Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 9 MONTHS.
ON 06/03/2024 MORE THAN 1.940.230
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
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.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
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 In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
19-03-2024
Inside the £160-a-ticket UFO conference where thousands of alien hunters flocked to French city to 'train humanity for the arrival of extraterrestrials' - as councillor slams 'eccentrics' peddling 'conspiracy theories'
Inside the £160-a-ticket UFO conference where thousands of alien hunters flocked to French city to 'train humanity for the arrival of extraterrestrials' - as councillor slams 'eccentrics' peddling 'conspiracy theories'
Around 2,200 paid between €150 to €190 to attend the three-day conference
Speakers at the conference included major conspiracy theorists
Organisers said they want to prepare humanity for the arrival of aliens
Thousands of UFO fanatics flocked to a small city in central France in the hopes of finally meeting extra-terrestrial life.
The event, organised by fringe group Alliances Célestes, reportedly drew around 2,200 people who each paid between €150 to €190 (£128 to £162) to attend the three day conference held in Zenith Limoges Metropole building in Limoges, a small city with a population of around 130,000.
Organisers said they wanted to prepare people for the arrival of aliens or 'new-style encounters.'
The event's website reads: 'The mission of this citizen delegation is to accompany humanity in this process, in order to properly inform and reduce the fear and stress that this type of encounter can generate.'
Though media was banned from the event, video of the conference was leaked to BFMTV, and showed thousands of people attentively listening to someone speaking on a set on the stage.
The event, organised by fringe group Alliances Célestes, reportedly drew around 2,200 people who each paid between €150 to €190 (£128 to £162) to attend
The stage was decorated with white furniture, including several seats and what appeared to be a high table on the right
The conference was held in held in the Zenith Limoges Metropole building (pictured) in Limoges, a small city with a population of around 130,000.
The stage was decorated with white furniture, including several seats and what appeared to be a high table on the right.
The background of the set was made up of 'futuristic' windows that portrayed stars rushing past the 'alien room' they were in.
The speaker can be heard telling conference attendees: 'We are in contact with civilizations. When I say in contact, it is with communication and a partnership, a collaboration.
'But they have a big problem, these civilizations, which is that they don't know how to communicate with the citizens of Earth.
'For what? Because the citizens of Earth are afraid.'
Two French reporters managed to sneak in, and said they saw Alliances Célestes' director Jean-Michel Raoux dressed in a blue and yellow outfit claiming he was a being from the planet 'Niam.'
Raoux reportedly claims he regularly meets with aliens and that he has the power to bring aliens to different parts of the Earth.
While many in France dismissed the event as a harmless conference, political figures warned that these events draw in conspiracy theorists and extremists
One person invited to the conference was QAnon sympathiser Antoine 'Q' Cuttitta
The crowd also heard from Anne Givaudan, a 'galactic reporter' who claimed she was from the land of 'Shambhala'. She told the conference's attendees that she has witnesses human-hybrid animals in Antarctica.
'That's why it's time to get up and say to ourselves, what are we doing? Do we trust beings who have always deceived us in all areas? A new world must emerge,' she told a crowd.
But while many in France dismissed the event as a harmless conference, political figures warned that these events draw in conspiracy theorists and extremists.
One person invited to the conference was QAnon sympathiser Antoine 'Q' Cuttitta.
The conspiracy theorist regularly posted conspiratorial videos to YouTube before the platform shut his channel down.
According to Conspiracy Watch, Cuttita helped set up the Human Health Alliance International, a group known for its embrace of 'alternative' medicine. It ran a platform that offered to connect patients with debilitating illnesses with 'aromatherapists', 'energeticians', 'magnetizers', 'massotherapists' or even 'naturopaths.'
'I was stunned that such an event took place in Limoges,' Thierry Miguel, vice-president of the Haute-Vienne department council tweeted.
'Who are these eccentrics who invite themselves to Limoges to put the ideas of charlatans and conspiracy theorists into people's heads?'
Miguel said he plans to organise a public meeting on the role of science and social progress.
'We cannot stand there with our arms crossed in the face of possible charlatans who will come and talk to us about theories from another time,' he told BFMTV.
'When a society is dysfunctional, it takes refuge in values like these. But we must strive to demonstrate the truth from the false by relying on science.'
In today’s episode: We’ll look at more Enigma UAP video submissions, cover the latest news including the controversial report released this week from the Pentagon’s UAP research team. We also have a special guest, Dr. Michael Masters, professor of Biological Anthropology, to discuss an alternative to the Extraterrestrial hypothesis he calls The Extratempestrial Model.
The Enigmatic Falcon Lake Incident: Unveiling Canada’s UFO Enigma
The Enigmatic Falcon Lake Incident: Unveiling Canada’s UFO Enigma
In the vast expanse of UFO history, the Falcon Lake incident of 1967 stands as one of Canada’s most compelling and meticulously documented cases, overshadowing even the infamous Roswell event in its depth of investigation and the physical evidence presented. This occurrence not only captivates with its narrative but also challenges our understanding of the unexplained, offering a rare blend of eyewitness testimony, physical aftermath, and governmental intrigue.
The Incident Unfolded
On a day that seemed like any other, Stefan Michalak’s excursion into the wilderness near Falcon Lake, Manitoba, transformed into an encounter that would etch itself into UFO lore. Michalak, an industrial engineer and geology enthusiast, experienced a close encounter with what he described as two cigar-shaped objects descending from the sky. One landed on a nearby flat rock while the other hovered momentarily before vanishing into the ether.
Compelled by curiosity, Michalak approached the landed craft, which, to his astonishment, appeared to be made of a steel-like substance, with no seams or welding marks, and emitted a spectrum of colors from red to gray to the glow of polished steel. As he reached out to touch the craft, it scorched his gloves, a testament to its intense heat.
Physical and Psychological Aftermath
The encounter left Michalak with more than just memories. He suffered first and second-degree burns where the craft’s exhaust had hit him, leaving a grid-like pattern on his chest that puzzled medical professionals. His health deteriorated, symptoms akin to radiation poisoning manifesting shortly after the incident. The site itself bore witness to the encounter, with scorched vegetation and a deposit of radioactive silver found, further mystifying the case.
Governmental and Scientific Scrutiny
The Falcon Lake incident underwent extensive examination by Canadian authorities, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and even the U.S. Air Force, all of which corroborated Michalak’s account to varying degrees. The Canadian government, typically reticent about UFO matters, found itself unable to dismiss the incident outright, given the physical evidence and Michalak’s compelling narrative. This case stands out not only for the attention it received from governmental bodies but also for the physical evidence that was scrutinized, a rarity in UFO incidents.
Years have passed, yet the Falcon Lake incident remains a cornerstone of UFO study in Canada, challenging skeptics and believers alike. It raises questions about what lies beyond the bounds of our understanding and what other secrets may be veiled in the vast Canadian wilderness. The incident serves as a beacon for UFO researchers and enthusiasts, a reminder of the mysteries that hover just beyond our reach.
This case underscores the importance of keeping an open mind in the face of the unexplainable. While definitive answers may elude us, the Falcon Lake incident invites us to explore, question, and wonder about the vast universe we inhabit and the potential for encounters that stretch the boundaries of our understanding.
Cylindrical UFO Photographed Over New York City March 20, 1950, UAP Sighting News.
Cylindrical UFO Photographed Over New York City March 20, 1950, UAP Sighting News.
Now I took the original photo and enhanced it. I notice there a re thick lines that encircle the craft all down it...kinda like a screw with lines that tilt more to one side than the other. Amazing and real alien spacecraft. Something hidden deep in the US gov Project Blue Books, and something the US Gov didn't want you to see today or ever.
Space Force budget (secret space programs are integrated) exceeds NASA
Space Force budget (secret space programs are integrated) exceeds NASA
Dr Michael Salla discusses the following topics:
US Congress cuts funding to NASA while corporations are funding more space missions.
Detailed breakdown of UAP historical report cites glaring deficiencies. Article proclaims Pentagon is heading for disaster due to AARO UAP report – catastrophic disclosure more likely.
AARO Report: Lies, flawed, unresponsive, clueless, and knavish analyzed by Robert Powell (A must read).
Webinar Trailer released- Ancient Alien Experiments and Crypto Terrestrials.
Space Force budget exceeds NASA but will surge as elements of secret space programs are integrated.
UFO Disclosure Project Attorney Danny Sheehan recounts his encounter with secret Project Blue Book files in 1977 that contained photos of retrieved flying saucer craft.
Could Romanian President entering race for NATO leadership be a reward for him suppressing news of the discovery of an ancient Hall of Records under Bucegi Mountains in 2003?
President Eisenhower’s role in agreements reached with Aliens revealed by Great Granddaughter in New Book.
New JP video highlights ETs monitoring humanity’s consciousness and the importance of the love ethic.
The wise Reptilian entity depicted in Japanese art is similar to Naga beings in Vedic art and literature.
Analysis of AARO historical report discussing July 1952 shootdown attempt against a flying saucer involved in Washington flyover.
Four primary goals in AARO historical report point to a coming false flag UFO event.
Mysterious Triangular UFO Spotted in the Skies of Bratislava
Mysterious Triangular UFO Spotted in the Skies of Bratislava
In an extraordinary event that has captured the attention of UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike, a remarkable sighting occurred in the night sky over Ru¸inov, a bustling borough of Bratislava, Slovakia, on March 14, 2024. This incident has swiftly climbed the ranks in the annals ofUFO sightings, stirring a whirlwind of speculation and intrigue.
The Sighting in Detail
Just before the clock struck 11 pm on that fateful evening, a resident and amateur UFO enthusiast known online as “ufoslovakia” managed to capture jaw-dropping footage of an unidentified flying object. But this was no ordinary sighting. The footage reveals a distinct triangular-shaped craft, looming ominously above. What makes this sighting particularly fascinating is the suggestion from the footage that we might be looking at a single, massive object rather than three separate entities.
