John Greenewald: February 21 2021. at 36,000 feet above
north eastern New Mexico, American Airlines Flight 2292
had an unusual encounter.
ATC Recording: You have any ta gets up here we just had somethi
g go right over the top o
John Greenewald: first reported at the drives Warzone by
investigative journalist Tyler rogue away, the encounter was
confirmed by American Airlines and the air traffic control
recordings were authenticated.
ATC Recording: I look like a long electrical object that
almost looks like a vertical pipe and things moving really
fast, but my right over the top.
John Greenewald: But beyond that the airline recommended to
contact the FBI. This indicated there was an investigation
potentially underway. And that meant to me that there were
documents to be found. Although I didn't have high hopes of
groundbreaking results, I attempted to get ahold of the
information via the freedom of information. And the end result
made the entire saga much more interesting. But it may have
also produced more questions than answers. Here. Here's the
story about how it all went down. So stay tuned, you're
about to journey inside the black vault.
That's right, everybody. As always, thank you so much for
tuning in and making this your podcast or your live stream of
choice. I'm your host, john Greenwald, Jr, creator and
founder of the black vault calm. And I'll admit to you upfront,
when I originally was going to do this video, it was going to
be very, very short. We call them quick blast here on the
channel. And I just literally do that in a very quick manner.
tell you guys a story. Sometimes they're a couple minutes.
Sometimes they're a minute or two. Sometimes they've got me in
them. Sometimes they don't. But regardless, much, much smaller,
which was my intent for this. Now, although I don't plan to go
on too long. Why I wanted to point that out is the story took
kind of an interesting turn. After I published a small
article yesterday, I call it small because it was just that I
was just updating you guys on the investigation into American
Airlines Flight 2292. Now the reason why I wanted to do this
video is this video is now going to update you guys on a new
development. Now let me tell you just in a nutshell what the
article was yesterday. For those who don't know, American
Airlines Flight 2292. On February 21 2021, had a strange
encounter, just like you just saw in the in the introduction.
Now what I did was I kind of saw the the great reporting by Tyler
rogue away, I'm a huge fan of his and what they do over there
at the drive, and utilize that to create FOIA requests to track
down documentation. Now, admittedly, I'm sure they were
doing it too. And I was in no way trying to step on, on their
toes. Either Tyler's or anybody at the team over there, but
rather just start digging in using that reporting. And kudos
to them for breaking the story. But seeing what you can come up
officially, I'm a big fan of tackling issues like that on
multiple fronts, because you never know. And this is a prime
example of just that, who may get something where the other
person does not. And sometimes it is either just down to luck.
Maybe it is malicious, I'll let you guys decide. But that
happened in this case. So when I posted that out yesterday, I
posted two letters. When I went after information about this
encounter by American Airlines Flight 2292. I sent a couple
FOIA requests out, one to the FBI, because according to
American Airlines, they were essentially the contact to go to
that was reported by the drive. So that gave me a reason to go
to the FBI. The more obvious one was the FAA. And that was
essentially the the, in my opinion, the best spot for
information on this encounter. But hey, with the FOIA, whenever
in doubt, send it to everybody and see what happens. So here's
the story about how that all went down. Because when I
published that that article yesterday, I thought thought
that that was somewhat, at least for now, the end of the story I
have appealed both cases. Now here are the articles that were
published by the Warzone. Again, this is just the groundwork that
allowed me to do that for you. You can see here let me turn my
little pen on here for those watching on YouTube. So this
article up here whoops, now I'm drawing on my presentation.
That's not what I wanted. Here's my laser pointer. So this was
the February 21 article, airliner encountered
unidentified fast moving cylindrical object over New
Mexico. That was when the story was broken on February 21.
digging in more as Tyler does best. Two days later, they
published this one American Airlines confirms encounter with
unidentified cylindrical object over New Mexico. I gave you the
nutshell version. Here's a little bit more about what the
encounter was. On the February 21 article, Tyler wrote American
Airlines Flight 2292 and Airbus A 320. Flying between Cincinnati
and Phoenix on February 21 2021.
