Tag: Congress

Harry Reid Pushing For More UFO Research

by Niels Lesniewski                      January 10, 2019                   (rollcall.com)

• On January 10th, former Nevada Senator and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told KNPR radio that he was scheduled to talk with an important senator about setting up a way for members of the military to support exploring UFO and USO (unidentified submerged objects) sightings without facing retribution. “I personally don’t know if there exists little green men… but I do believe that the information we have indicates we should do a lot more study,” the Nevada Democrat said.

• “What we found in the past is that these pilots, when they see something strange like this, they’re prone not to report it for fear that the bosses will think something’s wrong with them, and they don’t get the promotion,” Reid said. “So, many, many times they don’t say a word to anybody about these strange things.”

• “The facts are, they need a place to be able to report this, and that’s what I’m going to work on in a couple of hours, to make sure that somebody I think’s a powerful member in Congress, I want him to be able to sit down and talk to some of these pilots who have seen these things,” Reid said. “I can arrange this because of the contacts I have with members of the Congress.”

• Although Reid declined to identify the US Senator to whom he referred, Reid’s former deputy, Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., happens to be the ranking member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

• Reid recalled how he lobbied the leaders of the Senate Appropriation’s Defense Subcommittee to get money for a Pentagon UFO research project, which the New York Times reported in December 2017. He related how the late Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, was entirely on board because of a suspicious aircraft he cited during his own time as military pilot. “Frankly, I think the federal government has done almost nothing to help us with this,” Reid said.

• In the radio interview, Reid also confirmed his knowledge about a notorious secret base in Nevada. “Oh sure, I’ve been to Area 51. …I know Area 51 quite well. I know what they’ve done there.”

 

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is lobbying his former colleagues to do more to study unidentified flying objects.

“I personally don’t know if there exists little green men other places, I kind of doubt that, but I do believe that the information we have indicates we should do a lot more study,” the Nevada Democrat said. “We have hundreds and hundreds of people that have seen the same thing — something in the sky, it moves a certain way.”

Reid said that also included sightings of vessels at sea.

The topic of UFOs was on Reid’s mind Thursday because his interview with KNPR came just before he said he was scheduled to talk with an important senator about setting up a way for members of the military to support exploring suspicious sightings without facing retribution.

       Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill.

“I’m going to have a call with a member of the Senate in an hour or two where we have people in the military who want to come and tell somebody what they’ve seen,” Reid said in the interview, declining to identify who that senator is. (Food for thought: Reid’s former deputy, Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., is the ranking member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.)

“What we found in the past is that these pilots, when they see something strange like this, they’re prone not to report it for fear that the bosses will think something’s wrong with them, and they don’t get the promotion,” he said. “So, many, many times they don’t say a word to anybody about these strange things.”

“The facts are, they need a place to be able to report this, and that’s what I’m going to work on in a couple of hours, to make sure that somebody I think’s a powerful member in Congress, I want him to be able to sit down and talk to some of these pilots who have seen these things,” Reid said. “I can arrange this because of the contacts I have with members of the Congress.”

Back in December 2017, the New York Times reported on a Pentagon program to study UFO sightings that came about because of Reid’s advocacy back when he was serving in the Senate.

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U.S. Spent $22 Million on Secret Project to Identify Threats in Space (38 program titles)

by Adam Kredo                       January 17, 2019                        (freebeacon.com)

• In response to The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) filing of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, on January 16th the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released to the FAS a list of 38 titles of research papers that had already been provided to Congress in January 2018. Only the list of titles were released, not the research papers themselves. (see the list of titles here)

• The research papers were generated as a part of a $22 million DIA program (the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program which the NY Times reported in December 2017) that ran from 2007 to 2012 with the goal of combating possible threats from space, including those of an alien form.

• The underlying 38 research programs, “many of which are highly conjectural and well beyond the boundaries of current science, engineering, or military intelligence,” according FAS, have all been shut down. Titles of the research programs provided include, “Invisibility Cloaking,” “Traversable Wormholes,” “Antigravity Aerospace Applications,” and “Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions.”

• The secret program “was apparently initiated at the behest of then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, with most of the funding directed to a Nevada constituent of his,” FAS reported in its newsletter.

[Editor’s Note] It is significant that this list of ATIP research titles were released and officially acknowledged by the DIA because it confirms that they actually exist. Until now, the list was known as a leaked document with uncertain authenticity. This also confirms the authenticity of the two actual research papers that were leaked by Corey Goode in 2017. A DIA FOIA officer noted with some exasperation that yesterday’s release of the list of research papers will, in all likelihood, prompt a flood of new FOIA requests for each of the listed papers.  The question is, were these individual research programs actually shut down?  Or were they replaced by similar covert research projects under different names?

