Article by Adam Barnhardt June 8, 2021 (comicbook.com)
• On June 8th, former President Bill Clinton appeared alongside James Patterson on Live with Kelly and Ryan in support of their new book, The President’s Daughter. When the topic of conversation inevitably turned to the Senate UFO report due out this month, Clinton said, “Keep in mind there are billions of galaxies in an ever-expanding universe. I mean, you can’t even get your mind around the sheer number of things that are out there. No one knows, but I think the probability is that there is something you would call life somewhere else.”
• So Clinton flat-out suggested that aliens could exist. “The truth is, we’ve never proved one [ie: extraterrestrial UFO], but there are things flying around up there that we haven’t fully identified yet.”
• In Barack Obama’s recent appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden, the former President wouldn’t confirm the government has possession of alien “specimens”, but he did confirm the existence of UFO records. “What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are. We can’t explain how they move, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern. I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is, but I have nothing to report to you today.”
• “Well, when it comes to aliens, there are some things I can just can’t tell you on air,” Obama said. “The truth is that when I came into office, I asked. I was like, ‘All right, is there the lab somewhere where we’re keeping the alien specimens and spaceships?’ They did a little bit of research and the answer was ‘no.'”
James Patterson and Bill Clinton
By the end of the month, Congress expects a report from the United
Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest
States intelligence community on the significance of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), the government’s official verbiage for UFOs — Unidentified Flying Objects. Days after former President Barack Obama was candid about the scenario in one interview, one of his predecessors is being even more open about the situation. Tuesday morning, President Bill Clinton appeared alongside James Patterson on Live with Kelly and Ryan in support of their new book, The President’s Daughter.
Obama with James Corden
It’s here Clinton flat-out suggested he believes aliens could exist. “The truth is, we’ve never proved one, but there are things flying around up there that we haven’t fully identified yet,” the politician said on the morning show. That’s when he quickly pivoted and told Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest to think of the vastness of the cosmos.
“Keep in mind there are billions of galaxies in an ever-expanding universe,” Clinton added. “I mean, you can’t even get your mind around the sheer number of things that are out there. No one knows, but I think the probability is that there is something you would call life somewhere else.”
In Obama’s appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden, Obama wouldn’t confirm the government has possession of alien “specimens.” He did, however, confirm the existence of UFO records.
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Article by Alejandro Rojas October 23, 2020 (openminds.tv)
• The news has been ablaze with UFO headlines. The US government has been forced to seriously confront the UAP/UFO issue. In fact, The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has requested a public report from the Director of National Intelligence on what has been done thus far with regard to Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon.
• This focus on the UFO phenomenon was the result of a string of media events: a tweet by Sky Hub founder Steve McDaniel followed by a Danny Silva blog; an article by Leslie Kean in The Huffington Post in May 2016; Open Minds UFO Radio interviews of Bryan Bender and NY Times writer Leslie Kean in the summer of 2017; a blockbuster NY Times article in December 2017; a Washington Post op-ed in March 2018; an article by Politico’s Bender in June 2019; a History Channel show; and finally the US Navy authenticating Navy cockpit video of UFOs, admitting that they are for real, and issuing Navy personnel guidelines for reporting them.
• The focus of all of this media attention over the past four years has been former Senate intelligence analyst Chris Mellon and former Pentagon intelligence officer and head of its UFO program, Luis Elizondo. (both are pictured above with Tom DeLonge) It began with Elizondo’s difficulty in being granted a meeting with defense officials to reveal unexplained craft. It would end with Mellon and Elizondo invited to Capitol Hill for high level UFO briefings. “They couldn’t any longer deny it… when they had active-duty pilots and others going on the record,” said Mellon.
• In the documentary “The Phenomenon”, Mellon says his professional interest in UFOs arose from early claims by astronaut Gordon Cooper. Cooper was a part of the famed ‘Mercury Seven’, the first seven US astronauts to go into space. Prior to this, in 1951, Cooper’s squadron of jet fighters had chased a group of round objects that could stop mid-air and make instant 90 degree turns. In 1957, Cooper and his crew at Edwards Air Force base filmed a saucer-shaped object land on a dry lake bed and then take off again. The Air Force sent a courier to collect it. Cooper never saw the film again.
• Just prior to the end of President Clinton’s second term, Clinton told his Secretary of Defense, Michael Cohen, to investigate Cooper’s claims. Cohen assigned the matter to Chris Mellon, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Security and Information Operations for The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mellon would later become the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence for the Senate Committee. Apparently, Mellon wasn’t satisfied with the records that the US Air Force kept on UFOs, including Cooper’s. He was told that most of them had been removed in order to “clean up” or “save space”. Mellon’s curiosity was piqued.
• Mellon retired from the government and joined a UFO monitoring system called UFODATA. Then he learned about the existence of a Pentagon UFO program. The UFO topic “was something that I had always been interested in,” said Mellon. “So, I was surprised to see they had anything organized at all.” Mellon quickly offered to assist Elizondo to help get data of the Nimitz Strike Carrier Group encounter with a UFO/UAP to the Secretary of Defense. The Office of the Secretary of Defense did not want to escalate the issue. “People were still afraid to touch it and afraid to let the secretary even be exposed to the issue,” says Mellon. Even with Mellon’s connections to senior officials in the Department of Defense, they were unable to secure a meeting with the Secretary of Defense.
