The Navy answered a four-year-old question this week: what was in Scott W. Bray’s email while he was Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence.
John Greenewald at The Black Vault filed the FOIA on May 24, 2022 – a week after Bray sat next to Under Secretary Ronald Moultrie at the first open congressional UAP hearing in more than 50 years. The Navy’s response letter is dated September 23, 2026, case DON-NAVY-2022-008648. Search terms included UAP, UAPTF, UFO, AATIP, and AAWSAP.
The Navy located 1,321 pages. It withheld 302 pages in full. It released 1,019 pages with redactions under FOIA exemptions for classified intelligence methods, personal privacy, deliberative process, and confidential commercial information. Greenewald posted the package the next day.
This is not a new sensor video. It is the paper trail around the man who, in 2022, told the House Intelligence Committee the Navy could not explain a portion of the military’s UAP reports – and who, these emails show, was already running the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from inside OPNAV N2N6.
Stratton Worked Directly for Bray
One line in the release states the chain of command in plain English. In a September 29, 2020 email coordinating a classified briefing, a Navy official wrote that John “Jay” Stratton “leads the UAP Task Force effort for Navy… working directly for Scott Bray, our Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence.”
That matches how Stratton has described the UAPTF in public. The emails put it on Navy stationery two years before Bray’s televised hearing. Stratton’s memoir Out of the Shadows is due October 13; a television series based on it was announced this week.
September 2020: Classified Briefings on the Hill
A September 27, 2020 legislative-review email to Bray and Vice Adm. Jeffrey Trussler, copied to Rear Adm. Kelly Aeschbach, lists what the Task Force did that week:
- September 22: a classified UAP brief to Reps. Guy Reschenthaler, Kelly Armstrong, Mike Garcia, and Tom Tiffany, requested by Reschenthaler’s personal office.
- September 23: a classified update to Senate Select Committee on Intelligence professional staff.
- September 24: a six-committee classified update – SASC, HASC, SAC-D, HAC-D, SSCI, and HPSCI staff directors and professional staff.
The Task Force was not waiting for a public hearing. It was already in classified rooms on the Hill.
“I Don’t Think It’s Appropriate for Us to Reach Any Conclusions”
On August 21, 2020 – Bray wrote that the Task Force had been “officially assigned to us last week” – staff were already arguing over talking points for the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
The subject line: UAPTF Straight Talk TPs for DEPSECDEF – Making BIG News?
A public-affairs officer reported that a “serious major network reporter” had stood at the desk repeating that the Task Force was “investigating aliens,” no matter how many times the officer said “unidentified” or “UAP.” The officer wanted language to “tamp down on that.” Another official said Matt Cummings at OUSD(I&S) was “pushing hard” for stronger wording and “won’t listen.”
Bray’s reply to Stratton:
“Concur completely. Given that the Task Force was just officially assigned to us last week, I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to reach any conclusions at this point… let’s stick to what we’ve said before.”
The emails also show Neill Tipton, then Director of Defense Intelligence for Collection and Special Programs at OUSD(I&S), in the same circle. A September 1, 2020 note warned Bray he was “coming by to chat” with Tipton and should “prepare to get an earful.” Greenewald flags a March 2020 Tipton-to-Bray exchange about a document Tipton preferred to deliver in hard copy.
The April 2020 Navy Video Release
The cache includes traffic around the Department of Defense’s April 27, 2020 public posting of the three Navy clips now known as FLIR, GIMBAL, and GoFast. Vice Adm. Matthew Kohler, Rear Adm. Charles Brown, and Rear Adm. Paula Dunn appear in that correspondence. Officials forwarded the first news hits – including a Motherboard piece noting To The Stars Academy had already published the same files.
The videos were not a surprise inside this mailbox. They were a public-affairs event with a classified program sitting behind it.
What 302 Pages Still Hide
Greenewald’s caution is the right one. The request used keyword searches. The Navy’s own letter says 302 responsive pages never left the building. Redactions on the released pages include entire paragraphs under (b)(5) deliberative process and (b)(1) classified intelligence sources and methods.
What remains is still the largest contemporaneous Navy email dump on the UAPTF era yet posted: congressional briefings, talking-point fights, the Stratton–Bray reporting line, and the 2020 video release, all from the inbox of the official who later became the public face of Navy UAP analysis.
The full PDF is on The Black Vault (DON-NAVY-2022-008648).
