A 2026 KLAS/Mystery Wire report credits James Lacatski alone with proposing, designing, and managing AAWSAP, naming Jay Stratton only as a co-pitcher of the preliminary 2007 idea — [unverified-historical]

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A February 2026 8 News Now (KLAS) report by George Knapp and John Forest — the same investigative team whose 2023 reporting is already captured in claim-knapp-reporting-stratton-consulted-aawsap-conflicts-with-memoir-founder-claim — states: "Dr. James Lacatski proposed, designed, and managed the largest U.S. government-funded UFO investigation in American history." Jay Stratton appears two sentences later (after a sentence on Lacatski's DIA career), credited only with an earlier, more preliminary act: "In 2007, Lacatski and a DIA colleague Jay Stratton pitched the idea of a clandestine investigation into UFO/UAP technology and case studies, one that would include Skinwalker Ranch as a 'living laboratory.'"

The verbs distinguish two different acts: Lacatski "proposed, designed, and managed" the program itself; Stratton co-pitched the antecedent idea that preceded it. This is a third independent account of Stratton's role — distinct from both the outlet's own 2023 "consulted" framing and the Dan Farah/Hal Puthoff "co-founded" framing in claim-dan-farah-not-puthoff-asserted-strattons-cofounder-director-titles — and it again stops short of crediting Stratton as AAWSAP's founder, even while granting him a co-equal role in the idea that led to it.

James Lacatski is now the figure every account checked across this vault's two Stratton captures measures the founder claim against; no account found so far credits Stratton with Lacatski's "proposed, designed, and managed" verbs.