The Eyewitness and the Video
“ufoslovakia,” known for his passion for filming and sharing aerial anomalies, could hardly believe his eyes. Through his lens, he witnessed what could very well be one of the most definitive pieces of visual evidence of UFO activity in recent history. The clarity and detail of the footage have left viewers in awe, prompting debates and discussions across various platforms.
What Makes This Sighting Unique?
Triangular UFO sightings have been reported globally, but the Bratislava incident stands out for several reasons. First, the quality of the footage is unusually high, providing a clear view of the object’s shape and movements. Secondly, the size of the craft, as suggested by the footage, indicates that this could be an unusually large object, distinguishing it from more common reports of smaller, drone-like objects.
Skeptics and Believers Alike Are Intrigued
While some skeptics propose explanations ranging from advanced military aircraft to atmospheric phenomena, the distinct characteristics observed in the Bratislava sighting challenge conventional understandings. Enthusiasts point to the lack of sound, the steady flight pattern, and the uniformity of the object’s lights as indicators that this sighting cannot be easily dismissed.
This remarkable sighting in Bratislava has added a fascinating chapter to the ongoing narrative of UFO sightings. Whether you’re a staunch believer in extraterrestrial visitors, a curious skeptic, or simply someone fascinated by the unknown, this incident invites you to explore the endless possibilities that our universe holds.
Aliens and the Origins of Human Life: Insights from David Grusch on The Joe Rogan Experience
Aliens and the Origins of Human Life: Insights from David Grusch on The Joe Rogan Experience
In an enthralling episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, David Grusch joined Joe Rogan to delve into the enigmatic possibility of extraterrestrial influence on the development of human life. This thought-provoking discussion explored various aspects of alien life, the hypothesis of extraterrestrial seeding of life on Earth, and the implications of such interventions.
The Hypothesis of Extraterrestrial Seeding
David Grusch presented a captivating hypothesis that extraterrestrial beings could have played a pivotal role in the genesis or acceleration of life on Earth. This theory suggests that aliens, through genetic intervention, could have fast-tracked the evolution of emerging intelligent life forms on our planet. The underlying idea is that such interventions would not only boost the natural progression of evolution but also imbue these life forms with an innate drive for innovation, control, and the expansion of influence.
Beyond Biological Limitations
A significant portion of the discussion was dedicated to the concept that advanced extraterrestrial entities might have evolved beyond the biological constraints known to human beings. Grusch and Rogan speculated about the existence of beings that operate in realms undetectable to us, free from the limitations of physical space and the conventional life-death cycle. This advanced state would allow them to engage in and influence processes in ways that are currently beyond human comprehension.
Technological Evolution and Communication
Reflecting on the rapid evolution of human communication technologies, from face-to-face interaction to instant global connectivity, the conversation touched upon the potential for future advancements. This led to discussions about the possibility of instant physical presence across vast distances, drawing parallels between human technological progress and the speculated capabilities of advanced extraterrestrial beings.
Theoretical Frameworks and Cosmic Perspectives
The dialogue ventured into discussions on theoretical frameworks that could potentially explain the universe’s complexities, including Eric Weinstein’s Geometric Unity. The notion that the universe itself could be considered a creator or a form of god was explored, suggesting a meta-perspective on the origins and nature of creation. This perspective invites contemplation on the universe’s ability to generate complex systems, potentially including other universes.
Exploring Existential Questions
The conversation between Grusch and Rogan raised profound existential questions regarding the nature of the universe, the origin of life, and the concept of a cyclical universe that undergoes endless cycles of expansion and contraction. They discussed the limitations of human understanding and the exciting potential for discoveries that lie beyond our current observations of the cosmos.
David Grusch’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience provided a fascinating exploration of the hypothesis that extraterrestrial life forms might have contributed to the creation or acceleration of human life. This discussion spanned the potential for biological and technological advancements beyond our current understanding, theoretical frameworks for comprehending the universe, and the deep existential questions these ideas evoke. The possibility of alien influence on human evolution invites us to reconsider our place in the cosmos and the untapped mysteries of the universe.
The Enigma of Scotland’s UFO Encounter: Unraveling the Mystery with Physical Evidence
The Enigma of Scotland’s UFO Encounter: Unraveling the Mystery with Physical Evidence
In the captivating landscape of Scotland, nestled within the enigmatic expanse known as the Falkirk Triangle, an incident unfolded that would forever etch its name in the annals of UFO research. The event centers around Bob Taylor, a forest service supervisor, whose ordinary day transformed into an extraordinary encounter, presenting what many believe to be undeniable evidence of an extraterrestrial presence.
The Unforgettable Encounter
On a day like any other, Bob Taylor ventured down a wooded path, only to be greeted by a sight that defied explanation—a massive, hovering object, with a distinctive disc-like shape, adorned with peculiar propellers. This was not merely a fleeting vision; it was a tangible entity that marked its presence in the physical world. Taylor’s attempt to approach the object led to an unforeseen altercation, culminating in him being forcibly drawn towards this mysterious craft, an experience that left him staggered and bewildered.
The Investigation Unfolds
What sets the Bob Taylor incident apart is not just the encounter itself, but the aftermath. Disturbed and disheveled, Taylor managed to return home, promptly alerting the authorities. Thus began one of the few UFO cases to be officially investigated as a criminal matter. The scrutiny it attracted was not limited to law enforcement; young UFO researchers Malcolm Robinson and Andrew Collins, alongside researcher Hugh Newman, took it upon themselves to delve deeper, seeking answers to a mystery that had lingered for over four decades.
Physical Evidence: A Tangible Proof
The investigation into Taylor’s encounter is distinguished by the compelling physical evidence it amassed. The site of the encounter bore witness to peculiar ground markings, arranged in a circular pattern, defying conventional explanations. These were not mere anomalies; they were physical imprints of an otherworldly visitor. Further corroborating Taylor’s account was the condition of his trousers, torn in such a unique fashion that it suggested a struggle with an unseen force, a testament to the physical reality of his experience.
VIDEO:
Ancient Aliens: Scottish UFO Landing PROVED By Physical Evidence (Season 29)
The Bob Taylor incident offers a rare glimpse into the potential for extraterrestrial encounters, bolstered by tangible evidence and an official investigation. It challenges us to reconsider our understanding of the unknown, urging a more open-minded and rigorous exploration of unexplained phenomena. As we continue to ponder the mysteries of the cosmos, cases like Taylor’s serve as a beacon, guiding us through the uncharted territories of our universe in search of the truth.
Craig Muir discovers a monolith on a hillside in Wales this week.
(Craig Muir via Storyful)
"When I first saw it, I was a bit taken aback as it looked like some sort of a UFO," Muir told the Press Association.
"It didn't seem like it was chucked in there, instead it has been accurately put in the ground," he added. "However, there were no obvious tracks around it and one would think that there would be a lot of mess around it, but there wasn't."
The unusual discovery comes after similar monoliths have been found in locations such as the U.S., Belgium, Romania and the Isle of Wight – an island in the English Channel.
In November 2020, one of the monoliths, estimated at between 10 feet and 12 feet high, was found by Utah state wildlife employees who were counting sheep from a helicopter.
Craig Muir found the monolith near Hay-on-Wye on Tuesday, March 12.
(Craig Muir via Storyful)
Bret Hutchings, the helicopter pilot, said it was "about the strangest thing that I’ve come across out there in all my years of flying," according to Salt Lake City's KSL-TV.
Authorities said at the time that the mysterious object was installed in the ground in a remote area with "no obvious indication" of who might have put it there, according to a press release from the Utah Department of Public Safety.
Then a week later, another monolith was discovered in Atascadero, California, which is north of Los Angeles.
It’s unclear who is behind the placement of the monoliths. A New Mexico artist collective claimed responsibility years ago.
One of the monoliths was found by state wildlife officials in Utah in November 2020.
Tom Dunford, who discovered one of the monoliths in the Isle of Wight in 2020, told Sky News "The person who put it there knows what they're doing. It's really reflective. It's someone playing a practical joke, I don't believe in any of these conspiracy theories."
During the summer of 1952, the United States was on high alert as UFO sightings over the nation’s capitalwere making frequent headlines. Buried amid the otherworldly clamor occupying the minds of Americans around that time, an obscure report conveyed that one of the objects—a small, glowing disc—was pursued and shot at by a military aircraft, blasting off a fragment that fell into a field near Washington D.C., which a naval officer later retrieved.
More than a decade later, an official government-funded scientific inquiry into UFOs—or what the United States government now calls unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP)—would investigate the incident, ultimately determining claims involving the 1952 UFO incident were unlikely to be true.
Without question, the notion that a fragment might have been recovered after a shoot-out with a flying saucer in the 1950s offers a textbook example of what most would call a dubious claim. Yet a deeper look into this Cold War-era rumor reveals, surprisingly, that there could potentially be more to this odd story than past assessments would seem to indicate.
However, you would never have gleaned that from reading the latest report issued by the U.S. Defense Department’s official UAP investigative office.
Last week, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) released a long-awaited historical report on its findings involving the United States government’s involvement with UAP and related programs since the end of World War II.
In the report, AARO investigators maintained the U.S. federal government’s longstanding position that it has never found any convincing evidence of extraterrestrial technologies operating near Earth, nor of any secret programs involving the acquisition or reverse engineering of crashed exotic technologies that have remained hidden from Congress.
The report was met with heavy criticism following its publication, partly due to a number of errors it was revealed to contain. Despite this, there were also a few intriguing inclusions made by AARO’s investigators, based on their relevance to the question of whether UAP materials have ever crashed on Earth and been studied.
One of these appears in a section of the AARO report that discusses the University of Colorado UFO Project, more commonly called the Condon Committee, a U.S. Air Force-funded evaluation of cases that were collected under its long-running Project Blue Book investigations that studied UFOs during the 1950s and 1960s.
According to AARO’s recent report, the Colorado scientific panel, led by American physicist Edward U. Condon, “investigated a claim made by radio broadcaster Frank Edwards in a 1966 book that a piece of a UFO was recovered near Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1952 during the spike in UFO sightings over the U.S. Capitol in July and August.”
