Jay Stratton's 'Out of the Shadows': The Biggest Claims in the Memoir, and What Would Prove Them

Jay Stratton’s memoir went on sale yesterday, October 13. The night before, he sat down with Bret Baier on Fox News and Baier asked him the only question anyone cares about:

Baier: Does the United States government have non-human craft in its possession? Stratton: Yes, it does. Baier: And have you seen one with your eyes? Stratton: I have seen non-human beings and non-human craft with my own eyes.

That exchange is the news, and it is worth being exact about why. When David Grusch went on Joe Rogan two weeks ago, every striking thing he said came with the same disclaimer, offered by Grusch himself: he was passing on what colleagues told him. We went through that interview line by line. Stratton is making a different kind of claim. He is the former director of the government’s own UAP Task Force, and he is saying he looked.

So this piece does two things. It sets out the most striking claims in Out of the Shadows and the interview that launched it, with the wording attached. And for each one it asks the same question: what record would exist if it were true, and has anyone produced it?

Who is making the claim

The résumé matters here more than usual, because the book leans on it. Stratton joined the Army in 1989 and served about 33 years across the military and intelligence community, retiring from the Office of Naval Intelligence in 2022 as a defense intelligence senior executive, the top non-appointed civilian grade. At the Defense Intelligence Agency he was chief of air and space warfare, responsible for “emerging and disruptive” aerospace threats, with access, he told Baier, to “our most classified programs.”

From there the chain is documented. He helped found AAWSAP, the DIA program that in 2008 funded the Skinwalker Ranch study and the 37 exotic-physics papers that resurfaced in PURSUE Release 06. KLAS has reported he wrote the investigative report on the 2004 Nimitz “Tic Tac” encounter. In 2020 he became the first director of the UAP Task Force. None of that is in dispute. The book’s blurbs come from a former Secretary of Defense, a retired Air Force Space Command general, a former NSC aviation security chief and Cmdr. David Fravor.

That is the strongest possible messenger. It is not the same as evidence, and the rest of this piece keeps the two apart.

Claim 1: the black triangle over the missile silo

AI illustration of a scene described in the book. The video Stratton describes has not been released. Not evidence.

This is the book’s origin story. In the autumn of 2005, according to PEOPLE, a colleague brought Stratton classified footage recorded near a nuclear missile site. Baier read the passage on air:

“A black triangle aircraft, no wings, no tail, no exhaust, no visible propulsion of any kind, as if the fundamental laws of physics simply didn’t apply.”

PEOPLE adds yellow, white and orange lights at the corners and an acceleration that “seemed to defy known physics.” Stratton: “I can literally still see that video in my head. That was the moment that changed my world.”

What would exist if it’s true. A video file, a date, a base, and a chain of custody inside DIA. Stratton’s claim is not that the object was alien, at this stage, but that it “exceeded our capabilities” and he could not identify it, which is a narrower and more defensible statement. What’s public. Nothing. The video is not among the 447 PURSUE records released so far, and the book, as quoted, does not name the site. Black triangles are also one of the most commonly reported UAP shape in civilian databases, which cuts both ways: it is consistent with a real recurring object, and with a classified US platform Stratton might not have been read into, a possibility he would have been well placed to rule out and which the excerpts so far do not address.

Claim 2: a nuclear submarine as bait

AI illustration of an operation described in the book. No imagery from it has been released. Not evidence.

The most operational claim in the book, and the most checkable. Baier quoted it:

“Our bait would be a nuclear submarine. Draw a UAP in close enough to monitor, track, and if possible, capture or recover.”

Stratton said this came after “several efforts,” and culminated when he “had access to a nuclear submarine that I could put out off the East Coast,” with a Navy P-3 submarine hunter carrying “a lot of different equipment” parked overhead. Did it work? “On their very first mission, a UAP appeared,” and “data was collected on that mission.”

Note what he did not say. He did not say anything was captured or recovered. The book’s own phrasing is “if possible.”

What would exist if it’s true. A lot. Submarine deployments generate patrol orders, and a P-3 sortie with a collection package generates flight records, sensor tapes and an intelligence report. This is exactly the kind of material the PURSUE releases are supposed to surface, and exactly the kind Congress can ask the Navy for by date and area. What’s public. The quote. If there is one claim in this book a member of Congress can test this month, it is this one.

Claim 3: two admirals, a “phase in” over Top Gun, and no report

AI illustration of an account in the book. Not evidence.

Baier read a line from a call Stratton received: “We’ve had four UAP encounters in the past week.” Stratton said the callers were two admirals and a commander serving as their senior intelligence officer, and that they had seen a UAP “phase in, was their own words, over the training building” at the Top Gun compound, before it “just disappeared as fast as it was there.”

Then the part Stratton calls “the more important part of the story.” He arranged for them to be debriefed at the Pentagon. When they arrived, he says, a more senior officer, “someone who I believe is involved in this legacy program, this historic coverup, the hidden hand as I call it in the book, intercepted them and convinced them that their reputations are on the line if they make this report. And they didn’t make the report.”

What would exist if it’s true. By Stratton’s own account, no intelligence report, which is the point of the story. But two flag officers and a commander are three living witnesses with names, and the officer who intercepted them is a fourth. Since July, an ODNI memo and a Department of War waiver have, on paper, freed exactly these people to report to AARO or PURSUE without breaching their NDAs (our explainer). What’s public. No names. If even one of the three goes on the record, this becomes the best-corroborated story in the book.

Claim 4: Roswell happened, in two pieces

AI illustration of a secondhand account. No authenticated image of any Roswell recovery exists. Not evidence.

