RAF's 'X-Files' of reported UFO sightings in the skies over Britain are to be published for the first time online

• UFO sighting reports to be published more than a decade after RAF unit closed
• A clearance process for the documents is now under way before publication 
• National Archives 'are looking to put them on to a dedicated gov.uk web page' 

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

UFO sightings received by a dedicated RAF unit are to be published online.

The RAF closed its UFO unit in 2009 after concluding that – in more than 50 years – none of the reports showed evidence of a threat.

Records were handed to the National Archives, often classified before being released after a number of years.

But an RAF spokesman said the most recent reports are now going online.

This phenomenon was photographed by a retired RAF officer. He sent this photo to his old bosses tasked with investigating UFOs. The RAF closed its UFO unit in 2009

A spokesman for the RAF said that 'it had been assessed that it would be better to publish these records, rather than continue sending documents to the National Archives, and so they are looking to put them on to a dedicated gov.uk web page'.

It added: 'The MoD has no opinion on the existence or otherwise of extra terrestrial life and does not investigate UFO reports.'

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A clearance process for the documents is currently under way before publication, which is expected to take place 'some time within the first quarter of 2020'.

Ex-Ministry of Defence UFO investigator Nick Pope said: 'Given the massive public interest in this subject, I'm pleased that these files will be released and made available online… I'm glad the public are to be given insights into our work on these real-life X-Files.'

A flock of 70,000 starlings were seen earlier this month flocking to form the shape of a spaceship on a nature reserve in South Yorkshire. UFO sightings received by a dedicated RAF unit are to be published online

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

28-01-2020 om 01:43 geschreven door peter  

27-01-2020 om 16:24 geschreven door peter  

“Up, left, down, forward… any way it wanted to go, at any speed it wanted to go. Which was hard for your brain to kinda wrap around at first.”

This was how Gary Voorhis, former Petty Officer 3rd Class Fire Controlman aboard the USS Princeton, described the behavior of an unidentified flying object that was tracked and observed across multiple systems during a 2004 Naval incident off the coast of California. The events described here, commonly known today as the USS Nimitz UFO incident, have become one of the most widely-discussed instances involving unexplained aerial phenomena of the modern era.

A number of key factors have contributed to the attention this incident has gained, which include the involvement of multiple witnesses, and more fundamentally, that it had been a military encounter with obvious national defense implications. Also contributing to the interest it has received had been footage obtained with the help of the Raytheon ATFLIR targeting pod systems employed by the Navy, as well as observations by radar operators and other technicians in the Navy’s Strike Carrier Group-11. All of these sources provided information about the operational capabilities of the craft, which has since been popularly likened to a bus-sized, flying “tic-tac”.

Gary Voorhis and Ryan Weigelt, both of whom served with the Carrier Group-11 at the time of the incident, related a number of unique details to me during a recent interview I conducted with them about the incident. Voorhis, as described earlier, had been a Petty Officer 3rd Class Fire Controlman aboard the USS Princeton, and was one of the system technicians for the Cooperative Engagement Capability and AEGIS Combat systems, which included the AN/SPY-1 Bravo radar. Weigelt, a former Leading Petty Officer, had been the power plant specialist of the SH-60B Seahawk helicopter at the same time.

One of the key elements that both men shared with me in our interview had been their recollection of seeing the now-famous intercept attempt led by Commander David Fravor, a former commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 41 (and, notably, the officer to first compare the object or aircraft’s shape to a “tic-tac”). Fravor was accompanied at the time of the intercept by his weapon systems officer and two other pilots.

“When I started watching this film to begin with,” Voorhis recalled, “they had already started the intercept. The object was moving around, and it was moving in conjunction with the pilot. It would move out of the frame, but then the pilot would adjust, and it would come back into the frame.

“And then it would move sharp to the right, sharp to the left, up, down, any particular direction it wanted to go. It had no rudders, no props, no jet plume. You couldn’t tell which side was the front and which side was the back, except that you’d just assume that which way is going forward is front. But you can’t even assume that, because it would just move sideways.

“You’re waiting for it to move,” Voorhis said. “Then it just moves.”

Voorhis also said that the objects were tracked more than once on radar over the course of several weeks and that, on a few occasions when such radar detections occurred, he attempted to observe the objects with binoculars from the top deck of the U.S.S. Princeton. Voorhis described seeing what appeared to be movement of phosphorescent, albeit ambiguous objects along the horizon in the direction indicated by radar.

And yet, perhaps the Nimitz object’s otherworldly maneuverability isn’t the only impressive thing about its capabilities. Shortly after the initial phase of the intercept, Fravor and the others were alerted via radio that the object reappeared, this time at a designated “cap point”, as indicated in interviews about the incident.

Video footage obtained by pilot Chad Underwood shortly after the initial intercept during the 2004 incident.

“We were at least 40 miles away, and in less than a minute this thing was already at our cap point,” Fravor told the New York Times in 2017. Although the unidentified object at no time displayed any offensive capabilities or other indications of hostile intent, the fact that it (or rather, its operators) had obvious knowledge of the Combat Air Patrol coordinates seems to indicate one of two possibilities:

1. 1) That in addition to highly advanced maneuverability, the “tic-tac” also had the ability to decode the highly encrypted communications systems employed by the Strike Group at that time, or
2. 2) The operators of the UAP technology may have somehow had foreknowledge or other means of access to this information.

The implications of either scenario are significant, and may even be fundamental to understanding the nature of the technology in question.

The various accounts of this object and its capabilities, observed at close-range by Fravor and his company during the intercept, as well as on radar by Voorhis, Day, and others, indicates something that is well beyond the capabilities of any known technologies possessed today by the United States; the same can be said of any other world superpower. This should not necessarily be alarming, as there was no indication of overt offensive capabilities displayed by the object. However, any object or aircraft with such highly advanced performance should not be ruled out as a concern.

It could be decades (at least) before any further information is released that will give the public a clear idea as to what the 2004 Nimitz incident really entailed. That, however, relies heavily on whether the U.S. government–or that of any nation–actually possesses any significant further information in the first place.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

26-01-2020 om 22:37 geschreven door peter  

The outskirts of Socorro, New Mexico blend right into desert badlands that stretch off into the horizon, a seemingly unforgiving, hostile place of parched earth and spiny plants. On April 24, 1964, at about 5:50 p.m., a plume of dust kicked up over this moonscape, originating from the patrol car of police officer Lonnie Zamora. He had been in a high speed chase moments before, when a strange roaring sound had filled his ears and he had witnessed a bluish, orange flame soaring through the sky some distance away. It was all odd enough that he had broken off from the chase and was now barreling down a rural road towards where he estimated the flame had originated from to investigate. At this point he was not thinking of UFOs or the world of the weird. His best guess was that a car had overturned or a dynamite shack in the vicinity had blown up, but as he navigated the winding, rough and remote road he saw something sitting out in that desert that he at first assumed to be a white car overturned on the road with what looked like two people standing nearby. At this point he thought that his instincts were correct, and that there had been an accident, but as he rushed forward to offer assistance he would soon realize that this was no car. And thus would begin one of the most well-documented and discussed UFO encounters there is.

As Zamora approached, he could see that rather than an overturned vehicle, the object seemed to be a whitish, “O” or egg shaped vehicle with no discernible windows or doors and a shiny sheen like aluminum, as well as what looked like a set of four thin legs underneath it propping it up, and the figures standing nearby were about the size of small adults, with somewhat large heads and wearing what looked like coveralls and possibly some sort of headgear. Even at this point he wasn’t struck by anything particularly outlandish, although it was starting to give him the odd feeling that something was “off.” The object had some sort of red insignia on it, although he could not tell what exactly it depicted or what it meant, and he says that one of the figures seemed to jump in surprise when it realized he was approaching, after which both of them seemed to disappear within the object. In the meantime Zamora had radioed in the incident and it was then that he would be truly shocked when the object in question began to lift up straight into the air. He explains of what happened next:

Hardly turned around from car, when heard roar (was not exactly a blast), very loud roar — at that close was real loud. Not like a jet — know what jets sound like. Started low frequency quickly, then roar rose in frequency (higher tone) and in loudness — from loud to very loud. At same time as roar saw flame. Flame was under the object. Object was starting to go straight up — slowly up. Object slowly rose straight up. Flame was light blue and at bottom was sort of orange color. From this angle, saw the side of object (not end, as first noted). Difficult to describe flame. Thought, from roar, it might blow up. Flame might have come from underside of object, at middle, possibly a four feet area — very rough guess. Cannot describe flame further except blue and orange. No smoke, except dust in immediate area.

After fell by car and glasses fell off, kept running to north, with car between me and object. Glanced back couple of times. Noted object to rise to about level of car, about 20 to 25 feet guess — took I guess about six seconds when object started to rise and I glanced back. I ran I guess about halfway to where I ducked down — about fifty feet from the car is where I ducked down, just over edge of hill. I guess I had run about 25 feet when I glanced back and saw the object level with the car and it appeared about directly over the place where it rose from.

I was still running and I jumped just over the hill — I stopped because I did not hear the roar. I was scared of the roar, and I had planned to continue running down the hill. I turned around toward the object and at same time put my head toward ground, covering my face with my arms. Being that there was no roar, I looked up, and I saw the object going away from me. It did not come any closer to me. It appeared to go in straight line and at same height — possibly 10 to 15 feet from ground, and it cleared the dynamite shack by about three feet. Shack about eight feet high. Object was travelling very fast. It seemed to rise up, and take off immediately across country.

