Tag: Washington Post

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

Article by Alejandro Rojas                                   October 23, 2020                              (openminds.tv)

• The news has been ablaze with UFO headlines. The US government has been forced to seriously confront the UAP/UFO issue. In fact, The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has requested a public report from the Director of National Intelligence on what has been done thus far with regard to Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon.

• This focus on the UFO phenomenon was the result of a string of media events: a tweet by Sky Hub founder Steve McDaniel followed by a Danny Silva blog; an article by Leslie Kean in The Huffington Post in May 2016; Open Minds UFO Radio interviews of Bryan Bender and NY Times writer Leslie Kean in the summer of 2017; a blockbuster NY Times article in December 2017; a Washington Post op-ed in March 2018; an article by Politico’s Bender in June 2019; a History Channel show; and finally the US Navy authenticating Navy cockpit video of UFOs, admitting that they are for real, and issuing Navy personnel guidelines for reporting them.

• The focus of all of this media attention over the past four years has been former Senate intelligence analyst Chris Mellon and former Pentagon intelligence officer and head of its UFO program, Luis Elizondo. (both are pictured above with Tom DeLonge) It began with Elizondo’s difficulty in being granted a meeting with defense officials to reveal unexplained craft. It would end with Mellon and Elizondo invited to Capitol Hill for high level UFO briefings. “They couldn’t any longer deny it… when they had active-duty pilots and others going on the record,” said Mellon.

• In the documentary “The Phenomenon”, Mellon says his professional interest in UFOs arose from early claims by astronaut Gordon Cooper. Cooper was a part of the famed ‘Mercury Seven’, the first seven US astronauts to go into space. Prior to this, in 1951, Cooper’s squadron of jet fighters had chased a group of round objects that could stop mid-air and make instant 90 degree turns. In 1957, Cooper and his crew at Edwards Air Force base filmed a saucer-shaped object land on a dry lake bed and then take off again. The Air Force sent a courier to collect it. Cooper never saw the film again.

• Just prior to the end of President Clinton’s second term, Clinton told his Secretary of Defense, Michael Cohen, to investigate Cooper’s claims. Cohen assigned the matter to Chris Mellon, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Security and Information Operations for The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mellon would later become the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence for the Senate Committee. Apparently, Mellon wasn’t satisfied with the records that the US Air Force kept on UFOs, including Cooper’s. He was told that most of them had been removed in order to “clean up” or “save space”. Mellon’s curiosity was piqued.

• Mellon retired from the government and joined a UFO monitoring system called UFODATA. Then he learned about the existence of a Pentagon UFO program. The UFO topic “was something that I had always been interested in,” said Mellon. “So, I was surprised to see they had anything organized at all.” Mellon quickly offered to assist Elizondo to help get data of the Nimitz Strike Carrier Group encounter with a UFO/UAP to the Secretary of Defense. The Office of the Secretary of Defense did not want to escalate the issue. “People were still afraid to touch it and afraid to let the secretary even be exposed to the issue,” says Mellon. Even with Mellon’s connections to senior officials in the Department of Defense, they were unable to secure a meeting with the Secretary of Defense.

• Mellon and Elizondo began to consider more drastic measures – to take their information directly to the media and the public in order to force Congress to take some action. They invited Leslie Kean to Washington on October 4, 2017. “I went down and went to Washington, and we spent three or four hours together,” says Kean. “Luis had resigned (his) position literally the day before we met.” “I was shown the videos… (and) was shown documents about Harry Reid’s involvement. [T]he story was kind of laid out for me at this meeting.” “I realized at that point that it was a New York Times level story, given the documentation that was available for the program and for the people involved and everything else,” Kean continued. “And so that’s how it all started.”

