In 2002, Timothy Cooper – a UFO researcher from Big Bear Lake, California, who is no longer involved in the subject – sold all of his UFO files to ufologist Dr. Robert Wood. I spent a week ensconced in an Orange County, California motel room carefully logging every one of the items contained within Cooper’s vast document collection – having been hired to do so by Bob Wood. One of those items was a controversial, undated, 8-page extract from a longer, very seldom seen, document titled UFO Reports and Classified Projects: The CIA Perspective. Provided to Cooper, indirectly by an alleged CIA source that he referred to as the “Blue Boy,” it details a controversial theory that links Roswell with down-to-earth (as opposed to extraterrestrial) biological warfare activities and the Nazis. The document appears to be a draft of a briefing paper, and provides a concise history of the role of the United States’ Government and military with respect to UFOs. The opening pages, which would have provided us with a date, are unfortunately missing; but the 1990s are mentioned. Like so many supposedly leaked documents, it’s incredibly difficult to say for sure if it is the real deal or carefully-crafted disinformation. The available portions of the document are provided in full and begin as follows, and under the heading of “Historical Perspective.”

“Since 1969, the United States Government has taken the official position that unidentified flying objects (UFO) do not exists and do not pose a threat to national security. This position is based on the conclusions reached by Project BLUE BOOK, the official United States Air Force UFO study program which began in early 1948 and was terminated in December 1969. According to General Charles P. Cabell USAF, and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, this view was no accepted until the successful moon landing of Apollo 11 and several scientific studies. In January 1953, the CIA conducted its own review of the UFO phenomenon known as the Robertson Panel chaired by Dr. H.P. Robertson, a CIA employee, and its conclusions are mirrored by Project BLUE BOOK files. The only threat was of UFO reports, not UFOs.

“Freedom of Information Act responses by the CIA state that the only involvement by the CIA ended after the Robertson Panel submitted its report. Since then, the Agency has not authorized any intelligence collection project nor has received a mandate from the National Security Council to continue UFO intelligence and operations at the scientific level. A review of declassified CIA and NSA intelligence documents suggest that this may not be the case which in either event, a re-examination of all CIA and NSA intelligence documents dealing with UFOs since 1953 is warranted. I might also add that continued reporting of UFOs and related phenomenon across the United States and foreign countries, most noticeably in China, Korea, Australia, and Russia would require some form of surveillance as was done by the CIA up until 1991. Based on past CIA conclusions, a positive identification was never reached.”

We are then told: “The need for an American central intelligence and Coordinator of Information (COI) to advise the president of impending political and military developments among hostile governments arose in pre and post-World War II era through the efforts of Sir William S. Stephenson of British Intelligence, General William J. Donovan, and President Roosevelt. In this case, technological advantages in unconventional aircraft and weapons systems of Nazi Germany became the focus of Military Intelligence Division (MID), Army Intelligence (G-2), Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and COI (later Director of the Office of Strategic Services) shortly after Germany’s capitulation in May 1945. Interest in securing all available rocket and aircraft technology was generated from earlier reports of incursions over the United States by yet unidentified aerial objects believed to have been advanced aircraft from a foreign power. This technical intelligence collection effort was carried out through a vast and comprehensive man hunt known as Operation PAPER CLIP whose purpose was to bring back to the United States leading German rocket and aircraft scientists and engineers to begin work on military defense projects while preventing the wholesale recruitment of remaining German scientists by Soviet military intelligence still in Germany.

“During the war OSS technical intelligence had secured reliable information that German advances in high speed, high altitude, long range fighters and bombers were all-wing, circular-shaped employing innovative airfoil designs capable of eliminating boundary layer restrictions achieved by their V-2 ballistic missile. Coupled with the fact that American and British intelligence were gravely concerned that such aerial machines could deliver atomic bombs anywhere in Europe and on the continental United States given the fact that Germany’s atomic bomb program had a two-year head start of the Army’s Manhattan Project. I January 1948, the Department of the Army circulated a classified intelligence document to all concerned intelligence chiefs that ‘the German High Command indicated a definite interest in the Horten type of flying wing and were about to embark on a rigorous campaign to develop such aircraft toward the end of the war.’  The report suggested that the Gotha manufacturing plant was the proposed site where such aircraft were to be built and warned: ‘This plant is now in the hands of the Russians.’ The report also indicated that such information was highly desirable and requested any additional intelligence on ‘aircraft whose shape approximate that of an oval, disc, or saucer’, including ‘boundary layer control method by suction, blowing, or a combination of both” and “special controls for effective maneuverability at very slow speeds or extremely high altitudes.’