He would claim that after this spectacular takeoff the craft ceased to make any noise or flame, and proceeded to silently shoot off into the distance over a mountain. As he stood there in shock and we at what he had just witnessed backup arrived, in the form of a Sergeant Chavez. Zamora excitedly told Chavez about what had happened, and the two searched the area to allegedly find strange indentations and scorch marks upon the earth. Other officers who would arrive claimed that some of the vegetation and the ground were still hot to the touch, with some of it even described as still smoldering, as if just hit by a massive heat. Not long after this, word got out about this outlandish incident and reporters were coming in droves, with headlines splashed all over the news talking of aliens and UFOs in the desert.

This quickly got the attention of the government, including the FBI and the U.S. Air Force, in particular the study it had initiated into UFO sightings, called Project Blue Book. Investigators would intensively question Zamora about the incident and deem him to be a reliable witness, a respected police officer who seemed to be telling the truth and had no reason to lie. The FBI would say Zamora was “well regarded as a sober, industrious, and conscientious officer and not given to fantasy.” When Zamora then brought them out to the alleged landing sight, they found wrecked, charred brush and the indentations he spoke of, as well as what looked like some sort of metal scrapings on a rock, and it was all rather baffling indeed.

Investigators were also able to track down other people who had possibly witnessed the same exact event. It turned out that several independent witnesses had also reported seeing an egg-shaped unidentified object trailing a blueish flame at approximately the same time as Zamora’s encounter. One witness in particular gave a dramatic report of some sort of silvery craft emerging from a bank of black smoke, of which he said, “a round, saucer or egg-shaped object ascended vertically from the black smoke… After climbing vertically out of the smoke, the object leveled off and moved in a southwest direction.” There were other witnesses as well, including those who had seen the object visually and those who had heard a strange roar echo out across the desolate landscape, as ell as those who had seen merely a bright flash from the region, but it is all intriguing as many of these reports came in before Zamora’s tale even hit the news. In the end, the case had experts and investigators stumped, and Major Hector Quintanilla, the Air Force Chief of Project Blue Book at the time, would call it a genuinely puzzling case, and he would write in his report on the matter:

There is no doubt that Lonnie Zamora saw an object which left quite an impression on him. There is also no question about Zamora’s reliability. He is a serious police officer, a pillar of his church, and a man well versed in recognizing airborne vehicles in his area. He is puzzled by what he saw, and frankly, so are we. This is the best-documented case on record, and still we have been unable, in spite of thorough investigation, to find the vehicle or other stimulus that scared Zamora to the point of panic.

This is particularly odd, as it was in an era in which Project Blue Book was on a crusade to debunk sightings as much as possible, the days of weather balloons, misidentified aircraft, and of course Venus, and rarely admitted to or covered up those that were genuinely unexplained. Adding to the weirdness of it all was a discovery allegedly made in 1968, when a a University of New Mexico doctoral student in radiation biology by the name of Mary G. Mayes claimed to have gone out to the site of the landing to do a study on the “plant material” of the area, and had found that not only were the plants around the site unusually dried out, but that there seemed to be an area of fused sand in the middle of all of this, which looked as if “a hot jet had hit it.” She would claim that after these discoveries the Air Force had moved in to acquire all of her research, data, and samples and that was the last she heard of it.

In later years, the Zamora incident would gain a lot of traction in the UFO community, as it was extremely well-documented and considered a truly unclassifiable event made by a reliable witness, and Zamora would continue to stand by his story. Of course, the main problem is that there is only one person who ever saw the landed craft and around which all of this revolves, and that is Zamora himself. As such, there has been much debate as to how much any of it holds up, and so there have been a lot of theories proposed on what might have gone on out there along that remote road. It has often been suggested that this was all a hoax, not necessarily implemented by Zamora, but perhaps a prank played on him by some enterprising individuals, but if that is the case then they did a good job of fooling everyone involved, including the FBI and Air Force. There is also of course the notion that Zamora set this all himself, as part of a scheme in order to raise tourism to the area.

Other ideas have really run the range, including ball lightning, dust devils, mirages, and top secret military aircraft, even an experimental lunar surveyor being tested out of the nearby White Sands Missile Range. Then of course there is the idea that this was an actual encounter with otherworldly forces, and that this was a genuine alien encounter. It is hard to say, as Zamora is no longer with us, having taken what he saw to the grave with him, and the case has mostly been dropped officially, merely an unexplained little hiccup listed simply as “unknown” and not worthy of follow-up. Whatever it is Zamora encountered out there, it has remained one of the most well-documented and oft discussed UFO encounters out there, and without any definitive answers we will probaby never know exactly what transpired.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

26-01-2020 om 21:17 geschreven door peter  

Ex Navy boss stumped by UFOs

Three sets of gun-camera videos – one taken from an F-18 assigned to the USS Nimitz operating off southern California in November 2004, and two more from Super Hornets attached to the USS Roosevelt during maneuvers off Jacksonville in January 2015 – were authenticated as official government footage by the Defense Department last year.

{ http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/ }

26-01-2020 om 00:41 geschreven door peter  

Watch Latest UFO Footage – Is This Real Or Not

The most recent UFO sightings are often not investigated by those who claim to have seen the UFO. Of course, the majority of UFO sightings can be accounted for by the lens of the human mind, so it is a fact that many people see UFOs. However, many of these people have no knowledge of how to spot a UFO and are open to misinformation when they do.

Many people are very skeptical when it comes to seeing what they believe to be UFOs because they are unfamiliar with the actual evidence. Sometimes, they simply have no clue what they are looking at. So, how can you spot a UFO? Here are some things to consider.

One thing to consider is the overall aura of the film; in other words, does the footage seem real or does it look like a fake? This is important because the UFO is often perceived in a similar way. Is the film realistic and does it appear to be real?

Does the movie have a real sense of creepiness? If so, then the footage you are seeing may not be as genuine as you thought. It may just be a group of teenagers messing around with a camera, or someone trying to shoot a UFO with their very own camera.

Another thing to consider is the artistic license Jimmy Semper used with his shots. Have you ever noticed that many of the UFO’s shot in these movies seem to mimic real UFO’s? It is easy to see how this is possible, but it can be annoying.

You will also want to be careful about those comments that Jimmy Semper left on his website. Are they true or false? I don’t care about this, but you should decide if you believe Jimmy Semper’s statements.

These are just a few things you will want to think about before you decide to watch a YouTube video. Of course, the world is filled with UFO videos, so you are bound to see many others. That is why it is a good idea to check out more recent UFO footage, so you can learn how to spot a UFO and enjoy the best of the newest UFO footage that is available to watch.

Source:

•  http://footageofufos.com/2020/01/watch-latest-ufo-footage-is-this-real-or-not/

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

25-01-2020 om 22:58 geschreven door peter  

Have You Ever Seen Someone Showing Unidentified Flying Objects In Their Videos?

With the recent explosion of UFO footage in recent years, many people wonder if it is possible to identify a UFO in someone’s video. You may be able to tell the difference between your own UFO and the strange lights in someone’s video, but what do you think a “Truther” might do if they could find your video? Would they tell everyone on the internet that you are a professional con man?

We have all heard the stories of deception in the past and will continue to do so, especially when we hear information about things that are not real, and people getting fooled by these people. I guess you could say that a UFO is like the golden goose in the movie The Wizard of Oz, if you think about it; a hoax is just like a hoax, however, if you could disprove something that people claim is real you could convince the masses of its fakery.

Of course, the only way you can do this is to make a person think that you have proof that someone else has proven something to them. Now, if the skeptics like yourself had something, like videos of UFOs, then you could definitely convince some of the skeptics. But, you do not, so how do you proceed?

If you are the guy that says, “Look at my photos!” then I would recommend that you hold off on making any videos until you get someone to believe you. You see, I have to put the picture of this subject out there, in order for people to believe what I have to say, if they can prove something to me, then I will have no need for them.

If you can prove that people have been seen in the photos, then you will have convinced more people than you know that the UFO phenomenon is real, but, it is probably not, that’s why they all go to the movies to see alien aliens. Some have pointed out to me that since UFOs are just that; they could justbe pictures of old mountain ranges or clouds.

Then again, maybe these are not real, and a more reliable source of UFOs is a web site with videos. If you are sure that these UFO videos are real, then the last thing that I would want to do is to convince anyone of the reality of aliens.

So you see, you do not have to be so sure. If you cannot find any evidence, then simply say that they are in the same category as the pictures you see in your mind’s eye, no one needs to know!

Source: 

• http://footageofufos.com/2020/01/have-you-ever-seen-someone-showing-unidentified-flying-objects-in-their-videos/

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

23-01-2020 om 18:51 geschreven door peter  

Anyone who has been on a European river cruise or an organized bus tour through cities with ruins dating back thousands of years has no doubt felt that they were traveling back in time and probably wished it were possible to go back in time and see these cities when they were alive with our ancestors. If we feel that way, it’s not hard to imagine that our future descendants will have the same yearnings. What they may also have is the technology to pull off such a time-traveling tour package. A professor of biological anthropology believes UFOs are actually identified tour ‘buses’ from the future and lays out a case on how to prove it.

“Undoubtedly in the future, there are those that will pay a lot of money to have the opportunity to go back and observe their favorite period in history. Some of the most popular tourist sites are the pyramids of Giza and Machu Picchu in Peru … old and prehistoric sites.”