• Mellon and Elizondo began to consider more drastic measures – to take their information directly to the media and the public in order to force Congress to take some action. They invited Leslie Kean to Washington on October 4, 2017. “I went down and went to Washington, and we spent three or four hours together,” says Kean. “Luis had resigned (his) position literally the day before we met.” “I was shown the videos… (and) was shown documents about Harry Reid’s involvement. [T]he story was kind of laid out for me at this meeting.” “I realized at that point that it was a New York Times level story, given the documentation that was available for the program and for the people involved and everything else,” Kean continued. “And so that’s how it all started.”
• The world was introduced to Mellon and Elizondo on October 10, 2017, with the press conference launch of Tom DeLonge’s ‘To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science’. Elizondo and Mellon had joined ‘To the Stars’ team of former high level UFO investigators. The announcement was accompanied by Kean’s article in The Huffington Post. Still, no one seemed to take notice of Elizondo who claimed that he ran a UFO program despite the government telling us for decades they had no interest in the topic.
• Then in December 2017, Kean along with co-writers Ralph Blumenthal and Helen Cooper, published a blockbuster NY Times article revealing that the Pentagon had run a secretive UFO program from 2007 to 2012 called the ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’ (AATIP). The article’s primary source was Elizondo who claimed AATIP did not end in 2012 and that it continues to this day. The Times article also included two videos allegedly showing infrared camera footage from Navy F-18 fighter jets of a UFO, which Mellon had clandestinely received from an anonymous DoD official in a parking garage. (see previous ExoArticle on this)
• On March 9, 2018, Mellon wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post (see previous ExoArticle here) asking ‘Why Doesn’t the Pentagon Care? “Senators and staffers have been kept in the dark,” said Mellon. “There’s some important unanswered questions here.” Soon thereafter, the US Navy announced new formal guidelines for Navy personnel to report UFO encounters. “There’s no doubt in my mind that that report requirement (by the Navy) would not be in there, wouldn’t exist if we had not been engaged in bringing witnesses forward and advocating this and writing about it and so forth,” said Mellon.
• Mellon called upon Congress to require an ‘all-source study’ by the Secretary of Defense, and promoted research into new forms of propulsion that might explain how these vehicles achieve such extraordinary power and maneuverability, as it pertains to national security. “[H]opefully (this attention) will force the Executive branch to get its act together… establish some accountability and force them to take a position in black and white, as opposed to just giving some briefings.”
• In less than three years, Mellon and Elizondo’s strategy has resulted in the US government admitting they take UAP seriously, reversing their decades-long denials of the fact, and the Senate Intelligence committee taking notice by asking for more information. “It’s a tremendous step forward,” said Mellon. “Regardless of what the phenomenon turns out to be in the end. At least now we can have some faith that a serious effort is going to be made to hold and analyze the data, probably implement a new collection strategy… So it has a lot of potential ramifications, all of them positive.”
Luis Elizondo
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) has requested that the Director of National
Chris Mellon
Intelligence organize research into Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP – aka UFOs) and provide a public report on what has been done thus far. It is an extraordinary move that further legitimizes a topic that has historically been relegated to mythological stories like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. However, the public did not know that there were those in the US military and intelligence communities who took the issue seriously and wanted more to be done to figure out what those UFOs are.
Leslie Kean
“We have an intelligence community for a reason, partly to support our military, partly to avoid strategic surprise, and the intelligence community was failing on both counts,” former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Chris Mellon told OpenMinds.tv in a recent interview. “The intelligence community was completely unresponsive, completely dropping the ball. I mean, it could be Russian, it could be Chinese, it could be something else.”
Bryan Bender
Mellon served for ten years as a Staff Director of the SSCI. From 1998 to 1999, he served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Security and Information Operations, and from 1999 to 2002, he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.
In a recent interview for a documentary called The Phenomenon, Mellon says his professional interest in the topic of UAP began with a request by astronaut Gordon Cooper.
Cooper was a part of the famed Mercury Seven, the first seven US astronauts to go into space. He claims to have had two UFO incidents. The first was in 1951. He claims his squadron of jet fighters chased a group of round objects that could stop mid-air and make instant 90 degree turns. He also claimed that in 1957 a crew he managed at Edwards Air Force base filmed a saucer-shaped object land on a dry lake bed and then take off again. He reviewed the film and reported it. The Air Force sent a courier to collect it. He never saw the film again.
the ‘Mercury Seven’
According to Mellon, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, Michael Cohen, tasked him to investigate the matter.
“Astronaut Cooper had spoken with the President,” Mellon says in The Phenomenon. “At a cabinet meeting, he raised this with Secretary Cohen, and then Cohen’s office called me and asked me to pursue this and chase it down.”