They had a bizarre encounter with what its crew described as
a long cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise
missile, moving extremely fast over the top of their aircraft,
as it crushed along at 36,000 feet and 400 knots. The incident
occurred over the remote northeast corner of New Mexico
to the west of the tiny town of Des Moines. Now two days later,
as I said, Tyler published a update. He says less than 48
hours after our initial reporting on an outright strange
incident involving American Airlines Flight 2292, as it flew
at 36,000 feet over the northeastern corner of New
Mexico on February 21 2021. We have confirmation that the event
in question did indeed occur and that it is being investigated by
the FBI. The incident involve pilots of the Airbus A 320 being
buzzed by an unidentified cylindrical shaped object moving
at high speed which resulted in them querying the FAA is
Albuquerque error, route traffic control center. That was the
reporting. So you can see here that there was there was this
encounter and the FBI in the FAA would be the most logical place
to go now. Tyler also published the actual air traffic control
recording, you heard a little bit of it on the introduction,
let me go ahead and play the rest of it here.
ATC Recording: 2292. You have a y targets up here we just had so
ething go right over the top of s. I hate to say this look l
ke a long cylindrical object t at almost look like a cruise mi
sile type of thing moving really fast, but my right ove
John Greenewald: Now that was the recording between the pilot
and the in the in the traffic control center. So utilizing
that reporting, that's what you use as a basis for FOIA requests
for those FOIA people out there. If you're looking for ideas,
then the news media is the best place for that. Now, Tyler's an
exception to what I'm about to say, meaning Tyler keeps digging
Joe over there as well. He keeps digging that team over there is
why I respect them. Because they continue digging. Most media
outlets do not. In fact, most media outlets don't even use the
foyer at all. They will get you know, an anonymous source or
some kind of source or somebody in the know, they report on
something and then they they move on, they don't go back to
it. It's a great source for what I call FOIA fodder, you look for
stories that might be of interest. And I mean, unless
you're looking for, you know, breaking a brand new story, even
though you might be, again, not breaking a brand new story.
That's a great tactic. When you want to expand on the story, you
see things and sometimes you will find something that is more
breaking news. But again, it's just a great way to dig in and
find documentation. So that's that's an example here. But
again, I do want to credit, Tyler and Joseph and everybody
over there at the drive for digging in themselves. And I'm
sure that they were that they were doing the same. Here is the
FBI letter that I had talked about a few moments ago, were on
March 2, and I filed on February 24. That is going to be key in a
couple of minutes. So So put a pin in that I filed on February
24. March 2, they sent me this letter that they were unable to
identify records responsive to my request. Now my request, as
you can see here in black and white was about American
Airlines Flight 2292 on February 21 2021, about an encounter with
an unknown object over in New Mexico. You can't get more
specific than that in the eyes of the foyer. Sometimes if you
don't know date, then you could run into a problem. If you don't
know a location, you can run into a problem. If you don't
know a flight number, you can potentially run into a problem.
But this particular case, as indicated here, had everything
on there. There was no reason that they shouldn't find
documents. So they sent me this no records. I believe I tweeted
this out, I couldn't find it prior to recording this
presentation. I think I did. It wasn't even an article, I just
tweeted it out and said, the FBI said they didn't find anything,
and kind of moved on because there's, there's really nothing
you can do other than appeal, which I did. And then it's a
waiting game. And I'm still waiting, by the way for that
appeal. But more on that again, in a moment. Here's the FAA
letter, this one dated June 21 2021. Just a day ago from the
recording of this. They say we can neither confirm nor deny the
existence of the records that you seek What was I seeking Same
deal, American Airlines Flight 2292. And the encounter on
February 21 2021. They also cited a very interesting
exemption, which is B seven E. Now generally, this involves law
enforcement, investigation material, so they don't want to
essentially blow their cover, so to speak on how they conduct law
enforcement investigations or hinder a law enforcement
investigation. So what was weird here and I'll read the whole
paragraph. Now, pursuant to four exemptions B seven E, the FAA,
neither can firms nor denies the existence of records, which
would indicate whether an individual or an organization is
or has ever been of investing good Tory interest of the
federal government. Further, acknowledging federal government
interest invites the risk of circumvention of federal law
enforcement efforts, therefore, we can neither confirm nor deny
the existence of records that you seek. Now, I felt that I had
an appeal here, I could very well be shot down, so to speak,
but the appeal was that they were citing a law enforcement
exemption. They didn't want to, in essence, say that American
Airlines was under investigation. But that's not
what the request was about. The request was about the
investigation of an incident and therefore no rights would be
infringed upon on a personal or a corporate level, meaning
they're not. They're not essentially labeling slandering
or incriminating any type of organization or individual
rather, I was asking about a certain incident. So I believe
that gave me grounds for an appeal. We'll see what happens.