Michael Masters is a professor of biological anthropology at Montana Technological University in Butte and the author of “Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon.” In a presentation at the 2019 International UFO Congress and a more recent interview with Space.com, Masters lays out his reasons to believe that aliens are future human tourists. The ‘human’ part is certainly plausible – he points out that most “extratempestrials” are described as bipedal beings with human features who can communicate in our languages and travel in ships that seem to be based on current technology … like a Ferrari resembles a Model T.

“We know we’re here. We know humans exist. We know that we’ve had a long evolutionary history on this planet. And we know our technology is going to be more advanced in the future. I think the simplest explanation, innately, is that it is us. I’m just trying to offer what is likely the most parsimonious explanation.”

Masters sees the stories of alien abductees as indicators that many of the UFO time machines contain anthropologists doing what he wishes he could do if he had the technology – meeting ancient civilizations and perhaps picking up a few samples. Space.com adds credence to the connection to abductee stories by bringing in Larry Lemke, a retired NASA aerospace engineer and ufologist who points out that some abductee experiences coincide with what might happen if they were taken onboard a ship that was able to defy the usual laws of aerodynamics and Newtonian mechanics.

“There’s a group of thinkers in the field of UFOs that point out that phenomena reported around some UFOs do, in fact, look exactly like general relativity effects. Missing time is a very common one.”

Just like today, once the explorers and scientists are done analyzing (and looting) ancient sites, people with a lot of money start visiting them. Eventually, the costs go down and these tours become available to the masses. Have our future selves reached that point yet? Were those recent Tic Tac UFOs merely time-traveling tour buses filled with extratempestrials – noses pressed to the windows, future cell phones taking selfies as they try to see ten cities in ten … minutes?

“Our job as scientists is to be asking big questions and try to find answers to unknown questions. There’s something going on here, and we should be having a conversation about this. We should be at the forefront of trying to find out what it is.”

Not to mention selling souvenirs to these time-traveling tourists.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

23-01-2020 om 09:43 geschreven door peter  

UFO encounters run the range between those of a benevolent type, and others that are more sinister in nature. Throughout accounts of such encounters one kind find a wide range of experiences lying along this scale, to the point that it is often difficult to know what to make of it all. One very odd and frightening case supposedly played out over an expanse of the Australian Outback, and which has not been solved to this day. It is the tale of a mundane trip across the desert that would turn into a nightmare from possibly another world.

On January 20, 1988, Faye Knowles, her adult sons Patrick (24), Sean (21) and Wayne (18), and their two dogs were making their way towards Melbourne, Australia across a vast expanse of limestone bedrock called the Nullarbor Plain. The area is a remote desert moonscape of a place, with no one around for miles and other cars a rarity, so it was considered odd when in the very early morning hours a light was spotted some distance ahead, just outside of the tiny town of Mundrabilla. The light seemed to get steadily brighter as they watched it, and as they got closer they could see that it was semi-spherical or egg shaped and was most certainly not another vehicle as it was just a single bright light and seemed to be hovering in the air over that desolate expanse.

Nullarbor Plain

As the family struggled to comprehend what they were seeing, the strange object allegedly emitted a beam of light that swept towards their vehicle and caused the driver, Sean, to take evasive maneuvers. The beam missed the car, but this is when Sean would claim the object had begun to follow them down that lonely roadway, easily keeping pace with them no matter how fast they went. They apparently passed another car going the other direction, after which the mysterious object stopped pursuing them and followed the other vehicle. Sean the reportedly turned the car around to follow the other car and its UFO pursuer to figure out what was going on, but thought better of it and turned around yet again. The object then must have decided to go after them again, because it was soon ominously closing in on them once again.

It purportedly got brighter and closer, passing them a few times to circle around to approach again before positioning itself right above their car as the terrified family within screamed out in fright. There was then a thump on the roof, and the car slowed down as if something very heavy were sitting atop it, leading them to the horrible realization that it had actually lowered itself to make contact with the vehicle. According to the witnesses, it then issued a shrill, ear piercing sound, and Faye would say that they were overcome with the sense of something invading their minds, later saying, “It felt like something was going into our heads,” and Patrick would say “I felt like my brain was being sucked out.” They also claimed that their voices became distorted and that they moved sluggishly, as if underwater or experiencing a slowing of time itself. Things would intensify when they then felt the car physically lift off of the road, after which they were shaken violently from side to side as a grey mist filled the car and dropped back down with such force that it blew one of their tires and disabled the vehicle to leave to leave it lying in that unforgiving place like a wounded beast. Fay Knowles would say of the otherworldly encounter:

I wound down the window and I felt this thing on the roof… all of this smoke stuff started coming into the car, the car was covered in black stuff. It was a small light and all of a sudden it became big like this, like a big ball. We thought we were dying, then we got out the car and we hid behind a little tree and the bushes and it couldn’t find us.

When the cowering family were sure the object was gone, they warily went back to their car, changed the tire, and got out of there as fast as they could, eventually making their way to Mundrabilla, where they excitedly told of what had happened to them. Interestingly, a trucker at the gas station there would tell them that he had also seen the strange, eerie light out over the desert as well. When their car was examined, it was found to be banged up, and both the exterior and interior covered with a fine film of black material like soot or ash that had an unusual odor like “a blown fuse.” The Knowles were able to get some truckers to go with them out to where the incident had supposedly occurred, where they allegedly found odd skid marks on the road that seemed to show that the vehicle has been dragged sideways by some powerful force, making it all even stranger.

South Australian Police in Ceduna were notified, and analyses of the soot on the car would be carried out that later prove to be divisive, with some saying it was merely sand and dust particles from the desert, while others claimed that there were also traces of an explosive compound called Potassium Chlorate, as well as a radioactive chemical called Astatine. Yet another analysis found that the dust on the outside of the car and that of the interior were different. The surprising differences of these results seem like they would deserve more follow-up, but oddly the South Australia police were apparently very eager to distance themselves from it all, finish the investigation, and sweep it under the carpet, and the whole case was just sort of filed away even as it was hitting the news in a big way. This would cause Faye Knowles to lament:

We are all angry. Everybody knows that this happened to us but the people who should be concerned have just ignored it. There has been a cover-up. The government owes us and the public an explanation.

Theories on what might have happened to the Knowles family out on that lonely and forbidding stretch of road have swirled ever since, ranging from the mundane to the far-out. One idea is that they had been tired from a 13-hour car ride all night along an isolated road in the middle of nowhere, and had then perhaps misidentified some natural phenomenon in their fatigued state. This has been speculated as perhaps being a truck’s headlights in the distance or the planet Venus, that were distorted by a temperature inversion, which is basically a layer of warm air over cooler air that can cause mirages and tricks of light. However, this in no way explains their car being picked up off of the ground and dropped.

It has also been suggested that they might have experienced a meteor that just happened to disintegrate and cause a shockwave near their car, or even a rocket fired from a military base at nearby Woomera. Other theories include that they were caught in a dust storm or some sort of electromagnetic storm, but none of these really fits all of the details of the encounter. Of course there is the idea that this was an actual UFO abduction, and a possibly even weirder idea is that it was an attack by a secret government organization using a helicopter and a powerful, technologically advanced electromagnet to lift the vehicle up. Researcher William Buckley has said of this strange idea:

The attack on the Knowles family was orchestrated and carried out by a well-resourced paramilitary organization operating in Australia, using a sophisticated helicopter with specialized lifting equipment. The Knowles’ involvement was purely accidental. They were not the intended target and were attacked only because they resembled the real target group who were also travelling on the same road that night. The nature of this covert action by this paramilitary group and the importance of the assassination attempt on the real target group are now shrouded in secrecy and cover-up and nobody wants the truth to be revealed.

This is obviously a case of attempted murder of four people who were all extremely traumatised by this hour-long attack. There was plenty of forensic evidence and witnesses to prove that the family was attacked and a major police investigation should have been triggered to uncover the truth.

Not quite as interesting as any of these is the idea that the family was trying to pull an insurance scam or even that it was just a flat-out hoax. For their part, the Knowles family has always insisted that what they experienced was very real, and very frightening, and they have never sought to gain fame or large amounts of money from any of it, mostly lying low about the whole thing. What happened to this family out on that bleak stretch of road? What forces came calling for them to follow them around and terrorize them? Was this aliens, a weather phenomenon, or something else? No one really knows, and the case remains controversial and debated to this day.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

23-01-2020 om 09:37 geschreven door peter  

Hollywood's UFO Stories Are Becoming Way More Realistic

The Pentagon admits UFOs are real. So Hollywood is making a flurry of movies and TV shows about how we should look for them.

By MJ Banias

UFOs are everywhere, and Hollywood has noticed. Talking about UFOs is no longer fringe, with former Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge getting the U.S. military to admit that it has videos of UFOs.

Small and big screens alike have always carried alien and UFOs. From films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind to Contact to Arrival and even The Avengers franchise, bizarre aliens and their vehicles have come to Earth and have had audiences the world over question the existence of extraterrestrials. But there is an increased focus on UFO hunters in Hollywood.

“I think it’s fair to say that it is, and that this resurgence in popularity is a direct result of the Pentagon UFO revelations of 2017, which captured the attention of the establishment press like no UFO story has in decades,” Robbie Graham, media critic and author of Silver Screen Saucers: Sorting Fact from Fantasy in Hollywood's UFO Movies, said. “This helped to legitimize UFOs as a topic of mainstream debate and has opened up new scientific and political lines of inquiry for TV producers who are always looking for fresh approaches to this enduringly popular subject.”

