Ep. #134 – Emails of Dr. James Lacatski Are Destroyed – Why?

In this day and age, why in the world would the U.S. government destroy documents and emails? Storage is cheap, and history is valuable! But, the U.S. government feels they should -- and they do.

But is it always by the book?

The post Ep. #134 – Emails of Dr. James Lacatski Are Destroyed – Why? first appeared on The Black Vault.

Episode Transcript

John Greenewald (00:08):
In this day and age, why in the world with the
US government destroy documentsand emails? storage is cheap.
And history is valuable. But theUS government feels they should.
And they do. But is it always bythe book? Well, what I
discovered years ago is no, itabsolutely is not. And now, a

(00:29):
new controversy has just beenrevealed with the discovery that
even more emails were destroyedof a key player in a hot topic,
Dr. James Lacatski, he's the guythat not only lead a program
called us up that he says,explore the paranormal, that
Skinwalker Ranch, but he alsosaid the US government has gone

(00:51):
inside an actual UFO. So why didhis emails disappear? And wasn't
all by the book? What proof, ifany, could we have received from
his classified communications?If they weren't all destroyed?
Stay tuned, you're about tojourney inside the black vault.

(01:35):
That's right, everybody. Asalways, thank you so much for
tuning in and taking thisjourney inside the black vault
with me. I'm your host, JohnGreenewald, Jr, founder and
creator of The Black Vault. Andwe are exploring today, what
could or could not be amalicious cover up and
destruction of records. Nowthere's a couple of ways to look

(01:57):
at this. So what we're going todo is explore exactly what went
down, at least to the best of myknowledge, and explore the
questions that are stillunanswered. Sadly, I can't give
you whether or not this was amalicious cover up or not, it
may actually be by the book. ButI want to go ahead and explore
that a little bit also, becauseif it is, it's still

(02:19):
problematic, and it's somethingthat I feel needs to be
addressed, needs to be exploredmore and needs to be fixed
because we are losing valuable,valuable history, not just on
the UAP topic, which we're goingto be talking about today.
Again, in the context of theemails that were deleted.
However, this expands wellbeyond just the UAP topic, in

(02:41):
fact, pick any topic thatinvolves the US government, and
that history is likelydestroyed, or at least a piece
of it is likely destroyed aftera certain amount of time. But
we'll get into all of that. Sothank you all for joining me. If
this is your first time, I hopeyou do enjoy the channel, please
give a thumbs up that reallydoes help this channel, get get

(03:04):
more visibility more people seethe videos. And of course, if
you're not subscribed, pleasehit that subscribe button and
turn the notifications on. Thatway you see when these videos
drop when I do live streams. Ithappens sometimes at random. So
definitely make sure you'resubscribed and turn the
notifications on. So that said,let's just go ahead and get into

(03:27):
it and explore exactly whathappened here. Because I did
post this out I feel that it wasnewsworthy, so don't like to sit
on things that James Lacatskiand his emails were destroyed.
That was a new revelation. Wehad not known that before he was
a DIA employee. And for thosewho don't know, let's explore a
little bit about who JamesLacatski is for anybody who does

(03:51):
explore the UAP topic, you'llknow that he has written now two
books as of the recording ofthis video. The first out was
skinwalkers at the Pentagon. Nowhe wrote that with Dr. Colum
Keller, her and George Knapp,the journalist from Las Vegas
that everybody knows of the BobLazar fame and obviously,
someone who has been deeplyinvolved with covering these

(04:13):
issues. Well, those threegentlemen came out with skin
markers at the Pentagon andexplored what was the AW SAP
program within the DefenseIntelligence Agency. Now,
depending upon who you listen toall SAP was allegedly, the
paranormal program that spawneda tip that was led by Luis
Elizondo in the Pentagon,specifically, OSD and that's at

(04:35):
least one version. There areother versions, even away from
the US government. Whether ornot a tip was a nickname for us,
and that's a whole video initself and kind of a mess. But
skinwalkers at the Pentagon,according to that book, set the
record straight, so to speak,because what we were told in the
New York Times article,according to this book, was

(04:58):
wrong and inaccurate. And sowhat they did was they explored
what OSAP was where the $22million went and James Lacatski
was the guy who headed thatprogram. Within the DIA. The
contractor was BigelowAerospace, his subsidiary called
bass, and the rest was history.So that was the first book they
came out with another one insidethe US government. Covert UFO