• The world was introduced to Mellon and Elizondo on October 10, 2017, with the press conference launch of Tom DeLonge’s ‘To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science’. Elizondo and Mellon had joined ‘To the Stars’ team of former high level UFO investigators. The announcement was accompanied by Kean’s article in The Huffington Post. Still, no one seemed to take notice of Elizondo who claimed that he ran a UFO program despite the government telling us for decades they had no interest in the topic.

• Then in December 2017, Kean along with co-writers Ralph Blumenthal and Helen Cooper, published a blockbuster NY Times article revealing that the Pentagon had run a secretive UFO program from 2007 to 2012 called the ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’ (AATIP). The article’s primary source was Elizondo who claimed AATIP did not end in 2012 and that it continues to this day. The Times article also included two videos allegedly showing infrared camera footage from Navy F-18 fighter jets of a UFO, which Mellon had clandestinely received from an anonymous DoD official in a parking garage. (see previous ExoArticle on this)

• On March 9, 2018, Mellon wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post (see previous ExoArticle here) asking ‘Why Doesn’t the Pentagon Care? “Senators and staffers have been kept in the dark,” said Mellon. “There’s some important unanswered questions here.” Soon thereafter, the US Navy announced new formal guidelines for Navy personnel to report UFO encounters. “There’s no doubt in my mind that that report requirement (by the Navy) would not be in there, wouldn’t exist if we had not been engaged in bringing witnesses forward and advocating this and writing about it and so forth,” said Mellon.

• Mellon called upon Congress to require an ‘all-source study’ by the Secretary of Defense, and promoted research into new forms of propulsion that might explain how these vehicles achieve such extraordinary power and maneuverability, as it pertains to national security. “[H]opefully (this attention) will force the Executive branch to get its act together… establish some accountability and force them to take a position in black and white, as opposed to just giving some briefings.”

• In less than three years, Mellon and Elizondo’s strategy has resulted in the US government admitting they take UAP seriously, reversing their decades-long denials of the fact, and the Senate Intelligence committee taking notice by asking for more information. “It’s a tremendous step forward,” said Mellon. “Regardless of what the phenomenon turns out to be in the end. At least now we can have some faith that a serious effort is going to be made to hold and analyze the data, probably implement a new collection strategy… So it has a lot of potential ramifications, all of them positive.”

 

                        Luis Elizondo

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

                          Chris Mellon

Intelligence organize research into Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP – aka UFOs) and provide a public report on what has been done thus far. It is an extraordinary move that further legitimizes a topic that has historically been relegated to mythological stories like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. However, the public did not know that there were those in the US military and intelligence communities who took the issue seriously and wanted more to be done to figure out what those UFOs are.

              Leslie Kean

“We have an intelligence community for a reason, partly to support our military, partly to avoid strategic surprise, and the intelligence community was failing on both counts,” former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Chris Mellon told OpenMinds.tv in a recent interview. “The intelligence community was completely unresponsive, completely dropping the ball. I mean, it could be Russian, it could be Chinese, it could be something else.”

                    Bryan Bender

Mellon served for ten years as a Staff Director of the SSCI. From 1998 to 1999, he served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Security and Information Operations, and from 1999 to 2002, he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.
In a recent interview for a documentary called The Phenomenon, Mellon says his professional interest in the topic of UAP began with a request by astronaut Gordon Cooper.

Cooper was a part of the famed Mercury Seven, the first seven US astronauts to go into space. He claims to have had two UFO incidents. The first was in 1951. He claims his squadron of jet fighters chased a group of round objects that could stop mid-air and make instant 90 degree turns. He also claimed that in 1957 a crew he managed at Edwards Air Force base filmed a saucer-shaped object land on a dry lake bed and then take off again. He reviewed the film and reported it. The Air Force sent a courier to collect it. He never saw the film again.

            the ‘Mercury Seven’

According to Mellon, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, Michael Cohen, tasked him to investigate the matter.

“Astronaut Cooper had spoken with the President,” Mellon says in The Phenomenon. “At a cabinet meeting, he raised this with Secretary Cohen, and then Cohen’s office called me and asked me to pursue this and chase it down.”