 

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency disclosed this week that, from 2007 to 2012, it spent $22 million on bizarre science projects aimed at tracking and identifying potential threats in space.

The DIA this week made public the names of 38 research projects “funded by the program, many of which are highly conjectural and well beyond the boundaries of current science, engineering—or military intelligence,” according to the Federation of American Scientists, or FAS, which filed freedom of information requests to unearth the information.

The programs—all of which have now been shutdown—range from the theoretically possible to the completely farfetched. Such titles include, “Invisibility Cloaking,” “Traversable Wormholes,” “Antigravity Aerospace Applications,” and “Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions,” among others.

“The DIA list of research papers, marked for Official Use Only, was previously provided to Congress in January 2018. It was publicly released yesterday under the Freedom of Information Act,” according to FAS. The overall goal of the program was to combat possible threats from space, including those of an alien form.

The secret program “was apparently initiated at the behest of then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, with most of the funding directed to a Nevada constituent of his,” FAS reported in its newsletter.

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Pence Briefed on Space Force Proposal at Pentagon Meeting

by Sandra Erwin                    December 19, 2018                        (spacenews.com)

• On Tuesday December 18th,Vice President Mike Pence announced President Trump’s Pentagon directive to establish a four star U.S. Space Command. While at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida on Tuesday, Pence said, “We’re working as we speak with leaders in both parties in Congress to stand up the United States Space Force before the end of 2020.”

• On Wednesday, VP Pence was at the Pentagon to receive a briefing on space operations and cyber defense. One of the topics was the Pentagon’s draft proposal, named SPD-4, establishing a Space Force as a sixth separate military branch. The directive is being finalized and could be signed by the president shortly after the new year.

• The SPD-4 directive would instruct Department of Defense to submit a legislative proposal on how the new service would be organized and a budget request. Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan said to reporters, “We’re right now in final coordination in the building on the legislative proposal.”

• The Space Force will most likely be initially organized under the Department of the Air Force. This approach would be less costly and more likely to get congressional support, experts said. The Air Force had already included an Air Force Space Command. Under this construct, Space Force would still meet the criteria to be considered a sixth service, said Thomas Taverney, the former vice commander of the Air Force Space Command.

• The Pentagon could keep costs under control by making the Space Force a leaner organization that does not require multiple layers of bureaucracy to get things done, Taverney said. “Maybe we can come up with a more efficient way to set up the organization.”

• One part of the plan that is still unresolved is the establishment of a preliminary Space Development Agency to accelerate innovation and insertion of commercial technology into space programs. Its functions and makeup have not yet been decided. A study team will have 60 days to complete this task. “What is it going to be? An overarching policy organization? A separate acquisition organization? Or a new acquisition organization that takes pieces from the others?” Taverney asked.

• Air Force brass is pushing for Fred Kennedy, the director of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA) Tactical Technology Office, to head the Space Development Agency. Kennedy has past experience working at the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center and has ‘space acquisition’ expertise.

[Editor’s Note]   It now appears that the Deep State tentacles of the Air Force and DARPA are creeping into the creation and control of this supposedly “separate sixth branch of the military”. Is this the ‘Space Force’ that President Trump intended?

 

Vice President Mike Pence visited the Pentagon on Wednesday to receive a briefing on space operations and cyber defense. One of the topics was the proposal the Pentagon is drafting to establish a Space Force as a separate military branch.

Speaking with reporters shortly before Pence arrived at the Pentagon Wednesday morning, Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said the establishment of a Space Force was one item on the agenda. “We’re going to talk to him about a number of projects going on here in the building,” Shanahan said, according to a pool report.

Pence came to the Pentagon one day after announcing that President Trump directed the Defense Department to establish U.S. Space Command as a four-star combatant command. Speaking on Tuesday at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, Pence said Trump will also sign a new space policy directive in the coming days that will lay out plans and a timeline to create a U.S. Space Force as a sixth branch of the armed forces. “We’re working as we speak with leaders in both parties in Congress to stand up the United States Space Force before the end of 2020,” said Pence.

The new space policy directive, named SPD-4, is the fourth major space policy action by the Trump administration. According to sources, the directive is being finalized and could be signed by the president shortly after the new year. The policy memo would instruct DoD to submit a legislative proposal on how the new service would be organized and a budget request. The National Space Council, led by Pence, has been in back and forth coordination with DoD on the legislative proposal.

Shanahan told reporters on Wednesday that the legislative proposal has not yet been shared with Congress. “We’re right now in final coordination in the building on the legislative proposal,” he said. “I think we’re still on the timeline. We’ve kind of all talked about it.”

DoD sources said the Space Force proposal will likely recommend organizing the new branch initially under the Department of the Air Force. This would make the Space Force comparable to the Marine Corps, which is part of the Department of the Navy. This approach would be less costly and more likely to get congressional support, experts said.

