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Post by auntym on Oct 30, 2018 16:56:09 GMT -6
dailygalaxy.com/2018/10/from-the-x-files-the-day-the-new-york-times-implied-extraterrestrials-are-for-real/ From the X Files –“The Day The New York Times Implied Extraterrestrials are for Real”Posted on Oct 30, 2018 By Jeff Wise / nymag.com/author/Jeff%20Wise/The internet went slightly “bananas” on December 27, 2017 with the New York Times’ story implying that extraterrestrials are real and the U.S. government has been tracking them for years. Appearing first on the web on a Saturday, it came out in print on Sunday as a front-page story entitled “Real U.F.O.s? Pentagon Unit Tried to Know.” As if wary of the waters into which it was about to wade, wrote wrote Jeff Wise for the Intelligencer, the piece started out in a sober and measured tone, describing the existence of a heretofore little-known Department of Defense program, but then after the jump to page 27 loosened up and gave free rein to claims that the program had found evidence of strange aircraft that flew in seemingly impossible ways. For Ufologists who had dreamed of being taken seriously by the mainstream media, continues Wise, the story was a dream come true: As BigThink put it, “The article is shocking, and arguably represents a historical inflection point in our attitudes regarding UFOs.” Twitter user Space Traveller wrote: “How is everyone not losing it over this Pentagon #UFO report and footage?!” Even inveterate bubble-burster Neil deGrasse Tyson accepted that something was out there, reminding CNN viewers that just because an object was unidentified didn’t necessarily mean it came from outer space. A photo of a UFO spotted spotted on October 16, 1957, near Holloman Air Force Missile Development Center in New Mexico, which was released by the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization.The tl;dr appeared to be “flying saucers are real.” But a closer reading suggests a murkier proposition. The main source in the Times article was a former Pentagon employee named Luis Elizondo, who ran a small program called Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification from 2007 until it was shut down in 2012. What made the story Times-worthy was the fact that Elizondo’s account was vouched for by the man who’d arranged for its funding, former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, as well as by the billionaire donor who won the contract to manage the program, Robert Bigelow. (Fox News justifiably raised an eyebrow at the men’s lucrative interconnection.) The fact that the program really existed was the part that the Times touted as its big get, but that wasn’t what set the internet on fire. What got people excited was the implication that the program had collected evidence of encounters with unidentified flying objects. In reporting this part of the story, reporters Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean were much less careful about maintaining a critical eye. “The program produced documents that describe sightings of aircraft that seemed to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of lift,” the article asserted, later adding: “The company modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Mr. Elizondo and program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. In addition, researchers also studied people who said that they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for physiological changes.” The straightforward presentation of these assertions implies that the authors believe them to be true. But they beg for elaboration. Were the produced documents credible? In what way were the buildings modified, and why was it necessary to modify them in order to store this material? What does it mean for an object to be associated with a phenomenon? What were the claimed physical effects, and were any physiological changes found? Making portentous assertions out of context is a powerful technique for creating a sense of mystery and drama. Leaving a question unanswered implies that it is unanswerable. Selectively omitting key details can make a mundane fact seem uncanny. These techniques are great for exciting an audience, but they’re better suited to Ancient Aliens than the pages of the New York Times because the net effect is to cloud rather than illuminate key issues. In this case: What exactly did Elizondo’s team uncover? The main article is decidedly short on specifics. There’s a brief reference to “footage from a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet showing an aircraft surrounded by some kind of glowing aura traveling at high speed and rotating as it moves.” A more detailed account is provided in an accompanying sidebar entitled “2 Navy Airmen and an Object That ‘Accelerated Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen.’” In it, former Navy F/A-18 pilot David Fravor relates his experience during a flight from the aircraft carrier Nimitz on November 14, 2004. While en route to a training mission he was vectored toward an unknown radar contact. Arriving on the scene, he witnessed a lozenge-shaped craft that moved over an agitated, churning patch of ocean, then moved so quickly that it appeared to defy physics. Embedded in the sidebar is a 76-second-long video that is described as having been taken during the 2004 encounter. It shows a fuzzy dot in the center of an infrared-camera monitor that, when zoomed in on, appears lozenge-shaped. There are no visual clues such as clouds or sea, so it is impossible to gauge distance or relative motion. Near the end, the object ducks away to the left. There is nothing about the video that in itself reads as being beyond the realm of normal physics, though it seems eerie given the article’s content. As UFO sightings go, Fravor’s account ranks as fairly credible. It’s detailed, internally consistent, and is provided by an unusually well-credentialed subject. Not only was Fravor a Navy pilot, he was a cast member of the ten-part documentary series Carrier about life on the USS Nimitz that aired on PBS in 2008. Neither the story nor the video are new, however. Both have been kicking around the internet for some time. Fravor’s tale first appeared in March, 2015, on the website FighterSweep.com, where writer Paco Chierici presented a detailed story as told to him by “a good buddy of mine and former squadron mate, Dave ‘Sex’ Fravor.” Chierici advises that it’s “one of the most bizarre aviation stories of all time … a story that stretches credibility.” In a follow-up story for the Times Insider about how the story came to be, reporter Ralph Blumenthal makes it sound like the Times scored an exclusive by getting Elizondo to open up to them, writing that he and two colleagues “met Mr. Elizondo in a nondescript Washington hotel where he sat with his back to the wall, keeping an eye on the door.” The implication is that Elizondo feared the repercussions of leaking sensitive information for the first time. In fact, when Elizondo spoke to the Times he had left government and was promoting the launch of a new venture called To the Stars … Academy of Arts & Science, a website that is trying to crowdsource donations to study paranormal phenomena. Before the Times told his story, To the Stars’ main shareholder, former Blink-182 guitarist Tom DeLonge, had previously promoted the venture on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. And what, exactly, did Elizondo uncover during his five years heading a semi-secret arm of the Pentagon investigating possible extraterrestrial visitations? A visit to the venture’s website raises doubts. A video with the title “2004 USS NIMITZ FLIR1 VIDEO” is the same video seen on the Times’ website, with the addition of a detailed technical description of the infrared-imaging system that took it, along with the claim that “this footage comes with crucial chain-of-custody (CoC) documentation because it is a product of U.S. military sensors, which confirms it is original, unaltered, and not computer generated or artificially fabricated.” But no such documentation is provided. The description links to a separate page entitled “2004 USS NIMITZ PILOT REPORT.” This is a truly curious document that retells Fravor’s story in the form of a military-style briefing, with his name replaced by the word “Source,” allegedly “to protect sources and methods.” Sections of it have been blacked out, as if by a military censor, though the given date of September 7, 2017, was some 13 years after the event and 5 years after the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification had been shut down. Curiously, the file flubs some well-known aviation technology, such as equating “UAS” with “Unidentified Aerial System.” (It commonly refers to “Unmanned Aircraft System,” or drone.) It seems that To the Stars is trying to shroud Fravor’s account in a spooky fog of faux top-secrecy. This is a dicey strategy given Fravor’s prominence in online UFO circles, and gives the impression that Elizondo’s company is repackaging timeworn tales from the internet as freshly revealed government X-files. And, by extension, calls into question the Times’ wisdom in taking his claims about extraterrestrial encounters at face value. nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/12/new-york-times-ufo-report.html
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Post by auntym on May 5, 2019 17:06:09 GMT -6
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Post by auntym on May 9, 2019 14:00:00 GMT -6
www.patreon.com/posts/26574518May 3, 2019 DoD Confirms They Released Navy F-18 FLIR UFO Videos A document leaked by KLAS and a letter from the DoD given to a government documents researcher proves the Department of Defense (DoD) did release Navy videos related to UFO incidents, despite an earlier denial. In the December 16, 2017 article published by The New York Times that revealed the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a secretive Pentagon project to investigate UFOs, there were two videos included. The videos were Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) camera videos captured by Navy jet fighters of unidentified objects. The New York Times claimed these videos were “released by the Defense Department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.” Much, not all, of the information The New York Times received about AATIP was from the former head of the program, Luis Elizondo. He retired from the DoD in October of 2017. The same month he joined Tom Delonge and other former high-level officials in a new venture called the To the Stars Academy (TTSA). This group also researches the UFO phenomenon. Soon after The New York Times released the videos, TTSA also released them. According to TTSA, the videos were released “through the official declassification review process of the United States government and has been approved for public release.” Questions first arose about the release of the videos soon after The New York Times published their article. The same day The Washington Post also published an article, and regarding the videos, they wrote: “Elizondo, in an internal Pentagon memo requesting that the videos be cleared for public viewing, argued that the images could help educate pilots and improve aviation safety. But in interviews, he said his ultimate intention was to shed light on a little-known program Elizondo himself ran for seven years: a low-key Defense Department operation to collect and analyze reported UFO sightings.” I was able to interview Leslie Kean, one of the authors of The New York Times article, in January of 2018. I asked about The Washington Post’s claims. Kean said The New York Times had received the videos from the DoD and had verified they were real. She references a document called a DD 1910: Clearance Request For Public Release of Defense Information. She says although they have not made the document public, it was a release approved by the DoD that authorized the release of the videos. She says the document was vetted by The New York Times and is confident it is real. In February of 2018, during a Q and A for the International UFO Congress, Elizondo was asked to give further information about the release of the videos. This was a question I slipped in. Here is an excerpt from the transcript of that interview. Q: How were the videos released? Was it under a false pretense or a trick as the Washington Post suggests? A: No, there was no trick, and there was no false pretense. The videos were released in accordance with the strict manner that DOD prescribes to DOD manuals and regulations involving the release of information. It went through the official DOPSR process and then furthermore an additional step was taken to have the videos reviewed by foreign disclosure representatives. In fact, the most senior foreign disclosure representatives in the department, and ultimately required OCA or original classification authority approval and review to release the video. So in essence, I didn’t release anything; the department of defense released those videos. The documentation is held by the department of defense, and the justification for releasing those videos were exactly as stated, and that was to create an unclassified database that people could then access and help us identify the signatures we were seeing. Although Kean and Elizondo shared what they knew about the videos, researchers, rightfully, were still seeking official confirmation. However, the DoD threw us another curve ball. Researcher John Greenewald received a letter from the DoD that claimed, among other things, the “DoD has not released videos related to this program.” WTF? Were The New York Times and Elizondo wrong or lying, or did the DoD spokesperson get it wrong? My guess was the latter. Kean had stressed they thoroughly vetted the videos. Also, historically, the military press departments often get information wrong regarding UFOs. Case after case we have seen this. Greenwald has also often received erroneous information from military and government press offices. We finally got more insight into this situation just this week. On May 1, George Knapp and Matt Adams of KLAS 8 News Now in Las Vegas released a copy of the DD 1910. KLAS wrote: “The request specifies the three videos: Go Fast, Gimbal and FLIR, which was the original name for the Tic Tac encounter. Some personal information has been redacted, but the document shows authorization for release was granted on August 24 2017. The I-Team also acquired the Department of Defense directive which spells out how the release procedure works. The form shows the videos were released by the book.” Not everyone was satisfied with this leak of the DD 1910. They argued this was still not an official statement. Fortunately, the DoD responded to a request by Greenewald for a confirmation that the DD 1910 KLAS leaked was real. The DoD responded: “I can confirm that the form DD1910 you asked about is a valid DD1910. The standard procedure is for blocks 1-7 on the form to be filled out by the submitter before sending to DOPSR; however, occasional exceptions have occurred. The submitter is responsible for any disclaimers on the form as approved, and also abiding by any amendments that may be included in additional communications from DOPSR to the submitter as part of the approval process. Per block 3 of this form DD1910, the submitter requested release of the videos solely for research and analysis purposes by the US government agencies and industry partners, and not for general public release.” So Elizondo and Kean were right, and the DoD press department’s initial response regarding the videos was wrong. The DoD spokesperson did not directly address why they made their initial claim of having not released the videos. However, they added at the end of their response the claim that the videos were not released “for general public release.” It is readily apparent this is not accurate. The DD 1910 is a request for “public release.” This DD 1910 was approved, so the videos were indeed approved for public release. The DoD spokesperson may have been referencing a note in the form that says the videos are not being released for “publication” which is not the same thing as the general public. A publication is an article, book, journals, etc. The request said the videos would be released for “research and analysis ONLY and info sharing with other USG and industry partners for the purpose of developing a database to help identify, analyze, and ultimately defeat UAS threats.” There is nothing that prohibits these databases from being publicly available. Further, again, this DD 1910 is a form to approve information for “public release,” and it was approved. Nowhere does this form limit the release to not include the “general public.” My guess as to why they added this note to the end of their response to Greenewald is that they are trying to justify their original false statement that the “DoD has not released videos related to this program.” Even if for some reason you agree the videos were not released for the “general public,” it is still not accurate to say the “DoD has not released videos related to this program.” In the end, the DoD has now admitted the DD 1910 proving the DoD released the videos is real. The DoD did release the videos, just as Kean and The New York Times had discovered, and Elizondo had claimed. www.patreon.com/posts/26574518