The account in question appeared in Edward’s book Flying Saucers: Serious Business, of which AARO’s investigators recount that Edwards “claimed that a USN jet fired on a two-foot diameter glowing disc and dislodged a one-pound fragment that was recovered by a ground team.” At the time of their study, the Condon Committee’s investigators inquired about the incident with Project Blue Book, who told the University of Colorado team that they were unaware of the purported 1952 incident.
Above: Excerpt from Frank Edwards’ 1966 book, Flying Saucers: Serious Business, where the author discussed the alleged 1952 UFO incident.
“The USAF and USN found no incident report of weapons engagement with a UFO that summer, no USN aircraft were present, and the retired officer who was the original source of the claim had retired before the summer of 1952, when the event allegedly occurred,” the AARO report’s summary reads.
The report then attributes another claim to Edwards, this time involving fragments from a UFO that were loaned by the United States to the Canadian government. “It is not clear if this claim was linked to the alleged Washington, D.C. incident,” the AARO report’s authors state, adding that “The Condon panel determined that these claims most likely were false.”
The reason any connections between the 1952 UFO incident and Frank Edwards’ claims of a flying saucer fragment being loaned to the Canadian government remained unclear to AARO’s investigators is probably very simple. In likelihood, their investigation of these claims took them no further than the Condon Committee’s report (as evidenced by the relevant source citations found at the end of AARO’s document). Indeed, the two events are connected, as a deeper examination of the literature regarding this alleged 1952 incident readily reveals.
Additionally, much like other assertions that appeared in the recent AARO report, some of the facts about this case have been misrepresented. However, this may not be entirely the fault of AARO’s team in this instance; a closer look at this case also reveals how much of the confusion arises from the Condon Committee’s original investigation, and problems involving their main source for the claims.
THE CONDON COMMITTEE’S CONFUSION
In the late 1960s, under contract No. 44620-67-C-0035 with the United States Air Force, the University of Colorado conducted an extensive analysis of UAP incidents collected by Project Blue Book, which resulted in the publication of its findings in a lengthy report titled Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects.
Despite the title of the Condon Committee’s report, many viewed it as being anything but a truly scientific evaluation of existing data on aerial mysteries. As British physicist Peter Sturrock later noted in his analysis of the Condon Committee’s findings, “most case studies were conducted by junior staff, the senior staff took little part, and the director took no part, in these investigations.” Additionally, after concerns were raised by some of the Committee’s members over apparent biases and other issues they identified with its leadership, several either resigned or were dismissed, resulting in the final report being partly assembled by staff who had only joined the project as it neared completion.
Above: Original title from John G. Fuller’s article, “Flying Saucer Fiasco,” published in Look Magazine, May 14, 1968
(Credit: CIA CREST/Public Domain/Fair Use).
The saga of the 1952 UFO shoot-down over Washington was addressed in a section of the Condon Committee’s final report titled “Parts of UFOs, or UFO Equipment,” where the Colorado team’s investigators wrote that “Representatives of Air Force Project Blue Book claimed no knowledge of the disc fragment discussed by Edwards, who claimed the successful search for this fragment was confirmed by Lt. Cdr. Frank Thompson of the U.S. Navy.”
“The fragment, said to have been dislodged by gunfire from a Navy jet, reportedly fell to the ground, where it was found, still glowing, an hour later by U.S. military ground search crews,” the Committee’s report states. “Reports of UFO events over Washington, D.C., in 1952 contain no reference to such a gunfire incident,” they add, though noting that had the fragment ever really existed “and was classified ‘Secret’ as was claimed, its existence and whereabouts would not necessarily be revealed to this project.”
On the outside chance that such an incident might have occurred, the Committee’s members reached out to U.S. Air Force headquarters for clarification. A response came from J.W. Clinton “by direction of the Chief of Information, Department of the Navy,” who indicated that a search of all Navy records revealed no documentation related to the purported incident, nor could they find any records involving the retrieval of fragments at any time that were believed to have come from a UFO.
That wasn’t the only damning revelation that came from a search of the Navy’s records. “Perhaps more significant, however, were the facts that Navy records of the year 1952 carried only one Frank Thompson, an individual who had retired from active duty several years before 1952 with the rank of lieutenant, not lieutenant commander,” the Condon Committee’s report states. In addition to this, the Committee’s investigators were told that it was unlikely that U.S. Navy aircraft would have participated in any shoot downs of objects over the nation’s capital, since in doing so they “would have been usurping an Air Force function if they had been present over Washington, D. C., as interceptors.”
“The incident is not beyond the realm of possibility,” Clinton nonetheless conceded to the Colorado team, though ultimately concluding that the incident was “very highly unlikely” given the jurisdictional issues limiting any Navy aircraft’s involvement.
Although Clinton had admitted that the incident reported by Edwards might at least have been possible, the fact that there had been no evidence of a “Frank Thompson” with the rank of lieutenant commander in active service at the time seemed to pour cold water on Edwards’ claims.
However, a closer look at Edwards’ sources for this account reveals something that may help to clarify the matter, since it turns out the name of the Lieutenant Commander in question was not “Frank Thompson” at all.
In the relevant chapter of Flying Saucers: Serious Business, Edwards states that one of his sources regarding the 1952 affair had been an earlier book from 1955 by Major Donald E. Keyhoe, titled The Flying Saucer Conspiracy. In Edwards’ book, he even provides the page number (272) for Keyhoe’s account of the incident, a review of which helps to shed some light on the situation.
“I also listed a recent report given me by Lieutenant Commander Frank Thomas,” Keyhoe wrote in his brief account of the 1952 incident, immediately revealing that the “Frank Thompson” Edwards had been referencing was, in fact, instead a Lieutenant Commander Frank Thomas.
Above: Excerpt from Donald Keyhoe’s 1955 book, later cited by Frank Edwards, where the actual name of Keyhoe’s source is shown as “Frank Thomas.” Edwards mistakenly wrote this individual’s name as “Frank Thompson” in his 1966 book.
“According to Thomas, a peculiar object had fallen near Washington during the mass saucer sightings in 1952,” Keyhoe writes. “Retrieved by a naval officer, it was later analyzed by the Bureau of Standards.”
Keyhoe goes on to describe the object, noting that “one side of it was flat with odd markings, as if it had been milled. During tests the unknown substance proved to be fire-resistant. But the analysis, Thomas said, had failed to determine whether it was an artificially constructed object or a fragment of some unknown type of meteorite.”
Keyhoe concluded the brief account by adding that “Afterward the object had been sent to W. B. Smith at Ottawa for further analysis by Project Magnet engineers.”
One must wonder whether the Condon Committee might have had better success locating the Lieutenant Commander in question if onlythey had asked the Navy to search for Frank Thomas, rather than Frank Thompson, as Edwards later mistakenly spelled the individual’s name.
However, further adding to the confusion is the fact that nowhere in the original account written by Keyhoe is it stated that the fragment was dislodged from the UAP during the purported 1952 incident by fire from an aircraft. In Keyhoe’s account, the author only conveys that “a peculiar object had fallen near Washington during the mass saucer sightings in 1952,” though adding that it was “Retrieved by a naval officer.”
Although Edwards initially only referred to a “military jet” in his retelling of the account in 1966, later in the same chapter he makes passing references to “the fragment collected by gunfire from that Navy jet.” It seems likely that Edwards had merely inferred that a Navy jet had been involved; confusion that may have stemmed from his misreading, again, of Keyhoe’s original account involving a “naval officer” who retrieved the fragment, as well as his primary source, a USN lieutenant commander.
Based on this, it would appear the insinuation that a Navy jet had been involved was another error made by Edwards, which ultimately the Condon Committee’s investigators relied on without attempting to validate the author’s sources. Add to this the fact that they had the wrong name of the alleged lieutenant commander they were looking for, and it becomes quite clear why the Navy was unable to corroborate any of the details in Edwards’ 1966 account.
THE WILBERT SMITH INTERVIEW
Although the recent AARO historical report only provides a cursory summary of the alleged 1952 incident based primarily on the Condon Committee’s findings (which, as demonstrated above, were doomed to fail from the outset based on inaccuracies in Frank Edwards’ account), there is still more to this bizarre story of alleged UAP debris. Much of this involves the Canadian engineer and UFO researcher Wilbert Smith, who eventually received the alleged flying saucer fragment according to Keyhoe’s original 1955 narrative.
A Canadian Department of Transport engineer, Smith ran Project Magnet, a UFO investigative effort that formally ran out of the Canadian government from December 1950 until mid-1954, although Smith’s informal studies involving UFOs continued for many years after the project ended.
“Smith assessed that UFOs were of extraterrestrial origin and that they flew by magnetism,” the recent AARO historical report states in a summary of Project Magnet that appears in a section addressing Foreign and Academic Investigatory Efforts. “Smith believed he was in personal contact with extraterrestrial beings through telepathy and ‘tensor beams’,” AARO’s investigators add, noting that in a 1961 interview Smith had “claimed that in 1952, the USAF lent him a piece of a UFO to study. He also claimed it was composed of magnesium orthosilicate.”
A rather revealing transcript of this interview with Smith appeared in Edwards’ 1966 book, based on a recording supplied to the author by Ohio-based researchers C.W. Fitch and George Popovitch, who conducted the 1961 interview. At one point while speaking with Smith, Fitch asked Smith about his association with the retired U.S. Navy Admiral Herbert B. Knowles, to whom Smith had reportedly shown the fragment of the saucer that the U.S. government had loaned him:
FITCH: You’re a friend of Admiral Knowles, Mr. Smith? [Rear Admiral H. B. Knowles, U.S. Navy, Retired.]
SMITH: Oh, yes. Admiral Knowles and I have been very good friends for many years.
FITCH: I have been told by a mutual friend that in 1952 you showed Admiral Knowles a piece of a flying saucer. Is that statement correct, sir?