Organizing the Space Force under the Department of the Air Force is “probably the most logical way to solve this in the near term, said Thomas Taverney, a retired Air Force major general who served as vice commander of Air Force Space Command.

The Space Force under this construct would still meet the criteria to be considered a sixth service, Taverney told SpaceNews.

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Why hasn’t Google Updated Images of a Military Base in 8 Years?

by Susan Leighton                      November 4, 2018                     (1428elm.com)

• Google Earth images had not updated the images of the Tonopah Test Range, located 70 miles from Area 51 in Nevada, for over eight years – until just recently. Many believe that the secretive military installation is the proving grounds for the development of alien technology and re-engineering of otherworldly aircraft.

• Nick Pope, the former head of the Ministry of Defense’s UFO program in the U.K., appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News to discuss the Tonopah Test Range blind spot on Google Earth. (see 5 minute video below) The question was raised that if Roswell involved a derelict weather balloon, and not a UFO crash as the government continues to assert, then why so are there still so many documents pertaining to UFOs from 50 years ago that remain classified? What “military secrets” are associated with downed weather balloons?

• Pope says that Congress is starting to ask questions. The Senate Armed Services Committee is officially looking into the Navy videos of UFOs that were made public in December of 2017, and the House Armed Services Committee is researching the Pentagon’s AATIP program that also made headlines at that time. Pope also contends that President Trump must have some information on extraterrestrial UFOs, as it is rumored that this is why the “Space Force” is being created.

 

UFOs have captured the minds of the American public since the Roswell crash in 1947. With the recent exposure of the government’s Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program and the compelling evidence that unidentified aerial phenomenon does exist the interest has intensified.

Nick Pope, former head of the Ministry of Defense’s UFO program in the U.K. appeared on Fox News to discuss an unexplained blind spot on Google Earth images. This lack of information lasted over an 8-year period of time. The location in question is the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada.

What is intriguing about this scenario is the fact that the Test Range is located 70 miles away from Area 51. For over 7 decades, Americans have believed that the secretive military installation is the proving grounds for the development of alien technology and re-engineering of otherworldly aircraft.

What is Google Earth hiding? More importantly, are they being directed to do this? There will always be conspiracy theorists and in fact, Tonopah is probably classified and off the grid because we test our experimental airplanes there as well as our latest military weapons.

5 minute video of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson interviewing Nick Pope

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Do Aliens Exist? Blink 182 Co-Founder and Ex-Pentagon Official Are Determined to Prove We’re Not Alone

by Keith Kloor                    September 20, 2018                       (newsweek.com)

• On July 29th, Luis Elizondo, the former career military intelligence official in charge of the Pentagon’s UFO research program from 2007 to 2012 and current member of rock star Tom DeLonge’s ‘To The Stars Academy’, spoke at the annual Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) Symposium at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

• Elizondo’s background is typical of a straight-arrow military officer with a distinguished career. He is the son of a Cuban exile who participated in the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Elizondo worked as a bouncer while attending the University of Miami. After graduating in 1995, he joined the Army and trained to be a military spy. Later, at the Pentagon, Elizondo showed no sign of being a disgruntled employee, spending much of his career chasing militants in South America and the Middle East.

• In 2010, Elizondo was made the head of a small group within the Pentagon charged with investigating reports of “unexplained aerial phenomena” – a less controversial term for UFOs. It was an ¬obscure, low-budget initiative created in 2007 at the behest of then-Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, and operated jointly by Elizondo and Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace. But the results of their UFO investigations made Elizondo a true believer. Although the Pentagon program was officially shut down in 2012, Elizondo insists it remains ongoing.

• Elizondo resigned from the Pentagon in October 2017 protesting what he considered lackluster support and unnecessary secrecy. “Why aren’t we spending more time and effort on this (UFO) issue?” Elizondo wrote to Defense Secretary James Mattis in his resignation letter, “Despite overwhelming evidence at both the classified and unclassified levels, certain individuals in the Department (of Defense) remain staunchly opposed to further research on what could be a tactical threat to our pilots, sailors, and soldiers, and perhaps even an existential threat to our national security.”

• When Tom DeLonge launched ‘To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science’ in October 2017, Elizondo joined and quickly became its public face. Its mission: to advance UFO research, produce science-fiction-themed entertainment about UFOs and, with luck, glean some insight into the super-advanced technology displayed by UFOs (such as spaceships that can seemingly defy gravity) that the Pentagon keeps ignoring. Over the past year, the Academy claims to have attracted more than 2,000 investors and raised roughly $2.5 million.

