Leslie Kean | Exo News

Two Intelligence Insiders’ Plan to Get the World to Pay Attention to UFOs

November 8, 2020
ExoNews Editor

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.”

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) has requested that the Director of National

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.

“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.”

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.

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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Chris Mellon Reveals He Was Handed Three Infamous UFO Videos in a Pentagon Parking Lot

November 1, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Luke Kenton October 20, 2020 (dailymail.co.uk)

• A documentary film by James Fox, The Phenomenon, released on October 6th has reignited the fire in the UFO community with firm confirmation of the government’s knowledge of still-unexplained ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon’ (UAP), more commonly known as UFOs, Along with some new information as well.

• In the documentary, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Chris Mellon (pictured above), explained how came to possess the three infamous Navy UFO videos. The 63-year-old Mellon said that unnamed Defense Department official met him in a Pentagon parking lot and handed Mellon a package with the three UFO videos captured by Navy pilots in 2004 and 2015. Mellon tells the filmmakers, “This is a case where somebody bent the rules a little bit, and they did so for the larger good, and we’re absolutely all better off because of it.”

• The three videos were the ‘Tic Tac’ UFO seen by Navy pilots off of San Diego in 2004; an anomalous UFO rotating while in flight and a small UFO darting across the water below, taken by Navy pilots off of the East Coast in 2015. Nimitz carrier pilots Commander David Fravor and Chad Underwood both saw the Tic Tac UFO on November 14, 2004. In the January 21st, 2015 video of the small UFO darting across the Atlantic Ocean, a Navy pilot is heard to remark, “what the fuck is that thing?” as it passes below him. (click link NY Times ExoArticle below to see the three Navy videos… again.)

• Mellon shared the videos with Luis Elizondo, the former head of the classified Pentagon UFO program called the ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’. (The two men had moved on from government work to become colleagues in “To The Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences’, formed in 2017 to investigate and promote UFO data.) In late August of 2017, Elizondo worked with the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review to have the three videos declassified.

• On October 4, 2017, Elizondo and Mellon had a meeting with New York Times journalist, Leslie Kean, who also appears in the documentary. Kean was informed by Elizondo about the about the secret Pentagon UFO program, and Mellon showed her the UFO videos on his laptop. This information went on to form what would become the bombshell NY Times article of December 2017 (see ExoArticle here) Kean said she ‘knew this was breaking news for the front page of the New York Times as soon as Mellon informed her about the clips’ existence.

• The Pentagon’s ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’ (AATIP) was conceived in 2007 by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and morphed into the ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force’, under the Office of Naval Intelligence, after 2012. Apparently, for over a decade, the Pentagon has been conducting classified briefings for Congressional committees, aerospace company executives and other government officials. The briefings were centered on sightings, video footage, and radar logs by military pilots of ‘unexplained aerial phenomena’ which seemed to transcend existing flight technology – such as an aircraft with no visible engine at 30,000ft, traveling at hypersonic speed.

• The Department of Defense officially released the videos in April this year, nearly two-and-half years after the NY Times report, in order to ‘clear up any misconceptions’ about the video’s veracity. “The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified’,” the department said.

• ‘The Phenomenon’ analyzes the history of UFO sightings in the US since the 1940s. In the film, Senator Reid claims that the US government has been hiding key details about UFO encounters from the public for years. ”Why the federal government all these years has covered up …everything, stopped it, I think it’s very, very bad for our country.” Reid says that most of the government’s evidence of UFOs still “hasn’t seen the light of day”.

• Reid, however, stops short of confirming other-worldly activity, tweeting in August that “we must stick to science, not fairy tales about little green men”. In the film, Reid tells Fox, “Nobody has to agree why [the UFO phenomenon is] there. But should we at least be spending some money to study all these phenomenon? The answer is yes.”

• The documentary film also goes into the US military’s investigation of UFOs in the late 1940s, as sightings of UFO discs began cropping up in mainstream news reports. The Air Force investigated over 12,000 UFO sightings, ‘explaining’ all but 701 of them. One of those unexplained incidents occurred over Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in 1967. Ten ICMB missiles situated underground beneath the base suddenly become inoperative. Similar sightings and results were also reported at nuclear sites in the former Soviet Union and in Great Britain.

• Robert Jamison, a retired USAF nuclear missile targeting officer, told of several occasions having to go out and ‘re-start’ missiles that had been deactivated, after UFOs – mysterious glowing red objects in the sky – were sighted nearby. “If they had been called upon by the President to launch, they couldn’t have done it.”

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Chris Mellon, has revealed that he was the

source who provided the New York Times with the three UFO videos it famously published in 2017.

Mellon, who served in the senior intelligence role under the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, made the bombshell admission in a recently released documentary, The Phenomenon, which is directed by James Fox.

The 63-year-old told Fox that he met with an unnamed individual in the parking lot of the Pentagon months earlier and was handed a package containing three videos of ‘unexplained aerial phenomena’ captured by Navy pilots between 2004 and 2015.

