DOW-UAP-D173: BAASS Monthly Report, November 2009 -- MUFON Field Cases, the Utah Ranch and the "Blue Orb" Case

Source file: DOW-UAP-D173-BAASS_Monthly_Report_November_2009.pdf Originating agency: Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), Las Vegas, contractor to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) under the AAWSAP program Document type: Monthly contractor progress report ("November 2009 Monthly Report"), with attached MUFON case reports, field-investigation reports, experiment protocols and an internal memorandum Date: Reporting period November 1-30, 2009 (some attached photographs carry December 2009 time stamps) Classification: No classification banner; the title page reads "This Information is proprietary and confidential and cannot be disseminated or used without prior written consent from the Operating Manager of BAASS." Released to the public in 2026, with names and personal details redacted under 1843(a)(2) and 1843(a)(3) Page count: 155 VIRIN: 260508-D-D0360-1165 PURSUE Release: 7

Summary

This is the November 2009 progress report that BAASS delivered under the AAWSAP contract. A one-page preface states that it "summarizes BAASS activities and progress for the period November 1- November 30, 2009" and lists four parts: the MUFON investigative activity (from printed page 3), progress on the Utah ranch investigations (page 59), a preliminary report on a "Blue Orb" incident (page 126) and a conclusion (page 154). The PDF page numbers used below run one ahead of the printed ones.

Unlike the technical DIRD papers of Release 6, almost nothing here is about aerospace engineering. The report is a casebook: field write-ups by MUFON "STAR Team" investigators, patrol logs of the guards BAASS stationed on the Utah ranch, interview notes from neighbours and Ute tribal members in the Uintah Basin, and a medical-style workup of one witness. All BAASS and MUFON personnel appear as "AAP Person" labels and all civilians are redacted.

The report is useful because it shows the program's working methods and their limits at the same time. It records a hoax-like case closed as model gliders, cases left as "unknown" on single-witness testimony, BAASS's own admission that coin-movement reports by its guards "are difficult to interpret," and a closing page that concedes BAASS lacked the access it needed for its most ambitious projects.

Research Article

MUFON as a sensor network, and a $10,000 cut

The first section explains the arrangement behind half the report. "In February 2009, BAASS executed a Purchase order with MUFON" that entitled it to notification of significant UAP reports "from anywhere in the United States within hours," timely investigator reports, and physical evidence -- "photographs, digital recordings, samples of soil, insects, plants, and animals" -- for its laboratories (page 4). The same page records a falling-out: after an October 2009 appraisal, "BAASS was dissatisfied with MUFON's tendency to warehouse significant sums of money every month," and would cut the monthly stipend by $10,000 for the rest of the contract. The section is headed November but introduces "selected investigative reports from MUFON deployments during the months of October 2009"; in practice the cases span 7 October to 25 November. Every case report names the same MUFON STAR Team Manager and "SIP Project Coordinator," AAP Person 59.

Six MUFON deployments

Modesto, California (case 19865, 7 October 2009). A father and his six-year-old daughter photographed two blue lights, which then seemed to converge on their car and follow it; the daughter developed a chest rash the next day (pages 5-10). The lead investigator, AAP Person 116, retraced the route, estimated distances (the lights still visible about 4,400 feet from the railroad crossing, gone at about 7,200 feet) and found a hobby shop near the sighting spot. A follow-up email from AAP Person 117, a MUFON chief investigator, settled it: staff confirmed that hobbyists fly gliders at night with "bright blue colored lights" and were flying on the night in question. The case was reclassified "IFO-Man-Made Objects." This is the report's clearest solved case, and it was solved by a phone call.

Versailles, Missouri (case 20143, 25 October 2009). A witness reported a large upright triangle of flashing lights landing in woods about 0.7 miles north of his house, seven small spinning orange-red lights, and, about 50 yards away, a figure "about five feet tall" in a striped, loose top, apparently talking into a hand-held object (pages 11-16). The investigator, AAP Person 109, found a bare patch "6 foot 6 inches, by 7 foot 6 inches," a compass deviation of 40 degrees at the spot, two matching holes 1 foot 6 inches apart, and oddly behaving dogs, and took four soil samples. A neighbour described military aircraft flying grid patterns the next night; he called them "4 F-111 jets out of Whiteman Air Field," an identification the report does not question even though the F-111 had left U.S. Air Force service more than a decade earlier. The conclusion is blunt: "Unknown UAV, Entity, and Landing Sight. CAT. 3." Pages 17-18 reproduce the witness drawings.