Recent polls indicate a little over half of Americans believe UFOs exist and one third buy into the belief that they are alien spacecraft, Graham isn’t totally convinced that UFOs will be the next big thing. He does point out that young people are being drawn into the subject matter like never before.

“It does seem that UFOlogy is not quite as dorky as it once was, thanks to an influx over the past several years of relatively young and trendy researchers who have been drawn to the subject through its newfound legitimacy. UFOlogy was once an old person’s game; now it’s a young person’s game,” stated Graham.

In 2017, former lead singer for Blink 182, Tom DeLonge, publicly announced his UFO/technology/media company, To the Stars Academy, alongside the New York Times article announcing a secret Pentagon program designed to study anomalous phenomena. Young gun UFO enthusiasts turned to social media, #UFOTwitter became an actual hashtag and the once invisible UFO discourse became incredibly public.

“I think people are more open to considering it as a real phenomenon as opposed to just psychology,” Aiden Gillen told Motherboard in an interview. Gillen, known best for playing the role of Littlefinger in HBO’s Game of Thrones, plays Dr. J. Allen Hynek in History Channel’s Project Blue Book, which returns next week. “I suppose you could have said that in the 50s and 60s as well, in the age of science, that people would be more open to the idea that we're not alone in the universe. I'm also fully aware of how unlikely it is that we will find each other.”

Project Blue Book is a fictional TV series about the infamous 1950’s and 60’s Air Force UFO investigation program of the same name.

Gillen said that humans are naturally curious about UFOs.

“It's inevitable that you are going to wonder. This is something that people have done since we began standing on our own two feet as a species. ‘What's up there?’ It's always been, ‘What's up there?’” he said. While Gillen doesn’t think the government should be spending vast sums of money chasing UFOs, as we have more direct problems to deal with, he does think that talking about UFOs is no longer taboo.

“I think there is something that is becoming cool about UFOs. It’s easier to talk about or reference,” Gillen explained. “I feel like Close Encounters of the Third Kind is one of the coolest films of the 70s, and when this role came my way, I actually thought, ‘This is fucking cool.’”

While TV dramas like Project Blue Book are fictional, reality UFO themed programs still have a long way to go.

They “depict presenters chasing lights in the sky in Jeeps while wearing night-vision goggles and brandishing walkie-talkies. It’s nonsensical and devoid of educational value. It doesn’t have to be this way though, and this coming wave of factual UFO TV shows will likely reflect the more serious tone that the mainstream news media have begun to adopt with this topic,” Graham said. “Certainly, UFOs are ‘selling’ like never before. They’re hot property in TV land right now, and everybody wants to stake a claim.”

{ https://www.vice.com/en_in }

22-01-2020 om 23:20 geschreven door peter  

Here’s Why Scientists Are So Dismissive Of UFOs

Our new alien overlords aren’t likely to be landing anytime soon, sad to say, despite news reports of the Pentagon’s secret UFO program.

A Department of Defense “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program,” which investigated sightings of mystery aircraft moving in impossible ways, thrilled UFO fans in reports this week in both the New York Times and Politico Magazine. Accompanied by released videos of military pilots expressing bafflement at artifacts on cockpit screens, the news seemed a respite from earthly concerns about death and taxes.

But experts in real-life optical illusions expressed more caution, perhaps best summed up by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson telling CNN, “Call me when you have a dinner invite from an alien.”

“Green flashes,” “inversion,” and “ghost” mirages have bedeviled fliers for decades. These illusions are created by different layers of the air acting like lenses. An optical effects archive maintained by astronomer Andrew Young of San Diego State University details the physics of such observations as seen by the eye, cameras, and video recordings. A “subsun,” for example, is a remarkably bright solar reflection from ice crystals floating in the air. The reflection’s circular or flattened shape could resemble a UFO.

Not all of the effects reported by news stories can be explained by mirages, optics expert Joseph Shaw of Montana State University told BuzzFeed News. “Reports of objects accelerating in different directions seen by pilots sounds different,” as well as claims of fallen “alloys” collected by the Pentagon. But that doesn’t mean the objects come from outside of our atmosphere.

“Certainly the Air Force should be trying to figure out phenomena reported by pilots,” investigative writer Joe Nickell of the Center for Inquiry, who has investigated UFO reports for two decades, told BuzzFeed News. “But to immediately decide something unexplained is ‘extraterrestrial’ is just really unlikely.”

Defense Department investigations into unexplained aerial phenomena date at least to the start of the Cold War, since the 1947 “Roswell Incident” crash of a secret spy balloon, Project Mogul, in the New Mexico desert.

Around the end of the Cold War, in the “X Files” era, reports of mystery aircraft picked up, security analyst John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org told BuzzFeed News, tied to early development of US stealth fighter and bomber planes. A long history of dubious reports since the 1960s lead him to conclude, “anyone who was paying attention to UFOs had too much time on their hands.”One other source of skepticism about the Pentagon’s UFO program is that it originated in the patronage of former Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, and was contracted to Bigelow Aerospace, owned by an avowed believer in UFOs, Robert Bigelow. It reappeared in the news reports as a private effort headed by its former program director, Luis Elizondo, and supported by Blink 182 guitarist Tom DeLonge. Elizondo identified himself as a believer in extraterrestrials in the reports.

“I think it is telling that the program was initiated at the behest of Senator Reid and on behalf of a friend and constituent of his,” Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists told BuzzFeed News. “If DoD had been genuinely concerned about the subject, I believe it would have undertaken the program on its own volition.”

A Defense Department spokesperson, Laura Ochoa, confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it cancelled the $22 million program in 2012. “It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change,” she said.

But that doesn’t mean the government’s search for aliens has stopped forever, she added: “The DoD takes seriously all threats and potential threats to our people, our assets, and our mission and takes action whenever credible information is developed.”

Source 

• www.buzzfeednews.com

{ https://www.soulask.com/ }

22-01-2020 om 00:35 geschreven door peter  

Photos of a UFO Buzzing a Commercial Jet Over the United Kingdom

JANUARY 19, 2020 …..NEWTON ABBOT DEVON ENGLAND

Hi Ken : The sky was clear and blue and I was watching a passenger plane pass over the area when I decided to take some photographs of it with my Nikon P900 camera. I was in the process of taking photographs when a white sphere of light just appeared out of no where and flew around the sky right in front of the passenger plane. I captured the white sphere of light in four of the photographs before I lost sight of it. I couldn’t believe it I wasn’t even trying to capture a UFO… It was just sheer luck that I just happened to be photographing the passenger plane at that precise moment. I often like to take photographs of passing passenger planes as they fly over the area and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is out there trying to spot UFOs as they are clearly drawn to commercial aircraft.

The question is where are these strange objects coming from and how do they just seem to appear out of thin air like that? I really would like to know. I believe that the government knows what these strange object really are and is purposely withholding this information from the public. There’s still time left for the government to come out and save face and tell the general public the truth. Why are they allowing these unidentified objects to freely fly around in the sky with complete impunity. I am calling the government out on their cowedly cover up of the whole situation. This cowedly cover up as gone on for far to long. Enough is enough It just isn’t right. The general public have the right to know the truth and need to be informed as to what is really going on in the skies above them! This truth embargo won’t last forever. The photographs where taken ‏‎at 11:58 AM on the ‎19th of ‎January ‎2020, at Newton Abbot Devon England. All the best John.

KEN PFEIFER WORLD UFO PHOTOS AND NEWS 

HTTP://WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOS.ORG

HTTP://WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOSANDNEWS.ORG

HTTP://WWW.KENPFEIFERDISCOVERIES.COM

THANKS TO JOHN MOONER, CHIEF INVESTIGATOR FOR WORLD UFO PHOTOS. https://ufologist.yolasite.com

Source: 

• http://worldufophotosandnews.org/?p=24939

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/}

20-01-2020 om 18:49 geschreven door peter  

In November 2019, Popular Mechanics revealed previously unheard eyewitness accounts of the U.S. Navy’s encounters with UFOs while conducting training off the coast of San Diego in the fall of 2004. These are now known as the Nimitz encounters, so named for the fighter pilots of the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group who spotted the strange flying objects.

Some of the Nimitz witnesses told Popular Mechanics that the brief “Flir1” video—released for public viewing by the UFO research group To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science and included below—is merely a small piece of a much longer video that the government is keeping a secret. According to these Navy veterans, the video they saw showed many more details of an unknown aircraft seeming to defy the known laws of physics as it effortlessly evaded some of the world’s best fighter jets. In December 2019, Chad Underwood, the former F/A-18 pilot who originally filmed the UFO encounter, told New York magazine that Flir1 is indeed a “little video cut” of his original recording.

But retired U.S. Navy Commander David Fravor, who first observed the “Tic Tac” from the cockpit of his Super Hornet in 2004, has pushed back on all claims that a longer video exists. The same goes for the Department of Defense (DoD). The Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence, meanwhile, responded to a recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for more Nimitz records by saying it had discovered “certain briefing slides” related to the encounter “that are classified TOP SECRET.” The Navy has determined that “the release of these materials would cause exceptionally grave damage to the National Security of the United States.”

Consistent with the entire Nimitz event, the bizarre history of this grainy black and white video seems to challenge logic and defy reality. The video has a peculiar and convoluted path that spans a decade and a half, covers thousands of miles, and includes shadowy characters known only by pseudonyms.