‘I received the videos, the now famous videos in the Pentagon parking lot from a Defense Department official. I still have the packaging,’ Mellon is heard telling the filmmakers. ‘This is a case where somebody bent the rules a little bit, and they did so for the larger good and we’re absolutely all better off because of it.’

The three videos went on to form what would become the basis of one of the most significant and

revealing articles about UFOs in recent years.
One of journalists who worked on the story, Leslie Kean, also appears in the documentary.

Kean said she ‘knew this was breaking news for the front page of the New York Times,’ as soon as Mellon informed her about the clips’ existence.

In its bombshell December 2017 article, the Times unveiled a classified Pentagon UFO program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), overseen by the likes of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Though at the time the government said the program, secretly commissioned in 2007, was shuttered due to a lack of funding in 2012, the Times later confirmed it continued its existence under a new name, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, within the Office of Naval Intelligence.

For more than a decade, the Pentagon had been conducting classified briefings for congressional committees, aerospace company executives and other government officials.

The briefings were centered on sightings, video footage, and radar logs by military pilots of ‘unexplained aerial

phenomena’ which seemed to transcend existing flight technology – such as an aircraft with no visible engine at 30,000ft, traveling at hypersonic speed.

The Times also released three clips captured by Navy pilots across an 11 year period.

The first of which, known as the ‘Tic Tac’ incident, was captured by F-18 pilot Chad Underwood off the coast of San Diego on November 14, 2004.

The Tic Tac UFO – so-called because of its rounded shape and white color – was spotted by Underwood flying erratically over the Pacific Ocean.

**‘fast’ UFO skimming above the ocean off of Virginia in 2015**

‘It was going from like 50,000 feet to 100 feet in like seconds, which is not possible,’ Underwood said back in December 2019, breaking his 15-year silence over the encounter.

To this day, officials still have no idea what the recorded object was, with weather phenomenon, man-made craft and birds having all since been ruled out.

Two other videos recorded on January 21st, 2015, were also released.

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“The Phenomenon” Asks ‘Why Are UFOs Visiting Us? What Do They Want?’

September 29, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Susan Leighton September 17, 2020 (1428elm.com)

• October 6th will mark the digital release of the James Fox’ UFO documentary, The Phenomenon. Fox, who is known for a previous UFO related History Channel film, I Know What I Saw, brings out supporting evidence of UFOs from Biblical accounts to modern revelations brought forth by New York Times journalist Leslie Kean of the Pentagon’s AATIP UFO program, and the Navy’s cockpit video of the ‘Tic Tac’ and other types of UFO craft roaming around our skies.

• Narrated by veteran actor Peter Coyote and distributed on digital platforms by 1091 Media, The Phenomenon deals with the government’s ongoing efforts to cover-up the existence of UFOs with testimonies from “high-ranking government officials” including President Clinton, John Podesta and Senator Harry Reid. Audiences will have access to never-seen-before UFO footage.

• NASA rocket engineer, Josef Blumrich, constructed a blueprint of what the “wheel” spaceship depicted in the Old Testament’s Book of Ezekiel might have looked like based on the prophet’s account in the Scriptures. But if UFOs have been visiting us for thousands of years, what do they want? Why are they here?

The Phenomenon is a documentary from the mind of James Fox dealing with UFOs and the government’s ongoing efforts to cover-up their existence.

Fox is well known for the History Channel film, I Know What I Saw, which featured detailed reports of alien crafts and investigations into the sightings by analysts and experts.

According to Deadline, veteran actor Peter Coyote, who appeared in Steven Spielberg’s, ET the Extra-Terrestrial, narrates the production. The Phenomenon contains testimonies from “high-ranking government officials” including President Clinton, John Podesta and Senator Harry Reid.

Audiences will have access to never seen before UFO footage. Also covered, the hard-hitting revelation of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification (AATIP) program in The New York Times by journalist Leslie Kean. The now famous declassified Navy fighter jet videos of the “Tic-Tac” and “Gimbal” incidences are mentioned, as well.

2:21 minute trailer for 1091’s “Phenomenon” the movie (‘1091 Pictures’ YouTube)

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Earth to Face Doomsday Due to Alien Invasion if Multi-National Leadership is Absent

June 3, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Nirmal Narayanan May 22, 2020 (ibtimes.sg)

• If the Earth is invaded by advanced, hostile extraterrestrial beings, Clifford N Lazarus believes that we Earthlings will need to come together to prevail. Lazarus, the clinical director of the Lazarus Institute, wrote in Psychology Today: “It is critically important that we find a way to create a coordinated, global response to this mortal peril because it will almost inevitably not be the final pandemic our world will face. Without rational, scientifically guided and cooperative, multinational leadership, “ET” will prevail and human civilization as we know it will be doomed.”