“The Air Force colonel that I spoke with got very frustrated, and when I asked him what happened to all of these records,” explained Mellon. “He said, ‘Well, that was all cleaned up or thrown out to save space.’ Something like that. It sounded ludicrous, but that’s what he told me.”
Mellon’s interest in the UFO topic was the focus of an article in The Huffington Post in May 2016 titled Is There a UFO Cover-up? A Government Insider Speaks Out. The article was written by Leslie Kean and was about Mellon joining a group of scientists interesting in developing a UFO monitoring system called UFODATA.
Kean was also one of The New York Times authors, along with Ralph Blumenthal and Helen Cooper, who broke the news in December 2017 that the Pentagon had run a secretive UFO program from 2007 to 2012 called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). The article’s primary source was Luis Elizondo, a former military intelligence official who claims he retired to get more attention to what he felt was important information regarding UFOs. He also claimed AATIP did not end in 2012 and that it continues to this day.
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Article by Dave Makichuk August 28, 2020 (asiatimes.com)
• The Pentagon and President Trump consider space to be a warfighting domain on par with land, air and sea. And the newly established US Space Command indeed faces a clear and present danger. China has already tested anti-satellite missiles, while Russia has deployed on-orbit systems that could threaten US satellites. America’s adversaries now have the ability to use jammers, ground-based lasers, ground- and space-based kinetic weapons, attack ground facilities that support space operations or even carry out a nuclear detonation in space.
• “As a geographical combatant command focused on the space domain, those are the things that keep us up at night,” says Army National Guard Major General Tim Lawson. But Lawson told the virtual audience at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Space Warfighting Industry Forum (on August 21st) that America has new capabilities are on the way to mitigate the threat. But these capabilities classified as “black budget” projects, and he can’t tell you about them.
• “A lot of times you listen to that threat picture and you kind of get a little dismayed at what you’re seeing, but then you look at our side and — trust me — we’ve got some things coming. So, it’s good news,” said Lawson.
• Lawson highlighted the need to have resilient space architectures that utilize large networks of small communications and intelligence-gathering satellites that would be less vulnerable to enemy attacks. “If you had hundreds of small satellites up there in a constellation … the enemy can take out quite a few of those and it will really never have an impact on us,” he said. “That really is the resiliency piece that we’re seeking out there and we need.” The ‘Spacecom’ command is also interested in developments in space logistics such as on-orbit refueling or servicing of satellites. Lawson says that if American industry could put assets into orbit to overwhelm adversaries’ ability to shoot them down, “it would be a game-changer”.
• But it’s not the first time a US president has launched a major military defense project in space. President Ronald Reagan envisioned a Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) as an array of space-based X-ray lasers would detect and deflect any nukes headed toward the United States. On March 23, 1983, Reagan called upon the US scientists who “gave us nuclear weapons to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.”
• But politicians and scientists argued that SDI was overambitious. Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy referred to it as Reagan’s ”reckless ‘Star Wars’ schemes.” The “Star Wars” moniker stuck. Over the course of 10 years, the government spent up to $30 billion on developing the concept without achieving operational status. It was scrapped by President Bill Clinton in 1993.
• [Editor’s Note] So where did this $30 billion go? By coincidence, the 1980’s was when the US Navy created and deployed its deep space fleet of eight oversized submarine-type warp drive spacecraft known as ‘Solar Warden’, unbeknownst to the public.
To say that officials at the newly established US Space Command face a clear and present danger, is an understatement.
Tim Lawson
America’s adversaries now have the ability to use jammers, ground-based lasers, ground- and space-based kinetic weapons, attack ground facilities that support space operations or even carry out a nuclear detonation in space.
Ronald Reagan
China has already tested anti-satellite missiles, while Russia has deployed on-orbit systems that could threaten US satellites.
But according to Army National Guard Major General Tim Lawson, new capabilities are on the way to mitigate the threat — he just can’t tell you about them, because they are classified under the umbrella of “black budget” projects.
“As a geographical combatant command focused on the space domain, those are the things that keep us up at night,” said Lawson, who made the remarks at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Space Warfighting Industry Forum, which was held virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sen. Edward Kennedy
“I would love to sit behind some closed doors and have this discussion on some of the things we really think we need,” Lawson said when asked about the types of capabilities Spacecom is seeking.
“A lot of times you listen to that threat picture and you kind of get a little dismayed at what you’re seeing, but then you look at our side and — trust me — we’ve got some things coming. So, it’s good news.”
Significant portions of the US military’s space programs are classified, making it difficult for outside observers to know what’s coming down the pike.
Meanwhile, Lawson highlighted the need to have resilient space architectures that utilize large networks of small communications and intelligence-gathering satellites that would be less vulnerable to enemy attacks.
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Article by Sarah Scoles February 29, 2020 (slate.com)
• A 2019 Gallup poll revealed that 68 percent of Americans believe that the government is hiding information about aliens and UFOs from the public. Thirty-three percent of respondents said that they believe UFOs are alien spacecraft from other worlds. So why then would the government lie about aliens? Sarah Scoles, the author of the book: They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers,offers perspective and possible answers.