The saga is centered on a puzzle of contradictions, as the Navy has confirmed that the objects shown in Flir1 (as well as those seen in two other clips, "Gimbal" and "Go Fast," filmed in 2015), are genuinely “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” or UAP. But the service has also said these three widely circulated videos are “not cleared for public release.”

What follows is a thorough examination of the video’s convoluted history that, for the first time, sheds light on exactly how the clip—which we were never meant to see—made its way into the mainstream. This is the tale of the tape.

GETTY IMAGES

THE LEAK

On December 16, 2017, when To The Stars released the now-famous “Flir1” video, the organization did so with a caveat: “It is the only official footage that has been released.” Easily overlooked, this distinction by the UFO “public benefit” company from former blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge was significant. That’s because it wasn’t actually the first time the video was in the public domain.

On February 3, 2007, a person using the pseudonym “thefinaltheory” posted a thread on Above Top Secret, an obscure message board site for discussions of conspiracy theories and paranormal events. The title: “Observations of an Actual UFO.”

The anonymous user shared details of a UFO encounter they said occurred while they were aboard a naval aircraft carrier off the coast of Mexico in 2005. After hearing rumors of the ship encountering a UFO, using their position, which they described as “working in the computer field,” thefinaltheory said they accessed the ship’s Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET). To their surprise, on the ship’s secure server, thefinaltheory said they discovered many files confirming something strange was going on around the Navy fleet.

Describing what they found on SIPRNET, thefinaltheory said:

“I found many videos and powerpoint briefs (navy standard) and written reports and even message traffic that was being passed through our radio division. It was all there. I couldn’t believe it at first, but then our ship called in the Air Force because even the captain didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

thefinaltheory described one particular video they found amidst the many files (albeit using terrible spelling and grammar):

It was taken directly from the cockpit camera of one of our ships fighter pilot jets F-18 I believe but cant be sure. It was in black and white and showed the altitude, the pilots “nickname” and the tempurature and all those little critical stats.

The UFO was floating extremely still in mid air, this was 30,000 ft above ground level. It looked literally and i mean LITERALLY just like a disk, no stupid traingles or any gimicky things like Independence Day or whatever. It looks exactly how the goverment wants you to NOT think it looks like. It’s simply put, a disk.

So it was floating, the figher pilot tried to get numerous locks on the UFO but everytime the cross hairs tried to hone in the crosshairs scaled back and forth. I dont know how to put it into words well, but I know what i saw. Crosshairs move in and move back out, it couldnt get a lock whatsoever.

After about I say 10 seconds or so the UFO started to move. It moves in ways that we have never seen before, it spontaniously moved in a half circle upward and paused once again. Then it suddenly teleported about five times all over the pilots screen. The movement is instant and cannot be followed. It simply put, is amazing and so fast the eyes cant see it.

There was a bright light and suddenly it dissapeared, out of sight.

ABOVE TOP SECRET

When thefinaltheory said they’d sneaked files about the encounter off the SIPRNET, but forgotten where they’d put a disc with the material, he was met with extreme skepticism and criticism by others in the forum. A fellow user declared the claim “one of the worst thought out stories I have read here in forever.”

Like countless similar and seemingly dubious UFO witness accounts, thefinaltheory’s story would likely have faded away into internet oblivion … had it not been for his reemergence the next day on the forum.

Under a new post titled, “Fighter Jet UFO Footage: The Real Deal,” thefinaltheory posted a Navy Event Log of a UFO encounter that occurred on November 14, 2004, along with a link to a grainy black and white video clip titled “F4,” both of which they said had been smuggled off of the Navy’s SIPRNET back in 2004. [Editor’s note: The original clip has since been removed.]

By the date and details contained in the event summary, including the description of “Fast Eagle 110” (the squadron nickname and aircraft number of the plane flown by Fravor) and the sighting as “an airborne contact which appeared to be capsule shaped (wingless, mobile, white, oblong pill shaped, 25-20 feet in length, no visible markings and no glass),” thefinaltheory was indisputably describing the now-famous 2004 Nimitz UFO encounter.

More significantly, a full decade before its “first official release,” the “F4” video clip thefinaltheory shared by in 2007 was the exact same clip that’s become more popularly known as “Flir1.”

A side-by-side comparison and analysis of the two videos provided by Dave Beaty.

In contrast to the acclaim the “Flir1” video received when the New York Times published it in December 2017, most Above Top Secret users trashed thefinaltheory’s clip. “Sorry, it’s totally uninspiring video of a dot,” one user said.

One such critic was the UFO researcher and Above Top Secret administrator Isaac Koi (a pseudonym to protect the person’s identity for professional reasons), who believed at the time that thefinaltheory’s story and video were bogus. “Within a few hours of the video being posted online, I tracked the video back to a website run by a group called Vision Unlimited located in Germany,” Koi tells Popular Mechanics. “Since that group specialized in producing footage, including special effects, I originally tentatively concluded the footage was a hoax.”

But thefinaltheory defended the authenticity of the video, explaining it was uploaded on the German film server to try and avoid the implications associated with removing and leaking classified military materials. The excuse didn’t stick with most detractors.

Except for their two initial message threads, thefinaltheory hasn’t posted on Above Top Secret or otherwise publicly surfaced since February 2007. But when the “F4” video reemerged as “Flir1” in 2017 as an important piece of one of the most compelling UFO puzzles in modern history, the anonymous user was vindicated. Still, the world had many of the same questions about that grainy clip

After the UFO video’s more ceremonious release, rather quickly, savvy internet sleuths tracked down thefinaltheory’s original postings from over a decade prior. Thanks to the internet archive Wayback Machine, questions of why a seemingly classified video first appeared on the server of a German film company that specializes in CGI effects were reinvigorated.

With notions of government mistrust inherently intertwined with the UFO topic, the link between the freshly minted 2017’s “Flir1” and peculiar past of 2007’s “F4” video became red meat for the conspiracy zeitgeist.

While reporting this story, Popular Mechanics tracked down an individual claiming to be thefinaltheory. Still fearing reprisal, even under the assumed pseudonym, the individual did not wish to speak on the record. However, the equally enigmatic Koi agreed to assist by providing an overview of how the “F4” video made it to the web in the first place.

According to Koi, back in 2007, after thefinaltheory located the lost materials, he provided them to another Above Top Secret member with the username “Cometa,” who lived in Germany. Koi said friends of Cometa, who worked at Vision Unlimited, agreed to upload and host the video on their server.

Phillip Schneider, the owner of Vision Unlimited, Phillip Schneider, tells Popular Mechanics the company did not produce the video, and he and other employees were unaware of who uploaded the clip in 2007. “I talked to all my coworkers and former coworkers, and they said they don’t know [anything] about it,” Schneider says. Clips, logs and mails [were] stored on an old server, so we can’t check back anything.” The owner indicated a former colleague may have uploaded it without his knowledge.

Regarding the clip on the Wayback Machine, Schneider says, “The server link ‘extern’ means external, so this was the low security area of our ftp data exchange between customers, friends, and so on. Maybe someone used our FTP to post the video link.”

In a statement to Popular Mechanics, Susan Gough, the Senior Strategic Planner for the Secretary of Defense Public Affairs Office, confirmed the authenticity of the video uploaded to Vision Unlimited, saying Navy officials became aware that the video had been posted online in 2009.

“With respect to the 2004 sighting by aircraft from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68); that video was widely shared throughout the ship at that time,” Gough writes. “In 2007, one of those crewmembers posted the video onto the public web.”

But in terms of investigating the video leak, Gough writes, “Given the time since recording (approximately 5 years), the widespread distribution of the recording within the ship at the time of recording, and the size of the crew at the time (approximately 5,000), it was determined that there was no way to accurately determine who might have released the video.”

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So how would thefinaltheory have been able to download materials off their ship’s secure server? Vincent Aiello, a former F/A-18 pilot and member of the VFA-94 “Mighty Shrikes” strike-fighter squadron aboard the USS Nimitz in 2004, tells Popular Mechanics that such a swipe is entirely possible.

“Once a recording of their tape was made in CVIC [the ship’s intelligence center], there was less control,” Aiello says. “Indeed, someone could have used a thumb drive to download something off the SIPRNet.”

The enlisted eye-witnesses Popular Mechanics previously spoke with all agreed, although unlawful, that it was equally possible for someone to have hooked up a CD/DVD drive and burned the files off the SIPRNET onto a disc.

Since no event summary has been officially released and is assumed to still carry a security classification, Aiello, who hosts the Fighter Pilot Podcast, declined to review the leaked summary provided by Thefinaltheory. Aiello did, however, confirm an event summary is completed after every flight. “Standard operating procedure was to pass through CVIC immediately after landing to debrief one of the squadron intelligence officers on duty,” he says. “They would ask a series of questions or have us fill out a simple form of what was experienced on that particular flight.”

So while there doesn’t appear to be any grand conspiracy with the 2007 leak of the UFO video, when it comes to the more fashionably released “Flir1,” clip, more confusion and contention eagerly fill in the blanks of ambiguity and the unknown.

U.S. AIR FORCE

THE RELEASE

Doubling down on a statement previously issued by the Navy, Gough tells Popular Mechanics that “Flir1,” “Gofast,” and “Gimbal,” all circulated by the To The Stars, were never cleared for public release.

