Senator Harry Reid

Harry Reid Thinks Lockheed Martin May Have UFO Fragments

May 15, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Tamar Lapin May 1, 2021 (foxnews.com)

• On April 30th, as part of an in-depth investigation into UFO/UAPs, former Senator Harry Reid (NV-D, pictured above) revealed in The New Yorker that he “was told for decades that Lockheed (Martin) had some…retrieved materials”, ie: fragments of a crashed UFO. (see here for the amazingly accurate summary of the UFO phenomenon thus far in The New Yorker)

• Reid, 81, admitted that he had never actually saw the extraterrestrial remnants allegedly in the possession of the US defense contractor – but he tried, unsuccessfully, to get approval from the Pentagon to find them. “And I tried to get, as I recall, a classified approval by the Pentagon to have me go look at the stuff. They would not approve that,” Reid said. “I don’t know what…kind of classification it was, but they would not give that to me.”

• Earlier the same day, The NY Post ran an article on Luis Elizondo who ran the Pentagon’s AATIP UFO program (see previous ExoArticle here). Elizondo believes that the bombshell government UFO report that is expected before the end of June will address what UFO believers have been clamoring to discover – the Tic Tac-shaped objects the Navy saw in 2004, the strange “cubes within spheres” seen by Navy aviators in 2014, and the mysterious black triangles reported around the world. Elizondo hasn’t been able to get the DoD to act on what he describes as a serious national security risk, and believes the federal government has been covering up the UFOs existence.

• Senator Reid defended the Pentagon whistleblower for taking the heat in the exploration of UFOs.”Mr. Elizondo has spent his career working tirelessly in the shadows on sensitive national-security matters, including investigating UAPs as the head of AATIP,” the former Senate Majority Leader said in a recent statement. “He performed these duties admirably.”

Former Nevada Sen. Harry Reid believes U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin

may have once had fragments of a crashed UFO in its possession, it was revealed Friday.

Reid, 81, told The New Yorker that he had never actually seen proof of the remnants — but tried, unsuccessfully, to get approval from the Pentagon to find them.

“I was told for decades that Lockheed had some of these retrieved materials,” the Democrat told the magazine.

“And I tried to get, as I recall, a classified approval by the Pentagon to have me go look at the stuff. They would not approve that,” Reid continued. “I don’t know what all the numbers were, what kind of classification it was, but they would not give that to me.”

His comments were part of an in-depth New Yorker story on U.S. government investigations

into unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP).

Earlier Friday, The Post revealed that an ex-Pentagon official who says he ran the program probing UAPs believes the feds have been covering up their existence.

The controversial whistleblower, Luis “Lue” Elizondo, said he hasn’t been able to get the Defense Department to act on what he described as a serious national security risk.

Elizondo, the former head of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, spoke out ahead of a bombshell government report on UFOs that is set to be released before the end of June.

He said the highly anticipated report will address what UFO believers have been clamoring to discover about Tic Tac-shaped objects the Navy saw in 2004, the strange “cubes within spheres” seen by naval aviators in 2014 and mysterious black triangles reported around the world.

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Tucker Carlson: It’s ‘Outrageous’ That the Government is Still Hiding Evidence of UFOs

October 24, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Phil Owen October 10, 2020 (yahoo.com)

• On October 9th, Tucker Carlson ended his Fox News show by discussing UFOs and aliens. (see 4:47 minute video clip below) The topic was prompted by the release of an obscure new documentary called “The Phenomenon” – which claims to be “the most credible examination of the global mystery and cover-up involving UFOs.” (see previous ExoArticle here)

• The documentary features former Senator Harry Reid talking about how the government is still keeping most of the evidence of UFOs under wraps. “If this wasn’t an election year we’d be doing a full hour of this, maybe a full week. It’s that important,” Tucker said of the release of the documentary. “We used to be defensive on this topic, but there’s no reason to be. There is now an enormous amount of evidence, including physical evidence, that UFOs — whatever they are — are real.”

• Carlson then played a clip from the documentary in which Reid says he thinks “it’s very, very bad for a country” that the government won’t tell us about the UFOs, and that “most” of the physical evidence for UFOs has remained locked away. “It’s outrageous,” Carlson said. “And it’s not a partisan question, by the way. That of course was former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, a Democrat if there ever was one.”

• According to the film, Reid said that UFOs have actually and repeatedly interfered with our nuclear weapons capabilities. “So where are these UFOs from?” Carlson asks. “Some researchers told the filmmakers that their origins are becoming clearer.”

• Carlson plays a film clip in which the narrator says: “Dr. Jacque Vallee has collected purported metal debris from UFO cases dating as far back as 1947 that experts are analyzing in a state-of-the-art laboratory. He was astonished to find their composition was unlike any known metal.” Vallee claims that the materials he has were “manufactured” by someone, as they are “not natural to the materials that we have… on the Earth.”

• Carlson then chats briefly then with the documentary’s director, James Fox, and former Defense Department official Christopher Mellon. Carlson asked Fox about this story Reid tells in the film about the UFOs messing with nuclear missiles. “Well, that was one of the big bombshells that Harry Reid dropped during production of the film. It really kind of caught me off guard because it’s the first time, you know, a government official of his magnitude, of his level, had revealed that these UFOs were not only seeing over, you know, super secret nuclear weapons facilities, but they were interacting, shutting on and off some of the missiles,” Fox said. “(Reid) went as far as even saying that if the president had called upon– to launch the missiles on several occasions, they couldn’t have done it. The missiles were deactivated. And this has also been happening in Russia, and we document those cases very thoroughly with high level military officials testifying about these incidents.”

• “In terms of the materials, there are private researchers, Jacques, perhaps foremost among them,” said Mellon. “Jacques is a meticulous scientist, so he’s sending it to peer review and multiple labs. But the gist of it is that those materials were engineered at an atomic level. It’s a capability that we don’t even possess. If they can prove that, demonstrate that, that’ll raise a lot of interesting questions.”

As he often does, Tucker Carlson took a break from talking politics for a few minutes at the very end of his Fox News show on Friday night — to talk about aliens and UFOs.

The last time Tucker talked about aliens on his show was mid-September, when we got the the news that there is very likely some form of life on Venus. This time, the topic was prompted by the release of an obscure new documentary called “The Phenomenon” — which claims to be, according to the product description on Vudu, “the most credible examination of the global mystery and cover-up involving UFOs.”

The doc, which was put up for sale and rental on streaming services this past Tuesday, features former Sen. Harry Reid talking about how the government is still keeping most of the evidence of UFOs under wraps. It’s also narrated by “Sphere” star Peter Coyote.

“If this wasn’t an election year we’d be doing a full hour of this, maybe a full week. It’s that important,” Tucker said of the release of the documentary, which currently has six reviews from critics listed on Rotten Tomatoes, and five user reviews.

“We used to be defensive on this topic, but there’s no reason to be. There is now an enormous amount of evidence, including physical evidence, that UFOs — whatever they are — are real,” Tucker went on. “Why don’t we know a lot more about this? Because the government has hidden that information from us, outrageously. But now some of that information has come into public view thanks to a new documentary called ‘The Phenomenon.’

“Tucker Carlson Tonight” then pulled up a clip from the film in which Reid says he thinks “it’s very, very bad for a country” that the government won’t tell us about the UFOs. And that “most” of the physical evidence for UFOs has remained locked away.

“It’s outrageous,” Tucker said after the clip. “And it’s not a partisan question, by the way. That of course was former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, a Democrat if there ever was one. But that’s not even the biggest claim he makes. According to the film, Reid said that UFOs have actually and repeatedly interfered with our nuclear weapons capabilities.

