The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
17-08-2023
In 1979, a military pilot photographed a UFO over Italy
In 1979, a military pilot photographed a UFO over Italy
Pilot Giancarlo Cecconi was returning to Treviso AFB, Italy, in his G-91R fighter with his G-91R group 14 of the Air Force’s 2nd Fighter Wing, after completing a reconnaissance mission on June 18, 1979 at 11:30 am.
The Istrana Radar Center (TV) registered the intruder’s presence on its radar screens and instructed Cecconi to approach an unidentified aircraft that entered the restricted area.
With unused film in the cameras of his aircraft, the pilot activated the cameras and approached the UFO at a distance of 70-80 meters and at a speed estimated at 300 knots (450-500 km).
Airport ground staff watched the event through binoculars. Cecconi was called in by the Treviso control tower to warn him that the object was emitting a strange blue trail.
He pursued the object at an altitude of 7,000 feet, but did not notice its trace. When the pilot approached the object, he moved up and down at an altitude of 1,000 feet at a time, climbing up to 13,000 feet.
Cecconi flew seven to eight flights near the object and each time photographed the UFO with a camera, resulting in 82 frames in which the intruder was captured.
The visible UFO was stationary relative to the G-91, but the radar center confirmed to Sesconi that it was moving, its course and speed were determined.
The pilot saw a matte black cylindrical object and the presence of a small white or transparent “dome” located on the upper side of a slightly flattened object.
The dome was similar in shape to those found on sports cars. While Cecconi was making another call to return to another series of photographs, Istrana’s radar called and reported that the object had suddenly disappeared from their and other radars.
Seconds later, Treviso’s control tower confirmed that the UFO had visually disappeared. A few minutes later the plane landed, the films were removed and quickly developed.
The object was a cylindrical object no less than eight meters (26 feet) long and no more than three in diameter, flying thirteen thousand feet in the sky.
The incident is significant thanks to the camera footage, radar, and visual evidence from several witnesses, including a highly respected fighter pilot.
EXCLUSIVE: Dramatic videos of UFOs over the Pacific are revealed, as expert pilots describe seeing bright lights moving in 'race track' circles over the summer - but say their employers told them to keep quiet
EXCLUSIVE: Dramatic videos of UFOs over the Pacific are revealed, as expert pilots describe seeing bright lights moving in 'race track' circles over the summer - but say their employers told them to keep quiet
Pilots claim they saw UFOs while flying on routes from Japan and Hawaii in August and September
Now captains and a former F-18 pilot describe to DailyMail.com seeing bright lights moving in elongated circles or 'race tracks' for hours high in the sky
The series of sightings were seen by dozens of pilots and captured on video and in air traffic control recordings
Witnesses tell DailyMail.com they are now being told by their employers to keep quiet about the sightings
Pilot Chris Van Voorhis said UFO sightings are quite common among pilots, 'Out of my pilot friends, at least 50% have seen some type of an anomaly'
Van Voorhis said his employer told him to 'cease and desist' even mentioning the incident in public, and that he feared his job could be at risk for reporting his sighting
A series of strange UFO incidents over the Pacific Ocean this summer were captured on video and in air traffic control recordings after sightings by dozens of pilots.
Experienced captains and one former F-18 pilot told DailyMail.com they saw bright lights moving in elongated circles or 'race tracks' for hours high in the sky while they flew on routes fromJapanand Hawaii towards the US West Coast in August and September.
The incidents were reported to the FAA, and a researcher obtained dramatic audio of the pilots calling in the strange sightings to Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC).
Pilots also attempted to film from their cockpits the group of between three and five bright objects, which appeared to fly around in the area of the sky where the 'scoop' of the big dipper constellation sits.
Some of the witnesses told DailyMail.com they are now being told by their employers to keep quiet, and are calling for better reporting procedures for encounters with 'unidentified aerial phenomena' (UAPs).
A graphic shows the location and dates of the several reported UFO sightings, mainly in the Pacific Ocean, that occurred in August and September of this year
Pilot Chris Van Voorhis, 63, told DailyMail.com he saw between three and five objects, far brighter than the stars around them, fading in and out with no discernable pattern and moving in a 'race track' circular motion, while he was flying from Honolulu to Los Angeles in August
Two of the pilots can be heard in ARTCC recordings from August 18, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Ben Hansen, a former FBI agent and the host of Discovery+ show UFO Witness.
'We've got a few aircraft to our north here and he's going around in circles, much higher altitude than us. Any idea what they are?' Mark Hulsey, a pilot flying a Gulfstream charter jet off the Los Angeles coast radioed in.
'Uh, no, no I do not,' the baffled controller responded. 'You're not entering any [military] airspace or anything. I am not sure.'
Van Voorhis, who has been flying since he was 14 and has 32,000 hours experience, said the objects appeared to be in Earth's orbit or even further out in space
The pilot described seeing 'maybe three aircraft there,' then called ARTCC 23 minutes later, stating, 'there's now like seven of them,' and estimating that they were 'at least 5 or 10,000 feet above us.'
Asked to elaborate by the controller, the rattled Hulsey added: 'They just keep going in circles. I was an F-18 pilot in the Marine Corps, and I'm telling you, I've done many intercepts, I've never seen anything like this.'
At certain times of day satellites can reflect the sun and appear to pilots as bright lights in the sky. But the expert aviators say they believe the circular movement and duration of the sightings – some for hours – ruled out satellites.
Chris Van Voorhis, 63, told DailyMail.com he saw between three and five objects, far brighter than the stars around them, fading in and out with no discernable pattern and moving in a 'race track' circular motion, while he was flying from Honolulu to Los Angeles in August.
Van Voorhis, who has been flying since he was 14 and has 32,000 hours experience, said the objects appeared to be in Earth's orbit or even further out in space, given their continued position near to the big dipper constellation as he flew over the ocean for hours.
'The other airlines were saying, Hey, are you seeing what we're seeing?' the veteran pilot said.
'They were lights that would come on very bright, you would see them move, then they would go out.
'It had to be in a very, very high orbit, or actually even out in space quite a ways away from anything that a satellite would be, because every time we were seeing it, it was in the lower right hand corner of the Big Dipper, no matter where we were in the world.
'It lasted for such a long time that it actually became boring, almost.
'If it was [Elon Musk's satellite system] Starlink, or anything like that, then it's going to be moving in a linear fashion, and all of them will be moving in the same direction. These weren't. They were moving different directions.'
Van Voorhis said his employer, which DailyMail.com has chosen not to name, told him to 'cease and desist' even mentioning the incident in public, and that he feared his job could be at risk for reporting his sighting.
Gulfstream captain and former F-18 pilot Mark Hulsey's saw a UFO sighting on August 18 by Santa Catalina, an island off the LA coast
This image shows the brightness of the UFO compared to the three circled stars, which are much dimmer
Two UFOs (also called UAPS - unidentified aerial phenomena) are seen in this photo, grabbed from a video of the encounter
Hansen has collected accounts of pilots for Southwest Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines and others between August 6 and September 23 who say they saw the same lights in the sky as Van Voorhis.
'Many of these pilots are very confident that the lights were not just going in one direction, but in both directions, which is very unusual for satellites.
'In Mark's case they would go from the north and then actually go above his craft, where he had to crane his neck to see them from the canopy.
'It was seen by upwards of 15 different commercial flights. And at least six pilots are willing to go on record with their names and everything if asked to do so by any investigative agencies.
'In this case, we have a global phenomena from as far west as Japan, to as far east as possibly Miami. Whatever it is, pilots are seeing it from halfway across the world.'
But Hansen said there is currently no proper process for reporting such sightings – even of strange objects that could pose a threat to the safety of commercial airlines.
'Civilian pilots do not have a structured, robust process that is publicly provided to them where they can report UAPs,' he told DailyMail.com.
'The reason the pilots don't report primarily is because they don't think the FAA will follow up, or worse they will be ridiculed.'
An FAA spokesman told DailyMail.com: 'The Federal Aviation Administration documents Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) sightings whenever a pilot reports one to an air traffic control facility.
'If the pilot report can be corroborated with supporting information such as radar data, it is shared with the UAP Task Force' – a Defense Department unit that investigates UFOs, now officially called the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
A 2021 Director of National Intelligence report warned that 'UAP threaten flight safety and, possibly, national security,' due to 11 near misses between naval aviators and unknown objects.
Van Voorhis' said UFO sightings are quite common among pilots.
'Out of my pilot friends, at least 50% have seen some type of an anomaly,' he said.
Two of the pilots can be heard in ARTCC recordings from August 18. 'We've got a few aircraft to our north here and he's going around in circles, much higher altitude than us. Any idea what they are?' Mark Hulsey radioed in
'Uh, no, no I do not,' the baffled controller responded. 'You're not entering any [military] airspace or anything. I am not sure'
The incidents were reported to the FAA, and a researcher obtained dramatic audio of the pilots calling in the strange sightings to Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC)
His August sighting was not his first. In February 2004 while flying for Japanese airline Jalways he said he and another plane's crew saw three 'disks' descend from outside the atmosphere, 'stop' mid air, then suddenly pivot 30 degrees while keeping their triangular formation and shoot off beyond the horizon at thousands of miles per hour.
'I was coming back from Japan to Honolulu. We were at 39,000 feet coming across the Pacific Ocean. It was 5:30 in the morning, local time. Something caught my eye off the left hand side of the aircraft. There were three large discs,' he said.
'They were high enough up in the atmosphere to be reflecting the light from the sun which wasn't up yet.
'They came in a triangular formation and stopped. They turned in formation, they didn't bank or anything like that, nothing aerodynamic, they just pivoted. And then they took off over the horizon.
'It wasn't like they accelerated. They were just at speed and gone over the horizon. The whole thing took about 15 seconds.
'The aircraft in front of us saw it too. They said 'are you going to tell anybody?' and we said 'no'.'
Gulfstream captain and former F-18 pilot Hulsey's August 18 UFO sighting was by Santa Catalina, an island off the LA coast.
Famously, US Navy aviators from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz chased a 'tic tac'-shaped UFO near Santa Catalina Island in 2004.
The tic tac evaded Top Gun ace Commander David Fravor, maneuvering and accelerating in ways which seemed to defy the laws of physics. It then disappeared before astonishingly reappearing 40 miles away in less than one minute, at the aviator's CAP point, a rendezvous location only known by the pilot and his commander.
In July 2019, in the same area, multiple strange objects harassed US naval warships over several days.
The Pentagon claimed they were drones, but could not confirm the origin nor the operators of the craft. A source close to the investigation of the incident told DailyMail.com that a nearby Chinese cargo ship named Bass Strait, thought to be the culprit, was searched with no signs of drones.
With both the Pentagon and NASA launching renewed efforts in the study of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), a Ukrainian research team says that it has undertaken a study of its own, producing imagery of aerial objects that cannot be easily identified.
According to researchers B.E. Zhilyaev, V.N. Petukhov, and V.M. Reshetnyk, the Main Astronomical Observatory of NAS of Ukraine “conducts an independent study of UAP” which has managed to collect imagery depicting several anomalous aerial events. The team says it employs a pair of meteor stations located in Kyiv and in the Vinarivka village, each fitted with video cameras observing the daytime sky.
In a recent paper announcing their findings, the researchers say they have created “a special observation technique” they use “for detecting and evaluating UAP characteristics.” Based on the events they have observed, they break down their observations of UAP into two primary categories, which they call “Cosmics” and “Phantoms.”
Night sky over Kyiv, Ukraine, 2020.
(Image credit: Getty)
“We note that Cosmics are luminous objects, brighter than the background of the sky,” the authors write, noting three subcategories of Cosmics each named after various birds: swift, falcon, and eagle, whereas “Phantoms are dark objects, with contrast from several to about 50 percent.”
The Ukrainian team says they have detected UAP under a variety of conditions and have observed what they characterize as “a significant number of objects whose nature is not clear.”
“Flights of single, group and squadrons of the ships were detected,” the paper states, with several of the objects exhibiting speeds “from 3 to 15 degrees per second” and varying degrees of brightness that the team gauges within a range of 10 to 20 Hz. The research team also employed synchronized camera systems that in one instance, according to their paper, “allowed the detection of a variable object, at an altitude of 1170 km.”
By employing instrumentation used to measure variations in color, the team also believes they could determine the characteristics of the appearance of some of the objects they observed and estimate their distance.
Composite imagery depicting one of the purported “Phantom” objects, along with what are labeled “bright swifts,” captured by the Ukrainian research team (Credit: B.E. Zhilyaev, V.N. Petukhov, V.M. Reshetnyk/Main Astronomical Observatory, NAS of Ukraine).
According to the researchers, the objects they designate as Phantoms appear to have very low reflectivity, characterizing the objects as “a completely black body that does not emit and absorbs all the radiation falling on it.” The researchers hypothesize that such an object may be visible “because it shields radiation due to Rayleigh scattering,” an effect that describes light particles that become scattered without there being changes in their wavelengths.
“Phantoms are observed in the troposphere at distances up to 10 – 12 km,” the researchers state in the paper, estimating their size as being between 3 and 12 meters and capable of speeds of as much as 15 kilometers per second.
The researchers present a variety of diagrams within their paper that indicate variations in the color and brightness, as well as speed and other characteristics displayed by the objects. However, the authors do not propose any possible explanations or hypotheses regarding the objects and their appearance or whether they could have mundane underlying sources.
“Unidentified anomalous, air, and space objects are deeply concealed phenomena,” the authors conclude, adding that the primary characteristic of the UAP they have observed is “extremely high speed.”
The paper, “Unidentified aerial phenomena I. Observations of events,” by B. Zhilyaev, V. Petukhov, and V. Reshetnyk can be read online.
Hat tip to Brett Tingley of Space.com for bringing this study to our attention.
Micah Hanks is Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. Follow his work at micahhanks.com and on Twitter: @MicahHanks.
In 2016, a large number of emails from the account of John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, were leaked by WikiLeaks. The tranche of emails thrilled the Internet when reporters associated with the New York Times were working on the groundbreaking story entitled “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program.”
The emails between Podesta and a person named Bob Fish are the main subject that has been widely discussed by UFO enthusiasts. Mr. Fish, who had previously worked as an IT contractor, held the position of Director of Advanced Programs at Network Equipment Technologies from 1984 to 1993. (Source)
During that time, he was responsible for overseeing a top-secret global network for a major intelligence agency within the Department of Defense. In addition, he was involved in various operations that were of national importance, such as the Gulf War and Operation Just Cause.