Central Texas (combined cases, 18 November 2009). Seven MUFON reports from Santo, Stephenville, Hico (two), De Leon, Dublin and Breckenridge were combined into one deployment on 24 November (pages 19-39). Witnesses described high-intensity lights in a line switching on and off between 19:00 and 20:05. AAP Person 119 plotted lines of sight on Google Earth, pulled NEXRAD radar frames from Fort Worth and Dyess (Figures 5, 6, 12), noted that the area lies under the Brownwood Military Operating Area where "aircraft do not have to run with lights," and collected local press coverage of the "Mystery Lights." Witness drawings (Figures 7 and 11) and a reconstruction (Figure 17) are included; one caption reads, "No proof here of an object." The findings page lists four headings -- "A case for the 3 helicopters and arrays," "A Case for Jets and flares," "A Case for TR-3B," "A case for the unknown" -- with no text under any of them (page 39). The investigation was left unfinished.

Port Jervis, New York (case 20706, 25 November 2009). A 41-year-old mental-health professional driving home at about 12:15 AM described a slowly rotating, cigar-shaped object with blue-white-red-white-blue lights, "around 200 feet in length," with a sound "like a cat purring" (pages 40-50). As it passed over, his engine, phone and electric window stopped working, and after about 1.5 minutes the car restarted by itself. Investigators AAP Person 103 and AAP Person 104 found background radiation levels, but a TriField meter "pegged the needle" around the engine compartment of his two-month-old 2009 sedan and not on an identical test vehicle at a dealership (pages 45-48). They also report an unexplained double camera-battery failure. Their summary is candid: "This Investigation yields a reliance primarily on a single witness testimony of events."

Tomball and Georgetown, Texas (cases 20264, 20123, 20268, 25 October - 1 November 2009). A 19-year-old reported a saucer about 20 feet across hovering 20 feet above her backyard with "a loud rocket sound" (pages 51-59). The investigator, AAP Person 122, found berries on a Duranta shrub below it with "ash appearance," and AAP Person 59 flew to Houston to check for radiation (none found). A redacted plant specialist said the plant "had been exposed to some type of heat," source unknown. Two linked reports, a loud noise over a nearby house and an object seen in a field off I-35, yielded no interviews. The finding: "an unknown object."

The Utah ranch: guards, coins and experiments

The Utah section (pages 60-126) is divided into security-officer events, surrounding-property investigations, experiments, and a fourth, redacted heading. BAASS had kept "round the clock surveillance" on the property since 3 August 2009. The excerpted logs (10-21 November) are mostly routine patrols in temperatures of 21-33 degrees, punctuated by small anomalies: a stereo that "turned on by itself" at 00:25; pennies left at Homestead 2 found moved, flipped or missing; coins on an officer's nightstand shifting overnight; an occasional "anomaly/orb" in a photograph; and one officer's account of a "threatening presence" near the trees and of a "cold grip" on his ankle while he slept, after which AAP Person 44 advised him to move rooms.

BAASS treated these logs with notable caution. In the experiments section it writes that the coin reports "can be easily explained by (a) fraud perpetrated by the officers, (b) trespassers, (c) animals etc.," and so it designed controls: brain-teaser puzzles assembled and photographed in Las Vegas, locked in briefcases whose keys stayed in Las Vegas, and left at a ranch "hotspot" for a month; padlocked light boxes holding a Fibonacci series of tiles, with the challenge "for any intelligence on the ranch" to add the next number; and a seed-germination comparison of sweet corn, lima bean, sugar snap pea and garden bean between Las Vegas and the ranch (pages 107-116). The puzzle photographs are time-stamped 2 and 8 December 2009, so the section was finished after the reporting month. No results are reported.

The canvass around "Skinwalker Ridge"

From 16 to 19 November, field investigators AAP Person 41 and AAP Person 14 interviewed residents around Vernal, Fort Duchesne and Randlett (pages 71-95). They report "5 additional witnesses to either an unidentified flying object, a bright blue orb and/or a large dog like creature which stood and ran on its hind legs." The accounts include a white orb circled by a smaller red light, watched for 20-30 minutes; a creature said to have been shot from about 75 feet with a .30-30 rifle and to have left a 25-foot trail of "thick black blood"; a golf-ball-sized blue orb that paced a woman's car and "shot off in a 45 degree angle" near a place locals call "UFO hill"; a low underground hum; and a childhood sighting from 1968-69 of a dome-topped craft about 12 by 12 feet over trees near Pelican Lake, which the witness herself now thinks was "a NASA test craft." An elderly Ute veteran explained the local belief about skinwalkers and "Navajo wolves" but declined to discuss the ranch area in detail. One interviewee was 15 years old. Photographs #008-#020 (pages 96-107) show only landscape: the dirt mound, ravine and ridge of the shooting account and the road to "UFO hill."