4:47 minute video of Tucker Carlson on new UFO documentaryfilm (‘Let It Snow’ YouTube)

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UFO Sightings Shoot Up in NY in 2020

October 8, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Adam Nichols September 25, 2020 (patch.com)

• Nationwide, there have been thousands of witness accounts of UFOs submitted to the National UFO Reporting Center. New York has seen a dramatic increase in UFO sightings. While there were 151 sightings reported in all of 2019, there are already 184 sightings of unexplained flying craft in the sky in 2020, including bright lights, strange sounds and oddly shaped objects.

• Following a sighting of a UFO craft, a witness in Staten Island, New York gave a terrifying description of a burning sensation. “…I felt this heat like feeling going through my body,” this person reported. “Starting at my head, like some sort of radiation. Burning me like frying me. And that’s when I realized it was the craft.”

• In another account, witnesses said, “We were on a rooftop viewing the Persiuds when the glowing green UFO passed directly overhead at a low altitude, followed by what sounded like a military aircraft. The green lights were revolving in a figure eight as the craft moved quickly from east to west towards Manhattan. The military aircraft that appeared to follow it was very loud.”

• The credibility of UFO got a boost when The New York Times and Politico reported on a $22 million, multi-year Pentagon UFO research program that began in 2007 known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Funding for the program came through former US Senator, Harry Reid, who is from Nevada where Area 51 is located – also the reported home to alien beings and craft.

• In late 2017, retired Navy Commander David Fravor was conducting a training mission off the coast of California in 2004 when he saw an oblong craft flying erratically through his airspace at incredible speed, maneuvering in a way that defies accepted principles of aerodynamics. Described as a wingless object, about 40 feet long and shaped like a Tic Tac, Fravor remarked, “I can tell you, I think it was not from this world.” “[A]fter 18 years of flying, I’ve seen pretty much about everything that I can see in that realm, and this was nothing close.”

• When Fravor saw the object from the air, controllers on one of the Navy ships on the water below reported that objects were being dropped about 80,000 feet from the sky, then headed “straight back up.” Fravor could see the disturbances on the water below and breaking waves on the surface, “like something’s under the surface.” The radar jammed, and as Fravor flew closer, the craft rapidly accelerated and zoomed upward and disappeared. Once the object was gone, the ocean below was a still sheet of blue with no evidence of disturbance. Infrared scanning also showed no evidence of an exhaust trail.

NEW YORK CITY – Add War of the Worlds to everything else 2020 is throwing at New York.

Skygazers have reported a huge increase of unidentified flying objects seen in the state – already, 184 unexplained flying crafts or lights seen in the state have been logged with the National UFO Reporting Center.

In almost all of 2019, only 151 were seen.

The sightings include bright lights, strange sounds and oddly shaped objects. A person in Staten Island gave a terrifying description of a burning sensation following a sighting.

“And that’s when I felt this heat like feeling going through my body,” they reported.

“Starting at my head, like some sort of radiation. Burning me like frying me. And that’s when I realized it was the craft.”

Others were less disturbing.

“We were on a rooftop viewing the Persiuds when the glowing green ufo passed directly overhead at a low altitude, followed by what sounded like a military aircraft,” said one.

“The green lights were revolving in a figure eight as the craft moved quickly From east to west towards Manhattan. The military Aircraft that appeared to follow it was very loud.”

Nationwide, there have been thousands of witness accounts of UFOs submitted to the center.

UFO hunting has been a popular pursuit in the United States since the mid-20th century, when Kenneth Arnold, a businessman piloting a small plane, filed the first well-known report in 1947 of a UFO over Mount Rainier in Washington. Arnold claimed he saw nine high-speed, crescent-shaped objects zooming along at several thousand miles per hour “like saucers skipping on water.”

Although the objects Arnold claimed to see weren’t saucer-shaped at all, his analogy led to the popularization of the term “flying saucers.” And since then, Americans have been more or less obsessed with the idea that alien life is among us.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

The Pentagon Officially Releases UFO Videos

May 3, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Michael Conte April 28, 2020 (cnn.com)

• Between December 2017 and March 2018, Tom DeLonge’s ‘To The Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences’ first released three US Navy videos of UAPs/UFOs. One of these was the infamous “Tic Tac” UFO from 2004 which Navy pilot David Fravor remarked, ‘moved in ways he couldn’t explain’, “like a ping pong ball, bouncing off a wall.”

• Also revealed was the existence of a classified Pentagon UFO program launched in 2007 at the behest of former Nevada Senator Harry Reid. The program was allegedly ended in 2012. The former head of the Pentagon program, Luis Elizondo, said in 2017 that he personally believes “there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone.” “These aircraft,” said Elizondo, “… are displaying characteristics that are not currently within the US inventory nor in any foreign inventory that we are aware of.” Elizondo resigned from the Defense Department in 2017 in protest over the secrecy surrounding the program and the internal opposition to funding it.

• In September 2019, the Navy acknowledged the veracity of the videos. Now, the Pentagon has officially released these same three short UFO videos taken by Navy pilots on infrared cameras – one in 2004 and two others in 2015 – “in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos,” said Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough.

• Former Senator Reid tweeted that he was “glad” the Pentagon officially released the videos, but that “it only scratches the surface of research and materials available. The U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications.”

• A spokesperson for Virginia Senator Mark Warner told CNN last summer, “If pilots at Oceana (Master Navy Jet Base in Virginia Beach) or elsewhere are reporting flight hazards that interfere with training or put them at risk, then Senator Warner wants answers. It doesn’t matter if it’s weather balloons, little green men, or something else entirely — we can’t ask our pilots to put their lives at risk unnecessarily.”

The Pentagon has officially released three short videos showing “unidentified aerial phenomena” that had previously

been released by a private company.

The videos show what appear to be unidentified flying objects rapidly moving while recorded by infrared cameras. Two of the videos contain service members reacting in awe at how quickly the objects are moving. One voice speculates that it could be a drone.

The Navy previously acknowledged the veracity of the videos in September of last year. They are officially releasing them now, “in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos,” according to Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough.

“After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems,” said Gough in a statement, “and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena.”

2:42 minute video on release of declassified UFOs (‘ABC News’ YouTube)

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How the Government Keeps Its UFO Information Secret

February 23, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Jazz Shaw February 15, 2020 (hotair.com)

• In December 2017, the New York Times broke the story about a secret Pentagon program investigating UFOs called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). Since then the Pentagon has remained secretive about the program. It has even denied that Luis Elizondo ever worked on the program, much less ran it for years. The DoD’s information keeps getting contradicted and the Pentagon can’t seem to get their story straight.

• Investigative journalist and retired Police Lieutenant Tim McMillan has been digging into the truth behind the conflicting information we’ve been getting from the Pentagon. It turns out that the Pentagon thwarted efforts by journalists using FOIA requests to get more information on AATIP by “shopping” them out to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) and other private operations. You may recall that BAASS received the lion’s share of the government funding when the AATIP program was created at the request of former Senator Harry Reid. Therefore, they aren’t technically “government documents” and not subject to FOIA requests. McMillan quotes sources who actually worked on the project, describing the situation as “a dizzying shell game that’s entirely consistent with how black budget intelligence programs are run.” (see Jazz Shaw’s interview of Tim McMillan below)

• BAASS would provide the AATIP and the DIA with technical reports on exotic and potential “game-changing” aerospace technology through their research of UFOs. But the reports themselves remained the commercial property of BAASS, and the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 prohibits the disclosure of proprietary materials provided to the government in confidence. Essentially, the DIA’s UFO program was set up to circumvent FOIA requests and avoid having to discuss UFOs publicly.

• McMillan was able to obtain some of those AATIP documents from the government and from the now-defunct Bigelow Aerospace to learn that not only was AATIP real, but the program absolutely focused on UFOs. Also, McMillan has the documents to prove that the Pentagon’s AATIP program still exists under a restructured program, even though the government claimed that it ended the program in 2012. It certainly was in operation in 2017 when Elizondo left the program, and it is still in operation today.