SMITH: Yes. It is correct. I visited with Admiral Knowles and I had with me a piece which had been shot from a small flying saucer near Washington in July of that year—1952. I showed it to the Admiral. It was a piece of metal about twice the size of your thumb which had been loaned to me for a very short time by your Air Force.
FITCH: Is this the only piece you have handled which definitely had been part of a UFO, Mr. Smith?
SMITH: No. I’ve handled several of these pieces of hardware.
FITCH: In what way, if any, do they differ from materials with which we are familiar?
SMITH: As a general thing they differ only in that they are much harder than our materials.
FITCH: What about this particular piece from that UFO near Washington . . . did it differ from conventional materials? Was there anything unusual about it, sir?
SMITH: Well, the story behind it is this: The pilot was chasing a glowing disc about two feet in diameter—
FITCH: Pardon me, sir. But did you say two feet . . . ?
SMITH: That is correct. I was informed that the disc was glowing and was about two feet in diameter. A glowing chunk flew off and the pilot saw it glowing all the way to the ground. He radioed his report and a ground party hurried to the scene. The thing was still glowing when they found it an hour later. The entire piece weighed about a pound. The segment that was loaned to me was about one third of that. It had been sawed off.
FITCH: What did the analysis show?
SMITH: There was iron rust—the thing was in reality a matrix of magnesium orthosilicate. The matrix had great numbers—thousands—of I5-micron spheres scattered through it.
Fitch then questioned Smith about the whereabouts of the sample the U.S. Air Force had loaned him, to which he responded by providing the following very intriguing remarks:
FITCH: You say that you had to return it—did you return it to the Air Force, Mr. Smith?
SMITH: Not the Air Force. Much higher than that.
FITCH: The Central Intelligence Agency?
SMITH: [Chuckles] I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I don’t care to go beyond that point. I can say to you that it went to the hands of a highly classified group. You will have to solve that problem—their identity—for yourselves.
Smith’s insinuations about “a highly classified group” within the United States government that the alleged UFO fragment had been returned to is certainly intriguing, although for more reasons than merely those which are immediately obvious. Another has to do with a memorandum dated November 21, 1950, addressed to the Canadian Controller of Telecommunications, in which Smith discussed inquiries he made at the Canadian Embassy in Washington shortly after acquiring a copy of author Frank Scully’s book Behind the Flying Saucers, an early book on UFOs that recounted a dubious story involving the alleged crash of a flying saucer near Aztec, New Mexico (the incident was later deemed to have been a hoax).
Smith’s 1950 memo included a series of intriguing remarks that eventually became widely discussed in UFO circles, following the rediscovery of the memorandum in the Canadian National Archives decades later. Specifically, Smith stated that:
I made discreet enquiries [sic] through the Canadian Embassy staff in Washington who were able to obtain for me the following information:
The reference to Vannevar Bush in the 1950 memorandum is noteworthy, particularly because Bush’s name would later appear in an infamous series of documents sent to filmmaker Jaime Shandera in 1984, which consisted of briefing papers describing “Operation Majestic 12,” an alleged secret U.S. investigation into UFOs and extraterrestrials that began in the aftermath of the supposed crash said to have occurred at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. The Majestic 12 documents, as they have since become known, also later appeared in British researcher Timothy Good’s book Above Top Secret.
Despite a few intriguing references from over the years like the one in the Smith memorandum, no evidence verifying the existence of “Operation Majestic 12” has ever surfaced. The documents were deemed to be hoaxes in a series of separate investigations, including one conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which concluded the documents were “completely bogus.”
It is worth noting that in the recent AARO report’s summary of the Condon Committee’s findings regarding the alleged 1952 saucer fragment affair, the AARO authors state that Frank Edwards “claimed that Dr. Vannevar Bush, a prominent inventor, defense industry scientist, and founder of the National Science Foundation, led the effort to study the fragment.” The citation given for this in the AARO report, number 49, lists “The Condon Report” (Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects) as the source for this, although a search of both the PDF linked to by the AARO report’s authors, as well as an online text version of the Condon Report, reveals no references to Vannevar Bush. This could represent another error on the part of AARO’s investigators, who may have mistakenly attributed Wilbert Smith’s alleged knowledge that a “concentrated effort is being made by a small group headed by Doctor Vannevar Bush,” as stated in the 1950 memorandum, with details in the Condon Committee’s final report.
THE LETTER FROM REAR ADMIRAL KNOWLES
There is a final addendum to the story of the 1952 Washington saucer fragment, which involves testimony from the man who was allegedly shown the sample of the object while it was in Smith’s possession. As conveyed earlier in the transcript of C.W. Fitch and George Popovitch’s interview with Wilbert Smith, the latter had confirmed his friendship with U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Herbert B. Knowles, an individual with whom Fitch also corresponded about the alleged 1952 UFO incident.
In the March 1986 edition of Just Cause, the newsletter of the FOIA activist group Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS), a letter provided to the editor, Barry Greenwood, from none other than C.W. Fitch lent additional corroboration to the story of the saucer sample Wilbert Smith claimed the U.S. Air Force had loaned him in the 1950s.
“We must thank long-time UFO investigator C. Wesley Fitch for the following information, which CAUS regards as of great historical interest to our subject,” an entry at the end of the newsletter stated. “Fitch is one of a shrinking group of researchers who knew many of the pioneers of UFOlogy. We regard ourselves as fortunate that he chose to give this impressive little tid-bit to us.”
The item in question had been a series of then-25-year-old correspondences shared with CAUS, revealing “that former Navy Rear Admiral Herbert B. Knowles was involved in the examination of fragments of a UFO shot at over Washington, D.C. in 1952.” As it turned out, in addition to recording the interview where Wilbert Smith acknowledged his friendship with Admiral Knowles, Fitch had also corresponded with Knowles about the saucer fragment Smith claimed to have shown him while on loan from the United States.
As explained in the CAUS newsletter, Fitch, a member of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) had been told by one of the organization’s board members, the Reverend Albert Baller, about a visit he received from Admiral Knowles (also a board member of NICAP at the time) during which the two men discussed UFOs. Throughout their discussion at Baller’s home, Knowles recounted how he was allowed to examine the purported UFO fragment in Smith’s possession, which he said had been shot off a small glowing disk in 1952.
Fitch managed to track down Admiral Knowles, who at the time (1961) had been living in Eliot, Maine, and wrote to him asking for confirmation as to whether he had indeed examined the alleged saucer fragment. In a response dated August 27, 1961, Knowles wrote back to Fitch, divulging the following intriguing account of his recollections about the visit with Smith:
Yes, I have had a piece of a small disc in my hands. It was shown me by Mr. Wilbert Smith (address given- Ed.). At that time (1952), Mr. Smith was heading the “Flying Saucer” research of the Canadian government and working in very close cooperation with our authorities in Washington, D.C. He is still very much interested in this matter and does independent research. The Canadian Govt. has “officially” abandoned the project.
To the best of my recollection the object was shot down by a plane and seen to fall in the yard of a farmer across the river in Virginia. Upon searching the area several pieces were found, one of which was turned over to Mr . Smith for independent research. In one of his trips down to see me he brought the piece along for my inspection.
It was a chunk of amorphous metal-like structure, brownish in color where broken, with a curved edge indicating the whole thing to have been not over 2′ in diam. The edge was rounded in cross section, perhaps a quarter inch thick and obviously swelled to a considerably greater thickness at the center. The outer surface was smooth but not polished, and at the broken sections there were obviously iron particles and even evidence of iron rust. I would say that the weight was somewhat lighter than if of solid iron, but it was not extremely light.
Mr. Smith told me that a chemical test had been made of the piece at hand, that iron had been found in it but little if anything else could be identified.
Concluding his account, the retired Admiral then asserted his belief that the fragment he examined had belonged to a “remotely-controlled observation disc,” the likes of which have been “seen many times, most often in the vicinity of defense installations.”
A follow-up letter from Knowles, dated October 11, 1961, included a sketch of the alleged UFO fragment, a version of which was redrawn and included in the CAUS newsletter based on faded originals provided to Fitch (see below).
CONCLUSIONS
As a deeper analysis into this alleged 1952 incident has revealed, the DoD’s recent investigations into the matter amounted to little more than a rehashing of the flawed conclusions of the Condon Committee from decades ago, whose investigators, as we have now seen, relied on incorrect data provided in a popular book on UFOs from the 1960s as the basis for their investigations.
Thus, to briefly summarize:
AARO’s recent historical report features a short entry on the University of Colorado UFO Project (i.e., the Condon Committee) and its findings, including its investigation into claims made in a 1966 book by Frank Edwards involving a fragment allegedly shot off a UFO by a U.S. Navy aircraft near Washington, D.C., in 1952.
While the Condon Committee determined the incident had likely never occurred, the information used as the basis for its investigations had been incorrect details from Edwards’ book, resulting from his probable misreading of information in an earlier 1955 book by author Donald Keyhoe. The Condon Committee’s investigators seemingly did not scrutinize this information before providing it to the U.S. Navy, which, understandably, was unable to verify the erroneous claims.
AARO’s report attributes unverified claims involving American defense industry scientist Dr. Vannevar Bush to statements from Frank Edwards in 1966, although his book published that year makes no references to Bush, nor does the Condon Committee’s final report, which AARO cites as its source for this assertion in its recent report. It seems likely that a possible origin for the claims involving Bush may have been a 1950 memorandum attributed to Wilbert Smith, who was allegedly loaned a portion of the UFO fragment by the U.S. Air Force two years later.
A recording of a 1961 interview the Ohio-based researcher C.W. Fitch conducted with Smith, partially transcribed in Edwards’ 1966 book, details Smith’s recollections about the purported UFO fragment he was loaned and insinuated that it was returned to a “highly classified group” within the United States government. Additional correspondences between Fitch and Rear Admiral Herbert B. Knowles from 1961, and later supplied to the activist organization CAUS, confirmed that Knowles had been shown the object during a meeting with Smith in 1952, corroborating Smith’s claims of having once had the fragment in his possession.