• Lazarus also says that an alien invasion is very similar to a pandemic outbreak, where humans should unite as a single species irrespective of various barriers. “If ever there was a time for joining forces and pulling together as a nation, a global community and a single species, this is it,” says Lazarus. “COVID-19 does not recognize national borders or social boundaries. It will infect and possibly kill anyone regardless of nationality, race, religion, gender, sex, age, education, wealth, social status, or political affiliation.”

• Investigative journalist Leslie Kean recently suggested that alien hypothesis could be the best option to explain UFO sightings. (see ExoArticle here) “The extremely advanced technology that the objects have displayed since the 1950s… demonstrate tremendous speed and accelerations, the ability to make sharp right-angle turns, stand still in midair, zoom off and disappear in the blink of an eye, and operate underwater. They appear to defy the laws of aviation as we know it since they have no wings or visible means of propulsion.” Many believe that (some) UFO sightings are authentic proof of alien existence and their presence here on Earth to ‘monitor human activities’.

• [Editor’s Note] They’re here, and they’ve been here for a very long time – both the ‘bad’ ETs who have turned the Earth into a slave planet using mind control over our leaders and the media, and the ‘good’ ETs who watch our species from a distance, assisting us through our consciousness. This struggle has escalated since WWII when we reached a level of technological development that made us more valuable and susceptible to the ‘bad’ ETs’ agenda of domination. We have now reached the culmination of this cosmic struggle for planet Earth, where we will need to either awaken to the ET reality and take control over our own sovereign future, or accept our species’ fate as servants to an elite human class and their deep state henchmen doing the bidding of an evil extraterrestrial race.

Many space experts believe that humans are not alone in the universe, and they claim that advanced alien species might be living somewhere in the deep nooks of the universe.

If these advanced beings are now searching for life in the universe, there are possibilities that they could find earth, and we cannot rule out a possible invasion in the future.

Will Earth Face Doomsday Due to Alien Invasion?

Clifford N Lazarus, the clinical director of the Lazarus Institute believes that the earth will be doomed if hostile aliens visit earth. He also added that multi-national leadership should prevail in the world if humanity wants to fight against a common enemy.

“It is critically important that we find a way to create a coordinated, global response to this mortal peril because it will almost inevitably not be the final pandemic our world will face. Without rational, scientifically guided and cooperative, multinational leadership, “ET” will prevail and human civilization as we know it will be doomed,” wrote Lazarus in his recent article published in Psychology Today.

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Should Our Scientists Take UFOs and Ghosts More Seriously?

May 30, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by John Horgan May 18, 2020 (scientificamerican.com)

• Leslie Kean (pictured above) is a co-author of the 2017 New York Times front-page article on Pentagon investigations of UFOs. (see ExoArticle here “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program”). She is also the author of the 2010 bestseller UFOs: Generals, Pilots, And Government Officials Go On The Record and also her 2017 book Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife. John Horgan, who has a hard time believing in ghosts and alien visitations, interviewed her to ask about UFOs and the paranormal.

• Kean tells Horgan that she wasn’t interested in UFOs and the paranormal until she reached adulthood. When she was a child, she believed in the “supernormal magic” of Santa Clause because he took a bite from the Christmas cookies she left out which proved he was real. When she learned that Santa didn’t exist, she felt betrayed by “the authorities” – her parents – for lying to her. “Something precious had been taken away”” says Kean. “Maybe at some unconscious level this led me to want to find out what’s real and to prove the so-called authorities wrong.”

• When Kean was a freelance writer in 1999, she came across a 90-page ‘COMETA Report’ by retired French generals, police, scientists and an admiral. (see COMETA reports Part 1 here and Part 2 here) The group had spent three years documenting official military and aviation UFO cases. Their conclusion was that the “extraterrestrial hypothesis” was the most valid and logical one to explain the data. Their report proposed that pilots be trained on how to respond to UFOs to avoid future mishaps or even dangerous accidents. Given the stature and credibility of the group, Kean published a lengthy article based on the COMETA Report for the Boston Globe in May, 2000.

• Whether UFOs might be piloted by aliens, “I …will not rule it out,” says Kean. “There are many possibilities on the table. I have made the point over and over that we do not know what these objects are, and that’s where things stand.” “My book concluded that (the UFO) phenomenon exists, without question. …It’s physical, and well documented, even by our government. But what these objects are is another question…. (which) has led to all kinds of speculation. These flying machines, whatever they are, might not even have any drivers at all, for all we know.”

• The best evidence we have that UFOs have an extraterrestrial origin is the “extremely advanced technology that the objects have displayed since the 1950’s. They demonstrate tremendous speed and accelerations, the ability to make sharp right-angle turns, stand still in midair, zoom off and disappear in the blink of an eye, and operate under water. They appear to defy the laws of aviation as we know it, since they have no wings or visible means of propulsion. The documentation goes back more than 60 years, when no one on this planet had technology like this.”

