UFOs continue to be a matter of open–and frequent–discussion in the U.S. media, with even President Donald Trump now weighing in on the matter.

When asked about unidentified flying objects during a recent interview with ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos, Trump responded with little interest in the matter.

Saying that he wants the U.S. Navy and other agencies “to think what they think,” the U.S. President acknowledged that the military was saying they were seeing flying objects, but that he was not a particular believer yet.

Interestingly, Trump did seem to acknowledge that there had been a briefing or some other kind of meeting about the matter.

“I did have one very brief meeting on it,” Trump told Stephanopolous. He didn’t elaborate further on the nature of the meeting, or what it might have entailed.

Though little was said on the subject during the exchange, it is a notable first indication of U.S. President’s mindset toward the subject, and the fact that there has been at least limited discussion of the topic at the White House. Not surprisingly, the passing statement about a meeting has been receiving more attention than Trump’s broader statements that indicate an apparent lack of interest in the subject.

The questions followed recent news stories reporting on the fact that the Navy has announced it will institute new guidelines for how to report encounters with aircraft they can’t identify. According to a New York Times piece published in late May, many of these objects have been encountered by Navy pilots, and appear to possess advanced capabilities that include propulsion systems that may help keep them aloft for hours–if not days–on end.

Campaigning leading up to the 2016 U.S. Presidential election saw what was arguably the most public discussion of the UFO subject by a leading contender in the race. However, at that time it had not been Donald Trump making such comments, but Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton, who discussed the issue in a notable exchange with comedian Jimmy Kimmel on his program (there is evidence, however, that the exchange was at least partially intended as a joke by Kimmel).

The recent exchange between Trump and Stephanopoulos appears to be the first time since taking office that Donald Trump has made statements of any particular significance in relation to the UFO subject. And although President Trump doesn’t appear to be sold on the subject himself, he nonetheless expressed faith in the capabilities of Navy and USAF pilots and their testimony about these incidents.

“I think our great pilots would know,” Trump said to Stephanopolous, “and some of them see things a little bit different from the past.”

“We’re watching, and you’ll be the first to know,” he seemed to equivocate.

As I mentioned in my previous article, I noted that I have a new book out right now: Flying Saucers from the Kremlin. The subtitle: UFOs, Russian Meddling, Soviet Spies and Cold War Secrets. I thought, today, I would share with you an early example of how the Russians stuck their collective noses into what was afoot with UFOs in the United States. As well as investigating what appeared to be legitimate, mystifying UFO encounters in the summer of 1947, the FBI also studied the possibility that the Russians were recruiting communists within the United States to provoke fear – and were using aspects of the UFO enigma to heighten that fear. Barely a month after the Kenneth Arnold situation erupted and caused worldwide amazement, FBI Special Agent S.W. Reynolds had a face-to-face chat with Brigadier George F. Schulgen, of the Intelligence Branch of the Army Air Corps Intelligence. The reason was, in part, to address that controversial matter of potential Russian manipulation of the UFO issue. In fact, it was this theory – rather than matters relative to aliens or to highly classified U.S. military programs – that was at the forefront of Brigadier Schulgen’s thinking.

FBI records show Schulgen informed Reynolds that “the first reported sightings might have been by individuals of Communist sympathies with the view to causing hysteria and fear of a secret weapon [italics mine].” Schulgen’s team suspected that many flying saucer sightings were not what they seemed to be. Rather, they were completely fabricated tales – with no real UFO component attached to them at all, but driven by a Soviet operation to maximize deep concern in the United States. The Russian program had begun. On August 14, 1947, the FBI got word – via newspaper articles contained in “the Los Angeles papers” of the day – that, to quote the FBI, “Soviet espionage agents had been instructed to determine the facts relative to the flying discs. The article carried a Washington date-line and indicated that Red espionage agents had been ordered to solve the question of flying discs, the Russians being of the opinion that this might be some new form of defense perfected by the American military.”

It should also be noted, however, that the FBI was worried that those same Russian agents cited in the L.A. press were actually in the United States for other reasons. Namely, to determine how effectively they – the Soviets – were disrupting the U.S. by conjuring up bogus tales of unidentified flying objects. When questioned by the media on this matter, the FBI stated that it had no information relative to such a story. Uh-huh. FBI Special Agent D.M. Ladd, of the Bureau’s Domestic Intelligence Division said that “in the event any inquiries were made concerning such a story, that the story should be flatly denied in so far as the FBI was concerned.” Nevertheless, behind closed doors elements of the FBI were still speculating on the astounding theory that many UFO reports were complete fabrications; fanciful tales put together at the behest of influential and powerful figures in the Moscow Kremlin – to give it its full name – which is the official residence of the President of the Russian Federation.