“The OSS had information regarding such developments as early as 1943 based on transcripts taken from the Flying Wing Seminar given by the Horten brothers at Bonn, Germany, on April 14, 1943, in which the newly created Central Intelligence Agency had classified and did not disseminate in 1947. British intelligence also had this information and provided the CIA technical specifications for delta-shaped, right-angled triangle, tailless and semi-circular aircraft. Other specifications included designs for ‘boomerang’ shapes under development in Britain, Canada, and the United States which are enumerated in General Nathan F. Twining’s September 23, 1947 Air Materiel Command ‘Flying Saucer’ report to Air Intelligence headquarters after numerous UFO sightings subsided during the previous summer. During the ensuing 50-year development efforts of the CIA and defense contractors these designs evolved into today’s delta-shaped stealth aircraft and uninhabited reconnaissance drones. Some of the reported UFO sightings of the 1960’s and 1970’s were classified CIA and Air Force satellites developed under high security and for national security reasons were not divulged publicly which fueled considerable speculation among the news media and civilian UFO researchers. One basic rule of military secrecy: You don’t allow a rival service to gain control over a new area of operations. Two days after the Air Materiel Command released its ‘flying saucer’ report, the Air Staff instructed the AMC to evaluate a Research and Development (RAND) study on the feasibility of putting earth orbiting reconnaissance satellites about the earth based on the opinions of German rocket experts employing state-of-the-art photographic techniques and optical imagery.”

The “Blue Boy” then turned his attention to the matter of the Roswell affair of 1947: “Another rule of secrecy was: You always camouflage your operations from prying eyes. It was not widely known to many that the Air Force and navy were conducting classified rocket-launched reconnaissance payloads from White Sands, New Mexico, which failed to reach orbiting altitudes and subsequently crashed off range and generated considerable public interest in the United States and abroad. As part of a top secret Air Force atomic weapons detection project called MOGUL involving radiation dispersal in the atmosphere, selected monitoring sites across the United States were not acknowledged to by the Air Force and Central Intelligence Group (CIG) and as a result, wreckage from one of the payloads was accidentally discovered by a sheep rancher not far from the Air Force’s Roswell Army Air Field.

“Also, another fact was not widely known among military intelligence was that CIG had planned to utilize artificial meteor strikes as decoy devices ejected from V-2 warheads at 60 miles above the earth to record dispersal trajectories and possible psychological warfare weapons against the Soviets in the advent of a war in Europe. One of the projects underway at that time incorporated re-entry vehicles containing radium and other radioactive materials combined with biological warfare agents developed by I.G. Farben for use against allied assault forces in Normandy in 1944.

“When a V-2 warhead impacted near the town of Corona, New Mexico, on July 4, 1947, the warhead did not explode and it and the deadly cargo lay exposed to the elements which forced the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project to close off the crash site and a cover story was immediately put out that what was discovered was the remains of a radar tracking target suspended by balloons. In 1994 and again in 1995, the Air Force published what it considered the true account of what lay behind the Roswell story but omitted the radiological warhead data for obvious reasons. It may also be pointed out here that this kind of experiment was very similar to those conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission and the military in the late 1940’s. It was known in the CIA that the Soviets were conducting the same kind of radiological and biological warfare experiments in the early 1950’s after their successful detonation of a [sic] atomic bomb based on stolen documents and materials from Los Alamos forwarded to Moscow by communist espionage agents in the United States.”

Turning away from Roswell, the Blue Boy continued thus: “Prior to the August 1949 Soviet atomic bomb experiment, Army, Navy, and FBI intelligence officers had classified flying saucer sightings in the United States as TOP SECRET as indicated in a January 31, 1949 FBI memorandum which located Los Alamos as an active area of investigation by USAF Office of Special Investigations and described the UFOs as an ‘unconventional type without wings’ and resembled ‘rocket ship’ configurations similar to the German V-2. Almost a year prior to the United States 1947 Flying Saucer wave, State Department military Attaches reported similar sightings over Sweden and other parts of northern Europe and it was assumed that the ‘ghost rocket’ phenomenon was of Soviet origin and was in response to U.S. atmospheric tests of atomic weapons in the Pacific.

“In March 1949, the CIA did a review of flying saucer sighting data conducted by the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) and based upon submitted reports from Air Force Project SIGN did not concur with the extraterrestrial hypothesis reached by project officers. Dr. Stone of OSI drew other conclusions suggesting that ‘many of the objects may be free meteorological sounding balloons’ and that if the sightings were classified projects they would not be launched from many locations across the United States and would be ‘closely coordinated with USAF or commercial designers.’ Stone also ruled out foreign aircraft reconnaissance flights because of the great distances involved and ‘guided aircraft’ lacked the range required for such flights and was beyond technical capabilities of any government at that time. The CIA had the best intelligence available on Soviet capabilities and for security reasons would not discuss classified ‘secret weapons’ programs that were under development within secret establishments in the U.S. which would be compromised if Stone made some obscure disclosure to Project SIGN staff officers. And, for the same reasons General Twining did not elaborate on ‘physical evidence’ for recovered wreckage of failed rocket launches conducted at White Sands.