The leaked emails may provide new insight into UFOs. Mr. Fish sent an email to Podesta on March 5, 2015, in which he stated that blurry photos, crop circles and statements from witnesses alone would not be enough to confirm the existence of UFOs. “What was needed,” he continued, was “hard scientific data collected from instruments that are known to be accurate and reliable.” Which, he added, was available “if one knows ‘where to look’ and ‘what to look for.’
Bob Fish. Image source: Linkedin
He claimed that the federal government had been collecting data on UFOs since the 1970s, using the Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites.
In his next email to Podesta, he shared an incident that happened with him in El Segundo, a city in California. After Project Blue Book was shut down, Fish met with a USAF official who worked on the program. He told Fish that “there were times when they were diverted from these missions to track UFOs off the east coast of Florida.”
Further, the email stated: “His claim was the UFOs had a landing and takeoff spot in the ocean east of Miami, north of Bermuda. He also claimed there was a specific electronic signature (frequency) emanating from them when they were going into or coming out of the water, so they were easy to track. On several occasions, they filmed the UFO as it transitioned from water to air or vice versa.”
Mr. Fish was convinced that the United States Air Force’s Project Blue Book, which was officially closed in 1970, did not end but instead was taken out of public view. The existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) demonstrated that the Pentagon’s interest in UFOs never dissipated.
Based on the observations provided by Lue Elizondo, the former director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), the United State government had already been aware that UAPS were vastly outmatched by superior technology. These objects have capabilities that are beyond comprehension.
They can travel at incredibly fast speeds and have the ability to get invisible while accelerating. They are capable of moving through air without wings and can travel through space, atmosphere, and oceans without being affected by gravity, and without any visible means of propulsion.
Such scenarios alarmed the US government, and the officials realized that if this god-like technology were to be obtained and mastered by their adversaries before the United States, it would make democracy vulnerable. Australian investigative reporter Ross Coulthart noted that his sources confirmed “there has been consideration given to offensively trying to bring down these objects.”
In his book “In Plain Sight: An investigation into UFOs and impossible science“, Coulthart describes that the United States government appears to have knowledge of some UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) entering Earth’s orbit from deep space. Furthermore, the US government can actively track them via RF signals emanated from these craft based on conversations with retired US intelligence officer Bob Fish.
“I wrote to Bob Fish and after a few weeks, he kindly responded, confirming everything he told Podesta, and more. He had never spoken publicly about UAPs before. A previously very highly security-cleared defense communications intelligence insider, Fish has extensive experience working on classified programs, including President Reagan’s ‘Trust but Verify’ nuclear missile disarmament treaty with the Soviets, and he assured me he was happy to be quoted about his strong interest and belief in UAPs.
He clearly knew a lot more than he was prepared to reveal. When I asked him what he knew about the purported US ability to track such mystery craft, he told me, ‘At some point, the information about “alien” stuff and true US national defense information crosses paths.
Patriots with clearances do not want to be traitors to their country or their way of life. For instance, if I told you the exact electromagnetic signature of a high-Mach UFO that US sensors search for, but don’t attack, and you put it in a book, the Soviets/Chinese would manufacture a bomber with SIGINT/ELINT [signals and electronic intelligence] countermeasure equipment that generated that exact signature.
We must find a path forward that brings about greater knowledge of the truth without endangering the civilizations we have evolved into. The intriguing thing about Fish’s comment was the implication there was indeed a ‘truth’ still being concealed.”
Mr. Fish stated that the UAP entered the atmosphere and descended into the Atlantic Ocean, specifically in an area east of Miami, Florida and north of Bermuda. He suggested that this location would be ideal for a telescope with sensor capabilities if one were to be running the Galileo Project.
Former U.S. Navy Lt. Ryan Graves told Lex Fridman on a podcast that his squadron started getting the UAP hits, once they upgraded their APG-73 radar to the APG-79. He mentioned that the upgrade was something like going from analog to digital and that sometimes they would fly F-18s with the old radar in the morning, and the objects would not be there, but when they swapped to the F-18s with the new radar, the UAP hits would be back again. He also noted that perhaps the new radar was not filtering out something that they should have been yet, or perhaps it had not been calibrated. (Source)
“The radar always picks up everything flying, but they go so fast, you don’t recognize them. Your mind says it could have been an 18-wheeler, it could be something low, I don’t know what it was…”
— John Callahan, FAA Retired at the National Press Club, Washington D.C., 2013. (Source)
There is pretty good evidence that the government has been intercepting UFO signals or emissions since at least the 1950s. In one 1957 case investigated by James E. McDonald, a UFO was simultaneously witnessed by military officers, it was seen on radar and ECM gear detected a certain frequency coming from it. (Source)
Whistleblowing is fundamentally American, since 1778
Whistleblowing is fundamentally American, since 1778
BY STEPHEN M. KOHN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
FILE – A flag is waved outside the White House, in Washington, Sept. 4, 2017.
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
For the tenth year in a row, the United States Senate has unanimously passed a resolution urging every executive department of the federal government to honor July 30 as National Whistleblower Appreciation Day. Why? As with so many other great movements where human rights and civil liberties were vindicated, protected whistleblowing began with a small band of people who stood up for justice, made their voices heard, and changed history.
During the winter of 1777, 10 sailors and marines aboard the USS Warren blew the whistle on abuses by the commander of the U.S. Navy despite the lack of any existing legal protection. Their spokesman, without leave, jumped ship in Providence, Rhode Island, and made way for the Continental Congress, where he presented 10 petitions in the interest of the Revolution. On July 30, 1778, the sailors finally had their fate sealed.
For these 10 men, the stakes could not have been higher. Their punishment would not be a slap on the wrist — they were subject to military law and could have been disciplined at the hands of the very commander they were trying to take down.
Their first effort to report the wrongdoing was a letter to Robert Treat Paine, the lawyer who prosecuted the British soldiers tried for killing innocent civilians in the Boston massacre. In early February 1777, the whistleblowers asked Paine, a member of the Continental Congress, for his support. Their letter provides insight, not to how the elite in the Continental Congress were viewing the Revolution, but to how everyday sailors and marines explained what “sacrifices” they were willing to make for their “ravish’d, bleeding, injur’d country’s cause.”
The 10 men did not want corrupt leaders to betray the Revolution and demanded their constitutional liberty to expose wrongdoing. Eight days later, Marine Captain John Grannis jumped ship in the Providence Harbor and, without authorization, traveled to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to present the signed petitions.
A transcript of Captain Grannis’s testimony to the Marine Committee was preserved in the records of the Continental Congress. When asked by a member of Congress if he had permission to leave the Warren, Grannis said “no,” but he explained that he did so out of his “zeal for the American cause” and “love of country.”
He presented the whistleblowers’ petitions setting forth their reasons why the First Commander of the U.S. Navy, Esek Hopkins, should be removed from his position. The man pointed to serious misconduct including the harsh mistreatment of British prisoners, but perhaps their most significant allegation was the threat to their belief in the Revolutionary cause. They explained how Hopkins had told the men, who were risking their lives to create a republic where all men were created equal, that his governing philosophy was that “all mankind” could be bought with money and for the lust of money they would perform “any action whatsoever.” The whistleblowers fundamentally rejected this view of humanity and feared his leadership would undermine the mission of the Revolution.
What unfolded in the winter of 1777 was a classic whistleblower exposure that would go on to be repeated throughout American history. We still see persons today, in service of the country, report misconduct committed at the highest levels of government. But what followed Grannis’s courageous testimony is even more remarkable because it set a precedent for how our nation would respond to these whistleblower reports going forward.
After reviewing the petitions, Congress initiated a series of actions that should inspire every American committed to the ideals of the Revolution of 1776 to rethink their opinions of whistleblowing. Instead of retaliating against the whistleblowers, Congress suspended Commander Hopkins, gave him the opportunity to rebut the claims, and later terminated his service when no defense was made.
Hopkins then turned around and engaged in the types of retaliation that even today’s whistleblowers all too often face. Of the 10 men, he tracked down two — Third Lieutenant Richard Marven and midshipmen Samuel Shaw — and had them arrested for criminal libel in his home state of Rhode Island, holding the men to high bail. From their Providence jail cell, the two captured whistleblowers wrote a letter to Congress pleading for help. Congress met again to consider the appropriate actions to take in response to the pleas of the jailed men.
On July 30, 1778, without any noted dissent, the Continental Congress sent a message that must resonate in today’s White House, Congress and courts. They passed what could very well be the world’s first explicit whistleblower law, and they did not stop there. They voted to release all of the petitions signed by the whistleblowers, many of which included information that was embarrassing to the U.S.
The American people, through Congress, agreed to pay all legal costs necessary to defend the two whistleblowers fighting for their freedom. A highly respected lawyer was hired, and the whistleblowers won their case — the first recorded legal victory for American whistleblowers. The records of the Congress reflect that even though money was desperately needed for military supplies, they honored the resolution and paid Marven and Shaw $1,418. Founding Father Samuel Adams played a leading role in ensuring the vindication of whistleblower rights.
This is why the United States Senate has continuously passed a resolution recognizing what the Continental Congress did on July 30 at the height of the American Revolution and what the current government must do to honor this tradition and the contributions that whistleblowers have made throughout history. The resolution is a way to recommit our nation to recognize the importance that whistleblower protections played in the birth of our democracy and the crucial role these protections still have in our nation’s continued growth.
If aliens actually crashed here on Earth, what would happen?
Would the debris, and the aliens themselves, vanish behind a massive government cover-up, only to emerge as classified military technology years later? Or would altruistic civilian scientists work together to study the alien artifacts for the good of humanity?
These questions seem like fodder for very trope-y science fiction, but last week, a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer told Congress last week, with a straight face, that an unnamed source had told him that the U.S. Department of Defense (or possibly its contractors) has debris and “nonhuman biologics” from a crashed UFO.
To answer these suddenly relevant questions, Inverse spoke with Greg Eghigian, a Pennsylvania State University historian and bioethicist who specializes in the study of UFOs.
NASA and the Department of Defense have been paying much more attention to Unidentified Anamolous Phenomena, or UAPs, in recent years.
ANTON PETRUS/MOMENT/GETTY IMAGES
WHO OWNS CRASHED UFOS?
If a flying saucer crashes in Oklahoma tomorrow, just for example, what happens next?
No law or treaty spells out who gets to claim the spaceship or alien remains. The U.S. and several other countries have laws about who owns meteorites (spoiler alert for U.S. readers: if the meteorite falls on private land, it belongs to the landowner; on public land, it depends) and even debris from human-made spacecraft re-entering Earth’s atmosphere (you can’t collect rocket parts in Florida, for example). Other laws even spell out who’s liable if a de-orbiting satellite crashes on someone’s house. At the moment, though, there’s nothing on the books about who technically owns a flying saucer that crashes on U.S. soil.
Senators Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds are hoping to change that with an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. Their amendment, if it passes, would (among other things) give the U.S. federal government “eminent domain over any and all recovered technologies of unknown origin (TUO) and biological evidence of non-human intelligence (NHI) that may be controlled by private persons or entities in the interests of the public good.”
“I think the sense is that the government, particularly the military, would be the key entity that would take on this stuff,” Eghigian tells Inverse. “I don't think civilian scientists would be getting first dibs on this. I think they would be out of the loop.”
The U2, SR-71, A-12, B-2 and F117 were flight tested at the Air Force’s Groom Lake facility in Nevada, better known as Area 51.
ROGER HOLDEN/STOCKBYTE UNRELEASED/GETTY IMAGES
COULD THE GOVERNMENT REALLY KEEP A CRASHED UFO A SECRET?
Does that mean the Department of Defense would whisk the crash debris (and the “nonhuman biologics,” as former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch recently described it to Congress) away to a top-secret bunker, never to be spoken of again?
“To start with, I think there's no question that the first people on the ground are going to be policing authorities: it’s going to be the police, and it’s going to be the military,” says Eghigian. Once the crash site is secure, the next step would probably be forensic work, involving a mix of technicians, scientists, and engineers from within the military branches or from defense contractors.
It’s likely the military’s interest would be threefold: first, to determine whether the flying saucer and its builders pose a threat to humanity, especially the U.S.; second, to try to reverse engineer the technology for military use; and third, to keep anybody else from doing part two. That would almost certainly involve some secrecy — or at least, an attempt at secrecy.
“Militaries keep secrets all the time, and the intelligence community is built around, not just holding secrets, but also exposing secrets for their benefit,” says Eghigian. “If something remarkable happened, I can believe that that would be a dynamic that would emerge.”
But SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak questions how long a veil of secrecy would last on a planet surrounded by high-resolution imaging satellites.
“Actual alien craft in our airspace bigger than an office desk would likely be visible to satellites that — among other things — supply imagery to Google Earth,” he writes in a recent essay for the SETI Institute. And it’s not just satellites; more than one country’s military personnel have managed to share sensitive operational information on social media. “I still strongly maintain that alien visitation is not something that could be kept secret. The size of such a secret is just too big,” writes Shostak.
Eghigian is also skeptical that an alien cover-up could last very long, but he says the fact that so many people expect — or already believe in — a government conspiracy to hide aliens from us is, in itself, very revealing.
“So often this stuff about UFOs isn’t about UFOs at all,” Eghigian says. “It gets to the heart of how a person or an organization or group of people, your image and your idea of how government works, and what modern governments are capable of and what they do."
Definitely not actual footage.
DONALD IAIN SMITH/TETRA IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Once the word gets out — and Shostak and Eghigian seem to agree that it almost certainly will, one way or another — scientists around the world would be clamoring for access to the evidence, and even the Department of Defense might have some good reasons to share.
“That would probably be followed by, you would hope, lots of questions coming from journalists like you,” Eghigian says. “And then I think the civilian scientists and researchers, if we catch wind of this stuff, would then be I think clamoring for an opportunity to have a look.”
With nearly 300 research universities in the U.S. alone, not to mention the private sector, there would be a lot of researchers clamoring for dibs on alien autopsies and analyzing the metals in the flying saucer’s hull. Sorting out who should get access to study which pieces of the evidence would quickly become a sticky, and highly politicized, problem.
“One thing I think you can expect absolutely right away is this would turn political,” says Eghigian.
Of course, this story has focused on what would happen if an alien spaceship crashed somewhere in the U.S., but there’s no reason — other than nationalism — to think the U.S. is any more likely to be a UFO crash site than any other country in the world.
“There is a kind of national hubris operating here: If extraterrestrial beings are going to come to Earth, they’re going to visit us!” writes Shostak.
There has been a rise in the number of reported UFO sightings across many places in the United States since 2020. Moreover, officials have expressed concerns regarding the repeated occurrence of UFO sightings over military bases. Is there any possibility that these UFOs are controlling military actions?