• ‘To The Stars Academy’ also boasts such heavy-hitters as Chris Mellon, the former deputy ¬assistant secretary of defense for intelligence during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations who had oversight of the Pentagon’s super-¬secret ‘special access programs’ and highly classified ‘black operations’; Jim Semivan, a 25-year veteran of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service; and Hal Puthoff an electrical engineer who conducted controversial research on psychic abilities for the CIA and the DIA.

• The $22 million Pentagon UFO project marked the first time that the U.S. government admitted to studying UFOs since the Air Force’s ‘Project Blue Book’ was shut down in 1968. Despite Senator Reid’s assertion in an interview with New York magazine that “we have hundreds and ¬hundreds of papers… 80 percent at least, is public,” and Mellon’s statement in Washington Post op-ed, that referred to a “growing body of empirical data,” Elizondo says that much of these “large volumes” of academic studies and data are “FOIA-exempt,” meaning the public is not given access to them.

• There are those in the UFO community who are skeptical of DeLonge’s motives. They believe he simply wants to profit off his UFO-related books, websites and merchandise, and that his antics are part of the business plan.

• As the Academy’s head of Global Security and Special Programs, Elizondo serves as a liaison to the government, including Congress, the Pentagon and the intelligence services. Elizondo thinks that the next six months or so will be pivotal to the success of ‘To the Stars’ when he expects to be able to present more data on UFO sightings. “I’m not worried about credibility,” Elizondo says. “I’m worried about facts.” Reminded that the only facts the public has now are grainy videos, he insists, “There is data. It’s not out yet.”

• Elizondo understands why many remain dubious. “I get it. I’m a career spy,” he says.” “No, I am not running a government disinformation campaign.” “I took a huge risk in leaving a safe job to do this. If this doesn’t pan out, I’ll be working at Walmart.” “But…as crazy as it sounds, this is real.”

 

“I know what I saw.”

It was late July, and Teresa Tindal, a 39-year-old administrator for a consulting firm, was describing the incident that made her a believer: a round, golden object hovering in the evening sky over Tucson, Arizona. Weather balloon? No way. It could only be one thing: a UFO.

This kind of certainty had brought her—and 400 other people—to the Crowne Plaza hotel in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) Symposium, the “premiere UFO event of the year,” according to its literature. They had gathered to talk about extraterrestrials, UFOs and how to avoid being abducted by an alien mothership (hint: yelling at it doesn’t work). “There are too many people that have seen things,” Christine Thisse, 44, a soft-spoken mother from Michigan, told Newsweek.

There were the typical guest speakers giving talks with titles like “Unexplained Disappearances in Rural Areas” and “Report From Mars,” in which a physicist lays out his theory that 75,000 years ago an intergalactic nuclear war wiped out a Martian civilization. And there were famous abductees, like Travis Walton, a former logger whose story of alien captivity became the 1993 movie Fire in the Sky.

But this year offered another attraction—a new, and extremely unlikely, superstar: Luis Elizondo. Seven months earlier, The New York Times had published a front-page story on the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, a “shadowy” initiative at the Pentagon that “investigated reports of unidentified flying objects.” Elizondo, a burly Miami native with a billy-goat beard and colorful tattoos, was the career military intelligence official put in charge of the program a few years after it formed in 2007, until, according to the Pentagon’s press office, it was discontinued in 2012. (Elizondo insists the work is ongoing.) Last year, he resigned from the Pentagon, protesting what he considered lackluster support and unnecessary secrecy—red meat for the X-Files crowd. “Why aren’t we spending more time and effort on this issue?” he wrote to Defense Secretary James Mattis in his resignation letter.

In the private sector, Elizondo soon found an unlikely ally in his quest for the truth: Tom DeLonge, the former frontman for the pop/punk band Blink-182, the group behind a song called “Aliens Exist.” Turns out DeLonge actually believed it. In 2017, he launched To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, and Elizondo quickly became its public face. The mission: to advance UFO research, produce science-fiction-themed entertainment about UFOs and, with luck, glean some insight into the super-advanced technology displayed by UFOs (such as spaceships that can seemingly defy gravity) that the Pentagon keeps ignoring.

The academy claims to have attracted more than 2,000 investors and raised roughly $2.5 million, and Elizondo found a mostly enthusiastic crowd in Cherry Hill. “Sometimes people may have associated you with being fringe—being out there,” he told the MUFON audience over a buffet dinner. “All along, you were right.” Not everyone was convinced: Some cited a lack of evidence in his presentation. Tindal was suspicious of the Pentagon connection. “It could be a cover for something else,” she said.

But if Elizondo is trying to lend credibility to research on unexplained sightings, why would he partner with a guy whose band had a hit album titled Enema of the State? And why would he choose as a venue a UFO conference teeming with conspiracy theorists?

“We have to start somewhere,” he told Newsweek that day. “I don’t get invited to Stanford or MIT.”

