The UAP NDA Waiver Has a Text Now. It Is Three Paragraphs, and It Is Narrower Than the Law.

Update, September 17, 2026. A second waiver now exists, and it is not this one. On September 14 the Department of War announced its own “legal waiver to authorize UAP disclosures to PURSUE.” It is summarised in the new section at the end of this article. In short: it fills one gap this piece identified, the contractors, and leaves the others where they were. It covers civil and administrative penalties, not criminal ones. It covers the Department of War, not the intelligence community. And as of today there is still no public waiver text, no named signatory, and no published procedure for actually contacting PURSUE. Two re-check questions from the original article are answered below. The original text is unchanged.

On July 27 this site assessed the reported UAP nondisclosure-agreement waiver and set three tests for it. The first was the simplest: does a text appear? Everything then known about the directive came from unnamed officials briefing a single outlet, and the position taken here was that if the directive was real policy it would leave paper, and if it never left paper it was a message rather than a mechanism.

It left paper. On July 31, 2026, four days after that piece ran, the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence signed a two-page unclassified memorandum, ES 2026-00818, titled “Preliminary Guidance for Implementation of NDA Waiver.” Test one is passed. This is what the paper says.

The document, in full

The operative part of the memo is three paragraphs long. There is no summary that is shorter than the thing itself, so here it is, verbatim.

This memorandum provides preliminary guidance for the release of all Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) information to the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE) Task Force for review and declassification.

Consistent with Presidential Direction, the Department of War (DoW) and the Intelligence Community (IC) will implement a process to ensure current and former government employees and contractors with relevant information on UAPs shall have prior non-disclosure agreements (NDA), agreements, oaths, or commitments waived when speaking with authorized government representatives of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) or PURSUE.

All members of the IC will, within 30 days of the receipt of this memorandum, coordinate with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to establish a PURSUE designee, and inform their workforce of the President’s order. Subsequently, ensure the workforce is aware that any previous or existing NDAs prohibiting disclosure to the President, or designees like PURSUE, are no longer in force and that anyone with knowledge of UAP information should report all such information to AARO, or to an authorized PURSUE representative. Detailed reporting procedures will be disseminated to IC components within the next 30 days. In addition, DoW and ODNI will be issuing to departments and agencies detailed implementation guidance for the broader PURSUE transparency project.

It is signed Aaron Lukas, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, dated 7/31/26.

Who had to read it

The second page is a distribution list, and it is worth reading as its own document. The memo went to the directors of CIA, DIA, NGA, NRO, NSA and the FBI; to the intelligence chiefs of the Department of War, Homeland Security, State, Treasury, the DEA and the Department of Energy; and to the intelligence heads of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force and Coast Guard. Eighteen named officials.

Note what that list is and is not. It is the intelligence community. It is not the private aerospace and defense contractors who, in the central claim of the modern disclosure movement, are the ones actually holding material.

The clock, which closed on August 30

The memo sets two thirty-day obligations running from receipt: each IC member coordinates with ODNI to establish a PURSUE designee and informs its workforce, and separately, detailed reporting procedures get disseminated to IC components.

If components received it on the day it was signed, both windows closed on August 30, 2026, the day after this article was first published.

As of this writing there is no public statement from ODNI, from any of the eighteen recipients, or from the PURSUE portal indicating that a single designee has been named, that any workforce has been notified, or that the detailed reporting procedures exist. That is not evidence of failure. Internal personnel designations are not normally announced, and there is no reason they would be. It does mean that the deadline is, for the public, unobservable, and that the only people who can confirm compliance are the people obliged to comply.

What it genuinely adds

Three things, and they are real.

It names PURSUE in an operative document. The 2022 statute could not, since PURSUE did not exist. Now the task force actually pushing files out the door, five tranches between May 8 and August 7, is a named recipient in guidance addressed to the entire IC.

It puts eighteen named officials on a clock. A statutory right that nobody in authority ever mentions is, functionally, a rumour. An instruction to inform the workforce converts a provision most cleared employees have never heard of into something their own agency has to tell them about. That is the single most useful sentence in the memo.