Not so long ago, former US Air Force Captain Robert Salas claimed that UFOs are real and interfere in the military’s nuclear program. Additionally, former head of AATIP Luis Elizondo revealed that the U.S. Military created environments to attract UFOs to study them. He noted that there was much data that showed UFOs are interested in nuclear activities and the latest weaponry systems.
The UFO activity over US army bases has been observed since 1948, with the majority of incidents occurring at Malmstrom, Minot, F.E. Warren, Ellsworth, Vandenberg, and Walker AFBs between 1963 and 1996. Other sources stationed at Wurtsmith and Loring AFBs, where B-52 nuclear bombers were based during the Cold War era, also reported incidents.
In 1967, Captain Salas was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, when he received reports of a red glowing object hovering outside the front gate of the base. A security guard reported that the object had a saucer shape and was constantly hovering near the front gate.
At the same time, the missile system suffered a complete failure, with ten intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) going offline due to a “No-Go” (inoperable) condition, which caused several alarms to go off. After investigating the incident, a team of engineers from Boeing could not find any significant failures, engineering data, or findings that would explain how the missiles had been knocked off alert.
The cause of the failure remains unknown, but it was suggested that it could have been due to an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) sent from an unknown source. Despite the severity of the situation, Salas believed that the UFO did not have hostile intentions because it could have caused permanent damage to the weapons system if it wanted to.
The incident was reported by a UFO researcher Robert L. Hastings, who collected information from various army personnel, including Staff Sgt. Louis D. Kenneweg, Airman 1st Class David Hughes, Staff Sgt. Joseph M. Chassey, and Lt. Col. Robert Peisher (USAF Ret.) in his 30 years of investigation.
A similar attraction of UFOs toward nuclear bases was noticed in Canada as well. A report from Winnipeg reveals that over 200 years, there have been 2,000 UFO sightings reported in the Canadian province of Manitoba.
In the mid-1970s, there were numerous UFO sightings all along the US-Canadian border, with Manitoba being one of the places where a large number of sightings occurred. These sightings included a high number of cattle mutilations and were often seen over restricted areas where nuclear activities were conducted.
Chris A. Rutkowski, a Canadian UFO researcher, has studied UFO sightings in Canada for over 25 years and concluded that Manitoba has a long history of close encounters with aliens. His UFO research, which contains 30,000 reports, has been donated to the University of Manitoba.
In 2017, author Grant Cameron published a book entitled “Charlie Red Star: True Reports of One of North America’s Biggest UFO Sightings,” in which he described in detail the largest UFO sightings in history witnessed by Manitobans. The province was stunned by the object known as “Charlie’s Red Star,” which was seen almost every night in 1975.
Cameron claims that Manitoba UFO sightings have connections to nuclear weapons because 35 years later, he found out that the government secretly installed nuclear missiles and other weapons in restricted areas just south of the border. He believes that the sightings stopped after the missiles had been removed in November. The author thinks that the nuclear technology that humans possess could be created after extraterrestrial contact. (click here to read the full article)
Strange Occurrences Near Nuclear Bases
The Reddit user “BumblebeeExpensive” claimed to have worked at a now-closed nuclear weapons storage depot in Nevada for six years and shared various strange occurrences. “When people say UFOs are attracted to nukes, they are telling the truth. But so much more goes on,” the user writes. (Source)
The user claimed to have seen a ball of light triggering a sensor on the fence line, causing security to respond and witnessed three mutilated donkeys that were dropped off out of nowhere with various organs removed. The user also claimed to have witnessed a figure on the roof of a structure. He writes it was “30 meters from me and 14 other personnel. I took a spotlight and shined it up there and as soon as the light hit the figure it disappeared – we all saw it happen.”
“I heard a man laughing maniacally once, nothing there. Sweep with night vision and thermals revealed nothing, three other witnesses. We wrote it off as the ‘laughing Colonel,’ an urban legend passed down by the security personnel for ages.”
The user and his partner also heard a soft cooing sound coming from a hot pad loaded with 500 lbs bombs, seemingly luring them past the pad and into the pitch-black desert, but they did not pursue. Dur ing a training exercise, their machine gun overwatch team spotted two figures on thermals in the desert behind them, but their sweep revealed nothing.
The user claimed to have experienced the weirdest event when they were responding to a truck approaching on the side of a nearby mountain. They visually confirmed the truck on NVGs, but suddenly the headlights disappeared, and they believed the occupants had turned them off and were then approaching on foot. They called for K9 and moved to a blocking position where they waited for ten minutes, but their radios died, and they were out of contact for twice as long as they thought.
“We are there for about ten minutes when one by one patrol members overwatching us from high points on the inside call in lights appearing at our 12, 3, and 9 o’clock- in effect flanking us (with fence line about 300 meters behind us). We see and hear nothing, not even on NVGs or thermals, dog never reacts. Suddenly panicked patrol calls in that the lights are ‘rushing’ us. We are already locked and loaded, I tell my partner to put a grenade in the tube. Nothing happens, dog never indicates. Our radios die and after ten minutes we hike back to fence line only to discover we were out of contact for twice as long as I thought we were. Very paraphrased event cuz on phone, but our radios only started working when we were back at fence line.”
The user claimed that those events, combined with the belief that UFOs are attracted to nukes. He says: “There’s more but these were the highlights or events I’m allowed to speak about. The world is not as normal as you believe it is.”
Many other users found the same story in the video published on “The Infographics Show” YouTube channel in 2020 and began doubting BumblebeeExpensive if he copied the story. But the user later clarified that was his story and added that he is the lead writer of the show. He also claimed to be the writer of the “100-day survival series” on the channel.
“There’s things I can’t talk about as I signed a 30-year non-disclosure contract with pretty stiff penalties- but I’ll say this: I know people think that there’s these big conspiracies with the government hiding knowledge of this or knowledge of that. Truth is, yes there are big secrets. But overwhelmingly, the government isn’t actively hiding knowledge of this or that- it’s literally just ignoring it because it can’t do anything about it or it doesn’t pose a threat. It does spend some time and effort investigating it- you can see that there’s a greatly increased effort to investigate UAPs now. But the truth is that a long time ago a choice was made about certain things: do they affect national security, or could we stop it if it did? If the answer is no, we’ve got bigger or more immediate concerns like the Soviet Union starting a nuclear war,” explains Reddit user BumblebeeExpensive. (Source)
Mr. Elizondo suggested that those interested in more information about this subject read “UFOs and Nukes” by Robert Hastings. The book describes the reality of UFO incursions at American nuclear weapons facilities.
In “UFOs and Nukes,” there are documented incidents of UFO interference at the US nuclear weapons facilities. The book describes incidents where unidentified objects were seen hovering near nuclear facilities, causing malfunctions in nuclear missiles and communication systems.
Some of those incidents date back to as early as January 1945, months before the atomic bombings in Japan. Those events suggest that humans’ most dangerous weapons have been under scrutiny by unidentified observers with advanced technology. The author argues that the UFO-nukes connection is significant and may be the reason for the appearance of mysterious aerial crafts in the skies over the past 70 years. Mr. Elizondo recommends this book to those interested in learning more about this subject.
Ross Coulthart’s statement on an alleged huge UFO buried outside the United States unleashed a storm in the UFO community. He claims that he knows the exact location of this craft. Now, UFO enthusiasts are hunting the alleged site where this gigantic immovable craft could possibly be sitting. There is no confirmation from Coulthart about the nature of this craft if it was retrieved. However, some have speculated this could be an archeological dig. Could this particular craft potentially be a remnant of a bygone civilization?
Scientists have explored the possibility of detecting ancient civilizations in Earth’s geological record. A recent paper called “The Silurian Hypothesis” discusses how traces of industrial civilizations could be found. While fossils and artifacts are unlikely to survive over millions of years, anomalous changes in chemical compositions could serve as clues. By studying geological anomalies and applying models to other planets, scientists hope to understand if civilizations existed in the distant past.
NASA has spent many years seeking the truth regarding extraterrestrial life. Furthermore, the space agency has never denied the existence of non-human life beyond Earth in any form. This is sufficient to discuss the idea of non-human life existing beyond Earth in any form, from the microscopic to the macroscopic. Avi Loeb, a professor at Harvard, has supported the idea that there may have been earlier civilizations on both Earth and Mars, and that these civilizations may have been the origin of UAPs.
He writes: “Planets like Mars or Earth could have given multiple births to technological civilizations that were a billion years apart and hence were not aware of each other. Like stable parents, the planets recovered from the environmental impact of these civilizations over time. We may have been separated in time from siblings that we never had the opportunity to meet and so we are unaware of their existence.”
Considering these two possibilities, former Pentagon UFO official Lue Elizondo shared a truly eye-opening statement in his interview with James Iandoli of Engaging The Phenomenon on June 11, 2021. They discussed crash retrievals and materials related to unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs). Elizondo acknowledged the sensitivity of the topic and the potential consequences of discussing it openly.
However, Elizondo expressed his belief that the US government does possess exotic materials but could not provide further details due to the lack of transparency from the government. He mentioned the three layers of analysis that can be conducted on a piece of material, namely physical, chemical, and atomic or nano-level research.
Rogan asked: “Have you ever asked anyone that has any inkling of any idea of where they got them or how they got them?” Lazar replied, “No, but something must have been said to me from Barry (his lab partner) and… but I… I can’t quite remember what was said, but it just left a seed in my mind. I think at least one of them was part of an archaeological dig, so it’s old. Something, that one at least one of them is old. I don’t know if it was the one I worked on, but I remember something to do with an archaeological dig.”
He suggested that if a piece of material exhibits engineered characteristics and peculiarities outside the normal range of known materials, it raises questions about its origin and the technology used to create it. He concluded by using an analogy of finding an out-of-place object in King Tut’s tomb to illustrate the significance of finding advanced materials before our known technology existed.
“Let’s say nickel or aluminum or magnesium or bismuth. Then you have to say, ‘Okay, who created it and how?’ And at the end of the day, when you have material that has been found before, supposedly, we as a species had a technology to engineer it that way, then you’ve got to ask the question. And this is why I’ve said before, you know, a 747 isn’t uncommon to see at an international airport.
But imagine being the first guy to break into King Tut’s tomb, and of all the things you find in there, you find an intact 747 sitting in the tomb. Doesn’t make sense, does it? Because 747s weren’t around when King Tut was around. So, what the hell is a 747 doing in King Tut’s tomb? So, that’s the best analogy that I can use without going into further detail. I’ve tried to be very careful.
You know, I don’t want to be dismissive of your question because it’s an important question. I would ask the same exact question. But I also have to be very, very careful. And if you notice, other folks like Hal and Eric and others, they’re very careful to have this conversation too. Yeah, okay, yeah, it’s not just me. I’m not just being paranoid and cagey here. There’s… You’re actually the most out in the open. They’re… They still, you know…”
Many members of the UFO community interpreted Elizondo’s analogy as a subtle hint that UFOs could be considered as archaeological findings. Surprisingly, on the Joe Rogan Experience, Bob Lazar recalls hearing that at least one of the recovered UFOs was found during an archaeological dig, suggesting that it is ancient rather than simply old.
Mr. Loeb believes it is possible that some of the technological advancement devices made by early inhabitants of Mars and Earth are still operational elsewhere in the Solar System. He suggests that “in that case, old flying gadgets could be a source of some of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in reports from the Director of National Intelligence to the US Congress.” (Source)
Professor Loeb is not alone in thinking of the advanced civilization that once inhabited Mars. Physicist John E. Brandenburg explained in this 2015 study what could have happened on Mars. The planet that once had an Earthlike atmosphere faced a massive thermonuclear explosion that destroyed its atmosphere. The study considered the Cydonian Hypothesis and Fermi’s Paradox. (Source)
From the earliest days of recorded history, people have reported seeing strange sights in the sky. But with the advent of airplanes, the number of flying saucers and other unidentified flying objects—a term that was, itself, coined in 1953—has increased dramatically. Studies have been launched to learn the truth about UFOs, including Project Blue Book and a secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program carried out by the United States government between 2007 and 2012.
While there are plenty of true believers who say that UFOs are evidence of an alien presence in our history—and just as many skeptics ready with explanations of swamp gas, weather balloons, airplane flares, and hoaxes—the real facts about UFOs seem to remain elusive, even after millions of dollars of government research—unless, of course, you believe that the government knows the truth and is simply covering it up.
For all the reports of UFOs throughout the years, there have been comparatively few instances of clear photographic evidence, and even fewer quality UFO videos. But “few” doesn’t mean “none,” and especially as video recording equipment has become more and more ubiquitous, footage of strange lights and shapes in the sky has grown increasingly commonplace. Here are a few of the most famous and compelling UFO videos throughout history.
1. Mariana Incident
One of the earliest known UFO videos was recorded by a minor league baseball manager named Nick Mariana in August of 1950. He was inspecting the ballpark with his secretary when he noticed two bright spots moving across the sky against the wind. The footage, captured on a 16mm video camera, quickly became one of the most infamous “home movies” in the history of UFO videos, and was even featured in a 1956 film called Unidentified Flying Objects.
2. Phoenix Lights
Between 7:30 and 10:30 on the night of March 13, 1997, thousands of people reported seeing strange lights in the sky, ranging across an area spanning roughly 300 miles from Nevada to Tucson and into Arizona. These became known as the “Phoenix Lights,” although there were actually two separate sets of phenomena; a V-shaped formation that was seen to pass over the area, and stationary lights that were spotted—and recorded!—over the city of Phoenix, Arizona.
In part because of the number of witnesses, the Phoenix Lights became one of the most well-known UFO sightings in history. The lights reappeared in February of 2007, when they were captured in footage that was broadcast on the local Fox News station. The lights then made another reappearance in 2008. This time, however, they were a little different—possibly because they were a hoax, perpetrated by an unidentified Phoenix resident who told local newspapers that he had created the 2008 lights by attaching flares to helium balloons and releasing them from his back yard.
On December 17, 2017, no less reputable a source than The New York Times ran an article exposing the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a secret program within the Department of Defense designed to study “unidentified aerial phenomena.” Budgeted at $22 million, the program ran from 2007 until 2012, and while it didn’t produce any unclassified findings that necessarily point toward the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, the article was accompanied by three videos featuring UFO footage that, while maybe not as jaw-dropping as some of the other stuff on this list, get an extra sheen of authenticity since they come direct from the Department of Defense.