If the AARO report had indeed conducted an “exhaustive analysis” of U.S. government records associated with UAP, one would expect they would have also easily spotted errors in the publicly accessible resources like the Condon Committee report, as well as Frank Edwards’ 1966 account involving the alleged UFO fragment from 1952.
Instead, as indicated by AARO’s contention that “it is not clear” whether the alleged 1952 incident had been associated with claims that the Canadian government was loaned a sample from a UFO, it is hard to see past the fact that the AARO’s investigators performed little more than a cursory examination of the 1952 UFO case… just like the Condon Committee had done decades ago. Thus, one wonders: what else might they have overlooked?
This all may seem inconsequential to some, especially since the present analysis alone cannot “prove” that a fragment was indeed blasted off a small, drone-like UFO near Washington in 1952. However, what this analysis does help to illustrate, taken alongside the numerous other factual errors within AARO’s recent report, is that questions regarding the merit of AARO’s broader historical investigations are indeed warranted. It is also not impossible that, if such problems as those addressed here were taken into further consideration by AARO in advance of the publication of Volume II of its historical report, perhaps they may be better equipped to satisfactorily resolve some of these lingering questions.
Altogether, maybe these decades-old claims about a fragment shot off of a flying saucer, which past studies (and more recent ones) have claimed “were most likely false,” should warrant further attention after all.
And if nothing else, perhaps, given such considerations, we can better understand why many Americans remain skeptical about their government’s latest proclamations regarding the long-reviled subject of UFOs.
Watch this amazing raw footage of a UFO creating another UFO over a river in Wyoming last week. The orange craft has the shape of a classic disk with a hump on its top center area. The craft has a glow around it and a rhythmic pattern of moving forward and back that is perfectly timed. Very unusual and looks 100% alien. With aliens coming closer and closer and the publics evidence getting more and more clear, more and more indisputable...it wont be long before the world all agrees on one thing...that intelligent aliens exist.
A historical report issued by the Pentagon’s office tasked with the investigation of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), commonly referred to as UFOs, says it found no evidence that sightings of mysterious aerial objects represent extraterrestrial technology, or that secret programs related to the recovery of crashed exotic vehicles have been hidden from Congress.
Released on Friday, the report is the first installment in a two-volume series produced by the Defense Department’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and explores the history of the U.S. government’s involvement in investigations of UAP under a requirement established in the fiscal year (FY) 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
“To date, AARO has not discovered any empirical evidence that any sighting of a UAP represented off-world technology or the existence a classified program that had not been properly reported to Congress,” the report said.
Citing investigations that revealed most sightings to result from the “misidentification of ordinary objects and phenomena,” the report acknowledged that “many UAP reports remain unsolved,” though adding that better data could lead to the resolution of some of the currently unresolved cases.
In advance of the report’s release, Tim Phillips, acting director of AARO on assignment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), provided a briefing to a limited number of reporters on Wednesday, where he discussed the new report and revealed details about a new system called “Gremlin” designed to acquire real-time data on UAP. The Debrief did not participate in Wednesday’s media briefing.
Following the release of the report, Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough said in an email to The Debrief that “AARO reviewed all official USG investigatory efforts since 1945, researched classified and unclassified archives, conducted dozens of interviews and site visits, and partnered with the Intelligence Community and DoD officials responsible for special access program oversight.”
“AARO created a secure process in partnership with the highest-level security officials within the DoD, IC, and other organizations to research and investigate these claims,” Gough said. “AARO was granted full, unrestricted access by all organizations.”
Major Jesse Marcel poses with mysterious wreckage associated with the purported crash of a flying saucer near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. AARO’s recent historical report says the incident involved a once-secret U.S. covert operation called Project Mogul, as determined by the USAF in the 1990s
(Public Domain).
Although there were notable exceptions, most media coverage of the new AARO report focused almost entirely on the lack of evidence linking UAP sightings to extraterrestrial technologies, as well as the absence of classified programs involved in the recovery of crashed vehicles of non-human origin.
Also commanding media attention had been revelations involving the existence of a proposed program pitched to the Department of Homeland Security in the 2010s under the codename “Kona Blue,” which involved a prospective reverse engineering program for any extraterrestrial technologies acquired by the U.S. government.
According to the AARO report, Kona Blue had been proposed by former members of a DIA program called the Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program (AAWSAP), whose personnel are identified in the report as some of the main proponents behind ongoing assertions involving secret U.S. government UAP programs.
The report says that AARO investigators found no evidence that extraterrestrial craft or their occupants had ever been acquired by the U.S. military and that Kona Blue was ultimately rejected by DHS leadership due to a lack of merit.
Friday’s report was met with significant criticism online following its release, with many arguing that its findings were invalid, while others expressed skepticism over its assertions that no evidence of cover-ups involving crashed UAP retrieval programs had been found.
The report’s findings appear to run in stark contrast to whistleblower allegations that first received widespread public attention last June, involving an official complaint filed with the Intelligence Community Inspector General by David Grusch, a former U.S. intelligence officer whose duties included participation in the U.S. government’s investigations into UAP in recent years.
In January, Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Thomas Monheim spoke with members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee during a classified briefing on UAP, with some who attended claiming it left them with more questions than answers regarding ongoing claims of secret programs and exotic technologies.
Following the release of AARO’s report on Friday, amidst all the attention surrounding what AARO investigators did or did not find, and programs that were proposed but never came to fruition, few mainstream outlets discussed the numerous intriguing allusions to legitimate advanced capabilities the U.S. possesses that are peppered throughout the report—many of which, in likelihood, actually have contributed to UAP sightings over the years.
These seemingly went unnoticed, as well as several factual errors that appear throughout the new report that, for some, potentially undermine the level of rigor AARO appears to have applied in its investigations.
FACT-CHECKING AARO’S HISTORICAL REPORT
Among the many mistakes that appear in the new report, one of the most glaring appears in references to the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his involvement in helping acquire funding for a controversial UAP investigative effort run out of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the early 2000s. The report refers to the Democrat Senator’s home state as being New Mexico, whereas Reid was a U.S. Senator from Nevada.
In another instance, a famous sighting reported by pilot Kenneth Arnold near Mount Rainer, Washington in the summer of 1947 is described as having taken place on “June 23,” one day earlier than Arnold’s sighting occurred.
The report similarly claims Arnold described the objects he observed as being “saucer-like aircraft”, although this now-famous characterization was only later applied by members of the media who, at the time, were referencing Arnold’s description of their movement resembling “saucers” skipping across water.
In yet another example, the AARO report repeatedly refers to a statistical analysis of sightings collected by the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book conducted by the Battelle Memorial Institute as “Project BEAR,” which had, in fact, only been a nickname given to the program by Blue Book’s original director, Edward J. Ruppelt. The project’s actual name—one that has now been known publicly for decades—was Project STORK.
“The name Project BEAR was an intentionally false name made by Edward Ruppelt,” wrote Robert Powell, an Executive Board Member with the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, in a posting on X, “so as not to reveal the true name of the project.”
Powell also noted that the recent AARO report seemingly misstated the date of the Battelle project as having been issued in late 1954, whereas the date on the folder in the Air Force’s Project Blue Book files indicates a date of May 5, 1955.
Beyond mere problems with dates, AARO’s report makes further assertions that Battelle’s study, the results of which were published in a report titled Project Blue Book Special Report #14, “concluded that all cases that had enough data were resolved and readily explainable.” Quite the contrary, the study actually found that among the UFO sightings categorized within a reliability group of reports deemed “Excellent,” only 4.2% had “insufficient info,” whereas 33.3% of these cases remained “Unknown.”
In a posting on X, Marik von Rennenkampf, an analyst who worked with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, called the error “Blatantly, demonstrably false.”
INTRIGUING ACCOUNTS AND UNSOLVED CASES
Despite the number of factual errors that appear throughout the final AARO report, there are nonetheless a handful of intriguing references in it that appear to describe advanced U.S. technologies, although again, few of these have received significant attention in mainstream coverage.
In one example, which describes an individual’s account provided during an interview with AARO investigators, the report states that “AARO was able to correlate this account with an authentic USG program because the interviewee was able to provide a relatively precise time and location of the sighting which they observed exhibiting strange characteristics.”
Test flight during the 1970s of Lockheed’s then-secret Have Blue, the code name for its stealth fighter
(Public Domain).
AARO concluded the technology mistaken for being an exotic UAP technology by the unnamed witness correlated with DoD tests “of a platform protected by a [Special Access Program]” occurring at roughly the same time. “The seemingly strange characteristics reported by the interviewee match closely with the platform’s characteristics,” the AARO report’s authors state, “which was being tested at a military facility in the time frame the interviewee was there.”
“This program is not related in any way to the exploitation of off-world technology,” the report’s authors emphasize, offering no further details on the technology that is believed to have been mistaken for a test involving an exotic craft.
The report’s authors later add that “All the programs assessed to be authentic were or—if still active—continue to be, appropriately reported to either or both the congressional defense and intelligence committees.”
In another instance, material believed to have been retrieved from a UAP was subjected to analysis by the U.S. Army, with subsequent analysis conducted by AARO and “a leading science laboratory,” concluding that “the material is a metallic alloy, terrestrial in nature, and possibly of USAF origin, based on its materials characterization.”
Although most of AARO’s reported findings dismissed any verifiable connections to exotic craft or genuine unexplained phenomena, linking them instead to known U.S. government programs, there are a handful of incidents AARO said it was still investigating, which included a series of widely discussed UAP events that occurred at U.S. strategic sites during the 1960s and 1970s.
“AARO is researching U.S. and adversarial activity related to these events,” the report states, “including any U.S. programs that tested defensive ballistic missile capabilities.”
The report also maintains AARO’s past positions regarding the likelihood that prosaic explanations exist for the majority of UAP sightings, although its authors nonetheless acknowledge that there are still some cases the Pentagon’s UAP investigative office has been unable to solve.
