It was the code name for a program in the Department of Homeland Security.
And it was in the process of being established.
The DHS had the proposal in front of Congress in 2011. Senators Joe Lieberman and Harry Reid promised to secure funding. But something got in the way.
KONA BLUE was never approved, never received funding, and no data was ever collected under its name. That's the official government position.
If it was approved, it would have been a Special Access Program, or SAP. That makes it highly classified with extraordinary security measures. The SAP designation is reserved for sensitive military projects, cyber intelligence gathering, and technical developments no one can know about.
Stealth bombers, hypersonic planes, military space defense, cyber operations designed to intercept global communications, impossible energy weapons. These are the kinds of projects hidden under the Special Access Program banner.
If KONA BLUE became an SAP, we would never hear about it again.
But because it was a proposal reviewed by Congress, we know its stated purpose. It was to continue work undertaken by the Defense Intelligence Agency's AAWSAP and AATIP programs (Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program and Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program respectively).
What was that work? To investigate sensitive materials and technologies, including advanced aerospace vehicles. In other words, to chase UFO's.
KONA BLUE teams would continue investigations into Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), and reverse-engineer any recovered off-world spacecraft they captured.
Most dramatically, according to members of the DHS, KONA BLUE was meant to “protect the retrieval and exploitation of non-human biologics.” In other words, captured aliens.
For some reason, the U.S. Government was concerned enough with handling alien remains that they needed an official secret program to handle it. Doesn't necessarily mean the aliens exist – it could simply be the fear of the unknown.
The U.S. Government fears technology it doesn’t understand. UAP's defy physics and any Earthly explanation. Since they first started appearing in the sky, the government's been trying to explain them.
It started with Project SAUCER, launched in the 1940's to evaluate UFO sightings that could be construed as a concern to national security. And the sightings continue to this day.
Take the objects seen by U.S. Navy pilots in 2004. They were part of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group. They described seeing a flying, 46-foot long, wingless, white oval – they compared it to a tic tac.
And it maneuvered in impossible ways, at speeds and changes in direction that would have destroyed any aircraft known to man. At one point, the "tic tac" stopped on a dime after reaching speeds of 13,000 miles per hour.
There has been no explanation for this astonishing craft.
The AAWSAP and AATIP programs were meant to analyze these impossible craft. In 2008, Senator Harry Reid directed the Defense Intelligence Agency to "assess long-term and over-the-horizon foreign advanced aerospace threats to the United States".
They would try to unlock the secrets of advanced lift and propulsion. They would explain the UAP's ability to obscure itself – reduce its observable characteristics until it appeared to be, well, just a white tic tac. Or a metallic football.
Or any number of shapes in the hundreds of sightings tracked and logged by the Pentagon.
The AAWSAP/AATIP groups analyzed all the videos of UAP's making mind-bending maneuvers. They reviewed every eyewitness account.
But was there more? Did they have physical evidence?
In 2011, Doctor James Lacatski – one of the leaders of AAWSAP – informed a U.S. senator and a high-ranking official that:
"[The] United States was in possession of a craft of unknown origin and had successfully gained access to its interior. This craft had… no intakes, exhaust, wings, or control surfaces… (no) engine, fuel tanks, or fuel."
Luis Elizondo, former head of the AATIP program, said his team was:
"[Told] specifically that a defense contractor, associated with the Legacy Program, was in possession of UAP materials of nonhuman origin, made by some civilization from some distant planet."
It wasn't just the ship. Those "materials of nonhuman origin" included the pilot.
In 2023, a high-ranking former intelligence officer named David Grusch testified to Congress that individuals told him the U.S. government had retrieved craft and biological material of nonhuman origin.
Keep in mind, AAWSAP and AATIP were not Special Access Projects. KONA BLUE was born at the time AAWSAP and AATIP teams were asked to disband.
This after hearing rumors the government captured something alien. Did the Department of Homeland Security establish KONA BLUE because captured material required a higher level of security?
Whatever started the process, the new program was put in front of Congress and promised funding. Then something happened.
Six months into the program's creation, the Deputy Secretary of DHS disapproved KONA BLUE as a Special Access Program (SAP), and further directed its immediate termination.
The reasons were a string of government-speak: "concerns about the adequacy of justification for the program, and sufficiency of information central to the proposal development, including personnel and budget requirements".
Whatever the reason, KONA BLUE was stopped before it began. It never made it to an active Special Access Program.
Not that we know of.
Of course, if KONA BLUE became an SAP, we would never hear about it again.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gLPtRwXgCMhttps://www.congress.gov/118/crec/2024/07/11/170/115/CREC-2024-07-11-pt1-PgS4943.pdf
https://www.aaro.mil/Portals/136/PDFs/UAP_RECORDS_RESEARCH/AARO_DHS_Kona_Blue.pdf