“An internal review, not a formal investigation, determined that while a request had been submitted in August 2017 to the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR) for release of the videos to government and industry partners for research purposes, DOPSR did not grant final approval for the videos to be released to the general public,” Gough writes.

In an interview with Popular Mechanics, the man who applied for the release of the videos, Luis Elizondo, staunchly defended against any accusations he’d deliberately tried to circumvent DoD policies or hadn’t followed proper procedures.

Luis Elizondo, the Director of Government Programs and Services for To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science.

TO THE STARS ACADEMY OF ARTS & SCIENCE

“I initially requested the videos be cleared for restricted release to industry partners, however, it was DOPSR, not me, who suggested the videos be released in an unrestricted manner,” Elizondo says. “The emails on this exchange are out there now. They’ve been made public, so people can see this for themselves, precisely how this occurred.”

A series of emails obtained by Popular Mechanics via FOIA offer a behind-the-scenes look at the release of the three videos.

Based on the released emails, on August 9, 2017, in an apparent follow-up with an official with DOPSR (the agency tasked with control and release of DoD materials), Elizondo stated, “I sent a larger e-mail earlier but it appears it was too large to send all at once. As such, I have sent three (3) separate emails to facilitate this review.” At the time, Elizondo was working out of the Special Programs Management Office with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSD[I]).

On the same day as Elizondo’s follow-up, another email from an individual whose name has been redacted stated, “Just to be clear… we should consider these files to be SECRET//NOFORN until I am able to establish that they are to be considered U//FOUO [for official use only].”

Two weeks later, on August 23, Elizondo sent another follow-up email to DOPSR saying, “If it is easier for you or more streamline, then please consider our request for unrestricted release.” The following day, an employee with DOPSR replied, “If the service-level OCA verifies to me (simple one-sentence email is fine) that removing the metadata from the videos makes them UNCLASSIFIED, please feel free to move forward with release.” Two other individuals, one from OUSD(I) and the Navy, were CC’d in the email response.

Through the same FOIA request, Popular Mechanics obtained a copy of the form used to request the release of the videos. Dated August 24, 2017, the form contains a DOPSR stamp, which indicates “Cleared For Open Publication.”

A copy of the form Elizondo used to request the release of the videos. Dated August 24, 2017, the form contains a DOPSR stamp, which indicates “Cleared For Open Publication.”

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

What isn’t explicitly clear from the chain of internal emails is Elizondo’s claim that it was DOPSR that suggested the release be amended for unrestricted release. In an effort to investigate Elizondo’s claims, Popular Mechanics was able to locate and verify the identity of an individual who was involved in the release of the videos back in 2017. The person agreed to provide their recollection of the events, provided a guarantee of anonymity.

According to the individual, their specific job would not have included the investigation of UAP or UFOs. However, they were involved with the process of releasing the videos. Not shown in the series of emails, the person recalled, in their coordination with DOPSR, it was suggested it would be easier if the request was amended to “unrestricted.” Subsequently, the person said this information would have been passed along to Elizondo.

In a follow-up, Elizondo declined to discuss any details regarding the individual with whom Popular Mechanics had spoken. However, Elizondo says his email to DOPSR changing the status to unrestricted was confirmation of a suggestion made by them to another individual, and not simply an out-of-the-blue request made on his part.

Speaking on behalf of the Secretary of Defense’s Office, Gough elaborates, “The videos were not cleared for general public release because DOPSR did not receive final approval from Navy. Navy’s approval would have included PA review from Navy’s PA office (Public Affairs).” After the videos appeared in the New York Times in 2017, Gough indicates that an investigation was conducted to determine if the videos were considered classified. “The investigation determined the videos were not classified.”

In October 2017, former Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge announced the launch of To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, which would soon leak Flir1 to the world—and hire Elizondo.

YOUTUBE/MANIFESTA PROD

Ever since the DoD came out and said the videos were “not cleared for general public release” last fall, it’s been widely assumed that Elizondo—who now works as Director of Global Security and Special Programs at To the Stars, the very organization that released the clips to YouTube—was ultimately responsible for circumventing the final approval by the Navy. However, when asked who was responsible for the misstep in not getting the videos cleared for general public release, Gough points the blame elsewhere: “DOPSR, in this specific case.”

Given he’d ultimately go to work with To the Stars a little over a month after the leak, some have been understandably suspicious of Elizondo’s intentions in applying for the release of the three UFO videos.

Did Elizondo plan to use his government position for the benefit of his future private employer?

“Absolutely not!” he says. “I never even met Tom [DeLonge, founder of To the Stars] until long after the request was initiated. I resigned only after multiple attempts to brief the Secretary [of Defense] failed. It had nothing to do with the release of the videos!”

In a live broadcast on October 11, 2017, DeLonge excitedly announced the launch of To the Stars, his new UFO consortium. Appearing to confirm what Elizondo now says, during his introduction, the visibly giddy DeLonge describes how he’d heard of the existence of a mysterious government insider, however, only days prior did he actually get the chance to meet this person and discover it was Elizondo. “Days ago! Days ago! This person finished his career at the Department of Defense, as one of the senior covert intelligence officers in the Office of the Secretary of Defense,” DeLonge says breathlessly.

{ https://www.popularmechanics.com/ }

18-01-2020 om 16:46 geschreven door peter  

THE WAKE

Since the original July 2017 request was limited to “industry partners,” and was only changed to “unrestricted release” at the suggestion of DOPSR, Elizondo explains, “[To the Stars] was not initially considered an industry partner at the time the release was being initiated, but it was also not being deliberately excluded either.”

By Elizondo’s account, it appears he at least peripherally knew DeLonge was working toward forming a collective of professionals to tackle the UFO mystery. However, if the request was made in expectation of To the Stars’ later establishment, based on Elizondo’s initial July request, it would seem the videos may not have not initially be intended to made public.

A copy of Elizondo’s resignation letter.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Regardless, the career intelligence agent is firm in saying the decision to walk away from over two decades of government service wasn’t an easy choice to make, and it was something he didn’t ultimately decide to do until early October 2017. An unverified letter addressed to the Secretary of Defense, which was leaked on social media, appears to show Elizondo’s resigning from the DoD on October 4.

Elizondo’s final straw wasn’t an event, but a “realization that the boss was never going to receive his briefing unless something drastic happened,” he says. “I knew by resigning, he would eventually see my resignation letter. Resigning in DoD is usually done as a measure of professional protest while refraining from disruptive action that might hurt the DoD. Let’s not forget that only a year later, Mattis did the same thing.”

The “boss” Elizondo references was then-Secretary of Defense, retired Marine General James Mattis. During his conversation with Popular Mechanics, Elizondo reiterated something he’s frequently mentioned in the past, which was the tremendous respect and admiration he has for General Mattis.

In December 2018, General Mattis resigned as Secretary of Defense after failing to convince President Donald Trump to reconsider the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria and Afghanistan.

By acknowledging it was DOPSR that made a procedural error, the Pentagon has absolved Elizondo of any wrongdoing when it comes to the video’s public release. However, Elizondo has still faced past scrutiny about other aspects of his release request. Namely, some have questioned why he described the subject area of the videos on the release form as “UAV, Balloons, and UAS” instead of “UFOs” or the government’s new buzz word, “UAP.” (By DoD established definition, “UAV” and “UAS” represent “Unmanned Aerial Vehicle” and “Unmanned Aerial System,” respectively. Not “unidentified.”)

“Look, the idea that the government, or someone in government, might have an interest or be investigating UFOs is sensitive information in the sense that there were very few people in the building that knew about our program and the [DD 1910 form] is supposed to be an unclassified document that anyone can read,” says Elizondo. “I can’t simply write the word ‘UFO’ in the request to people who were not cleared for it. However, rest assured the OCA was always included in this request so the right people always knew what this request was about ” said Elizondo.

By “OCA,” Elizondo is referring to the “Original Classification Authority,” which in this case was the Navy. To Elizondo’s point, on the request for release form, the OCA point of contact is listed as a Navy official. Additionally, someone whose name and information is redacted is CC’d throughout the chain of emails. And in the final email from DOPSR saying if the “service-level OCA” verifies the videos are unclassified to “please feel free to move forward with release,” someone with a Navy email address is also CC’d. In a statement, the Pentagon tells Popular Mechanics, “The U.S. Navy retains custody of the source videos for the 2004 and 2015 sightings.”

To illustrate the unpopular nature of the topic of UFOs, as it relates to the Pentagon, Elizondo points to the fact the Navy never took any real action to hold the person accountable for leaking the “F4” video in 2007. “Just my opinion, but I doubt they wanted to bring a UFO case into court and so it was better to just let sleeping dogs lie,” he says.

Over the last two years, the Pentagon has definitely had a difficult time being consistent or concise when it comes to UFOs and UAPs. So far, the Pentagon has gone back and forth, and seems unable to decide if anyone, much less Elizondo, ever officially investigated UFOs for the DoD.

At the same time, the one thing all parties continue to agree on is what the objects shown in the videos represent: “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.” But what, exactly, are those?

An artist’s 3D rendering of the USS Nimitz 2004 "Tic Tac" UFO, shown hovering over a sea surface disturbance while approached by an F/A-18 hornet.

JMK (CC BY-SA)

For some, the Pentagon’s stance that object in the film is yet still “unidentified” means that whatever it is, it’s “exotic,” and even possibly extraterrestrial. Meanwhile skeptics say, “unidentified” means just that, and thus there could easily be a prosaic explanation, such as an error with the Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) system or even a misidentified flock of birds.