The investigators' own assessment is modest -- "we are barely scratching the surface" -- and much of their conclusion concerns building trust and showing "the highest level of respect for the tribal members and Native American culture" (pages 94-95).

A website, a dossier and a retraction

The redacted fourth Utah heading turns out to be a website. A memo of 12 November 2009 from field investigator AAP Person 34 to AAP Person 7, "Deputy Administrator," reports on a private individual whose site offered ranch tours and a forum listing BAASS and NIDS personnel, the BAASS building address, guard patrol times and equipment, and a claim that "a three star general and two other important ranking officals" had visited (pages 117-125). The memo compiles personal details about him that this article does not repeat and calls him "a threat to our work." A note added afterwards withdraws that: the material came mostly "from Internet sources," he is "merely a skilled researcher," and "BAASS no longer considers him a threat," since action would only increase the website's publicity (page 126).

The "blue orb" case

The last major item is a preliminary status report dated 17 November 2009 by AAP Person 18 and AAP Person 29 (pages 127-154). On the night of 16 August 2007, a woman driving a rental car north of Davis, California, at 85 miles per hour, with her daughter reclining in the passenger seat, reported that three blue orbs swirled toward the car; one crossed the road, one crossed the dashboard and one passed through her body from the left shoulder to the right upper arm. She described nausea, distorted time, a dream of a face saying "Okay, we are going to fix this," and then two years of declining health, including weight gain from 125 to 180 pounds. The daughter, interviewed separately by phone by AAP Person 7, described "brilliant laser blue flying lights chasing each other." The contact came through an email to AAP Person 126, forwarded to AAP Person 8; AAP Person 81 joined the face-to-face interview and proposed a battery of tests.

The report includes a location map, weather data from Sacramento International Airport (clear, 81.0 degrees F at 7:53 PM) and Figure 19, a diagram tracing "the path of the blue orb" across the endocrine glands. It does not reconcile its own timeline: the executive summary says a few minutes stretched to "approximately 1.5 hours," the first phone interview says a 45-minute segment "took three hours," and the face-to-face interview has the car leaving I-80 at about 8:30 PM, the clock at 10:45 PM and arrival at about 11:30 PM. The table dates that interview 15 September and the text 16 September. The "Documented Medical Records Summary" (pages 143-154) is redacted almost entirely.

Significance

D173 is one of the fullest pictures of what AAWSAP money was actually buying in late 2009: a nationwide alert feed from MUFON, permanent guards and simple experiments on a Utah ranch, ethnographic interviews in the Uintah Basin, and case files on individual experiencers. It is the same model seen in the program's earlier monthly reports (DOW-UAP-D169, D170, D171) and continued in the Utah Ranch Investigation Report of April 2010 (DOW-UAP-D174).

The closing page is the most revealing for program history. It states that "Northern Tier, entry into classified archives, Project Oral History, as well as contacting key people in the military and private sector are on hold because BAASS currently does not have the Need to Know," that tentative steps with the sponsor to approach U.S. government organizations were "much too a preliminary stage," and that MUFON case numbers remained "lower than originally expected." Yet it also claims that "The BAASS database of cases is now larger than any other database owned by UAP organizations in North America" and announces "a separate Capella database for the events on the Utah ranch." The report thus records both the program's investigative ambition and its distance from the classified material it hoped to reach. Its evidential value is uneven: one case explained, several left open on single-witness testimony, and a self-critical acknowledgement that the ranch anecdotes needed controls they did not yet have.

Key People

Locations

Incidents

Notable Quotes

"BAASS was dissatisfied with MUFON's tendency to warehouse significant sums of money every month, especially during the early stages of the contract." -- page 4

"Conclusion: Unknown UAV, Entity, and Landing Sight. CAT. 3" -- page 16

"This Investigation yields a reliance primarily on a single witness testimony of events." -- page 49

"While we continue to make strong headway into the Uintah Basin, we are barely scratching the surface." -- page 94

"In short these reports are difficult to interpret." -- page 114

"In short, BAASS no longer considers him a threat" -- page 126

"The BAASS database of cases is now larger than any other database owned by UAP organizations in North America." -- page 155