4. The Paris UFO
This one was first uploaded to YouTube by the UFOlogist group SecureTeam 10, and went on from there to make the rounds of various tabloid newspapers. The video of the skies over Paris, taken in 2017, shows what appears to be a glowing saucer or disc firing down beams of light. It resembles other sightings that occurred in China in 2010 and Australia in 2014. UFOlogists have called this footage “too good to be true,” but comparatively little follow-up to the initial video means that the origins of the footage remain unknown.
5. Myrtle Beach Orbs
On August 5, 2018, a photographer who was taking a time-lapse photo of a thunderstorm over Myrtle Beach, South Carolina inadvertently captured a number of glowing orbs in the sky above the town. It wasn’t the first time that glowing orbs had visited Myrtle Beach. Another report, from April of 2017, was removed from the MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) website when the sighting was determined to be an “unknown other”—that’s UFOlogist jargon for “we don’t know what it is, but it’s not a space ship.”
If anyplace was going to spot UFOs, it probably ought to be the International Space Station, right? Well, according to UFOlogist Tyler Glockner and SecureTeam 10, it has! They uploaded a clip of video supposedly taken from the International Space Station. The clip shows a yellowish-white disc shape that hovers near the space station then darts away at “a very high rate of speed,” as Glockner says in the video, “oddly enough just as the camera switched to this angle,” as if it “knew that the camera was suddenly watching it.”
While “UFO fever” may have peaked in the 1950s, when it seemed that the sky was alive with flying saucers and the drive-ins were filled with movies about invaders from outer space, sightings of UFOs have actually increased in recent years. And those increased sightings, combined with the fact that just about everyone now owns a phone capable of recording video, mean more UFO videos leaking onto the internet every day. While many of them are hoaxes or simple misidentifications of common sights or phenomena, some others have proven more difficult to explain …
The Pentagon reportedly holds a highly classified photograph of a “Black Triangle” UFO emerging from the ocean, taken by a US Navy pilot flying an F/A-18F Super Hornet. The photo’s existence has not been officially confirmed by the Pentagon, but many people believe that it does exist, as they have been told by government insiders. It is thought to be one of the most compelling UFO sightings ever captured on camera and is considered to be highly classified because it was captured using military equipment onboard the fighter plane.
In 2020, during an interview on Coast to Coast AM radio with investigative journalist George Knapp, former AATIP head Luis Elizondo stated that the current UAP Task Force obtained images of multiple unknown aerial objects, including a clear image of a mysterious triangle emerging from the ocean, recorded by military pilots.
The object was described as a large triangle with “blunted” edges and spherical white “lights” on each corner, and the encounter is said to have occurred off the East Coast of the US. The pilots who encountered the object are believed to have been operating from either the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower or the USS John C. Stennis, both of which are Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarriers, which further deepens the apparent links between UFOs and man’s nuclear capabilities.
Several officials confirmed the photo’s existence, but they did not provide any further details. The report primarily focused on “Unidentified Submersible Phenomena” or unidentified “transmedium” vehicles that can operate both underwater and in the air. The UAP Task Force appears to be concerned that these objects may originate from within the world’s oceans.
Tom Rogan, a national security writer for the Washington Examiner, verified the existence of the photo with his sources. He believes that the photo is “the tip of the iceberg” and that more UAP imagery and data would be leaked in the coming years. Rogan also called on the Pentagon to officially release more material. (Source)
In 2020, The Debrief reported that the Pentagon was investigating the “transmedium” element of the phenomena, which is the apparent ability of some UAPs to transit seamlessly between the air and the ocean.
The idea of “USOs,” or “unidentified submersible objects,” is not exclusive to the current UAP Task Force. In fact, there have been reports of unexplained, very high-speed sonar targets recorded by some of the most sophisticated listening equipment on the planet. A senior member of the intelligence community, whose responsibilities for decades involved underwater surveillance and reconnaissance programs, acknowledged that there are valid claims of extremely fast-moving underwater objects being detected by U.S. military systems.
The UAP Task Force is particularly interested in “transmedium vehicles,” which may seem unusual, but there have been many accounts, some going back centuries, in which people observed unidentifiable craft operating in and out of the water. In public appearances, Marc D’Antonio, an astronomer and chief video/image analyst for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), shared an unusual experience involving the detection of an underwater “Fast Mover,” which occurred while he was sailing as a civilian aboard one of the U.S. Navy’s prized attack submarines.
Tyler Rogoway, a defense journalist, spoke with several veteran submariners who almost unanimously acknowledged that unexplained, very high-speed sonar targets are indeed recorded by some of the most sophisticated listening equipment on the planet. Although there is skepticism about D’Antonio being granted a civilian ride-along, the Navy vets being interviewed confirmed the validity of such claims. The intelligence official declined to provide further details, citing the high levels of security classification associated with underwater reconnaissance.
Andy McGrillen from UAP Media UK, a team set up to campaign for a more open and serious discussion on UFOs in Britain, told The Sun Online that the triangular object was initially tracked underwater, then emerged, climbing to an altitude of 35-40,000 feet when an aircraft’s onboard systems took a high-fidelity image. He thought that something like this would surely be highly classified given the nature of the equipment taking the picture. However, if it did make its way into the public domain, it could be a key piece of evidence, demonstrating that we are truly in the presence of some other intelligence.
Mystery Wirereported that UFO enthusiastJoe Murgiawrote on his Twitter that Knapp asked Elizondo about an alleged triangle UFO coming out of the water, to which Elizondo responded by saying he was confident the photo exists, and it might even be a still frame from a video. Elizondo and Knapp talked about the need for patience when talking about disclosure and the series of high-level briefings that Elizondo took part in. Elizondo praised Florida Senator Marco Rubio for his willingness to talk about UFOs publicly.
Knapp also asked if the UFO mystery can be solved by just looking at military encounters with UFOs or if we need to expand our horizons and look at other topics like poltergeists and Bigfoot that seem to be connected to close encounter cases. Elizondo said the government programs have limitations, such as an inability to speak with commercial pilots about sightings.
When asked if he would consider ever returning to the government to work on the new Unidentified Aerial Phenomena task force (UAPTF), Elizondo said he would have to clear it with his family first. If he did go back, he would try to run it differently than when he ran the AATIP at the Pentagon. Elizondo said he would push for more openness with the public and work to break down the barriers that stigma about UFOs can cause.
“The problem with it is that the government recognizes it. There are some very authentic UAP images. When people say, “Oh, they’re all grainy and blurry,” no, they’re not. There are some that are really clear and are very authentic because we can look at the date and time stamp and the metadata on the video. We can then correlate that to any other type of assets that may be in the area, and we know where it turns out that we’re picking something up that came across, let’s say, the Pacific Ocean. All of a sudden, someone in San Diego says, “I had this really funny light doing these weird things in the backyard,” and all of a sudden, you realize, “Oh, man, they got it on camera.”
Yeah, there are some very, very compelling ones. There’s one, in particular, I probably can’t talk about it, but there’s one of a triangle, and it’s at night, and it’s not just three points of light. I mean, you can see the skin of the aircraft. You can see a lot, and to the point where some of our folks were like, “Well, should we take it off?” No, don’t take it off the internet. Leave it up. That’s not your video to take down. That’s a private citizen’s. Yes, they got a great video of a UAP. Congratulations. You should probably give them an award. Don’t take the video down”
The Sun Online produced a mock up of what the incident may have looked like as the F/A-18F came across the "Black Triangle" off the East Coast of the US
The Sun Online produced a mock up of what the incident may have looked like as the F/A-18F came across the "Black Triangle" off the East Coast of the US
Leaked emails from John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, may provide new insight into transmedium UFOs. The emails include a conversation between Podesta and a person named Bob Fish, who claims that the federal government has been collecting data on UFOs since the 1970s, using the Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites. (Click here to read the full article)
Fish shared an incident that happened to him in California, where a USAF official who worked on the program told Fish that there were times when they were diverted from these missions to track UFOs off the east coast of Florida. Fish stated that the UAP entered the atmosphere and descended into the Atlantic Ocean, specifically in an area east of Miami, Florida and north of Bermuda.
The US government has knowledge of some UAPs entering Earth’s orbit from deep space and can actively track them via RF signals emanating from these crafts. The officials realized that if this god-like technology were to be obtained and mastered by their adversaries before the United States, it would make democracy vulnerable.
Additionally, for many years, Bob McGwier worked in clandestine intelligence. He disclosed two incidents about underwater UFOs or USOs, that he saw while performing covert operations. This claim was made several months after a video had been made public by the United States military, in which it appeared to show an unidentified flying object moving from the sky into the water in the year 2019. (Click here to read the full article)
2022 is the 75th anniversary of the biggest UFO year ever. 1947 gave us so much more than just flying saucers. That summer came complete with many hundreds of legitimate sightings by excellent witnesses, classified memos admitting something strange was actually going on, a governmental reorganization to confront future existential threats, and even a public admission of some kind of crash wreckage retrieval, followed by a retraction.
Looking back now, have any lessons actually been learned?
THE PENTAGON’S HISTORICAL AMNESIA
On May 17, 2022, the House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation Subcommittee called two witnesses from the Department of Defense to testify before it about UAP or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. It was the first congressional hearing in 54 years, going back to a similar one-day event back in 1968 that came and went with no public impact.
The headline from the 2022 hearing was that both Ronald Moultrie, the Pentagon’s top intelligence official, and Scott Bray, the deputy director of Naval Intelligence, seemed to be suffering complete amnesia about the history of the Phenomenon. To hear them tell it, they might have known a thing or two about Project Blue Book but anything before or after just never seemed to register. For them, the entire matter of UAP seemed to start, oh, sometime around 2004 with the now-famous Nimitz incident.
It was probably intentional that they were so clueless. After all, if they knew nothing about the history of the issue, they could have plausible deniability if asked any tough questions. Which they were — questions about the Wilson-Davis Memo, the Malmstrom Air Force Base nuclear shutdown and even a softball question like what other investigations DoD had even done on the UFO subject. They claimed to have no knowledge of any of it. They were “unaware.”
Well, as Spanish philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Yet that would allow us to think about their lapse as faulty memory, not the purposeful obfuscation it clearly was.
The quote we should really savor comes from William Shakespeare, who wrote in The Tempest, “What’s past is prologue.”The irony is that this line of memorable dialogue, engraved on the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., is often used by the military when they teach about similarities between various wars fought throughout history. If you want to understand the future, start with learning about the past.
So, for the benefit of Moultrie and Bray and any other hapless Department of Defense insiders who will be called to testify at future hearings, let’s start their education with the basics.
THE WORLD OF 1947
As the only nuclear-armed superpower, the United States had come out of the Second World War stronger, more powerful, and more secure than ever before in history. Yet even with this strategic advantage, 1947 was still the year that the Cold War with the Soviet Union got kicked into high gear with the announcement of the Truman Doctrine in March. This was also the origin year for the famous Doomsday Clock initiated by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to sound the alarm about the likelihood of nuclear war.
Europe was still an incredible disaster area. The famous Marshall Plan to rebuild the nations devastated by Hitler’s rampage and the Allies’ relentless and destructive counter-attack would not become law until nearly a year later. U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall, however, made the pitch on June 5th, 1947, in a speech at Harvard University.
This was the year that Chuck Yeager would make that first supersonic flight, the one made famous in the book and film, The Right Stuff. Sadly, it was also the year that America suffered its greatest commercial aviation disasters on back-to-back days on May 29 and May 30, 1947, losing 42 and 53 lives respectively.
The big news out of Washington, D.C. on the third day of summer in 1947, June 23rd, was that the Taft-Hartley Act went into effect in the United States when the Senate overrode President Truman’s veto by a vote of 68–25. With political division on the front pages, no one was thinking about “flying saucers” or expecting news about such matters to come from the other Washington, the state on the opposite side of the country.
What a difference a day makes.
KENNETH ARNOLD’S STRANGE FLIGHT
On Tuesday, June 24th, an experienced civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold, flying a small CallAir A-2 plane on the way to an air show, was over twenty miles from Mount Rainier, a volcano in Washington State. It was a glorious day for flying as the air was calm and the sky was clear.
Arnold sold and installed fire suppression systems, a job that took him around the Pacific Northwest and explains why he was such an experienced pilot with several thousand hours of flying time. He was also a modern-day treasure hunter that day. A Marine Corps C-46 transport airplane had crashed in the area recently, and there was a $5,000 reward for the person who found the wreckage. Even with today’s inflation, that’s a lot of money. In 1947, it was a small fortune.
A portion of the drawing that Kenneth Arnold provided to the Air force of the flying objects he observed (Wikimedia Commons).
Arnold was then startled by a flash of light on his airplane that was so intense it lit up his cockpit. Looking for the source, he scanned the sky and saw them to his left. It was, as Arnold would soon tell the world, a fleet of unknown craft flying in “a diagonally stepped-down, echelon formation.” Each one was repeatedly flashing bright lights.
And that began a three-minute observation that would change the world. His case took America by storm. Flying saucers became such a big thing that stories about them generated as much news coverage as had Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color line a few months earlier.
Arnold was flying at an altitude of 9,200 feet when he saw those nine blue, glowing objects flying fast. He did something then that few observers would do even today — he measured their speed by using his plane’s clock and observing how long it took them to travel about fifty miles south, something he could do because he knew the terrain well.
He came up with an estimated speed of 1,700 m.p.h. Given that Yeager’s X-1 was still four months away from managing 662 m.p.h. it was enough to blow Arnold’s mind. He checked his work later using a map when he landed and put in lower numbers. He still came up with a speed in excess of 1,200 m.p.h.
It wasn’t just their speed and size that astonished him. It was the fact that he saw no wings, fuselage, tails, vertical stabilizers, or engines. He first believed the objects to be some sort of new military aircraft, but the military confirmed they were conducting no tests in the area that day. Here’s a condensed run of some of his interviews:
“They didn’t fly like any aircraft I had seen before… they flew in a definite formation, but erratically… like speed boats on rough water… they fluttered and sailed… emitting very bright blue-white flashes from their surfaces… I kept looking for tails and they didn’t have any tails. They seemed to flip and flash in the sun just like a mirror.”
Somewhere in that awestruck word salad, Arnold described the crafts’ motion as similar to “a saucer if you skip it across water.” The media coined the catchy phrase “flying saucer,” and it stuck.
Although it is remembered for ushering in the modern UFO age, the case had no radar confirmation, no photos, and no supporting witnesses. What it had, however, was a pilot of excellent reputation describing something that, while extraordinary, would soon be far more common than anyone might imagine.
EXCEPT KENNETH ARNOLD REALLY WASN’T THE FIRST
While UFO/UAP reality may trace back deep into ancient prehistory, there had been, in the years before Arnold, constant “foo fighter” sightings by both Allied and Axis pilots in 1945, the final year of World War II. That mystery continued in 1946 with the “ghost rockets” in Scandanavia, particularly vexing Sweden.