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Post by auntym on May 10, 2019 14:26:02 GMT -6
mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/05/ufo-disclosure-what-will-the-public-really-be-allowed-to-know/ UFO Disclosure: What Will the Public Really Be Allowed to Know?by Micah Hanks / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/mhanks/May 4, 2019 UFOs are all the buzz lately… and have been ever since the initial reporting by the New York Times about the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program in December of 2017. Since that time, further information has seeped forth at a slow trickle, with recent events including confirmation that the Pentagon had been behind the release of unusual footage promoted by the To the Stars Academy, a private UFO study group that also has various commercial interests. The group is headed by former Blink 182 frontman Tom DeLonge, although Luis Elizondo, former head of the Pentagon’s UFO program, is also a member. In recent news, an announcement by the US Navy reported previously here at Mysterious Universe announced plans to draft new procedures for UFO reporting. Speaking with the San Francisco Gate, Joe Gradisher, a spokesperson with the office of the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, further stated that this information would include sensitive classified data, and therefore would not be released to the public. “Any report generated as a result of these investigations will, by necessity, include classified information on military operations,” Gradisher said. With this in mind, it remains in question just how much information about ongoing UFO studies the public would be made aware of (although the Navy’s acknowledgment does raise hopes for the possibility of Freedom of Information Act requests, which might allow proper civilian channels for accessing certain government records, albeit in redacted form). Despite the necessity for secrecy in UFO reporting by government agencies like the Navy and USAF, there is still some compelling information about UFO incidents that the government has made available in recent years. It is accessible on account of the simple fact that it was never classified in the first place; however one has to know where to look in order to find it. The Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) is an online database which logs incident reports related to possible aviation safety hazards. For the last several decades, the ASRS has been maintained by NASA, and allows aviation professionals in various lines of work to report potential concerns anonymously (so as to remove concerns over things like future litigation). The bulk of the information presented in the ASRS reports deals with issues pertaining to electronic or mechanical problems, as well as weather-related issues and other similar things. Some reports also relate to concerns about collision avoidance, whether between two separate aircraft, or between aircraft and objects or animals (birds hitting aircraft during initial ascent is another frequent happening). Then there are the odd reports that, while remaining in the distinct minority, nonetheless convey some of the really unusual things going on in our skies. One of my favorites is an incident that occurred in August of 2015, where a pilot observed an extremely unusual object at approximately 3,500 feet in altitude, and a distance of five miles Northeast of Windham High Peak in Greene County, New York. According to the incident report: I was piloting and had a passenger along for his first flight. We could not see any kind of wings, rotors, or form of propulsion. Unfortunately, my camera was stuck in my pocket under tight seat belts and I couldn’t get it out while flying the glider trying to avoid hitting this thing. It was about 6 feet tall, 2-3 feet wide. Top of UAV was extremely radiant, with black half sphere under the radiant top and what appeared to be an antenna under the half sphere, we watched it skimming over the tree tops below and to the right of our flight path. It was moving at a fast speed southwest toward Windham High Peak. It had a very sparkling appearance like sun shining on a mirror with rainbow colors. I was flying northeast from Windham High Peak at about 3500 feet. As we watched the UAV I banked to the left and half way through the turn and now pointing at Windham High Peak, the UAV turned around and came toward us at a high rate of speed. As I got 3/4 of the way through the turn was within 50 yards of my right wing, quickly got in front of me and followed me around the turn getting closer until it was off my left wing, probably no more than 25-30 yards away. It covered about 5 miles in just a few seconds. We had a really good view of it. The report concludes with an interesting twist: the pilot notes that as the object left its position off of his left wing, the passenger flying with him “looked up and saw two more UAVs come out of the cloud directly over us.” The pilot, seemingly unnerved by the experience, told his passenger they were “returning immediately to the airport,” at this point. “I pushed the nose down and picked up speed,” the final line of the report reads. “The UAVs then headed to the west at a fast speed.” Standard procedure with ASRS reports of any kind usually involves at least one follow up call, in order to glean any additional details that might be determined about the incident in question. With relation to the incident above, additional commentary was provided by the agent who made the follow up, who noted the following: The reporter estimated at first visual contact the UAV was approximately 3.5 miles away down the hill. It sped up hill to the reporter’s aircraft at a much higher speed than the aircraft. The reporter estimated the closure took less than a minute and as he accelerated his aircraft away from the craft it followed, maneuvering at a speed much high than his. Two other similar shaped UAVs also had brilliant tops but colors somewhat different from the first which was a shimmering, brilliant rainbow type light. It’s a tantalizing story, to say the least. While it certainly leaves determinations about what the “UAVs” was a bit open-ended, it nonetheless appears to convey a genuine concern on part of the pilot (enough so, obviously, that he or she felt compelled to file an incident report with the ASRS). It is also just one of several reports of “unknowns” that appear in the database, although the majority of reports that involve unknown or unconventional aircraft are either indistinct, or they describe objects that more closely resemble some kind of unmanned aerial vehicle or projectile. The prevalence of the latter of these two, in fact, served as part of the basis for my own inquiry into “ghost rocket” reports since the end of World War II (the name is borrowed specifically from the sightings of projectile-like objects over Scandinavia in 1946, although I apply it more broadly in my book The Ghost Rockets: Mystery Missiles and Phantom Projectiles in Our Skies). Although many of the ASRS reports of unidentified craft aren’t as exciting as the case outlined above, they nonetheless point to an odd prevalence of unusual things in U.S. airspace, which were of obvious concern to the pilots and aviation professionals who encountered them. Whether or not the Navy and other agencies are able to disclose information from their forthcoming inquiries, the fact alone that they have publicly stated an intent emphasize their UAP studies is noteworthy. mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/05/ufo-disclosure-what-will-the-public-really-be-allowed-to-know/
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Post by auntym on May 18, 2019 1:47:40 GMT -6
devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/15817/after-the-gunsmoke-clears/#comment-585033 After the gunsmoke clearsPosted on May 16, 2019 by Billy Cox / devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/author/cox/Coming-of-age tales cross so many familiar thresholds and genres, it’s hard to imagine one of those storylines breaking new ground. Yet, that’s sort of what happened last month, with the release of John Greenewald’s Inside the Black Vault: The Government’s UFO Secrets Revealed. It’s not written as a memoir – in fact, it has nothing to do with the bittersweet fuzzies of growing up – but it most definitely is about coming to terms with one of adulthood’s peculiar institutional mysteries. In this case, of course, that would be the enduring embargo of the greatest secret of our age. If you’re reading De Void, then you’re already familiar with Greenewald’s story, about how he started bugging “the government” to declassify documents when he was a teenager more than 20 years ago, and how he turned his Black Vault website into one of the biggest repositories of federal paper in cyberspace. His first-person accounting compresses that that journey into 169 pages. Hopefully, for a new generation of readers, it’ll do for them what Clear Intent, by Lawrence Fawcett and Barry Greenwood, did for me 30 years ago. Which is to say, dispelling any doubt about the serious nature of The Great Taboo by relying exclusively on FOIA-obtained records to build the case. I remember what that awakening was like so long ago; sometimes, I wonder if I’d been better off if I’d stayed asleep. Few researchers know as much about the FOIA process as Greenewald, and as a consequence, his expertise has been recruited by the likes of the National Geographic Channel, History, and Discovery. So when the 38-year-old Californian weighs in on new releases of federal records, it’s usually a good idea to pay attention. And a lot of people were doing just that a couple of weeks ago, after investigative reporter George Knapp of KLAS-TV in Las Vegas produced the long-awaited smoking gun. It was the Defense Department’s official imprimatur on the F-18 UFO videos that triggered this remarkable national conversation we’ve been having for the past 17 months. KLAS-TV reporter George Knapp’s acquisition of a previously unreleased Pentagon document removed all doubt about the authenticity of the Navy’s F-18 UFO-pursuit footage/CREDIT: care2.comWhen on 12/16/17 the NY Times broke the news about the Pentagon’s secret UFO study, one of the missing components was formal proof positive establishing the provenance of those gun-cam vids. Credible witnesses went on record, including pilots, the intelligence official who ran the program, even the former Senate Majority Leader who commissioned the initiative. But although the Times reporters vouched for its authenticity, there is no substitute for documentation. On April 29, Knapp got his hands on the elusive DD Form 1910, channeled through the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review. It was marked “Cleared For Open Publication,” with attached mpg files of the three UFO sequences – captured by Navy fighter pilots, and nicknamed “GoFast,” “Gimble,” and “FLIR” – that got such massive media play last year. Almost everyone paying attention applauded the breakthrough. But The Black Vault detective was more subdued. Greenewald had been going after that same DD-1910 through FOIA for more than a year, without any success. Still empty-handed and understandably miffed when Knapp showcased the trophy, Greenewald gave it the white-glove treatment, spotted some red flags – which were not insignificant – and aired out his reservations in a series of posts at his website. The ensuing dustup provoked a pointed rebuke from 12/16/17 co-author Leslie Kean, who called it “an unnecessary controversy,” and added, “If we at the Times did not have this document from a reliable source, we would not have stated that the videos were from the DOD.” Open Minds editor Alejandro Rojas put together a useful podcast overview — most definitely worth a listen — of the loosely sketched events leading up to Knapp’s acquisition of the DD-1910. After all, the rollout of these unprecedented revelations, initiated by the To The Stars Academy in October 2017, has been been flawed, erratic, and exasperating for the drive-thru point-and-click chip-or-swipe instant-gratification masses, which includes yours truly. Greenewald would concede that the DD-1910 was “genuine,” but his skepticism was reserved for way it cleared the censors. Although the name of the official who prepared the document’s release on 8/24/17 was redacted, suspicion swung to the study’s former project manager Luis Elizondo. Greenewald floated the idea that Elizondo might have employed “false pretenses” to sneak the paper into the public domain. Why, he wondered, did the form’s subject-area entry only mention “UAV, Balloons, and other UAS”? In official Pentagon parlance, UAV means Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, and UAS means Unmanned Aerial System. Nothing concerning “unidentified” is in either of those U-prefixed acronyms. Greenewald’s objections have been largely tossed off, but they do raise questions. Such as: Given the obfuscation, sloppiness, and downright falsehoods that often greet FOIA requests for UFO data, does it really matter if sympathetic insiders use a little subterfuge to get that stuff into public hands? Because it’s not unreasonable to wonder if the DD-1910 would’ve ever seen the light of day had UFO/UAP/AAO or some more exotic euphemism were posted in the subject field instead Let’s just say, for the sake of future argument, that a little semantic sleight of hand is used to fool the censors — then what? How would that form of deception be significantly different from what Daniel Ellsberg did with the Pentagon Papers in 1971? Ellsberg was charged with theft, espionage and conspiracy. If, in the past, some Deep Throat had wanted to drag classified UFO docs into the light, there was an implicit assumption of immunity because Uncle Sam’s longstanding party line was that the phenomenon was silly and frivolous. Prosecuting a leaker would’ve exposed official policy for the lie that it always was. Now that this story itself has ripened and the Navy has belatedly confirmed that UFOs do in fact embody legitimate national security issues, might this actually make it more difficult for whistleblowers to step up? There are stockpiles of related documents languishing out there somewhere. Who on the inside wants to test this radical new paradigm and see what, if anything, happens? devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/15817/after-the-gunsmoke-clears/#comment-585033
