ODNI-UAP-D001: The Senior Intelligence Officer's Helicopter UAP Encounter

Released through PURSUE Release 02 on May 22, 2026 (with a May 26 correction): a first-hand written narrative by a currently-serving senior U.S. intelligence official describing a multi-orb UAP encounter from a military helicopter near a sensitive U.S. military facility in late 2025. The narrative is one of the only first-person accounts in the entire PURSUE archive written by an active senior member of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

File ID: ODNI-UAP-D001 Document type: USPER Narrative Author: Senior USIC official, currently serving Encounter: Late 2025 Released: 22 May 2026 (Release 02)

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Read the file page (ODNI-UAP-D001) Released summary, source link to war.gov, SHA-256 verification

Why this file is unusual in the PURSUE archive

Almost everything else in PURSUE comes from one of two evidence types. Either it is a sensor capture - infrared video, electro-optical footage, photography - with an accompanying mission report describing what the sensor recorded. Or it is an investigative paper record - FBI case files, State Department diplomatic cables, internal policy memoranda - documenting what someone told the federal government, transmitted through normal investigative or diplomatic channels.

ODNI-UAP-D001 is neither. It is a first-person written narrative by a person who personally observed the encounter, written for the federal record by that observer, and released through PURSUE under the observer's federal-agency authority. The agency is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The category in the released metadata is "USPER" - a federal-information-handling designation for documents involving U.S. persons (here, the official who wrote the narrative). The author is described in the released metadata as a "currently serving (May 2026) senior U.S. intelligence official."

The closest other artifact in the archive is the Gemini 7 audio in which astronaut Frank Borman reports an unidentified object to NASA mission control on the live air-to-ground voice loop in December 1965. Both are first-person reports of unidentified phenomena from senior federal personnel, into the official federal record, with the observer named (or in ODNI-UAP-D001's case, identified by senior intelligence-community role). The Borman audio is sixty years old and was made in real time over a voice channel; the ODNI narrative is contemporary, written, and reflective.

The encounter as described in the released metadata

The released summary - which is the metadata war.gov published alongside the file, written by the disclosure program rather than by the original author - is the textual record this site treats as authoritative. The summary describes the encounter in these terms:

"The official was part of a team investigating reports of unusual noises and sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena in and near a sensitive U.S. military facility in late 2025. From the official's vantage point as a helicopter passenger, the official recounts encountering unidentified 'glowing orbs' both at close range and at a distance. The account describes an apparent high-speed object moving low to the ground, which appeared to split in two and accelerate away in two different directions. It also describes numerous higher-altitude 'orbs,' some of which the official assessed to be in close proximity to the helicopter."

Four distinct observed elements appear in that one paragraph:

A team had been dispatched specifically because of prior reports of unusual noises and UAP sightings at and near a sensitive U.S. military facility. The encounter happened during that investigation, not by chance.
The observer reports "glowing orbs" at both close and distant range. The descriptor "glowing" indicates self-luminous appearance rather than reflected light.
An apparent high-speed low-altitude object appears to split into two and accelerate away in two different directions. The released summary does not commit to whether the split was a real division of a single object or the observer's perception of two objects that appeared to emerge from one location.
Numerous higher-altitude orbs, some of which the observer assessed to be in close proximity to the helicopter. The observer's "close proximity" assessment is an estimate from the helicopter, not a measured distance.

The accompanying infrared imagery

The narrative is not unsupported. The released file metadata notes:

"This account is accompanied by infrared imagery taken during the same exercise by other federal officials from the ground, originally released on war.gov/UFO on May 8, 2026."

This is structurally important. The ODNI narrative was released on May 22, 2026 as part of PURSUE Release 02. The corresponding ground infrared imagery was released two weeks earlier on May 8, 2026 as part of Release 01. The two artifacts cover the same exercise from independent vantage points: ODNI-UAP-D001 is the narrative from the helicopter, and the ground IR is the supporting capture from below. Release 01 contained the imagery; Release 02 added the eyewitness narrative.

That ordering has a noticeable consequence for anyone trying to read the disclosure chronologically. The IR imagery from Release 01 has been on war.gov since May 8 and has been indexed on this tracker since the initial Drop 01 ingest. Researchers who looked at those Release-01 IR captures in the first weeks of the disclosure were seeing the ground-based half of an encounter whose airborne first-person account was not yet released. The full picture of the late-2025 exercise only became visible when ODNI-UAP-D001 went up two weeks later.

The May 26, 2026 correction

The released file metadata also documents a correction to the original publication:

"May 26, 2026, correction: The document originally posted to the PURSUE collection of UAP-related records on May 22, 2026, under the name 'ODNI-UAP-D001, USPER Narrative, Senior USIC Official,' contained a typographic error in the second paragraph, describing a helicopter flight profile as 'map-of-the-earth.' The correct military aviation term for this profile is 'nap-of-the-earth.' This document has been updated to reflect this correction."

The correction is small in scope - a single-word typographic fix on a technical aviation term - but informative for two reasons.