In fact, there had already been multiple sightings of anomalous objects in 1947 before the Arnold case caught the public fancy. Lake Mead, Nevada. Weiser, Idaho. Spokane, Washington. Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Bakersfield, California. And there were many more. As it turns out, many people were seeing unidentified objects in the sky, but with no point of reference, they tended to keep them to themselves.
Forty-nine sightings were reported to have happened in the period between June 1st and June 24th. There are even six reports in the Air Force files for this period. In 1967, researcher Ted Bloecher wrote a definitive account, “Report on the UFO Wave of 1947,” that’s worth reading in its own right and also contains a compelling introduction by Dr. James McDonald. You can download a copy for yourself here.
The point is only that the Arnold sighting, historically important as it turned out to be, was no one-off. His candor did allow some of those earlier reluctant witnesses to come forward. Based on its sensational details and media coverage, and the date itself, however, the Arnold case was definitely the starter’s gun for the 1947 Summer of the Saucers.
Over the next days, literally hundreds of sightings occurred across the United States and flying saucers became the subject of intense interest. While there were some reported cases elsewhere around the globe, the phenomenon did seem to be centered in the United States. And so, ironically, it was during the July 4th holiday that the entire affair deepened further. As the Bloecher report states:
“Reports of sightings, coming almost simultaneously from hundreds of bewildered citizens, were made to newspapers and police stations all over the country, and adjacent areas as well, from Southern California to New Brunswick, and from Louisiana to North Dakota. People everywhere were experiencing the beginning of one of the most massive waves of UFO sightings on record. Reports came from all kinds of observers: from picnickers and holiday crowds, from policemen and public officials, and from pilots, farmers, professional men, housewives and bus drivers.”
The sightings were, at first, treated respectfully in most of the press that reported on them. These were good stories relayed by reliable people, often locals, including many officials from politics, law enforcement, government and the military. As the wave crescendoed through the holiday, the tide began to turn. By mid-July, as if recovering from a hangover, the coverage took on an air of ridicule, something that continues to this very day.
While the report cited above makes for some good reading, making clear that these are not easily dismissed cases, it’s impossible to summarize or break them down in an article of this scope. There are, however, two key cases that came out of the Summer of the Saucers — United Airlines Flight 105 and, of course, the Roswell crash.
UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 105
On July 4th, just eleven days after Kenneth Arnold’s sighting, a United Air Lines DC-3 crew, led by Captain Emil J. Smith, took off from Boise, Idaho, at just after 9:00 pm, and almost immediately sighted two separate formations of wingless discs.
The irony is that in the aftermath of Arnold’s sighting, Captain Smith had been asked for his opinion by reporters about the flying saucers being seen over the northwest, an area where he regularly flew. He told reporters: “I’ve never seen anything like that (Arnold’s flying saucers) and the boys (other pilots) say they haven’t either. . .what that other fellow (Arnold) probably saw was the reflection of his own instrument panel.”
Just over a week later, on the evening of July 4th, as Smith was boarding his aircraft, he told another reporter, “I’ll believe in those discs when I see them.” He didn’t have to wait long.
Just eight minutes into their flight, in clear weather, UAL 105 saw five disc-like objects, one larger than the rest, heading straight for the DC-3. Smith and co-pilot Ralph Stevens observed the objects reverse direction and take up a course literally parallel to their own. They got a good look, too. Studying them against the twilight sky, Smith and Stevens soon realized that neither wings nor tails were visible on the five objects tracking with them. They appeared “flat on the bottom, rounded on top” with a perceptible “roughness” top-side.
Smith, Stevens, and the airliner’s stewardess, Marty Morrow, all were able to keep the objects in their view for about twelve minutes!
The objects clearly demonstrated intelligent control. When co-pilot Stevens, thinking the objects were aircraft, flashed the airliner’s landing lights, they responded by changing formation from a very tight cluster to a more open one. The cluster of discs then began to open and repeatedly close before settling down into a loose formation.
Almost immediately after they lost sight of the first five, a second formation of four (three in line and a fourth off to the side) moved in ahead of their position, again traveling westward but at a somewhat higher altitude than the DC-3’s 8000 ft. These passed quickly out of sight to the west at speeds that the pilots felt surpassed any conventional speeds. They had the general impression that these disc-like crafts were appreciably larger than ordinary aircraft.
Smith talked to reporters at their next scheduled stop in Pendleton, Oregon, and told them about what Flight 105 had just encountered. The United Airlines incident was picked up by Reuters News Service and sent around the world. It got a lot of ink in the papers, like the Arnold sighting, but four days later, it would be pushed aside by an even more alarming story.
THE ROSWELL CRASH
If the UFO cover-up has an original sin, it may be what happened in Roswell, New Mexico, over the July 4th holidays. It was during this time that rancher Mac Brazel discovered a collection of strange debris scattered across his employer’s land southeast of Corona, New Mexico. He drove some of it into town, primarily to complain to the local Army base, thinking they had crashed one of their secret planes.
One of the first to investigate was Major Jesse Marcel, who, as an intelligence officer, immediately assessed this was not military property but something stranger. The Roswell Army Air Force base outside of town responded vigorously, cleaning up the rancher’s site and another one. In addition to debris, the rumors started that they found a craft and bodies at a second site. Many of the locals, including future Apollo 14 pilot and Roswell resident Edgar Mitchell, said this publicly.
In the immediate aftermath, Colonel William Blanchard, base commander, instructed Lieutenant Walter Haut to release a hastily drafted press release describing the wreckage as a “flying disk.” The local paper headlined their own story with “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region.”
The front page of the Roswell Daily Record, July 8, 1947 (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons).
That news ricocheted around the world at record speed. After all, this was not even two weeks after Kenneth Arnold’s story had done the same.
The statement was quickly retracted. Major Marcel was ordered to pose for reporters next to some tin foil and balsa wood. It was, they now said, a misidentified weather balloon. This is particularly unconvincing given that Roswell Army Air Base was the only nuclear bomber base in the U.S. arsenal at the time. In other words, the public was now being told that these people out in the New Mexico desert of 1947 who were trusted with the nation’s nuclear weapons got it all wrong and misidentified a weather balloon, something they dealt with every day.
It allows one nagging question to remain burrowed in your consciousness: What if the government accidentally told the truth that first day?
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ACT
The National Security Act of 1947 enacted a major restructuring of the United States government’s military and intelligence agencies following World War II. The majority of the provisions of the act took effect on September 18, 1947, the day after the Senate confirmed James Forrestal as the first secretary of defense and, yes, places it firmly into our Summer of the Saucers chronology.
The act merged the Army, Navy, and the newly established Air Force into the National Military Establishment run by a Secretary of Defense. Aside from the unification of the three military departments, the act established the Central Intelligence Agency.
The legislation was signed into law by President Truman on July 26, 1947.
It’s also worth noting that the Air Force, which had been part of the Army during World War II, was now an independent service branch that would be given responsibility for flying saucer investigations. It created Project Blue Book in 1952 and disbanded it in 1969, although before, during, and after, it continued to study unidentified flying objects while denying to the public that this was the case. Such misrepresentations were largely revealed by classified documents released as part of the new Freedom of Information Act in the 1970s.
The reputation of the Air Force has not improved. It’s been called out in extraordinary detail by intelligence insider Christopher Mellon for not being responsive to congressional calls for data and for basically saying it has no good cases to look at when the Navy has forwarded hundreds of them.
As for the CIA, it kept its powder dry for five years, letting the Air Force ride shotgun on the UFO issue. In 1952, however, the CIA formed a special study group to review the situation. The group reported that most UFO sightings could be easily explained but also urged that the CIA conceal its interest from the media and the public to avoid alarming the public.
This duck-and-cover from the Central Intelligence Agency continued with the Robertson Panel, which concluded unanimously that there was no evidence of a direct threat to national security or evidence that the objects might be ETs. It worried that potential U.S. adversaries might exploit the UFO phenomena and use them to disrupt air defenses. It recommended debunking UFO reports and suggested using the mass media, advertising, business clubs, schools, and even the Disney corporation to get the message across.
By most accounts, the CIA has had a lot more interest in UFOs than it has ever admitted publicly, although FOIA requests and a director-ordered document dump both leave the impression that the CIA has been content to watch others investigate than do it for itself.
In any case, by August of 1947, the flying saucer wave was history. Captain Edward Ruppelt, who ran Project Blue Book for several years and wrote a powerful book about the experience, put it this way:
“By the end of July 1947 the security lid was down tight. The few members of the press who did inquire about what the Air Force was doing got the same treatment you would get today if you inquired about the number of thermonuclear weapons stock-piled in the U.S.’s atomic arsenal.”
Still, there was one final goodbye to the Summer of the Saucers, a memo that had been written that summer, completed two days into fall, and not discovered until the 1970s.
THE TWINING MEMO
United States Air Force General Nathan Farragut Twining was a very big deal. During World War II, he was considered an outstanding commander of bombing operations in both the European and Pacific theaters. After the war, then Lieutenant General Twining was named Commanding General of the military’s Air Materiel Command, working with the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It was in this esteemed capacity that he was asked to write a secret memo about UFOs in 1947 for Brigadier General George Schulgen, Chief of the Air Intelligence Requirements Division at the Pentagon.
Twining put his name to a high-level “coordinated” memo from extremely in-the-know officers and scientists on September 23rd, 1947, in which he stated his considered opinion (and theirs) that UFOs were real and had capabilities he did not believe the U.S. had yet achieved. For context, this memo came just three months after the Kenneth Arnold sightings, two months after the Roswell crash, and just five days after the U.S. Air Force was officially created as its own entity.
The entire memo is a barn-burner, not just for its time but for our time. It starts out with a single sentence, under Section 2, which reads:
“It is the opinion that the phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious.”
In further clear language, it goes on with specificity to state what these devices could do —
“The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted … lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically, or remotely.”
Yes, that does sound like a few of Lue Elizondo’s so-called “Five Observables.” Only it was being put in writing some 70 years before we ever heard of Elizondo or read the New York Times story about his Pentagon gig and the Nimitz case.
Twining listed several common descriptions of UFOs. They generally were silent, had a metallic or light reflecting surface, no trail, were circular or elliptical in shape, and often flat on the bottom. Many descriptions indicated a dome on top. Several reports indicated they flew in formation.
Importantly, such statements did not hurt Twining’s career, given that he was subsequently made Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force from 1953 until 1957 and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1957 to 1960, being the first member of the Air Force to serve as Chairman, let alone become a key advisor to the President of the United States Dwight Eisenhower.
The takeaway is that Twining was hardly ridden out of military service for advancing crazy ideas. That, of course, is what makes the memo he wrote so damned interesting.
As an addendum to tie some of these elements together, on July 8, 1947, the exact same day that the Roswell Air Base put out its press release saying that they had a flying saucer in their possession, Twining canceled a scheduled trip to the West Coast. He did so, as he told others, “due to a very important and sudden matter.” It appears that while it was thought he was in Washington, D.C., travel records show he actually made a trip to New Mexico, where he remained until July 10.
LESSONS LEARNED
To the extent that the government of the United States and the citizens of the country were aware of the flying saucer controversy in the Summer of the Saucers, it seems reasonable to assume that few of them could have believed we would remain as ignorant of this subject as we appear to be today.
The majority of journalists continue to treat UFO stories as human interest pieces, and the people who report them as not exactly credible. The government, based on these latest hearings in Washington, seems not yet ready to level with the people about what it has learned in studying the Phenomenon for nearly eight decades. Some scientists are starting to take the subject seriously, but most of the scientific community treats the topic as one that is not the subject of serious research and can only harm careers.
And yet…
There are also signs everywhere that a critical shift in perspective is underway. The government has at least confirmed in public what it had only said before in classified memos — that the Phenomenon is real and that not only are citizens seeing these objects but so are the military’s pilots and data collection devices. The hearing, while frustrating, still managed to put the idea before the public and show that representatives were capable of asking pointed questions of the Department of Defense. And while scientists who took the subject seriously in the early days were practically non-existent, some are now openly visible, even if in the minority.
It now seems clear that we will not go another 75 years without some kind of answer. In fact, there are moments where it even seems possible we may not have to wait another 75 days, before we finally get a more complete picture of what this phenomenon might entail.
In a world of pandemics, politics, war, and economic insecurity, we seem to be moving toward some kind of new status on this subject. Maybe there is room for a surprising message of hope amid all the gloom and doom of today’s chaotic world. A message that says maybe–just maybe–the “War of the Worlds” is really just a way to end the War Among Ourselves, to unify humanity, and brighten the skies that have often seemed so dark.
The people who had the courage to speak up in 1947 may someday soon be names found in history books that tell a story about how it all began.
Bryce Zabel co-hosts the podcast Need to Know with Coulthart and Zabel — a concise analysis of news, research and history related to the UAP/UFO issue. He is the creator of five produced one-hour TV drama series, screenwriter on multiple features and limited series and winner the Writers Guild award. He has been a CNN correspondent, PBS investigative reporter, CEO of the TV Academy and adjunct professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He is the author of three award-winning books. Follow him on Twitter @HollywoodUFOs. His professional credits can be found on LinkedIn.
In 1995, Fox Televisioncaptivated millions with a medical autopsy of a space alien. The 17-minute black and white clip purported to show military doctors examining a bloated, humanoid-looking extraterrestrial that had died in a flying saucer crash.
The broadcast generated so much hoopla that Fox aired it two more times that year, tacking on “added footage” of the UFO wreckage. Even then, the hoax—recycling the Roswell myth, which holds that the U.S. government in 1947 recovered an alien craft from the New Mexico desert—was old hat.
The latest version of this fable is the widely circulated story of—you guessed it—crashed UFOs that the U.S. government has been hiding for many decades. In June, a recently retired intelligence community “whistleblower” madethis claim, like others before him in years past. That the latest “bombshell” landed without any evidence or corroboration has not dampened our feverish enthusiasm. “Are we finally ready to admit UFOs are aliens?” asks the Daily Beast in itsheadline.
Americans have a bottomless appetite for this stuff. The initial story of crashed aliens was the Roswell incident, which stemmed from an actual cold war event; a balloon from a then-secret U.S.military project had fallen near Roswell, N.M., just as the flying saucer phenomenon was taking root. Ever since, the crashed saucer myth and UFOs in general have steadily profited news and entertainment outlets, and they have sated a deep human need for mystery.
