AATIP Nickname Created in Reid SAP Letter
According to James Lacatski, AATIP was created as an unclassified nickname in Senator Harry Reid's June 24, 2009 letter requesting Special Access Program protection for AAWSAP data. It was not the funded $22 million program; that program's official name was AAWSAP.
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Background
AATIP should not be treated as the original funded DIA/BAASS contract. In Lacatski's account, the funded program was AAWSAP — Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program — under contract HHM402-08-C-0072. The AATIP acronym was created for use in Senator Harry Reid's unclassified June 24, 2009 letter to Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn requesting a Special Access Program for AAWSAP data.
Lacatski states that AAWSAP's name was never changed and that the $22 million in congressional funding belonged to AAWSAP, not AATIP. The AATIP acronym was adopted much later to describe a small unofficial DoD effort to investigate UAP encountered by military personnel. Public reporting after 2017 often conflated these two things.
Significance
This distinction corrects the common public conflation: AAWSAP was the official funded DIA program; AATIP was a later label and not a funded program in Lacatski's account.