“The Air Force colonel that I spoke with got very frustrated, and when I asked him what happened to all of these records,” explained Mellon. “He said, ‘Well, that was all cleaned up or thrown out to save space.’ Something like that. It sounded ludicrous, but that’s what he told me.”

Mellon’s interest in the UFO topic was the focus of an article in The Huffington Post in May 2016 titled Is There a UFO Cover-up? A Government Insider Speaks Out. The article was written by Leslie Kean and was about Mellon joining a group of scientists interesting in developing a UFO monitoring system called UFODATA.

Kean was also one of The New York Times authors, along with Ralph Blumenthal and Helen Cooper, who broke the news in December 2017 that the Pentagon had run a secretive UFO program from 2007 to 2012 called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). The article’s primary source was Luis Elizondo, a former military intelligence official who claims he retired to get more attention to what he felt was important information regarding UFOs. He also claimed AATIP did not end in 2012 and that it continues to this day.

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UFO Sightings Frequently Reported Across Western Pennsylvania

Listen to “E63 8-11-19 UFO Sightings Frequently Reported Across Western Pennsylvania” on Spreaker.
Article by Stephen Huba                      July 27, 2019                      (triblive.com)

• Retired journalist Bob Gatty, 76, originally reported on the Kecksburg UFO incident for the Greensburg Tribune-Review, when on December 9th, 1965, people across six states and Canada reported seeing a fireball streak across the sky before crashing into a wooded area in Mt. Pleasant Township, Pennsylvania, a southeastern suburb of Pittsburgh. (Note: The Army and State Police cordoned off the area, and claimed that they found nothing there in the woods. But locals have come forward to say they saw a military truck removing an acorn-shaped object the size of a Volkswagen Beetle with hieroglyphics on it.)

• The Kecksburg UFO sighting has become part of local lore, but Gatty says, “It’s not going away. Whether you believe or don’t believe in this stuff, the fact remains there is a lot happening for some reason.” Reports of unexplained aerial phenomena are getting serious attention from Congress, the U.S. military and longtime UFO watchers. “Congress apparently is taking this stuff… seriously,” says Gatty.

• UFO researcher Stan Gordon, 69, has spent the past 54 years investigating the Kecksburg incident. Gordon says that there has been a recent “surge” in sightings of unexplained phenomena in Western Pennsylvania. Says Gordon, “We’ve had a surge of UFO and Bigfoot activity in the area in the last couple of weeks. Many of these sightings are very detailed reports… from credible people that you cannot easily dismiss.” Most end up in the growing repository of unexplained phenomena, with no conclusive explanation.

• Gordon continues to report UFO sightings in Pennsylvania on his website, StanGordon.info. Pennsylvania is ranked seventh in total UFO sightings in the U.S., with 3,937 UFOs reported since 1947. There have been 84 sightings so far in 2019, which already matches the total for 2018. The most recent was a sighting over Greensburg on July 5th of a red/orange round object moving across the sky at night, lasting about six minutes.

• On July 4th, an orange-red sphere was spotted at night in both Erie and Cecil, in Washington County. On June 28th, a shiny silver saucer was seen over Mt. Lebanon. After about 15 minutes, it disappeared. On June 23rd, an Elizabeth resident reported seeing five amber-colored, circular shapes move in all directions in the sky, and then form an arrowhead shape before disappearing after about 4 minutes.

• Peter Davenport, director for the National UFO Reporting Center, has been collecting UFO data for 25 years. In 2004, Davenport presented a paper to the Mutual UFO Network on the use of “passive radar” for detecting UFOs in the near-earth environment. This was acknowledged by the CIA and the FBI. Davenport says that the US government has known about the UFO phenomenon for a long time. Solving the mystery of UFOs will require “a government that still serves the people”.