• Popular Mechanics learned that in October 2019, staffers with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Armed Service Committee were briefed on current UAP/UFO activities with former BAASS contractors and current AATIP leaders in attendance. During a closed session with the Senate Intelligence Committee, Brigadier General Richard Stapp, Director of the DoD Special Access Program Central Office, reportedly said that these highly advanced UFOs do not belong to a secret military project. This indicates that the US military does not have that kind of advanced technology. And it is likely that China and Russia do not have this technology either. So the extraterrestrial explanation is still in play.

In the more than two years since the New York Times broke their bombshell story about a secret Pentagon program investigating UFOs (or UAPs, if you insist), many questions have been raised by those investigating the topic. Unfortunately, the Pentagon has had very little to say, and even when they do offer to answer some questions, those answers frequently have a rather short shelf life. In the past, we’ve explored why there is still so much secrecy surrounding the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) and how the Pentagon can’t seem to keep their stories straight. This is particularly true when it comes to their statements about Luis Elizondo, executive of To The Stars Academy and the former Defense Department official who ran AATIP for several years. (The Pentagon keeps insisting he never did, though Elizondo has his own theories as to why they’re doing this.)

Now, at long last, at least some of those mysteries have been solved. Yesterday another bombshell in this

saga dropped at Popular Mechanics. Investigative journalist Lt. Tim McMillan (ret) has been digging into the truth behind the conflicting information we’ve been getting for months and now he’s published a lengthy and incredibly well researched and documented article that peeks behind the curtains and shines some light on the subject. (If you’ve never watched my interview with McMillan, you might want to. He’s a fascinating person in his own right and well versed in the lore of ufology.)

This article provides most of the history of AATIP, some of which we already knew, but with some shocking new information that Tim uncovered through scores of interviews and by obtaining many documents from both the government and the now-defunct Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS). BAASS, as you may recall, received the lion’s share of the government funding when the AATIP program was created at the request of former Senator Harry Reid. The first thing

McMillan clears up beyond a shadow of a doubt is that not only was AATIP real, but it was also absolutely a program focused on UFOs. (You may recall that after initially admitting it was a UAP program, the Pentagon turned around and said it wasn’t.)
So how is the Pentagon keeping everything secret and thwarting efforts by journalists using FOIA requests to get more information on AATIP? McMillan quotes sources who actually worked on the project, describing the situation as “a dizzying shell game that’s entirely consistent with how black budget intelligence programs are run.” The trick being used involves the fact that the documents many of us have been seeking were all shopped out to BAASS and other private operations, so they aren’t technically “government documents” and not subject to FOIA requests. (Emphasis added)

According to several former AATIP contractors, the “product” being produced for the DIA was technical reports on exotic and potential “game-changing” aerospace technologies, and the manner of determining what areas these radical airborne breakthroughs might emerge was through the research of UFOs.

42:55 minute Jazz Shaw interview of Tim McMillan on govt secrecy (‘Townhall Media’ YouTube)

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A Reversal of OSD Pentagon Statements About AATIP?

December 9, 2019
Giorgio Piacenza

Do you know that, recently, Mrs. Susan Gough (PR spokeswoman of the OSD – Office of the Secretary of Defense) allegedly/apparently wrote an email to Mr. John Greenwald (The Black Vault) saying (according to Mr. Greenwald) that AATIP did not investigate UAP (UFOs)? I still haven’t read the original letter but it is something that has to be known.

I expect more information to come out soon, from Mr. Greenwald, perhaps from Mrs. Gough, perhaps from the Navy and from TTSA. Is it a misunderstanding or a fundamental conflict of factual information? Is it a strange strategy to confuse people?

These declarations would have to deny not only Mr. Elizondo’s but also Mr. Jim Semivan, Chris Mellon, H. Puthoff and other serious people (such as Senator Harry Reid), not only knowledgeable about classified information (and intelligence clearances) but also linked to TTSA, credible persons who today – as a whole – guarantee that AATIP did investigate UAPs (UFOs).

Is all of this a confusion or a reversal of policy?

It doesn’t seem to make sense but (if the information shared by Mr. Greenwald is accurate) WHY would this be happening now? Do some persons “in the know” want to lock the cat back after it came out of the box?

Or is Mr. Greenwald’s information not very clear? Or perhaps is this the old pattern of those who try to control what the population knows, using the practice of revelation followed by denial? (However, this revealing was to one or a few individuals only before the denial).

Is it a mistake from Mrs. Gough who doesn’t know all the information? Or has she been told to say that? Is this a strategy from a faction inside those “in the know” because something else is in the offing? Is this apart of an old plan or a new move?

In terms of UFO disclosure, the “powers that be” follow a pattern of revealing and denying information to society as Randy Koppang and Grant Cameron would likely agree. They usually reveal something to one or a few individuals and later deny it after these individuals have been used to deliver a message to society. But this time they would be denying a whole team of intelligence- savy VIPs gathered in TTSA.

A few days before, another letter by Mrs. Gough (in response to an SCU (Scientific Coalition for Ufology request) publicly shared by Mr. Greenwald) stated that the U.S. Navy only had the “source” videos similar in quality and in length of the 3 videos shown to the public through TTSA (“GIMBAL” “GO FAST” and “FLIR 1”). That these were not classified. She doesn’t actually deny that there may be full-length and higher quality “original ” videos somewhere else but seems to be minimizing or trying to minimize expectations from the general public regarding what the U.S. Navy (and, by extrapolation, the Government in general) may have.

What is happening here?

—————————————————————————

LINK to John Greenwald’s report in The Black Vault:

The Pentagon Corrects Record on “Secret UFO Program”

Harry Reid Wants Hearings on What the Military Knows About UFOs: ‘They Would Be Surprised How the American Public Would Accept It’

June 19, 2019
ExoNews Editor

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told KNPR, he wishes lawmakers would hold public hearings into what the military knows about UFOs

by Chris Ciaccia June 14, 2019 (foxnews.com)

• Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev pictured above) told KNPR, the National Public Radio affiliate in Las Vegas, he wishes lawmakers would hold public hearings into what the military knows about UFOs. “They would be surprised how the American public would accept it,” Reid said on air.

• Reid himself was the lawmaker behind the $22M funding for the Pentagon’s AATIP UFO study program from 2007 to 2012, as reported by the New York Times in December 2017. (see article here) “That money was spent developing page after page of information,” said Reid. “[T]here’s been a lot of activity since that.” Reid says that he sees this as a national security issue, noting that he believes both Russia and China are looking into the issue. Last month, the Pentagon admitted to the New York Post that it is still actively investigating claimed sightings of alien spacecraft. (see article here)

• This past April, the US Navy announced new guidelines for Navy personnel reporting encounters with “unidentified aircraft” in response to more sightings of unknown, advanced aircraft flying into or near Navy strike groups or other sensitive military facilities. (see article here)

• On Fox News & Friends, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon remarked, “We know that UFOs exist. This is no longer an issue.” “The issue is why are they here? Where are they coming from and what is the technology behind these devices that we are observing?” (see article here)

• In January, the Defense Intelligence Agency revealed its funding of projects investigating wormholes, alternate dimensions, and other advanced propulsion technology research topics associated with UFOs (see article here).

Nearly two years after it was reported that the Pentagon set up a secret program to investigate UFOs at the request of former Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, the former senator is clamoring for Congress to look into what the military knows about their existence.

Speaking with Nevada’s KNPR, Reid said he wishes lawmakers would hold public hearings into what the military knows.

“They would be surprised how the American public would accept it,” he said during the wide-ranging interview. “People from their individual states would accept it.”

