How to Read a Pentagon UAP File: the Redaction Codes Explained

Every black bar on a declassified UAP mission report carries a small code. The codes are not secret — they are defined in public law (Executive Order 13526 and the Freedom of Information Act) — and they tell you what kind of secret each redaction is keeping, even when the content itself stays hidden.

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The codes you'll see on UAP files

Code	Legal basis	What it protects
`1.4a`	E.O. 13526 §1.4(a)	Military plans, weapons systems, or operations — callsigns, coordinates, operation names, unit movements.
`(b)(1)`	FOIA Exemption 1	Information that remains classified in the interest of national defense or foreign policy.
`(b)(6)`	FOIA Exemption 6	Personal privacy — the names and identifying details of the people who filed and appear in the report.
`3.5(c)`	E.O. 13526 §3.5(c)	Marking associated with the Mandatory Declassification Review process the file went through.

The asymmetry worth noticing: across the released mission reports, the UAP observation line itself — "OBSERVED A UAP" — is left unredacted. It is the operational context around the sighting that gets blacked out under 1.4a. The government is willing to say its crews saw something; it will not say what was around them when they did.

Try it on the real files

Each case page below shows the actual released document. Look for the codes beside each bar:

Case D-62 · Strait of Hormuz Case D-64 · "Iran" Case D-14 · Iraq / Su-30 Case D-23 · UAE (two sightings) Case D-33 · Greece launch Case D-32 · Syria (TIME-cited)

Sources: Executive Order 13526 · FOIA.gov · documents from the U.S. government's 2026 PURSUE release (war.gov/UFO). All documents authentic; narration in the video is AI-generated text-to-speech.