(05:20):
press program, initialrevelations also authored by the
same three gentlemen. So again,Lacatski was the guy who was at
the helm. And it's it's notdisputed either. There's a lot
of government controversy hereabout Luis Elizondo and a tip.
The other. We'll call it acounterpart to this story that
all SAP went through the yearsthat it was about 2008 to 2000,

(05:43):
technically 12, but really 2008to 2010 was when they created
the majority of their reports.And then Luis Elizondo was doing
things inside the Pentagon,under what he called a tip. Now,
his role is disputed by thePentagon, they say he had no
assigned responsibilities on theprogram. And essentially, he
didn't do anything that heclaimed. However, lookout ski is

(06:06):
a different story. It's neverbeen disputed by the US
government. In fact, if you knowwhere to look, the original
documentation back from 2008That was looking for bitters for
the off SAP within dia still haslike cat skis name, so anybody
can verify that he was going tobe the contracting officer,
contracting officersrepresentative, or CLR. And he

(06:29):
was the government projectleader of all SAP, so none of
that is in dispute. And it'seasily proven. There is evidence
that supports that. Now, as theyears went on, and documents
came came out. I don't know why.But the DIA ended up redacting
the cat skis name, but thedocuments were still
downloadable from the USgovernment when they were

(06:50):
looking for bids. Go figure, whoknows? Sometimes there's no
rhyme or reason why they dothings. But there you go. So
anyway, that's exactly who lookat Ski was now per this bid
solicitation. They call it a bidsolicitation, they were looking
for government contractors tocome aboard, get a certain
amount of money. And createessentially reports that were

(07:13):
forward looking 40 years intothe future. Now this is on
paper, so don't kill themessenger here. But that's
that's what the solicitation wason paper forward looking 40
years into the future. How couldtechnology advanced when it came
to materials lift? propulsion,there were about 12 different
areas of study primarily inaerospace research that they

(07:35):
were going to be looking intoper this contract. Now, what
came out over the years was notnecessarily that instead, it was
supposedly this ParanormalResearch Program, headed within
the DIA with the contractor bassthrough Bigelow Aerospace. And
they studied different aspectsof the paranormal at Skinwalker
Ranch in Utah. Now this wasowned by Robert Bigelow. And

(07:59):
again, allegedly, the DIA wasinterested in what was going on
there. They were studying UFOsthey were studying paranormal
creatures, all of which wereoutlined in the Catskills books.
So it was on paper one thing,but allegedly something much,
much more mysterious. And moreparanormal, by the way, this
graphic was not prompted by AIother than what is your

(08:21):
interpretation of the offsetprogram? That's what it came up
with? I'm fascinated by AI andhow it interprets things. So
anyway, that's why the image isa little wonky. But that's,
that's the root of it, I alwaysget a kick out of, again, how AI
thinks about things. So that wasthe prompt, give me an image
representation of the offsetprogram. So now the question

(08:44):
mark is, you know, was was itreally this paranormal program?
And I've always anybody whowatches this channel, I've
always had a problem with thatfor a couple of different
reasons. It's out of the CIA'spurview. It just is. I mean,
look, there may be somegovernment agencies that would
be interested in SkinwalkerRanch if there was provable

(09:06):
paranormal research going on. Icouldn't believe that that's not
a problem. But it wouldn't bethe DIA. It's just not in their
purview to operate with boots onthe ground on US soil. That's
just not their job. So for me, Ikind of lean towards this was if
it was funded by governmentmoney, then the actual
government and the DIA didn'treally know or authorize it. But

(09:30):
rather, maybe this was somethingthat was just off the rails that
Lacatski was doing through thedefense warning office where he
was a part of, they got the $22million over the course of a
couple of years. And on paper,there was those aerospace
research studies. And they didcreate 38 reports, all of which,
but I believe one, because it'sstill classified has been

(09:53):
released. The rest are now inthe public domain. And again,
that controversy is palpablewhen It comes to OS app and
whether or not it was related toparanormal. Now, why am I going
into that diatribe here whenwe're talking about emails?
Well, because in my opinion,emails are going to be the
absolute best way to eitherprove or disprove whether or not