I get it. Aliens are cool. Fuzzy UFO videos, which (let’s be honest) the media uncritically hype way too much, are fun. Maybe this is why friends and family members are always texting me the latest, craziest UFO story (that is quickly proven to be bogus). UFOs are so damn entertaining!
(A quick public service announcement: All this talk for decades about a “cosmic Watergate” is not amusing to everyone. Some people get really worked up and land in serious legal trouble; others find it a gateway to a toxic, paranoid swamp and entice vulnerable minds to join them.)
For the most part, the ubiquitous alien icon is now a gimmicky relic from a larger landscape of escapist fantasy, the same terrain that has relegated other faddish subjects, like the Bermuda Triangle and Nessie, to the annals of pseudoscience. UFOs, in contrast, remain an enduring American obsession. Why? Are they so much fun that we can’t let them go?
It’s more than that. “Despite centuries of scientific and social progress, we remain, at our most intimate level, believers,” writes author Marc Fitch in Paranormal Nation: Why America Needs Ghosts, UFOs, and Bigfoot. Indeed, this is a core sentiment of the hit 1990s X-Files show, which is embodied on the poster of a flying saucer above agent Mulder’s office wall with the phrase, “I want to believe.”
Perhaps it also explains why Scott Brando, a diligentmonitor and debunker of phony UFO videos that regularly go viral online, is alwaysplaying whack-a-mole. People fall prey to such hoaxes because they “need to believe something extraordinary” or “satisfy their craving for mystery,” he wrote in an e-mail to Scientific American.
That human desire for mystery is something that UFO promoters—and theyseem to have multiplied in recent years—are adept at fulfilling. Hence, all the recycling and reimagining of classic UFO narratives, such as Men in Black.
On occasion, there is a creative blending that invents a new myth for the UFO canon. The latest is a 512-acre ranch in rural Utah that is supposedly a “hotspot” for UFOs, poltergeists, animal mutilations and “shadow creatures.” A Las Vegas TV journalist (who is also a host of a conspiracy-themed radio show), refers to the ranch as a “paranormal Disneyland.”
It’s the basis for a scripted reality show on the History Channel called The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. The main character is a retired Department of Defense astrophysicist (afeatured character for years on Ancient Aliens) who also happens to be theformer chief scientist of the Pentagon’s 2022 Unidentified Aerial Phenomena report produced by an agency task force.
Like the latest UFO “whistleblower,” these fellows all have otherwise impeccable credentials. As Mick West, a prominent skeptic and debunker, writes in a 2021 Guardianpiece, such influential messengers couch “weak evidence” for UFOs as compelling. “Don’t be fooled,” he cautions.
But what if, like fans of professional wrestling, we know it’s just a big goof and don’t care? After all, ghost stories are fun. It’s the same with UFOs. The filmmaker behind the Alien Autopsy video latersaid he regretted his deception, but admitted “it was a joke, a bit of fun.”
Avid consumers of UFO stories seem to be in on the joke. “Part of this whole thing is just wonderful bullshit,” Adam Frank, an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester, said to me in a recent conversation about the latest wave of UFO mania. “It has nothing to do with science, but we all love talking about aliens.” Frank was speaking in general about the silliness factor that has long made it virtually impossible to take UFOs seriously—except as a sociocultural phenomenon.
Pop culture needs a consistent diet of this junk food to meet our incessant UFO hunger. Will we ever kick the habit? UFO promoters obviously don’t think so. In recent days, the “whistleblower” hasspoken out more to say that the multiple space alien crafts retrieved by the U.S. military are the size of football fields and held by unnamed U.S. defense contractors. Additionally, he suggested that the Vatican is involved in the cover-up and that, oh, by the way, people have been murdered to keep all this hushed up.
That does not sound like fun. Perhaps this is why no one texted it to me.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
What UFOs actually are is one of the mysteries that the entire world is yearning to have answered. Top agencies from all around the world invest millions of dollars to uncover this reality and determine the cause of numerous UFO sightings. George Knapp recently broke a story about an Alabama-based private company that he asserts might be working with alien technology.
Controversial physicist Bob Lazar told long ago about the alleged secret US program aimed to reverse engineer the alien technology. Perhaps he knows something that we do not. Investigative American journalist George Knapp was the first person who interviewed Lazar and brought his story to the world. Now, Mr. Kanpp believes that a private American company named “Radiance Technologies” might be reverse engineering UFOs.
Radiance Technologies, Inc. is an employee-owned small business prime contractor. It has over 900 employees working in more than 15 U.S. and international offices. It serves customers in the Department of Defense (DOD), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the national intelligence community, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), other government organizations, and selected commercial customers.
In 2021, the US Congress passed a bill (soon-to-become law) that would allow funding to reverse engineer UFO technology. In a few months, the Pentagon created an office to track UAP, and NASA also joined in the investigation. Any data gathered could also be used in funding requests to “replicate any such advanced characteristics and performance” of UAPs, according to Military.com. This means that government plans to encourage the reverse engineering of UFOs.
Mr. Knapp claims that this private defense contractor has an office inside Wright-Patterson Air Base that is known for holdingalleged UFO material. Radiance Technologies has quietly become a major player in developing Cutting Edge weapons and systems for the Pentagon but unlike some of its larger competitors Radiance without hesitant talks about a topic long considered Fringe or forbidden UFOs. (Source)
Tim Tinsley, president of Radiance Technology
Tim Tinsley, a president of Radiance Technology avidly said that he would like to work on UFO technology if somebody offered them to do it. “Why not,” he says. “I’m waiting for one of those.” Tinsley is an engineer who spent two decades working on missile defense systems before joining Radiance.
Mr. Knapp hinted (as per the information available on their website) that Radiance deals in exotic defense Technologies such as Star Wars-like direct energy, Hypersonic missile systems to defend against cyber warfare, etc.
Perhaps they are working on other unclassified projects at Nellis Air Force Base, however, Tinsley refrained himself telling about it. “I can’t tell you a lot,” Tinsley said. “I can tell is you is we’ve supported the Las Vegas community, Nellis Air Force Base, for over 20 years.” He noted the work is mainly for the Air Force in research and development, test and evaluation spectrum.
For more than three decades, Nellis Air Force Base has been rumored to be the home of mysterious materials of unknown origin. The rumor claims that a top-secret operation located at or close to Nevada’s Area 51 military base has been attempting to reverse-engineer alien technology. However, this rumor has been dismissed as folklore by military organizations and defense companies.
However, Radiance Technology is unable to validate the claims. Longtime Navy intelligence official Jay Stratton, who earlier served as the chief of the Pentagon’s unidentified aerial phenomenon, or UAP, task force, was hired as a reverse engineering specialist, according to an announcement made months ago. (Source)
“I am very excited to join Radiance Technologies. Radiance has a great culture, balancing mission focus and vision with a strong emphasis on the professional and personal growth of our employees. I’m excited to provide our customers with a diverse and innovative approach to delivering capabilities and supporting our nation in strategic competition,” said Stratton.
Dr. Travis Taylor, who collaborated with him as the lead scientist for the UAP task team, was recommended for hire by Stratton to Radiance. When Radiance announced the hire of two UFO research veterans, the news releases didn’t downplay the association and specifically mentioned their credentials. But is the business concerned about the notion that they could be creating UFOs through reverse engineering? (Source)
Taylor, for his part, isn’t saying what he and Stratton are working on but makes it clear what they’re hoping to tackle, writes Mr. Knapp. “Jay and I are working on growing the capabilities, doing reverse engineering of foreign materials,” Taylor explained. “If we were to get something to reverse engineer, we would absolutely want to do that.”
During an interview for On Balance With Leland Vittert, a member of the US House of Representatives Tim Burchett was asked about the Navy’s possession of more videos of UFOs that it is not willing to release to the public for reasons of National Security.
First of all, Burchett again highlighted the UFO cover-up by the intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense, recalling what happened at the last public hearing in Congress. “We are the most technologically advanced nation in the world, and they present us with these lousy videos, which — during the hearing — weren’t even able to pause properly to show us two or three frames,” he said. “Everything is bad, they don’t trust us. It’s all about power and control,” he added.
Vittert then asked the Congressman about the statement issued by the Navy and how they are refusing to release any more videos showing UAP. He questioned whether this might be because it is a proprietary technology that adversary nations should not know about. The Congressman replied by saying that he thinks the United States Government had probably reverse-engineered alien technology. He claims that many sightings are made on military installations or over restricted airspace.
The Congressman was also asked about his thoughts on whether the Navy was working on technology that could have applications in space or similar to that. In addition, he was asked whether he thought Roswell was a weather balloon. “They are covering it up, and American taxpayers should sue them. It’s so compartmentalized that probably a lot of the people working on it — reverse engineering projects — don’t even know what they’re working on,” he said.
The stories about UFOs and the Vatican primarily revolve around alleged encounters, documents, and speculation linking the Vatican to the study and investigation of unidentified flying objects. Which brings us to today’s whistleblower.
Documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell has stunned UFO enthusiasts with his piece of evidence on the phenomenon and information he received while studying UFOs. He is the one who shared the video footage showing the UFO as a transmedium vehicle. Additionally, he says that UFOs and aliens are just a small part of a larger reality along with other interesting and eye-opening statements in an extensive interview with Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal.
Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell is an American contemporary artist and investigative filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California. He did extensive research on nanotechnology, aerospace exploration, and exotic propulsion systems, as well as an in-depth examination into the life and discoveries of the enigmatic “Godfather of Conspiracy” John Lear.
Corbell has documented the surgical removal of alleged off-world alien implants, and has filmed NASA’s analysis of anomalous materials alleged to be physical evidence of extraterrestrial nano-technology from UFO landing sites. He has obtained deathbed confessions from former CIA and government intelligence officials who claim to expose the truth about UFOs and the worldwide coverup of the ultimate truth.
Jeremy Corbell with former Pentagon UFO official Luis Elizondo.
Corbell released the film “Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers” on Netflix, adding credibility to Lazar’s case. Moreover, his 2-hour interview with Curt Jaimungal discussed dozens of topics that added great information to the UAP/UFO phenomena. In 2021, he leaked a film of the US Navy photographed & filmed “spherical” shaped UFOs & advanced transmedium vehicles. In the footage shared by filmmaker and UFO enthusiast Jeremy Corbell, a flying object can be seen disappearing into the water off California.
In this interview, he covers a variety of controversial subjects including the release of the Tic-Tac videos by the government, possible government disinformation campaigns, and the claims of Bob Lazar that he once worked on backward engineering an alien craft.
UFOs and Aliens Just Small Part of ‘Larger Reality’
Corbell asserted in the interview that aliens and UFOs are a small part of a much larger reality of this mysterious and mind-boggling phenomenon.
He said:
“UFOs appear to be part of a larger phenomenon meaning UFOs are kind of an auxiliary implication of a much larger reality. So this idea that what we’re seeing are machines from other planets. I’m unconvinced what we may be seeing is an alternate reality. You know maybe it is something closer to dimensional travel.
There seems to be another version of reality that is occurring and that somehow once they pop through into our reality. And this is not just from a cursory look at the ufo phenomenon, this is from talking with thousands of close encounter eyewitnesses who tell me that this is something bigger than just flying machines.
To give you an example at Skinwalker Ranch. The report is that a piece of the sky opened up like a tear and out of this came “Beings” came “Craft.” So, UFOs is a symptom, it’s part of this alternate reality, The phenomenon as I call it. But it’s not just about UFOs represent this phenomenon.
I know this to be true that Skinwalker ranch is the best example of this because you have UFO phenomena. But you also have cattle mutilation which is often associated with lights in the sky. So, cattle mutilation is something a concrete example.
Cattle mutilation, Is this a UFO phenomenon or a government experiment, or is this a private corporation that’s going around mutilating these cows and draining their blood in the dead of the night? Nobody has ever been caught during these cattle mutilations.
They are the same across the board. They’re drained of blood. The farmers and people that are cattle ranchers see UFOs oftentimes during these mutilations so I can’t separate them.”
American billionaire Robert Bigelow shared his personal experiences and losses that prompted his interest in life after death, as well as UFOs. He talked about possible links between consciousness research and UFOs. He also talked about the risks of trying to establish communications with the unknown.
“That’s been mainly what I’ve been doing except for the skinwalker ranch thing for 20 years as the space world has been huge in my life to pursue the legitimate parochial kind of you know using fire engines rockets to get you there. We didn’t expect anything like this to happen and so there this is different. This is the holy grail and is different than the second holy grail. If the second one is ‘Beings’ (E.T.), then the first one: Is there any part of your consciousness that survives your bodily death? That’s a big deal. That’s a huge story. That’s gigantic.”
Dr. Travis Taylor’s Statement On Skinwalker Ranch
Dr. Taylor joined businessman Brandon Fugals’s team at Fugals’s infamous Skinwalker ranch three years ago and firmly believed he would be able to resolve the ranch’s assorted mysteries in short order. But the longer he stayed, the stranger things became. In his interview with investigative journalist George Knapp, he said: “You know, I had never seen a UFO until I got out there. Now, I have seen more UFOs now than you can count.” (Source)
In the surprisingly candid and wide-ranging interview, Dr. Taylor shared his opinions about the role of science in the pursuit of the unknown, his personal experiences with strange phenomena on Skinwalker Ranch, the physical effects of close encounter cases, and the mysterious “hitchhiker effect” that multiple UFO/paranormal eyewitnesses have reported.
In his opinion, this unexplained phenomenon can be different for people in regards to their brain activity. Hypothetically speaking, he said that the phenomenon can be connected with different planes in the universe. He added that he could go along with the idea of a portal but was not sure. He believes it is bizarre but there is some truth to it.
UFO Secrets Of The Third Reich (1994) - English - Obscure Documentary
UFO Secrets Of The Third Reich (1994) - English - Obscure Documentary
UFO Secrets Of The Third Reich (1994) – English – Obscure Documentary
“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” – 1 Peter 5:8
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” – Ephesians 6:12
More than 26 years later, mystery of Phoenix Lights still fascinates people
More than 26 years later, mystery of Phoenix Lights still fascinates people
(Screenshot)
PHOENIX — Wednesday,on March 13 marks the 26nd anniversary of one of the strangest things to ever happen in Arizona, the Phoenix Lights phenomenon.
Those who witnessed the bizarre lights described them as “otherworldly” and the phenomena is remembered fondly each year since it — whatever it was — was spotted.
According to the Mutual UFO Network, on March 13, 1997 between 7:30 and 10:30 p.m., thousands of people reported seeing strange, bright lights flying over Nevada, Arizona and part of Mexico.