• UFO sightings by Navy fighter pilots have reached the highest echelons of the US government, according to the ‘To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science’. Former Pentagon intelligence official Christopher Mellon, an adviser to the Academy, wrote in the Washington Post in 2018 that the existence of UFOs is no longer in question. What is lacking is a commitment from the Defense Department to investigate the growing body of evidence from the military. Said Mellon, “It is time to set aside taboos regarding ‘UFOs’ and instead listen to our pilots and radar operators.”

 

While the Kecksburg UFO sighting has become a quaint part of local lore, more recent reports of unexplained aerial phenomena are getting serious attention from Congress, the U.S. military and longtime UFO watchers.

reproduction of Kecksburg “acorn” UFO

“It’s not going away,” said retired journalist Bob Gatty. “Whether you believe or don’t believe in this stuff, the fact remains there is a lot happening for some reason.”

                Bob Gatty

Gatty, who originally reported on the Kecksburg incident for the Tribune-Review in 1965, recently noted on his blog NotFakeNews.biz that the Navy has issued new guidelines to fighter pilots regarding UFO sightings, and members of Congress are seeking more frequent briefings on the subject.

“Congress apparently is taking this stuff — at least the Navy reports — seriously,” said Gatty, 76, a former Sykesville, Jefferson County, resident who lives in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Meanwhile, longtime local UFO researcher Stan Gordon said there has been a “surge” in sightings of unexplained phenomena in Western Pennsylvania — whether extraterrestrial or not.

Stan Gordon

“We keep getting reports of very strange things that people see around here,” said Gordon, 69, of Greensburg. “We’ve had a surge of UFO and Bigfoot activity in the area in the last couple of weeks. Many of these sightings are very detailed reports.”

While sightings usually spike in the spring and summer, when people are outside more, reports in 2018 and 2019 have been more consistently year-round, he said. Sightings are mostly of unexplained things in the sky or of earthbound cryptids — animals such as Bigfoot, whose existence is unsubstantiated.

Gordon has spent the past 54 years investigating the Kecksburg incident, when on Dec. 9, 1965, people across six states and Canada reported seeing a fireball streak across the sky before crashing into a wooded area in Mt. Pleasant Township.

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“Let’s See Them Aliens”: The Comic Futility of #StormArea51

Listen to “E43 7-27-19 “Let’s See Them Aliens”: The Comic Futility of #StormArea51” on Spreaker.

Article by Kate Knibbs                      July 17, 2019                      (theringer.com)

• Believing in aliens used to automatically catapult a person into kook territory, but things have changed. Prominent public figures are treating the UFO and extraterrestrial phenomenon seriously, from Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, to aerospace billionaire Robert Bigelow, to the New York Times, to members of Congress demanding briefings. All of this has lent credence to a Facebook event called “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us.” (see previous ExoArticle) Well over a million Facebook users have pledged to show up at a Nevada tourist spot, to invade en masse the secret military base known as ‘Area 51’ at 3 am, September 20th.

• A similar online phenomenon happened in 2017 as Hurricane Irma approached the Florida coastline. Ryon Edwards created a Facebook event called “Shoot at Hurricane Irma.” Over 80,000 people responded with interest in attacking the hurricane, though no one did. It was a way to diffuse a frightening situation with a lighthearted meme.

• Like the Irma event, this is an obvious stunt. The post reads: “If we naruto run (like an animated video game character), we can move faster than their bullets.” And the Facebook page itself is called “Shitposting cause im in shambles”. Many attendees responded tongue-in-cheek: “I only RSVP’d for the memes” and “Let’s see them aliens.”

• Samantha Travis, the manager of the Little A’Le’Inn tourist spot where the invaders are scheduled to convene, said people have been calling “nonstop, all day,” and all of their rooms are booked. University student, Jackson Weimer, imagines that it will turn into a big party. Travis noted that there is plenty of available campground space.