• Kean says she doesn’t know what to make of alien abduction experiences. “I know sane, intelligent people who report such events, and some even have physical evidence of them. Their lives have been turned upside down by these experiences. … It points to the greater complexity of this issue which goes beyond any simple hypothesis.”

• What does Kean say about journalists like Keith Kloor who accused Kean’s NYTimes article as “thinly-sourced and slanted”? “I simply don’t agree with Kloor’s statement,” says Kean. “[I was] one of three people writing the Times stories, which include scrutiny by fact-checkers and multiple editors.” “[I] will continue to cover the (UFO) topic whenever we can.”

• Astrophysicist Katie Mack, said in Scientific American, that she doesn’t take alien spaceships seriously enough to debunk them. Kean says that she understands Mack’s position, as UFOs might not be “alien spaceships” at all. “[A]ny question about alien spaceships misses the point,” says Kean. “These are unknowns, plain and simple. But they are physically real. They interact with military pilots and commercial aircraft. Therefore, they deserve investigation.”

• “During the ten years I was investigating UFOs, I had been intrigued by the question of the possible survival of consciousness when we die,” says Kean. “I had poked around into some of the research, especially the work of Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia studying young children with verified past life memories. …This was another big mystery facing human beings: what happens when we die?” So Kean wrote the book: Surviving Death. “Most of my “paranormal” experiences occurred during the time I was involved in the (book’s) research, which began in 2012,” says Kean. “The experiences I had were beyond my imagination. They were life-changing. …So writing Surviving Death was a journey of discovery which unfolded while I was writing it.”

• In Surviving Death, Kean didn’t make any “claims about life after death” that she felt could discredit her as a writer. “I invited others to write their own chapters, and they said things that I didn’t say. My conclusion was that the evidence was suggestive (of life existing after death), but not definitive.” Kean received what appeared to be after-death communications from [her] brother, saw an apparition, and experienced genuine physical mediumship. “I think my narrative would have remained one-dimensional and abstract without this personal element. …It would have been dishonest to omit them, because they impacted my thinking and my effort to come to terms with many remarkable phenomena” while remaining analytical and discriminating with everything else. “The tricky aspect lies in the interpretation of the extraordinary events, not in their reporting.”

• “Paranormal phenomena exist,” insists Kean. “They seem to operate outside the limits of the current materialistic framework adapted by most scientists, while at the same time, nobody can explain what consciousness actually is. …I find it astonishing that there are still some scientists who adapt the position that ‘it can’t be, therefore it isn’t.’ …I have witnessed many paranormal phenomena myself, and I know they exist. Those who don’t want to believe these things will dismiss them no matter what they read.”

• “Cases of very young children who report accurate details of a past life, complete with nightmares about the previous death and knowledge from the previous career, are compelling when the memories can be verified and the previous person is identified,” says Kean. “Cases of responsive apparitions are also interesting – these “forms” demonstrate intelligence by reacting to multiple human observers, and sometimes provide information through telepathy about their lives on earth which are verified to be true.” “There is a wealth of literature on all of this,” says Kean. “[In] the words of William James: “If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn’t seek to show that all crows are black; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.”

• The ‘life after death’ question centers “around the nature of human consciousness and its manifestations that appear to transcend the limitations of the brain. …Who are we really? Biological robots, or something else?” asks Kean. “I think all aspects of “superhuman” functioning – precognition, clairvoyance, telepathy, psychokinesis, and energy healing – should be taken seriously. They have been well documented. Where is the curiosity among scientists about the mysteries of the unknown?”

• Keans says that at first she was “skeptical about claims of alien visitations as being the simplistic answer to the UFO question. I was a skeptic about the afterlife when I began my work on that topic. It was my personal experiences that opened my eyes.” “Some ‘parapsychologists’ and other scientific investigators are doing brilliant work on all of this, but they are hampered by the mainstream scientific community’s irrational disrespect. Someday that dam will break.”

Like many long-time readers of The New York Times, I was shocked when the staid old paper published, in 2017, a front-page article on Pentagon investigations of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs. This article, plus a shorter sidebar and a 2019 follow-up, heartened those who believe that extraterrestrials have visited us and annoyed skeptics like my friend journalist Keith Kloor. Last December, I met journalist Leslie Kean, a co-author of the Times articles and sole author of the 2010 bestseller UFOs: Generals, Pilots, And Government Officials Go On The Record, at a week-long symposium on challenges to conventional scientific materialism, about which I wrote here. At the meeting, which took place at the Esalen Institute in California, Kean talked about the possibility of life after death, a topic she explores in her 2017 book Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife (which includes chapters from other contributors). Kean and I hit it off. I told her that, although I have a hard time believing in ghosts and alien visitations, I admire the courage and professionalism with which she investigates these topics. I also enjoy talking to smart people whose views diverge from mine, like renegade biologists Rupert Sheldrake and Stuart Kauffman. So last week, after the Times published yet another UFO story by Kean and her collaborator Ralph Blumenthal—which triggered more pushback from Kloor–I emailed Kean a few questions. – John Horgan

Horgan: When I was a kid, I was obsessed with UFOs and the paranormal. Were you like that too?