“A small percentage of cases have potentially anomalous characteristics or concerning characteristics,” the report’s authors write. “AARO has kept Congress fully and currently informed of its findings. AARO’s research continues on these cases.”
Historic image of an A-12 test flight at Area 51 in 1962
(Public Domain).
QUESTIONS OF ACCESS AND ONGOING PROBLEMS
Last April, during a Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities hearing led by U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, then-Director of AARO, agreed when asked about AARO’s Title 50 accessibility by Senator Gillibrand that “having additional authorities for collection, tasking, counterintelligence… those are all things that would be helpful, yes.”
In the U.S., most activities conducted by the Intelligence Community, including covert action missions, foreign espionage, and other activities best suited for combating unconventional external threats, operate under what is known as Title 50 authority.
Although Dr. Kirkpatrick emphasized having “good relations” with other agencies during last April’s hearing, his statements gave the distinct impression that AARO had been operating solely under Title 10 authority for the duration of its mission at that time, which would seemingly place limitations on its ability to acquire information related to the Intelligence Community’s involvement with UAP investigations, including but not limited to exchanges of data and tasking collection assets.
Responding to questions from The Debrief, Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough clarified that AARO does have access to U.S. intelligence information that falls under Title 50 authority.
“There is no impediment to AARO receiving all UAP-related information, past or present, regardless of level or origin of classification,” Gough told The Debrief. “By law, AARO may receive all UAP-related information, at all levels of classification, regardless of whether the original classification authority for such information is within DoD or the Intelligence Community.”
Although AARO does appear to have access to all the intelligence on UAP that it required, contrary to what was conveyed during last April’s Senate hearing, the Pentagon nonetheless continues to face challenges in its collection and management of information about UAP.
Earlier this year, an unclassified summary of a DoD Inspector General report evaluating the Pentagon’s activities related to UAP was released, which argued that the DoD lacks any comprehensive, coordinated means by which it can currently address UAP. The report further argued that the DoD’s apparent lack of coordination on the UAP issue could pose a threat to U.S. military forces and, more broadly, to national security.
“We determined that the DoD has no overarching UAP policy,” a portion of the DoD Inspector General report read, “and, as a result, it lacks assurance that national security and flight safety threats to the United States from UAP have been identified and mitigated.”
In a statement on Friday following the new AARO historical report’s release, Pentagon Press Secretary Major General Pat Ryder said the second volume of AARO’s historical review will be forthcoming later this year.
“AARO will publish a second volume that will provide analysis of information acquired by AARO after Nov. 1, 2023, including information received via interviews with current and former U.S. government personnel who contacted AARO via the secure reporting mechanism on AARO’s website,” Ryder said.
“Analyzing and understanding the historical record on UAP is an ongoing collaborative effort involving many departments and agencies, and the department thanks the contributing departments and agencies, as well as the interviewees who came forward with information,” Ryder added.
A long-awaited Pentagon report says there is "no verifiable evidence" of the U.S. government encountering or concealing evidence of alien life.
The Pentagon, Washington DC, USA.
(Image credit: Glowimages via Getty Images)
The U.S. government is not hiding aliens or their spaceships — although it did once propose a program to reverse-engineer any hypothetical alien technology it found, a Department of Defense (DOD) report reveals.
The Pentagon report, a highly anticipated review of classified documents from 1945 to 2023 that was submitted to Congress Friday (March 8), found no evidence that the U.S. government has encountered aliens or covered up their existence.
Instead, the report blames UFO sightings in the 1960s on top-secret flights of prototype American spy planes and spacecraft. And while the U.S. government did consider a program to reverse-engineer any captured alien ships in the 2010s, no craft were ever found and the proposal was rejected for "lacking merit," according to the report.
There is "no verifiable evidence for claims that the U.S. government and private companies have access to or have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology," Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement after the report's release. The report also found "no evidence that any U.S. government investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP [unidentified aerial phenomenon] represented extraterrestrial technology."
"All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification," Ryder added.
The 63-page review was made by the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was established in 2022 to investigate and manage reports of UFO sightings from the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force. The review included classified and unclassified archical evidence, full access to all secretive government programs related to UFOs, and 30 interviews with intelligence personnel.
The U.S. government's renewed interest in UFOs came after a 2017 leak of three now-infamous video clips that appeared to show mysterious, wingless aircraft flying at hypersonic speeds past dumbfounded U.S. Navy pilots. In 2020, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence called for an inquiry into UFOs, and in June 2021, the Pentagon released a report on more than 140 UFO sightings by Navy pilots. That report concluded there was no evidence of alien activity in any of the instances.
Despite those findings, the government's interest in UFOs drove news outlets and social media sites into frenzies of speculation. The conspiracy theories reached their apex when, in July 2023, David Grusch, a former U.S. intelligence official and whistleblower, claimed that the government had been secretly investigating crashed UFOs. In his congressional hearing, Grusch told the House Committee on Oversight and Reform that not only had spaceships been recovered but that "nonhuman" beings had been found inside.
Despite bluntly contradicting many of Grusch's claims, the report does mention a brief period when the Pentagon considered a program to reverse-engineer alien technology. Called Kona Blue, it was proposed to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by individuals who suspected the U.S. government was hiding crashed UFOs.
"This proposal gained some initial traction at DHS to the point where a 35 Prospective Special Access Program (PSAP) was officially requested to stand up this program, but it was eventually rejected by DHS leadership for lacking merit," the report said. "It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected — this material was only assumed to exist by Kona Blue advocates and its anticipated contract performers."
The AARO said that later this year it will publish a second volume of the report covering sightings made between November 2023 and April 2024. The office also announced that the DOD is working on a portable sensor kit called the "Gremlin system" to investigate UFO sightings as they occur.
VIDEO – UFO Over Oklahoma City: Witness Describes Mysterious Smoky Circle
VIDEO – UFO Over Oklahoma City: Witness Describes Mysterious Smoky Circle
In a recent, captivating interview on “NewsNation Prime,” Steve Aragona shared his extraordinary experience of witnessing an unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) in the skies over Oklahoma City. This event, occurring on the evening of March 4, has added to the growing collection of UAP sightings that continue to intrigue both the public and researchers alike.
The Encounter
Steve, a Navy veteran, was enjoying a casual evening outside with his children and neighbors when their attention was abruptly drawn to the sky by an unexpected sight. A bright, stationary object appeared overhead, its brilliance and stillness in stark contrast to familiar aerial objects like aircraft or celestial bodies such as shooting stars and comets.
The object’s behavior became even more intriguing when it began to move, emitting what Steve described as a “smoky type circle.” This phenomenon defied the witnesses’ expectations, as conventional understanding suggests that any natural object, such as a meteor entering the Earth’s atmosphere, would move away from such a formation, not towards it.
Expert Insights
The sighting prompted discussions with experts who acknowledged that this event strongly aligns with numerous other UAP encounters reported not just in the United States but globally. These encounters often share a common thread of exhibiting behaviors and characteristics that challenge our current understanding of physics and aeronautics.
Speculation and Skepticism
The mention of a SpaceX launch earlier that day added a layer of complexity to the sighting. SpaceX clarified that if the launch were related to the observed phenomenon, it would have been visible in a completely different direction, thereby ruling out a direct connection. This detail further deepens the mystery, as it suggests that the sighting cannot be easily dismissed as a misidentified human-made object.
Broader Implications
Steve’s experience and subsequent reflection on the possibility of extraterrestrial life highlight a significant shift in the public discourse surrounding UAPs. Once a topic relegated to the fringes of serious conversation, the increasing number of credible witnesses and official investigations into UAPs has brought it into mainstream consideration.
VIDEO:
‘Smoky type circle’: Man describes seeing UAP over Oklahoma City | NewsNation Prime
The sighting over Oklahoma City underscores the need for continued research and open dialogue about UAPs. As we gather more evidence and testimonies, we inch closer to understanding the true nature of these phenomena. Whether they are natural, extraterrestrial, or something else entirely, stories like Steve Aragona’s play a crucial role in unraveling the mysteries that lie beyond our current comprehension.
The 4 Big Questions the Pentagon’s New UFO Report Fails to Answer
The 4 Big Questions the Pentagon’s New UFO Report Fails to Answer
The Pentagon says it’s not hiding aliens, but it stops notably short of saying what it is hiding. Here are the key questions that remain unanswered—some answers could be weirder than UFOs.
After a year of eyebrow-raising headlines about government whistleblowers alleging that the military was running secret programs focused on alien spaceships and a months-long study and dogged investigative work through the shadows of classified Pentagon programs, the United States Defense Department announced Friday that it found no evidence that the government is covering up contact with extraterrestrials.
The first sentence of the 63-page report on the government’s involvement with unidentified anomalous phenomenon—a report mandated and driven by Congress—seemingly left no wiggle room: The study “found no evidence that any USG [US government] investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology. All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification.”-
The report was issued by the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the unit created and tasked in recent years with studying UAP sightings and untangling the truth of the government’s knowledge and understanding of generations of UFO reports. It follows media interviews and a blockbuster congressional hearing last summer where whistleblower David Grusch testified that the government was engaged in a decades-long cover-up of crashed alien spacecraft and in possession even of “non-human biologics,” e.g., alien bodies. Grusch and other witnesses and whistleblowers came forward to congressional committees and Pentagon investigators and hinted at astounding possibilities, including that the government was running secret UFO crash-retrieval programs, and defense contractors were running covert programs, hidden even from budget appropriators, to reverse-engineer captured alien technology.
There were many reasons to doubt the full expanse of the testimony by Grusch and others. Much of it was second-hand, and after spending two yearswriting a bookon the government, UFOs, and the search for extraterrestrial life, Isaid last summerthat many of the claims seemed more like an “intergalactic game of telephone,” where people with limited visibility into secret Pentagon and intelligence programs were misidentifying or misinterpreting more mundane program. But that’s not to say that the new AARO report is the end of the story nor that its conclusion should be the end of public interest in UFOs, UAPs, and the secret frontiers of government science.