(10:15):
OS have truly was exploringthis, because let's face it,
there may not be governmentreports that were quote,
unquote, deliverables asconnected to us app when it came
to some of these paranormalaspects. But, you know, they're
talking about it. Dr. ColmKelleher, who was part of bass
was obviously talking about it.It's not 100% telephone

(10:37):
conversations for yours. No, I'myou're going to have emails, and
you're going to have emails thattouch on the topics that may be
disputed by the US government.But within the email box of
James Lacatski, maybe we can geta little bit of an idea of what
really went on, what was theKaski researching, what was he
looking at? What was he tryingto figure out, so on and so

(11:01):
forth. So I love that foranybody who delves into the FOIA
and wants to explore with it,don't forget, it's not all about
reports and, and snoozy memosand stuff like that for your
email boxes, you will be amazedat the stuff that you will find
when it comes to this type ofmaterial. So don't forget that
in your for your travels.Definitely go after email. So

(11:24):
that's why what I did here. Now,let me kind of detour from the
Kaski here because obviously theDIA stance now is the Catskills
email box was destroyed. Nowwhen I announced that on social
media, a lot of speculationbegan from different corners of
this conversation. And that'sprimarily because it tied into a

(11:44):
story that I did back in May of2021. And I worked on this story
for months. And what the whatthe gist of this was, was that
Luis Elizondo again thatdisputed director of a tip
disputed by the US governmentthat is I was going after his
emails for the exact same reasonbecause look, the government can

(12:06):
have their stance and can becompletely lying. Luis Elizondo
can have his stance and he couldbe completely lying. But if
there was this program, called atip, and there was this research
and UFOs look, the chances thathe was sending an email
classified or not, that hadkeywords like UFO or a tip or
UAP, or tic tac or Nimitz or godown the list. The odds of that

(12:33):
would be pretty high. So thegovernment can play this. He
said, he said game with LuisElizondo, that's fine. I don't
care. Because you go after thereal records, you know, again,
the away from the reports thoseemails, and over the course of
months, in fact, it was actuallyyears while I was filing these,
these FOIA is, but some of themwere coming back negative, that

(12:53):
just didn't make sense. Negativemeaning they were saying we got
nothing responsive to yourrequest, no records whatsoever.
So I started prodding thePentagon on this, specifically
the DoD that that was in controlof Luis Elizondo his emails even
after he resigned, because theyarchive those things. And after
pushing and pushing and pushing,had finally discovered that Luis

(13:15):
Elizondo 's emails weredestroyed. Now, is that legal?
Yes. However, you have to adhereto what are called records
retention schedules, in order tomake it legal. So when somebody
resigns, you don't just poof,automatically delete their
entire existence. But rather,there are these schedules that
outline from top to bottom leftto right, depending upon your

(13:39):
position, how high up you were,what did you do, what office
were you at? What agency did youwork for? It stipulates how long
those agencies have to archiveyour emails and your files and
your reports. Now, in somecases, it's a very short
timeframe. In other cases, it'sseven years. In other cases,
it's in perpetuity, it's in itsforever. So they they archive

(14:03):
them and they never getdestroyed. So it depends on
where you fall on the spectrumwhen it comes to where you are
in the governmentinfrastructure. And that's
defined by these recordsretention schedules. So I dug
and dug and dug and pushed andprodded and poked and asked
anybody I could for statementsand essentially the bottom line

(14:23):
was Luis Elizondo, I could provehis emails were supposed to be
maintained for seven years. Now,according to Mr. Elizondo, he
felt it was in perpetuity, Icould not prove that. So he and
I had many discussions aboutthat. And, and I told him, I
said, Look, I can't on paper. Ican't prove that because you

(14:45):
don't fit into the category fromwhere I'm sitting. I can't prove
it. But I can prove seven yearsand I can prove that the DoD
just destroyed your emails wellahead of schedule. Now, I don't
want to call that illegal, butit's definitely not by the book.
It is definitely frowned upon.And so what I had determined was
based on his resignation date,October 4 2024, was when his

(15:10):
emails were supposed to bemaintained until so that means
you file a FOIA in early 2024.Those emails should still be
there ready for you to search.Yet in his case, they were
deleted years ago. And so thatwas wrong. Now, that obviously
created a lot of controversy anda lot of, shall we say,