• The government alone has the means, motive and opportunity to maintain a cover-up of aliens and UFOs. Even US presidents’ security clearances are need-to-know. On Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2014, Bill Clinton revealed that during his time in office, he’d asked his people to look into both Area 51 and the Roswell files. He was denied access to those secrets. When Kimmel asked whether Clinton would tell the public if he discovered that extraterrestrials, or ‘ET’, were here, Clinton replied, “yeah.” Is this simply part of the cover-up?
• The government’s primary means of cover-up is its authority to classify information, making it a crime to disclose to the public. Such secrets can be sequestered to massive military bases. The notoriously secretive Area 51 Air Force installation in Nevada spans 2.9 million acres – twice the size of Delaware. Military guards at Area 51 are authorized to use “deadly force” against civilians who try to storm the base. This is a lot of security for a base whose existence the Air Force denied until 2013. There must be something truly incredible going on inside there.
• The government has proven that it is adept at cover-ups. When the public rumor-mill heard about a “UFO” crash near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, the Air Force used this as a cover-up for what the crash “debris” really was – a spy balloon under the ‘top secret’ Project Mogul. The point is that the US government is not above resorting to decades-long cover-ups.
• Is the government’s motive to cover-up the ET presence due to a fear of hostile ETs, or the fear of benevolent ETs ushering in an era of peace? The existence of any sort of extraterrestrials would unite us Earthlings. It would transcend national borders as we contemplated our place in a galaxy possibly teeming with life. What if benevolent ETs brought us technologies like free energy devices, warp drive propulsion, self-contained life support systems and the blueprints for spaceships? Such a technological renaissance would be a high-tech respite from international conflict.
• But under such a benevolent scenario, those currently benefiting and making a fortune off of the fossil fuel energy status quo would oppose it. A truly global society could topple national-level leadership. While ET technology would be good for the little guy, it would negatively affect the ‘powers that be’. Or perhaps the ‘powers that be’ already have such alien technology and want to keep these only to themselves. Perhaps the government wants to hide free “zero-point energy” from the public to keep big companies in business, and therefore keep the people poor and dependent on them. Or maybe the US military wants to keep this advanced technology hidden from foreign nations, giving the US an unbeatable advantage.
• No one really knows how the public would actually react to the sudden existence of extraterrestrials. In 1953, the CIA sponsored a small group of scientists and military personnel to evaluate the national security risks UFOs. Known as the Robertson Panel report, these experts warned that the public’s revelation of the existence of extraterrestrials among us would give the Soviets an opening to sow mass hysteria and panic in the United States. This sort of reasoning concludes that such hysteria could result in ‘more spying, more assassinations, the dissolution of religion’ and an increase in radicalism. This gave the government a legitimate national interest to protect.
• Alternatively, these extraterrestrials could represent an apocalyptic threat as in the movies War of the Worlds, Independence Day, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. Or maybe these aliens are benign or anti-social, and the government has determined that we are simply better off without them without making a big deal about it. The possible answers to why the government would choose to cover up the extraterrestrial presence spans a whole spectrum: They’d cause too much peace, make too much chaos, give too many people too much technology, or they’d just be a real disappointment. Believers can choose the one that makes most sense to them or tick off “all of the above.” But all of this has one certain result – there is enough of a narrative here to give ET/UFO conspiracists solid ground to support their conspiracy theories.
If you think the government has more information about UFOs than it’s letting on, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re in the majority. A 2019 Gallup poll revealed 68 percent of people feel that way. Thirty-three percent of all respondents said that they believe UFOs were built by aliens from outer space.
The Venn diagram center of those two groups clings to one of the most enduring conspiracy theories: The Government (it’s always with a capital G for believers) is squirreling away information about alien spacecraft. This idea appears, and has for years, on internet forums, social media, TV shows, memes, movies, and, of course, fiction, like Max Barry’s “It Came From Cruden Farm.”
Almost as interesting as any government secret is why it’s kept secret. And for alien UFOs, the conspiratorial answers span a whole spectrum: They’d cause too much peace, make too much chaos, give too many people too much technology, or, maybe—as is the case in Barry’s story—just be a real disappointment. Because the why here has so many potential answers, believers can choose the one that makes most sense to them or tick off “all of the above.”
Even powerful politicians, it turns out, think there may be more to the saucer story than meets the public eye. That’s why, when presidents become presidents, sometimes they, too, take an interest in the extraterrestrial. On Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2014, for instance, Bill Clinton revealed that during his time in office, he’d asked his people to look into both the Area 51 and Roswell files. “If you saw that there were aliens there, would you tell us?” Kimmel asked.
“Yeah,” said Clinton. (But if you’re inclined to believe in a cover-up, isn’t this affirmative just further evidence of disinformation?)
The president in Max Barry’s story similarly uses his power to seek out ufological secrets—immediately after his inauguration. The Air Force chief of staff, to the president’s surprise but perhaps not the reader’s, confesses that, yes, there is a specimen from space. It is, just as last year’s would-be raiders suspected, tucked away inside Area 51, a notoriously secretive Air Force installation in Nevada, whose existence wasn’t officially acknowledged till 2013 (although, you know, we knew).