“It wasn’t just one event, there were many events across the state for more than 12 hours,” Phoenix Lights Network spokeswoman Lynne Kitei said.
The first event was described as a V-shaped object the size of a commercial plane soaring through the sky.
One witness from Prescott who wished to be known only as J.R. said he watched a boomerang-shaped object glide over Granite Mountain, and it was at least a mile wide. He said there’s no way it was from this planet.
“We don’t have anything that big,” he said. “It was totally silent. I’ve never seen anything even close to the colors from the exhaust that propelled that thing. It was as big as downtown Prescott and completely blocked out the stars.”
The second event was reported by an unidentified former Arizona police officer who claimed he saw a series of stationary, orange and red lights hanging over the Valley.
The Phoenix Lights were treated as a joke at first by then-Gov. Fife Symington, who had an aide dress as an alien for a press conference about the phenomenon.
“This just goes to show that you guys are entirely too serious,” Symington said then.
However, Symington later did a complete 180 and not only said he saw the lights himself, but believed them to be of otherworldly origin.
“I’m a pilot, and I know just about every machine that flies,” Symington said. “It was bigger than anything that I’ve ever seen. It remains a great mystery. Other people saw it, responsible people. I don’t know why people would ridicule it.”
The orange and red lights were later explained away as flares dropped by military aircraft during a training exercise at the Barry Goldwater Range. However, the V-shaped object remains unexplained.
The Phoenix Lights have captured the imaginations of millions over the past two decades, including some people in Hollywood. The phenomenon was a key plot point of a found-footage horror film, “Phoenix Forgotten,” which was released last year.
The film told the story of Sarah Bishop, a documentary filmmaker who returned to Phoenix 20 years after her brother disappeared investigating the Phoenix Lights.
In the movie, Bishop came across a video recorded by her brother and two others about their experiences investigating the lights. The found-footage style of film was first popularized by the cult hit “Blair Witch Project.”
The event was also the focus of both a book and a documentary. The latter will be screened Sunday at the Harkins Theaters near Scottsdale Road and Shea Boulevard.
But those are not the only ties between the UFO and the silver screen. Actor Kurt Russell claimed he was the pilot that reported the phenomena.
“I was flying [my son] to go see his girlfriend, and we’re on approach, and I saw six lights over the airport — absolutely uniform — in a V-shape,” he said in a BBC interview last year.
UFO sightings are fairly common in the Phoenix area. There are reports of strange lights in the desert sky multiple times each year.
According to a 2014 Washington Post article, Arizona has the highest number of UFO sightings per capita in the country.
KTAR’s Jim Cross and Taylor Kinnerup and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Tom DeLonge, the former lead vocalist and guitarist of the popular band Blink-182, has always had a keen interest in UFOs. He has spent many years researching and studying the topic. He has even formed a company, To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science (or To The Stars) to investigate and promote research on UFOs and other related phenomena.
DeLonge’s To The Stars is behind publishing the three footages (captured in 2004 and 2015 by the US Navy) that were released in 2017 and 2018. They depict UFOs and include audio recordings of the pilots. These videos gained a lot of attention when they were released.
His interest in UFOs began at a young age. As a child, DeLonge was fascinated by stories of alien encounters and sightings. He used to spend hours reading books and watching documentaries about UFOs, and was particularly interested in the famous Roswell incident of 1947, where a UFO allegedly crashed in New Mexico.
DeLonge’s research led him to conclude that UFOs are real and that they are of extra-terrestrial origin. He believes that there is a wealth of evidence to support this conclusion, including reports of sightings and encounters, as well as physical evidence such as radar tracks and photographs.
During a podcast with Daniel P Carter of BBC Radio 1 Rock, DeLonge disclosed that he has a secret official Pentagon document from a UFO program that shows telekinesis is a real ability. He believes that telekinesis has been proven in the lab and that consciousness precedes matter, and once we discover that, life is going to get very interesting.
Tom DeLonge with Former Pentagon UFO official Luis Elizondo and Former Defense for Intelligence Chris Mellon
He suggests that we have the ability to heal ourselves and create new types of Sciences and Engineering tweets. He also believes that telepathy is going to be a part of it, and that they have found an area in the brain that they believe is where telepathy happens. He thinks that once people accept all of the stuff that they have been talking about, it’s going to change the world. Below is the transcript of his conversation with Carter:
“I always tell people there is this really cool document (that I have) that was a part of the UFO program where they were studying a kid in China who can move objects with his mind. He is around 10 years old, so they wanted to figure out how that’s possible, and they recreated it in the lab.
I have the whole Department of Defense document, and it goes through it and says they were able to put a piece of paper in a glass jar, screw the lid on it, and move the paper through the lid and then six feet across the floor, all with their mind. 100 people can do this, only 10 have mastered it, and it was just wild.
So telekinesis has been proven in the lab, but no one knows about it. I’m like, to be able to move things with the force, like in Star Wars, is a big deal. It sounds ridiculous, that’s why, and within the current paradigm, it sounds ridiculous. I’m sure, or you won’t remember, but we had a conversation at the Reading Festival many years ago where I think I probably came across as a total maniac, even to someone as open-minded as yourself. But, I was talking about reading a bunch of different things, which means nothing, but I was looking at different realms of consciousness because that’s the basis of everything I believe.
I believe that consciousness precedes matter and I highly agree with you. Because the current paradigm is that consciousness is a facet that’s created by matter, which is just this weird thing that’s come about because our brains are complicated and that’s nonsense. I think it’s exactly the opposite and once we discover that stuff, life is going to get very interesting.
Once we discover that mind over matter, not the other way around, we will have the ability to heal ourselves, create new types of Sciences and Engineering, and become a civilization where telepathy is a part of it. I believe that’s all going to happen. There is one person, who was up for the Nobel last year, is one of the top geneticists in the world, at one of the Ivy League schools that we are working with, who worked on part of the UFO program at the Pentagon. I was talking to him, and they found an area in the brain that they believe is where telepathy happens, and he believes he can create something to enhance it by a thousand times, like some type of drug that targets that area of the brain.
So, that’s the thing, people do think it’s ridiculous, but not the people who have an open enough mind to research and jump in. These guys are like World leading PhDs, and that’s been the kind of the story of my life, is everything I’ve told, even on Rogan, is not made up, it’s coming from somewhere, and I can’t say where it’s coming from, but at the end of the day, it’s all real. I think it’s going to be a very exciting time once people accept all of the stuff that we’ve been talking about here on this interview, I think it’s going to really change the world.”
Moreover, as in the January 2022 Thrasher Magazine issue, DeLonge was asked: “Would you say UFOs are driven by aliens or do you think it’s more like a drone?” He replied: “I think both.” He suggested that it is important to note that while studying UFOs, we must be aware of the fact that they could be remotely controlled and may have occupants. (Source)
“I think the biggest misconception is that they are coming from other planets. Evidence doesn’t really support that. The evidence supports that it’s dimensional and that it’s parallel timelines that exist with frequency. It’s really complicated, different, and interesting. But once you understand that, you have no way out of reexamining the religious world and wondering what the Star of Bethlehem really was,” DeLonge explained.
Further, he was asked if UFOs or aliens are coming from the oceans. He said that while the origin of UFOs is a separate conversation, it is believed that they do exist in our oceans. With the use of sensors placed throughout the ocean to detect submarines and other objects, it has been reported that there have been sightings of unidentified submerged objects (USOs).
In one instance, a helicopter pilot was testing torpedoes, and a navy SEAL was sent down on a wire to retrieve the torpedo. However, as soon as he touched the water, a large craft came underneath him, took the torpedo, and left at the high speed. The navy SEAL was in shock and panicked, requesting to be pulled up immediately. Although there were initial plans to have the witnesses speak on television, they later backed out, and some of them testified to the committee. Nonetheless, similar incidents continue to occur frequently, and it is, indeed, extraordinary.
DeLonge’s views on UFOs have been met with both praise and criticism. Some people believe that his research is valuable and that it is important to investigate and study UFOs in an open and honest manner. Others believe that DeLonge’s opinion is misguided and that there is no evidence to support his conclusions.
Despite the criticism, DeLonge remains committed to his research and wants to continue promoting the truth about UFOs. He believes that UFOs are real and that they are of extra-terrestrial origin, and that the truth about UFOs should be investigated and studied openly and honestly. Through his work To The Stars, DeLonge hopes to bring more attention to the topic of UFOs and to promote research and discussion about this fascinating phenomenon.
The UFO Invasion of Italy in 1978: What Were They After?
The UFO Invasion of Italy in 1978: What Were They After?
Bibhu Dev Misra
A bizarre series of UFO related events unfolded over Italian skies in the year 1978. Throughout the year, and extending into January 1979, hundreds of UFOs sightings were reported by people across the country. Richard Hall – one of the most prominent ufologists – states that more than 500 cases are on record for that year, with at least 130 being close encounters and 25 involve humanoid entities. The sightings led to an unprecedented bout of public discussions in Italy, some even in the Parliament. Many reports of sightings came in from the officers of the army, police and navy, which prompted the New York Times to run a story on December 17, 1978, with the headline, “Italian Skies Peppered By Lighted Doughnuts — Some Say UFO's”.
The report stated,
“The skies of Italy, it seems, are full of OVNIS, the Italian version of U.F.O.'s. Unidentified flying objects that give off green, red or white lights and have a doughnut-like hole in the middle have been reported and, in some cases, photographed, at dozens of places between Palermo, Sicily, and Milan, in the north…Newspapers all over the country have been getting calls for weeks — so many that Paese Sera, the Communist newspaper in Rome, said it might have to consider a daily column about the sightings… The most alarming item was from San Benedetto del Tronto, a fishing village on the Adriatic’ near Pescara, where two fishermen in a boat were reported to have disappeared without a trace on a clear night. Fishermen in the area refused to go out at night after that, and there is talk of an “Adriatic Triangle,” reminiscent of the legendary “Bermuda Triangle,” where ships and planes are rumored to have disappeared for generations.”
No-one really knows why a wave of UFOs suddenly decided to swoop down on the country in 1978. Was it just a large group of interstellar travelers stopping by in batches to have a look around the country, or something more involved? Before we speculate on those questions, let’s review some of the intriguing cases of that year.
The UFO sightings peaked between the 14th and 20th of September, 1978, with around 120 cases being reported. One of the events occurred in the province of Sienna on 17th September. It was investigated by Dr. Roberto Pinotti, a leading authority of Italian ufology and the Vice-President of the UFO research organization called CUN (Centro Ufologico Nazionale). Dr. Pinotti’s report was published in the Flying Saucer Review magazine in 1979.[1]
The incident involved a person called Rivo Faralli (25y), a barber by profession, who had just left his mother’s house at around 9 pm on his Fiat 127, and moved a few meters, when the car stalled and the electric system stopped functioning. Rivo saw a strange, shining object land in front of the car. It had a disc-shaped lower part of red color, while the upper part was hemispherical and of glowing orange color. The light from the craft illuminated the surroundings. It stood on the road on three iridescent beams of light, and seemed to hover in the air at the height of the Fiat 127’s bonnet. The object was around three meters in diameter and it occupied all the roadway. Dr. Pinotti writes,
Suddenly, on the object, a "port" opened in the manner of a double door, one part to the left, the other to the right. Two beings emerged and descended in a fluctuating motion until they were about 10 centimeters from the ground. They were about 1.00 to 1.10 meters (3.3 – 3.6 feet) in height. They wore green “coveralls”…big helmets, and a part of these helmets was transparent. The fronts of the helmets had what seemed to be two slender cylindrical protuberances like springs, or similar helical structures. The creatures’ skin seemed also to be green, and while their faces were to a degree human-like, they were lean with bony, arched cheeks, regular noses and thin lipless mouths. Mr. Faralli could not see their eyes and ears as they were hidden in a shaded zone.
They walked towards the car. Their gait was awkward as they encircled the vehicle. They seemed to have more interest in the car than in its owner, and when they were behind him he could still see them by the driving mirror…After completing this round trip, they headed back for the UFO in which they ascended with the same fluctuating motion as they had displayed when descending...The port shut, and from the lower part of the craft's “body”, came two very intense beams, whereupon the craft rose vertically for about 10 meters, then shot away in level flight leaving a bright horizontal trail.
As the craft disappeared, the car's headlights came back on, and since a gear was still engaged, the car started to move forward without any action by Rivo Faralli.
The description of the UFO occupants, in this case, is closely aligned with the stereotypical notion of aliens in the early phase of the UFO phenomenon as “little green men” with antennae on their heads. The humanoids appeared to “float in the air”, which is a theme that continued to repeat throughout the 1978 phenomenon. Their act of examining the Fiat car, as if they had never seen such a contraption before, seems to suggest that they were not regular visitors to our planet. Either this was their first visit, or the first one since the invention of the locomotive.
Another sighting occurred on the next day, 18th September 1978, at about 03:30 pm in the locality of Melaria in the Udine province in Italy. This incident was investigated by ufologist Antonio Chiumiento.[2] It involved a man called Giorgio Filiputti (47y), who was fishing on the banks of the Corna River. Suddenly, he heard a kind of whistling sound, which was continuous and high-pitched, accompanied by a strong wind which made fishing impossible, because the water was striated with wavelets. Giorgio climbed the slope to check what was going on. Arriving at the top, he was amazed to see a strange object, nearly 25 meters in front of him. It had the shape of a disc, about 4 or 5 meters diameter, 3 or 4 meters in height, and topped by a cupola. It was supported by three large landing feet approx. 1.50 meters in height. The craft was made of a “golden-silvery” metal, which was shining in the sun. Antonio Chiumiento writes that,
Almost immediately, a being came out from behind the cupola and walked on the edge of the saucer. He was approx. 1.30 meters (4.3 feet) tall, wore a very tight-fitting outfit, of a color and brightness similar to those of the saucer, which let only see his face from the forehead to the chin. The one piece outfit was entirely covered with “painted” fish scales, of varied sizes, larger upwards and decreasing towards the ends.
The face was initially reported as “yellow”, then later “between an olive-greenish and bronze color”, with almond eyes, stretched towards the place where ears would have been, those being nonvisible because of the outfit. The mouth and the nose were completely normal…When the occupant saw the witness, he seemed to hesitate, as if he were frightened and surprised by the latter’s presence…
After having immobilized itself a few moments, the being again walked on the saucer's wing with flexible and nimble steps, then stopped to touch the crescent shape protrusion. During this work, perhaps a repair, made by actuating a lever near the cupola or a gadget in the shape of a half-moon or horseshoe, he frequently glanced at the witness. He then disappeared again behind the cupola.