But I appealed that. Now I want to go back to the FBI. As I
mentioned, in the top of this video, I published that very
short article profiling the letters that I just went over
profiling the reporting by the drive and why I believe that the
FAA and or the FBI had responsive records. Okay, so
that that's, that's the overview. About a few hours
after I published that, Robert Powell, friend of this show,
friend of mine for many years, you guys know him well, had
written me and we were starting to talk. I know he's been going
after the FOIA as well, going after the documents via the FOIA
as well. And he had gotten the same denial. So he saw my post,
we started chatting, he had told me about another contact and
friend of mine who I've worked with, on and off for many, many
years. He runs the UFO. He runs UFOs Northwest, I should say his
his organization name. And what he does with UFOs Northwest is
is very similar to like the UFO reporting center, is he brings
in UFO cases that are sent to him, investigates them where he
can he posts videos, post photos, and his name is William
Puckett. Now, I also worked with him when I produced for UFO
hunters. I know that the series itself even Well, before I
joined on season three had utilized Mr. Puckett, Mr.
Puckett, many, many, many times. So he's very well known, very
knowledgeable. And in fact, you may actually see him on this
channel very soon Hinton's. But that being said, he had also
filed a FOIA request to the FBI. And he posted documents about
Eric, American Airlines Flight 2292, and the UFO encounter from
the FBI. Now, you could be saying, Hey, wait a minute. You
just showed me a letter that said it was denied that they
couldn't find anything? Well, you're absolutely right. And
remember when I said earlier also, that it's good to tackle
this on multiple fronts with multiple people, because you
never know what happens. Why did they tell me they had nothing,
when in fact, they had four pages? I don't know. And I'm
still researching that. I sent a very Turn letter to the FBI
stating that I had to go through the song and dance of an appeal,
which sometimes does not take three and a half seconds to
produce, you have to sit down, write it, and outline why you're
appealing a final, final decision and submit it. Why I
had to do that when in reality there were documents that
existed. I don't have an answer to that for you. But I did write
to them and say, Look, this is ridiculous that we all have to
waste our time, when at the end of the day, you guys did have
documents and sent it to another investigator. So my credit 100%
for these documents, goes to Mr. William Puckett. So thank you to
him, I talked to him on the phone earlier today, we were
unable to do an interview for this video. However, stay tuned
to the channel, because you'll see him coming up soon, in the
next few days. But I did ask him, if I could go over with
full credit to him the documents he did get. Of course, he was
all over that and all for it, because he wanted to share this
with all of you guys as well. So for those watching, I'm going to
show you the documents. For those listening, I'm going to
read through them a little bit as well. That way you guys get
an understanding of what the FBI actually had. Now, like I said,
there were four pages. This was the first page you'll notice
here, the date of March 2 2021. This is called an import form.
For those taking notes. It's a form called Fd 1036. And
essentially, you find this quite a bit in FBI files, they're
generally I would say, I don't want to call it a cover sheet.
But essentially you find this at the top of the stack, so to
speak. It's the synopsis of the particular case or incident. It
tells you a little bit of background and then it goes into
greater detail, which I'll show you in a moment. So this was the
first page. I'm going to read to you here the highlighted portion
of the FBI document,
American Airlines Flight 2292 and Airbus A 320. flying from
Cincinnati to Phoenix on 221 21 had a bizarre close encounter
with what the crew described as a long cylindrical object that
almost looked like a cruise missile moving extremely fast
over the top of their aircraft at a cruise along of 36,000 feet
at 400 knots. The incident occurred over the northwest
corner of New Mexico to the west of the town of Des Moines,
located east of Raton. American Airlines is instructing
reporters to contact FBI. Albuquerque. What's interesting
here and Mr. Pocket actually pointed this out to me, I missed
it. They're wrong. Here it was the north east corner, which is
where Des Moines was was located or is located. And that's where
the incident took place. So regardless though, they're kind
of setting the synopsis of the case. And that's how they
described it very similar to how Tyler Rockaway had reported it.