(15:30):
conversation about what werethey doing? Were they covering
up Luis Elizondo and his historywithin the a tip, and the proof
that people like me needed tosupport his claim? What were
they doing? And of course, wedon't know the true answer to
that. But I can say and fill inone more blank, that in the

(15:53):
future, I don't know how far I'mnot hiding it from you. I just
don't have the proof yet.However, I am under
How can I word this I have undervery good authority, that that
Luis Elizondo is not alone withthese email destructions, that
it was not just Luis Elizondothat was destroyed. But rather,

(16:16):
this was a much bigger problemwithin the DOD. Now, I have not
come across that information toowell, after 2021 When I wrote
this story, so I plan on writingit more. However, I have open
cases that need to complete forme to get the reports get all
the proof, and all of that, butlet's just say that this is a
bigger story. And it's onethat's incredibly important to

(16:39):
me. And it goes to the root andheart of why I do what I do with
the black vault. And quitesimply that is the preservation
of history. Whether or not it'sLuis Elizondo is ATypI. Males,
whether or not it's James,James, the Catskills OS happy
males, or whether or not it'scompletely unrelated to any of
this. That's why I do what I dothat this material is incredibly

(17:02):
valuable and should be saved.And the fact that my story had
really resonated within thePentagon, but not in a good way.
Things kind of started to fall.And people started realizing,
hey, there's an issue here.There's there's information
being lost. And that's where I'mgoing to be able to pick up the
story hopefully sooner thanlater. But we know the

(17:24):
government's paces, you know,nothing short of a slug and
sloth so I don't know whenthat's going to come but just
know that that blank I want tofill in. And it's one that is a
bigger issue here because of ofthings like this, not only with
Luis Elizondo, but with JamesLacatski. And the fact that
these answers can be given thisis evidence in what may be look

(17:47):
in the grander scale a small oneto the UFO community. It's a big
one. But to the grander scalehere, look, not everybody's
going to care about theCatskills email and proving all
SAP was paranormal related. Butlook at the bigger picture and
what this is and how things arebeing destroyed. And how things
are being harmed how people'scredibility is being potentially

(18:10):
harmed here. Look at the proofthe evidence that's being
destroyed. That is an issue. Nowwith Lacatski, I had filed
multiple requests going back toyou know 2018 2019 When the cat
skis name really was startedbeing bantered about that he was
connected to all of this. Weknew it from the original bid
solicitation that had alreadybeen out in early 2018. But

(18:32):
again, not not necessarily hisconnection to the paranormal
side of this more so at thattime, it was Luis Elizondo, but
as time went on, and peoplestarted talking and doing
interviews, obviously that ledto these FOIA requests being
filed, one of which I had lookedfor anything that said Elizondo
within the Catskills box. Thereason for that is pretty

(18:54):
obvious it would have showed theconnection between Luis Elizondo
and potentially all SAP LuisElizondo has now since come out
and said that he talked to theCAT scan, they had conversation
and again depending upon whatversion of these stories you
listen to Luis Elizondo said heplayed no role in OS app yet in
his IG complaint said that hedid for a couple of days, again,

(19:17):
depending upon which version ofhis that you want to believe,
regardless, sounded like there'dbe evidence there yet. A search
that ended in 2021 for thekeyword Elizondo came up
absolutely negative. They saidthat there was no records. Right
here no documents responsive tomy request, which I always felt
was weird. I don't think I evereven posted this, because

(19:40):
especially in 2021, everybodyjust thought I was out to get
Elizondo and Lacatski. So Iwasn't hiding this, but it was
like look, this doesn't make anysense whatsoever. So I archived
it for myself and I moved on.Another one was straightforward.
It was key word UFO on JamesLacatski's email box. Now, that
one's pretty obvious. And yes, Ido these requests with all sorts

(20:03):
of lists of UAP, UFO, differentvariations of view of UAP, so on
and so forth. So I'm not goingto, you know, bore you to death
with every single word that I'veused. But even this one also
came back with no documentsresponsive to your request. That
was in March of 2022. So thatwas really kind of bizarre to
me. Now, my mantra with the FOIAand I always preach this is

(20:27):
always appeal. And that is true.I fully support that. And
sometimes I don't follow my ownadvice. Some of these I didn't
appeal. And it was just quitesimply because there was no
grant. I couldn't figure outwhat the grounds at this time
that I could stand on to say,hey, here's my legal argument.
Here is how I can appeal this.Well, when it came to this

(20:49):
request. That ended in Septemberof 2023. I was looking for all
James Lacatski communicationswith Luis Elizondo. I included
multiple private emails now I'vechosen to redact those to
protect Mr. Elizondo hasprivacy. I've always done that.
So when you see red redactionson documents, those are mine.
They're very few and farbetween. But that's what I do.