Super Hornets and Tic Tacs

Each year, thousands of people report UFO sightings to various authorities—the police, the Pentagon, radio talk show hosts. By one count, more than 100,000 sightings have been reported since 1905. Nearly all can be explained away as clouds, meteors, birds, weather balloons or some other quotidian phenomenon. Efforts at rational debunking serve only to harden the conviction of the true believers, who are convinced that abundant evidence of alien visitations is hidden in secret military documents—literal X-files—locked away in the bowels of the so-called deep state.

The X-files conspiracy theory is the beating heart of the UFO community—an article of faith among enthusiasts and the basis of almost every call to action on social media (#Disclosure). It is also encouraged by some prominent people, including John ¬Podesta, who lamented on Twitter a few years ago that he’d failed to secure the #disclosure of the UFO files, “despite being President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff.

When Elizondo went public, it gave a sheen of credibility to the conspiracy crowd. His background is typical of a straight-arrow military officer with a distinguished career. He is the son of a Cuban exile who participated in the Bay of Pigs—the failed CIA-¬sponsored plot to overthrow Fidel Castro in 1961. Elizondo worked as a bouncer while attending the University of Miami. After graduating in 1995, he joined the Army and trained to be a military spy. Later, at the Pentagon, Elizondo showed no sign of being a disgruntled employee or a loon, spending much of his career in the shadows, chasing militants in South America and the Middle East.

In 2010, he started to run a small group charged with investigating reports of “unexplained aerial phenomena”—a less controversial term for UFOs. It was an ¬obscure, low-budget initiative created three years before at the behest of then-Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. Details are murky, but the $22 million program seems to have been operated jointly by Elizondo and Bigelow Aerospace, a Nevada-based defense contractor whose billionaire owner, Robert Bigelow, is an avid believer in UFOs.

Two months before the Times published its front-page story, Elizondo retired from the Pentagon. He shows Newsweek what he says is a copy of his resignation letter, dated October 4, 2017, and addressed to Mattis. The letter expresses some frustration about the lack of attention his program was getting. And it suggests that something he learned at the Pentagon turned him into a true believer. “Despite overwhelming evidence at both the classified and unclassified levels,” he wrote, “certain individuals in the Department remain staunchly opposed to further research on what could be a tactical threat to our pilots, sailors, and soldiers, and perhaps even an existential threat to our national security.”

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New Pentagon Memo Lays Out Action Plan to Establish Space Force by 2020

by Sandra Erwin                     September 13, 2018                   (spacenews.com)

• A September 10th memo issued by Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan entitled “Space Reorganization and Management Tasks” outlines a detailed plan of action to be taken to establish Space Force as the sixth independent branch of the United States military by the year 2020.

• The first order of business is to establish a ‘Space Command’ and the subordinate unified command by the end of 2018. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood are responsible for leading this effort.

• Next, the DOD will establish a Space Development Agency, led by Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Griffin and Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson. This agency “will initially focus on rapidly developing and fielding new space capabilities that leverage commercial space technology and access in support of warfighter and U.S. Space Command… consolidating space development efforts under the SDA as the equipping arm for the space warfighter, with an initial operating capacity in calendar year 2019”.

• A “Space Operations Forces” office will be set up to “produce a complete inventory of all forces and functions conducting or directly supporting space operations and designating space operations forces.”

• A new office of “Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space” will be established to consolidate civilian oversight of space and outline how it could evolve into the future headquarters of the Space Force.

• The Pentagon’s director of cost assessment and program evaluation will develop a five-year cost estimate. The memo says the budget should include the cost for the Space Force, the Space Development Agency, the Space Operations Forces, U.S. Space Command and the path for transferring space budgets to the Space Force.

• The establishment of the Space Force as a military branch must be approved by Congress and written into legislation. These reorganization and management directives will ultimately be written into a legislative proposal.

• A “Space Governance Committee” led by Shanahan will have the final word on any reorganization action and on the legislative proposal before it goes to the White House. Shanahan’s orders have short deadlines. Many of the tasks are due in the coming weeks, and the legislative proposal could arrive at the White House as early as Dec. 1, 2018.

• The Air Force, which owns 90 percent of the military’s space programs and functions, will have only a limited support role in shaping the transition to the future Space Force.

[Editor’s Note]  The President is taking the authority of space defense out of the hands of the Deep State controlled Air Force and into the hands of the Alliance-friendly Pentagon.

 

WASHINGTON — Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan this week issued a detailed plan for how the Pentagon will move forward to create a Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces by fiscal year 2020.