“The CIA paid particular attention to reports originating out of New Mexico as indicated in a April 24, 1949 CIA intelligence report detailing a theodolite track of a ‘white spherical object’ that was traveling too fast to be a balloon described as ‘an ellipsoid about 2 ½:1 slenderness ratio’ at an altitude of 60 miles with a course heading that would have covered White Sands, Holloman Air Force Base and Los Alamos. At this point, the CIA did not comment on such reports and drew no conclusions without disclosing the existence of classified programs to un-authorized agencies.

“SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE: UFO Identification And Analysis: The sharing of scientific intelligence between British and American agencies in missile and atomic weapons research was instrumental in defeating Japan and Germany in World War II. In exchange of aviation advances and electronics, the OSS supplied technical and scientific intelligence and kept General Groves appraised of German scientific activities in atomic fission. The use of atomic weapons in war and the spread of scientific knowledge was anticipated and magnified by the Soviet penetration of U.S. atomic secrets enlarged the horror of a nuclear Pearl Harbor. With the growing possibility that some UFO sighting reports collected by the CIG were Soviet devices, Admiral Sidney Souers in 1946 undertook the task of coordinating scientific intelligence with the Office of Scientific Research and Development and directed the Central Planning Staff to look into the problem of surprise attack by unconventional means and recruited Dr. H. P. Robertson as his scientific consultant and established the Interdepartmental…”

The remaining pages of the document were not found within the files of Tim Cooper. And while the data imparted by the Blue Boy concerning the Roswell crash and biological warfare is certainly provocative, does it have any validity? With respect to the theory that a Mogul balloon was responsible for creating the legend of the UFO crash at Roswell, the United States Air Force firmly embraced, and still does embrace, that particular explanation. Mogul was a project that utilized balloons to carry radar reflectors and acoustic sensors aloft for the purpose of determining the state of Soviet nuclear weapons research. As far as the reference to I.G. Farben is concerned, this too is provocative: I. G. Farben was the company that made the Zyklon-B gas that was utilized in the terrible Nazi death camps of the Second World War. Indeed, at the height of its production in 1944, I.G. Farben ran a slave labor plant at Auschwitz using no less than 83,000 people. Arguably any “biological” work undertaken at White Sands involving people allied to I.G. Farben would have created intense controversy and would have been subject to stringent security measures – particularly if a V-2 rocket with such a “deadly cargo” had indeed strayed off course and crashed near the town of Corona.

And it is quite true that a wealth of tests of captured Nazi V-2 rockets were undertaken at the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico in the period 1946 to 1952. Indeed, in total, sixty-seven V-2 rockets were assembled and tested at the Range, and ultimately provided the United States with valuable experience in the assembly, pre-flight testing, handling, fueling, launching, and tracking of large missiles. The scientific experiments conducted aboard the rockets also yielded significant information about the upper atmosphere. One series of tests, the Blossom Project, was responsible for undertaking the first biological experiments in space. Interestingly, in its July 1994 document titled Report of Air Force Research Regarding the Roswell Incident, the Air Force did address the question of whether or not a V-2 rocket was to blame for the monumental fuss at Roswell:

“A crashed or errant missile, usually described as a captured German V-2 or one of its variants, is sometimes set forth as a possible explanation for the debris recovered near Roswell. Since much of this testing done at nearby White Sands was secret at the time, it would be logical to assume that the government would handle any missile mishap under tight security, particularly if the mishap occurred on private land. From the records reviewed by the Air Force, however, there was nothing located to suggest that this was the case. Although the bulk of remaining testing records are under the control of the U.S. Army, the subject has also been very well documented over the years within Air Force records. There would be no reason to keep such information classified today. The USAF found no indicators or even hints that a missile was involved in this matter.”

To this day, the Blue Boy’s controversial revelations – shared with Tim Cooper almost a couple of decades ago – remain steeped in controversy. Whether or not the papers told the truth of Roswell and other UFO-themed events, or if alleged personnel at Area 51 concocted them to try and deflect Cooper away from the idea that UFOs have extraterrestrial origins, is an issue that remains wide open, years after Cooper received the documents.