(21:11):
And in fact, I also asked the USgovernment to please be six
redact my FOIA requests on LuisElizondo, and other individuals
as well when I use privateemails as as a keyword or a
target of a search to please dothat to protect privacy, whether
or not they do that. I hope theydo. But again, I'm not
interested in blowing anybody'sprivacy. So when you see those

(21:34):
red redactions, they're mine. SoI was looking for the cascade
communications with Elizondo andJ. Stratton. He was the one that
was part of the UAP Task Force.We don't hear a lot from him.
We've heard a few interviews. Ithink just just one main one, I
should say, with George Knapp.But Jay Stratton is somebody
that has intrigued me the firsttime his name came out, was an

(21:57):
article that I wrote a few yearsago. His name was not connected
to any of this. At that time,what I had discovered was
Stratton had wrote, the originalstatements that I got from the
US Navy that went viral. I mean,it was covered worldwide, about
UAP, and the three videos, theFLIR, the gimbal, and the go
fast, and how the US Navyconsidered them unidentified.

(22:20):
Now, they had leaked, obviously,but they had never been
acknowledged before by the USNavy or the military. And on top
of that never said to beunidentified. So that was a huge
deal. So I had filed for yearsto figure out, Hey, how did that
statement get written? And bydoing that had discovered this
gentleman by the name of John J.Stratton. And I didn't know at

(22:43):
the time exactly what his titlewas. But I knew that he was
highly connected because he'sthe one that wrote those
statements for the PublicAffairs Office. And then the
Public Affairs Office took them,reworded them a little bit
shrunk them down just to makethem more condensed. And that's
what I got, while I haddiscovered the original emails

(23:05):
that Stratton wrote. So just togive you that little background
on how Stratton came to be, Ithought, okay, look, maybe there
was some communication withLacatski as well. So let's put
it all in the same request. Andyet that came up with no
documents responsive to yourrequest. Now, this I had grounds
to appeal. Why, because Elizondohad already put in writing and a

(23:28):
document that he had submittedto the inspector general that he
had talked to Lacatski, therewas other material that I could
draw firm from to build anappeal off of saying, hey, this
doesn't make sense because ofthis. And so I essentially what
what they call appeal, theadequacy of the search. And so
when you appeal, you have to doso under certain grounds of

(23:50):
proving what you're appealing.You also have to name what
you're appealing. You can't justsay, I have a gut feeling things
are are there, you have toappeal the adequacy of the
search. Explain why so many FOIApeople out there, I stress
appeal. So I filed the appeal onthis. And this was the letter
that I got back just days ago.Dear Mr. Greenwald, this

(24:13):
response, your freedom ofinformation act appeal dated
November 2520 23, I'm going tojump down, I reviewed your
request for appeal and remandedyour request to the review team
for an additional search. I'mgonna stop quoting right there.
That means that I essentiallywon the appeal, that that they
that they didn't see adequateevidence that the search was was

(24:35):
done correctly. So from what Iunderstand, appellate
authorities don't justautomatically remand it back.
They only do so if they feelthat the search wasn't adequate
enough, which was what I wasappealing, so they remanded it
back for an additional search.Going back to the letter. Upon
remand and review, dia personnelverified the search procedures

(24:57):
and conducted a second search.No responsive records were
located as a result of thisSearch, the records you
requested were properlydestroyed prior to your request,
pursuant to records dispositionschedules approved by the
National Archives, and RecordsAdministration, based on the
above information and thegoverning law, I find that dia

(25:18):
personnel performed an adequatesearch for records responsive to
your request, please be advisedthat no further action will be
taken regarding this appeal.Now, I'm going back one, one. So
April 2 2022. I'm going to writethat down. So I don't forget,
because we're going to talk about
we're going to talk about whythat data is important. So they

(25:43):
said that the records weredestroyed prior to me submitting
that. So April 22, or excuse me,April 2 2020, to some date prior
to that. So that's, that's theonly way I'm trying to kind of
dissect this and figure out whenwere these records destroyed,
because as you'll see, in a fewminutes, that date is key. So