The plan, laid out in a Sept. 10 memo titled “Space Reorganization and Management Tasks,” includes actions that the Pentagon will pursue using executive branch authorities — standing up a unified command for space, a Space Development Agency and Space Operations Forces. These proposals were presented to Congress in a report on Aug. 9. The establishment of the Space Force as a military branch must be approved by Congress and written into legislation. Shanahan’s Sept. 10 memo, a copy of which was obtained by SpaceNews, explains the steps DoD will take to develop a legislative proposal.

The memo makes it clear that the space reorganization is being led from the top down. Shanahan is overseeing the entire effort, but the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the undersecretary of defense for policy also have significant roles. The Air Force, which owns 90 percent of the military’s space programs and functions, only will have a limited support role in shaping the transition to a future Space Force.

The changes directed by Shanahan only apply to DoD and not to the intelligence community, even though organizations like the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency have key responsibilities in national security space. “Only DoD space functions would move into the Space Force,” the memo says. “National security space components outside of the DoD should not be included in the legislative or budget proposal, but will be considered in an interagency process.”
The Director of National Intelligence is cc’ed in the memo.

Shanahan’s orders have short deadlines. Many of the tasks are due in the coming weeks, and the legislative proposal could arrive at the White House as early as Dec. 1, 2018. To avert concerns that a new service will saddle the military with billions of dollars in added overhead costs, the memo says the Space Force should have a “lean” bureaucracy.

A “Space Governance Committee” led by Shanahan will have the final word on any reorganization action and on the legislative proposal before it goes to the White House. Shanahan also will establish and designate the leader of a “working group” to help with the implementation that will include representatives from all military branches and relevant DoD agencies.

Upcoming steps in the reorganization

The first order of business is to stand up U.S. Space Command, a unified combatant command responsible for space. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood are responsible for leading this effort. A U.S. Space Command “should be established by the end of calendar year 2018,” the memo says The Joint Staff will draft an amendment to the Unified Command Plan to establish U.S. Space Command and the subordinate unified command, and a detailed plan will be developed to “transfer requisite authorities and capabilities.” Rood and Dunford will be responsible for “identifying any operational authorities that are needed for U.S. Space Command.”

The creation of a Space Development Agency also could happen relatively soon. Shanahan directs Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Griffin and Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson to “each develop a concept for establishing the SDA.” The draft concepts are due to the governing committee by Sept 14.

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What Has the U.S. Government Been hiding About UFOs?

by Dom Armentano             January 16, 2018               (tcpalm.com)

• Last December, when The New York Times reported that the Pentagon had authorized a UFO research from 2007 to 2012, and the Department of Defense released a Navy F-18 cockpit video of an encounter with a UFO, some in the media were exclaiming that this was the first time that the government had acknowledged UFOs. But the belief that the U.S. intelligence community had been previously unaware of the exotic nature of UFOs is just bogus.

• The U.S. government has known about UFOs since at least Roswell (and the other New Mexico crashes) in 1947, but it chose to hide this information from the American people. A declassified Air Force document from September 23, 1947 by General Nathan Twining acknowledges reported that flying discs “are real and not visionary or fictitious” and because the discs were “evasive when sighted … Some of the objects are (intelligently) controlled.” Since then, the U.S. military has had dozens of reports from experienced military pilots, FAA controllers and ground personnel of UFOs that displayed technology far in advance of our own.

• The deep intelligence state has known for at least 70 years that some UFOs were real, yet it has chosen to keep the information confidential or denied that it even existed. When this writer called for UFO disclosure in 2008, he says that his professional colleagues in law and economics thought he had lost my mind. The Cato Institute abruptly ended its 20-year affiliation with him as an adjunct scholar the day after his first UFO article appeared.

• The decades-long policy of secrecy and denial on a subject as important as UFOs is foolish and dangerous in the extreme and puts our entire democratic process at risk. The good news is these perverse attitudes are changing somewhat. The New York Times’ Pentagon project revelations have created an important opportunity for more serious media coverage of government UFO research. We must take advantage of that opportunity now and push for open Congressional hearings and full disclosure.

 

On Dec. 16, three experienced journalists posted a bombshell story on the New York Times website: The Pentagon had authorized a secret research project (2007-2012) to study unidentified flying objects.
Even more importantly, Luis Elizondo, the Pentagon project coordinator and a career intelligence officer, later asserted that in his opinion some UFOs were real objects and appeared to demonstrate a technology that the U.S. did not have and did not understand. To highlight that point, the Pentagon also released “gun camera” film of a Navy pilot’s 2004 close encounter with an object that displayed wildly unconventional flight characteristics.

The mainstream media was caught completely off guard by the sensational Pentagon revelations, although they should not have been. Some breathlessly opined that never before had a U.S. intelligence agency acknowledged UFOs were solid objects that defied conventional explanation. Well, not exactly. While that assertion is true in some narrow sense, the belief that the U.S. intelligence community had been unaware of the exotic nature of UFOs until the recent Pentagon study is just totally bogus.

