Conspiracy

CIA refuses to 'confirm or deny' that it has records on comet 3I/ATLAS

By T.K. Randall
January 6, 2026

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) With 3I/ATLAS now heading away from the Earth to resume its journey through the solar system and with NASA having conclusively determined it to be little more than a normal comet, it would have seemed as though the story of this intriguing interstellar interloper was all but over.

But as recently highlighted by Harvard's Prof Avi Loeb in his latest blog entry, it seems that it wasn't always a foregone conclusion that 3I/ATLAS would turn out to be harmless.

On December 31st, the CIA replied to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted by The Black Vault's John Greenewald Jr. by stating that it could "neither confirm nor deny" the existence or nonexistence of any records pertaining to 3I/ATLAS.

Greenewald Jr., who is going to file an appeal, maintains that this is a standard response when records do exist, but the CIA doesn't want to release them for various reasons."If [the conclusion that 3I/ATLAS is a comet] was clear all along to everyone within government and academia - as NASA officials presented the case, then why would the CIA treat the possible existence of records dealing with a natural comet as sensitive enough to be classified?" Loeb wrote.

He went on to suggest that this could indicate that 3I/ATLAS had been investigated by the CIA as a possible "black swan" event (something that could pose a serious threat to human society), but that revealing such a possibility would have been detrimental to social cohesion.

In other words, there would be no point even suggesting to the public that the object had the potential to end human civilization considering how extraordinarily unlikely such a possibility actually was.

Still, this is the first time the CIA has offered a response of this nature in relation to an astronomical object, suggesting that it must have held some real significance to the powers that be.

🚨The CIA will "neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records" pertaining to interstellar object 3I/ATLAS.

The fact of documents existing or not existing is classified. pic.twitter.com/UNWXUL2Av0

- John Greenewald, Jr. (@theblackvault) January 5, 2026

Source: Avi Loeb Medium

Tags: Interstellar, Avi Loeb