(26:04):
they told me here in writing,boom, everything is gone. So I,
you know, I do this a lot. Idon't always talk about it. But
when I write articles, and whenI announce things that I think
are newsworthy, I'm alwaysdouble and triple checking. And
here is that double and triplecheck. Can you please confirm

(26:24):
that, by this response, all ofJames Kathy's emails were
destroyed, and the DIAresponded, the DIA FOIA office
can confirm that a search wasconducted for emails using the
cited name, James Lacatski, andno records were located. Now,
that wasn't good enough for mebecause even though they said
they were destroyed, it's sovague here. So I asked again,

(26:48):
I'll spare you my letter. Butessentially just ask them what
I'm trying to confirm is theentire email box, just the ones
that I'm looking for, you know,what, what exactly are you
saying? And their response?Greetings. Your question was
understood, and the response isthe same. There are no email

(27:09):
records for James Lacatski as aresult of records retention
schedule, so everything is gonenow. Anybody who knows me, I
continued to push. And I said,Look, you guys got to you got to
do better than that. Whatdisposition schedule Are you are
you pulling from? And they saidaccording to NARAS, General

(27:29):
Records Schedule 6.1 dispositionauthority, da G Rs 2022 0060002
emails are deleted when sevenyears old. So that's what they
said. Now, I did ask about Jamesthe cat skis, exact resignation
date, because there's a coupleof differing dates. They're kind
of floating around. The DoD gaveme Luis Elizondo when asked. So

(27:51):
I was hoping dia would do thesame for look like ASCII, and
they're making me sign a thirdparty release form. And the
Kaski doesn't return my messagesthat I stopped a year or two
ago. But he's very, very tightwith who he talks to, which is,
essentially is Jeremy Korbel.And George Knapp. I'm not

(28:11):
familiar with him talking toanybody else, when it comes to
answering questions. So takethat as you will. So that said,
I don't know his exactresignation date. Now that
schedule I just rattled off toyou this is it general record
schedule 6.1. Here's the coverpage. And here's the specific
section that they were talkingabout, which is email and or

(28:35):
other types of electronicmessages of all other official
staff and contractors notincluded in item 10. Now, keep
in mind, these schedules arevery, very detailed. I'm sparing
you all those boring, nittygritty details. But essentially,
they go into what type ofposition, how long, what type of

(28:55):
record, how long do you retainit for, so on and so forth. And
so it spells all that out. WhereLacatski fit was this and that
that was stipulated here forseven years, then that's no
longer needed. This item appliesthe majority of emails and other
messaging account slash userswithin an agency adopting a

(29:16):
capstone approach, which itseems like dia does not media
neutral applies to recordsmanaged in an electronic format
only. So again, it it actuallyseparates electronic documents
from paper records and so on andso forth. So they're that
they're that detailed, but thisis where he fit. So seven years

(29:36):
was when lookouts keys emailsshould have been maintained. Now
this was item 10. Because someof you may may wonder, well,
what was item 10? Why didn't hefit into their item 10 are
actually permanent records is sothings are kept in perpetuity
forever, till the end of theworld. As soon as they resign.

(29:57):
It's kept and archived andthere's no destruction. But he
didn't fit into any of theirthat made the absolute closest,
but it was not. fitting forLacatski was number six
directors of significant programoffices and or their
equivalents, as far as I'm awareof the Cascade was not the
director of a program office. Hewas within the offense warning

(30:20):
office. And he did leadobviously OS app. And I'm sure
he worked on a plethora of otherprograms as well. But he was not
a director number 10. Again,Close, but no cigar additional
roles and positions thatpredominantly create permanent
records related to missioncritical functions, or policy
decisions and are of ahistorical significance. Well, I

(30:44):
mean, I guess ASA wasn't of hishistorical significance for them
to say, Hey, we should maintainall of those records. On top of
that, they didn't maintain anyof his emails. So whatever he
was doing, they felt it was notsomething that they needed to
keep in perpetuity. So thatbeing said, seven years, so what

(31:05):
exactly do we not have answeredhere? And it comes down to these
two questions, what exact datethe James or Kathy retire? Now,
he has said in interviews around2015 2016. And another one, I
believe it was set in May of2016, or just 2016. So for my
purpose here, because I can'tprove it yet. We're gonna say