Here's page two. Now for those savvy minds, you're going to see
right here the status of the case within the FBI, his
holdings, and that says closed on three to 2021. And underneath
that does not fall within the FBI jurisdiction, put a pin in
that we'll talk about that in a minute as well. You're going to
see a big white box here. Yes, that is all redacted under B
seven e same exemption as cited by the FAA. You see this a lot
in FBI files for just that they're a law enforcement
agency. They don't like to talk about the details of a certain
investigation of blow their tactics and stuff like that. The
exemption B seven breaks down into multiple different
subsections and defines again, where they don't want to reveal
too much about their law and law and enforcement investigative
processes. And that is where B seven falls in this, I believe
is probably the most interesting part in my opinion, but it's all
redacted. Down here you'll see pretty much what I just read to
you. I'm not going to read it again. But more of the synopsis
on the case. This is the summary. So you'll see that I
read to you the synopsis. Then it gets into more detail in this
report and this form, incident summary. So again, they kind of
go over the same deal. Then it drills down into the notes. I'm
going to read to the notes. Administrative note for
informational purposes on 224 21 writer reached out to the FAA
office in Albuquerque. The FAA is currently aware of the news
articles that have been written on the incident. The FAA is
currently checking their systems to determine if their equipment
picked up other aircraft in the area of American Airlines Flight
2292. At the top of the flight was in the northeastern region
of New Mexico. So there that was that was correct with northeast.
This is the bottom part of that note on page three, you'll see
that it's 224 2021. That is the first note in that
document on February 24. And you'll see here other notes that
were added on And I won't go through all of them, I invite
you to look in the show notes below. That will link you over
to the actual document and and written article where you can
download these, see these, see Tyler's articles, so on and so
forth. I'm going to jump down here to 225. I'm gonna read to
you that this is when they contacted the loss nemus I
probably have that pronounced incorrectly. So I'm sorry to all
those in Arizona who are in New Mexico, I should say. That just
cringed at my pronunciation, interview or request information
from members of the public and private entities on February
25 2021. At approximately 10:20am Special Agents blacked
out spoke to blacked out who worked for Los nemus Sheriff's
Office dispatch, he advised no reports were made in regards to
objects distend descending from the sky, or objects that had
crashed in the area will contact Special Agents again redacted or
special agent redacted at the Albuquerque FBI field office if
future reports are obtained. Again, that was the 25th. Those
redactions By the way, very, very common. They don't reveal
Special Agent names. And here you'll see a couple more notes.
Again, I invite you to read all of that at the link below.
Here's page for the last page I'm going to again, you can see
the sections here I'm going to jump down not read everything to
you. But there's a section called disposition. I'm gonna
read to you that few lines, blacked out and redacted. What
you can read. After consultation with FBI Albuquerque chief
division counsel, it was concluded the FBI does not have
federal jurisdiction to investigate this matter.
Therefore, this matter is being closed for information only.
However, if additional information presents itself
within the scope of FBI, federal jurisdiction, the FBI could
reopen this assessment and perform any investigative
actions deem necessary to have a successful resolution. last line
under disposition does not fall within the FBI jurisdiction.
Why is that? And I'm not sure that I'm still trying to
research this a little bit. But this ties into a much bigger
question. And this will be a future video. But I'm going to
pose this question to you guys. Right now. As you know, the FBI
has wound up in the Senate Intelligence Committees request
for the information from this particular agency, and others to
be evaluated by the UAP Task Force and for the upcoming UAP
report hopefully do any day now from the posting of this video.
If the FBI can't investigate what is clearly an unknown
object, flying near an airline, then what is it that they're
doing, because any military encounter is likely going to be
done by the military. And I've got documents to show that when
a drone went into a Navy installation, I believe it was
San Diego, it was NCIS that investigated that. So the
military has investigative arms for encroachments on their own
installations. So why is the FBI seemingly so prevalent in some
of these mentions about the UAP Task Force, this UAP report so
on and so forth, this seems to me cut and dry could be a drone,
it could be something manmade? Look, you know, let's not go the
alien route with this. All I'm saying is if it's not the
jurisdiction of the FBI, then why are they so prevalently
mentioned as of late, and, you know, that's still kind of, in
my opinion, unfolding. Maybe we'll find more about the
report. Last thing I'm going to go over here, before I show one
last thing to you, and then we're going to end this is at
the end of this form is what's called the workflow essentially,
this summarizes all of the different entries. So remember,
I said 224 was when they they put the first note, that's when
they created the incident. So it kind of makes a very small
summation of what happened with this particular incident, broken
down by date and time, all the way to march 2, closed as
information only obviously, because the disposition states
not part of the FBI is jurisdiction. Okay. So that is
this particular FBI form this incident report broken down.
