through the FOIA process; it is reporting that preceded, and appears to have prompted, the request.
A Letter That Took Two Months to Arrive
Greenewald has stated that although the letter is dated April 14, 2020, he did not actually receive it until June 9, 2020, almost eight weeks later. No explanation for that gap appears anywhere in the response, and none has been offered publicly by the agency that issued it. He published his article on the file on June 10, 2020, and updated it on February 7, 2023, adding twenty-one pages of Naval Air Systems Command emails obtained separately, referencing the same investigation number.
One Withheld Document, One Missing Attachment
Whether the single withheld document is the missing presentation remains unresolved. Greenewald has said he considers it unlikely that the two are the same thing, which is his own reading of the paperwork rather than something the letter itself confirms. An appeal aimed at obtaining the presentation was anticipated at the time of his report.
What Remains Unanswered
The file, as released, does not say whether the three videos were leaked or officially cleared, which was the question the request was built to answer. It confirms that AFOSI looked at the videos. It withholds one document without naming it. It references a presentation it does not include. For anyone used to reading FOIA logs rather than headlines, that is the ordinary shape of an unfinished disclosure: a confirmed investigation, an acknowledged withholding, and no stated outcome on the record. Whatever an appeal eventually produces, nothing in the two pages obtained so far closes the question.