My own view on all of this is one that many might not have taken into consideration: you will have noted that Nazi Germany gets a lot of coverage in this controversial document. I know for a fact that there are a number of people in Ufology who are racist pigs and who have a disturbing admiration for the Nazis. Yep, undeniably disgusting. Some of them are well-known figures in the field. In view of that, I would not be surprised if Cooper was duped by someone – or by a group – within Ufology itself, seeking to further emphasize and highlight a UFO-Nazi connection. My new book, Flying Saucers from the Kremlin, is a study of how the Russians – throughout the Cold War – used the UFO phenomenon as a tool of psychological warfare against the United States. In light of that, I’m seriously thinking of writing a similar book, but on all of the many and varied racist, right-wing extremist scumbags in Ufology – and who still have a dangerous UFO-themed agenda designed to fly the flag of the pathetic “master race.”

The long, strange saga of the U.S. Navy and its sudden willingness to admit that its personnel regularly encounter unidentified aerial phenomena keeps getting longer and stranger. Why the sudden shift in policy? What is the motivation for disclosing these encounters to the public? Some of my fellow MU contributors and I have for months been discussing the matter and speculating about the motivations of the Navy and the Pentagon, yet nobody is any closer to understanding what might really be happening here.

Clearly, the narrative is being carefully controlled by the Department of Defense and the U.S. Navy. We can only base our speculation on what has been released to the public over the last few years by news outlets and the History Channel and what is public record. With that said, it’s been my humble opinion that the most curious additions to the still-developing story are the strange aerospace patents filed by one Salvatore Cezar Pais, a scientist working for the Naval Air Warfare Center – Aircraft Division, or NAWCAD, in Patuxent River, Maryland.

In my attempt to dig up as much information as I can about the inventor and these patents, I’ve found some supplemental documents in the U.S. Patent Office’s databases that seem to imply that Navy leadership knows that these technologies are actually possible – or that they want us to think that they are. Accompany me down this rabbit hole, if you will. I’m so far down I can’t even see the surface anymore.

Little information can be found about Salvatore Cezar Pais; he has absolutely no web presence. What is known is that he received a PhD from Western Case University in 1999 and that he currently works as a scientist for NAWCAD. Pais has published several articles and presented papers at American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conferences over the years describing his work in electromagnetic propulsion, revolutionary room temperature superconductors, and topics like his PhD dissertation: “Bubble generation under reduced gravity conditions for both co-flow and cross-flow configurations.” A list of his publications can be found here.

Pais is listed as the inventor for three separate patents for which the U.S. Navy is the assignee: a curiously Tic-Tac-shaped “High Frequency Gravitational Wave Generator;” a room temperature superconductor; and, perhaps the strangest of all, one titled “Craft Using an Inertial Mass Reduction Device.” That craft is described as being capable of incredible feats of speed and maneuverability, capable of flying equally well in air, water, or space without leaving a heat signature, and capable of altering the ‘fabric of our reality’ as we know it through exploiting what are essentially ‘loopholes’ in our current understanding of the laws of thermodynamics.

It’s weird stuff.

Of course, just because something is patented doesn’t mean it’s currently in production. Private entities and the U.S. government both regularly patent forward-looking technologies to ensure that they own the rights to them when or if they’re ever fully realized. That being said, the unorthodox circumstances surrounding the approval of this patent has me wondering: does the Navy or anyone else actually possess craft capable of the feats listed in these patents – feats which are curiously exactly like those described by Navy personnel in the recently disclosed UFO incidents and which make up the “Five Observables” Luis Elizondo keeps hammering home in the History Channel’s Unidentified series? Is the Navy attempting to patent something not yet in production based on what they’ve observed in these now well-known sightings of unknown aircraft? I’m beginning to wonder: could the United States actually already be flying hybrid underwater/aerospace craft that will change history as we know it?

While many readers have pointed out to me over the last few months since I first reported on these patents that there are plenty of patents for futuristic technologies far beyond our ability to actually produce them, it turns out the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Navy personally vouched for the legitimacy of this beyond-revolutionary aerospace technology in an appeal with the U.S. Patent Office, assuring the patent examiner in charge of this application that the aircraft propulsion method described in the patent is indeed currently possible based on experiments and tests NAWCAD has already conducted.

The application was initially rejected by Patent Examiner Philip Bonzell on the grounds that “when referring to the specifications as to ascertain about the microwave emitters needed in this system it is seen that for a high energy electromagnetic field to polarize a quantum vacuum as claimed it would take 109 [T]eslas and 1018 V/m.” That’s more magnetic strength than most magnetars generate. In other words, the examiner believed it’s impossible with today’s technology to create the insane amount of energy needed to generate the EM field that would propel this craft in the manner described in the patent application. What would be needed to generate such amounts of energy, you ask? How about a room temperature superconductor? That do anything for ya? Again, though: until we see a working prototype of said room temperature semiconductor, we have no idea what this theoretical research may add to the mystery surrounding the objects described by Navy pilots – if anything at all.