While addressing the same time-frame – the latter part of the 1940s – we see evidence that the U.S. Government chose to follow the lead of the Soviets when it came to the matter of manipulating the UFO controversy. That’s to say, U.S. Intelligence realized that if the Soviets could theoretically use bogus UFO tales as a means to try and keep the American people in a state of concern, then why couldn’t Uncle Sam do exactly the same – but with their operations aimed at the citizens of the likes of Moscow and Saint Petersburg? Evidence that the U.S. intelligence community entered into the very same realm of mind-games that the Russians initiated, can be found in the pages of a Project Grudge “Technical Report” on UFOs; Grudge being one of the early UFO projects of the U.S. military. The report was prepared by the U.S. Air Force in August 1949. The writer of the lengthy Project Grudge document states in part the following: “Upon eliminating several additional incidents due to vagueness and duplication, there remain 228 incidents, which are considered in this report. Thirty of these could not be explained, because there was found to be insufficient evidence on which to base a conclusion.”

It’s the following words, however, that really stand out. The military made a recommendation that “[the] Psychological Warfare Division and other governmental agencies interested in psychological warfare be informed of the results of this study[italics mine].” Quite possibly, it was this document – more than any other of that particular era – that led the U.S. Government to initiate a highly secret program to manipulate the flying saucer phenomenon and mess with the minds of Soviet Premier, Joseph Stalin, and his goons. Take a look at how the Pentagon defines psychological warfare. It is, in the military’s own words, “The planned use of propaganda and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of hostile foreign groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives [italics mine].”

What this demonstrates, is that the earliest U.S. military-controlled UFO research programs weren’t just about investigating sightings of strange things in the sky. The operations were also focused on creating utterly bogus flying saucer-themed stories; amazing yarns born out of psychological warfare operations and ingenious propaganda. The Russians were doing it to our people, and we were doing likewise to theirs. And what a strange and twisted game it all became.

While we in the U.S. continue to marvel that The New York Times published an investigative report on the U.S. military pilots who have seen UFOs, El Tiempo (The Time), the largest daily news source in Colombia, has gone one step further. On June 11, 2019, El Tiempo published a report about “strange beings measuring more than two meters tall, speaking with a robotic voice, and dressed in black” in Guasimal, a small farming town near Zarzal on the west coast of Colombia.

“According to locals, the only thing that changed their daily lives is what happened in December 2012, when these beings began to be observed. Even today, these humanoids are still reported.”

In a U.S. city, a report like this on the national news would eventually lead to books, a documentary, an annual festival and possibly a movie with a Dancing with the Stars wannabe. However, back in 2012, there seem to have been some local media reports and a few videos (here and here) made by UFO investigators, but not much national interest in eyewitness testimonies of an estimated 300 laborers who claimed to have seen “disc-shaped objects” from which these “humanoids” emerged.

According to El Tiempo, it appears that sightings of the tall humanoids continued in the town periodically over the next six years, but attention never rose beyond urban legend status because there was no video or photographic evidence of them. That changed somewhat in December 2018 when farmer Diego Mondragón recorded his encounter with the beings who were seen at on a neighbor’s property.

“I realized what was happening because I had already had contact with them, but some of those on the farm were scared and there was a shot. I left the house and approached the fence of the farmhouse to tell them that they [the extraterrestrials] were calm, peaceful.”

Mondragón claims that because he had been in contact with these beings before, the five on his neighbor’s farm trusted him enough to speak to him in those strange robotic voices and let him record their message on his cellphone.

“We have been allowed to come and deliver a sacrificial message for humanity. It was a message of love and allegiance . Love one another because the human race will soon be wiped out ; take these warnings into account. “

There’s no indication in the El Tiempo article that the reporter heard the recording or is merely repeating Mondragón’s testimony, which moved on to more details about the “extraterrestrials.”

“Then, the supposed to be coming from another planet declared that they lived in the region of Guasimal for 60 years, where they claim to have an underground base of 5000 square meters, a space where they would house a mothership. They would come from the planet Orion.”

Police officer Manuel Velandia Márquez told El Tiempo that he responded to a disturbance call and claims he saw “these silhouettes about 2 meters high” and also recorded their message. According to Márquez:

“(They were) more human beings than we are. They will preserve something of humanity and prepare us for future events.”

Again, El Tiempo doesn’t say how he knows this nor whether his audio recording was played for the reporter. It contacted Cristian Ramos, a ufologist from the Contact Ovni Colombia group, who says he investigated the initial sighting in 2013, talked to Diego Mondragón, who was one of the original witnesses, and claims to have seen the ETs himself.

