AATIP and Project Prato

Dr Hal Puthoff's recent speech

One aspect of Dr Hal Puthoff's recent speech at the Las Vegas, Society for Scientific Exploration conference, was his reference to the AATIP work concerning the 1977 Brazilian Air Force's major study - Project Prato. In part, Dr Puthoff, stated:

"We as part of this program looked at some cases that were really good from Brazil. In 1977, 78, it was like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. A thousand pages of documents all done by the Brazilian Air Force investigation team, 500 photographs, 15 hours of motion film, a lot of medical injuries. This is a list of the different kinds of medical injuries that occurred when people encountered these craft at close range, and it has some overlap with cases that we've investigated during the program, of injuries occurring."

How does the topic of "medical injuries" relate to the AATIP? The DIA's solicitation for firms to submit a tender for the AAWSA program, in August 2008, HHM402-08-R-0211, has, at attachment one, paragraph 3a) the words "the contractor shall complete Advanced Aerospace Weapon System technical studies in the following areas ...9. human interface, 10 human effects."

January 2018

Earlier, on 28 January 2018, during an interview with George Knapp, Puthoff referred to a Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) archive of data - such as the 1977 Brazilian Air Force study with 1000 pages of documents; 15 hours of movie film; 500 photographs amd then states that the data base was BAASS proprietary.

 I wanted to find out more about what happened to the Project Prato data. The Internet contains much information about the project itself, but almost nothing about the disposition of material beyond Brazil itself.  However, I did find a mention in one of Jacque Vallee's works.

Vallee's Brazilian research trip

In July 1988 Jacques and Janine Vallee visited Brazil on a research trip. (Forbidden Science Vol. 3.)There I found much about what the Vallees knew, about Project Prato.

The Vallee's met with a Colonel Hollanda of the First Air Force region, which covered most of the Amazon. Jacques Vallee writes: "He led the team sent to the islands at the mouth of the Amazon during project Prato to observe and photograph the objects that flew over the area for three months from July to September 1977. " (p.336.)

The Vallee's were shown a file by Hollanda which "...held the military photographs, detailed aerial maps, trajectory analysis by the staff of Project Prato. Every page was stamped "confidential" on top and bottom." Vallee was told that the originals of some of the photographs had been sent to the Brazilian capital city of Brasilia.

Yet another Brazilian Air Force colonel met with the Vallees and told them " When Colonel Hollanda and his team installed their cameras on the beach at Bahia do Sul, I was head of security for Primeiro Comar,  he went on "And when our superiors and the damm politicians from Brasilia confiscated out best data, my team got very frustrated...so we made our own copies" He pulled out the real thing, including pictures of objects emerging from the water." (p.337.)

Vallee reports that following the official Brazilian Air Force investigation, news media visited the same area and took their own photographs. "And all the negatives taken by the newspaper teams have left Brazil, purchased from the publishers by an unnamed American firm. "

In summary

In summary, the vast amount of material gathered by Hollanda and his team, went in a number of directions, with copies being kept by Hollanda and the other, unnamed Colonel; and some went off to Brasilia and Brazilian Air Force headquarters. It was also reported that newspaper photographs of the phenomenon was bought by an unnamed American firm. However, we do not have a date for the latter action.

It is unclear from Puthoff's reference to "A thousand pages of documents all done by the Brazilian Air Force investigation team, 500 photographs, 15 hours of motion film.." as to whether this was the data that BAASS acquired, or was a reference to the amount of data that the Brazilian Air Force itself gathered.

Further information on Proejct Prato

To read a very detailed summary of the contents of some of the documents click here.