(Web Desk) - The Pentagon's embattled, but official UFO investigations office released its congressionally mandated report on 'historic' UFO cases dating back to 1945.
The report — which came in classified and unclassified formats, with the latter now available to the public online — claims that the office found 'no verifiable evidence that any UAP [i.e. UFO] sighting has represented extraterrestrial activity.'
The UFO office, which did not enjoy subpoena power for its inquiries, reported that c-suite executives at US defense contractors 'denied the existence' of any top secret UFO crash retrieval programs 'on the record.'
But it did reveal at least one proposed top secret project, dubbed 'Kona Blue,' reviewed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the 2010s, and pitched as an effort to reverse-engineer hypothetically recovered extraterrestrial spacecraft.
Tim Phillips, acting director of the Pentagon's UFO-hunting All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), told reporters that his office's new report casts doubt on the public testimony of UFO whistleblower and ex-US intel officer David Grusch.
'AARO has found no verifiable evidence that the US government or private industry has ever had access to extraterrestrial technology,' Phillips told select reporters in a closed setting.
But in the past week, the exclusive, invite-only nature of the report's pre-release has been criticized by other journalists and UFO researchers for its lack of transparency.
A months-long tease has preceded AARO's 'Historical Record Report' on UFOs since the retirement of the office's first-ever director, former CIA laser physicist Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, last December.
Dr. Kirkpatrick appeared on CNN analyst Peter Bergen's podcast, 'In the Room,' late last January, revealing that his office intended to double-down on the Air Force's evidence-poor explanation for the infamous Roswell UFO case of 1947.
In fact, multiple ex-NASA scientists, as well as former US Air Force personnel, including the Air Force Colonel who authored the Pentagon's official 1994 Roswell report have cast doubt the 'Project Mogul spy balloon' explanation that Dr. Kirkpatrick and his AARO successors still maintain is correct.
In its official report today, AARO wrote of the Roswell UFO case: 'The materials recovered near Roswell were consistent with a balloon of the type used in the then-classified Project Mogul.'
Last month, DailyMail.com published records from the US Air Force's own official report confirming that no scheduled Project Mogul flights fit the Roswell timeline.
Dr. Kirkpatrick's successor, acting director Phillips described Friday's release of AARO's historical review as the most comprehensive government-wide investigation of US government UFO records, classified and unclassified, ever conducted.
But critics of AARO have long maintained that the office has lost the trust of past and present government officials, military personnel and US defense contractors with any knowledge of the alleged top secret UFO crash retrieval programs.