FILE BRIEF - DOW-UAP-D171 - PURSUE RELEASE 07

A Pentagon Contractor Planned an Underground Vault for "Exotic Material or Tissue"

A June 2009 monthly report from BAASS, the Las Vegas contractor the Defense Intelligence Agency hired to run its UAP investigation program, includes plans for a secure underground vault built to store exotic material or tissue the company hoped to obtain. Released Oct 23, 2026, in PURSUE Release 07.

Primary source: DOW-UAP-D171 (PDF, war.gov/UFO)

Key facts

BAASS (Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies) held the DIA contract for AAWSAP, the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, the Pentagon's UAP investigation effort of that era [D168 and AAWSAP contract files, Releases 06 and 07].
The June 2009 monthly report describes construction of an underground vault to store "exotic material or tissue that the organization could obtain" [D171 p.7].
Six months earlier, the company's December 2008 project plan asked DIA to press for access to samples "under the premise that biological material of potentially non-human origin has been recovered" [D168].
The vault was a plan, not a report of a delivery: the June 2009 report does not state that BAASS held, received, or examined any exotic material or tissue [D171].

What the document says

Monthly reports are routine contractor paperwork: staffing, case counts, facility work. Buried in the June 2009 edition is a facility plan out of proportion to the rest of the document, an underground vault designed for the secure storage of exotic material or tissue, written in the conditional: material "that the organization could obtain."

Excerpt from DOW-UAP-D171, page 7, "Progress on New BAASS Facilities," item (1) Underground Vault. A red box marks the sentence: "exotic material or tissue that the organization could obtain." — FIG. 1 — EXCERPT, DOW-UAP-D171, P.7 • RED BOX ADDED BY UAP WIRE

Read together with the December 2008 plan in the same release, the vault was one piece of a standing pitch. BAASS told DIA it wanted samples to examine, argued the premise that biological material of potentially non-human origin had been recovered somewhere, and built, on paper, the storage to receive it.

Excerpt from DOW-UAP-D168, page 13 of the PDF (page 7 of the plan), item 9. A red outline marks the words: "biological material of potentially non-human origin has been recovered." — FIG. 2 — EXCERPT, DOW-UAP-D168, P.13 (PLAN PAGE 7) • RED OUTLINE ADDED BY UAP WIRE

What the document does not say

It does not say BAASS possessed any recovered hardware or biological samples. It does not say any material ever arrived at the vault, or that the vault was completed. The claims in these files are a contractor's premises and plans, recorded in its own monthly reporting. No BAASS document in Release 07 states that exotic material or tissue was obtained or examined.

Why it matters

The BAASS files are the paper trail of the last Pentagon UAP program run through a private contractor, and they show what the contractor believed its job could become: not just collecting sighting reports, but receiving physical material. Whether anything was ever delivered is a question these documents raise and do not answer, and it is the question the next tranches may speak to.

Document box

File: DOW-UAP-D171
Title: BAASS Monthly Report, June 2009
Author: Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), contractor to the Defense Intelligence Agency under AAWSAP
Release: PURSUE Release 07, Oct 23, 2026
Primary source: Read the primary source (PDF)

Related files

Headlines and briefs on UAP Wire are editorial summaries of the published records. The primary source controls.