• While the vast majority of participants are openly kidding around and not seriously planning to attack a military base, the military itself appears to be treating this as a matter of real concern. An Air Force spokesperson told the Washington Post that it is “ready to protect America and its assets.”

• There’s a good chance “Storm Area 51” will be a distant memory by the time September 20th actually rolls around. In the same way that people took a moment to laugh at the concept of attacking a hurricane, the punch line to “Storm Area 51” is how cartoonishly futile life can feel. It is the sort of joke that can puncture the terrors of climate change and evil governments. The popularity of “Storm Area 51” reflects a larger mood of low-grade fatalism and hyperbolic violence that is percolating online this summer.

 

Over a million people have RSVP’d to an event on Facebook called “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us.” The military has warned people to stay away. It’s just a gag—but one particularly well-suited to this summer.

In 2017, as Hurricane Irma twirled menacingly toward the Florida coastline, a young Floridian named Ryon Edwards coped with storm-related anxiety in a very modern way. He logged onto Facebook and created an event called “Shoot at Hurricane Irma.” Over 80,000 people responded that they were interested in staging an attack on the “GOOFY LOOKING WINDY HEADASS NAMED IRMA.” No one ever opened fire on Irma; at least, there is no documentation of such an event. The Facebook post was a joke, a way to diffuse a frightening situation with a lighthearted meme. Despite some hand-wringing by local authorities, it wasn’t actually worth fretting over.

In recent days, a similarly playful Facebook event has reached an even greater height of popularity. “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us,” an event scheduled for 3 a.m. on September 20 at the famously mysterious Nevada military base, has racked up over 1.4 million RSVPs over the past week, with more than a million other people expressing interest in storming Area 51 en masse. “We will all meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and coordinate our entry. If we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets,” the post reads. (“Naruto” is a reference to Naruto Uzumaki, an anime character who runs with an awkward stride.) “Lets see them aliens.”

Like the Irma event, it’s an obvious stunt. The viral appeal is equally obvious, as it is fun to imagine a ragtag group of strangers liberating Martians from one of the most notoriously locked-down places in the country, like the plot of a pleasantly stupid action movie.

“Honestly I only RSVP’d for the memes,” one event attendee told me via Facebook Messenger. A Discord chat room created to “strategize” about the attack is filled with memes about adopting aliens and chatter about role-playing. “I think we need a division of vapers. To make an escape cloud,” one participant suggested. “I don’t think no one is going to this,” another said. When I identified myself as a journalist and asked people on the event page whether they’d speak with me, I was repeatedly called a “Fed”—exactly what I deserved for posting on an event page co-created by an account called “Shitposting cause im in shambles.”

But for all the jokes, the event has sparked real-world uptick in interest in traveling to the Area 51 region. People have been calling the local hotel and bar Little A’Le’Inn, for instance, “nonstop, all day,” manager Samantha Travis told The Ringer. “Our rooms have been booked for a few days now.” (Travis noted that the area does have plenty of available campground space.) “I think that people actually might go and have a party,” Jackson Weimer, a University of Delaware student who runs a popular meme account and accepted that I was not a cop, told me. “Some idiots will probably take it too far and try and rush the base but I hope everyone is smart enough to realize when a meme is a meme.” While the vast majority of participants are openly kidding around and not seriously planning to attack a military base, the military itself appears to be treating this as a matter of concern. An Air Force spokesperson told the Washington Post that it is “ready to protect America and its assets.” (The Air Force did not respond to The Ringer’s request for comment.)

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Buzz Aldrin: It’s Time to Focus on the Great Migration of Humankind to Mars

by Buzz Aldrin                  May 1, 2019                   (washingtonpost.com)

• In a Washington Post opinion piece, former NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin says that America should take the lead in a global effort to go to the moon and to Mars. ‘When Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and I went to the moon 50 years ago this July, we did so with… America’s can-do commitment to space exploration,’ wrote Aldrin. ‘More of that is needed now.’ ‘The United States should… offer itself as a willing team leader.’ Aldrin added that ‘Mars is waiting to be discovered… by living, breathing, walking, talking, caring and daring men and women.’