It makes a certain sense that in this story, and in popular consciousness, the government holds these celestial secrets. After all, it alone meets the classic criteria of guilt: Means. Motive. Opportunity. Those elements make the conspiratorial conviction feel juuuust plausible enough. And if a hypothetical narrative is juuuust plausible enough, adherents have juuuust enough ground to remain standing on it—which is part of why this conspiracy theory has long, sturdy legs.
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Article by George Knapp November 4, 2019 (8newsnow.com)
• When former Nevada Senator Harry Reid was the Majority Leader, he was the go-to guy when it came to UFOs. When Bill Clinton was still president, Reid discussed UFOs with him during a White House visit. Reid told George Knapp that the truth behind UFOs was “something (Bill Clinton) was interested in”. In 2016, Hillary Clinton vowed to open up the Pentagon’s UFO files if elected. The Clintons still seek out Reid for his advice on UFOs.
• Reid had similar conversations with other national figures during his years in the Senate, including Senators Ted Stevens and Daniel Inouye, and former astronaut John Glenn. Knapp, a KLAS-TV Channel 8 reporter in Las Vegas (a CBS-affiliate), asked Reid what specifically John Glenn was interested in about UFOs. Reid said that Glenn remained tight-lipped about the subject, but he was “very interested”. “I didn’t want to push him,” said Reid.
• Bigelow Aerospace was the Nevada contractor who spearheaded Reid’s initial government sponsored UFO study. After that contract ended, Reid, along with Senators Stevens and Inouye appropriated funding for a scaled-down Pentagon UFO program in 2007 called Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP. In 2010, Lue Elizondo became the point man for AATIP. Now the Pentagon denies that Elizondo ever worked there.
• UFO critics have pounced on the claim that Elizondo never worked for a Pentagon UFO project. Reid says he’s not surprised. Reid says that there is a fringe group who want to control the UFO narrative, the “so-called conspiratorial folks”. “They go online and try to belittle Elizondo and me and anybody else that is trying to (figure out the UFO stuff) in a scientific way,” says Reid. “Elizondo is a man with a great record serving our country and …he’s not backing off. And I appreciate that very much.”
• Although the Pentagon says AATIP ended in 2012, Reid is informed that the program is ongoing, with greater resources than it had before. And the US Navy has announced that it will encourage UFO encounter reports by pilots, indicating that the subject is no longer taboo. The ongoing wave of media interest has even convinced Reid’s most formidable skeptic – his wife who admitted, “[M]aybe you aren’t crazy after all.”
• [Editor’s Note] I’ll bet that the “conspiratorial folks” are even more nervous about how close Harry Reid is with Deep State toadies like Bill and Hillary Clinton.
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Former Nevada Senator Harry Reid says he’s enthusiastic about reaction to a once-secret study of UFOs that Reid and congressional colleagues authorized more than a decade ago.
The last two years have seen an explosion of interest in UFOs among mainstream media, but there’s been push back from conspiracy enthusiasts, and some military officials.
astronaut and senator John Glenn
When Bill and Hillary Clinton came to Las Vegas in May to speak to a large audience on the Las Vegas Strip, their first stop was the Henderson home of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. It’s the same path followed by many Democratic politicians and presidential candidates who visit Nevada, seeking guidance from the retired, but still-crafty senator.
Reid and the Clinton”s share an interest in a controversial subject — UFOs. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Hillary Clinton vowed to open up the Pentagon’s UFO files. And when Bill Clinton was still president, Reid asked him about UFOs during one White House visit.
Lue Elizondo
George Knapp: “You discussed it with Bill Clinton. Don’t know if we can talk about this?”
Harry Reid: “Yeah, yeah Bill is, one thing about President Clinton, no one ever said he wasn’t smart. He was and is an extremely intelligent man, and this is something he was interested in.”
Reid was cagey about whether the Clintons discussed UFOs during their recent visit, but told us the subject is definitely on the agenda for their next get together. Reid had similar conversations with other national figures during his years in the senate, including Senators Ted Stevens and Daniel Inouye, who lent their support to the creation of a secret Pentagon study of UFOs, as well as senator and former astronaut John Glenn.
Knapp: “Did he ever give you specifics about why?”
Reid: “Nope, nope, but he, I didn’t want to push him, but he was very interested.”
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• Have U.S. Presidents believed in the existence of UFOs?
• Jimmy Carter, in Georgia in 1969, along with 25 other men, saw a light in the western sky coming toward them. As it came closer, he could see the lights above the pine trees changing colors from blue to red to white. It remained for a while and then sped away to the west. When he became President in 1977, he asked NASA to investigate UFOs. NASA declined.
• In 1974, before Ronald Reagan became President (in 1981), he and others were flying in a plane when they saw a “big light” flying alongside the plane until it sped off and disappeared. Reagan was quoted as saying, “We followed it for several minutes. It was a bright white light. We followed it to Bakersfield and all of a sudden, to our utter amazement, it went straight up into the heavens.”
