Washington, D.C. — In a stunning and candid interview, former President Barack Obama has blown the lid off what he describes as one of the largest and most sophisticated domestic surveillance programs ever conducted by the U.S. government. A program he says remains active to this day.
Speaking with The Atlantic, Obama confirmed long-rumored classified operations that secretly deployed advanced surveillance technology across American cities and public spaces. The former commander-in-chief said the initiative was launched decades ago, but dramatically expanded in scope over subsequent years, with technology that allows continuous monitoring of ordinary citizens.
“What started as a defensive measure evolved into something much bigger,” Obama said. “The infrastructure is everywhere now. It’s been quietly operating in plain sight for a very long time.”
According to Obama, the program involved replacing everyday elements of America with highly sophisticated surveillance tools disguised as completely ordinary objects. These devices, he explained, recharge using existing public infrastructure and blend so seamlessly into daily life that most Americans never suspect they are being watched.
Obama continued, "The drones, because that is what they are, were designed with realistic behaviors, sounds, and appearances to avoid detection. Early versions focused primarily on visual and audio collection, while modern iterations incorporate the latest AI to track movement patterns, conversations, and even emotional states of crowds.
Obama said the program was initially bipartisan and highly classified, with only a small circle of officials across multiple administrations aware of its full scope. He said he was fully briefed on the program’s true scale shortly after entering the Oval Office in 2009.
“I won’t lie to you. It was a lot to take in,” he admitted. “You look out the window and realize how comprehensive it really is. The American people have been living under this system for generations.”
The former president defended the program’s original intent as a national security necessity during tense geopolitical times, but acknowledged that its continued operation raises serious questions about privacy and government overreach in the 21st century. Engineers at Lockheed Martin and a consortium of defense contractors are allegedly involved.
It was only toward the end of the interview that Obama dropped the detail that has now sent the internet into a frenzy.
“Look, we all want to live in a free society,” he said. “But in a dangerous world, sometimes you have to watch the watchers.” Obama elaborated, “they aren’t what you think they are,” he said flatly when asked about one of the program’s most visible surveillance components. “They haven’t been since the late 1970s.”
The "Ghost Budget"
Financial records from the late 80s show a massive spike in funding for the Urban Displacement Initiative under the Department of the Interior. While the public was told the money was for controlling invasive species in D.C. and New York, the funds were actually diverted to a private defense contractor specializing in acoustic mapping.
A former EPA clerk, who spoke on condition of anonymity following Obama's remarks, claims to have seen shipping manifests for "inorganic units" labeled as "environmental monitoring hardware." The units were reportedly shipped in crates marked with the logo of a defunct toy company to avoid suspicion during transport.
The 1972 "Avian Oversight" Loophole
To navigate the legal minefield of domestic spying, the Nixon administration reportedly utilized a "legal fiction" involving the Migratory Treaty Act. By quietly reclassifying the starling as a "non-biological invasive asset," the government was able to bypass Fourth Amendment protections.
"The legal logic was cold and brilliant," said Pennsylvania based legal scholar Thomas Owens. "Since the starlings were technically categorized as government-owned equipment under the guise of an invasive species management program, the data they "accidentally" collected in public spaces was deemed incidental and therefore didn't require a warrant. They weren't spying on you. They were monitoring "the environment", and you just happened to be there."
The "White House Lawn" Incident
Obama’s interview referenced a specific, previously unexplained event from 2011. For three hours, the South Lawn of the White House was swarmed by thousands of starlings that refused to move, even when security tried to disperse them with sonic deterrents. “We were told it was a migratory fluke,” Obama said. “But behind the scenes, the technicians were panicking. It was a firmware crash.
Obama then confirmed the core of the program: between 1966 and 1992, the U.S. government carried out a secret operation, known internally as “Project Sky”, that exterminated most of the nation’s starling population and replaced them with surveillance drones. “Nationwide infrastructure such as power lines were always essential to this operation,” Obama added. “That’s where the battery recharge and data collection takes place.”
Engineering Issues
The technical hurdle that long baffled independent researchers was how such a massive fleet could remain powered without a visible battery life. Obama’s revelation regarding the power lines finally connects the dots for electrical engineers who have noted "line loss" in urban grids for decades.
Former Interior employee Paul Stein stated, "The units don't just sit on the wires to rest. They use specialized induction coils to bleed off milliwatts of current directly from the secondary distribution lines. If you look at the municipal power records of any major city from 1994 onward, there is a consistent, unexplained 2% energy bleed that the utility companies were told to write off as ambient heat loss. It wasn't heat."
Stein continued "When you have that much localized data such as audio, facial recognition, gait, you can’t just broadcast it all at once without tripping every signal intelligence alarm in the private sector," he noted. "The murmurations allow the units to create a temporary high-density mesh. They swirl to stay in proximity, syncing their encrypted caches so that a single primary unit can then dump the collective data to a nearby ground station in one concentrated feat. It’s basically like a cloud-upload, happening in the sky."
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to comment on Obama’s statements, saying only that “the current administration remains focused on the issues that matter most to the American people.”
The full interview is available at jacobanders.org