According to documents available to the public at USPTO.gov, the Patent Office rejected Pais’ and the Navy’s application for this craft several more times, the last of which was on March 30, 2018. Yet each time it was rejected, the NAWCAD’s patent attorney, Mark O. Glut, appealed the decision and submitted further documentation to ensure the patent office that this craft is indeed “enabled,” meaning it can actually be built and can actually perform as described in the patent.

The most significant addition I’ve found in these documents is a letter accompanying the final appeal written by Naval Aviation Enterprise Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Dr. James Sheehy concerning the US Patent Office’s rejection of “Craft Using an Inertial Mass Reduction Device.” In the letter, Dr. Sheehy claims that Salvatore Pais has “already begun a series of experiments to design and demonstrate advanced High energy Density/High Power propulsion systems” that are described in the patent. Furthermore, he claims that “the realization of this result demonstrates that this patent documents the future state of the possible and moves propulsion technology beyond gas dynamic systems to field-induced propulsion based hybrid aerospace-undersea craft.” Have a look at the letter yourself:

It’s important to note that Sheehy doesn’t go so far as to say the Navy currently possesses this technology, and instead notified Patent Examiner Philip Bonzell that he agrees that “this mode of acceleration/movement is beyond the state of the possible, at least at present.” Sheehy of course adds that “China is already investing significantly in this area” and “would prefer we [the US] hold the patent as opposed to paying forever more to use this revolutionary technology” as he asserts “this will become a reality.” As always, it all boils down to the ol’ “we must not allow an Inertial Mass Reduction Device gap!” With that threat of the Chicoms looming, the U.S. Patent Office finally issued a notice of allowance for “Craft Using an Inertial Mass Reduction Device” to the Department of the Navy on October 31, 2018 at a fee of $1000 USD. No reason was given for why the patent was eventually approved.

Shortly after the patent was approved, Pais presented his paper, “Room Temperature Superconducting System for Use on a Hybrid Aerospace Undersea Craft” at the 2019 SciTech Form in San Diego this past January. In the paper, Pais writes that “the achievement of room temperature superconductivity (RTSC) represents a highly disruptive technology, capable of a total paradigm change in Science and Technology,” and adds that its “military and commercial value is considerable.” The capabilities described in the paper should certainly sound familiar to anyone who’s been following the Navy UFO story over the last several years:

It is possible to envision hybrid aerospace-undersea craft (HAUC), which can function as a submersible craft capable of extreme underwater speeds (lack of water-skin friction) and enhanced aerial / underwater stealth capabilities (non-linear scattering of RF and sonar signals). This hybrid craft would move with great ease through the air/space/water mediums, by being enclosed in a Vacuum /plasma bubble/sheath, due to the coupled effects of EM field-induced air/water particles repulsion and Vacuum energy polarization. The HAUC is conical in configuration, with an elliptical cross-section, similar in geometry to a hypersonic glide vehicle / dart.

Furthermore, Pais notes in the paper that such a technology “would permit swift movement of the HAUC [hybrid aerospace-undersea craft] beyond our Solar System.” Is this why we suddenly need a Space Force? Is this what Air Force Lieutenant General VeraLinn Jamieson was referring to last year when she casually dropped during an unrelated interview that in “different galaxies in the future we’re going to actually have capability that we have right now in the air”? Curiously enough, the patent for the hybrid aerospace-undersea craft includes the possibility of a crew compartment.

SPACE FORCE! Sign me up.

Normally, I would agree with others that these patents are likely just the Navy ensuring that when or if this technology does become available, the U.S. will be able to control it. However, these are not normal times. Thanks to To the Stars Academy (TTSA) and the Department of Defense, we are now being told that Navy Navy pilots have witnessed unknown aircraft behaving exactly like these patents describe. Some of the pilots’ visual descriptions of those anomalous aircraft even seem to be uncannily similar to the drawings of the aircraft in Pais’ patents: the patents describe a resonant, gas-filled body surrounding an internal microwave generator; some Navy pilots have described seeing cubes encased in spheres flying through the air, seemingly ignoring the laws of physics.

Images from two separate patents: “Craft Using an Inertial Mass Reduction Device,” left; and “High Frequency Gravitational Wave Generator;” right. Look familiar? They’re straight out of every UFO sighting ever.

Are these patents related to the ongoing To the Stars Academy revelations in any way? Perhaps the few pieces of footage that have trickled out in the last several years could be the Navy’s way of subtly hinting that this concept actually works and is being tested in the field. Or, perhaps more likely, could all of this – the patents, the footage, the TTSA revelations – be part of some psychological operation or misinformation campaign designed to make our adversaries wonder if the U.S. is flying the unidentified aircraft zooming through their airspace with impunity? Some reports out of Iran seem to suggest that incredibly fast and maneuverable objects have been entering Iran’s airspace for years, hovering over nuclear facilities, flying abruptly away at seemingly impossible velocities, and possibly even downing an Iranian F-14. Similar craft have been seen in Russian airspace in recent years, and known U.S.-controlled experimental aircraft testing grounds around the world have seen their fair share of unusual activity lately. Remember that Puerto Rican coast guard UFO footage from a few years back? It certainly appears to show a hybrid aerospace-undersea craft, if what we’re seeing is indeed legitimate.