“In the distance, about 200 meters, there was a silhouette of about 2.30 meters, a thick build, black clothes, a black suit, boots. He wavered from left to right, never remained motionless. He watched us.”

Ramos says the beings had a hostile reaction when he pulled out a camera, which may explain why there are no photos or video of them or even their silhouettes. Seven years later, there’s still nothing more than numerous witness testimonies and the alleged audio recordings. El Tiempo says that local authorities refuse to deny the stories.

What should we make of the alleged humanoids of Guasimal? The witness accounts are as numerous and as detailed as many in the U.S. whose locations have celebrated them with festivals and documentaries. The fact that The New York Times published a serious report on the Air Force UFO sightings gave them credence. Should El Tiempo’s report do the same for the accounts of the Guasimal humanoids?

There have been many discussions and arguments recently about the difficulties facing those in the ufology, cryptid and paranormal fields when trying to gain acceptance and credibility. This case offers another good example.

As of June 12, I have a new book out. Its title: Flying Saucers from the Kremlin. The subtitle: UFOs, Russian Meddling, Soviet Spies & Cold War Secrets. It’s a study of how and why Russian Intelligence used the UFO phenomenon as a means to try and create fear, hysteria and paranoia in the West. Russian meddling: they are two words that just about everyone has come to know very well in the last few years. Only a fool – or someone with an agenda of a sinister kind – would deny that such meddling occurred. And on a large scale. It clearly did. The outrageous, almost flagrant, ways in which the Russians unfortunately succeeded in manipulating the United States’ political arena in 2016 are out there for one and all to see. Without the hacking, without the Russians’ widespread use of social media to influence the mindset of the American public, and without the shameful “no evidence of meddling” assertions of certain factions of the right-wing media, the United States would be in a far better shape than it is right now.

There’s little doubt that the Russians were practically in a state of glee when President Donald Trump chose not to take any significant action against the Russians for their intrusive activities. As CNN noted on July 16, 2018: “U.S. President Donald Trump, in a stunning rebuke of the U.S. intelligence community, declined on Monday to endorse the U.S. government’s assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, saying he doesn’t ‘see any reason why’ Russia would be responsible. Instead, Trump – standing alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin – touted Putin’s vigorous denial and pivoted to complaining about the Democratic National Committee’s server and missing emails from Hillary Clinton’s personal account.”

Still on the matter of Putin, let’s not forget that from 1975 to 1991 he was employed as a foreign intelligence officer in the KGB. History.com state: “The KGB was the primary security agency for the Soviet Union from 1954 until its collapse in 1991. The KGB served a multi-faceted role outside of and within the Soviet Union, working as both an intelligence agency and a force of ‘secret police.’ It was also tasked with some of the same functions as the Department of Homeland Security in the United States today, safeguarding the country from domestic and foreign threats.”

What all of this tells us is that the Russian government is not our friend, it’s not our buddy. It’s a threat to our nation – and to the West as a whole. Short of a nuclear war (which neither side could ever possibly win), the Russians have done whatever they could to try and ensure military superiority over the United States and its allies. For decades – and particularly so when the Cold War was at its height – the Russians sought to find more and more ways to erode our way of life. In the latter part of the 1940s, the Soviet Union embarked on a program designed to use the UFO phenomenon as a dangerous weapon. Not by attacking us with real flying saucers. But, by using the lore, the legend, and the belief-systems that surround the UFO subject.

I should note that Flying Saucers from the Kremlin is not a skeptical look at the UFO mystery. Just because, for years, the Russians planted and circulated numerous bogus stories of UFOs, doesn’t mean there isn’t a real mystery to be solved. As I personally see it, there certainly is a genuine puzzle to figure out. It remains steadfastly unresolved. It’s important that I make that distinction: there are real UFOs and there are deliberately-crafted lies concerning UFOs. Maybe, the saucers are the products of government agencies. They could be the creations of extraterrestrials. Possibly of inter-dimensional creatures. Or, the work of something even stranger (time-travelers, maybe?). There could be multiple origins, rather than just one. That’s an issue which we can ponder on forever and a day. But, trying to figure out what UFOs are, is not the goal of my new book. Rather, it’s to demonstrate how a real, strange presence in our midst became entangled in the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union.

The Russians tried to use the Contactee movement of the 1950s to their distinct advantage; spread tales of crashed UFOs and alien autopsies; recruited American UFO enthusiasts – who also had connections to the U.S. government – into their strange games; created bogus “government documents” (including at least some of the much-debated Majestic 12 papers); forged links with saucer-seekers in both the U.K. and Australia; and even incorporated the history of the AIDS virus into their disturbing agenda. And much more, too.

No such thing as Russian meddling? Don’t make me laugh.