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Post by auntym on May 18, 2019 1:56:55 GMT -6
devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/author/cox/ In ruins: a Berlin Wall of the mindBy Billy Cox / devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/author/cox/ Apr 30, 2019 6:01 PM Holy moly – we haven’t seen UFOs light up the media this way since the New York Times broke the news about the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program back on 12/16/17. And when the U.S. Navy announced last week it was revamping its communications system to allow its pilots to accurately and without fear of reprisal report what they’ve been seeing in the skies, this was a story The Times should’ve owned. But it didn’t – that task fell to Politico, which had also filed its own 12/16/17 AATIP piece shortly after the Times clicked the send button first. De Void would like to think this signals the beginning of an old-fashioned media war, something previously unimaginable with the ascendency of Donald Trump. After all, Hillary Clinton was the only candidate to voluntarily talk about UFOs during the campaign, and the press had no idea what she was talking about, the way they never do when it comes to The Great Taboo. After the incurious 45 delivered his “American Carnage” speech at the inauguration, it seemed pretty clear that nothing prescient or remotely visionary, especially on the UFO beat, would be happening for the next four years. Yet, by the end of 2017, hell shivered in a cool breeze when we learned about AATIP, the Nimitz/tic tac incident, and that the Navy’s elite fighter pilots weren’t afraid to man up talk on the record. Covfefe! ET landing on the White House lawn these days might damage or destroy outright the event’s credibility/CREDIT: shirtpool.comBut could the media scrum that followed Wednesday’s Politico coup be directly proportionate to freakish surrealism Trump himself has imposed on the United States? Things are not normal in this country. Down is up, up is down, and when a culture is subjected to an unrelenting diet of suffocating lies, how surprising is the reaction, really, when suddenly one of the longest-running myths in living memory – that UFOs pose no threat to national security – is officially exposed as a fraud? Even as one of America’s top conspiracy theorists makes policy in the Oval Office? What does this mean? Anyway, the axis did in fact tilt last Wednesday, after Politico and then The Washington Post got the Navy to admit that whatever’s happening upstairs isn’t ours, and that command would no longer pretend those charged with the defense of the realm are all drunk, delusional, liars or naïve. The Navy’s decision to make an honest and active effort to learn as much as it can about what appears to be advanced technology operating at will in our restricted airspace was like a Berlin Wall of the mind cracking open. CNN, Time magazine, Stars and Stripes, The Atlantic, the Navy Times, Business Insider, you name it – the Fourth Estate pounced like it was starved for oxygen and fresh air, or at least something that didn’t come from a partisan script. It’s making Tucker Carlson of Fox News (12 UFO segments since 12/16/17) look like the dean of the Big Media truth movement. And hey, does anyone remember if 12/16/17 made ESPN2? Here’s David Jacoby of Jalen & Jacoby swerving off topic on Friday on the front end of a two-minute riff: “This next bit of news is more impactful than anything that happens in the world of sports, pop culture, or the actual news. The U.S. Navy has changed their procedures and policies – there have been so many sightings of unidentified flying objects by Navy pilots that they have now put in a formal procedure to fill out the information for these to be investigated …” Sports geeks, yo … What we should never lose sight of during our long national night of aggressive stupidity is context for how some good news finally broke through. Last week’s announcement didn’t roll off some corporate whiteboard, and it sure as hell wasn’t an act of political courage by our elected representatives. What happened was the persistence of citizen advocates who, without a glimmer of hope for financial remuneration, were guided only by evidence, and a faith that said evidence would somehow, someday, find the right audience. And you can go all the way back to the 1950s to trace that arc. More recently, of course, Tom DeLonge’s To The Stars Academy’s blue-chip board members spritzed fresh fuel on those embers with news of the 2004 Nimitz incident. Researcher Dave Beaty’s related mini-doc, The Nimitz Encounter, offered a reconstruction respectable enough to draw nearly 1.5 million viewers into the story. And this month, the Scientific Coalition for Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena Studies’ volunteer collaborators released the first detailed forensic analysis of the Nimitz encounter. Although SCU’s work didn’t get the nearly attention it deserved, it set a standard for transparency and gave all the right people something to work with. The most comprehensive overview on the implications of what happened last week was provided not by legacy media, but from War Zone blogger Tyler Rogoway, a military hardware Joe Friday kinda guy who strays into UFO territory only when he’s obtained original FAA documentation and radar data. In an essay titled “What the Hell Is Going On With UFOs and the Department of Defense,” Rogoway writes that a defense establishment with more than seven decades of patrolling American skies without knowing what it’s up against because it hasn’t done its homework amounts to “an unfathomable dereliction of duty.” Going forward, let’s hope the rest of the media can show similar diligence. Kudos to Washington Post reporter Deanna Paul for running beyond the canned statement and actually getting a real-life Navy spokesman to elaborate, at least somewhat, on the new policy. On the other hand, in an annoying companion video, WaPo backslid by letting political reporter Cleve Woodson, Jr., try to fake his way through some commentary using a lot of familiar buzzwords. Woodson was all over the board, unfocused, bouncing from Area 51 to Roswell to Ray Santilli’s “Alien Autopsy” fiasco. His major takeaway on the Navy announcement was that it emboldens conspiracy theorists with “a small kernel of truth, that they can back it up with. They still have this excuse for all the holes that end up in all these theories, which is that, well, the government’s hiding, right? The government’s been spending decades and all this money trying to hide all these unexplained things.” Attention WaPo: Readers are moving beyond this sort of soft chewed cud. You need to get smarter now. We all do. devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/author/cox/
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Post by auntym on May 22, 2019 13:01:30 GMT -6
mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/05/the-pentagon-finally-admits-it-investigates-ufos/ The Pentagon Finally Admits It Investigates UFOsby Paul Seaburn / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/paulseaburn/May 23, 2019 “[The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)] did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena.” The New York Post is reporting that it received an exclusive admission from a Department of Defense (DoD) spokesperson that the Pentagon not only has investigated but still does investigate unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) or unidentified flying objects (UFOs for you traditionalists). Wait a minute … didn’t we already know this? “Presented here is the first official evidence released by the US government that can be rightfully designated as credible, authentic confirmation that unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) are real.” That’s from the well-publicized (and rightly so) announcement in late 2017 revealing both the one-time existence of the top-secret Pentagon program known as AATIP and three videos taken by US military planes in 2004 of unidentified aerial phenomenon. The announcement confirmed that AATIP was defunded in 2012 but The New York Times discovered was still in operation. What this latest exclusive by the New York Post is is apparently the first public admission by the DoD that this is true. “The Department of Defense is always concerned about maintaining positive identification of all aircraft in our operating environment, as well as identifying any foreign capability that may be a threat to the homeland. The department will continue to investigate, through normal procedures, reports of unidentified aircraft encountered by US military aviators in order to ensure defense of the homeland and protection against strategic surprise by our nation’s adversaries.” The Post quotes DoD spokesperson Christopher Sherwood in the article, but does not give any further information than the above admissions. For that, it turned to Nick Pope, the well-known former member of the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) who secretly investigated UFO sightings. Pope called The Post revelation a “bombshell” and makes sure he gets a little indirect credit for it. “This new admission makes it clear that they really did study what the public would call ‘UFOs’. It also shows the British influence, because UAP was the term we used in the Ministry of Defence to get away from the pop culture baggage that came with the term ‘UFO’.” Pop culture baggage? That’s a different hot debate going on in U.S. UFO/UAP circles. This “exclusive” by The Post should add to the current hot debate about UFO/UAP disclosure. Will it happen? Is there really anything to disclose? Are they aliens, foreign aircraft, our own secret tests or something else? Unfortunately, the Post article ends after quoting investigator John Greenewald Jr. of The Black Vault, who calls it “official evidence — that said, ‘Yes, AATIP did deal with UAP cases, phenomena, videos, photos, whatever.’” The Post says it reached out to former Nevada senator and AATIP approver Harry Reid – who isn’t running for anything and should be open to questions about announcements like this – but received no response. Greenwald hopes more from the DoD is forthcoming, but he’s still excited about The Post’s exclusive because: “… at least we’re one step closer to the truth.” Now, back to the debate about the “pop culture baggage” of the term “UFO.” WATCH VIDEOS: mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/05/the-pentagon-finally-admits-it-investigates-ufos/
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Post by auntym on May 22, 2019 16:21:22 GMT -6
nypost.com/2019/05/22/the-pentagon-finally-admits-it-investigates-ufos/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons The Pentagon finally admits it investigates UFOsBy Steven Greenstreet / nypost.com/author/steven-greenstreet/May 22, 2019 The Pentagon has finally uttered the words it always avoided when discussing the possible existence of UFOs — “unidentified aerial phenomena” — and admits that it still investigates reports of them. In a statement provided exclusively to The Post, a Department of Defense spokesman said a secret government initiative called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program “did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena.” And while the DOD says it shut down the AATIP in 2012, spokesman Christopher Sherwood acknowledged that the department still investigates claimed sightings of alien spacecraft. “The Department of Defense is always concerned about maintaining positive identification of all aircraft in our operating environment, as well as identifying any foreign capability that may be a threat to the homeland,” Sherwood said. “The department will continue to investigate, through normal procedures, reports of unidentified aircraft encountered by US military aviators in order to ensure defense of the homeland and protection against strategic surprise by our nation’s adversaries.” Nick Pope, who secretly investigated UFOs for the British government during the 1990s, called the DOD’s comments a “bombshell revelation.” Pope, a former UK defense official-turned-author, said, “Previous official statements were ambiguous and left the door open to the possibility that AATIP was simply concerned with next-generation aviation threats from aircraft, missiles and drones — as skeptics claimed. “This new admission makes it clear that they really did study what the public would call ‘UFOs,’ ” he said. “It also shows the British influence, because UAP was the term we used in the Ministry of Defence to get away from the pop culture baggage that came with the term ‘UFO.’ ” John Greenewald Jr. — whose website The Black Vault archives declassified government documents on UFO reports, “Bigfoot” sightings and other subjects — also called the Pentagon’s use of the term “unidentified aerial phenomena” unprecedented in its frankness. “I’m shocked they said it that way, and the reason is, is they’ve seemingly worked very hard not to say that,” he said. see also US Navy creating new guidelines for reporting UFOs “So I think that’s a pretty powerful statement because now we have actual evidence — official evidence — that said, ‘Yes, AATIP did deal with UAP cases, phenomena, videos, photos, whatever.'” Greenewald said he hopes that the Pentagon will release more information about the AATIP, either by voluntary disclosure or through requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act. “But at least we’re one step closer to the truth,” he said. The existence of the AATIP was revealed in 2017, along with a 33-second DOD video that shows an airborne object being chased by two Navy jets off the coast of San Diego in 2004. At the time, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took credit for arranging $22 million in annual funding for the AATIP, telling the New York Times that it was “one of the good things I did in my congressional service.” Reid’s home state of Nevada hosts the top-secret military installation known as “Area 51,” long rumored to be the storehouse for an alien craft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Reid, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment. nypost.com/2019/05/22/the-pentagon-finally-admits-it-investigates-ufos/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons
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Post by auntym on May 22, 2019 16:33:29 GMT -6
HISTORY Verified account @history
Meet Luis, formerly in charge of AATIP, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. He's one of the elite members of the team of experts in our new series, #Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation, premiering Friday, May 31st at 10/9c.
