Secretary Hicks,
I suggest you walk the walk for wounded, ill, and injured service members. Please take a look at the letter below, which will be submitted for the Congressional record early next week. Current DoD policy directly endangers the lives of your service members who file PPD-19's and provide protected disclosures to AARO.
Multiple sources in the government have informed us that the organization you put together in response to
@SenGillibrand's initial UAP efforts,
@DoD_AARO, has a secret technical advisory group comprised of members who your former AARO Director, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, refused to reveal to Congress who those members are.
Multiple sources have confirmed that one of this board's primary members was/is Glenn Gaffney, the former head of CIA DS&T, who, as I'm sure you are well aware, is one of the primary gatekeepers for the UAP deep legacy program and has been for quite some time. This technical advisory group was operational as of two weeks ago and advising DoD AARO.
So, the organization you set up for DoD/IC whistleblowers to provide protected disclosures is allegedly advised by the primary gatekeeper/stakeholder of the UAP deep legacy program.
This raises the question of whether this group functions as a conduit for funneling whistleblower identities and information back to the CIA/DS&T and, ultimately, to defense contractors used as cutouts for whistleblower retaliation.
This endangers the lives of the whistleblowers you claim to protect.