• When Bill Clinton became President in 1993, he ordered a review of the Roswell NM (UFO crash) documents, and any material on Area 51 (Nevada) “to make sure there was no alien down there”, said Clinton. But Bill Clinton does think there’s a good chance that extraterrestrial life does exist out in the universe and pointed out that many planets outside of our solar system might be able to support life. “It makes it increasingly less likely that we’re alone,” said Clinton.
• In 2007, before he was elected President in 2008, Barack Obama was asked about his thoughts on “life beyond Earth.” “I don’t know and I don’t presume to know.” Was his response. During Obama’s Presidency, the government declassified over 60 documents from the 1960s and 1970s regarding Area 51. In 2015, Obama stated, “People always ask me about Roswell and the aliens and UFOs, and it turns out the stuff going on that’s top secret isn’t nearly as exciting as you expect.” “In this day and age, it’s not as top secret as you’d think.”
• With regard to Donald Trump’s views on UFOs and extraterrestrials, the closest to an answer came from White House correspondent Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “Somehow (the UFO issue) hasn’t come up in our back-and-forth over the last couple days,” said Sanders. “But I will check into that and be happy to circle back.” (And we’re still waiting.)
Do you believe there are UFOs in the universe? If so, you’re not alone. Many people are believers, including some U.S. presidents.
Yes, you read that correctly — some presidents really believe in UFOs — and we’re here to tell you which ones do. Keep reading to find out if Donald Trump is a believer and make sure you learn about some other presidents’ opinions on this very controversial subject.
1. Jimmy Carter — a believer?
According to Mashable, Jimmy Carter sighted a UFO in Georgia in 1969 — before he became president.
“I was outside a school lunch room one night right before sundown. It was getting dark and we were getting ready to eat supper. And I and about 25 men were standing around and all of a sudden in the western sky we saw a strange light coming toward us, a round light,” said Carter.
“It got closer and closer and right above the pine trees it stopped and then it began to change colors from blue, to red, to white. Then it stayed there for a while. We were all aghast. We didn’t know what it was. And then it just disappeared into the west. That was the end of it.”
“I have never thought and still don’t think it is possible for creatures from Mars to visit us and then come back home,” said Carter. But was that true? You decide.
2. Jimmy Carter asked NASA to look into UFOs
Whatever Jimmy Carter saw in 1969 in Georgia obviously stuck with him. During his presidency, he asked NASA to investigate UFOs, said Leslie Kean, investigative journalist and author of the book UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record.
“Carter made a request through his science advisor Frank Press in 1977 asking NASA to look into UFOs, Even though the request came from the highest office in the land, NASA declined,” said Kean.
3. Bill Clinton
When Bill Clinton appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2014, he talked about what he thought of aliens and UFOs, according to Mashable. Clinton said he thought the White House would get a lot of mail on the Area 51 Roswell incident anniversary, so he had all of the Roswell documents reviewed. “First I had people go look at the records on Area 51 to make sure there was no alien down there,” Clinton said on the show.
Clinton also said he thinks there’s a good chance that other life does exist out in the universe and pointed out that many planets outside of our solar system might be able to support life. “It makes it increasingly less likely that we’re alone,” said Clinton.
4. Hillary Clinton
Although she’s not a president, Hillary Clinton is married to a former one and she was Democrat nominee for president in the 2016 election. And, according to Mashable, she wants to know what’s out there. She, like her husband, went on Jimmy Kimmel Live and told the world she’d try to delve into government files pertaining to UFO sightings.
“I would like us to go into those files and hopefully make as much of that public as possible. If there’s nothing there, let’s tell people there’s nothing there,” said Clinton. “If there is something there, unless it’s a threat to national security, I think we ought to share it with the public.”
5. Donald Trump
When Jordan Fabian, a White House correspondent, asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders about a UFO report that appeared in The New York Times, he also asked her whether Donald Trump believes in UFOs — and if he had planned to fund the Pentagon program again. As Fabian finished speaking, something began playing on his phone. “I don’t know if that’s a coincidence or not,” said Sanders. “I feel like I already want to pass on this question given that you have aliens sitting among you.”
Sanders eventually told Fabian that she hadn’t asked Trump about his feeling regarding UFOs, according to Vanity Fair. “Somehow that . . . hasn’t come up in our back-and-forth over the last couple days,” she said. “But I will check into that and be happy to circle back,” said Sanders.
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• When Bill Clinton became President in 1992, he appointed his friend, Webster Hubbell, Associate Attorney General and tasked him with finding out what there was to know about the JFK assassination and the UFO phenomenon.
• In Hubbell’s 1997 memoir, Friends in High Places, he relates that CIA chief James Woolsey provided Hubbell with information that the CIA had run two projects to study whether UFO were a threat to national security. The official determination was that UFOs did not pose a threat to national security, and that’s where it ended. Hubbell was allowed no information at all on the JFK assassination.
• Hubble concluded that there are “unacknowledged special access projects” within the US government that officials will not reveal, and that a “secret government wing” holds classified information that even the President is not privy to.
• [Editor’s note] This is the notorious “Deep State” that is keeping secrets.