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Post by auntym on May 24, 2019 15:56:57 GMT -6
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Post by auntym on May 27, 2019 15:37:30 GMT -6
mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/05/this-is-big-ufo-coverage-in-the-new-york-times/ This is Big — UFO Coverage in The New York Timesby Paul Seaburn / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/paulseaburn/ May 27, 2019 All the UFO News That’s Fit to PrintThose writers who cover UFO sightings and those readers who believe some unidentified flying objects are not conventional human-made aircraft have resigned themselves to the fact that these encounters get covered by tabloids, paranormal websites and minor or obscure news services. That’s no longer the case. On the weekend of the biggest military holiday in the U.S. — Memorial Day — The New York Times (“All the News That’s Fit to Print”) published a detailed article whose title says it all: “‘Wow, What Is That?’ Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects.” www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings-navy-pilots.html “We have helicopters that can hover. We have aircraft that can fly at 30,000 feet and right at the surface.” But “combine all that in one vehicle of some type with no jet engine, no exhaust plume.” The article doesn’t just describe the encounters between pilots and UFOs, it names names and includes pictures – allowing these eyewitnesses to come out of the military and self-imposed shadows, censorship, enforced suppression and threat of discharge to tell their stories. Lt. Ryan Graves, a 10-year veteran and F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot, told the Times that he and his fellow pilots know these are not conventional aircraft they’re watching because “Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.” Despite what certain people in high office imply, The New York Times does its journalistic job and interviews science and physics experts who explain how and why these encounters can be of the non-alien kind. Here’s Leon Golub, a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: “[An extraterrestrial cause] is so unlikely that it competes with many other low-probability but more mundane explanations. There are so many other possibilities — bugs in the code for the imaging and display systems, atmospheric effects and reflections, neurological overload from multiple inputs during high-speed flight.” Of course, military pilots have heard all of this before. What’s new – and exciting to those in UFO research – is that they’re fighting both tradition and their current commanding officers to reveal these encounters to the general public and in publications like The New York Times where they’re exposed to tough journalistic scrutiny. “I almost hit one of those things.” The last thing pilots want is midair collisions and they know their fellow military members would not intentionally put their own in danger with new or unconventional test aircraft or drones. However, the Times could not pin down Lt. Graves or any of the other witnesses interviewed for the article on what they had encountered numerous times in close and even dangerous proximity with their own high-speed sophisticated jets. Do they still fear reprisals or ridicule? This coverage by The New York Times truly lets the UFO cat out of the secrecy bag. It’s only a matter of time before other whistleblowers come forth in this age of whistleblowers coming forth. This is big. mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/05/this-is-big-ufo-coverage-in-the-new-york-times/ Multiple F/A-18 Pilots Disclose Recent UFOs Encounters, New Radar Tech Key In Detection www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28231/multiple-f-a-18-pilots-disclose-recent-ufos-encounters-new-radar-tech-key-in-detection?fbclid=IwAR2eeTOFkvr7qs0EVSq-PcaMJ-OBm5ddKjYY34h_RekKcJ_MCTe0lYwVWVY
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Post by jcurio on May 27, 2019 17:45:23 GMT -6
What's even more important is that these events took place as recently as 2015, over a decade after the now famous Nimitz incident with the so-called 'Tic Tac' craft occurred.
(From the recent article posted).
________________________
Rats! 2015.
Kinda hoping that they would be talking about something more recent. (In time they will 👍🏻).
Again, something like this brings to mind that there are hidden bases on this Earth.
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Post by auntym on May 29, 2019 12:55:18 GMT -6
devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/15823/this-isnt-how-its-supposed-to-be/ This isn’t how it’s supposed to bePosted on May 29, 2019 by Billy Cox / devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/author/cox/Well, The History Channel, or History, or whatever they’re calling it these days, couldn’t ask for better publicity than what it got on Monday – a surprise Memorial Day plug from the New York Times. And whoa, what a talker. For starters, The Times’ on-the-record interviews with Navy pilots — at least one of whom has shared his testimony with members of Congress — moved CBS White House correspondent Paula Reid to grab a contextual interview with UFO historian Richard Dolan. ABC’s “Good Morning America” ran excerpts from History’s upcoming “Unidentified: Inside America’s U.F.O. Investigation,” and The Washington Post ran a related op-ed from Tufts University international politics professor Daniel Drezner. Drezner’s column reminded us that this whole “disclosure” thing isn’t playing out the way Dolan or anyone else might’ve anticipated, at least not on the front end. Dolan’s projected scenario imagined top-down revelations, with the U.S. chief executive, in concert with foreign leaders, breaking the ET news with a formal announcement on account of an undeniable series of events going down beyond anyone’s control. But Drezner revisits “Sovereignty and the UFO,” an overlooked essay from 2008 in the journal Political Theory by Raymond Duvall and Alexander Wendt. Those co-authors couldn’t imagine a legitimate bottom-up line of inquiry into The Great Taboo because that would require us all, including the media, to concede that maybe anthropocentrism isn’t the center of cosmic intelligence after all — and demonstrably not. “What is interesting about this latest news cycle,” Drezner offers, “is that DoD officials are not behaving as Wendt and Duvall would predict.” True that. For reasons unknown, the military bureaucracy – and let’s face it, they’re really the ones running the show, since White House occupants are only temporary employees – has broken form in a big way this year. They’re not giving us the kind of transparency we’d like, but compared with past practices this is a regular gusher, man. In April, the brass told Politico the Navy was revamping its instructions for its people to report UFO activity. Hungh? Say what? Just eight years ago, upon being pressed for more information by Huffington Post reporter Lee Spiegel about an Air Force manual directive to specifically log all UFO incidents, the Pentagon freaked and scrubbed the entire UFO category from its books the very next day. Now, apparently, the Navy has no problem allowing its pilots to talk to the NYT about the unsettling UFO events off the eastern seaboard in 2014-15. At least one of those encounters was significant enough to have instigated a near-miss incident report, and if you haven’t read the Times story yet (where have you been?), you’re not much of a UFO nerd and you can check it out here. A cube inside a translucent sphere threading the needle between two warplanes 100 feet apart? WTF? Swamp gas disguised as geometry? As with its ground-breaking reporting on the 2004 Nimitz incident on 12/16/17, Monday’s Times piece raised more questions than answers, even as it filled in critical gaps from its first UFO story 18 months ago. We now know, for instance, that the previously sketchy “Gimbal” and the “Gofast” videos were recorded off Jacksonville in early 2015 by F-18 pilots prowling with a unit known as the “Red Rippers.” But what else is being embargoed? Robert Powell, co-founder of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, was caught just as flat-footed as everyone else by the Times report on Monday. He had been aware of the 2014-15 incidents associated with the USS Roosevelt task force as early as January 2018, but he had no pilot testimony and little material to work with. Besides, he was just beginning to assemble an SCU team for a deep dive into available data from the Nimitz incident, and they released that forensic analysis in April. Powell’s unnamed source told him last year that the Gimbal and Gofast videos were acquired by pilots attached to the Roosevelt. He was also told there was footage from at least five incidents, not two, and that one sequence was especially harrowing. “He said he didn’t believe it would ever be released,” Powell recalls, “because it would show we’re definitely not at the top of the totem poll.” Powell was told the clip shows a bogey, embedded metadata intact, on what looks like a head-on collision course with an approaching Navy pilot. But the intruder swerves away before the potential disaster. If accurate, that’s an intentional and majorly aggressive maneuver. And it would be insane to imperil our aviators by telling them to never mind the Leprechauns. Still — why not just quietly reinsert UFO reporting procedures back into the handbook, without any fanfare at all? “This doesn’t seem to fit,” says Powell. Exactly who’s calling the shots on what to release and what to withhold is more than a bit murky right now, but the To The Stars Academy, which lured military intelligence agent Luis Elizondo out of the shadows in 2017, obviously has major clout. TTSA is an official partner with the History channel on this one, whose six-part and now hugely anticipated series begins Friday night. Is there an actual game plan here, or are they just winging it to see what sticks? devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/15823/this-isnt-how-its-supposed-to-be/
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Post by auntym on Jun 4, 2019 16:13:45 GMT -6
www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/please-god-let-it-be-aliens-and-not-trumps-space-force Please, God, Let It Be Aliens and Not Trump’s Space ForceIt appears the U.S. government is softening us up for a revelation, either regarding extraterrestrial life or a world-disruptive military technology. It’s sad to say that alien life seems like the safer option. by by T.A. Frank / www.vanityfair.com/contributor/ta-frankMay 30, 2019 A crowd points to a UFO flying over the Chrysler Building From GraphicaArtis/Getty Images.Perhaps the only thing more curious than the news that the U.S. Navy is establishing new guidelines for reporting UFO sightings is the decision to let the public know. For decades, we have assumed government secrecy on such matters. In Ed Wood’s 1959 film, Plan 9 From Outer Space, it is suggested that even a deadly alien invasion would be hidden, at least if casualties were low. “For a time we tried to contact them by radio, but no response,” says Plan 9’s Colonel Tom Edwards, who is in charge of saucer field activities. “Then they attacked a town. A small town, I’ll admit. But nevertheless a town of people. People who died.” The subordinate says he missed the news. “It was covered up by the higher echelon,” Edwards explains. “Flying saucers, Captain, are still a rumor. Officially.” And yet, now, we’re reading about UFOs in the New York Times, seeing footage of them on video, and pilots are putting their names to their sightings. We hear the pilots chattering and laughing in a manner that’s almost ominous, reminiscent of movie scenes depicting similar lightheartedness prior to vaporization. Then again, everything concerning UFOs is reminiscent of some movie scene, which only makes harder to engage with the details now being reported. One of the vehicles in question is said to have resembled “a giant Tic Tac” the size of a commercial plane, and the UFOs were able to “accelerate, slow down and then hit hypersonic speeds.” Another is said to be “like a