SAP

A special access program (SAP) is a classified program run apart from ordinary, or collateral, channels, with its own access controls, oversight and inspections.

Executive Order 12356 (1982) let agency heads create SAPs by written direction and dropped the automatic five-year expiry in Carter's 1978 order. The Deputy Secretary of Defense chairs the Special Access Program Oversight Committee, set up on 5 January 1994, which approves, revalidates, restructures and ends Defense Department SAPs. The most sensitive can be "waived" from congressional notification; only eight senior defense-committee members may be told.

SAPs recur in UAP accounts:

• In April 1997 UFO researchers briefed Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson. Eric Davis's notes of an October 2002 meeting record Wilson saying he found hidden programs and was refused access. Wilson has disputed that account.
• In 2009 Harry Reid asked the Pentagon to make AAWSAP a SAP. Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence James Clapper recommended against it; the Pentagon declined. The Pentagon declined to create a new program, and no document shows Reid refused entry to an existing one.
• In a May 2026 interview, David Grusch said a "White House SAP" can avoid the reporting required for covert action. It is his testimony, not independently documented.
• Some accounts say Executive Order 12356 or the exposure of the Army's Yellow Fruit pushed hidden programs deeper underground. The order's text does not support that, and no known source links the first Pentagon SAP directive (4 January 1989) to Yellow Fruit.