The Pentagon Finally Searched for ‘Immaculate Constellation’ Emails. The Answer: No Records.

CASE FILE: RW-DAILY-2026-1112-AM

Subject: Department of War FOIA case 25-F-3827, an email search for “Immaculate Constellation” in the records of the Director of Special Programs

Key dates: Request filed 25 July 2025 · Search refused 26 January 2026 · Appeal granted 26 May 2026 · “No records” made public 10 November 2026

Location: The Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia

Status: “No records” result CONFIRMED (as reported by the requester, letters posted) · Immaculate Constellation as a real program UNVERIFIED · Pentagon “subject does not exist” position CONFIRMED as its stated position

The claim

The file was opened in the Pentagon’s own words: a “subject matter” that “does not exist.” This week it came back with a second stamp.

On 10 November 2026, John Greenewald Jr., who runs the FOIA archive The Black Vault, reported that the Department of War had finally searched the email of its top special-access-program official for the phrase “Immaculate Constellation,” the name of an alleged secret program said to hoard military imagery of unidentified anomalous phenomena. The result, he posted on X at 8:58 a.m. EST, was “no records.” He wrote that the update and the letters were posted to his site.

That is the first time the department has run an actual search on the name in response to this request. In January it had declined to look at all, saying the program did not exist, so no such emails would turn up. Greenewald appealed, won, and got the search. It came back empty.

The video evidence first

There is no video of a FOIA letter. The footage that matters is how the name entered the official record, and what was said about it under oath. Descriptions below come from each video’s title and description, and for the hearing, from its auto-generated captions; timestamps are from those captions.

1. “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth,” GOP Oversight (House Oversight Committee Republicans)

• Uploaded: 13 November 2024
• Length: 2:26:20
• Key timestamps (per captions): 24:00, Rep. Nancy Mace tells members a document “about Immaculate Constellation that Michael Shellenberger delivered to Congress today” has just been handed out. 41:01, she moves to enter “this 12-page document” into the congressional record, describing its first section as an “unacknowledged special access program called Immaculate Constellation” and the second as U.S. government imagery intelligence; it is entered without objection. 56:30, Shellenberger summarizes the report’s claim that the program consolidates UAP observations from “tasked and untasked” collection platforms. 1:21:48, a member asks what specific evidence his source provided; he replies that the report is in front of them. 2:13:14, former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo, asked if he was read into the program, says he is not authorized to confirm or deny any special access program.

2. “UFO whistleblower shares details of ‘Immaculate Constellation’ program | Vargas Reports,” NewsNation

• Uploaded: 11 October 2024
• Length: 5:15
• What it covers (per its description): a whistleblower’s reported claim that the program holds “a massive database of photos, videos and documents regarding UFOs,” discussed with Marik von Rennenkampff, an opinion contributor for The Hill.

3. “Rep. Nancy Mace discusses ‘immaculate constellation’ program,” NBC News

• Uploaded: 14 November 2024
• Length: 4:17
• What it covers (per its description): Mace talks with NBC’s Gadi Schwartz about the hearing and the program the day after it was entered into the record.

Timeline

• 16 December 2017: The New York Times reveals the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. The later whistleblower report claims Immaculate Constellation was set up after this disclosure.
• 8 October 2024: Michael Shellenberger’s newsletter Public publishes the program name for the first time, citing whistleblowers.
• 22 October 2024 (document date): An Office of the Director of National Intelligence one-page summary, later released under FOIA case DF-2025-00021, records the Defense Department’s denial.
• 13 November 2024: The 12-page report is entered into the record of the House Oversight hearing “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth.” The published hearing record, Serial No. 118-135, lists it as a Pentagon report on “Immaculate Constellation” submitted by Rep. Mace.
• 3, 6 and 9 December 2024: The Black Vault asks the NSA for records; the NSA gives a “Glomar” reply (neither confirm nor deny); Greenewald appeals.
• 25 July 2025: Greenewald files FOIA request 25-F-3827 for emails to or from Maj. Gen. Derek J. O’Malley, Director of Special Programs and head of the DoD Special Access Program Central Office, containing “Immaculate Constellation,” classified and unclassified.
• 26 January 2026: The final response says no search was done.
• 26 May 2026: Greenewald announces the appeal was granted and a search will take place.
• 17 September 2026: The Black Vault reports that the NSA denied its appeal.
• 10 November 2026: The department’s search result is made public: no records.

What believers claim

The report entered at the hearing calls Immaculate Constellation an “Unacknowledged Special Access Program” whose “primary mission is collecting imagery intelligence” on UAP, according to The Black Vault’s quotation of it. It describes imagery from four combatant commands and a Defense human-intelligence database said to hold more than 400 encounter reports from 1991 to 2022. The Black Vault reports the document was written by former official Matthew Brown, whose account was later profiled by NewsNation.

On that reading, a no-records answer is what an unacknowledged program would produce: the real files sit under a different code word, in a compartment the search never touched, and the denial is the cover.

What the research found

1. This is the first real search, and it came back empty. In January the department’s FOIA office wrote, in a letter dated 26 January 2026 and addressed to Greenewald, that after coordinating with its Special Access Program Coordination office, “a search was not conducted as they confirmed the subject matter itself does not exist, and an extensive email search on the custodian would not yield responsive records.” The appeal forced the search. Per Greenewald, it found nothing. He has written that the original refusal was “100% wrong” as a matter of transparency, but that the empty result did not surprise him.