sphere encasing a cube.” These UFOs seem to stay airborne all day, despite having no apparent source of energy. According to the latest Times story, they “appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015” in the skies above the East Coast. Watch Now: Animal Trainer Breaks Down Dog Acting in Movies What’s going on? Speculation is rife on the Y Combinator forums. Guesses include U.S. drones (a terrestrial craft), “Von Neumann probes” (self-perpetuating extraterrestrial craft), and a “disinformation campaign” (none of the above). Politico reports that advocates of the Navy’s new UFO reporting rules simply want to change “a culture in which personnel feel that speaking up about it could hurt their career.” After all, in an age when “removing the stigma” has become a refrain on everything from cannabis to male postpartum depression, maybe it was inevitable that overcoming UFO shame was next. We don’t want to invalidate your flying saucer feelings. Whatever the case, this new transparency feels like part of a trend. The 1970s saw a raft of regulations opening up the workings of government to public eyes, and these sprang from a feeling that trust had been abused in the prior decades, when Cold War anxiety was higher. Today, we see similar sentiments, especially following revelations about our counterterrorism policies after 9/11. With less war, or at least with less immediate war, we have the luxury of looking more closely. Ironically, despite the indefensible cover-up described by Tom Edwards in Plan 9 from Outer Space, there’s no great sense of distrust or outrage toward the authorities for their opacity and lies. Today, government makes itself much more transparent, even as Americans distrust it more than ever. What’s also new is the concreteness of these sightings. When I was a kid, a neighbor of my family in upstate New York claimed to have witnessed an enormous craft touch down on one of her fields, terrifying her and the nearby livestock. She was otherwise a no-nonsense type, but it was her experience alone, and most UFO sightings tended to be of this variety: the product of a lone witness. As the physicist Richard Feynman once wrote, “I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.” The UFO sightings described in the Times, by contrast, are shared experiences, discussed by multiple personnel, and captured on tape. When that happens, covering it up—especially given the human tendency to pass on amazing stories—can cause more trouble than reporting it. If the objects are real, as opposed to optical illusions or radar glitches, they move in a mystifying manner and suggest a technological breakthrough of history-altering importance. Odds are low that they’re products of the U.S. military, because some of these vessels have come close to colliding with manned U.S. aircraft, and such recklessness would be unlikely among aerospace experts in a secret program. On the other hand, such recklessness would also be odd for any other country capable of producing such vessels. Looks like that leaves only Zorgon. Even alien spacecraft must obey the fundamental laws of time and space, or so we assume, and so those looking to explain these latest vessels must turn to increasingly abstruse sources, far above the technical ken of mere political journalists. NASA engineer Paul R. Hill (1909–1990), who had a fascination with what might power UFOs, concluded, in a posthumous book called Unconventional Flying Objects: a Scientific Analysis, that “force-field propulsion” using some sort of combination of stored and gathered energy could do the trick. I won’t pretend to be able to evaluate Hill’s claims, but his reputation seems to be decent. It might be time to give it a look. A partially declassified list of government reading materials, produced under the Pentagon’s now-defunct Advanced Aerospace Threat and Identification Program, included such titles as Aneutronic Fusion Propulsion and State of the Art and Evolution of High Energy Laser Weapons. Perhaps these would be worth reading too. Some people speculate that the U.S. government, by making these sightings public, is softening us up for a revelation, either regarding extraterrestrial life or a world-disruptive technology. It’s sad to say that alien life seems like the safer option. If the UFOs turned out to be man-made, then the first worry would be that the inventors weren’t American. The second worry would be that they were. If China or Russia had developed a force-field propulsion technology, whatever that is, they could use their new power for ill, as they have in the past. On the other hand, if the United States had developed a force-field propulsion technology—well, our stretch as a lone superpower following the collapse of the Soviet Union was not characterized by excessive prudence. Compared to earthly hegemons, alien Tic Tacs seem benign, apart from their erratic driving. These UFOs could change human history, but, for now, we aren’t giving them much thought. They’re just floating about, unexplained and unidentified, and we have work to do. But mention them in conversation and they’re likely to lead to nervous humor, as do most things unfamiliar and out of our control. The pilots may be laughing, because they have the comfort of peers who are seeing the same thing, but most wouldn’t be laughing if they were alone. We know that life is fragile and that it continues at the mercy of a universe on a little planet orbiting around a star that will eventually flame out. The odds of these supersonic ovals in our midst turning out to be a net plus for humanity are low. Worrying about Donald Trump is almost reassuringly small by comparison. But at least we’re trusting our military personnel to see what’s in front of them. As Colonel Edwards asks, “How could I hope to hold down my command if I didn’t believe in what I saw and shot at?” www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/please-god-let-it-be-aliens-and-not-trumps-space-force
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Post by auntym on Jun 5, 2019 18:41:11 GMT -6
www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/the-pentagon-denies-luis-elizondos-role-in-aatip-heres-my-take/# The Pentagon Denies Luis Elizondo’s Role in AATIP; Here’s My Takeby John Greenewald, Jr. – The Black Vault June 5, 2019 This past weekend brought some disturbing news that even I was not expecting. The Intercept, authored by Keith Kloor, published a piece last Saturday that surrounded a new statement from the Pentagon. That statement read, in part: The Intercept headline, first published June 1, 2019. “Mr. [Luis] Elizondo had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program while he worked in OUSDI [the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence], up until the time he resigned effective 10/4/2017.” — Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood For those who are unfamiliar; Mr. Luis Elizondo has been profiled as the former director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) – the US government’s “secret UFO research program.” Now, for the first time since the New York Times and Politico broke this story in December of 2017, The Pentagon has called into question what role, if any, Mr. Elizondo had with AATIP. Mr. Elizondo is a former member of our intelligence community, and as I have said many times before, he should be commended for his service. However, he should still be questioned, as he even said himself. He has EARNED his right to respond to The Pentagon and prove that their statement is untrue. Mr. Kloor and The Intercept, according to their article, gave him multiple opportunities to do so, and he chose not to respond (along with other personnel from To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science [TTSA]). Since The Intercept’s article posted, the internet has gone into a frenzy. The line that separated supporters of Mr. Elizondo and those that questioned his story, has now been further dug deep into the sand. Some thought it was clear vindication for doubting his claims; while others instantly turned Mr. Elizondo into a martyr. When I first set out to find the truth behind the claims made by Mr. Elizondo, I questioned his story, but not the man. I had assumed that part was already done. As The Intercept accurately portrayed, I was very excited to learn about this story, and was not an instant skeptic. However, as time went on, yes, I became known as a someone who had tough questions that clearly, Mr. Elizondo still does not want to address. Some equated questioning as me making definitive statements or trying to attack Mr. Elizondo’s honor, integrity or character. It was not. Some equated those questions as me working within a secret cabal, in cahoots with The Pentagon, and our lone intent was to take down Mr. Elizondo. That, too, is not true. My intent with more than twenty-two years running The Black Vault, is the truth. No spin, no agenda, no personal politics injected, no nothing. When I post the documents; they are the documents being posted. We all, myself included, can choose to make opinions thereafter. However, those unanswered questions that remain, arguably just became much more obvious on why they remain. The “Navigating the Twisted Maze of the AATIP Timeline” I created, includes just a small portion of the discrepancies to this saga. Conflicting dates; confusing origins; questionable funding; all are included in the incredibly important minutia of this story – something some “researchers” want you to ignore. I have been saying for some time, these details need to be ironed out, especially before we run front page stories or create a series on networks like The History Channel. The cart got well before the horse on this story from the onset, and now, we may be seeing the repercussions of that. I have made it my life’s mission to uncover details about government secrets, lies, deceit and deception by the U.S. government and military, that has spanned the last century. However, I would be foolish to think that it is only the entities of the U.S. government and military, that can hold secrets or spew lies, deceit and deception. I’ve been around the UFO field of research long enough to know that the number of lies by the feds that I can prove by legal means, arguably are dwarfed by the number of lies that have come from everyday individuals and former government employees injecting themselves into their own UFO-related legacy. Not to steal a line from the X-Files, but, “Trust no one, Mr. Mulder.” That’s a mantra I have adopted, and I will continue to do so. This entire ordeal has lost me many friends, along with visitors who say they will no longer visit The Black Vault because I have brought up discoveries, discrepancies and questions relating to this story. For that, I will forever be sorry that my friendship did not mean more to those that I lost, and it could be so easily diminished with a difference of opinion. I will also forever be sorry for those who feel that asking questions somehow equates to an evil, sinister agenda, out to get someone so they never return to my free site. I am sorry for all of that. But I regret absolutely nothing. I want the truth – and nothing but. The attackers slinging their mud my direction consist of those who have supported TTSA from the beginning. The same names that I have seen attack me for more than a year, now appear on Mr. Kloor’s twitter feed slinging their mud his direction. The same people that happily display selfies with Mr. Elizondo on their Facebook walls, are the ones leading the charge against me, Mr. Kloor, and whomever else is posting the link to The Intercept. Yet, as of the writing of this statement, there is no Mr. Elizondo. There is no TTSA. There is no evidence to prove Mr. Kloor, well scratch that, that the Pentagon, is wrong. Just the same names, the same bloggers, the same selfie-takers, and the same super-fans. All shocked that quite possibly, the mainstream media in the beginning days, may have been wrong. Although that may be shocking to some that it may be a possibility; that does not make it untrue. According to those who still back Mr. Elizondo, and claim Mr. Kloor’s article was a “hit piece,” they are relying