Reid, who was able to get $22 million in funding for the study of military sightings of UFOs, said that his office produced a plethora of reports on the subject.

“That money was spent developing page after page of information,” he added. “Where people in the past had seen things and not one person but hundreds of people as a result of that there’s been a lot of activity since that.”

Reid mentioned that he would like further research into a topic he sees as a national security issue, noting that he believes both Russia and China are looking into the issue.

In December 2017, both The New York Times and Politico published stories that revealed the existence of the Pentagon’s now-defunct Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. The New York Times said the UFO program began in 2007, while Politico reported it began in 2009.

Last month, the Pentagon admitted to the New York Post that it is still actively investigating claimed sightings of alien spacecraft, despite claiming that it shut down the AATIP program in 2012.

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The Paranormal Roots of the Pentagon’s UFO Program

May 19, 2019
ExoNews Editor

by Alejandro Rojas May 15, 2019 (denofgeek.com)

• The Pentagon’s five-year, $22M ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’ (AATIP) UFO study program, headed by Luis Elizondo, which The New York Times revealed in a December 2017 article (see here), did not begin with interest in UFOs. It began with the Defense Intelligence Agency’s interest in the paranormal activities going on at billionaire Robert Bigelow’s ‘Skinwalker Ranch’ in Utah. The original name for the secret project was the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program (AAWSAP).

• Soon, the fundamentalist Christians within the various US intelligence agencies began to raise their religious concerns. “They’re basically high-level people in different intelligence agencies… who think that anything involving UFOs and the paranormal is satanic,” said George Knapp (the I-Team Las Vegas television journalist who has been closely following this story). “Certain senior government officials thought our collection of facts on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) was dangerous to their philosophical beliefs,” said Elizondo. “[T]he data was a threat to their (Christian) belief system.”

• By 2008, the pressure from the Christian right to end these demonic “paranormal investigations” caused them to create a sub-group inside of AAWSAP that focused only on military UFO cases. This was AATIP. When Elizondo took over as the head of the program in 2010, he only worked within the AATIP UFO division while the DIA closed the AAWSAP paranormal division. By 2012, the AATIP was closed down as well (so they say), and Elizondo left the government to work with Tom DeLonge’s ‘To The Stars Academy’.

• The DIA had initially approached Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow “to visit Mr. Bigelow’s ranch in the Uintah Basin of Utah, where he conducted research”. The original AAWSAP Paranormal division’s investigations included “bizarre creatures, poltergeist activity, invisible entities, orbs of light, animal and human injuries and much more,” according to a senior manager on the project.

• Bigelow’s first significant foray into the unknown was an organization created in 1995 called the National Institute for Discovery Sciences (NIDS). Its purpose was to conduct scientific investigations of the paranormal. Bigelow bought the Skinwalker Ranch in 1996. By the time the DIA official had approached him, Bigelow had already spent decades and large sums of money researching the paranormal.

• Among the paranormal manifestations at the Skinwalker Ranch were floating orbs and a giant wolf-like creature that attacked cattle, could withstand multiple point-blank gunshots, and seemed to disappear into thin air. On one occasion, NIDS investigators were observing the ranch from the edge of a bluff when one of them noticed a light in the forest below. The light began to grow. Once it became a couple of feet wide, they say it looked like a tunnel opening up, and they saw a creature within. It was large and black with no face. It crawled out of the light and into the dark forest. The light then began to disappear until it was gone.

• After the DIA began investigating the Skinwalker Ranch in 2007, DIA officials met with Nevada Senator Harry Reid about starting a paranormal research program. Senator Reid, a friend of Bigelow’s, shared Bigelow’s interest in the topic and found bipartisan support from a couple of fellow members of Congress to secure funding and get the project launched in 2007. Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) won the government contract to manage the project.

• John Alexander, a retired Colonel in U.S. Army Intelligence, helped organize NIDS investigations. “What we learned was that the events were real and tangible, and definitely occurring,” Alexander explained. “These weren’t figments of someone’s imagination, or folklore or any of these sorts of things.”

At the end of 2017, The New York Times broke the story of a secretive Pentagon program with a budget of $22 million to investigate UFOs called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). The man who exposed the existence of the program, Luis Elizondo, was the former head of the project. Elizondo’s ongoing efforts to investigate the UFO mystery with his new employer, the To the Stars Academy (TTSA), will be featured in a History Channel series premiering May 31 called Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.

However, what The New York Times apparently did not know when they published their story is that the program went by a different name at its inception, and the scope of the program was much broader than just UFOs. In fact, according to a senior manager on the project, the investigations included “bizarre creatures, poltergeist activity, invisible entities, orbs of light, animal and human injuries and much more.”

It is unknown whether Undisclosed will cover the paranormal aspects of the program. Although Elizondo did work with this paranormal project, he only worked in the UFO division. By the time he was the head of the entire program, the UFO division was all that was left. The rest of the program had been shut down, and you will never guess why. It wasn’t because people inside the Department of Defense (DoD) thought the program was too weird, although some did. It was shut down because of demonic forces.

Don’t worry, demons didn’t attack the Pentagon, but apparently, some people inside the government were afraid the potentially paranormal incidents being investigated could be demonic, especially scary occurrences taking place at a ranch in Utah, and they wanted no part of it. They didn’t want the government messing with demons either, so they lobbied for the program to be ended and it was.

This may sound extremely odd, but according to those involved, it’s true.

The New York Times story that broke the Pentagon UFO program began when an official with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) approached Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow “to visit Mr. Bigelow’s ranch in Utah, where he conducted research.”

That sounds innocent enough, but what the article did not cover is what Bigelow researched at this ranch in Utah. Bigelow was known for his interest in the paranormal and UFOs, and by the time the DIA official had approached him, Bigelow had already spent decades and large sums of money researching the paranormal. Bigelow’s first significant foray into the unknown was an organization created in 1995 called the National Institute for Discovery Sciences (NIDS). Its purpose was to conduct scientific investigations of the paranormal.

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I-Team Confirms Pentagon Did Release UFO Videos

May 5, 2019
ExoNews Editor

by George Knapp and Matt Adams April 29, 2019 (lasvegasnow.com)

• U.S. Navy officials recently announced that it is changing its policy regarding the reporting of UFOs/UAPs by Navy pilots and personnel (see announcement article). But since a December 2017 New York Times article (see here) revealed a 5-year/$22M Pentagon UFO study program that ended in 2012, along with several videos with images of apparent UFOs, the Pentagon has insisted that the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) had nothing to do with UFOs, and it has denied that the videos came from the Department of Defense (DoD). Now, George Knapp’s ‘I-Team’ has learned that this is not accurate.

• The U.S. Navy’s 2004 encounter with a ‘Tic Tac’ UFO off of San Diego; the 2015 incursion by multiple unknowns off the coast of Florida dubbed ‘Gimbal’; and a zippy craft off of the coast of Virginia known as “Go Fast” did, in fact, come from the DoD. “The videos were released by the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense made the decision to release them,” said Lue Elizondo, a former DoD intelligence officer and director of the Pentagon’s AATIP study.

• Before Elizondo resigned from his Pentagon detail, he initiated a process to get the three videos, and many more, declassified for public release. He insisted in a June 2018 interview these UFO encounters were not isolated incidents. “There were many incidents we looked at and we looked at them on a continuing basis,” said former US Senator Harry Reid. Senator Reid confirmed ‘there’s a lot more where these came from’.

• To back up their assertions, the I-Team obtained a copy of the DD 1910 form issued by the Department of Defense office of prepublication and security review, the final step in a multi-step process to have them publicly released. (click here for the DD 1910 form) The request specifies the three videos: Go Fast, Gimbal and FLIR, which was the original name for the Tic Tac encounter. The document shows that authorization for release was granted on August 24, 2017. The I-Team also acquired the DoD directive which spells out how the video release procedure works.