President Bill Clinton tried to discover the truth about the assassination of JFK and UFOs while he was in office. Mr Clinton asked Webster Hubbell, his associate attorney general, to find out all he could about two of the world’s biggest conspiracy theories – that more people than Lee Harvey Oswald were involving in killing his predecessor John F Kennedy, and the US Government has covered up for years the fact that aliens have visited Earth.
According to his memoir Friends in High Places, Mr Hubbell hit a brick wall at every turn.
He was unable to find out anything more about the death of JFK.
Thousands of files made public by the CIA about the death late last year were not handed over.
And, while he was able to get the disclosure of some files on US interest in UFOs, there was no smoking gun evidence that aliens conspiracy theorists are seeking.
Mr Hubble concluded that a “secret government wing” holds all such data, that even the President is not privy to.
Mr Hubbell wrote that the two tasks given to him by Mr Clinton were to resolve the mysteries surrounding the murder of JFK and to get to the bottom of the understanding of the government on UFO sightings.
His conclusion of a secret government wing appears to tally with the claims of conspiracy theorists, like the Paradigm Research Group (PRG), which campaigns for alien disclosure that there are “unacknowledged special access projects” within the US government, that are not only top secret but not even admitted to.
However, Mr Hubbell was given some information on UFOs from the then CIA chief James Woolsey. Mr Woolsey revealed the agency had run two projects named ‘Project SIGN’ and ‘Project SAUCER’ to access whether if UFO sightings were a threat to national security.
The inquiries concluded there was no such threat.
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“I think we may already have been visited.” Hillary Clinton
UPDATE:
Dear Readers: Since this news release ZNN has learned that Hillary Clinton may be facing FBI indictments on suspected use of her personal email server for storage of classified files.
In a Jan 25/16 article by DRUDGE – it states: “The FBI is ready to indict Hillary Clinton and if its recommendation isn’t followed by the U.S. attorney general, the agency’s investigators plan to blow the whistle and go public with their findings, former U.S. House Majority leader Tom DeLay tells Newsmax TV.”The tactic of ET talk on the part of Hillary is either a ploy on her part along with Bill Clinton and campaign manager John Podesta – possibly an effort to dismantle FBI charges with an even bigger issue or… it’s her Waterloo.
Because of the cowardice and incompetence of NBC News during the Democratic Debate on Sunday Jan 18/16, birthing their pathetic failure to question Ms. Clinton on her remarks about the UFO/ET matter or about the possible FBI indictments – it appears the contrived denial in major US news media to face the fact that she did make these UFO/ET statements, once again has come into play in the same way they ignored John Podesta’s public statements on ET Disclosure. They’ll get the point soon if the clever Podesta has anything to do with it.
This disingenuous posture on the part of NBC, and the likes of CBS and ABC, which leads them to patently ignore these matters, is a testament to their complicity and fatuous existence as provocateurs of mendacity and complicity and not news. [Ed. Note]
Toronto [ZNN] Momentum is growing in Washington DC amidst the stunning announcement by Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton that she will investigate the UFO issue if elected President.
Jennifer Harper of the Washington Times today published a new rendering of the Clinton statement on the UFO/ET matter and as she points out, international interest in Hillary Clinton’s statements on UFOs is heating up.
Harper writes, “In a casual conversation with the Conway Daily Sun, a local paper, Mrs. Clinton vowed, ‘Yes, I’m going to get to the bottom of it.’ She [Clinton] later added, ‘I think we may already have been visited. We don’t know for sure.’ Mrs. Clinton also suggested that a future task force could be assembled to investigate Area 51, a top secret military installation in Nevada long rumored to have had dealings with UFOs.” It does not get much more blunt than that, coming from a former US Secretary of State and now Presidential candidate.
Hillary Clinton with Conway Daily Sun
reporter Daymond Steer
One can only speculate on why Clinton is taking such a bold stand on the UFO/ET matter just before the first major Primary in New Hampshire in February. The Clinton’s connection to UFOs is a matter of history of which few are familiar.
Hillary Clinton’s close association with Laurance S. Rockefeller regarding that philanthropist’s demands of then President Bill Clinton to end UFO secrecy and her husband’s public opinions on Extraterrestrials that surfaced on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, clearly demonstrate this is not the first time Ms. Clinton has come face to face with the UFO/ET issue.
Even more perplexing, John Podesta former White House Chief of Staff under President Bill Clinton, who is Hillary Clinton’s current campaign manager, has already made two publicly challenging and provocative statements aimed directly at the US government. At the Washington DC National Press Club in 2002 and 2003 he demanded that the US government tell the American people what it knows about UFOs.
John Podesta
Podesta stated:
“It’s time to open the books on questions that have remained in the dark, on the question of government investigations of UFOs. It’s time to find out what the truth really is that’s out there. We ought to do it, really, because it’s right, because the American people, quite frankly, can handle the truth, and we ought to do it because it’s the law.”
Furthermore, in a now famous Tweet in March of 2015, Podesta also admitted his greatest failure while in the White House was that he did not achieve the release of UFO files.