Very few seconds later, there were was a rumbling sound, a rumble as deafening as the thunder, a whistling sound, and the craft rose vertically while retracting its landing gear very fast. It slowly rose up to ten meters, and at this time the witness noticed the presence of a rhombus-shaped grid on the underside of the UFO, dark or almost black, from which came out a blue flame. Then the object quickly tilted and moved away at a very high speed towards the south-west, taking the appearance of a ball of fire of gold color.
In contrast to the UFO that was spotted the previous day in Sienna, this craft was slightly bigger, as was its occupant. Interestingly, the humanoid was surprised to see Giorgio near the craft, and kept a watch on him, possibly to make sure that he won’t be attacked while he was carrying out the repair. Clearly, this was not your regular sci-fi alien on a quest of galactic domination. He was careful and cautious and was not sure of what to expect from humans.
The humanoids seen during the 1978 UFO wave in Italy were predominantly dwarf entities with a range of magical abilities. Some witnesses said that they float in the air, a few centimeters above the ground, while they are walking or bounding. The humanoid beings were also spotted inside bright orbs of light moving in the sky. Incidentally, stories of humanoid entities transforming into orbs of light and vice-versa have been reported by the indigenous Maya people of Palenque and Uxmal, as documented by the author Ardy Sixkiller Clarke in her books. A few accounts from Italy shed more light on the strange powers of these mysterious beings.
Italian ufologist Maurizio Verga reported an incident in the Lumières Dans La Nuit magazine in 1981, concerning an event that occurred in Villammare di Sapri, Salerno, Italy.[3] He wrote that, On April 25, 1978, Mrs. Constantina Imbibo (26y) saw an enormous orange sphere, as large as the trees, which then started to shrink in size. When the sphere reached a diameter of approximately 1.5 meters, a humanoid resembling a “gnome” came out of there, wearing an orange outfit with dark orange boots. His face appeared completely human, he wore a conical cap or device, and his lower lips were very thin. He moved in short steps and bounds. Soon, the sphere shrank in size and disappeared. When the being was within 50 meters from Mrs. Imbibo, she called her husband. Immediately, the gnome hid behind a truck, and disappeared in a slight fog which persisted a few seconds.
A similar incident was recorded by Albert Rosales in his “1978 Humanoid Reports”. In Adrano, Catania, Italy, on June 25, 1978, late in the afternoon, several local residents were returning from an expedition to the nearby volcanic Mt Etna. They stopped their car as they noticed what appeared to be two headlights following behind them. As the lights approached they noticed that they were two human-like figures that glowed in a very bright white light. Also each carried in their right hands two luminous flashing objects. Terrified, the witnesses fled the area.
Albert Rosales recorded another intriguing event in his “1978 Humanoid Reports” sourced from the SUF archives. On August 28, 1978, at 02:30 a.m., near Chieti, Italy, a baker named Amerigo Rocci was on his way to work when his car broke down. While checking under the hood, a powerful bright light illuminated the area around him. He then noticed five strange figures, as tall as an eight-year-old child. The figures moved in unison in synchronized movements and appeared to float 25 cm above the road. The figures wore a dark, gray, tight-fitting diver's suit and they had a large hood with a kind of antenna. As the beings were about 500 meters away, Rocci was not able to identify any facial features. The dwarf entities glided away in single file from the witness, who noticed that the last figure was carrying something resembling a “shovel”- like apparatus.
Who knows how many such bizarre events occur after midnight and go unreported! It is odd enough that the humanoid dwarfs were floating a few cm above the road and walking in a single file, but what on earth were they doing with a shovel in the middle of the night? Grave diggers? Treasure hunters? Or some studious aliens collecting soil and plant samples?
Another entry in Albert Rosales’s “1978 Humanoid Reports” records a strange event that went down in San Vito Chietino, Italy, on December 23, 1978. At around 20:30 pm, the Bucco family was returning from visiting relatives when a dazzling light began to follow their vehicle. The light overtook the vehicle and the vehicle suddenly stopped without the driver applying the brakes. Then, at the same time a strange little man crossed road in front of the vehicle in bounding jumps. Mr. Bucco thought he had struck the figure with the car. The figure then quickly bounded away and disappeared into a nearby pine grove. While Francesco and Fiorentina Bucco saw only one humanoid, the other two passengers in the vehicle reported seeing two. The figure or figures wore brown astronaut like suits, large helmets with black square visors, and 5-digit white gloves. The beings were about 1 meter in height, and moved over the road in a strange unison, robot-like manner, floating 20-35 cm above the road, as if moving and bouncing on an invisible cushion.
In case you happen to meet one of these little child-like beings in the middle of the night and entertain the idea of lifting them up and taking them to the nearest pub to show them off - abolish that thought immediately, for it could prove to be very dangerous, as Alfonso D'Aviero found out on the night of December 16, 1978.
Moreno Tambellini documented a humanoid sighting event in his book,4 taken from the SUF archives. In Francavilla, Italy, on December 16, 1978, late in the afternoon, Alfredo D'Aviero was returning home on his Garelli 50 motorcycle, when he suddenly saw two “small strange beings” with small and round eyes. They had their arms behind their back and seemed to laugh, and one of the two had his jaw twisted a little. They were clad in a white-silver outfit and around the head they had a tight-fitted tissue which covered the ears. Their legs did not have any knee, and were rigid like two sticks. Aviero offered them cigarettes and kakis, but they refused. He decided to take them to Francavilla as proof of his experience. He was going to try that when a dazzling flash of light neutralized his action, and when he reopened his eyes both the beings were not there anymore.
These anecdotes give us an idea of the impressive array of “magical” powers that these dwarf humanoids command. They can disappear, float in the air a few centimeters above the ground, transform into luminous orbs of light and defend themselves against perceived threats by paralyzing the enemy or making him unconscious. No stories of abductions or telepathic communications, however, were reported during this UFO wave in Italy.
When the UFO phenomenon started burgeoning in 1978, most Italians were not aware of UFOs or aliens, except for a few researchers. The people in general, including the press, police and the bureaucracy, were taken by surprise and did not know what to think or how to react. Many reports of UFO sightings were filed by police officers, which assured other witnesses that they were not going bonkers, and encouraged them to come forward with their experiences. The press was more than happy to give coverage to these stories, and no-one, generally speaking, tried to hush up or obfuscate what was going on. As a result, we have a large catalogue of sightings over a short span of time, which lowers the probability of the stories being hallucinations or fabrications. These sightings provide us with a reliable and interesting peek into the early UFO phenomenon.
One naturally wonders why the UFOs decided to come in a wave over a period of one year in 1978. The fact that something like this had never happened before or after 1978 seems to suggest that the aliens got what they were looking for. Or, perhaps, they were so disappointed by the Earthlings that they did not feel like returning. What stands out from these experiences is that the humanoid beings were generally curious and may have come on a reconnaissance mission to study our planet, and to collect samples to take back with them.
Generally we tend think of aliens as extraterrestrial beings who come here from some other galaxy or stellar system, but we cannot ignore the possibility that some of them may be subterrestrials i.e. beings who live under the surface of the Earth. The majority of witnesses during the 1978 UFO wave in Italy reported dwarf, humanoid beings, and the legends of many cultures tell us of a race of human-like dwarfs, who reside in lavishly decorated subterranean chambers. They can shape shift, fly through the air and become invisible at will. Their magical powers were said to reside in their cap or head-dress that they wore at all times. Being expert blacksmiths, they could fashion magical contraptions such as flying machines. The dwarfs were one of the members of the “faerie folk” that include an ensemble of supernatural beings including elves, fairies and others. In popular mythology, elves were sometimes said to have green skin. In fact, the elf helpers of Santa Claus, who are depicted as small, green-clad beings with pointy ears and wearing pointed hats, is a continuation of such folk beliefs. If the “little green men” reported in UFO sightings are various classes of subterrestrials, then it would imply that the faerie folk are intimately tied up with the UFO phenomenon.
In Italy, and particularly in Sicily, there used to be a widespread belief in the fairies during the medieval period. But, after the infamous “witch trials”, contact between humans and the fairies ceased, and all such stories slowly drifted into the realm of folklore and myth. In Sicily, the faerie folk were called Doñas de fuera. They could make contact with humans, mostly women deemed to have “sweet blood”, whom they took to Benevento, by mounting them on magical, flying goats. Between 1579 and 1651 there were a number of witch trials in Sicily, in which the accused were exiled or jailed, but not sentenced to death. The witch trials in Sicily were relatively mild, because the local population held a positive view of the faerie phenomenon. The belief that the fairies were benevolent creatures remained in Sicily long after the Inquisition, but have been forgotten in the modern era.
What if the UFO wave of 1978 was simply an attempt by the faerie folk to explore the world after a long period of isolation and hibernation? It is said that, “time” in the “otherworld” passes very slowly, in which case a period of 400-odd years might simply be a long nap for these beings. If that were the case, the faerie folk would have been very surprised to see how the world has changed since the medieval ages. In either case, whether extraterrestrials or subterrestrials, the 1978 UFO invasion of Italy remains one of the most interesting events of ufology, which is not as widely known or discussed as it should be.
End Notes
"Landing, E.M. Effects and Entities at Torrita di Sienna", article by Dr Roberto Pinotti in the ufology magazine Flying Saucer Review (FSR), U-K., volume 25, #4, November 1979.
Antonio Chiumiento, "Alieni Tra Noi", Nuovi Autori publishers, Italy, 2004.
Maurizio Verga, Lumières Dans La Nuit (LDLN), France, vol 207, pages 31,32,33, August-September 1981.
Moreno Tambellini "Alieni in Italia - 50 Anni di Incontri Ravvicinati: 1945-1995", published by Edizioni Mediterranee, Italy, 1996, page 134.
Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell Claimed ‘UFOs & Aliens Are Just Small Part of Larger Reality’
Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell Claimed ‘UFOs & Aliens Are Just Small Part of Larger Reality’
Documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell has stunned UFO enthusiasts with his piece of evidence on the phenomenon and information he received while studying UFOs. He is the one who shared the video footage showing the UFO as a transmedium vehicle. Additionally, he says that UFOs and aliens are just a small part of a larger reality along with other interesting and eye-opening statements in an extensive interview with Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal.
Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell is an American contemporary artist and investigative filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California. He did extensive research on nanotechnology, aerospace exploration, and exotic propulsion systems, as well as an in-depth examination into the life and discoveries of the enigmatic “Godfather of Conspiracy” John Lear.
Corbell has documented the surgical removal of alleged off-world alien implants, and has filmed NASA’s analysis of anomalous materials alleged to be physical evidence of extraterrestrial nano-technology from UFO landing sites. He has obtained deathbed confessions from former CIA and government intelligence officials who claim to expose the truth about UFOs and the worldwide coverup of the ultimate truth.
Jeremy Corbell with former Pentagon UFO official Luis Elizondo.
Corbell released the film “Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers” on Netflix, adding credibility to Lazar’s case. Moreover, his 2-hour interview with Curt Jaimungal discussed dozens of topics that added great information to the UAP/UFO phenomena. In 2021, he leaked a film of the US Navy photographed & filmed “spherical” shaped UFOs & advanced transmedium vehicles. In the footage shared by filmmaker and UFO enthusiast Jeremy Corbell, a flying object can be seen disappearing into the water off California.
In this interview, he covers a variety of controversial subjects including the release of the Tic-Tac videos by the government, possible government disinformation campaigns, and the claims of Bob Lazar that he once worked on backward engineering an alien craft.
UFOs and Aliens Just Small Part of ‘Larger Reality’
Corbell asserted in the interview that aliens and UFOs are a small part of a much larger reality of this mysterious and mind-boggling phenomenon.
He said:
“UFOs appear to be part of a larger phenomenon meaning UFOs are kind of an auxiliary implication of a much larger reality. So this idea that what we’re seeing are machines from other planets. I’m unconvinced what we may be seeing is an alternate reality. You know maybe it is something closer to dimensional travel.
There seems to be another version of reality that is occurring and that somehow once they pop through into our reality. And this is not just from a cursory look at the ufo phenomenon, this is from talking with thousands of close encounter eyewitnesses who tell me that this is something bigger than just flying machines.
To give you an example at Skinwalker Ranch. The report is that a piece of the sky opened up like a tear and out of this came “Beings” came “Craft.” So, UFOs is a symptom, it’s part of this alternate reality, The phenomenon as I call it. But it’s not just about UFOs represent this phenomenon.
I know this to be true that Skinwalker ranch is the best example of this because you have UFO phenomena. But you also have cattle mutilation which is often associated with lights in the sky. So, cattle mutilation is something a concrete example.
Cattle mutilation, Is this a UFO phenomenon or a government experiment, or is this a private corporation that’s going around mutilating these cows and draining their blood in the dead of the night? Nobody has ever been caught during these cattle mutilations.
They are the same across the board. They’re drained of blood. The farmers and people that are cattle ranchers see UFOs oftentimes during these mutilations so I can’t separate them.”
American billionaire Robert Bigelow shared his personal experiences and losses that prompted his interest in life after death, as well as UFOs. He talked about possible links between consciousness research and UFOs. He also talked about the risks of trying to establish communications with the unknown.
“That’s been mainly what I’ve been doing except for the skinwalker ranch thing for 20 years as the space world has been huge in my life to pursue the legitimate parochial kind of you know using fire engines rockets to get you there. We didn’t expect anything like this to happen and so there this is different. This is the holy grail and is different than the second holy grail. If the second one is ‘Beings’ (E.T.), then the first one: Is there any part of your consciousness that survives your bodily death? That’s a big deal. That’s a huge story. That’s gigantic.”
Dr. Travis Taylor’s Statement On Skinwalker Ranch
Dr. Taylor joined businessman Brandon Fugals’s team at Fugals’s infamous Skinwalker ranch three years ago and firmly believed he would be able to resolve the ranch’s assorted mysteries in short order. But the longer he stayed, the stranger things became. In his interview with investigative journalist George Knapp, he said: “You know, I had never seen a UFO until I got out there. Now, I have seen more UFOs now than you can count.” (Source)
In the surprisingly candid and wide-ranging interview, Dr. Taylor shared his opinions about the role of science in the pursuit of the unknown, his personal experiences with strange phenomena on Skinwalker Ranch, the physical effects of close encounter cases, and the mysterious “hitchhiker effect” that multiple UFO/paranormal eyewitnesses have reported.
In his opinion, this unexplained phenomenon can be different for people in regards to their brain activity. Hypothetically speaking, he said that the phenomenon can be connected with different planes in the universe. He added that he could go along with the idea of a portal but was not sure. He believes it is bizarre but there is some truth to it.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
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