Kean: No, not until I was an adult. Although I do remember having mystical feelings about Santa Claus as a young child. It happened when I saw that my cookies, carefully placed next to the Christmas tree, had been nibbled on by Santa during his visitation into my world the previous Christmas Eve. It was solid evidence that something magic, something “supernormal” had actually occurred. This fantastical being who could be everywhere at once had been in my living room and left behind a physical bite mark to prove his existence. The authorities of the day, my parents, confirmed it. I felt momentarily transported, expanded, into a new level of connection to something big and mysterious. That may sound silly, but it was true. When I found out the truth about Santa later, I felt betrayed. Something precious had been taken away. My parents weren’t trustworthy because they lied to me. Maybe at some unconscious level this led me to want to find out what’s real and to prove the so-called authorities wrong. I’m not totally serious, but I suppose it’s possible.

Horgan: When and why did you first decide to write about UFOs? Was there any particular triggering event?

Kean: My serious interest in UFOs as a journalist began in 1999 when I was working as an on-air host and producer for public radio and publishing as a freelancer. I unexpectedly received an explosive 90-page report titled UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare For? by retired French generals, police, scientists and an admiral. The report intended to “strip the UFO phenomenon of its irrational layer”. The group had spent three years documenting official military and aviation UFO cases. Most stunning was their conclusion: that the “extraterrestrial hypothesis” was the most valid and logical one to explain the data. Of course there was no proof, only an hypothesis. The authors were concerned about the national security implications of the phenomenon and proposed that pilots be trained on how to respond to UFOs to avoid future mishaps or even dangerous accidents. Given the stature and credibility of the group, I thought this was a huge story. I published a lengthy article based on the report, known as the COMETA Report, for the Boston Globe in May, 2000, which required overcoming the reservations of a very nervous editor. [See links to the COMETA Report here and here.] That’s what set me on this path, and there was no turning back. And two decades later, I can hardly believe how things have changed. [See this Times story by Ralph Blumenthal for more background on Kean’s UFO coverage.]

Horgan: One admirer of your book UFOs describes you as an “agnostic” on whether UFOs are actually piloted by aliens. When I met you at Esalen, you struck me as a believer, not an agnostic. Am I wrong?

Kean: Piloted by aliens? I have an open mind, but no, I don’t believe that and have never said that. But I also will not rule it out. There are many possibilities on the table. I have made the point over and over that we do not know what these objects are, and that’s where things stand. My book concluded that a phenomenon exists, without question, named “unidentified flying objects” by the US Air Force in the 1950’s. It’s physical, and well documented, even by our government. But what these objects are is another question. That’s what everyone wants to know, and that desire has led to all kinds of speculation. On that question my 2010 book was agnostic, and it was recognized as such. These flying machines, whatever they are, might not even have any drivers at all for all we know.

Horgan: What is the best single piece of evidence that UFOs have an extraterrestrial origin?

Kean: The extremely advanced technology that the objects have displayed since the 1950’s. They demonstrate tremendous speed and accelerations, the ability to make sharp right-angle turns, stand still in midair, zoom off and disappear in the blink of an eye, and operate under water. They appear to defy the laws of aviation as we know it, since they have no wings or visible means of propulsion. The documentation goes back more than 60 years, when no one on this planet had technology like this. In some cases, experts, such as officials from the French Space Agency, had enough data to rule out all conventional explanations (meaning it wasn’t something natural or man-made). These cases represent only a small fraction of those reported, but they are the ones that matter. So, what are we left with?

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How the CIA Tried to Quell a UFO Panic During the Cold War

January 15, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Listen to “E222 How the CIA Tried to Quell a UFO Panic During the Cold War” on Spreaker.

Article by Becky Little January 5, 2020 (history.com)

• In the 1950s, when Cold War anxiety in America ranged from Soviet psychological warfare to nuclear annihilation, LIFE Magazine published a story titled “Have We Visitors From Space?” that offered “scientific evidence that there is a real case for interplanetary saucers.” A few months later in the summer of 1952, newspaper headlines blared reports of flying saucers swarming Washington, D.C. During this period, the US Air Force said that reported UFO sightings jumped from 23 to 148.

• the U.S. government worried about the prospect of a growing national hysteria. The CIA decided it needed a “national policy” for “what should be told the public regarding the phenomenon, in order to minimize risk of panic.” The CIA convened a group of scientists to investigate whether the UFO phenomena represented a national security threat.

• The CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence collaborated with Howard Percy Robertson, a professor of mathematical physics at the California Institute of Technology, to gather a panel of nonmilitary scientists. The Robertson panel met for a few days in January 1953 to review Air Force records about UFO sightings going back to 1947. The panel reviewed Project Blue Book investigators Captain Edward J. Ruppelt and J. Allen Hynek and concluded that many of these ‘unexplained’ sightings were actually explainable if you just got creative about it. The panel’s main concern was controlling public hysteria.