In point of fact, they have known about the unconventional nature of the phenomenon for decades and have chosen to hide the bulk of that information (dozens of military gun camera films, for example) from Congress and especially from the American people.

Contrary to the media coverage of the Pentagon story, the U.S. defense and intelligence communities actually have known about the exotic nature of UFOs since at least 1947. There exists, for example, a once-secret document (dated Sept. 23, 1947) written by Gen. Nathan Twining (Air Material Command) that acknowledges reported flying discs “are real and not visionary or fictitious” and that the discs “must be considered evasive when sighted … which lends belief to the possibility that some of the objects are (intelligently) controlled.”

And since the U.S. military had dozens of reports from experienced military pilots and FAA controllers and ground personnel that the discs could hover, turn on a dime and then accelerate at incredible speeds — unlike any technology that existed then or now — it was implicit even in 1947 that these flying objects were not ours.

In short, the deep intelligence state has known for at least 70 years that some UFOs were real; yet it has chosen to keep the information in support of that conclusion either confidential or simply denied that it even existed. But a decades-long public policy of secrecy and denial on a subject as important and mind-bending as UFOs is foolish and dangerous in the extreme and puts our entire democratic process at risk.

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Pentagon UFO Study Catches Attention of Congress

by George Knapp          December 22, 2017             (good4utah.com)

• In his only television interview, former Nevada Senator Harry Reid told the I-Team about the pivotal role he played authorizing a secret Pentagon study of UFOs that ended five years ago. (see five-minute video below)

• The explosion of news coverage about the UFO issue has caught the attention of Congress. Reid’s phone started ringing immediately from people from Congress and the business community who’ve always been interested in the subject but were afraid to admit it. Reid thinks the time may be right to re-launch a formal Congressional inquiry in to the UFO phenomenon.

• “Now that it’s out, why shouldn’t they do this? Reid said.

 

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – Former Nevada Senator Harry Reid thinks it might be time to hold congressional hearings into the mystery surrounding UFOs.

In his only television interview, Reid told the I-Team about the pivotal role he played authorizing a secret Pentagon study of UFOs that ended five years ago.

The project was based in Nevada, carried out by Las Vegas businessman who is no stranger to paranormal investigations. In fact, Robert Bigelow’s mysterious Skinwalker ranch played a role in the Pentagon investigation.

A picturesque ranch in northeastern Utah, shunned by its Native American neighbors and long considered a hotbed of UFO sightings and other unexplained phenomena, played a pivotal role in the creation of the once-secret Pentagon study of unknown aerial objects.

In the mid 90s, Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow bought the property and sent in his research team, the National Institute for Discovery Science, or NIDS, to study the ranch and the larger Uintah Basin.
Over the next 10 years, NIDS scientists had dramatic encounters with the unknown, including daylight mutilations of livestock, mysterious aircraft, and discarnate entities.

“The ranch is not just UFOs. Performances of anomalies go back many years,” said Robert Bigelow.
The I-Team’s 2007 conversation with Bigelow, his first on camera interview on any subject, never aired but he told us that his NIDS team experienced more than 100 baffling encounters, though they had no idea what was behind it.

“And that we don’t have to worry about aliens coming and taking us away. That’s for somebody else to talk about,” said former U.S. Senator Harry Reid.

When Senator Reid and colleagues authorized funding for a Pentagon study, they made a point of saying it was not a search for little green men. The primary aim was to identify, analyze, and eventually duplicate the other worldly technology that had been demonstrated in multiple dramatic encounters involving the U.S. military.

“The phenomenon is real,” said Luis Elizondo, former Pentagon official.

The man who ran the Pentagon’s study, Luis Elizondo, resigned in October and has since said the technology of these craft is beyond anything known on earth, but he declines to guess where it originates. No one involved wants to mention space aliens, for obvious reasons.

“I’m not into that,” Reid said. “I’m interested in science, what’s going on in our world.”

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Big Pharma’s Big Connections: Congress Exposed as Protecting Drug Companies While Opioid Problem Worsens

by Kalee Brown         October 19, 2017        (collective-evolution.com)

• American is experiencing a major opioid crisis that is killing people every day from an opioid or heroin overdose.

• Opium is first removed from the poppy plant, which is then refined into morphine, and can then be further refined into heroin. Some opiates are entirely synthetic, and others are a cross between the two.

• Big Pharma companies ensure that their market grows by creating products that are addictive and have negative side effects so they can keep people sick and take more drugs.

• During the Vietnam War, the CIA worked with Laotian general Vang Pao in smuggling heroin via “Air America” to create a world hub for heroin in Southeastern Asian countries.