• Since their release, the three videos and the pilots involved in those encounters have been part of several closed door briefings given to Congress, set up by Chris Mellon who formerly worked for the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Department of Defense. High ranking Navy officials claimed to be ‘just as surprised’ at the UFO evidence as congressional staff. The Navy now wants to encourage pilots to report unusual encounters without fear of damaging their careers.

• Mellon, now of ‘To The Stars Academy’, told the I-Team that the Navy officials realized it was “indefensible” to not have a system that allowed more reporting of these incidents.

U.S. Navy officials issued a stunning statement a few days ago. The Navy announced it is developing new policies that will make it easier for pilots and other military personnel to file official reports about encounters with “unexplained aerial phenomena”, otherwise known as UFOs.

What’s behind this dramatic announcement? And is it related to the UFO videos which were made public at the end of 2017?

For the U.S. Navy to issue such a forceful statement about UFOs and the importance of investigating each incident is such an abrupt change. It stands in marked contrast to all the conflicting statements made by the Pentagon in the past 15 months — claims that the secret study sponsored by Nevada Senator Harry Reid wasn’t really about UFOs, that it ended years ago, and that the three videos weren’t really released by the Department of Defense. Suffice to say, those Pentagon statements are simply not accurate.

The U.S. Navy’s 2004 encounter with an object dubbed the Tic Tac UFO. The 2015 incursion by multiple unknowns off the coast of Florida dubbed Gimbal. And a zippy craft aptly known as “Go Fast”.

Two of the three videos were made public in December 2017, released simultaneously by the New York Times and To The Stars Academy. The provenance of the videos has been disputed ever since.

“The videos were released by the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense made the decision to release them,” said Lue Elizondo, a former intelligence officer.

Reporter George Knapp: “So, someone gave this the green light?”

Lue Elizondo: “Absolutely, and it wasn’t me.”

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Insights About Secret Scientific Research in the U.S.

April 9, 2019
ExoNews Editor

by Come Carpentier de Gourdon March 23, 2019 (sundayguardianlive.com)

• How much more time and effort will it take for certain agencies in the US government to confess to the mind-boggling secrets they have kept from the public, often in violation of constitutional principles and legal norms and procedures? Unacknowledged scientific and “exotic” technical programs being carried out in various publicly and privately funded laboratories and research centers, often affiliated to military and intelligence agencies, and unknown to democratically elected authorities, demonstrate the existence of a two-tier scientific culture in the US at least, if not in the rest of the world.

• What do we know about “special access” programs hiding within the American military-industrial-intelligence complex? Among whistleblowers, Bob Lazar is noteworthy because of the extensive information he provided in videotaped talks about research he had carried out in Area S-4, near the notorious Area 51 in the Nevada desert. Lazar claimed to have been part of a team reverse engineering a 52 feet wide saucer-shaped craft that he quickly realized was not built by humans. The craft could sit three small sized (3 feet tall) crew members and generated its own gravitational field, enabling the craft to reach fantastic speeds.

• Lazar’s report was supported by well-connected investigators, including John Lear, son of the Learjet inventor and a veteran CIA operative who testified that he was also exposed to covert research into “alien” technologies. Area 51 aeronautics engineer Edgar Fouché reported the development of the secret Tr3-B triangular mercury plasma fueled spacecraft.

• In 1997, former Pentagon intelligence officer and White House staffer Colonel Philip Corso’s bestselling book, The Day After Roswell, lifted the veil on much of the clandestine research pursued since 1947 by various branches of the federal government and compartmentally outsourced to defense contractors such as Lockheed, Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Martin Marietta, Northrop, Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics and others. Corso alleged that major technical breakthroughs such as microtransistors, superconductors, fibre optics, Kevlar and night vision goggles had been developed through reverse engineering of alien materials, although the results of those advanced investigations remained largely undisclosed.

• Dr Robert Wood from McDonnell Douglas, Corey Goode, William Tompkins also formerly at McDonnell Douglas, and the more controversial Dan Burisch, are among the alleged “insiders” who have blown the whistle on various “black” programs. Their accounts have been extensively reported and analyzed by veteran researchers such as Linda Moulton Howe as part of her Earthfiles series, Paola Harris, Dr Steven Greer (in his widely publicized Disclosure Project) and Dr Michael Salla, co-founder of the Exopolitics Institute.

• In 2007, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who then chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, with the support of fellow Senators, Inouye and Stevens, set up the $22 million/ five-year ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’ to conduct research on UFOs and the collected evidence of the extraterrestrial presence. The program commissioned 38 classified papers from a number of universities and research centers and a 490-page report which are still unissued publicly. The DIA did release a list of titles to the 38 government-funded research reports, and Corey Goode released two of these exotic propulsion studies.

• In June 2017, a 47-page top secret MJ-12 briefing document was leaked and analyzed by various experts. It contains detailed descriptions of alien craft and their recovery, transcripts of communications with alien beings and spells out the measures taken by concerned agencies to keep the entire subject secret, even to the highest elected authorities.

• A private initiative called ‘To the Stars Academy’ has been set up with the participation of some of the former staffers of AATIP, including its former director Luis Elizondo. TTSA is working with retired military and civilian officials to further disclose the extensive and long-standing secret military R&D pursued between government agencies and private contractors involved in what is commonly called the Deep State. Its executive director Tom DeLonge has produced a new documentary series for the History Channel relying on military insider testimonies and entitled Unidentified.

• Cynics who alleged that all this is speculative mumbo-jumbo amounting to a waste of public money did not consider that the disclosure from AATIP seems to be what the CIA calls a “limited hangout”: i.e. a superficial glimpse of a much larger secret cloaked in “plausible deniability”.

Many investigators and whistleblowers in the United States have, over the last 40 years, called attention upon unacknowledged scientific and technical programmes being carried out in various publicly and privately funded laboratories and research centres, affiliated to military and intelligence agencies, in “exotic” areas that are officially not regarded as deserving of serious attention in civilian institutions such as universities. The existence of such programmes, now being proven, would demonstrate the existence of a two-tier scientific culture in the US at least, if not in the rest of the world, of which the upper tier would be a domain for clandestine R&D, unsupervised by, and unknown to, democratically elected authorities. If only for this reason, finding out the truth about the situation is of great value to society.

What do we know about the long suspected “special access” programmes hiding within the American military-industrial-intelligence complex and what is backed by material evidence?

Among the first whistleblowers, who emerged in the 1980s (1989 in his case), Bob Lazar is noteworthy because of the extensive information he provided in videotaped talks about research he had carried out in Area S-4 close to the since notorious Area 51 in the Nevada desert’s atomic testing range, around the dry Groom lake riverbed.

Lazar claimed to have being recruited by the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), through defence contractor EG&G, to work as part of a team on a highly classified project which involved examining and reverse engineering a 52 feet wide saucer-shaped craft that he quickly realised was not built by humans. He further explained that it was made of some unknown ceramic-like material, could sit three small sized (3 feet tall) crew members and was powered by a hitherto undiscovered super-heavy element, eventually identified as number 115 on the periodic table, which generated its own gravitational field and enabled the craft to reach fantastic speeds. Lazar further explained that the retrieved space vehicle was being test flown in Area 51/S-4 although neither its materials nor its propulsion systems could be figured out or reproduced. However, he warned that the US military had somehow gotten hold of a substantial quantity of Element 115, stored at Los Alamos and intended for weaponisation. His report was supported by well connected investigators, including John Lear, son of the Learjet inventor and a veteran CIA operative who testified that he was also exposed to covert research into “alien” technologies.