• According to former UK government UFO investigator, Nick Pope, the CIA was worried that “the Soviets would find a way to use the huge level of public interest in UFOs to somehow manipulate, to cause panic; which then could be used to undermine national cohesiveness.” The Robertson report itself supports this viewpoint, suggesting “mass hysteria” over UFOs could lead to “greater vulnerability to possible enemy psychological warfare.”

• The Robertson report, which was released to the public in 1975 (see the Robertson report here), recommended debunking the notion of UFOs in the media content of articles, TV shows and movies in order to “… reduce the current gullibility of the public and … their susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda.”

• News reporter and book author, Leslie Kean, points to a CBS television show hosted by Walter Cronkite in 1966, which a Robertson panelist claimed to have helped organize “around the Robertson panel conclusions”. The program focused on debunking UFO sightings.

• Between 1966 and 1968, the US Air Force commissioned another ‘scientific’ inquiry into Project Blue Book by physicist Edward U. Condon and a group of scientists at the University of Colorado. The Condon Committee concluded that UFOs posed no threat to the U.S., and that most sightings could be easily explained. It also suggested that the Air Force end Project Blue Book’s investigations into UFOs—which it did in 1969. (see Condon Report here)

• UFO researchers have suggested that the government never really allowed the Robertson panel, the Condon Committee, or even Project Blue Book to review the most sensitive ‘classified’ UFO sightings. This is directly supported by a 1969 memo signed by Brigadier General Carroll H. Bolender revealing the Air Force hadn’t shared all UFO sightings with Project Blue Book and would continue to investigate sightings that could present a national security threat after the project ended.

• Critics claim that the real goal of the Robertson panel, the Condon Committee, and Project Blue Book was never to identify UFOs, but simply to influence public reaction to them. If so, then the government must have had information about extraterrestrials it wanted to conceal.

• The secrecy involving national security issues gave the CIA and the Air Force the audacity to explain away UFO sightings as “natural phenomena such as ice crystals and temperature inversions.” An example of a cover-up of UFOs that continues to today is the CIA’s claim that over half of the UFOs reported in the 1950s and 60s were actually US spy planes. CIA National Reconnaissance Office historian Gerald K. Haines notes a CIA tweet in 2014 that read, “Remember reports of unusual activity in the skies in the ‘50s? That was us.”

In January 1953, the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency had a thorny situation on its hands. Reports of UFO sightings were mushrooming around the country. Press accounts were fanning public fascination—and concern. So the CIA convened a group of scientists to investigate whether these unknown phenomena in the sky represented a national security threat.

But there was something else.

At a time when growing Cold War anxiety about the Soviets ranged from psychological warfare to wholesale nuclear annihilation, the U.S. government worried about the prospect of a growing national hysteria. In the previous year, UFOs had begun to figure prominently in the public conversation. In April 1952, the popular magazine LIFE published a story titled “Have We Visitors from Space?” that promised to offer “scientific evidence that there is a real case for interplanetary saucers.” In July that year, newspaper headlines around the country blared reports of flying saucers swarming Washington, D.C. Between March and June that year, the number of UFO sightings officially reported to the U.S. Air Force jumped from 23 to 148. Given all the attention UFOs were getting, the CIA decided it needed a “national policy” for “what should be told the public regarding the phenomenon, in order to minimize risk of panic,” according to government documents.

The Robertson report: The real enemy is hysteria

To this end, the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence collaborated with Howard Percy Robertson, a professor of mathematical physics at the California Institute of Technology, to gather a panel of nonmilitary scientists. The Robertson panel met for a few days in January 1953 to review Air Force records about UFO sightings going back to 1947.

Project Blue Book, which had started in 1952, was the latest iteration of the Air Force’s UFO investigative teams. After interviewing project members Captain Edward J. Ruppelt and astronomer J. Allen Hynek, the panel concluded that many sightings Blue Book had tracked were, in fact, explainable. For example, after reviewing film taken of a UFO sighting near Great Falls, Montana on August 15, 1950, the panel concluded what the film actually showed was sunlight reflecting off the surface of two Air Force interceptor jets.

The panel did actually see a potential threat related to this phenomena—but it wasn’t saucers and little green men.

“It was the public itself,” says John Greenewald, Jr., founder of The Black Vault, an online archive of government documents. There was a concern “that the general public, with their panic and hysteria, could overwhelm the resources of the U.S. government” in a time of crisis.