It is also important to note that if the Navy had wanted this patent to remain classified, it could have filed the patent under the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951, a law which allows patents to remain classified if they might pose a possible threat to the national security of the United States. Instead, all of Pais’ patents are currently fully available to the public. If such a propulsion technology was so revolutionary and if the Navy indeed wanted to keep this technology out of others’ hands, why make the patent public? 

Before all of this speculation is discounted as grasping at straws, consider comments made by former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, reportedly a key figure in securing funding and contracts for groups like Bigelow Airspace and the shadowy Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Earlier this year, Reid stated that the U.S., Russia, and China are currently in a “UFO race.” Could he have meant that these three military superpowers are currently scrambling to be the first to get these hybrid aerospace-undersea craft off the ground? Notice how both Tom Delonge and Chris Mellon have recently hintedthat we will soon see evidence that at least one of our NATO allies has encountered these objects as well. It’s curious that they both used the “NATO ally” talking point to bring up this addition to the unfolding story. Is TTSA all a propaganda campaign designed to make it seem as though the U.S. already has made progress in revolutionary aerospace technologies in order to sow doubt among our non-NATO frenemies? 

Alternatively, is all of this meant to capitalize on the current fascination with and belief in conspiracy theories to help shore up failing Navy recruiting, funnel more billions to the military industrial complex, or to simply keep us all afraid of unseen boogeymen so that we trust the judgment of the military and defense industrial complex? After all, anyone who’s seen it can agree: each episode of Unidentified is basically a 42-minute-long Navy advertisement.

Too many questions, not enough concrete evidence of anything outside of what is available to the public. Again: we can only draw conclusions from what has been released publicly over the last few years. Still, it’s clear that something is happening here, but we don’t know what it is, do we?

Salvatore Cezar Pais knows.

• Note: There is no way to link directly to these supplementary patent application documents. To view them for yourself, visit https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair and search for application number 15/141,270. Once there, click on the “Image File Wrapper” tab.

In 2017, Harvard University geneticist George Church predicted that gene-edited pig organs would be transplanted into humans within two years. Well, it’s 2019. Is it time to stop putting pork in baked beans and start putting it in human bein’s? (Sorry, but you knew it was coming.)

“I was wrong.”

When life gives you lemons, or pesky regulations that stop you from testing gene-edited pig organs on humans, you make lemonade by putting the pig organs in the next best thing to humans. No, not zombies … although that’s a great idea for a movie. George Church and his eGenesis company has convinced a major US hospital to allow them to transplant gene-edited pig organs into monkeys. You know the next question: What could possibly go wrong?

“What we’re doing is a necessary step. We’d be hard pressed to put a modified organ into a human until it’s been tested in a large animal.”

Dr. James Markmann, the chief of transplant surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, is working with eGenesis to prove to skeptics that the shortage of human donor organs can be solved by using modified pig organs which are closer to human organs than those of any other animals. Close — but not close enough to light up a Cohiba Behike … yet. In fact, the only thing you may want to light up at the moment is a warning flare. In an interview in the MIT Technology Review, Markmann declines to identify which pig organs are being tested (heart, kidney and liver would be the most popular and useful) nor what kind of monkeys are receiving them. Baboons and chimps would be the obvious choices for their size but it’s difficult both physically and ethically to obtain them for medical experiments, which is why those plentiful, pesky and sometimes murderous Rhesus monkeys are probably the recipients.

On the other hand, there’s millions of pigs and the non-organ parts won’t go to waste, but animal rights groups are fighting for them as well – Markmann avoids conflicts by refering to both donors and recipients as merely “large animals.” Pigs are also becoming more controversial as other researchers believe it’s better to perform the gene edits (the purpose is to eliminate recipient rejection) in such a way that they remove the rejection gene from most of the pig’s organs – creating a veritable buffet of transplantable offal. Markmann prefers to edit one organ at a time and points out that pig hearts have survived in baboons for up to two years. Is it time to test them on humans? What could possibly go wrong?

Doctor, ever since I got that transplant I have this overwhelming urge to burn down a sausage plant.

“We’ve got a Chevy. We may even have a BMW now. Do we wait for a Ferrari? There’s a point where you just want to give it a test drive.”