It promises procedures. The July reporting described an intention. This describes a process that is supposed to be written down within a month.

What it does not do, starting with the first sentence

Read paragraph one again. The memo is preliminary guidance “for the release of all Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) information to the PURSUE Task Force for review and declassification.”

That is the whole architecture in one line. Information moves to PURSUE. What happens after is review, then possibly declassification, conducted by the same departments whose withholding is the entire grievance. Nothing in this document releases anything to the public, and nothing in it obliges anyone to.

It is narrower than the law it implements. This is the substantive finding, and it is not a small one. The memo waives “non-disclosure agreements (NDA), agreements, oaths, or commitments.” Section 1673 of the FY2023 NDAA, codified at 50 U.S.C. 3373b, does considerably more than that: an authorized disclosure is protected notwithstanding any NDA, any regulation or order issued under Executive Order 13526, the Atomic Energy Act, and Section 798 of Title 18 or any other provision of law relating to the disclosure of information.

The NDA was never the load-bearing wall. Classification is. The statute reaches the classification regime. The memo reaches the paperwork. A witness reading only this memo learns that the form they signed is waived, and learns nothing about the classification order that is the thing actually exposing them.

It is guidance, not law, and confers nothing new. Agency guidance does not create legal rights. Anyone disclosing to AARO under this memo is protected by the 2022 statute, exactly as they were on July 30, and would be with or without the memo. The anti-retaliation protection people care about, including the bar on revoking clearances, lives in 3373b(b)(2), not here.

It leaves contractors in the gap. The waiver sentence covers “current and former government employees and contractors.” Every instruction that follows is addressed to IC components and their workforces. There is no channel described for a contractor employee, no designee at a contractor, and no explanation of how a person who signed a program indoctrination agreement with a private company in 1994 is supposed to act on any of this. The statute’s anti-retaliation clause does explicitly bind contractors and subcontractors. The implementation memo simply does not address them.

It tells you more guidance is coming, which is a reason to wait. The memo says detailed reporting procedures are still to come, and that DoW and ODNI will issue further implementation guidance for the broader PURSUE project. A prospective witness reading this honestly concludes that the procedure they would use does not exist yet. That is a rational reason to sit still for another month, which is a strange effect for a document meant to unlock testimony.

One curiosity, and one caution

The curiosity: the memo instructs the workforce to understand that “any previous or existing NDAs prohibiting disclosure to the President, or designees like PURSUE, are no longer in force.” It is worth noticing how odd that sentence is. A government nondisclosure agreement that barred disclosure to the President would be a strange instrument, given that the President is the ultimate classification authority. The standard forms do not do this. Whether the sentence is boilerplate, or whether somebody at ODNI believes such agreements are out there, the memo does not say.

The caution, which this site owes its readers: the public copy of this document is hosted on a congressman’s website. It sits on burlison.house.gov, in the files directory of the House member who sponsored the UAP Disclosure Act amendment. We could not locate a copy published on dni.gov or odni.gov. The document is marked UNCLASSIFIED on both pages, carries an ES control number and a full distribution list, and nothing about it looks irregular. But readers should know that the route by which it reached the public ran through a legislator with a position in this fight, not through the agency that wrote it.

Where the three tests stand

Test 1, does a text appear. Passed. There is a signed, numbered, unclassified memorandum with a distribution list and a deadline. That is more than existed a month ago, and more than the July reporting could show.

Test 2, does a named witness come forward and say the waiver is why. Open. Nobody has. For scale, AARO’s FY2025 report says that between June 2024 and May 2025, seven people contacted it with claims warranting a follow-on interview. Seven. If the memo works, that number moves and AARO’s next annual report will show it.

Test 3, does anything reach the public that could not have been released before. Open, and untouched by this document. The memo is a routing instruction. It moves information into a classified review, and the review is where disclosure is actually decided.

Verdict

Real paper, real deadline, narrower than the law.

The July directive has become a document, and the document does something the statute never managed in three and a half years: it obliges eighteen agencies to tell their own people the protection exists. Treat that as the win, because it is one.

