EXCLUSIVE: Pentagon UFO chief Dr Sean Kirkpatrick will be REPLACED by end of ... trends now

The Pentagon's UFO chief will resign by year's end — amid a wave of complaints accusing him of making false statements about UFO whistleblowers and fostering an 'atmosphere of disinterest,' the DailyMail.com understands.

'Four major candidates' have been interviewed to replace the current director of the Pentagon's UFO office, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, following months of heated public sparring between the former CIA physicist, UFO whistleblowers and activists.

The Pentagon appears to have already 'made the decision' on Kirkpatrick's unnamed successor, according to one former Pentagon official with past involvement in related UFO investigation programs, who spoke with the DailyMail.com.

'Given their public affairs track record,' this ex-official said, 'they may not put out anything to the press until well after the change, but who knows? They might surprise us.'

The personnel shift marks the culmination of months of accusations and counter-accusations traded between Kirkpatrick and former intel officer David Grusch, who has alleged widespread illegalities stemming from a long-secret UFO program. 

This week, Grusch publicly accused Kirkpatrick of lying about his office's efforts to investigate these claims, which had been laid out by Grusch last July under oath before Congress.

Previously, Kirkpatrick had described Grusch's same testimony, made before the House Oversight committee, as 'insulting [...] to the officers of the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community.'

But fellow UFO whistleblowers working with Grusch, some past and present DoD and Intelligence Community officers themselves, reportedly 'don't trust and never did trust Sean,' according to an attorney aiding their efforts.

While the precise reasons for his alleged departure remain murky, Dr. Kirkpatrick has faced vehement public criticism in recent weeks, from UFO enthusiasts and so-called 'disclosure' advocates seeking government transparency on UFOs and aliens.

A citizens' petition calling for Dr. Kirkpatrick's 'immediate removal,' hosted by Change.org, has garnered 1,739 signatures since its posting on October 22, 2023.

The petition's author, Lisa Fine, accused Kirkpatrick of operating 'a secret committee which directs the Department of Defense's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)'s actions and public statements.'

'Dr. Kirkpatrick has repeatedly lied to the American people about a lack of evidence concerning UFOs/UAPs,' according to Fine, referencing the updated terminology for 'unidentified flying objects.' 

In recent years, Pentagon brass, NASA experts and others have taken to calling what were once known as flying saucers 'unidentified anomalous phenomena' or UAP.

The petition's allegation that Dr. Kirkpatrick had assembled a secret advisory panel to run AARO, while still unproven, first emerged that same day via reporting by Matt Ford, host of 'The Good Trouble Show' YouTube channel, who had cited an anonymous source.

But the other recent accusations that Kirkpatrick has 'lied to the American people,' have come much more directly. 

This Halloween, AARO hosted a conference call Q&A session between reporters and Dr. Kirkpatrick, in which the physicist fielded multiple questions about David Grusch and his allegations of a covert UFO crash retrieval and reverse engineering program.

On the call, Kirkpatrick told assembled media that he had interviewed 'a whole range of people, over 30 people now' in relation to the allegedly secret and illegal activity.

'I think we've interviewed most of the people that he [Grusch] may have talked to,' Kirkpatrick added, in reference to investigative work that Grusch reportedly performed while assisting AARO's predecessor, the Pentagon's UAP Task Force.  

'We have extended an invitation at least four or five times now for him [Grusch] to come in over the last eight months or so,' Kirkpatrick told journalists on the call, 'and have been declined.'

But Grusch quickly accused Kirkpatrick of inventing these outreach efforts by his AARO team in their entirety. 

'I have zero emails or calls from them,' Grusch told reporters for NewsNation the following day. 'That is a lie.'

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Similarly, one retired US Air Force Captain David Schindele, a former Minuteman ICBM launch control officer who reported his UFO encounter to AARO, said he felt that its personnel projected an 'atmosphere of disinterest.'

Schindele told viewers of Matt Ford's Good Trouble that Kirkpatrick and his AARO team were 'not people I want to talk to again.'

The Mail's former intelligence official — who has intimate knowledge of the military's ever-evolving UFO/UAP investigation portfolio — cautioned against drawing a direct line between these controversies and any plans for Kirkpatrick's departure, however. 

'Sean has directly told folks he is leaving by the end of the year,' this former intelligence official told the DailyMail.com, under the condition of anonymity. 

'I think it's completely a planned departure, he probably gave them a timeline when he took the job,' according to this source, citing geographical stress on Dr. Kirpatrick's family life. 

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