(31:26):
circa may 2016, which means thatthe destruction would have been
authorized circa May of 2023.That would be seven years from
that. Now remember, I told youto put a pin in that one FOIA
request that was filed April 22022. From my calculation here,
it should have been May of 2023.That they were destroyed yet dia

(31:47):
said they were destroyed priorto my request of April 2 2022.
Now, if what is being said aboutlookout skis resignation date of
May 2016 is true, or justessentially, any date in 2016.
Then the destruction was notauthorized until pick a month in
2023. That means all of the FOIArequests that I filed, including

(32:09):
this April 2 2022 requests, andthe other ones that I went over,
which were filed in 2018 2019.So even years prior to that,
should have not met a destructedemail box, nothing should have
been deleted that yet the DIA issaying oh, sorry, you know, you
filed after, so it does not makesense. Now, in one off the cuff

(32:30):
remark that Lacatski had made,he was talking about his
resignation, and he said,approximately 2015 2016. Now,
I'd love to hear if anybody hasaligned to him wasn't really
2015 Or was, again, this kind ofoff the cuff remark said just
kind of like a 2015 2016timeframe. Maybe he was planning
it and 2015 didn't execute untilMay, you know, whatever that may

(32:54):
be, then you're starting to cutit close. Maybe. But regardless,
we still don't know. So, in myopinion,
I believe his emails weredestroyed early. But that is
just a guess at this point. Itall depends on when the Kathy's
actual resignation confirmedresignation date, or retiring

(33:15):
date. When that actually wasthat'll determine if this was
kosher or not. If I were toguess, I think it was early. I
really do. So hopefully we canget that question answered.
Number two, the second questionthat we still don't know what
exact date was his email boxdestroyed that we don't know at
all. According to them, the onlyclosest the DIA came to

(33:37):
answering that was prior toApril 2 2022. That doesn't help
me at all. So I have asked now acouple of times with follow ups
by the time I recorded this, butI'm kind of being met with deaf
ears at this point. What was theexact destruction date? Because
even though that they won't tellme when Lacatski retired, I said

(33:58):
we can forget that just tell mewhen the emails were destroyed.
And then we can kind of backdatefrom there and we can figure it
out. But until that happens,we're kind of in the dark. But
bottom line though, I wouldguess that it was actually a
little bit early. So was thisroutine procedure or an
intentional cover up? And Ithink a lot of people kind of

(34:20):
jumped to intentional cover up.And that could very well be
true. But the reason why Ipulled into Luis Elizondo story
that I wrote in 2021, is whatI've discovered since then, and
that is a massive problem withrecord retention schedules not
being followed. And althoughthat is getting into a very dry
story, I mean, I fully admitthat that not everybody really

(34:44):
cares about the nitty grittydetails when it comes to that.
The bottom line is what mattersand that is the fact that these
records are be being destroyedway ahead of schedule. And
that's a problem, that theserecords are being met with
absolute disregard for theirhistorical significance, but on
top of that absolute disregardfor what they need to be doing,

(35:07):
and that is preserving theserecords. And this is an issue.
See, I started using the Freedomof Information Act thinking that
the government just savedeverything, and that you can
just request and if it wasthere, then if it didn't fit
into the nine exemptions, thenboom, you got it right. Or it
was heavily redacted orwhatever. That was being young

(35:29):
and naive and stupid on my part,because then you realize, no,
the government actually destroysa lot. And that's part of the
game. And part of the game isthe Freedom of Information Act,
I do not believe is broken.There's a lot of people who
trash it. Look, I got more than3.23 point 3 million examples on
why the FOIA is not broken, youcan get some amazing things. But

(35:53):
it definitely needs help. And inone of the reasons it needs
help, and one of the ways itneeds help, it is the amount of
time that it takes to processrequests. I've posted some in
the last couple of months, acouple of them that almost had a
decade. That's a huge, hugeproblem. Some that take years,
to to come our way, that is ahuge, huge deal. It's not just

(36:16):
because US citizens shouldn'thave to wait that long, because
we shouldn't, we're, we're doingstories, we're doing research,
whatever. We're just curious, itdoesn't matter. The Freedom of
Information Act is at ourdisposal for a reason. But when
we get years of a wait, that isincredibly problematic. And I
think that this is an issue thatneeds to be dealt with, because

