FigureJames Lacatski

PhD aerospace engineering, University of Cincinnati. Career Defense Intelligence Agency civilian engineer; held a TS/SCI clearance for decades. In 2007 Lacatski, then a DIA program officer working on advanced propulsion and aerospace-threat analysis, was identified by Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and DIA leadership as the candidate program officer for what became the AAWSAP contract — a $22 million sole-source contract with Robert Bigelow’s Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), running from 2008 through 2012. Lacatski personally drafted the original AAWSAP statement of work. The program’s stated objective was the assessment of ‘advanced aerospace threats’ to U.S. defense; its de facto research program centered on the Bigelow-owned Skinwalker Ranch in northeastern Utah. Skinwalkers at the Pentagon (RTMA Communications, 2021), co-authored with biochemist Colm Kelleher (BAASS program scientist) and Las Vegas investigative reporter George Knapp, is the first-person insider account of the AAWSAP era and the document that placed Lacatski’s name on the public record. The book describes a personal on-ranch experience in 2008–09 that Lacatski reports changed his career. In a 2024 sworn affidavit submitted as part of the David Grusch–adjacent disclosure litigation, Lacatski stated under penalty of perjury that he had personal knowledge, gained through his DIA position, of a U.S. government-held non-human craft. The affidavit is in the public record (filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, 2024). Lacatski, Kelleher, and Knapp’s follow-up Inside the U.S. Government Covert UFO Program (RTMA, 2023) expanded the documentary record. Lacatski’s particular significance is institutional: he is the named DIA-civilian program manager on a documented and unclassified-named program contract, which makes his on-the-record statements harder to dismiss as anonymous-insider testimony.