This is not unique to unknown encounters of airliners. Again,
you find these in a ton of FBI files on the black vault comm I
have quite a few of them. It is a fairly common thing to see
nowadays. Here's the last thing that I'm going to point out to
you guys. And maybe you picked up on it as I was going through
the dates. I told you to put a pin in February 24 2021 because
that was when I faxed to the FBI that foi request. It says eight
pages, that was actually multiple FOIA requests. So
generally, I faxed them together. That way. I just don't
keep hanging up and faxing again and hanging up and faxing again.
Yes, I do fax because I hate their pet with what's called the
PAL system. I do use it periodically. But for the most
part, I fax it's a lot easier. It's a lot faster. And I wish
they did email. But they don't they took that away. So
regardless, there's my proof. There's the fax receipt. 4:03pm.
That is pacific time. Here's that workflow section, I talked
to you about 224 2021 maybe a pure coincidence that the FOIA
requests that I had sent in
what time is this 7:22pm? Eastern is a Pacific? I'm not
really sure. But regardless, within a couple of hours, they
created the incident report, and started creating notes that
evening about the inquiries that we're getting. I've already gone
over I was not the only one. So please do not think that I am
insinuating that I was. What I found interesting, though, is
that the case was started the day that I put the FOIA request
in. So how is it that on March 2, I yielded that no records
response that they were unable to find anything. Notice,
however, one other really weird coincidence, March 2 2021, is
when they sent that denial to me and said, Hey, sorry, Greenwald,
we can't find anything. And yet internally, when the documents
went to William pocket, look at the date of that final page, or
what I call that final page. It's not technically that March
2 2021, the same exact day that they essentially closed out the
incident report and saying that it wasn't FBI jurisdiction was
reflected by the same exact day, they sent out this no records
response to me. Now, what I learned with my conversation
today with William Puckett, was that he as well received a no
records response, however, and he let it go, he didn't appeal.
He didn't pursue it any farther. But then after had received the
FBI letter, in the beginning of June, that that essentially
released the records. So that to me, is, I won't say it. I don't
I don't want to talk bad about any foyer office. But I hope
that I showed you guys that I clearly described the records.
And what is really weird is that, again, the date of my
request reflects the date the incident was created. And the
date that I was denied is the date when they close their case.
Now, some may ask if the case is open. Can they lie? And, of
course, they can lie. We've seen that countless times. And I've
profiled it on this channel. They're just not supposed to.
But would it give them the freedom to say, hey, we've
gotten nothing on this when the case was still open? And I
believe the answer to that would be no, they would not have the
freedom. I have multiple cases I can cite with the FBI, where I
requested information on an individual, and the
investigation was still open. They didn't deny it. They didn't
say that there were no records, but rather they denied it
because the investigation was open. And that is exemption B
seven, so they will cite something when it is open. And
clearly, this was open during the processing of my request.
And yet they said Nope, sorry. We couldn't find anything. So
their action here for those who again, may pose the well maybe
they just you know, denied it because it was still open. That
does not coincide with a provable documented history of
how the FBI actually handles themselves in cases in
situations like this. What does that all mean? Well, you decide
it's pretty frustrating for me because I had that request in it
was properly identified and and described, and I was denied
anyway. And that is very frustrating and trying to choose
my words carefully there. But I'm always interested in what
you guys have to say. So if you are watching on YouTube, you
know the drill, please, please give me a thumbs up, make sure
you're subscribed to this channel and post your comments
below. If you're listening on any podcast form any podcast
platform, please you please know I aim for five stars. So if you
can take Take a moment, review the podcast. But hey, if you
want to see some of these visuals, see me go over them, go
to the black vault, comm slash live, and that will bounce you
to the YouTube channel. And that way you guys can see the
presentation that you're currently listening to. But
whichever way you are watching or listening, thank you so much
for doing so it's greatly appreciated. I hope you learned
at least one thing on this video. This is john Greenwald,
Jr. Signing off, and we'll see you next time.