• In the 1980’s, Afghanistan had become the largest suppier of poppies for opium production. The CIA trained, armed, and funded Afghan “rebels” and supplied them with trucks and mules to transport the opium. Then the Taliban moved in and eradicated 90% of the world’s heroin supply. After 9/11, the US military occupied Afghanistan, and under US “protection”, opium production skyrocketed.

• Back in America, doctors were being paid by Big Pharma to prescribe opioids. Through formidable lobbying efforts, the US Congress, led by Pennsylvania Republican Tom Marino, passed laws that weakened the DEA’s ability to stop excessive drug distribution. Corrupt doctors and pharmacists were able to prescribe more pain killers and introduce them into the black market. Big Pharma paid at least $1.5 million to the 23 lawmakers who sponsored or co-sponsored the bills.

• President Trump chose none other than Tom Marino to serve as his “drug czar” to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Marino wisely declined the nomination.

• In response to a renewed crack-down by the DEA, Big Pharma poached 46 top DEA officials and hired them to devise new ways to avoid the DEA’s enforcement.

[Editor’s Note]  It is quite apparent that the CIA relies heavily on the revenue derived from Big Pharma’s legal and illegal sale of opiates to fund its’ hidden Deep State agenda.

 

Many people often picture drug dealers as these scary individuals selling pills on street corners, but when it comes to the opioid epidemic, these drug pushers don’t exactly fit the stereotype. The true “drug dealers” largely responsible for America’s opioid epidemic aren’t thugs, they’re doctors and members of the U.S. government.

As former DEA agent Joe Rannazzisi put it, “They weren’t slinging crack on the corner… These were professionals who were doing it. They were just drug dealers in lab coats.”

You have physicians heavily pushing and marketing opioids, you’ve got countless doctors being paid by Big Pharma to prescribe opioids, and then you have the U.S. government overseeing the opium trade. This isn’t news to many people, as the reality of America’s war on drugs has lain exposed for decades, but mainstream media has been honing in on the deep ties the people we’re expected to trust share with Big Pharma.

An in-depth investigation into the opioid epidemic and the U.S. government’s ties to it was recently conducted by The Washington Post and 60 Minutes, revealing how U.S. Congress effectively weakened the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) ability to go after drug distributors, despite the worsening opioid epidemic.

The Washington Post‘s report on the opioid epidemic focused on one bill in particular that protected some major drug companies, allowing the flow of opioids to reach more people and creating more profit for their producers in turn. The law was presented as a more “industry-friendly” approach to law enforcement, but it undermined the DEA’s ability to monitor the flow of opioids.

So, corrupt doctors and pharmacists were able to effectively prescribe more pain killers and introduce them into the black market. Big Pharma funded this through lobbying efforts, worked closely with a handful of Congressmen, and even made some hefty donations to political campaigns (to the tune of millions of dollars) to ensure this bill came into fruition.

The Washington Post stated that the key member of Congress who paved the path for this bill was Pennsylvania Republican Tom Marino, as he allegedly spent years attempting to push this bill. The law Marino so desperately wanted to succeed basically acts as a protective barrier between Big Pharma and the DEA, preventing the DEA from freezing suspicious shipments from companies.

Why was Marino so supportive of this particular bill? Though we clearly do not have the full picture, we do know that he received $100,000 by “political actions committees representing the industry” for his efforts. Marino wasn’t the only lawmaker to accept payments though, as the industry paid a collective $1.5 million to 23 lawmakers who sponsored or co-sponsored the bill (and these are only the known amounts).

“The drug industry, the manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and chain drugstores, have an influence over Congress that has never been seen before,” explained the former head of the DEA’s division responsible for regulating the drug industry, Joseph T. Rannazzisi. “I mean, to get Congress to pass a bill to protect their interests in the height of an opioid epidemic just shows me how much influence they have.”

As per how this bill truly got passed, it remains a mystery. Yes, Big Pharma and Congressman Marino clearly played a huge role, but how did the DEA and Department of Justice accept this? Were they unaware of the effects this would have on the opioid epidemic? Former President Barack Obama, who was responsible for the final sign-off of the bill in 2016, and multiple DEA officials declined to comment on this matter to the Post.

In addition, the DEA and Justice Department refused or delayed requests made by the Post and 60 Minutes for files under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that could provide more information on the law that passed. A number of these FOIA requests have been pending for a year and a half, and so the Post is now suing the Justice Department in hopes of obtaining these files.

DEA Chief Administrative Law Judge John J. Mulrooney II commented on the law, stating that because of it being passed, it’s “all but logically impossible” for the DEA to suspend a Big Pharma company’s operations even when they do not comply with federal law. How can drug companies continue to operate when they’re not even operating under federal law? This is the power that Big Pharma holds over the U.S. government.

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