In fact, while the report’s conclusion surprised almost no one except the most ardent of believers—people who might not be all that inclined to believe the Pentagon’s disavowal anyway—the report in its own way raises as many new questions as it answers, questions that could, with time, prove revolutionary to technology and science.
AARO investigators, for instance, dug through the claims of witnesses and whistleblowers and successfully traced back the underlying research projects, Special Access Programs (SAPs), and classified compartments. As the report says, “AARO investigated numerous named, and described, but unnamed programs alleged to involve UAP exploitation conveyed to AARO through official interviews,” and ultimately, “conclude[d] many of these programs represent authentic, current and former sensitive, national security programs, but none of these programs have been involved with capturing, recovering, or reverse-engineering off-world technology or material.”
But what, then, were those programs? Herein lies the most intriguing—and potentially ground-breaking—question that the Pentagon study leaves us wondering: What exactly are the secret compartmentalized programs that the whistleblowers and government witnessesmisidentifiedas being related to UAP technology? What, exactly, are the Pentagon, intelligence community, or defense contractors working on that, from a concentric circle or two away inside the shadowy world of SAPs, looks and sounds like reverse-engineering out-of-this-world technology or even studying so-called “non-human biologics”?
There are at least four clear possibilities.
Secret Tech From Foreign Nations
First, what exotic technological possibilities have been recovered from unknown terrestrial sources? For example, if the government is working on reverse-engineering technologies, those technologies are likely from advanced adversary nation-states like China, Russia, and Iran, and perhaps even quasi-allies like Israel that may be more limited in their technology-sharing with the US. What have other countries mastered that we haven’t?
A Question of ‘Peculiar Characteristics’
Second, what technologies has the US mastered that the public doesn’t know about? One of the common threads of UFO sightings across decades have been secret military aircraft and spacecraft in development or not yet publicly acknowledged. For example, the CIA estimated that the U-2 spy plane in the 1950s accounted for as much as half of reported UFO sightings. And the AARO report spends a half-dozen pages documenting how confusion over subsequent generations of secret US government aircraft appear to have also contributed to the great intergalactic game of telephone of UFO programs inside the government, including modern Predator, Reaper, and Global Hawk drones. AARO investigated one claim where a witness reported hearing a former US military service member had touched an extraterrestrial spacecraft, but when they tracked down the service member, he said that the conversation was likely a garbled version of the time he touched an F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter at a secret facility.-
There are surely other secret craft still in testing and development now, including the B-21 stealth bomber, which had its first test flight in November and is now in testing at Edwards Air Force Base in California, as well as others we don’t know about. The government can still surprise us with unknown craft—like the until-then-unknown modified stealthy helicopter left behind on the Pakistan raid to kill Osama bin Laden. And some of these still-classified efforts are likely causing UFO confusion too: AARO untangled one witness’s claim of spotting a UAP with “peculiar characteristics” at a specific time and place and were able to determine, “at the time the interviewee said he observed the event, the DOD was conducting tests of a platform protected by a SAP. The seemingly strange characteristics reported by the interviewee match closely with the platform’s characteristics, which was being tested at a military facility in the time frame the interviewee was there.” So what was that craft—and what were its “peculiar characteristics?”
Relatedly, the US military has a classified spaceship, the X-37B, that has regularly orbited around the Earth since its first mission in 2010—it just blasted off on its seventh and most recent mission in December—and its previous, sixth, mission lasted a record-breaking 908 days in orbit. The Pentagon has said remarkably little about what it does up there for years at a time. What secret space-related or aviation-related programs is the government running that outsiders confuse as alien spacecraft?
A Material Matter
The third likely area of tech development that might appear to outsiders to be UFO-related is more speculative basic research and development: What propulsion systems or material-science breakthroughs are defense contractors at work on right now that could transform our collective future? Again, AARO found such confusion taking place: After one witness reported hearing that “aliens” had observed one secret government test, AARO traced the allegation back to find “the conversation likely referenced a test and evaluation unit that had a nickname with ‘alien’ connotations at the specific installation mentioned. The nature of the test described by the interviewee closely matched the description of a specific materials test conveyed to AARO investigators.” So what materials were being tested there?
There are some puzzling materials-science breadcrumbs wrapped throughout the AARO report. It found one instance where “a private sector organization claimed to have in its possession material from an extraterrestrial craft recovered from a crash at an unknown location from the 1940s or 1950s. The organization claimed that the material had the potential to act as a THz frequency waveguide, and therefore, could exhibit ‘anti-gravity’ and ‘mass reduction’ properties under the appropriate conditions.” Ultimately, though, the new report concluded, “AARO and a leading science laboratory concluded that the material is a metallic alloy, terrestrial in nature, and possibly of USAF [US Air Force] origin, based on its materials characterization.”
A Knowledge Limit
Fourth and lastly is the category of the truly weird: Scientists at the forefront of physics point out that we should be humble about how little of the universe we truly understand; as Harvard astronomy chair Avi Loeb explains, effectively all that we’ve learned about relativity and quantum physics has unfolded in the span of a single human lifespan, and astounding new discoveries continue to amaze scientists. Just last summer, scientists announced they’d detected for the first time gravitational waves criss-crossing the universe that rippled through space-time, and astrophysicists continue to suspect that the universe is far weirder than we think. (Italian astrophysicist Carlo Rovelli last year posited the existence of “white holes” that would be related to black holes, which, he pointed out, were still a mystery just 25 years ago when he was starting his career.)
Answers here could be almost unfathomably weird—think parallel dimensions or the ability to travel at a fraction of the speed of light. And one of the most intriguing questions left by the UAP “game of telephone” is whether there are truly astounding advances in physics that government scientists, defense contractors, or research laboratories or centers could be feeling around that could also appear from the outside to be UFO-related.
Indeed, the AARO report references that at least some chunk of the “alien confusion” inside government may have grown out of a now well-known but then-secret effort in the late 2000s and early 2010s by Nevada entrepreneur Robert Bigelow’s aerospace company to study UAPs and paranormal activity by the Defense Intelligence Agency, through $22 million in funding secured by then-Senate majority leader Harry Reid. That effort, known as the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program (AAWSAP), included digging—without official authorization—into paranormal activity at a ranch out west, among other activities. Not much came out of that effort—and the AARO report dismissively notes that AAWSAP’s “scientific papers were never thoroughly peer-reviewed.” But people in and around the world of “ufology” have long noted that one of those papers intriguingly studied “Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions.” Did the Pentagon know more about the outer boundaries of physics than it let on?
While other physicists who have reviewed that speculative 34-page AAWSAP report have said it had little real-world utility, it hints at how our modern understanding of the world around us may still be transformed by the unknown and future discoveries.
After reading thousands of pages of government studies, extraterrestrial research, and scientific papers related to the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, I’ve come to believe that in some ways aliens might be the least interesting answer to the questions around UAPs and UFOs. Similarly, the AARO report may one day be seen as closing the door on alien spacecraft while opening the door to something even more fantastical.
KONA BLUE: Top-Secret Government Program To Investigate “Human Consciousness Anomalies” Doesn’t Exist, New Report Says
KONA BLUE: Top-Secret Government Program To Investigate “Human Consciousness Anomalies” Doesn’t Exist, New Report Says
The 63-page-long document is part of an investigation into U.S. government programs that have been a springboard for alleged paranormal-related activity.
No, the United States government does not have alien bodies hiding somewhere, nor has it ever tried to reverse-engineer flying saucers. Really.
That’s one of the main stances that the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), an organization created in 2022 to resolve sightings of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), asserts in a report published Friday.
UAP is the modern moniker for UFO. Intelligence officials avoided reusing the popular term because it’s too closely associated, nowadays, with little green men.
UAP refers to sightings from pilots and members of the military, who haven’t been able to explain why they’ve seen objects that appear to reject the laws of motion and physics. Many have been proven to be weather balloons and tricks of perception. Several, however, remain unexplained. That has given credence to people who believe the U.S. government is hiding aliens.
The 63-page-long document is the first volume in a series of investigations into U.S. government programs through history that have been a springboard for alleged paranormal-related activity. “Analyzing and understanding the historical record on UAP is an ongoing collaborative effort involving many departments and agencies,” AARO officials wrote in an announcement published on Friday.
“To date, AARO has found no verifiable evidence for claims that the U.S. government and private companies have access to or have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology,” the statement says.
KONA BLUE NEVER EXISTED
The report makes several assertions, including a debunking of KONA BLUE.
KONA BLUE, as the report explains, was allegedly a top-secret program to investigate “human consciousness anomalies,” retrieve and exploit “non-human biologics,” and reverse engineer any alien craft they found.
“It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected — this material was only assumed to exist by KONA BLUE advocates and its anticipated contract Performers,” the report authors emphasized.
As the authors do throughout the report, they take an instance of a program and explain where the pseudoscience claims may be emerging. In the case of KONA BLUE, the contract for a $22 million program, greenlit in 2008 to assess aerospace threats on the horizon — and which was never explicitly tasked with researching UFOs — was awarded to a private sector organization. But the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency canceled it in 2012, “due to lack of merit and the
utility of the deliverables,” though this didn’t stop non-government program advocates, who renamed the proposal as KONA BLUE, from seeking to investigate paranormal activity.
“KONA BLUE’s advocates were convinced that the USG [U.S. government] was hiding UAP technologies. They believed that creating this program under DHS would allow all of the technology and knowledge of these alleged programs to be moved under the KONA BLUE program,” according to the report.
This program was never rubber stamped, and as the report says, “was never approved or stood up, and no data or material was transferred to DHS [Department of Homeland Security].”
In the Friday announcement, AARO officials stipulate that they’ve approached their review of KONA BLUE and other topics “with the widest possible aperture,” that it is committed to reaching conclusions based on verifiable evidence, willing to “follow the evidence where it leads, wherever it leads.”