In an effort to try and clear up the debate, Popular Mechanics sought the help of a digital forensics expert to analyze the video. Having processed over 1,000 cases, including high-profile investigations like U.S. vs Zimmerman, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and the shooting death of Laquan McDonald, Primeau Forensics is regarded as one of the nation’s leading digital forensics experts. Provided copies of both the “F4” and “Flir1,” clips, Michael Primeau, the co-owner of the business, agreed to take a look and see what information could be gleaned from the videos.

After analyzing the clips, Primeau indicated in order to provide an accurate professional opinion, the digital chain of custody would have to be determined, which would include examining the digital video equipment that originally captured the recording.

“Some components could be estimated,” Primeau says, however, based solely on the information contained in the released videos, “the error rate would simply be too high, and conclusions would not be based on an accurate confidence level.”

When asked if there was enough with just the video to meet the threshold of legally admissible evidence or make a definitive conclusion, Primeau says, “Based on preliminary forensic video analysis, it is my opinion that the FLIR video recordings provided cannot be relied upon as true and accurate, and therefore should not be admissible as evidence in a court of law.”

While Primeau says no definitive conclusion can be reached based solely on the publicly available video evidence, one intriguing element still remains: The U.S. Navy clearly should have had access to all of the necessary equipment and information that would have allowed it to arrive at a more definite conclusion.

Speaking generally, Gough confirms investigations into reported sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena are performed, and with incidents involving UAP encounters by the Navy, any investigation would include the Navy reaching out to other services to determine whether they might have aerospace craft in the vicinity at the time of the sighting. In light of this, when asked again, Gough once again sticks to the company line—but it’s just as intriguing as ever.

“The Navy designates the objects contained in these videos as unidentified aerial phenomena.”

{ https://www.popularmechanics.com/ }

18-01-2020 om 16:43 geschreven door peter  

Former Navy Admiral Says UFO Analyses 'Inconclusive'

18-01-2020 om 15:10 geschreven door peter  

UFOs have been sighted by pilots and aircraft for decades, yet some of these truly stand out as something special. What has become known as being one of the earliest official UFO reports from a commercial airline crew began as a normal flight. On July 23, 1948, chief pilot Clarence Chiles and co-pilot John Whitted took off for a routine 7-hour flight from Houston, Texas to Atlanta, Georgia, aboard their Eastern Air Lines Douglas DC-3 passenger plane along with twenty passengers. The weather was clear and calm, and both pilots were very experienced, with distinguished flying careers during World War II, so there would have been no reason to think that this would be anything more than a typical, uneventful flight, but this would soon prove not to be the case at all, and it would propel itself into the realm of great UFO mysteries.

At approximately 2:45 AM on July 24, the plane was in the skies near Montgomery, Alabama, at an altitude of 5,000 feet when Chiles’ attention was drawn to what he would describe as “a dull red glow above and ahead of the aircraft,” and he mentioned it to Whitted, who also saw it. They at first took to be a military plane, but it would soon prove to be anything but, as it rapidly closed in on their position with astonishing speed in a horizontal path and silently whizzed by before shooting straight up into the sky while belching forth “a tremendous burst of flame out of its rear.” The proximity of the strange craft had been such that they had been forced to bank in an evasive maneuver, and Chiles would say of the encounter:

We veered to the left and it veered to its left, and passed us about 700 feet to our right and about 700 feet above us. Then, as if the pilot had seen us and wanted to avoid us, it pulled up with a tremendous burst of flame out of its rear and zoomed up into the clouds.

Both men would get a good look at it, describing it as having been a cigar-shaped metallic object 100 feet long and 25-30 feet in diameter, with no noticeable wings or tail section, and they would explain that they had seen two rows of brightly lit windows along its side. It would turn out that only one of the passengers, most of who had slept through it all, had seen anything usual, saying that he had seen an eerie red glow pass the plane. Other witnesses would later turn out to be personnel from Robbins Air Base, near Macon, Georgia, who would claim to have seen the same object shoot through the sky a half an hour before Chiles and Whitted’s encounter.

The plane made it to its destination on schedule, and the pilots wasted no time in reporting what they had seen to the US Air Force, who in turn called in investigators from Project Sign, which was an early Air Force group for studying UFO sightings and sort of a precursor to the more famous Project Blue Book. The pilots were extensively interviewed and they provided sketches of what they had observed, and it was found that their descriptions were remarkably similar except that Chiles claimed to have seen an actual cockpit on the craft, whereas Whitted had observed no such feature. Project Sign also meticulously mapped every known aircraft in the air for the entire southeastern United States in an effort to see if the object could have perhaps been another plane, but there was nothing else officially in the air at the time that could really explain the bizarre sighting. This, combined with the fact that the two pilot witnesses were seasoned professionals and had gotten a good, close look at the anomalous object, made this a very exciting, albeit alarming incident.

The idea that some large, unidentified flying object of this type had invaded U.S. airspace was a sensitive issue at the time, and so the Air Force was scrambling for answers. It was suggested that this could have possibly been some sort of advanced aircraft from a foreign nation, but this was problematic because the technology was seen as far beyond what anyone was capable at the time and nothing like it had been seen before. The detail of the flame shooting out of the rear of the craft was important in this regard, because in those days few aircraft had afterburners, and none of that magnitude. This was more like a rocket, but there was thought to be no conceivable way that such a massive low flying, horizontal rocket had been traveling through the area with the technology available at the time and with no discernible launching point.

Sketches of the craft

Other ideas were suggested at the time as well, such as that the pilots had simply misidentified a particularly brilliant meteor, but this does not explain the object’s ability to make a sudden vertical ascent, nor details like the double rows of windows. Project Sign also briefly entertained the idea that this could have been a brush with a Navy plane called the RV6 Constitution, which could have been on a classified mission and was top-of-the-line cutting edge stuff at the time, and also just happened to be cigar shaped, with the characteristic feature of two rows of windows, but it did not spew long jets of flame and certainly could not perform the radical vertical maneuver that was observed. The Navy, for its part, would also deny that this sort of plane had been anywhere near the area at the time.

By all accounts Project Sign was utterly meticulous and thorough with every aspect of the investigation, leaving no stone unturned and at every turn seeking to exhaust every possible option. In the end they had completely ruled out the meteor theory and had considered the notion that this had been some experimental aircraft highly improbable. In light of this, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) compiled all of their findings into an “Estimate of the Situation” report, which allegedly came to the conclusion that the Chiles-Whitted object was an “interplanetary spaceship.” The top secret and highly classified report itself has become almost legendary, partly because it would have been the first time a government had ever conceded that UFOs were actually aliens, but also partly because it would shortly after disappear off the face of the earth and into history and the annals of great conspiracies.

The first head of The Air Force’s famous Project Blue Book study of UFO phenomena, Edward J. Ruppelt, would insist that the report did in fact exist, that it was sent all the way up through the chain of command, to land on the desk of General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, the chief of staff. The result? Well, Vandenberg apparently was skeptical of the estimate that the UFO was of alien origin, and doubted the evidence used to back that case up. Rather, he was a proponent of the idea held by another faction within the Air Force that believed that the object, and indeed UFOs in general, were the result of top secret aircraft being developed by the Soviet Union, which fit in perfectly with the Cold War paranoia at the time. According to Ruppelt, the report would then be totally dismissed and destroyed, saying:

The general wouldn’t buy interplanetary vehicles. A group from ATIC went to the Pentagon to bolster their position but had no luck, the Chief of Staff couldn’t be convinced. The estimate died a quick death. Some months later it was completely declassified and relegated to the incinerator.

The mysterious report has gone onto become the stuff of legend in UFOlogy, with occasional witnesses saying that they have seen a copy, but no concrete evidence that it ever even existed at all. There are no photographs of it, no known pages remaining from it, it is a specter lost to the mists of time, only reports of purported having seen the report up close. In the aftermath of this, the official Air Force verdict was and has remained that what Chiles and Whitted saw was a meteor. Case closed. Of course, in light of the other evidence of Project Sign’s findings on the case this explanation has been scoffed at and accused of being a weak attempt to obfuscate and blur the real truth, as has the fact that the actual report was apparently disposed of to leave us with nothing.

For their part, Chiles and Whitted would always stand by their account, never once faltering from what they believed was a truly anomalous situation and some sort of unknown craft. To this day the case is discussed heavily, and it remains a very credible one considering the pedigree of its pilots and the very thorough investigation that came to the conclusion that this might actually be something not of this earth. Yet not everyone obviously agrees, and so we are left with questions. If this wasn’t extraterrestrial in origin then what was it? A meteor, an experimental aircraft, what? Why would this remarkable and mysterious report make it all the way up through the upper echelons of the Air Force brass to merely be brushed aside and destroyed? Doesn’t incinerating it suggest they were merely trying to get rid of it? In the end we don’t know what it was, and it is all an intriguing mystery that we very well may never have the true answer to.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

18-01-2020 om 01:30 geschreven door peter  

Police Officers Close Encounter In Indiana

DECEMBER 26, 2003 …… HUNTINGTON INDIANA

At around 2:30 pm on 26^th December 2003 in Huntington, Indiana, an off-duty police officer with the Huntington Police Department had just turned the key in the ignition of his car. He was warming up the engine against the cold afternoon winter environment of the American Midwest when he noticed something strange in the skies overhead.