• ‘[M]embers of Congress, the Trump administration and the American public must… make human exploration missions to Mars a national priority. I do not mean spending billions of taxpayer dollars on a few hijinks or joy rides, allowing those who return to write books, tweet photos and talk of the novelty. ’ ‘It is time we get down to blueprints, architecture and implementation, and to take that next step — a sustainable international return to the moon, directly charting a pathway to Mars.’ ‘The United States… should focus on… the great migration of humankind to Mars.’

• ‘The next step would build on our early lunar landings and establish permanent settlements on the moon. In the meantime, preparations for permanent migration to the red planet can be made. All of this is within reach for humans alive now. …The nation best poised to make it happen is the United States.’

• [P]otentially, the ultimate survival of our species demands humanity’s continued outward reach into the universe. …Put simply: We explore, or we expire. That is why we must get on with it.

• ‘[T]he Trump administration and this Congress would be remembered decades forward for putting humans permanently on the moon and Americans on Mars — for making human footprints in red dust and subsequent migration possible.’ ‘I thank President Trump and the vice president for their commitment. But my eyes drift higher, to the red orb that, even now, awaits an American flag and plaque that reads: “We Come in Peace for All Mankind.”

• [Editor’s Note]   What Buzz Aldrin is cleverly advocating here is transparency. There are already secret bases on the moon and colonies on Mars and elsewhere. President Trump’s public foray into space will reveal that, over the past seventy years, governments and corporations have secretly built a vast breakaway civilization within our solar system. It is time the world learned the truth.

 

Last month, Vice President Pence announced that we are headed back to the moon. I am with him, in spirit and aspiration. Having been there, I can say it is high time we returned. When Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and I went to the moon 50 years ago this July, we did so with a mission. Apollo 11 aimed to prove America’s can-do commitment to space exploration, as well as its national security and technological superiority. We did all that. We also “Came in Peace for all Mankind.” More of that is needed now.

Today, many nations have eyes for the moon, from China and Russia to friends in Europe and Middle East. That is all good. The United States should cooperate — and offer itself as a willing team leader — in exploring every aspect of the moon, from its geology and topography to its hydrology and cosmic history. In doing so, we can take “low-Earth orbit” cooperation to the moon, openly, eagerly and collegially.

Meanwhile, another looming orb — the red one — should become a serious focus of U.S. attention. Mars is waiting to be discovered, not by clever robots and rovers — though I support NASA’s unmanned missions — but by living, breathing, walking, talking, caring and daring men and women.

To make that happen, members of Congress, the Trump administration and the American public must care enough to make human exploration missions to Mars a national priority. To be clear, I do not mean spending billions of taxpayer dollars on a few hijinks or joy rides, allowing those who return to write books, tweet photos and talk of the novelty. I mean something very different.

The United States’ eyes — and our unified commitment — should focus on opening the door, in our time, to the great migration of humankind to Mars. Books aplenty have been written about how to do this, and they have inspired government and non-government leaders to make lofty plans. But plans without a detailed architecture, and without that “next step” into the future, are just fantasy.

Americans are good at writing fantasy, and incomparable at making the fantastic a reality. We did it with Mercury, Gemini, Apollo — and in thousands of other ways. It is time we get down to blueprints, architecture and implementation, and to take that next step — a sustainable international return to the moon, directly charting a pathway to Mars.

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In This Time of Tension and Anxiety, UFOs Are Back in the News

by Hedley Burrell                Jun 10, 2018                (www.heraldtribune.com)


• Stories of UFOs have ebbed and flowed over the decades, but now there is new chatter of a different kind. Today mainstream news outlets featuring heavily credentialed experts weighing in on the ongoing UFO phenomenon. In December (2017), CNN announced: “A former Pentagon official who led a … government program to research potential UFOs said … he believes there is evidence of alien life reaching Earth.”