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Angels, Airships, and Aliens: The 3,500-Year History of UFO Sightings

September 28, 2019
ExoNews Editor

Listen to “E108 9-28-19 Angels, Airships, and Aliens: The 3,500-Year History of UFO Sightings” on Spreaker.
Article by Matt Blitz September 24, 2019 (popularmechanics.com)

• The US Navy has admitted that the three released videos of ‘unidentified aerial phenomenon’ are authentic, each depicting quick-moving oblong-shaped objects. The Navy has yet to identify the objects in these videos. The term “UAP” has replaced “UFO” which still carries a lot of historical “baggage” and stigma, and discourages people from reporting a sighting. Journalist Leslie Kean who helped break the New York Times story in December 2017 about the Navy’s UAP sightings says, “That term (UFO) is so loaded at this point, that you are never going to change people’s understanding of what it means.” “All you can do is adopt a new one.”

• But this is not a new phenomenon. Humans have seen and encountered unidentified flying objects for millennia. The only thing that’s changed is how people have interpreted these events over the years. Here is a summary of four eras of UFOs:

• Biblical Beginnings – Diana Walsh Pasulka, author of American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology and a professor of philosophy and religion at UNC Wilmington reports that “Catholicism, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and all the major religions actually have pictures and anecdotes of aerial phenomenon.” In nearly every religion, there are “contact events” where an important figure makes contact with a heavenly figure. Moses and the burning bush, Mohammad and the angel Gabriel, and the Virgin Mary’s own angelic visitation. “These are human’s first contact with something they interpret to not be human or of this planet. And, if they are [not of this planet], they are de facto extraterrestrial.” Unexplainable phenomena can become religion.

• The Era of Airships – In his 2010 book Wonders in the Sky: Unexplained Aerial Objects from Antiquity to Modern Times, French astronomer Jacques Vallee analyzed 500 historical UFO reports. The earliest sighting dates back nearly 3,500 years to modern-day Sudan, when a falling star “the like had not happened before” struck down the Nubians to give the Egyptians a military victory. These mysterious sightings dot human history and culminate in Dubuque, Iowa in 1879 when a “large, unexplained airship” was visible for an hour before it “disappeared on the horizon.”

• According to Pasulka, by the late 19th century humans began to shift their interpretation of the unknown from a religious framework to a technological one. In 1896 and 1897, mysterious “airships” were seen all over the U.S. with many witnesses signing affidavits. Thomas Edison remarked “it is absolutely impossible to imagine that a man could construct a successful airship and keep the matter a secret.” But by the late 19th century, hydrogen-filled airships were in development.

• The Dawn of the UFO – Late into World War II, American fighter pilots started observing orange, glowing lights they dubbed “foo fighters”. Rumors circulated about the Nazi’s using advanced technology and even establishing a lunar base. But American scientists explained it away as “electrostatic phenomena”. Then in 1947, Kenneth Arnold saw strange round craft flying in formation in excess of 1,000 miles per hour. Again, the Army dismissed it as a mirage or hallucination. But others came forward to say they had also seen similar aerial phenomenon.

• A few years later, the Air Force coined the term ‘UFO’ and it was prominently used in the Robertson Report, the same scientific panel that dismissed the ‘foo fighters’. The convenient excuse for these UFOs became the Soviet’s testing of secret weapons. But the US military brass “wrote that off pretty early on because of the extreme sophistication of the technology,” says Kean. “It was unimaginable that the Russians could have something like this.”

• An Extraterrestrial Threat? – The US Air Force created a secret project code-named “Sign” to investigate these UFO incidents. Kean says that there were “so many documents that show at the highest levels [the U.S. military] didn’t know what they were.” Some believed that these aerial phenomena were not from this planet. Then the July 1952 sightings over Washington D.C. convinced the government that the phenomenon could not be ignored. The military told the FBI that “the objects sighted may possibly be ships from another planet such as Mars”. The military told the public was that there was no “conceivable threat to the United States”, while they secretly feared a national security threat. Says Kean, “They just didn’t know what else to do at that point.”

• The Mystery Remains – The Robertson Panel in 1953 determined to debunk UFO sightings as either man-made or natural phenomenon. And that’s exactly what federal authorities did for more than six decades. But recent events suggest a new government strategy in the works. As of the 2017 New York Times article, the government confirmed that it had been investigating the UFO/UAP phenomenon in a $22 million Pentagon program that officially ended in 2012, but insiders said it continued until 2017 when its head, Luis Elizondo, resigned. The program studied physical effects from encounters with the objects and the theoretical technology that could enable the UAPs to perform as they did. But most interesting was that the program had recovered materials from these UAPs.

• Kean thinks there is a lot of research going on behind-the-scenes. As it is presumed that the U.S. isn’t the only country in possession of UAP materials, there is a secretive global race associated with this research. Says Kean, “From what I’ve been told, it’s a competitive thing. Whoever understands the technology first has a real advantage. My sense of it is that there’s an undercurrent of competition among Russia, China, and the U.S.”

• Sources have also told her that the physics of how these objects move has already been cracked. “What they’ve figured out is very futuristic,” says Kean. “[T]hey can understand how it’s done.” Scientists and medical experts are also attempting to understand the biological effects on those humans who’ve come close to these phenomenon.