on only two pieces of evidence: A single statement, given by a former Pentagon spokesperson, that only one journalist (out of the hundreds that did stories in December of 2017) can verify. The spokesperson who allegedly gave the statement, Dana White, is the same one who was under investigation by the Inspector General’s office for misconduct of her employees and she left her post in January of 2019 amid the scandal. The journalist who published that quote and is single handedly the only one who currently verifies it – happens to be making multiple appearances on the new History channel show Unidentified, starring, Mr. Elizondo. That journalist is Mr. Bryan Bender from Politico, one of the first journalists to cover the story on December 16, 2017. Please note: the aforementioned is not an accusation, but rather an observation. Hundreds of journalists around the globe covered this story in the beginning weeks of it breaking – not one that I am aware of got the same statement. Those that did receive statements, all matched exactly to each other, and none of them confirmed Mr. Elizondo headed the AATIP program. The Pentagon has always maintained that he was a DOD employee, but they refused to comment further about his role (if any) until now. This is the unredacted portion of a 2009 letter, that includes Mr. Luis Elizondo’s name. This pre-dates his claim of heading the program, therefore although may prove some involvement of being ‘read in’ to the program, certainly does not validate leadership. The only other piece of evidence is an alleged “leaked” letter, dated June 24, 2009, wherein Senator Harry Reid requested Special Access Program (SAP) status for AATIP. There is no provenance of this letter. The redactions were applied by investigative journalist George Knapp, who strangely, chose to (or was instructed to) redact Mr. Elizondo’s name prior to originally publishing in June 2018. Despite that bizarre choice, Mr. Knapp says on his social media, in light of this new Pentagon statement, Mr. Elizondo’s name is in “position #10” and has released that portion of the letter that he had previously redacted. Beyond the question of why Mr. Knapp would even redact Mr. Elizondo’s name in the first place, the fact remains that the letter is from June 24, 2009, which pre-dates Mr. Elizondo’s claim of heading the program, by at least 5+ months. (See TTSA official statement) So in other words, the appearance of his name, with the date of the letter, does not address the Pentagon’s statement or the indication Mr. Elizondo did not direct the AATIP program. Really consider this for a moment. Reverse the situation. If Mr. Kloor wrote an article, based on a single statement that only he could verify, which came from a former spokesperson who left amid scandal, and then Mr. Kloor only displayed one leaked document with no provenance, and he hinged his entire story on that – he would be chastised and likely never get a story published, let alone have his story taken seriously by anyone. Yet, that isn’t the case. Rather, that hypothetical is Mr. Elizondo’s current defense, by only those loudest supporters going to bat for him on social media. Mr. Kloor hinged his article on an official Pentagon statement, which was backed by the “OUSDI leadership.” Also, according to the Pentagon, some of that leadership was “still there” from the days Mr. Elizondo was, so therefore, they would have first-hand knowledge about his involvement, if any. That’s a powerful revelation – and if it is a lie – I look forward to corroborating evidence soon to come to light. In fact, I have said and offered to ALL parties involved, if that verifiable evidence presents itself, I will even help disseminate it to clear Mr. Elizondo’s name. That offer has been ignored by all parties. But despite what I want, this fight has risen above all of us. This debate is beyond you, me, Mr. Kloor, The Intercept, the NY Times, Mr. Knapp, Ms. Leslie Kean, the internet trolls and whomever else. It’s above EVERYONE except Mr. Elizondo and his former employer. More than all the above, NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING, should take away from a seemingly new environment where military pilots and personnel are coming forward with their experiences and encounters. NOTHING should take away from their bravery stepping forward, offering an honest recount of what happened to them. I hope, wholeheartedly, that this entire mess that we have before us does not diminish their stories or put an insurmountable obstacle in front of them and a press podium. They deserve better than this. The field of honest UFO research deserves better than this. WE deserve better than this. From here, I lift a glass to those who are so passionate, they continue to dig themselves deep into the trenches defending their beliefs – evidence based or not. I lift my glass to those journalists who believe they can not be wrong, and are digging in that they did their homework, but they just can’t show you anything to prove it. I lift my glass to them all. But until something irrefutable presents itself, I will remain on the same course I have been for well more than two decades… the truth. If that ends up me being shunned from a community that claims they want the “truth,” although I will be incredibly let down it came to that, so be it. I believe strongly that the truth can survive aggressive scrutiny; while everything else, can not. It’s the latter I have always sought to expose, no matter the cost of the questions that needed to be asked and answered. I am in this research field not to be popular; but to be accurate. My mind is rarely made up on any topic, and that includes this one, despite what you may have read from internet trolls on various social networks. I am, and will always be open, to official Pentagon statements being wrong. But in order to definitively say that, we need actual evidence, and as you have sat down to read this — there currently is none that anyone has offered. I’ll see you all at the finish line – wherever and whenever that may be. Sincerely, John Greenewald, Jr. Owner/Founder The Black Vault www.theblackvault.comwww.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/the-pentagon-denies-luis-elizondos-role-in-aatip-heres-my-take/#
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Post by jcurio on Jun 6, 2019 9:08:12 GMT -6
That’s a mantra I have adopted, and I will continue to do so. This entire ordeal has lost me many friends, along with visitors who say they will no longer visit The Black Vault because I have brought up discoveries, discrepancies and questions relating to this story. For that, I will forever be sorry that my friendship did not mean more to those that I lost, and it could be so easily diminished with a difference of opinion. I will also forever be sorry for those who feel that asking questions somehow equates to an evil, sinister agenda, out to get someone so they never return to my free site. I am sorry for all of that. Read more: theedgeofreality.proboards.com/thread/8112/day-times-implied-ets-real#ixzz5q55U7fSJ
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Post by auntym on Jun 9, 2019 17:06:56 GMT -6
Luis Elizondo: The US Gvmt Has Crashed UFO Material
UFO Issue Published on Jun 1, 2019
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Post by auntym on Nov 1, 2019 23:20:26 GMT -6
www.8newsnow.com/i-team/i-team-former-sen-harry-reid-talks-ufos-in-sit-down-interview/ I-Team Exclusive: Former Sen. Harry Reid talks UFOs in sit-down interviewby: George Knapp / www.8newsnow.com/author/george-knapp/Posted: Oct 31, 2019 LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Former U.S. Senator Harry Reid wants to clarify some bad information being dispensed by the Pentagon about a secret study of UFOs. It was authorized by Reid and other lawmakers more than a decade ago. The UFO study was kept quiet until two years ago, and since then, a lot of misinformation has surfaced about the purpose of the study and who worked for it. Senator Reid sat down with the I-Team’s George Knapp for an exclusive interview. Harry Reid: “Lost all my hair.” George Knapp: “It will come back?” Harry Reid: “Oh yeah, once I get rid of cancer.” Reid knows that his so- far successful battle against pancreatic cancer likely comes as a disappointment to his enemies, some of whom have long wished for his death, political or otherwise. Nearly two years after the New York Times blew open a story about a Reid-sponsored secret study of UFOs and related mysteries, the former senate majority leader is encouraged by continued coverage in mainstream media and heightened public interest. If UFOs are to be part of his political legacy, so be it. “I think I’ll be remembered for other things but hey, listen, if I am known as somebody that kind of got the ball rolling here, I’ll take it,” Reid said. The ball started rolling in 2007. Reid and fellow Senators Daniel Inouye and Ted Stevens authorized a black budget study of UFOs. The acronym for the program was Aerospace Weapons System Application Program, or AAWSAP. In 2008, a contract was awarded to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, or BAASS, an offshoot of Bigelow Aerospace. Twenty-two million was spent over three years. Since the New York Times story broke, Pentagon spokespersons have provided multiple conflicting statements about both AAWSAP, and its successor, a smaller effort Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Progran, known as AATIP. In some statements, the Pentagon denied the programs had anything to do with unidentified flying objects. Reid says the UFO mystery was always the primary focus, starting with the first meeting he had with a scientist from the Defense Intelligence Agency. “He said, ‘I don’t understand what we’re seeing around the world with all these unidentified flying objects, and I want to be able to have an intelligent conversation in this regard,’” Reid said. “And George, you know I became terribly interested in this, and rather than think about it, I said I’m going to do something about it.” Reid says there is no mention of space aliens or flying saucers in the program names or documents, nor did they use the term UFO, in part because those words and names carry so much baggage. The senator says no one can say for sure where these mystery craft originate, which is why he initiated a study in the first place. WATCH VIDEO & CONTINUE READING : www.8newsnow.com/i-team/i-team-former-sen-harry-reid-talks-ufos-in-sit-down-interview/************************************ I-Team: Former Sen. Reid encouraged by newfound interest in UFOsWATCH VIDEO & CONTINUE READING: www.8newsnow.com/i-team/i-team-former-sen-reid-encouraged-by-newfound-interest-in-ufos/
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Post by jcurio on Nov 2, 2019 10:35:43 GMT -6
I DO NOTE, that he is surviving pancreatic cancer. Something that was unheard of just a few years ago ( we have a family friend that is also surviving this type of cancer..... even with part of pancreas removed).
Interesting.
I also “like” the way he mentions enemies in this regard; some people expected him to be dead by now. 😉
Survival of the human spirit. 👍🏻 ____________________
Tom is back to doing concerts with Blink (did he ever stop?).
____________________
My home city just recently mentioned the New York article from 2 years ago....
??
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Post by auntym on Mar 19, 2020 12:38:57 GMT -6
can't wait...this sunday 9:00 NCIS LOS ANGELES Nick Pope @nickpopemod NCIS: Los Angeles does AATIP. Art imitates life. NB once again the pushing of the term "UAP", the term we used at the MoD in the Nineties, and which the US confirmed "was borrowed from the United Kingdom" NCIS: Los Angeles 11x18 Sneak Peek Clip 2 "Missing Time"•Mar 17, 2020
"Missing Time" - While NCIS investigates the disappearance of a department of defense officer who was looking into a recent UFO sighting, Anna (guest star Bar Paly) makes a bold decision about her future, on NCIS: LOS ANGELES, Sunday, March 22 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
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Post by jcurio on Apr 2, 2020 7:42:46 GMT -6
Did you watch?
