The Pentagon’s ‘Real Men in Black’ Investigation of Tom DeLonge’s UFO Videos
Article by Tim McMillan April 14, 2020 (vice.com)
• In spite of the fact that the US Navy video recorded the ‘Tic Tac’ UFO off of San Diego in 2004 and two other UFO videos in 2015, which were published in December 2017 by the New York Times, a new report acquired by Motherboard (Vice) shows that it was the US Air Force that conducted an investigation. (see Vice article for actual report)
• The Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) looked into the classification of the videos called “GoFast,” “Gimble,” and “FLIR.” (FLIR was the ‘Tic Tac’ UFO video; the Go Fast and Gimble videos were taken off of the US East Coast in 2015) (The AFOSI are known as “The Real Men in Black” in the UFO community.) The videos were ultimately released to the NY Times by Tom DeLonge’s ‘To the Stars Academy’. The AFOSI determined that while a declassification request had been made for these videos, it was never granted. Therefore, the videos were technically still classified.
• The AFOSI investigation also confirmed that Luis Elizondo did in fact run the Pentagon’s UFO program, the ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’, which did investigate UFOs. It was Elizondo who applied for the release of the three UFO videos before leaving his position as an intelligence specialist in the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence’s Office to join ‘To the Stars’. The Pentagon had falsely denied both the program and Elizondo’s role in it.
• While some assume that Elizondo ‘side-stepped’ regulations in releasing the videos, a former colleague claims that any process errors were the fault of the ‘Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review’ agency, and not Elizondo. Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough agreed with this appraisal.
• According to the report, the videos were submitted to multiple offices within the Navy for review, and it was determined they contained “No sensitive symbology or other items of concern.” The videos were determined to be “Unclassified and For official use only.” Apparently, there was some confusion as to the videos’ origin and classification status. By April 2018, both the AFOSI and the Air Force’s ‘Unauthorized Disclosure Program Management Office’ had reversed their initial finding by declaring the videos ‘unclassified’ and the matter ‘closed’.
• But why was the Air Force investigating Navy videos in the first place? In December of 2019, DoD spokesperson Susan Gough said she would look into the matter but has since failed to respond to numerous follow-up requests by Motherboard. Other journalists such as Tyler Rogoway of The War Zone have experienced similar stone-walling by the DoD.
• When asked his view, Elizondo stated, “Even though there was no wrongdoing on the part of my office, there are still elements within the Pentagon who are very sensitive about this topic and are unhappy with this information being brought forward for public discussion.”
A new document acquired by Motherboard shows that the Air Force launched an investigation into the release of classified UFO videos by former Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge’s UFO outfit To the Stars Academy.
At the end of last year, we revealed the U.S. Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations had looked into several videos, which The Pentagon claims show “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” or UFOs. This news was particularly curious considering the videos were initially filmed by the Navy (not the Air Force) in 2004 and 2015. Since the videos were published in a New York Times article in December 2017, the Air Force has refused to discuss anything related to UFOs.
The new document, obtained from the Air Force Office of Investigations (embedded below), shows that after that New York Times article, AFOSI looked into the classification of the released videos, called “GoFast,” “Gimble,” and “FLIR.” Originally, it found “all three videos were classified” and that, though a declassification request had been made for these videos, it was never granted. As we reported in December, AFOSI has become known as “The Real Men in Black” in the UFO community.
The AFOSI investigation also contradicts the Pentagon’s claims that Luis Elizondo, the man who says he ran the Pentagon’s UFO program, called Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, never worked on UFOs at all.
Though his name is redacted, the investigation is clearly focused on Elizondo, who left the Pentagon, spoke to the New York Times, and has since joined DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy. Before leaving his position as an intelligence specialist in the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence’s Office, it was Elizondo who applied for the release of the three UFO videos.
In the years since the videos’ release, the Pentagon has contentiously denied the existence of a current Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, and has denied that Elizondo investigated UFOs for the DoD. This appears to be disputed by this investigation. The AFOSI report states, “[Elizondo] disclosed his involvement (to several news outlets) with the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which focused research issues on Unidentified Flying Objects.”
Similar to what’s implied in the OSI report, since Fall of 2019 when the Pentagon made it known the videos weren’t cleared for public release, the court of public opinion has widely assumed Elizondo was responsible for side-stepping regulations and releasing the videos before leaving the DoD.
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