First, it confirms that the helicopter flight profile during the encounter was nap-of-the-earth: a low-altitude tactical flight mode in which the aircraft follows the contours of the terrain at very low altitude (typically under 200 feet AGL) to minimize radar exposure and detection. Nap-of-the-earth flight is used in operational training and in specific tactical mission profiles. It is not how civilian helicopters fly, and it is not a passive flight mode. The exercise was a tactical low-altitude operation.

Second, the correction's existence shows war.gov is iterating on the released documents post-publication - small textual fixes, document updates, version notes. The tracker's verified-diff page exists specifically to surface this kind of post-publication revision.

Why this scores 50 on the rubric (and why the rubric may be undercounting)

This site applies a six-axis evidentiary rubric to every file in the PURSUE archive. The rubric scores ODNI-UAP-D001 at a default value of 50 because the file currently propagates the default scoring for the new ODNI agency. The components the default assigns are: eyewitness-only on sensor quality (the file is a written narrative, not an instrumented capture), civilian-credentialed on witness credibility (the default for ODNI as a non-uniformed-services agency in the rubric), and the standard single_witness_instrument, no_kinematic_data, weak_mundane_candidate values that every PURSUE file shares.

That default scoring is conservative. The witness in this file is not a generic civilian - it is a "currently serving senior U.S. intelligence official" writing into the federal record under their professional authority, with corroborating infrared imagery from a parallel ground-based team. The witness-credibility tier this file genuinely sits in is closer to federal-agent or higher than to civilian-credentialed. A future curation pass on this file is expected to raise the score; we have not done so yet because the curation pass has to be deliberate rather than automated. Readers should treat the current 50 as a floor, not a ceiling.

What does not change with curation: the sensor-quality axis stays low because the file genuinely is a written narrative rather than instrumented capture, regardless of the witness's credentials. That is the rubric working as intended - eyewitness reports are weighted below instrumented captures even when the eyewitness is highly credentialed.

What this file does NOT establish

It does not establish extraterrestrial origin for any of the observed glowing orbs. The released summary uses the term "unidentified anomalous phenomena" deliberately, in line with the standard federal terminology, and does not make any origin claim.
It does not provide kinematic measurements. The "high-speed" and "close proximity" descriptors are observer estimates from a helicopter at nap-of-the-earth altitude, not instrumented data. The split-and-accelerate description is similarly a visual observation.
It does not name the senior official, identify the helicopter platform, the unit involved, or the specific U.S. military facility at which the exercise occurred. Those operational details are not in the publicly released narrative.
It does not assert that the "split into two" was a real physical division of a single object. The summary's language ("appeared to split") preserves the observational ambiguity.
It does not establish that the ground-based infrared imagery from May 8 shows the same objects the helicopter passenger saw. The released metadata says the IR was "taken during the same exercise by other federal officials from the ground," not that it captures the same objects from a different angle.

How this file fits the broader PURSUE archive

ODNI-UAP-D001 is one of 5 PURSUE files contributed by agencies outside the original FBI / DoD / NASA / State Department lineup that anchored Release 01. The four other intel-and-DOE files in PURSUE - one CIA Intelligence Information Report from 1973 concerning USSR activity, and three DOE files tied to the U.S. nuclear weapons complex (PANTEX, James Tuck correspondence, Pajarito astronomers invitation) - are historical paper records rather than contemporary first-person accounts. ODNI-UAP-D001 is the only contemporary first-person file in the intel-and-DOE cluster, and one of only a small handful of contemporary first-person files in the whole 294-file disclosure.

For broader context on PURSUE - what the program is, what is in Release 01 and Release 02, and how war.gov has been publishing it - see our PURSUE program explainer. For the broader 27-file score-66 cluster of AARO-submitted military mission captures that anchors the rest of the high-scoring archive, see our AARO Unresolved UAP deep dive.

How to verify everything on this page

The file's dedicated page on this site is at /files/odni-uap-d001-usper-narrative-senior-usic-official. It links to the war.gov source PDF and includes the released metadata.
The verbatim block quotes above (the encounter description, the imagery note, and the correction) are reproduced word-for-word from the released file metadata as published to war.gov.
The May 22, 2026 release date for ODNI-UAP-D001 and the May 8, 2026 release date for the accompanying ground infrared imagery are both verified against war.gov's published Release-01 and Release-02 file sets.
The nap-of-the-earth correction is documented inside the released file metadata itself - this is not an external annotation by this site.
For the broader scoring methodology, see /methodology. For the war.gov revision history, see /changes.

Bottom line

ODNI-UAP-D001 is the single most notable individual file in PURSUE Release 02. It is a contemporary first-person federal-record account of a multi-orb UAP encounter, from a serving senior member of the U.S. Intelligence Community, observing during a deliberate investigative operation, with corroborating ground-based infrared imagery released two weeks earlier in Release 01. It is not a sensor capture, it does not contain kinematic measurements, and its rubric score is conservative because the default scoring underweights what this specific file's witness profile actually is. But the document type - a senior intelligence-community official's written first-person federal-record narrative of a multi-orb UAP encounter - is structurally unique in the disclosure. There is one Gemini 7 audio at 72 and there is one ODNI USPER narrative. They are different artifacts from different decades, but they are the two pure first-person federal-record observer accounts in the archive.