Lazar’s testimony (retraced and updated in a recent documentary by Jeremy Corbell entitled Bob Lazar, Area 51 and Flying Saucers) was one of many that were more or less publicised in the following decades despite stubborn denials from official quarters. In 1997, former Pentagon intelligence officer (foreign technology desk) and White House staffer Colonel Philip Corso’s bestselling book, The Day After Roswell, purported to lift the veil on much of the clandestine research pursued since 1947 by various branches of the federal government and compartmentally outsourced to defence contractors such as Lockheed, Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Martin Marietta, Northrop, Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics and others. However, the results of those advanced investigations remained largely undisclosed, although Corso alleged that major technical breakthroughs such as microtransistors, superconductors, fibre optics, Kevlar and night vision goggles had been developed through reverse engineering of alien materials. Since then aeronautics engineer Edgar Fouché, who reports having worked for the Aurora Project at Area 51 which built the secret Tr3-B triangular mercury plasma fuelled spacecraft, Dr Robert Wood from McDonnell Douglas, Corey Goode, William Tompkins also formerly at McDonnell Douglas, and the more controversial Dan Burisch, are among the alleged “insiders” who have blown the whistle on various “black” programmes. Some like Goode claim to have served on an SSF (Secret Space Fleet), a branch of the US Navy which began operating in the 1960s or 1970s under the Solar Warden code name. Their accounts have been extensively reported and analysed by veteran researchers such as Linda Moulton Howe as part of her Earthfiles series, Paola Harris, Dr Steven Greer (in his widely publicized Disclosure Project) and Dr Michael Salla, co-founder of the Exopolitics Institute.

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Former Senator Reid Wants UFO Studies Made Public

March 10, 2019
ExoNews Editor

by George Knapp and Matt Adams February 27, 2019 (lasvegasnow.com)

• George Knapp’s Las Vegas-based CBS affiliate KLAS Channel 8 “I-Team” recently interviewed former Nevada Senator Harry Reid (pictured above) who is continuing to make the case for renewed studies into UFOs. Reid says that the Russian and Chinese military are certainly studying how UFOs work and how to build their own. (see 5:10 minute interview below)

• In 2007, Reid and a few senate colleagues sponsored a secret Pentagon program that investigated mystery aircraft and related phenomena. This is known as AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program), but Reid revealed that the original name for it was the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program (AAWSAP). This program ended six years ago. The former senator wants to see these ‘X-Files’ released to the public along with a renewed effort to get to the bottom of things.

• First there was the ‘Tic Tac’ UFO which buzzed the USS Nimitz carrier group in 2004 was not only seen by pilots and cameras but also by several high tech sensor systems, as documented in a 13-page report written for the Pentagon. Debunkers have tried to explain it as a rocket or something. Reid confirms that these craft are not [Earthly]. “People… who are in positions of responsibility, whether it’s the Pentagon or whatever it might be, …don’t want to have to try and explain something that many times is not explainable,” said Reid. “This has been going on a long time.”

• Then there was the so-called Gimbal UFO video recorded by military pilots in 2015. It was one of dozens of similar objects encountered off the coasts of Florida and Virginia over the past three years, according to Pentagon sources.

• More recently has been the release of the titles of 38 unclassified scientific papers produced by the AATIP/AAWSAP study, five of which has been made public in its entirety. Reid confirms that one of the unreleased studies involve the investigation reports of UFO activity over American nuclear missile bases. Another focused on a mysterious (Skinwalker) ranch in northeastern Utah, once owned by businessman Robert Bigelow, and the harmful health consequences for dozens of people who had close encounters there.

• Dr. Hal Puthoff, a Bigelow Aerospace physicist, says that the program also looked closely at a Brazilian investigation from the 1970’s that included a thousand pages of documents by the Brazilian Air Force, 500 photographs, 15 hours of film, and a lot of medical reports of injuries to people who encountered UFO craft at close range.

• Knapp asks Reid “What’s their [ETs] interest in us? Why are they buzzing around?” Reid replied, “Well, let’s turn that around. Why are we interested in them? Same answer to your question, because we don’t know.”

• [Editor’s Note] Since the AATIP/AAWSAP Program was revealed in December 2017, over 1200 Freedom of Information Requests have been filed with the Department of Defense for complete information on these declassified reports.

LAS VEGAS – Former Nevada Senator Harry Reid is continuing to make the case for renewed studies into the UFO mystery.

Back in 2007, Reid and a few senate colleagues sponsored a secret Pentagon program that investigated mystery aircraft and related phenomena.

The program was based in southern Nevada, but that effort ended six years ago, and very little from the study has been made public. Now, the senator not only hopes the X-Files get released but thinks there should be a renewed effort to get to the bottom of things.

“I’ll bet you anything that China is spending money to check this out I’ll bet you anything that KGB Putin is spending some money checking this out,” said former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

He dropped hard-edged hints that he knows potential adversaries Russia and China have carried out their own military studies to figure out how UFOs work and how to build their own.

The so-called Gimbal UFO recorded by military pilots in 2015 is one of dozens of similar objects encountered off the coasts of Florida and Virginia in the last three years, according to Pentagon sources.

The Tic Tac UFO which buzzed the USS Nimitz carrier group in 2004 was not only seen by pilots and cameras but also by several high tech sensor systems, as documented in a 13-page report written for the Pentagon, a document that went into the data base of AAWSAP, that’s the original acronym for the study Reid sponsored. The senator said these craft are not ours.

Reporter George Knapp: “What’s their interest in us? Why are they buzzing around?”

Former Sen. Harry Reid: “Well, let’s turn that around. Why are we interested in them? Same answer to your question, because we don’t know.”

Reporter George Knapp: “The Tic Tac. People have tried to explain it away, it’s almost an insult to our best pilots and sensors. It was real and we don’t understand it?”

Former Sen. Harry Reid: “This has been going on a long time. These sightings are said to have been set off by a rocket in California or something. People do not want, who are in positions of responsibility, whether it’s the Pentagon or whatever it might be, they don’t want to have to try and explain something that many times is not explainable.”

5:10 minute KLAS Channel 8 I-Team CBS News video of
Former Senator Reid’s interview (and Dr Hal Puthoff)

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

September 22, 2018
ExoNews Editor

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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The Pentagon Secretly Studied ‘Exotic and Sophisticated’ UFO Technologies, Bombshell Letter Reveals

August 31, 2018
ExoNews Editor

by Jasper Hamill August 13, 2018 (metro.co.uk)

• Last December, the world first learned of a Pentagon UFO research program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) dedicated to exploring ‘unexplained aerial phenomena’ and a range of futuristic technologies. Former program manager, Luis Elizondo, said he believed there is ‘very compelling evidence we may not be alone’, and has alluded to mysterious ‘metamaterials’ from crashed alien spacecraft being stored in specially modified warehouses in Las Vegas.

• Now, a letter obtained by George Knapp’s KLAS ‘Las Vegas Now’ I-Team written June 24, 2009 by then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to William Lynn III, Deputy Secretary of Defense has revealed the US government’s exploration of ‘disruptive aerospace technologies’. Without mentioning aliens or UFOs, the letter confirms that the US Senate ordered an assessment of ‘far term foreign aerospace threats’. These include ‘extremely sophisticated concepts within the world of quantum mechanics, nuclear science, electromagnetic theory, gravitics [anti-gravity], and thermodynamics’.

• Senator Reid warns in his letter that these technologies ‘have the potential to be used with catastrophic effects by adversaries’, but that ‘much progress has been made with the identification of several highly sensitive, unconventional aerospace-related findings’.

• ‘Ultimately, the results of AATIP will not only benefit the US Government but I believe will directly benefit the Department of Defense in ways not imagined,’ Senator Reid wrote. ‘The technological insight and capability gained will provide the US with a distinct advantage over any foreign threats and allow the US to maintain its preeminence as a world leader.’

