Daniel Inouye

Daniel Inouye (1924-2012) was a Japanese American Medal of Honor recipient, Hawaii senator, Appropriations chair, and president pro tempore whose name appears with Harry Reid in the 2008 funding record for AAWSAP.¹²³⁴

  Hawaii, the 442nd, and Senate Power

Born in Honolulu on September 7, 1924, Inouye was the son of Japanese immigrants, volunteered after Pearl Harbor, and enlisted in 1943 after the Army lifted its ban on Japanese American troops.¹² He served with Company E of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and earned the Medal of Honor for action near San Terenzo, Italy, on April 21, 1945, where combat wounds cost him his right arm.¹³ After law school and territorial politics, he became one of Hawaii's first U.S. representatives after statehood, won election to the Senate in 1962, chaired Appropriations from 2009 to 2012, and served as president pro tempore from 2010 until his death in 2012.¹⁵ A Senate reference volume lists his other chairmanships as Select Committee on Intelligence from 1976 to 1978, Indian Affairs in two periods, the Iran-Contra select committee in 1987, and Commerce from 2007 to 2009.⁵

  Intelligence Oversight Before AAWSAP

During the 1977 Senate hearing on Project MKULTRA, Inouye presided as chairman while CIA witnesses testified about covert drug-testing records.⁶ Inouye used the hearing to argue that intelligence abuses required continuing oversight by Congress and the executive branch.⁶

  The 2008 AAWSAP Funding Trail

A Defense Intelligence Agency packet prepared for a November 17, 2009 meeting with Senator Reid records that Reid and Inouye co-sponsored a $10 million July 2008 earmark in the Supplemental Appropriation Bill to assess far-term foreign advanced aerospace threats.[^5] The packet records another$12 million allocation for FY2010 and a September 2008 DIA contract awarded to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, the sole bidder.⁴ DIA described the program purpose as research into revolutionary advances in future aerospace technologies, while Reid's office referred to AAWSAP as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP.⁴ Reid's June 24, 2009 Special Access Program request listed Inouye on the preliminary FY2010 "bigoted" government-personnel access list for AATIP, but the request itself was Reid's letter to Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn III.⁴

  AAWSAP, AATIP, and KONA BLUE

At Reid's direction, the FY2008 and FY2010 Defense Appropriations Acts provided $22 million for DIA to assess long-term foreign advanced aerospace threats, and AAWSAP and AATIP were used interchangeably in official documentation.⁷ The later KONA BLUE proposal traced back to AAWSAP/AATIP, which DIA managed from 2009 to 2012 and funded through congressional earmarks, with Bigelow Aerospace as the primary contractor.⁸ The participant narrative later published as Skinwalkers at the Pentagon presented AAWSAP as an insider account of a secret government UFO program and identified James Lacatski, Colm Kelleher, and George Knapp as its authors.⁹

  AARO's Findings on Scope and Conduct

AAWSAP/AATIP's primary purpose was next-generation aerospace technology research in 12 areas, not a contract statement of work specifically directing UFO or UAP investigation.⁷ The contractor nevertheless conducted UFO research with support from the DIA program manager, reviewed new cases and old Project Blue Book cases, proposed laboratories for recovered UFO materials, and investigated UAP and paranormal activity at a Utah property then owned by the private-sector organization's head, a description that points to Skinwalker Ranch.⁷ That work included "remote viewing" and "human consciousness anomalies," but DIA did not seek or specifically authorize that work, even though a DIA employee set up and managed the contract.⁷ The resulting scientific papers were not thoroughly peer reviewed, AARO found no other substantive UAP casework by AAWSAP/AATIP, and the program ended in 2012 because of DIA and DoD concerns.⁷

  Stargate and the Remote-Viewing Question

Stargate was a DIA program using paranormal phenomena, primarily remote viewing, for intelligence collection, research and development, and foreign assessment.¹⁰ The CIA-declassified American Institutes for Research evaluation found a statistically significant laboratory effect in some remote-viewing experiments but said the source of the effect remained unclear, operational reports were vague or inconsistent, and remote viewing failed to produce actionable intelligence for intelligence operations.¹⁰ That evaluation's program-history section discusses CIA, DIA, and other government organizations, but it does not identify Inouye as a Stargate sponsor.¹⁰ Inouye's direct anomalous-program record is the AAWSAP funding and access record; remote viewing enters the Inouye-related record through AAWSAP/AATIP contractor activity and the broader federal history of Stargate.⁴⁷¹⁰

  References

  References

1. senate.gov ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. nps.gov ↩ ↩²

3. cmohs.org ↩ ↩²

4. dia.mil ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

5. congress.gov ↩ ↩²

6. intelligence.senate.gov ↩ ↩²

7. media.defense.gov ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

8. aaro.mil ↩

9. search.worldcat.org ↩

10. cia.gov ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