“To date, AARO has not discovered any empirical evidence that any sighting of a UAP represented off-world technology or the existence a classified program that had not been properly reported to Congress,” the report said.
Citing investigations that revealed most sightings to result from the “misidentification of ordinary objects and phenomena,” the report acknowledged that “many UAP reports remain unsolved,” though adding that better data could lead to the resolution of some of the currently unresolved cases.
In advance of the report’s release, Tim Phillips, acting director of AARO on assignment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), provided a briefing to a limited number of reporters on Wednesday, where he discussed the new report and revealed details about a new system called “Gremlin” designed to acquire real-time data on UAP. The Debrief did not participate in Wednesday’s media briefing.
Following the release of the report, Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough said in an email to The Debrief that “AARO reviewed all official USG investigatory efforts since 1945, researched classified and unclassified archives, conducted dozens of interviews and site visits, and partnered with the Intelligence Community and DoD officials responsible for special access program oversight.”
“AARO created a secure process in partnership with the highest-level security officials within the DoD, IC, and other organizations to research and investigate these claims,” Gough said. “AARO was granted full, unrestricted access by all organizations.”
Although there were notable exceptions, most media coverage of the new AARO report focused almost entirely on the lack of evidence linking UAP sightings to extraterrestrial technologies, as well as the absence of classified programs involved in the recovery of crashed vehicles of non-human origin.
Also commanding media attention had been revelations involving the existence of a proposed program pitched to the Department of Homeland Security in the 2010s under the codename “Kona Blue,” which involved a prospective reverse engineering program for any extraterrestrial technologies acquired by the U.S. government.
According to the AARO report, Kona Blue had been proposed by former members of a DIA program called the Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program (AAWSAP), whose personnel are identified in the report as some of the main proponents behind ongoing assertions involving secret U.S. government UAP programs.
The report says that AARO investigators found no evidence that extraterrestrial craft or their occupants had ever been acquired by the U.S. military and that Kona Blue was ultimately rejected by DHS leadership due to a lack of merit.
Friday’s report was met with significant criticism online following its release, with many arguing that its findings were invalid, while others expressed skepticism over its assertions that no evidence of cover-ups involving crashed UAP retrieval programs had been found.
The report’s findings appear to run in stark contrast to whistleblower allegations that first received widespread public attention last June, involving an official complaint filed with the Intelligence Community Inspector General by David Grusch, a former U.S. intelligence officer whose duties included participation in the U.S. government’s investigations into UAP in recent years.
In January, Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Thomas Monheim spoke with members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee during a classified briefing on UAP, with some who attended claiming it left them with more questions than answers regarding ongoing claims of secret programs and exotic technologies.
Following the release of AARO’s report on Friday, amidst all the attention surrounding what AARO investigators did or did not find, and programs that were proposed but never came to fruition, few mainstream outlets discussed the numerous intriguing allusions to legitimate advanced capabilities the U.S. possesses that are peppered throughout the report—many of which, in likelihood, actually have contributed to UAP sightings over the years.
These seemingly went unnoticed, as well as several factual errors that appear throughout the new report that, for some, potentially undermine the level of rigor AARO appears to have applied in its investigations.
FACT-CHECKING AARO’S HISTORICAL REPORT
Among the many mistakes that appear in the new report, one of the most glaring appears in references to the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his involvement in helping acquire funding for a controversial UAP investigative effort run out of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the early 2000s. The report refers to the Democrat Senator’s home state as being New Mexico, whereas Reid was a U.S. Senator from Nevada.
In another instance, a famous sighting reported by pilot Kenneth Arnold near Mount Rainer, Washington in the summer of 1947 is described as having taken place on “June 23,” one day earlier than Arnold’s sighting occurred.
The report similarly claims Arnold described the objects he observed as being “saucer-like aircraft”, although this now-famous characterization was only later applied by members of the media who, at the time, were referencing Arnold’s description of their movement resembling “saucers” skipping across water.
In yet another example, the AARO report repeatedly refers to a statistical analysis of sightings collected by the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book conducted by the Battelle Memorial Institute as “Project BEAR,” which had, in fact, only been a nickname given to the program by Blue Book’s original director, Edward J. Ruppelt. The project’s actual name—one that has now been known publicly for decades—was Project STORK.
“The name Project BEAR was an intentionally false name made by Edward Ruppelt,” wrote Robert Powell, an Executive Board Member with the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, in a posting on X, “so as not to reveal the true name of the project.”
Powell also noted that the recent AARO report seemingly misstated the date of the Battelle project as having been issued in late 1954, whereas the date on the folder in the Air Force’s Project Blue Book files indicates a date of May 5, 1955.
Beyond mere problems with dates, AARO’s report makes further assertions that Battelle’s study, the results of which were published in a report titled Project Blue Book Special Report #14, “concluded that all cases that had enough data were resolved and readily explainable.” Quite the contrary, the study actually found that among the UFO sightings categorized within a reliability group of reports deemed “Excellent,” only 4.2% had “insufficient info,” whereas 33.3% of these cases remained “Unknown.”
In a posting on X, Marik von Rennenkampf, an analyst who worked with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, called the error “Blatantly, demonstrably false.”
INTRIGUING ACCOUNTS AND UNSOLVED CASES
Despite the number of factual errors that appear throughout the final AARO report, there are nonetheless a handful of intriguing references in it that appear to describe advanced U.S. technologies, although again, few of these have received significant attention in mainstream coverage.
In one example, which describes an individual’s account provided during an interview with AARO investigators, the report states that “AARO was able to correlate this account with an authentic USG program because the interviewee was able to provide a relatively precise time and location of the sighting which they observed exhibiting strange characteristics.”
AARO concluded the technology mistaken for being an exotic UAP technology by the unnamed witness correlated with DoD tests “of a platform protected by a [Special Access Program]” occurring at roughly the same time. “The seemingly strange characteristics reported by the interviewee match closely with the platform’s characteristics,” the AARO report’s authors state, “which was being tested at a military facility in the time frame the interviewee was there.”
“This program is not related in any way to the exploitation of off-world technology,” the report’s authors emphasize, offering no further details on the technology that is believed to have been mistaken for a test involving an exotic craft.
The report’s authors later add that “All the programs assessed to be authentic were or—if still active—continue to be, appropriately reported to either or both the congressional defense and intelligence committees.”
In another instance, material believed to have been retrieved from a UAP was subjected to analysis by the U.S. Army, with subsequent analysis conducted by AARO and “a leading science laboratory,” concluding that “the material is a metallic alloy, terrestrial in nature, and possibly of USAF origin, based on its materials characterization.”
Although most of AARO’s reported findings dismissed any verifiable connections to exotic craft or genuine unexplained phenomena, linking them instead to known U.S. government programs, there are a handful of incidents AARO said it was still investigating, which included a series of widely discussed UAP events that occurred at U.S. strategic sites during the 1960s and 1970s.
“AARO is researching U.S. and adversarial activity related to these events,” the report states, “including any U.S. programs that tested defensive ballistic missile capabilities.”
The report also maintains AARO’s past positions regarding the likelihood that prosaic explanations exist for the majority of UAP sightings, although its authors nonetheless acknowledge that there are still some cases the Pentagon’s UAP investigative office has been unable to solve.
“A small percentage of cases have potentially anomalous characteristics or concerning characteristics,” the report’s authors write. “AARO has kept Congress fully and currently informed of its findings. AARO’s research continues on these cases.”
Historic image of an A-12 test flight at Area 51 in 1962
(Public Domain).
QUESTIONS OF ACCESS AND ONGOING PROBLEMS
Last April, during a Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities hearing led by U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, then-Director of AARO, agreed when asked about AARO’s Title 50 accessibility by Senator Gillibrand that “having additional authorities for collection, tasking, counterintelligence… those are all things that would be helpful, yes.”
In the U.S., most activities conducted by the Intelligence Community, including covert action missions, foreign espionage, and other activities best suited for combating unconventional external threats, operate under what is known as Title 50 authority.
Although Dr. Kirkpatrick emphasized having “good relations” with other agencies during last April’s hearing, his statements gave the distinct impression that AARO had been operating solely under Title 10 authority for the duration of its mission at that time, which would seemingly place limitations on its ability to acquire information related to the Intelligence Community’s involvement with UAP investigations, including but not limited to exchanges of data and tasking collection assets.
Responding to questions from The Debrief, Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough clarified that AARO does have access to U.S. intelligence information that falls under Title 50 authority.
“There is no impediment to AARO receiving all UAP-related information, past or present, regardless of level or origin of classification,” Gough told The Debrief. “By law, AARO may receive all UAP-related information, at all levels of classification, regardless of whether the original classification authority for such information is within DoD or the Intelligence Community.”
Although AARO does appear to have access to all the intelligence on UAP that it required, contrary to what was conveyed during last April’s Senate hearing, the Pentagon nonetheless continues to face challenges in its collection and management of information about UAP.
Earlier this year, an unclassified summary of a DoD Inspector General report evaluating the Pentagon’s activities related to UAP was released, which argued that the DoD lacks any comprehensive, coordinated means by which it can currently address UAP. The report further argued that the DoD’s apparent lack of coordination on the UAP issue could pose a threat to U.S. military forces and, more broadly, to national security.
“We determined that the DoD has no overarching UAP policy,” a portion of the DoD Inspector General report read, “and, as a result, it lacks assurance that national security and flight safety threats to the United States from UAP have been identified and mitigated.”
In a statement on Friday following the new AARO historical report’s release, Pentagon Press Secretary Major General Pat Ryder said the second volume of AARO’s historical review will be forthcoming later this year.
“AARO will publish a second volume that will provide analysis of information acquired by AARO after Nov. 1, 2023, including information received via interviews with current and former U.S. government personnel who contacted AARO via the secure reporting mechanism on AARO’s website,” Ryder said.
“Analyzing and understanding the historical record on UAP is an ongoing collaborative effort involving many departments and agencies, and the department thanks the contributing departments and agencies, as well as the interviewees who came forward with information,” Ryder added.
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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 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
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