• Former UFO investigator for the British Ministry of Defence, Nick Pope, said the document reveals just how seriously the US government takes the issue of ‘futurist technology’ and the associated threats and opportunities. Pope had previously said that the AATIP looked at UFO sightings as part of a wider intelligence assessment of the threat from next-generation aircraft, missiles and drones, and the ‘novel military applications’ that we felt might be derived from a fuller understanding of the phenomenon.’

• Britain and the US share concerns that Russia and China might beat us to the punch in the weaponization of futuristic technologies, says Pope. “[I]t’s time to drop our prejudices about the subject and to stop referring to ‘flying saucers’ and ‘little green men’. “It’s time to realize that… there are serious defense and national security issues involved and that the US, the UK, Russia, China – and maybe others – are engaged in potentially game-changing work on this subject.”

• [Editor’s Note] Futuristic weapons technologies. Trump’s declaration that ‘space is a war-fighting domain’. The creation of a US Space Force. Who or what are we gearing up to fight, or to defend ourselves from or free ourselves from? Perhaps the Draco Reptilian and Nazi Dark Fleet alliance?

Documents relating to a highly sensitive investigation government project called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) confirm that the US has studied a range of futuristic technologies which would allow it to exercise global military dominance for decades to come. This programme is dedicated to exploring ‘ unexplained aerial phenomena’ and is believed to have written a 490-page report which collects together UFO sightings from around the world. The world first heard about AATIP last year, when footage of an encounter between an F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet and an oval-shaped UFO travelling at astonishing speed was released.

Now a letter sent from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to William Lynn III, Deputy Secretary of Defense, has revealed tantalising new details of the US government’s exploration of ‘disruptive aerospace technologies’. Although the correspondence does not mention aliens or UFOs, it appears to confirm the US Senate ordered an assessment of ‘far term foreign aerospace threats’. It is not known whether these threats were alien in origin – or came from some rival military power. It said these include ‘extremely sophisticated concepts within the world of quantum mechanics, nuclear science, electromagnetic theory, gravitics [anti-gravity], and thermodynamics’. These technologies ‘have the potential to be used with catastrophic effects by adversaries’ Senator Reid warned in his letter, which was obtained by Las Vegas Now. The letter also said ‘much progress has been made with the identification of several highly sensitive, unconventional aerospace-related findings’.

‘Ultimately, the results of AATIP will not only benefit the US Government but I believe will directly benefit the Department of Defense in ways not imagined,’ he wrote. ‘The technological insight and capability gained will provide the US with a distinct advantage over any foreign threats and allow the US to maintain its preeminence as a world leader.’ Nick Pope, a former UFO investigator for the British Ministry of Defence, said the ‘bombshell’ document ‘reveals much more about the AATIP project than was previously known’. ‘These staggering revelations show just how seriously the US government took the issue. Irrespective of what they believed about the true nature of the UFO phenomenon, this letter gives a telling insight into the reasons why the Pentagon was interested, and what they thought the threats and opportunities might be,’ he told The Metro.

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I-Team Obtains Some Key Documents Related to Pentagon UFO Study

August 10, 2018
ExoNews Editor

by George Knapp and Matt Adams July 25, 2018 (lasvegasnow.com)

• Since the December 2017 NY Times article releasing U.S. military video of the “Tic-Tac UFO”, and subsequent UFO videos, thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests have been filed by UFO researchers. So far, the Pentagon hasn’t complied with any of the requests for more information. According to Luis Elizondo, the man who ran the military’s secret UFO study for years, says that there are as many as two dozen more unreleased videos still in the Pentagon vaults. The Las Vegas KLAS-TV “I-Team” has managed to obtain key documents related to the UFO inquiry.

• Former Senate Majority Leader, Nevada Senator Harry Reid instigated the Pentagon study back in 2007. Since his role was revealed last year, he’s had calls from many other lawmakers in Congress. Reid believes there have likely been classified Congressional briefings involving military eyewitnesses to similar UFOs. Reid wants the military UFO program to continue and its findings made public. (See 2009 letter from Reid to the Deputy Secretary of Defense asking for more personnel to increase productivity in the Advanced Aerospace Threat and Identification Program.)

• As the chief scientist for Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, a government-sponsored research project, physicist Hal Puthoff made the first public presentation about the UFO study. In a newly released document, research subjects are listed including warp drive, invisibility, metamaterials from crash sites, worm holes, antigravity, and how to track hypersonic vehicles.

• “You’ve got these advanced aerospace vehicles flying around, that we don’t know where they come from, what the intent is, possibly off-world even,” said Dr. Puthoff. Puthoff says he doesn’t know if more UFO videos will be released, but says there is big news coming about the ones already made public.

LAS VEGAS – Those secret UFO files at the Pentagon are still secret, but not for a lack of trying.
Thousands of researchers have filed requests via the Freedom of Information Act, hoping to force the military to unleash documents or videos generated during the secret study. The main contractor for the Pentagon was a Las Vegas company.

So far, the Pentagon hasn’t complied with any of the requests for more information. But now, the I-Team has obtained key documents related to the UFO inquiry.

The Pentagon’s release last December of a 2004 encounter between pilots from the USS Nimitz and a mystery machine dubbed the Tic Tac UFO generated huge headlines and demands for more releases.

Two more followed. The Gimbal video from 2015 and another nicknamed Go Fast. As many as two dozen more videos are still in the Pentagon vaults, according to the man who ran the military’s secret UFO study for years.

During his time running the AATIP program, Elizondo set into motion the release of these and other videos. He doesn’t know if the spigot has been turned off now that he is longer there. Since October, he’s been working with To the Stars Academy to help change the perception of the UFO issue, particularly in Washington. And without revealing too much, Elizondo hints that progress is being made.

“It’s about changing the paradigm in which our government can finally take this issue seriously without worrying about their political survival, right, allowing Congress to have a conversation in open or closed session saying, all right guys, gals, what do we do about this?”

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Harry Reid on What the Government Knows About UFOs

April 8, 2018
ExoNews Editor

by Eric Benson March 21, 2018 (nymag.com)

• In a follow-up to the New York Magazine’s March 20th article “Reasons to Believe”, this is the extended version of an interview of the former US Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid (pictured above), about the US government’s research into the topic of UFOs and extraterrestrial life.

• When Reid began to practice law in Las Vegas in the 1960’s, one of his first cases involved the local owner of Bigelow Carpet Company who died in a plane crash at LA Int’l Airport. His son and heir, Robert Bigelow, was told by his grandparents about an incident when they themselves saw a UFO near Las Vegas. As Bigelow increased his own wealth in hotels and real estate, he would financially sponsor UFO seminars and conferences, bringing in scientists and academics.

• Reid’s friend, popular Nevada TV journalist George Knapp, introduced Reid to Robert Bigelow. Bigelow began sending Reid material on UFOs and extraterrestrials which Reid found interesting. Bigelow’s approach to the study of UFOs was more scientific than fanciful, and as he began accumulating information, he built a warehouse in which to store all of this information. In time, Reid would also speak with people such as John Glenn, Bill Clinton, and John Podesta on the subject.

• When Reid had become the leader of the Senate, he reached out to two close friends – Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska and Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii – about this UFO phenomenon. Stevens revealed that as a pilot during WWII, he had flown next to a UFO. As Stevens and Inouye controlled the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, they decided to create the Pentagon UFO research program, and awarded the $11M contract to Robert Bigelow ‘because he had spent his own money first’. But it remained a secret program, says Reid, “because I wanted to get something done. I didn’t want a debate that no one knew what the hell they were talking about on the Senate floor.” Reid was never even briefed on the program afterward.

• Reid says that this Pentagon research program has generated hundreds upon hundreds of pages of information, 80% of which has been available to the public. “You know something?” says Reid, “the press has never even looked at it. Not once. That’s where we are. I wanted it public, it was made public, and you guys have not even looked at it.” “So, in short, it’s my belief you guys kind of want to be spoon-fed. You don’t want to do any work on your own.”