This is the passage that will travel furthest. Per the excerpt published by PEOPLE:

“[The source] said that there was indeed a crash in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. The crash broke into two pieces, and everything was recovered, the crash and non-human bodies.”

And on the occupants, from the same excerpt: “Some were dead on arrival. Others, allegedly, were alive but later perished, refusing food or contact. Communication was limited and often futile.” He also writes that exposure to the program was “so disturbing that it led individuals involved to resign, suffer mental breakdowns, and in some cases take their own lives.”

Look at the first three words. This one is not firsthand. It is Stratton relaying an unnamed source, the same structure as the Grusch material, and the word “allegedly” is his. Against it sits a thick official file: our Roswell piece walks through the 1947 press release, its retraction, and the 1990s Air Force reports tying the debris to Project Mogul balloons. AARO’s 2024 historical review went through the same ground and found no evidence of a recovery.

PEOPLE also reports the book says defense contractors currently hold at least a dozen recovered craft at sites across the US. We have only seen that figure in PEOPLE’s paraphrase, not a direct quote, so treat it as reported, not quoted. Stratton told Baier “both the defense contractor community and the government have craft of non-human origin” and that there is “an ongoing program to capture and reverse engineer this technology.” He named no company and no site.

Claim 5: it followed him home

AI illustration of a personal account in the book. Not evidence.

The strangest part of the book is the most personal. From 2010 on, according to PEOPLE, Stratton’s wife and two sons saw glowing orbs and “shadowy figures … darker than dark” around the family home near Washington, D.C. “As I began investigating deeper and deeper into non-human intelligent life, they started paying closer attention to me and my family,” he said. He says it stopped after he retired in 2022.

In September he told KLAS’s George Knapp a version of the same story: that he brought home “hitchhikers” from his time at Skinwalker Ranch. That idea, that the ranch’s phenomena attach to visitors, runs all through the AAWSAP-era accounts and is one reason the ranch study reads more like a haunting than a weapons assessment. Stratton is relaxed about the association; the rock band he plays lead guitar in is called Hitchhiker.

What would exist if it’s true. This is the one category where the answer is “probably nothing a reader could check,” and the book does not pretend otherwise. It is the part that tells you most about what the work cost him, and least about what the government holds.

The other lines worth knowing

• “They’ve done worse than threaten people.” Baier read a passage in which a friend pulls Stratton into his office: “These people don’t play games, Jay. They’ve done worse than threaten people to keep their secrets. They’ll do it again.” Asked what that meant, Stratton said steps have been taken “to remove the problem,” and agreed with Baier’s “and the people.” No case was named.
• The President hasn’t seen it. Stratton said he has been advising the White House since the files order, and that Trump is “still being shielded from the truth.”
• China and Russia. “I think China and Russia are both working on reverse engineering craft of non-human origin.” He framed it as “a secret Cold War race” and, to PEOPLE, as a potential “strategic surprise on the level of Pearl Harbor.”
• “Somebody’s wrong.” When Baier put AARO’s finding to him, that the Pentagon’s own office found no evidence of extraterrestrials, that was his whole answer. It is also the most honest framing of where things stand.
• Why a book? Asked why he is selling this rather than telling Congress, Stratton said he has briefed Congress since 2007, starting with Senator Harry Reid, for 16 years. The book, he said, “puts everything in context” and includes “UAP cases over US military bases that haven’t been discussed yet” and “descriptions and details of recovered craft.”

What “cleared for publication” does and doesn’t mean

A representative told PEOPLE the book was vetted by 21 government agencies and departments before release. That will be quoted as a kind of endorsement. It is not one.

Pre-publication review, run for the Pentagon by the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR), exists to stop former officials from publishing classified information. It does not fact-check. It will strike a true sentence that is classified, and it will pass an untrue sentence that is not. A cleared manuscript tells you the government did not object to the words being printed. It tells you nothing about whether they are accurate. Stratton has said himself that the book contains “everything I legally can,” which is another way of saying the review shaped what is missing.

AARO’s position, meanwhile, has not moved. Its March 2024 historical report says it “found no empirical evidence for claims that the USG and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology.” Stratton ran the office that came before AARO. So this is not a crank against the government. It is two parts of the government’s own UAP history saying opposite things in public, and only one of them has to show its work to Congress.

What would move this

Stratton has given more specifics than almost anyone at his level ever has. That makes him testable, in a way the field rarely is.

1. The submarine operation surfaces. A date range and an area off the East Coast are enough for a congressional office to request the P-3 sortie records and collection data. If they exist, they are not a secret about aliens, they are a secret about a Navy surveillance mission, and those get released all the time.
2. One of the three Top Gun witnesses speaks. Two admirals and a commander are on the hook in this story. The NDA waivers were written for exactly this.
3. Stratton names a site to Congress, under oath. The UAP Disclosure Act language now in the House NDAA would let the government take custody of recovered material. A sworn location given to the committees would put that clause to its first real test.
4. The silo video turns up in PURSUE. It was classified footage held by DIA in 2005. If it still exists, it is a record, and records are what PURSUE is for.

Verdict. Out of the Shadows is the most senior firsthand claim of recovered non-human craft and beings ever made by a former US official, and that is a genuine milestone in this story. It is also, so far, a claim without a single record attached. The book is strongest where it is most operational, the submarine and the admirals, because those left paper and witnesses behind. It is weakest at Roswell, where Stratton is doing what Grusch does: passing on what a source told him. Read it for the first half. Watch for the second.

Images on this page are AI illustrations made for this article from descriptions in the book and interview. None is evidence of anything. We will update this piece once we have read the full text.