What AARO's 2025 workshop FOIA released, and what it withheld

The host file is a 92-page PDF. Verified this run. PDF 1.6. 6,218,381 bytes. Created September 25, 2026. Not encrypted. The first two pages are the response letter. The third page is a host stamp. The rest is the responsive package.

Letterhead: Department of War, Office of the Secretary of War, Joint Staff, Freedom of Information. Reference 26-F-1773. Date: September 14, 2026. Signed Douglas McComb, Acting Chief, FOIA.

The request was filed March 17, 2026. The office received it March 18, 2026. The letter says the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, described there as a component of the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Intelligence and Security, located 89 responsive pages.

The AARO Initial Denial Authority withheld 19 of those pages in full under 5 U.S.C. § 552 (b)(5). The letter calls that exemption appropriate for deliberative records that contain subjective evaluations, opinions and recommendations.

Portions of the remaining 70 pages were withheld under (b)(5) and under (b)(6), the personal-privacy exemption. The letter says the office considered the foreseeable-harm standard. Fees were below the payment threshold. That fee line is not a finding about the workshop.

Inside the package, 19 sheets are marked Page 16 of 89 through Page 34 of 89, each with a (b)(5) withhold notation. That matches the letter's full-withhold count. It does not reveal what those pages said.

The extractable block is a definition set. Read the layer before you merge it with the next one.

Layer 1, white paper. Public synthesis. Title: 2025 UAP Workshop: Narrative Data, Infrastructures, and Analysis. August 5-6, 2025. AARO-sponsored. Associated Universities, Inc. hosted. 40 participants from government, academia, and independent research organizations. Not a named guest list. Not a case resolution.

Layer 2, working agenda in 26-F-1773. Header: last updated August 5, 2025. It says the agenda is tentative and subject to change. It names scheduled slots and the Vienna room. Not a transcript of what anyone concluded.

Layer 3, August 4 Pentagon calendar. July 2025 emails. Proposed CRIDOVNI and AARO briefings, an approved foreign-visit request, an approved visitor request, then lunch and a private tour. Not a signed information-sharing agreement.

Layer 4, the 19-page withhold. The letter says those pages are deliberative and contain subjective evaluations, opinions and recommendations. Not proof of hidden craft. Not proof of beings.

Layer 5, (b)(6) cuts. Personal-privacy redactions. Foreign visitor names are not in the released text. Not a puzzle to solve by guessing names.

89 is the letter's responsive-page count. 19 is the full withhold. 70 is the remainder, released with cuts. 92 is the host PDF, because it adds the letter and a host stamp. Do not call the host file 89 pages. Do not call the withhold 92.

The public white paper says 40 participants. An invitation letter in the package says a small group of 25 to 30 experts. Do not pick a winner. One is the cleared synthesis. The other is planning text.

That invitation prints the reply deadline as June x, 2025. The x is on the page. It is an unfilled placeholder, not a date this brief repairs.

The clearance form's page-count field reads 18. The remarks line in the text layer is dirty around that same count. Use 18 as the form field. Do not invent a second count from the dirty characters.

A registration sheet lists institutions. Names on that sheet are withheld. Two rows read CRIDOVNI (Uruguay). A row is not a sign-in sheet. Do not add the rows and call the sum the 40.

Meeting location on the working agenda: Associated Universities Inc., across from the Dunn Loring Metro station, 2650 Park Tower Drive, Suite 700, Vienna, VA 22180.

Welcome slot, 9:00 to 9:15 on August 5: Tim Spuck (AUI), Adam Cohen (AUI), Jon Kosloski (AARO), Gretchen Stahlman (Florida State University School of Information).

Keynote, 9:30 to 10:45, Setting the stage: Importance of good UAP data. Robert Powell (Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies) and Jon Kosloski (AARO).

Plenary 1, 1:15 to 2:15: Laura Domine, printed as Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University. The agenda line does not add another affiliation. This page does not add one.

Panel 1, 3:45 to 4:45, Opportunities and challenges with AI. Moderator: Tim Spuck. Named lines: Abigail Haddad (Machine Learning Engineer), Elliott Hauser (Assistant Professor, School of Information, University of Texas at Austin), Duncan McCaskill (former U.S. Navy CDAO).

The agenda does not spell out CDAO. This page does not expand it.

The fourth panelist line is an associate professor in the Department of Physics at the University at Albany. The host PDF text layer garbles that surname. This page does not print a correction.

August 6 plenary, 9:15 to 10:15: Stephen Breuhl, printed as Professor, Vanderbilt University Medical Center. That is the text-layer spelling. This page does not repair it.

Panel 2, 11:00 to 12:00 on August 6, Harmonizing qualitative and quantitative perspectives on narrative data. Moderator: Gretchen Stahlman. Michael Cifone (President and Executive Director, Society for UAP Studies). Amanda Focke (Head of Special Collections, Rice University Fondren Library). Ben Gibson (Social/Behavioral Scientist, RAND Corporation). Christian Stepien (Chief Technical Officer, National UFO Reporting Center, NUFORC).

These are scheduled slots on a page that says tentative. A name on the agenda is not a transcript, and it is not proof of what that person concluded.

The printed August 5 block jumps from a 2:15 to 2:45 coffee break to a 3:45 panel. No 2:45 to 3:45 line is on that page. Do not invent the missing hour.