(36:40):
now when you when you add intothe frustration of these delays,
you add in the records,retention schedules, the
records, retention scheduleswill destroy documents in a
quicker amount of time than ittakes some agencies to process a
request. And what that means is,is it doesn't even matter if
your request goes in prior todocument destruction. If they

(37:02):
don't process it, they may notknow to go to James look at
skis, email box that's archivedin whatever way that they
archive and say, Hey, we havepending FOIA here, we have to go
ahead and save that material forlonger. No, none of that takes
place. So if they prolong theprocessing of these requests,
whether it be maliciously,intentionally, or just, it's the

(37:25):
nature of the beast, becausethey're understaffed, doesn't
really matter. The end result isthat it takes longer to process,
that means all these records aredestroyed. Now, we've talked
about seven years here a coupleof times, but there are records
that are destroyed, literallywithin 30 to 45 days, all UFO
fans out there will really kindof cringe on this one. But when

(37:49):
it comes to the FAA records, anda lot of tower logs and, and the
control tower recordings, whilepilots are encountering UFOs and
UAP. That's undeniable, I have apile of FOIA requests that prove
that. But the only way I wasable to prove that was that
people gave me a tip. And theysaid there was an encounter over

(38:09):
Dallas on this date. Thathappened two weeks ago. So go
after records on it. And sureenough, recordings would come
up, tower logs would note it,these incidents were being
archived. But if it's after the30 or 45 day period, the FAA
destroys the air traffic controlrecordings, and they destroy
records because they don't keepthem forever. Now, that's a

(38:32):
problem. Now I'm only talkingabout one specific UFO related
reason. And that's reallyinteresting to me, may not be to
the whole world. But what elseis being lost on those shorter
retention schedules? Some areonly three years. Well, three
years isn't a long wait when youtalk about FOIA. So yet again,
you're talking about a lot ofmaterial that's just being lost.

(38:55):
A lot of these programs andstuff take years to come out
into the open. But if thosethose records, the emails that
went in, to creating theseprograms, because a lot of times
those emails and the banter backand forth, that's more
interesting than what happenedduring the program itself. And
the final reports and thequarterly summary reports and so

(39:18):
on. The behind the scenes is alot more interesting. But by the
time that stuff is public, it'sall gone. It's all destroyed.
That's not true across theboard. But it's true in enough
cases, that we need action. Weneed to do something about it
because we are losing valuable,important history. And it
doesn't matter what the topicis. Because all topics apply

(39:41):
records retention schedules, itdoesn't matter if it's a UFO or
UAAP report or recording orsomething about aircraft or
something about whatever, itdoesn't stipulate that the
records as a whole are eitherkept or destroyed. And that's
it. And that needs to change. Ihope we get more about the
Lacatski emails. I continue todig not only through getting

(40:03):
more information from dia, butalso doing the exact same thing
I did with Elizondo. And thatwas finding out key players that
he was likely communicating withthrough other agencies, or maybe
even dia, that even though theCatskills email boxes gone, the
receiving end may have aretention schedule that says,
hey, this person is kept inperpetuity forever. And so even

(40:27):
though the Catskills email boxis gone, you do a request on
that person for allcommunications they had with
James Lacatski. And hopefully,fingers crossed, you can get the
material. So it's a backengineering, if you will, the
communications from James thecat ski out. I've done it with
Luis Elizondo, and I've gottenresults, not a tip related. But

(40:49):
it was able to show a little bitof a glimpse of what Luis
Elizondo his job was within thePentagon. Hopefully, we'll have
the same with Rakowski. Onlytime will tell months, years,
decades. Who knows. But youknow, I've already filed quite a
bit and I will report it to youwhenever it comes in. So that's
the update. Thank you so muchfor hanging out with me for a

(41:13):
little bit here, talking aboutdocument destruction. And
whether or not it's kosher ornot by the book or not. Man, it
really does irked me when thathappened. So get involved. I
know some of this is dry. Butget involved, make a stink out
of it, start profiling theseincidents where records are
destroyed. Because look, look atwhat history we've lost. And

(41:35):
it's important, and I think morepeople should know. So thank you
for doing that. Again, thumbs upon the channel. If you're
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(41:59):
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(42:22):
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(42:46):
watching. This is JohnGreenewald Jr signing off. And
we'll see you next time.