• “I’m glad somebody is interested, because it’s a subject that is being terribly neglected,” says Reid. “I’m happy to talk to you.”

Yesterday, we outlined thirteen reasons to take recent reports of UFOs and extraterrestrial life seriously, including a chat with former Senate majority leader Harry Reid about the government’s research into the topic. Here, an extended version of that conversation.

Hi, this is Eric Benson from New York Magazine.

Hi, Eric. Why do you want to talk to me?

Well, because of the New York Times article and the program that you helped bring about.

Well, I’m happy to talk to you. Just let me preface this by saying this, if we’re here to talk about little green men or stuff that you want to look at that was found in New Mexico or something, I’m not interested. If you’re here to talk about science, I’m happy to do that. I’m really glad to do that. I’m glad somebody is interested, because it’s a subject that is being terribly neglected, so I’m happy to talk to you.

Great. Well, I don’t want to talk to you about little green men.

Okay.

One thing I am curious about, though, is just where your interest in this subject comes from.
That’s pretty easy. When I first got out of law school many, many years ago, in the mid-’60s, I worked with three other lawyers. A big case we had was a case involving a bunch of rich Las Vegas businessmen. They went into L.A. International Airport, tried to take off, and the plane crashed and killed them all. It was a very interesting case. It went to Supreme Court, a mistrial declared, hung jury, went on for years.

One of the people who was killed in that plane crash was a guy by the name of Bigelow. He was not as wealthy, but he was a wealthy man in Las Vegas who ran a carpet company, Bigelow Carpet. His son was 18 years old when that crash occurred. He’s a central figure in all this. I didn’t know him, but when he was a young man, he heard a story from his grandparents about driving down from Mt. Charleston — that’s a 12,000-foot mountain just ten miles out of Las Vegas — where they saw something in the air. This so-called flying saucer, for lack of a better description. It piqued his curiosity.

He became a very wealthy man. I mean extremely wealthy. During the time that he had some money, he said, “I would like to know more about this.” He would have, several times a year, at his big office here in Las Vegas — knew how to make money buying and selling real estate. He would pay for these seminars, these conferences, and he would bring in scientists, academics, and a few nut cases. That’s a bad way of talking about some people, but, you know — people who were really, in my opinion, kind of on the fringes.

Probably the No. 1 TV journalist in Nevada was a guy by the name of George Knapp. He and I were friends. He had known me for years. He said to me one day, “Hey, I know this guy Bigelow, he’s interested in a subject, I don’t know if you have any interest in it all, but you should get to know him. He’s got a lot of money. He’s kind of an interesting guy. I’ll introduce you. You’ll go to one of those little deals and spend a few hours with him.”

I did that. It was really fascinating quite frankly because there were people trying to figure out what all this aerial phenomenon was. Bigelow knew I was interested.

I’ve always been a voracious reader. I blinded myself in one eye — I used to read really, really fast, and I can still read fairly fast with only one eye; not nearly as fast as I used to. Just a little side note: I took the Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics course here in Las Vegas, and I was told I was the fastest reader they ever had in Nevada. I can read so fast.

How fast are you? Is there a number that represents —

I don’t know. I don’t know. But anyway, to make a long story short, he started sending me tons of stuff. I mean tons of stuff. I read it. A lot of it was nothing that interested me. It was, they reexamined and examined and reexamined the crash in New Mexico that happened down there that everybody knows about that knows anything about this subject. It was repetitive, and I didn’t care. But there was some stuff that interested me. Mainly what interested me is so many people had seen these strange things in the air. That was interesting to me.

I’m in the Senate now and one day was joined by John Glenn, who I thought was just such a wonderful human being. I said to John, “Hey John, I’ve been reading all this stuff, do you have any interest in it?” He said, “I’ve always had an interest in it.” You get the picture so far, right?

Yeah.

I’m in Washington in the Senate and Bob Bigelow called me — I kept in touch with him over the years. He called me and he said, “I got the strangest letter here. Could I have a courier bring it to you?” I said, “Sure.” He didn’t want to send it to me over the lines for obvious reasons.

I read the letter. The letter was from a federal national-security agency. Okay? The letter said, “I am a senior, longtime member of this security agency, and I have a Ph.D.” — I can’t remember in what, in physics for sure, maybe math also. “And,” the letter said, “I’m interested. I’m interested in talking to you, Mr. Bigelow. I have an interest in what you’ve been working on. I want to go to your ranch in Utah.”

Bigelow had bought a great big ranch, a 70-, 100-acre ranch in Utah that was in a basin for more than a century.

Was that the Skinwalker Ranch?

Yeah, that’s it. I called Bigelow back and said, “Hey, I’ll meet with the guy.” I called the guy. He said, “I don’t want to meet at my office, I don’t want to meet at your office. Where can we meet?” I said, “Come to my home.” The two of us met and I was terribly impressed with him. Very low-key scientist. He told me of his interest. I called Bigelow and I said, “This guy, I’ve checked him out and he seems like a pretty nice guy and his credentials are as he says.”

He went, met Bigelow, and after I don’t know how much time went by, he came to me and said, “Something should be done about this.

Somebody should study it.” I was convinced he was right. I said, “Well, if you were me, what would you say to people in power in the United States Senate who have huge control over the spending of defense money?” And here’s what he said: “What I will do is prepare something for you that anyone can look at it that wants to, it’s strictly science.” He put it in scientific language — what the study should consist of.

I, at the time, was the leader of the Senate, and I called two of my friends who for many, many years were like brothers. One a Democrat, one a Republican. They controlled for quite a number of years the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. It was Stevens and Inouye.

As I said in the New York Times article, it was the easiest meeting I ever had. I walked in and I knew so much and Ted Stevens interrupted me and said, “I’ve heard enough.” He said, “Since I was a pilot in World War II, I’ve been tremendously curious, concerned about stuff that we don’t know anything about.” He said, “I was in my airplane alone and off to my left was an object. I could see it. It was so close to me. I would veer up, down, sideways. Wherever I went, it was there. I was starting to get low on fuel, went and landed, and went to the air-traffic controller. I said, ‘Was there anybody up in the air with me?’ The guy said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’”

That’s why it was an easy sell for him. He, Ted Stevens, when he was in the military, didn’t go to his superior and say, “I saw the damnedest thing in the air.” Why? Because the work we did, pilots would almost refuse to report this stuff. Why? Because it would hurt them in their promotions and make them look like goofballs.

What we decided to do — it would be black money, we wouldn’t have a big debate on the Senate floor over it. They would put in their defense appropriation bill, 11 million bucks. The purpose of it was to study aerial phenomena. The money was given, a directive was given to the Pentagon, to put this out to bid, which they did.

People may be inquisitive: “How did Bigelow win that bid? Why?” Because he had spent his own money first. For two years, the federal government helped him. Thousands of pages were gathered, just like I told you, of things that had happened. There was no central location where all this stuff was gathered — that’s what he did. He built his building for it. For two years, when we got financial help — but there was a change in leadership and it didn’t work. So the federal government dropped out of the project.

As you’ve heard from a few people since this story came out, Luis Elizondo, for example, he quit, because they wouldn’t do anything seriously. He was terribly interested in this. They’re all mad because the federal government has done nothing. The guy that came to me, his job was in jeopardy because he tried to do something he felt was appropriate. He said to me first time we met, “I don’t know why we’re not doing anything.” He said, “I’ll bet the Chinese are.” He said, “I’ll bet the Russians are. I’ll bet the Japanese are. Why aren’t we doing anything?”

That’s the story. You’ve got in a nutshell, that’s how I got involved in this.

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Tag: Senator Harry Reid