• More than two-thirds of Americans believe that the US government knows more about UFOs than they are telling the public. It’s becoming common to see UFO videos on YouTube. But are they extraterrestrial? “It’s a valid hypothesis,” says Kean. Or could they be explained as inter-dimensional, or time travelers, or super-secret weapons or aircraft developed by another nation on this planet? What was a mystery in ancient times remains a mystery today.

This past week, the U.S. Navy confirmed that several videos—two of which were first released by The New York Times in 2017 depicting so-called “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAP)—are authentic. The three videos, (another was later published by The Washington Post), each depicting quick-moving oblong-shaped objects, were shot by Navy pilots during training exercises in 2004 and 2015. The Navy has yet to identify the objects in the video, and along with the Department of Defense, said the videos should have never been made public.

While a “UAP” may be an unfamiliar term, that’s sort of the point. UAPs are essentially the new UFO—but with a lot less historical baggage. A Navy spokesman told The Washington Post that the acronym “UFO” carries so much stigma that it discourages someone from reporting a sighting.

“That term is so loaded at this point, that you are never going to change people’s understanding of what it means,” journalist Leslie Kean, who co-wrote the 2017 New York Times investigation into the Pentagon’s UFO (or UAP) program, tells Popular Mechanics. “All you can do is adopt a new one.”

But humans didn’t just start seeing UFOs darting around above our heads in just the past few weeks…or in 2015, 2004, 1947, or even 1639. Humans have seen and encountered unidentified flying objects for millennia.

BIBLICAL BEGINNINGS

Unidentified flying objects have been recorded throughout human history. The only thing that’s changed is how people—stretched across thousands of years—have interpreted these unexplainable events.

“Catholicism, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and all the major religions actually have pictures and anecdotes of ariel phenomenon,” Diana Walsh Pasulka, author of American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology and a professor of philosophy and religion at UNC Wilmington tells Popular Mechanics.

Some of them were comets, asteroids, meteors, and other atmospheric optical phenomena that were scientifically unknown to our ancient ancestors, but others still defy modern explanations.

Pasulka explains in nearly every religion, there are “contact events” where an important figure makes contact with a heavenly figure. Moses and the burning bush, Mohammad and the angel Gabriel, and the Virgin Mary’s own angelic visitation.

“These are human’s first contact with something they interpret to not be human or of this planet. And, if they are [not of this planet], they are de facto extraterrestrial.”

Pasulka says the Torah’s tale of Jacob’s fight with an angel is a good example of an encounter with aerial phenomenon that was turned into a religious narrative. “When you go back to the original source and read it in its original language… it wouldn’t look like what the artists’ rendition of it are in Western history,” says Pasulka, “It would look like he’s fighting some kind of being from outer space.”

Pasulka isn’t saying that a biblical figure fought an alien and it turned into a religious text, but that vision of a figure descending from the sky could have come from a shared, human experience or observation. When religion is a lens to explain the universe, unexplainable phenomena can become religion.

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Pentagon’s Secret Search for UFO Still Continues, Says Investigative Journalist Leslie Kean

March 19, 2018
ExoNews Editor

by Nirmal Narayanan March 5, 2018 (ibtimes.sg)

• In a now infamous December 16, 2017 New York Times article, Leslie Kean (pictured above), one of the article’s investigative journalists, reported that the Pentagon’s $22M Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program which investigated UFOs ended in 2012. Now Ms Kean says that the secret Pentagon program still exists.

• Kean also confirmed that the ‘pill-shaped’ UFO which was spotted by U.S. Navy officials in 2004 might have come from outer space. Says Kean, “These objects, in this one incident in 2004, were actually observed coming in from outer space. They came in and then they went out, up into the sky. So whatever that means, that’s what happened. They were also seen able to move very, very, very fast from one space to another. Way faster than any airplane could do.”

Leslie Kean, the investigative journalist who shed light on Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) has now claimed that the secret project is still running. As per Kean, the investigation on unidentified flying objects is being continued by Pentagon, despite their previous statement which claimed that the program was ended in 2012.

“It’s completely rational to be interested and to try to figure out what’s going on with this. We know that this program existed, it still exists, and it investigated military cases and very significant cases of pilot encounter with these objects,” Leslie Kean told Wtop.

Kean made it clear that all the unidentified flying objects which we see in the sky are not necessarily from an alien world. However, Kean confirmed that the UFO which was spotted by US Navy officials in 2004 might have come from outer space. She added that none of the modern aircraft on earth could fly in such a way like that object did when it was tracked by a US Navy jet.

“These objects in this one incident in 2004 were actually observed coming in from outer space. They came in and then they went out, up into the sky. So whatever that means, that’s what happened. They were also seen able to move very, very, very fast from one space to another. Way faster than any airplane could do,” added Kean.

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