• The New York Post summarized events: “… The New York Times released the results of an investigation into the U.S. military’s monitoring of UFO claims and came up with… a video released by the Pentagon that shows U.S. Navy pilots tracking the movements of a totally unexplainable aircraft. Now, a local news team from Las Vegas has obtained a military report that offers even more details on the sighting and the story is somehow becoming even more bizarre than it already was.” “The report explains in great detail how a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier played a strange game of hide and seek with multiple Anomalous Aerial Vehicles (AAVs) that demonstrated flight characteristics that should be downright impossible to pull off.”

• Then there was a Washington Post story describing how a rock star had “mustered a team of credentialed experts to put mysterious incidents on your radar.” “UFOs”, the headline said, “are suddenly a serious news story.” The rock star, the Post reported, was former Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge, who launched To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science. It will investigate the “outer edges of science.”

• Christopher Mellon, an adviser to the academy who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, wrote a Washington Post opinion piece that carried this headline: “The military keeps encountering UFOs. Why doesn’t the Pentagon care?”

• What we have today are heavy-duty experts taking UFOs seriously. “My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone,” declared Luis Elizondo, the former Pentagon official in the CNN interview.

• It is intriguing to think of a new generation of journalists having to decide what attention, if any, should be given to new assertions that “the truth is out there,” to borrow a tagline from “The X-Files.”

 

Long ago, as a young reporter, I was well aware of UFO stories.

Out of curiosity, I read mainstream media pieces as well as tabloid tales. What repeatedly struck me was this: As with much else in life, we were reluctant to simply accept that we didn’t immediately know the answer to the mystery of the moment.

In any event, I would not have imagined that some six decades later, UFO stories would still be around, with heavily credentialed experts weighing in.

The stories ebbed and flowed over the decades, but now there is new chatter of a different kind.
In the past, I suspected that reports of sightings were likely to increase when popular entertainment featured space sagas, but I also thought they were a reflection of universal tensions and anxiety.

Given that these are truly tense and anxious times, I started to look around for UFO-type talk — or, rather, the reporting of same. I searched for some indication of renewed and perhaps more intense attention.

I found it, and it even had a new spin — namely an assertion that the subject was “serious.”

In December, CNN announced: “A former Pentagon official who led a … government program to research potential UFOs said … he believes there is evidence of alien life reaching Earth.” Other media outlets also weighed in. What was going on?

Last month, The New York Post summarized and updated events:
“UFO sightings are a dime a dozen … but back in December, The New York Times released the results of an investigation into the U.S. military’s monitoring of UFO claims and came up with something totally wild. It was a video released by the Pentagon that shows U.S. Navy pilots tracking the movements of a totally unexplainable aircraft. Now, a local news team from Las Vegas has obtained a military report that offers even more details on the sighting and the story is somehow becoming even more bizarre than it already was.”

The account continued: “The report explains in great details how a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier played a strange game of hide and seek with multiple Anomalous Aerial Vehicles (AAVs) that demonstrated flight characteristics that should be downright impossible to pull off.”
So there was all this.

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Washington Post report supports accounts of military personnel keeping UFO secrets from commanders

[Breaking News] The Washington Post has begun publishing the results of a two year investigation into the world of Top Secret programs in the U.S. Titled: Top Secret America, the investigation aims to expose the waste, redundancy and lack of oversight of many of the Top Secret programs created in response to the 911 attacks. More specifically, it states: “The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.” One of the findings of the report is that the military chain of command is routinely undermined as personnel are ordered not to reveal their activities to their commanding officers. This supports the claims of whistleblowers who have come forward to reveal cases of military personnel being ordered not to tell commanders about Top Secret programs to which they had been recruited. The programs in question concerned UFO technology and extraterrestrial life, and commanding officers denied access included senior admirals and generals.

 

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