(I wonder if I can stream this now)
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Post by auntym on Jun 1, 2020 15:11:24 GMT -6
devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/15997/meanwhile-in-other-news/ Meanwhile, in other news …Posted on June 1, 2020 by Billy Cox / devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/author/cox/ Hey look it's more #ufo stuff: Meanwhile, in other news …Uhh, yeah. It’s a little hard to concentrate on The Great Taboo right now. Cities on fire like it’s 1967 again. Coronavirus body counts surging into six digits. A new business initiative celebrating Elon Musk. These are things we can’t ignore. But as time passes, we’ll come to see them as variations of familiar themes. And when that happens, we will find ourselves confronting something genuinely unprecedented, a room-sized gorilla beginning to break its social quarantine, the implications incapable of being wished away. And for that, we can thank the increasingly engaged Fourth Estate – mainstream and outliers alike – in its accelerating quest for clarity. And the blades of inquiry are getting sharper. The world is coming to an end! Legacy media and a digital-only website are duking it out for UFO scoops!/CREDIT: medium.com Three weeks ago, in what hopefully signals the beginning of old-fashioned deadline competition, Tyler Rogoway and Joseph Trevithick at The War Zone scooped the New York Times, by a single day, on the results of a FOIA for UFO incident reports collected by the Navy Safety Center. Both teams of reporters were attempting to acquire official paperwork behind the 2015 “GoFast” and “Gimbal” encounters videotaped by pilots assigned to the USS Roosevelt. Instead, the fishing expedition landed eight previously unknown reports logged by Navy pilots operating along the Eastern seaboard over a 10-year span. Significantly, records from the Roosevelt encounters were not included. Wonder why? That’s called red meat. Steven Greenstreet at the New York Post has been circling back into the archives to fill in the gaps of missing history. Most recently, his video chat with physicist and Pentagon UFO research consultant Dr. Eric Davis strayed into terrain that clearly made Davis nervous. So nervous, in fact, that a portion of the interview was deleted from the original clip shortly thereafter. In the redacted portion of the exchange, Greenstreet wanted to know more about the controversial “Core Secrets” notes that Davis is alleged to have made during his conversation in 2002 with just-retired Defense Intelligence Agency Director Thomas Wilson. In a bombshell of a revelation, the notes indicate Wilson was still *angry* about being denied access to a classified program involving The Great Taboo. Confronted by Greenstreet, Davis held firm to the no-comment stance he assumed when the 15-page transcripts hit the Internet last June. But for the first time, he confirmed the source of the material. “They were leaked out of (Apollo astronaut) Ed Mitchell’s estate,” Davis told the Post, “and there’s nothing I can say about it.” Unless, maybe, the media keeps pushing. In fact, a few newsies have grown so tenacious that Luis Elizondo, the retired Army counterintelligence agent who set events in motion in 2017, tells De Void he wishes he’d met one of those journos before leaving the Pentagon to go public with the UFO material. “I told him, I said dude, if I’d known you four years ago I probably would’ve hired you to come onto AATIP,” Elizondo says, alluding to the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which studied UFOs for the Defense Department a decade ago. “He’s got sources that I would’ve gone to my grave thinking there’s no way in hell anybody will know who these people are. But he did. “And you haven’t seen anything yet.” Elizondo is referring to researcher Tim McMillan, who has singlehandedly converted Popular Mechanics from a featherweight on UFO matters into a formidable critic. In February, the former police lieutenant latched onto the DoD’s amateurish inability to get its stories straight concerning Elizondo’s duties with AATIP. As a result of McMillan’s reporting four months ago, the Pentagon felt compelled to admit that, yes, the subject of McMillan’s inquiry was, in fact, an information manager for unspecified Special Access Programs. Well, probably sooner than later, Elizondo predicts, the DoD will produce a more accurate version in order to avoid having to send people to testify under oath. And that, he says, will prove once and for all he’s been on the level since jump street. “The truth keeps coming out, whether they like it or not,” he says from southern California. “At first it was like, no, you’ve got the name wrong, it’s ‘Advanced Aviation.’ No, it’s not, it’s ‘Advanced Aerospace.’ Then it was ‘But AATIP was never about UFOs.’ Yes, actually it was. ‘Well, the videos weren’t legally released, they were classified.’ No they weren’t, and here’s the documentation that proves it. “I’ve got no agenda other than to tell the truth. Everything I’ve said can be proved through documentation. You can’t keep a lid on this forever. The Department of Defense realizes the landscape is changing because people are FOIAing the hell out of ‘em now. And the last thing you want to do is get caught red-handed lying to the American people – there are laws and rules against that.” Technically, yes, but lately, laws and rules in this country seem more like suggestions than mandates. Anyhow, Elizondo plans to leave a few more “Easter eggs” for the press to follow when History’s second season of “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation,” kicks off on July 11. And the former classified ops veteran who was invited in 2008 by then Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence James Clapper to join the Pentagon makes no bones about it – he consults with his former colleagues about what is and isn’t fair game when he puts stuff out there, whether it’s documentary material or an imminent interview on national media. “What I’ve tried to do from the start is to destigmatize and further legitimize this topic to advance the conversation, to get the government to admit this is real, while at the same time not breaking either my security oath or the trust of the American people,” he says. “And it’s working. Maybe not as fast as some people would like, but if you look at just the last two years alone, we have collectively come further in this one moment in time than in the 70 years before that.” At the SCU Conference in 2019, erstwhile Army intelligence agent Luis Elizondo acknowledged that UFOs have shown “some strategic interest in our nuclear capabilities.”/CREDIT: Billy Cox Elizondo says the release of the F-18 videos has created an irreversible momentum, “like a boulder going downhill,” following a path that can, at best, be only partially managed. He compares it to depressing an angled mattress in order to guide the direction of a bowling ball. “If you try to get in front of it,” he warns, “it’s gonna flatten you.” Nobody wants to get flattened. But the debate is growing so sophisticated that even traditional pillars of American journalism may soon find their reputations pancaked – or deemed irrelevant – by insouciant reporting. Case in point: the May 18 edition National Public Radio’s “1A.” Amid today’s suddenly target-rich environment, where plenty of insider participants (Eric Davis, anyone?) and military eyewitnesses are speaking on the record, NPR instead gave a platform to guests with bupkis to offer. One of them – Sarah Scoles, author of They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers – prefers to approach the issue with an anthropological filter. The other, utterly marginalized SETI astronomer Seth Shostak, admitted nearly two years ago that his discipline lacks the qualifications to properly assess the UFO conundrum. So public radio wound up delivering a huge platter of empty calories for audiences with the luxury of time to waste. And then there are the outright curiosities. Take freelance troll Keith Kloor. Like an Inspector Javert sentenced to purgatory in a never-ending Whac-A-Mole karma, Kloor keeps managing to pop up in mainstream publications in order to hock loogies at UFO journalism. He obviously has no problems scoring gigs. Last year, his byline (“The Media Loves This UFO Expert Who Says He Worked for An Obscure Pentagon Program – Did He?”) appeared in The Intercept, co-founded by Pulitzer Prize winner Glenn Greenwald. Also in 2019, Kloor landed a piece (“UFOs Won’t Go Away”) in Issues in Science and Technology, the magazine arm of the National Academies of Science. Two weeks ago, he popped up again, this time in Wired, with an essay titled “Will The New York Times Ever Stop Reporting on UFOs?” Like the preceding companion pieces, Kloor’s work is the latest addition to the tired UFOs-as-hokum genre, with a fixation on Elizondo’s credentials. And he isn’t afraid to burn his sources to accomplish the mission. Led to believe Kloor planned an objective discussion on the first detailed independent analysis of the so-called Tic Tac UFO incident captured on video by Navy pilots in 2004, members of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies agreed to delay release of their evaluation to coincide with publication of Kloor’s article for NAS. Kloor had attended SCU’s weekend discussion of those results, prior to public disclosure, in 2019. But when Kloor went to press, he also delivered a swipe at those following the evidence to a conclusion that UFOs represent truly exotic and unknown technology. He characterized advocates of those notions as sensationalists who “seem to be working in the great American tradition of P.T. Barnum.” In slamming the NY Times’ 5/17/20 article on the eight new UFO-Navy reports uncovered through FOIA as “thinly sourced and slanted” – without mentioning The War Zone’s more comprehensive reporting a day earlier, which published online PDFs of those same Navy reports – Kloor actually thought it was significant that the Times didn’t work Elizondo into its reporting. Implying that the NYT might be having second thoughts about Elizondo’s verisimilitude, Kloor cited his appearances on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News interviews, and how “cable news shows still find him irresistible.” This is beginning to sound like the flailing envy of a man with a sense that the times are passing him by. Maybe Kloor’s auditioning to be a UFO expert on NPR. There’s obviously plenty of room for that voice. Fortunately for the rest of us, investigative journalism is starting to make That Voice sound more like a plea for attention than a rational argument. The marketplace for new ideas moves on. devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/15997/meanwhile-in-other-news/
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Post by jcurio on Jun 6, 2020 16:24:28 GMT -6
Read the comments below the blog too 😉😊
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Post by auntym on Jul 23, 2020 13:49:55 GMT -6
www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/politics/pentagon-ufo-harry-reid-navy.html?referringSource=articleShare No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public For over a decade, the program, now tucked inside the Office of Naval Intelligence, has discussed mysterious events in classified briefings.By Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean / www.nytimes.com/by/ralph-blumenthal July 23, 2020 For over a decade, the program, now tucked inside the Office of Naval Intelligence, has discussed mysterious events in classified briefings. nytimes.com Despite Pentagon statements that it disbanded a once-covert program to investigate unidentified flying objects, the effort remains underway — renamed and tucked inside the Office of Naval Intelligence, where officials continue to study mystifying encounters between military pilots and unidentified aerial vehicles. Pentagon officials will not discuss the program, which is not classified but deals with classified matters. Yet it appeared last month in a Senate committee report outlining spending on the nation’s intelligence agencies for the coming year. The report said the program, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, was “to standardize collection and reporting” on sightings of unexplained aerial vehicles, and was to report at least some of its findings to the public every six months. While retired officials involved with the effort — including Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader — hope the program will seek evidence of vehicles from other worlds, its main focus is on discovering whether another nation, especially any potential adversary, is using breakout aviation technology that could threaten the United States. Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who is the acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told a CBS affiliate in Miami this month that he was primarily concerned about reports of unidentified aircraft over American military bases — and that it was in the government’s interest to find out who was responsible. He expressed concerns that China or Russia or some other adversary had made “some technological leap” that “allows them to conduct this sort of activity.” Mr. Rubio said some of the unidentified aerial vehicles over U.S. bases possibly exhibited technologies not in the American arsenal. But he also noted: “Maybe there is a completely, sort of, boring explanation for it. But we need to find out.” In 2017, The New York Times disclosed the existence of a predecessor unit, called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Defense Department officials said at the time that the unit and its $22 million in funding had lapsed after 2012. People working with the program, however, said it was still in operation in 2017 and beyond, statements later confirmed by the Defense Department. The program was begun in 2007 under the Defense Intelligence Agency and was then placed within the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, which remains responsible for its oversight. But its coordination with the intelligence community will be carried out by the Office of Naval Intelligence, as described in the Senate budget bill. The program never lapsed in those years, but little was disclosed about the post-2017 operations. The Pentagon program’s previous director, Luis Elizondo, a former military intelligence official who resigned in October 2017 after 10 years with the program, confirmed that the new task force evolved from the advanced aerospace program. Luis Elizondo, a former military intelligence official, was the director of the Pentagon’s previous program on unidentified aerial vehicles.Credit...Roger Kisby for The New York Times “It no longer has to hide in the shadows,” Mr. Elizondo said. “It will have a new transparency.” Mr. Elizondo is among a small group of former government officials and scientists with security clearances who, without presenting physical proof, say they are convinced that objects of undetermined origin have crashed on earth with materials retrieved for study. For more than a decade, the Pentagon program has been conducting classified briefings for congressional committees, aerospace company executives and other government officials, according to interviews with program participants and unclassified briefing documents. In some cases, earthly explanations have been found for previously unexplained incidents. Even lacking a plausible terrestrial explanation does not make an extraterrestrial one the most likely, astrophysicists say. Mr. Reid, the former Democratic senator from Nevada who pushed for funding the earlier U.F.O. program when he was the majority leader, said he believed that crashes of vehicles from other worlds had occurred and that retrieved materials had been studied secretly for decades, often by aerospace companies under government contracts. “After looking into this, I came to the conclusion that there were reports — some were substantive, some not so substantive — that there were actual materials that the government and the private sector had in their possession,” Mr. Reid said in an interview. No crash artifacts have been publicly produced for independent verification. Some retrieved objects, such as unusual metallic fragments, were later identified from laboratory studies as man-made. Harry Reid pushed for funding the earlier U.F.O. program when he was the Senate majority leader. Eric W. Davis, an astrophysicist who worked as a subcontractor and then a consultant for the Pentagon U.F.O. program since 2007, said that, in some cases, examination of the materials had so far failed to determine their source and led him to conclude, “We couldn’t make it ourselves.” The constraints on discussing classified programs — and the ambiguity of information cited in unclassified slides from the briefings — have put officials who have studied U.F.O.s in the position of stating their views without presenting any hard evidence. Mr. Davis, who now works for Aerospace Corporation, a defense contractor, said he gave a classified briefing to a Defense Department agency as recently as March about retrievals from “off-world vehicles not made on this earth.” Mr. Davis said he also gave classified briefings on retrievals of unexplained objects to staff members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Oct. 21, 2019, and to members of the Senate Intelligence Committee two days later. Committee staff members did not respond to requests for comment on the issue. Public fascination with the topic of U.F.O.s has drawn in President Trump, who told his son Donald Trump Jr. in a June interview that he knew “very interesting” things about Roswell — a city in New Mexico that is central to speculation about the existence of U.F.O.s. The president demurred when asked if he would declassify any information on Roswell. “I’ll have to think about that one,” he said. Either way, Mr. Reid said, more should be made public to clarify what is known and what is not. “It is extremely important that information about the discovery of physical materials or retrieved craft come out,” he said. WATCH VIDEO: www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/politics/pentagon-ufo-harry-reid-navy.html?referringSource=articleShare
