The Small Group
A Pentagon spokesperson’s ordinary job is to manage how information reaches the public, not to decide what an intelligence office is allowed to investigate. A set of internal emails, released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the law that lets the public compel disclosure of federal records, shows Susan Gough doing a good deal of the first job. In at least two places, the same correspondence shows her weighing in on the second.
The Release
The batch runs to 14 pages, released under FOIA case 24-F-0894. John Greenewald of The Black Vault had asked for any correspondence from Gough containing the words “AARO” or “Phillips,” bounded to February 1 through March 7, 2024. That window covers the run-up to the Historical Record Report, Volume 1, the congressionally mandated account of the government’s UAP investigations compiled by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). The Department released the pages on August 27, 2025, many of them redacted, bundled with a second, unrelated declassification: a Department of Defense (DoD) account, coordinated with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), of a program called KONA BLUE. Two documents, two different registers, out the same day.
Managing the Room
The emails show Gough telling at least one reporter that “we are looking to keep any media engagement with AARO’s acting director to a small group.” Journalists from Scientific American, the Washington Examiner and Finland’s national broadcaster YLE had each asked for access; the record shows those requests declined. What resulted, on March 8, 2024, was an invite-only briefing with about seven reporters and AARO’s acting director, Tim Phillips. Asked directly whether AARO had interviewed the whistleblowers Luis Elizondo or David Grusch, Phillips declined to say either way: “As a practice, we do not disclose who came in and spoke to us.” The restricted guest list and the non-answer on interviews are both in the paper trail. Why access was limited is not explained anywhere in the released pages.
The Credit Line
On March 5, 2024, working from a draft press release, Gough raised a structural point internally. AARO’s reporting line, set under the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), runs to both the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence (PDDNI). “The legislation calls for AARO producing the report,” she wrote, “but Dir, AARO reports to PDDNI, too, so wanted to check.” The reply came from a sender whose name is redacted in the release: “Confirming that we’re good without any ODNI mention.” The instruction is on the page. Who gave it, and why, is not.
A second dispute runs alongside it. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand had pressed Pentagon officials, at a briefing on drone incursions, to have AARO run a database of small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS) sightings. Gough wrote to David Kozik, Director of Congressional Activities in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence: “We do not want to see sUAS added to AARO’s portfolio!” Kozik wrote back that AARO could coordinate on counter-drone issues without becoming the lead office. Both positions are on record. Which one prevailed is not.
KONA BLUE, Closed on Paper
The declassified DoD account traces KONA BLUE to interviews AARO conducted for its historical review. Several interviewees described it as a DHS compartment built to protect the retrieval and study of what they called “non-human biologics.” AARO’s own research found something narrower: a prospective Special Access Program, a classification tier that requires individual approval on top of a standard clearance. A DHS Under Secretary recommended its approval in 2011. The DHS Deputy Secretary later turned it down; the record released here gives no date for that decision and no detail on the reasoning beyond what has been reported elsewhere. The DoD account is specific about what the rejection meant in practice: no funding, no staff, and, in its own words, “no data or material of any kind was ever transferred to or collected by DHS under the auspices of KONA BLUE.” The name resurfaced 13 years later, on March 6, 2024, as a “noteworthy program” raised by congressional staff at the classified briefing on the Historical Record Report.
What the Ordinary Explanation Doesn’t Answer
The KONA BLUE declassification settles the question it was written to settle: the program never operated. It has nothing to say about the paperwork sitting next to it in the same week’s correspondence. It does not name who struck ODNI from the press release. It does not confirm or rule out an interview with Elizondo or Grusch; Phillips left that open at the briefing, and the KONA BLUE record does not touch it either. Neither question was ever KONA BLUE’s to answer.
The Unresolved Mandate
The Gough-Kozik exchange over drone incursions ends where the email chain ends. There is no follow-up memo in this release, no note on which position the Department adopted, no sign of whether Gillibrand’s proposed database went forward. It is a disagreement caught mid-sentence, not a settled policy.
What People Have Said Since
The reporter Gough turned down described the restricted access, in her own words, as “Pentagon narrative setting versus genuine media outreach.” That is her characterization, written after the fact, and it does not appear in Gough’s correspondence itself. The Black Vault’s writeup of the release goes further, arguing that a public affairs officer arguing against a mission-scope decision in writing, as Gough did over sUAS, sits outside the role assigned to that office under DoD doctrine: Joint Publication 3-61 describes a public affairs officer as a commander’s principal spokesperson, not a decision-maker on operational responsibilities, while DoDD 5122.05 and DoDI 5400.13 tie the function to coordinating messaging rather than setting missions. That is an outside reading of the record, made by people who were not copied on the emails. Nobody in the correspondence makes that argument about themselves.
Where the File Stands
Phillips told reporters that AARO’s funding and authority exceed anything given to a past government UFO effort. Whether that authority should extend to drone incursions, who removed ODNI’s name from a press release, and whether two of the government’s most public UAP witnesses were interviewed by the office reviewing their claims: none of it is answered in the 14 pages that exist. The redactions in this release are not documented as covering those particular answers. They are simply blank.