Then read what it waives. It waives forms. The statute it implements waives forms, classification orders, the Atomic Energy Act and the Espionage Act provision. Guidance that reaches less far than the law it is implementing is not an expansion of anyone’s rights, and the memo’s own text says as much by promising the real procedures later.

The thirty days end on August 30, 2026. What the public can check afterwards is narrow: whether the detailed reporting procedures are published anywhere a reader can find them, and whether AARO’s next annual report shows the referral count moving off seven. Everything else happens behind the classification line, which was the point of the design.

This page is on a standing re-check. When either of those two things moves, or is still not moving thirty days later, the update goes at the top.

Update, September 17: the Department of War’s own waiver

On September 14, 2026, the Department of War published a release titled “Department of War Issues Legal Waiver to Authorize Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Disclosures to PURSUE.” It is a separate instrument from the ODNI memo above, from a different department, and it reads differently.

What it says. The department describes “an authorized, legally protected disclosure mechanism for current and former personnel to provide UAP-related National Defense Information (NDI) to designated representatives of the PURSUE effort.” It covers “current and former DOW service members, civilian personnel, and contractors” who hold or once held access to that information. For disclosures made to authorized PURSUE representatives, the waiver “supersedes civil and administrative enforcement provisions contained within Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) and Special Access Program Indoctrination Agreements (SAPIAs).” The stated goal is “an authorized pipeline for systematic review, security evaluation, and potential declassification of historical and ongoing UAP data.”

What it fixes. Two of the complaints in this article.

• Contractors are named. The ODNI memo mentioned contractors once and then addressed every instruction to intelligence agencies. The DoW waiver names contractors in its scope. That is the group the disclosure movement cares about most.
• SAPIAs are named. The ODNI memo waived “NDAs, agreements, oaths, or commitments.” The DoW waiver names the Special Access Program indoctrination agreement, the paper that governs exactly the kind of compartmented program whistleblowers describe.

What it does not fix. Four things, in order of importance.

1. It is civil and administrative only. By its own wording it supersedes the civil and administrative enforcement provisions of those agreements. The release says nothing about criminal exposure, which is the part that actually frightens people. The argument this article made in August still holds: the agreement was never the load-bearing wall, classification law is, and the real statutory shield remains 50 U.S.C. 3373b. Former State and Defense official Marik von Rennenkampff, speaking to IBTimes UK, drew attention to the release’s mention of “administrative prosecution” as one of the fears it is meant to remove. The release does not claim to remove anything more serious.
2. It stops at the Department of War. The intelligence community, where several whistleblowers say the legacy programs sit, is not covered by this instrument. It is covered only by the ODNI memo, which is narrower.
3. There is still no text. The release describes a waiver. It does not publish one, name who signed it, or cite the authority it rests on beyond the President’s transparency mandate. DefenseScoop reported that Pentagon spokespeople did not identify any PURSUE representative or answer its questions.
4. There is still no door. Nothing public tells a veteran or a retired contractor who a “designated PURSUE representative” is or how to reach one. A waiver that protects you only when you speak to a person you cannot find is a promise, not yet a procedure.

The re-check questions, answered.

• Did ODNI’s “detailed reporting procedures” appear anywhere public by August 31? No. We found nothing on dni.gov, war.gov/ufo, aaro.mil or burlison.house.gov. The DoW waiver is not those procedures. It is a separate department’s instrument, and its release does not mention the ODNI memo.
• Has ODNI posted the memo on its own site? Not that we could find as of September 17. The only public copy is still the one on burlison.house.gov.

Where the three tests stand now.

• Test 1, a text: passed for ODNI in August. For the Department of War, a press release exists but the waiver itself has not been published. Call it half.
• Test 2, a named witness who says the waiver is why: still open. Two waivers, zero named witnesses so far.
• Test 3, something reaching the public that could not have before: still open. Both instruments route information into review, not out of it.

Updated verdict. Two departments have now said, one on paper and one in a press release, that the agreements are no longer the obstacle. That is real movement, and naming contractors is a real improvement. But neither instrument reaches criminal exposure, neither publishes a way in, and the public still cannot check whether anybody has walked through. The next thing to watch is not another announcement. It is a person, with a name, saying: I came forward because of this.