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Post by auntym on Jul 24, 2020 21:38:32 GMT -6
www.thestar.com/entertainment/opinion/2020/07/24/evidence-suggests-ufo-whistleblower-bob-lazar-was-telling-the-truth-all-along.html Evidence suggests UFO whistleblower Bob Lazar was telling the truth all alongBy Vinay Menon Entertainment Columnist / www.thestar.com/authors.menon_vinay.htmlFri., July 24, 2020 Near the end of his 2019 autobiography, Bob Lazar writes, “I’m no kind of hero.” With each passing day, that seems less true. I know what you’re thinking: Is this idiot really devoting a column to a controversial UFO whistleblower during a global pandemic? Should I stop reading this tinfoil claptrap right now and spend the next few minutes on something more productive? Answers: 1. Yes. 2. Probably. OK. To everyone still here, why is Bob Lazar on my mind? Because I just read a New York Times story — “No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public” — that includes a buried nugget about how astrophysicist and Pentagon contractor Eric W. Davis gave a classified briefing to government officials in March about retrieved “off-world vehicles not made on this earth.” I know. It’s nuts. If you ever watched “The X-Files,” the U.S. government has basically done a 180 on UFOs. For nearly a century, intel gathering under clandestine programs — Project Mogul, Project Sign, Project Grudge, Project Blue Book, Project Ozma — had one guiding principle: blanket denial. The stated goal was to investigate UFO sightings. The outcome was official excuses. UFOs were weather balloons or street lamps or migrating birds. They were illusions refracted by the natural world. They were fantasies of deranged imaginations. They were not real. All of that has changed dramatically, starting with a 2017 New York Times blockbuster that revealed the existence of the U.S. government’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, created a decade earlier to analyze unexplained phenomena. The Navy has since publicly verified three videos that show unidentified aircraft violating the laws of aerodynamics. Apparently, there are more. What was once the stuff of supermarket tabloids is now taken seriously by politicians and scientists. So isn’t it time Bob Lazar got a second hearing in the court of public opinion? The man put Area 51 on the pop-cultural map in 1989, when during an interview with Las Vegas investigative reporter George Knapp, he made claims that would have sent Fox Mulder to a fainting couch. Lazar said he had worked at a top-secret military base, S-4, near Papoose Lake, where his job was to reverse-engineer crashed alien flying saucers. It was like hearing someone casually say they provided dental care to the Loch Ness Monster. I’m sorry, what? I remember thinking Bob must be smoking crack out of a Bunsen burner. But here’s the thing: 30 years later, nothing Lazar said has been disproven. Nothing. Oh, I know the skeptics want to discredit him based on flimsy allegations he falsified his education or previous employment with the Los Alamos National Laboratory. But did he? Knapp visited that lab with Lazar many moons ago and they were granted access without showing credentials. Security recognized Lazar, who gave Knapp a guided tour while waving to former colleagues who waved back. I can tell you right now, if I wander into the Globe and Mail newsroom and start waving at people, I’m going to get tackled and escorted out by security. You can’t fake working at a place. So if Lazar really worked at Los Alamos — which officially has no record of him — why should we question his Area 51 claims? There is also no record of Lazar’s birth. Does that mean he does not exist? I’d then go several steps further and ask, “Why should we doubt anything Lazar says about UFOs?” In a video authenticated by the Navy this year, a spacecraft is rotating and flying belly-up, exactly as Lazar described in the ’80s. It’s eerie. When he first talked about Element 115 as a possible power source of antigravitational propulsion, it didn’t exist on the periodic table. Now it does. Is that not a strange coincidence? What about his sketches that could now be blueprints for UFOs? As far as I can tell, Bob Lazar has been vindicated at every turn. And you know what? The world owes him an apology. But if you google Lazar, you get sucked into a black hole that suggests he is a “fraud,” “liar,” “conspiracy theorist” and “UFO hoaxster.” What he was saying in 1989 — we have recovered crashed alien saucers that defy everything we know about the universe — was a stick of dynamite to rational thought. But what he was saying then is now backed up by the official record. Please read Lazar’s autobiography “Dreamland,” or watch the Netflix doc “Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers,” and tell me why you still think he is a deceptive kook. Spoiler alert: You can’t do it. Lazar has never once tried to profit from the whistle-blowing that ruined his career. He’s not on any lucrative speaking circuits. He’s not selling kitschy T-shirts of Little Green Men. He goes about his business in the shadow of infamy and ridicule. Thirty years later, he just wants to move on and change the subject. He wants breathing room amid the suffocation of terrestrial doubt. But if, as reported this week, more UFO revelations are forthcoming — and they involve new insights on retrieved meta-materials not of this world — isn’t it time to set the record straight on our most famous UFO whistleblower? Isn’t it time we landed this flying saucer on consensus? Bob Lazar is either a diabolical liar or some kind of hero. He can’t be both. But what he could be, now more than ever, is an invaluable tour guide into the unknown. www.thestar.com/entertainment/opinion/2020/07/24/evidence-suggests-ufo-whistleblower-bob-lazar-was-telling-the-truth-all-along.html
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Post by auntym on Jul 26, 2020 11:45:42 GMT -6
medium.com/on-the-trail-of-the-saucers/new-york-times-reporters-take-aim-at-internet-frenzy-e5d66eda0a27
NY Times Reporters Argue Internet UFO “Frenzy”Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean complain about activists not understanding their process and annoying them with speculation about their article on crash retrievals.by Bryce Zabel / medium.com/@brycezabelJul 26, 2020 Reporting on the ReportersIt’s not easy being an investigative reporter. I get that. At the beginning of my career, I spent a couple of years with that job description at PBS Los Angeles, won a few awards even. It’s hard work, usually the people you’re investigating don’t want to talk, and they try to stop you from doing your work. Also, although I don’t know Times reporters Ralph Blumenthal or Leslie Kean personally, I do know people who say they are absolutely terrific people. Professionally, I have tremendous respect for their skills, guts and tenacity. So I was very interested in hearing what they had to say about their story that was published on July 23, 2020. In an interview just posted on YouTube, Jay (last name never mentioned), landed the first interview with Blumenthal and Kean for a group known as Project Unity that’s working to increase work in everything from quantum physics to extraterrestrial contact. It was a real coup getting both reporters the day after this piece broke, and it was great to hear the reporters speak at length about the topic and the process that allowed these articles to be written. WATCH VIDEO What shocks most in the interview is that the reporters reserve their deepest and harshest criticism not for the people who have allowed the truth to be suppressed for over seven decades now, but for a few folks on the internet who dared to talk about the story before it was published. The story itself already has a flag on the play with Senator Harry Reid’s day-after-publication tweet that he never said what they said he said. On this interview, they fought back against that characterization, saying they changed only one quote out of three, but it is what it is. ********************************************* Senator Harry Reid @senatorreid I have no knowledge—and I have never suggested—the federal government or any entity has unidentified flying objects or debris from other worlds. I have consistently said we must stick to science, not fairy tales about little green men. The New York Times @nytimes Despite Pentagon statements that it disbanded a once-covert program to investigate unidentified flying objects, the effort remains underway. Officials continue to study mystifying encounters between military pilots and unidentified aerial vehicles. nyti.ms/3hut1325:07 PM · Jul 24, 2020 ******************************************** An entire column can probably be written about Reid’s about-face. Suffice it to say here, it’s an even-money bet that Reid said whatever Kean and Blumenthal wrote, but that he got blowback on it immediately and, for reasons unknown at this time, he felt a strategic retreat was in order. More to come… In any case, given the need to get quotes right on a topic of such magnitude, it feels right to let the reporters — Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal — have their own words heard exactly as they said them. CONTINUE READING: medium.com/on-the-trail-of-the-saucers/new-york-times-reporters-take-aim-at-internet-frenzy-e5d66eda0a27
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Post by auntym on Jul 28, 2020 11:57:44 GMT -6
www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/insider/UFO-reporting.html Do We Believe in U.F.O.s? That’s the Wrong QuestionReporting on the Pentagon program that’s investigating unidentified flying objects is not about belief. It’s about a vigilant search for facts.By Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean / www.nytimes.com/by/ralph-blumenthal July 28, 2020 Times Insider www.nytimes.com/series/times-insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. We were part of The New York Times’s team (with the Washington correspondent Helene Cooper) that broke the story of the Pentagon’s long-secret unit investigating unidentified flying objects, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, in December 2017. Since then, we have reported on Navy pilots’ close encounters with U.F.O.s, and last week, on the current revamped program, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force and its official briefings — ongoing for more than a decade — for intelligence officials, aerospace executives and Congressional staff on reported U.F.O. crashes and retrieved materials. We’re often asked by well-meaning associates and readers, “Do you believe in U.F.O.s?” The question sets us aback as being inappropriately personal. Times reporters are particularly averse to revealing opinions that could imply possible reporting bias. But in this case we have no problem responding, “No, we don’t believe in U.F.O.s.” As we see it, their existence, or nonexistence, is not a matter of belief. We admire what the great anthropologist Margaret Mead said when asked long ago whether she believed in U.F.O.s. She called it “a silly question,” writing in Redbook in 1974: “Belief has to do with matters of faith; it has nothing to do with the kind of knowledge that is based on scientific inquiry. … Do people believe in the sun or the moon, or the changing seasons, or the chairs they’re sitting on? When we want to understand something strange, something previously unknown to anyone, we have to begin with an entirely different set of questions. What is it? How does it work?” That’s what the Pentagon U.F.O. program has been focusing on, making it eminently newsworthy. And to be clear: U.F.O.s don’t mean aliens. Unidentified means we don’t know what they are, only that they demonstrate capabilities that do not appear to be possible through currently available technology. In our reporting, we’ve focused on how the Department of Defense, the Office of Naval Intelligence and members of two Senate committees are engaged with this topic. Current officials are now concerned about the potential threat represented by the very real, advanced technological objects: how close they can come to our fighter jets, sometimes causing a near miss, and the risk that our adversaries may acquire the technology demonstrated by the objects before we do. So if U.F.O.s are no longer a matter of belief, what are they and how do they do what they do? And if technology has been retrieved from downed objects, what better way to try to understand how they work? Our previous stories were relatively easy to document with Department of Defense videos of U.F.O.s and pilot eyewitness accounts backed up by Navy hazard reports of close encounters with small speeding objects. But our latest article provided a more daunting set of challenges, since we dealt with the possible existence of retrieved materials from U.F.O.s. Going from data on a distant object in the sky to the possession of a retrieved one on the ground makes a leap that many find hard to accept and that clearly demands extraordinary evidence. Numerous associates of the Pentagon program, with high security clearances and decades of involvement with official U.F.O. investigations, told us they were convinced such crashes have occurred, based on their access to classified information. But the retrieved materials themselves, and any data about them, are completely off-limits to anyone without clearances and a need to know. The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program has been using unclassified slides like this to brief government officials on threats from Advanced Aerospace Vehicles — “including off-world” — and materials retrieved from crashes of unidentified phenomena.Credit...Leslie Kean We were provided a series of unclassified slides showing that the program took this seriously enough to include it in numerous briefings. One slide says one of the program’s tasks was to “arrange for access to data/reports/materials from crash retrievals of A.A.V.’s,” or advanced aerospace vehicles. Our sources told us that “A.A.V.” does not refer to vehicles made in any country — not Russian or Chinese — but is used to mean technology in the realm of the truly unexplained. They also assure us that their briefings are based on facts, not belief. Ralph Blumenthal was a Times reporter from 1964 to 2009. Leslie Kean has written a book and articles on U.F.O.s.www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/insider/UFO-reporting.html************************************************* Jason McClellan Ⓥ @acecentric · Jul 27 On this week's episode of @unknownufopod NYT UFOs UNKNOWN — a UFO podcast click to listen podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nyt-ufos/id1055098034?i=1000486220084
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