Direct download of the AARO white paper returned HTTP 403 this run. The public PDF text was still readable from the official URL. Quoted lines below come from that extract, not from a local file save.

The paper's extracted Appendix C labels Plenary 1 without a speaker name. The FOIA working agenda names Laura Domine for the 1:15 to 2:15 slot. That is the contrast this run verified.

This page does not claim it re-read every line of the public appendix. Do not upgrade one unnamed slot into a claim that the paper hides the whole room.

The paper says the workshop was not publicized online beforehand, and that the focus was not what UAP are or their origins. Use the narrative-data workshop page for the methods findings. Do not re-try those findings here.

The clearance form in the FOIA package names Kosloski as author, SES, Director, AARO. It is signed 20260209. Clearance was requested by 20260216. The review mark is 26-P-0344, the same mark on the public paper. The open-publication stamp did not yield a clean day in the text layer. Do not print a clearance day this file does not show.

The form still says Department of Defense and OUSD(I&S). The 2026 letter says Department of War and the Office of the Under Secretary of War. Keep each name on the document that uses it.

On the working agenda, August 4 is a pre-workshop evening. 7:00 to 9:00 pm. Networking social. Light dinner near the workshop venue.

In the emails, August 4 is a Pentagon calendar. A July 29, 2025 message from an AARO partner engagement officer says the foreign-visit request and the Pentagon Force Protection Agency visitor request were approved.

That same July 29 message proposes this clock: 1000 to 1030, CRIDOVNI mission briefing. 1030 to 1100, AARO mission briefing. 1100 to 1200, discussion of the briefings and future collaboration. Then lunch, then a private Pentagon tour from 1300 to 1400.

A separate note in the thread says a lunch reservation includes Dr. Kosloski and Josh Reiter, printed as AARO's Chief Technology Officer. Do not merge that reservation line with the July 29 lunch sentence into one confirmed venue. The page does not need the dining-room name.

An earlier message in the same thread, dated in the Spanish header as July 15, 2025, asks whether the visitors would be available at the Pentagon on August 4 for briefings on CRIDOVNI and AARO work. The clean line says the meeting would be between CRIDOVNI and AARO. One text-layer line misspells CRIDOVNI. Quote the clean lines.

The Uruguayan reply says they would be available on August 4, and that it was of special interest to establish a further working relationship with AARO and to exchange information and experiences. Interest is not a signed agreement.

That reply also says they would like to present on CRIDOVNI's work, about 15 minutes, then questions. A pre-event AARO email says time was set aside for a presentation. The working agenda text read this run does not name a CRIDOVNI slot. Time set aside is not a delivered talk. A missing agenda line is not proof they did not speak.

Do not merge the evening social with the morning Pentagon clock. Same date. Two tracks.

A pre-event email in the July thread says: We currently do not have any other registered guests from South America. That is the state of that message. It is not a final roster.

The same message says an invitation went to a Chilean contact in Washington to invite participants from SEFAA, and that no response was received. No response in the released text is not a finding that Chile refused cooperation. The contact's name is redacted. Do not guess it.

The same message says AARO plans to hold a follow-on data workshop in early 2026, and asks for contacts at other South American research organizations. A plan in a pre-event email is not a completed event. The file does not say the 2026 workshop happened.

A statement of work in the package is dated April 25, 2025. Period of performance: March 1, 2025 through December 31, 2025. Place of performance: AUI. That is planning paperwork. It is not a findings paper, and the end date is not a cancellation of the 2026 plan.

The invitation says the event builds on a 2024 workshop. That is adjacency. It is not this FOIA's finding.

Travel, lodging, and personal schedule lines are in the file. They are not the citation question. This page does not quote them.

Name the product: Department of War FOIA final response, case 26-F-1773, September 14, 2026, signed by the Acting Chief, FOIA.

Name the counts in one clause: 89 responsive pages, 19 withheld in full under (b)(5), 70 released with cuts. If you mention the host file, say 92 pages, including the letter and a host stamp.

If you name speakers, say the working agenda is tentative and last updated August 5, 2025. A scheduled slot is not a conclusion.

If you mention Uruguay, say the emails schedule an August 4 Pentagon briefing with CRIDOVNI and record an approved visitor request. Do not write that a data-sharing agreement was signed. The file does not contain one.

If you mention the 19 pages, keep the letter's words in the same sentence: deliberative records that contain subjective evaluations, opinions and recommendations. Do not upgrade a withhold into hidden extraterrestrial findings.

If you mention early 2026, say it is a plan in a pre-event email. Do not say the follow-on workshop occurred.

Keep the 2025 email name, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, off the 2026 letter. Keep Department of War off the 2025 emails.

Safe citation: On September 14, 2026, a Department of War letter on FOIA 26-F-1773 said AARO located 89 pages on the August 2025 narrative-data workshop and withheld 19 in full under exemption (b)(5). The released working agenda names scheduled speakers and says it is tentative. July 2025 emails schedule a separate August 4 Pentagon briefing with Uruguay's CRIDOVNI. Visitor approval is not a signed agreement. Withheld deliberative pages are not extraterrestrial proof.

Unsafe upgrade: AARO signed a data-sharing pact with Uruguay, the 19 pages hide alien findings, the follow-on workshop happened, the agenda is a transcript, or this FOIA closes a UAP case.