By far, the best quote on the subject comes from Devin Eckhoff, director of the medical school transplantation division at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who seems to liken his own field to auto mechanics and organ transplants to putting a big new Ford engine in an old Model T. As with so many other experiments that end up being plots for horror movies, what could possibly go wrong is that the marketing and accounting departments overrule research and development and make decisions based on fame, money and beating the competition.

Would the zombie idea be a better approach?

In 2010, in a disturbing and eye-opening article, the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper reported the following: “More and more police forces and government agencies are exploring the potential of unmanned drones for covert aerial surveillance, security, or emergency operations across the UK, the Guardian has learned.” According to the Guardian, one of the departments of the British Government that is at the forefront of keeping the population of the United Kingdom under surveillance is SOCA, the Serious Organized Crime Agency. SOCA has a close working relationship with MI5, which is the U.K.’s equivalent of the United States’ FBI. Government documentation secured by investigative journalists of the Guardian revealed that the growth of the use of drones in the U.K., by regional police forces, is growing at an extremely rapid rate.  And it’s not just the Guardian that has reported on such issues in the United Kingdom.

The BBC, in April 2015, told its readers that, “Police guarding London airports will start using drones for surveillance following a review by counter-terrorism officers. An 18-month analysis by the National Counter Terrorism Policing Headquarters, which helps develop police policy, found the technology could be ‘transformative.’ Privacy campaigners said they were concerned about the plans. Police are also to take over investigations into drone misuse.”

It’s decidedly disturbing that the very people who, in the U.K, are tasked with investigating the misuse of drones, are the same people who are using such drones, namely the police. The BBC had more to say on this issue. Revealing that, at the time of writing, more than 50,000 drones were in use in the U.K. – whether owned by the public and / or law-enforcement personnel and the intelligence world – the BBC noted how this growing increase in the employment of drones threatened the privacy of the people of the U.K. It quoted the words of Big Brother Watch’s Emma Carr, who said that, in regards to drones it’s vital that we have a fuller grasp of “how they’re used and who they’re being used by.” Amen to that.

Now let us move onto Australia. In 2014, Australia’s ABC News reported that, “The Australian Federal Police has told a federal parliamentary inquiry that drones are among the latest tools it is using in major crime investigations. A parliamentary committee has begun examining the growing use and popularity of drone technology, as well as the privacy concerns it raises for Australians.”

The extent to which the AFP was using drones, and the nature of the technology involved, became very clear in 2013. That was when the AFP used drone-based technology to search for the remains of an anti-drugs proponent in the New South Wales area of the nation. Mark Harrison, the Commander of the AFP, told the Australian press the following: “We assisted in the imagery and the recording of that search and excavation and the UAV provided a different and unique perspective to aid and assist in that process.” Notably, this was the very first occasion on which the AFP acknowledged it had a drone program. As is the case in the United States and the United Kingdom, the citizens of Australia have their deep concerns about how drones may be misused, all in the name of what passes for national security.

Certainly, the provisions of the Australian Freedom of Information Act have demonstrated that more and more people have lodged complaints with the world of law enforcement, chiefly to express their outrage at what they see as flagrant disregard for personal privacy. Much of this was revealed by Australia’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner. Timothy Pilgrim, the Commissioner himself, admitted that, “There are cases where people have woken up in the morning, pulled their curtains open and there’s been a drone hovering outside. It’s starting to suggest to us that there’s a point in time at which we need to sit back and say: ‘Do we have the right laws in place to make sure that we can regulate to the best extent possible how these devices can be used?’ That is the challenge now facing lawmakers in Federal Parliament and across Australia.”

In Australia, at least, there is some degree of oversight: the police, the military, and the intelligence community are now required to secure a warrant before any kind of drone-driven surveillance of citizens and residents can go ahead – which is very encouraging. We can only hope that such rules and regulations are being adhered to.

The exchange is now a famous one, and also one of the most notable quotes attributed to Hillary Clinton leading up to the 2016 election… at least among those interested in UFOs.

“You know, there’s a new name,” Clinton told comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who asked her about UFOs during an appearance on his program. “It’s unexplained aerial phenomenon. U.A.P. That’s the latest nomenclature.”

While there was a lot of buzz at the time about the fact that Clinton openly discussed the UAP issue on the program, what many are unaware of is that the question Kimmel asked her had been partially intended as a joke: in fact, it was suggested beforehand to Clinton aides by Kimmel himself.

The story behind the story here takes us back to the infamous Podesta email leaks. In an email exchange dated November 4, 2015, that was published as part of the batch of emails hacked from Podesta’s email account and released by Wikileaks, Clinton staffer Sara Latham wrote that, “[Kimmel] thinks it would be awesome and funny, if she explained that you don’t use the term UFO anymore.”