The officer would later state how he at first believed the object to be a “parachute that you can steer. (It was) black and curved”. However, he soon noticed there was no pilot attached to it. Then, it began to roll, “a slow roll” before turning upside down and resembling a “giant set of bird wings”. Following more rolls, the object appeared much “oblong and orange”.

The officer would immediately reach for the police radio. He would request that any other available officers attempt to locate the mysterious object also. Within moments, two other Huntington police officers had confirmed the object overhead.

One of the officers to respond would later claim it looked like a “tire in the sky”. The third officer, who was leaving the police station when he heard the call for attempts to locate the mysterious object. He would claim that “it was so big” that he no problem at all locating it. He would further state that it would “glide, (and) rotate the wide way around” before hovering and turning a bright orange color.

All three of the officers would later state their belief that the orange color was more likely a reflection of the afternoon sun as opposed to a physical glow of the craft itself. Furthermore, all three would agree that the object made no noise whatsoever.

A Distinct (And Strange) Lack Of Public Reports!

By the time the object had come to rest and hovered at would ultimately be its lowest point, the first police officer believed it was “going to get hung up on the steeple of the church”.

What he would also remark was extremely strange was the fact that no calls came into the 911 switchboard from the public. The officer would remark that such an incident would have normally “lit up the emergency lines”. However, not one single report came into their station or any others, including the state police. At least, that is, as a caveat of our own, none that are available to the public.

It would appear that the three police officers, the first of which just happened to look up at the “right moment” would prove to be the only witnesses to such a public sighting, at low altitude in the middle of the day, no less. In fact, so strange was the apparent lack of response that all three of the witnesses would stop speaking of the sighting altogether due to feat that “people would think we were crazy”.

The first officer would lose sight of the strange craft after it made its way behind the church steeple. The two remaining officers would keep the object in their sights, each from slightly different locations (although, in reality, only separated by around 40 feet).

After around 30 to 45 seconds, the object disappeared from all of the officer’s view. Despite their initial promise to remain quiet, however, they would soon change their minds and make an official report of the incident several days later. A public account of the incident would appear in the Huntington Herald newspaper shortly after.

Witnesses And Details Of Reports Appear Credible!

It is certainly an interesting sighting. And one that all three of the officers have no doubt was of a machine that wasn’t “anything (they) could relate to”. Another of the officers would state that they were “never really afraid, just in total amazement”.

Whether the three officers were the only witnesses or whether there was a quick suppression of information is perhaps open to debate, although admittedly, unlikely in this instance.

Even the pastor of the church the object hovered over for several moments would claim, when asked for comment this was “the first (they) had heard of it” and that they hadn’t noticed anything unusual at all on the afternoon in question. Furthermore, much like the police department, he had received no reports from parishioners of any unusual aerial activity.

Initial investigations at the time of the reporting of the incident suggested not only credibility on the part of the witnesses, but also in the details they gave. Such things as the movement of the craft, the rolling and tumbling, as well as the bizarrely slow movement for such a large craft. Not to mention the complete lack of any sound whatsoever.

Two local airfields who might have managed to capture the object on their respective radars, Huntington Municipal Airport and Fort Wayne Smith’s Field, would both claim to have no reports or data to show any “out-of-the-ordinary” aerial vehicles for the afternoon of the 26^th December.

What is also interesting, despite the three police officers being the only witnesses to this particular sighting, there were several other similar reports around Indiana during the Christmas and New Year period of 2003. NOTE: The above image is CGI.

• KEN PFEIFER WORLD UFO PHOTOS AND NEWS
• HTTP://WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOS.ORG
• HTTP://WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOSANDNEWS.ORG
• HTTP://WWW.KENPFEIFERDISCOVERIES.COM
• THANKS TO MARCUS LOWTH AND https://www.ufoinsight.com

Source: 

• http://worldufophotosandnews.org/?p=24881

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

18-01-2020 om 00:25 geschreven door peter  

Top-secret UFO files could 'gravely damage' US national security if released, Navy says

By Brandon Specktor 

The truth is out there… but you're still not allowed to see it.

This infamous video of the USS Nimitz UFO encounter may not be the only one out there...

(Image: © To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science)

In November 2004, several U.S. Navy pilots stationed aboard the USS Nimitz encountered a Tic-Tac-shaped UFO darting and dashing over the Pacific Ocean in apparent defiance of the laws of physics. Navy officials dubbed the strange craft an "unidentified aerial phenomenon," but they have remained mum on what, exactly, that phenomenon could've been. Now, unsurprisingly to anyone who's ever considered making a hat out of tinfoil, the military has confirmed they know more than they're letting on.

In response to a recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, a spokesperson from the Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) confirmed that the agency possesses several top-secret documents and at least one classified video pertaining to the 2004 UFO encounter, Vice reported. 

According to the ONI spokesperson, these documents were either labeled "SECRET" or "TOP SECRET" by the agencies that provided them, and that sharing the information with the public "would cause exceptionally grave damage to the National Security of the United States."

• Related: 7 Things Most Often Mistaken for UFOs

These top-secret files included several "briefing slides" about the incident, provided to the ONI by an unnamed agency. (Because ONI officials did not classify the slides personally, they are unable to declassify them, the spokesperson added). 

The ONI also admitted to possessing at least one video of unknown length, classified as "secret" by the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR). ONI didn't reveal whether this footage is the same 1-minute video that was leaked online in 2007 and widely released by The New York Times in 2017. However, in November 2019, several naval officers who witnessed the incident aboard the Nimitz told Popular Mechanics that they had seen a much longer video of the encounter that was between 8 and 10 minutes long. These original recordings were promptly collected and erased by "unknown individuals" who arrived on the ship by helicopter shortly after the incident, one officer said.

Luis Elizondo, a former Pentagon staffer who helped make the Navy video public, told Vice that "people should not be surprised by the revelation that other videos exist and at greater length."

The FOIA request, submitted in October 2019 by an independent researcher, asked for access to any nonclassified records or portions of records regarding the 2004 UFO encounter. No additional documents were mentioned in the ONI's response besides the classified briefing and video.

• Gallery of Curiosity Rover's 'UFO' Photos
• 9 Strange, Scientific Excuses for Why Humans Haven't Found Aliens
• 12 Possible Reasons We Haven't Found Aliens

Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

17-01-2020 om 01:50 geschreven door peter  

Two UFOs Near Module Carrying Supplies To Space Station, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Jan 16, 2020

Location of discovery: Earth orbit

Nasa Source: 

• https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-3/html/iss003e8203.html

 I found a glowing UFO near the module that brings supplies to the space station. The UFO seems very close and has a second UFO below it, but further away. I think this UFO may be one of the rare sightings of the light being ships we have all heard about. Of all the species in this universe who visit us...light beings are so advanced that there is little about humanity that catches their interest. This photo was taken back in Nov 28, 2001. This is absolute proof that the space station is being constantly observed by advanced alien species. 

Scott C. Waring 

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

16-01-2020 om 19:35 geschreven door peter  

Top-Secret UFO Files Could 'Gravely Damage' US National Security if Released, Navy Says

By Brandon Specktor - Senior Writer 

The truth is out there… but you're still not allowed to see it.

This infamous video of the USS Nimitz UFO encounter may not be the only one out there...

(Image: © To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science)

In November 2004, several U.S. Navy pilots stationed aboard the USS Nimitz encountered a Tic-Tac-shaped UFO darting and dashing over the Pacific Ocean in apparent defiance of the laws of physics. Navy officials dubbed the strange craft an "unidentified aerial phenomenon," but they have remained mum on what, exactly, that phenomenon could've been. Now, unsurprisingly to anyone who's ever considered making a hat out of tinfoil, the military has confirmed they know more than they're letting on.

In response to a recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, a spokesperson from the Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) confirmed that the agency possesses several top-secret documents and at least one classified video pertaining to the 2004 UFO encounter, Vice reported. 

According to the ONI spokesperson, these documents were either labeled "SECRET" or "TOP SECRET" by the agencies that provided them, and that sharing the information with the public "would cause exceptionally grave damage to the National Security of the United States."

• Related: 7 Things Most Often Mistaken for UFOs

These top-secret files included several "briefing slides" about the incident, provided to the ONI by an unnamed agency. (Because ONI officials did not classify the slides personally, they are unable to declassify them, the spokesperson added). 

The ONI also admitted to possessing at least one video of unknown length, classified as "secret" by the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR). ONI didn't reveal whether this footage is the same 1-minute video that was leaked online in 2007 and widely released by The New York Times in 2017. However, in November 2019, several naval officers who witnessed the incident aboard the Nimitz told Popular Mechanics that they had seen a much longer video of the encounter that was between 8 and 10 minutes long. These original recordings were promptly collected and erased by "unknown individuals" who arrived on the ship by helicopter shortly after the incident, one officer said.

Luis Elizondo, a former Pentagon staffer who helped make the Navy video public, told Vice that "people should not be surprised by the revelation that other videos exist and at greater length."

The FOIA request, submitted in October 2019 by an independent researcher, asked for access to any nonclassified records or portions of records regarding the 2004 UFO encounter. No additional documents were mentioned in the ONI's response besides the classified briefing and video.

• Gallery of Curiosity Rover's 'UFO' Photos
• 9 Strange, Scientific Excuses for Why Humans Haven't Found Aliens
• 12 Possible Reasons We Haven't Found Aliens

Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.livescience.com/ }

16-01-2020 om 01:33 geschreven door peter