The confluence of these multiple and eerie converging lines of evidence during an increasingly derisive Presidential campaign appear to be setting the stage for a massive explosion of questions both on the campaign trail and internationally about why a 2016 Democratic Presidential Candidate – her campaign manager and her husband have now publicly engaged their previous and current interest in the UFO/ET matter.
What will fellow Democrats and Donald Trump say about this turn of events spawned by the Clinton-Podesta triumvirate?
Jennifer Harper goes on to say, “It did not take long for the global media to pick up on the exchange. The British press in particular have seized upon the story, which also has a role for former President Bill Clinton – who joins his wife on the campaign trail this week – and former [Obama] White House adviser John Podesta.”
It is common knowledge in Washington DC that what Hillary wants – Hillary gets… UFO Disclosure?
John Podesta’s candid admission on Feb 13, his last day as Counselor to President Obama, that his biggest failure was to secure disclosure of UFO files raises many questions. The dominant response by the mainstream media has been to ignore questions of who, what, why a senior White House advisor was denied access to UFO files, and focus instead on Podesta’s long history of a fascination with the X-Files TV series. The Washington Post, UPI,The Hill, etc., have all made Podesta’s admission on Twitter a personal issue about his X-Files fascination, rather a serious policy issue concerning information denied to the White House.
For those that missed it, here’s what Podesta said on Friday:
my biggest failure of 2014: Once again not securing the #disclosure of the UFO files.
Podesta was a major fan of the “X-Files” television show. Our colleague Karen Tumulty asked him in 2007 about the FOIA jam at the library, and Podesta, through a spokesman, replied: “The truth is out there.” That’s the show’s tag line.
Amy Connolly of UPI writes: “In a nod to the long-running television show The X-Files, Podesta, who has had a longtime fascination with all things extraterrestrial, tweeted using hashtag #thetruthisstilloutthere.”
John Podesta’s biggest regret on leaving the White House is not proving Fox Mulder right… The humorous tweet about his time in office came in a list of his top 10 moments over the last year,
Here are just a few who, what, why questions the above writers didn’t bother asking.
Podesta’s admission came on his White House Twitter feed while he was discussing initiatives related to his official responsibility of overseeing climate change and energy policy for the White House. Did Podesta attempt to gain access to classified UFO files possessed by one or more government entities due to its relevance to his official duties?
His admission suggests that UFO information has relevance to climate change and/or energy policy. If so, does that mean that UFOs are indeed interplanetary spacecraft that use energy sources far more advanced than anything offered by the fossil fuel industry?
If UFO information has relevance to energy policy, then why wasn’t Podesta able to gain access despite having all the power of the White House behind him? What government entity can deny access to information requested by a senior advisor to a sitting President in the performance of his official duties?
Thankfully, there are some in mainstream media willing to explore such questions. CNET writer Chris Matyszczyk asks:
Is it possible that both the president and Podesta know more than they (are allowed to) let on? If your answer is yes, that leaves us to speculate on why they’re not revealing it. Is it because we’d be frightened? Or is it because our belief systems would become so displaced that what remains of our social cohesion would dissolve?
These are just a few of the more obvious who, what, why questions raised by Podesta’s admission. Unfortunately, much of the mainstream media isn’t asking them because it is treating his admission as wry X-Files humor. We are basically being told that the Twitter revelation of a senior White House advisor is not something to take seriously.
Podesta’s involvement in a number of earlier attempts to learn the truth about classified UFO files points to a different conclusion. He was very serious. As a counselor to President Obama, with all the power that position conveys, he was still unable to pierce the veil of secrecy surrounding classified UFO files.
Podesta’s earlier involvement in a failed attempt by the Clinton administration to gain access to classified UFO files is well documented. FOIA documents gained by Canadian UFO researcher Grant Cameron detail a timeline involving President Clinton and Hillary Clinton seeking information from deceased billionaire Laurence Rockefeller on the topic. Strategies were developed for how the Clinton White House could gain access.
Podesta was involved in one of these strategies. The passage of Executive Order 12958 aimed at streamlining declassification of thousands of national security files, and involving the White House in the process. The goal was to shake loose some of the classified files hidden away in the national security archives of various U.S. government entities and corporate contractors and see if any could cast light on the UFO phenomenon. Podesta became Chief of Staff to Clinton, yet despite all the power available to him then, and to the President himself, access to UFO files was denied.
If a sitting President and his most senior advisors can’t access UFO related information relevant to policies being developed, then who is the real power behind the throne? Surely that’s a question worth a serious investigation by the Fourth Estate.
Cooper was a part of the famed Mercury Seven, the first seven US astronauts to go into space. He claims to have had two UFO incidents. The first was in 1951. He claims his squadron of jet fighters chased a group of round objects that could stop mid-air and make instant 90 degree turns. He also claimed that in 1957 a crew he managed at Edwards Air Force base filmed a saucer-shaped object land on a dry lake bed and then take off again. He reviewed the film and reported it. The Air Force sent a courier to collect it. He never saw the film again.
raised this with Secretary Cohen, and then Cohen’s office called me and asked me to pursue this and chase it down.”
John Podesta’s candid admission on Feb 13, his last day as