She further outlined how the proposed exchange might go, outlining the following “rough draft” of Clinton’s response to the question:

‘Jimmy if you talk about UFOs, people think you’re nuts – you have to use the term, UAP – unexplained aerial phenomenon. this is an issue I think the govt should take this more seriously the govt has been too stingy on what information we should know and when I’m President, the american people will find out !!’

There appeared to be some concern (or at least confusion) about the idea early on; in a previous exchange, Latham had noted that “the question seems odd,” and asked if there was “any further context on why Jimmy is going down the alien road.” Reasons were said to have included a Mother Jonesstory that had gone to print around that time, titled “ETs for Hillary: Why UFO activists are excited about Clinton presidency,” along with the fact that Kimmel had previously asked a similar question of the candidate’s husband, former President William Jefferson Clinton.

Bill Clinton, when asked about the issue, told Kimmel that had he found any significant information about the subject, he would have released that to the public. Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama were slightly less talkative on the matter when asked similar questions by Kimmel, but the exchanges do help establish a sort of track record the comedian has for asking high-ranking politicians questions about UFOs.

Which brings us back to Hillary Clinton, and Kimmel’s plans for the “UAP” gag. As the plan took shape before a live audience during Clinton’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, perhaps the delivery had been just a tad too dry; in any case, it didn’t end up coming across quite like the joke it had been anticipated to be. The result was that Clinton’s widely publicized statements on UAP were offered by UFO advocates as further evidence of her frankness in discussing the matter, rather than a playful joke she was told in advance that she would be participating in.

However, the fact that Kimmel had actually suggested the “UAP, not UFO” statement doesn’t mean that there wasn’t evidence of legitimate interest in the subject by the Clinton campaign. In fact, shortly after the appearance, Joseph G. Buchman, a UFO transparency advocate, was quoted in the New York Times saying that “Hillary has embraced this issue with an absolutely unprecedented level of interest in American politics.” Prior to that, she had also stated in a radio appearance prior to that she wanted “to open the [UFO] files as much as we can.”

This wasn’t a newly acquired interest, either. In fact, going all the way back to just prior to her husband’s inauguration, the Clintons were briefed on the UFO issue by Laurance Rockefeller, who supplied a book on space and extraterrestrial life to Mrs. Clinton (this was determined by researcher Grant Cameron, from a photograph where a portion of the book could be seen protruding from a bag as she and Rockefeller were walking along together). The Clinton’s long-held interest in the subject is further reflected in Bill Clinton’s response to Kimmel asking him about it prior to the comedian’s exchange with Hillary.

And of course, John Podesta (who has appeared on UFO-related television shows that include Ancient Aliens) has quite a reputation for his interests in UFOs, which also may have carried over from his time working in the Clinton Administration during the 1990s. Podesta even wrote the forward to Leslie Kean’s 2010 book UFOs: Governments, Pilots, and Military Officials Go on the Record. 

And, as Sara Latham noted in her emails (which were eventually forwarded to Podesta in 2015, and hence why we know about the exchanges today), she was seen noting at one point saying she was “familiar with [John Podesta’s] area51(sic) and X Files obsession.”

The entire email exchange can be read here.

On a final interesting note, at the time Kimmel was working with Hillary Clinton’s staff to plan for her appearance, news about the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) had not yet become public knowledge, nor had the Navy’s policies on reporting UFOs, or many of the other “revelations” about UFOs that have fed into a broader shift in attitudes, and thus, further public discourse on the subject, in recent months. However, one other thing we learned from the Podesta email leaks, as many will recall, is that former Blink 182 frontman Tom Delonge had made arrangements to meet Podesta, along with an individual believed to have been Major General William McCasland, Commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

It seems very likely that the early workings of what became Delonge’s To the Stars Academy, as featured more recently on the History Channel’s Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation, were at play here… and that they were aspiring to get whatever involvement from a potential future Clinton administration that they could. Delonge would later state that the Wikileaks email release had been problematic, and caused setbacks for what eventually became the To the Stars Academy.

Why is all this significant? Because more than a year before the pair of New York Times articles that detailed the existence of the AATIP program (of which there now seem to be more questions than answers), and brought renewed interest to the U.S.S Nimitz Incident, Clinton’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel was generating buzz about her advocacy of UFO transparency, even to the extent the NYT carried the headline, “Hillary Clinton Gives U.F.O. Buffs Hope She Will Open the X-Files.” Suddenly, everyone was using the term “UAP” and touting it as a better, more modern and refined way of labeling the subject.

And if nothing else, well damn it, at least it *sounds* scientific. 

So one day, when we look back and begin mapping out the modern history of what slowly led to broader, more open discussion on the UFO subject, let’s not forget to thank Jimmy Kimmel, whose idea for a joke (and Mrs. Clinton’s reliably deadpan delivery) helped set the tone for a new kind of public discussion on unidentified flying objects.