Tom DeLonge and Alien Writing

Isaac Koi alerted many of us to an interview that Joe Rogan had with Tom DeLonge about DeLonge’s announcement about his UFO research. For those of us who have been around for more than ten minutes, some of the things that DeLonge believes are quite disturbing. You can watch the whole interview here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n_3mnJfHzY

Koi pointed out some of the trouble with this interview and I would be remiss if I hadn’t checked just to be sure, though Koi is reliable and careful. He noted, for example, that at the one hour, two minute and forty-two second point in the interview, DeLong begins to talk about Atlantis and how some of the survivors, a small number of them, escaped. These people had been directing… maybe influencing, human development.

But then he slips off the rails and talks about Greek writing found on the Roswell wreckage. They, Rogan and DeLonge, say you can look it up online. Just type in Roswell Wreckage and you’ll see Greek writing on the I-Beam. The photo they bring up at that point is a shot of the I-Beam (actually more of an H-Beam) as shown in

Jesse Marcel, Jr. and the mock up
of his I-Beam. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle

the old alien autopsy video which allegedly showed some of the Roswell wreckage. That whole thing is an admitted hoax.

I did type Roswell Wreckage into Google and didn’t get to the alien autopsy footage immediately. I first found the symbols as described by Jesse Marcel, Jr., with an illustration of what he had seen, which, by the way, looks nothing like Greek writing. You can see that here:

http://www.angelfire.com/indie/anna_jones1/roswell_hieroglyphs.html

I did, eventually, get to another URL that showed footage from the alien autopsy, but this isn’t what DeLonge had talked about. You can see that here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce98itRdOg

I finally just typed Roswell Symbols into my search engine and came up with a site that had all sorts of pictures of all sorts of symbols that related to Roswell. You can see that here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=roswell+symbols&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIoMjg5JjXAhWIOCYKHdciDKMQ7AkIMw&biw=1706&bih=816

The actual link that they found, which seems to be the one shown on Rogan’s YouTube video of the program can be found here:

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Ftrowbridgeplanetearth.com%2FALI%2Fgraphics%2FIBeam.gif&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Ftrowbridgeplanetearth.c

And to really complicate all of this, the main photo in that sequence actually links to another site which doesn’t seem to agree with the alleged translations given by Rogan and DeLonge. You can see it here:

http://trowbridgeplanetearth.com/ALI/ROS/Wreck.html

To make it worse, if possible, the symbols on the H-Beam are from the alien autopsy and were created by Spyros Melaris as part of the alien autopsy hoax. The point, however, is that the image shown by Rogan and DeLonge were clearly part of the long-discredited alien autopsy. That doesn’t bode well for the quality of the research that has been conducted by DeLonge and his fellows.

I was going to end it at this point, but then remembered their discussion of the discovery of Pluto. Fortunately for them, they had access to the Internet which provided the information they didn’t have. They then suggest that the Sumerians knew about Pluto. They find a picture that seems to show the sun surrounded by a number of circles they call planets and use this to prove that the Sumerians knew about Pluto long before we, in the modern world, knew.

You can read the whole article about the artifact so that you can put it all into some sort of context here:

https://subharanjangupta.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/case-for-nibiru-the-sumerian-angle/

The sun symbol is between the two standing
figures with the circles surrounding it.

As you’ll see, there is nothing to suggest that the small circles that surround the alleged sun were the planets of the Solar System. Those names shown by Rogan were obviously added later, much later, and include not only the planets that were visible to the unaided eye, but those dwarf planets that have been discovered in the last decade or so. This way everything is labeled, but it is not evidence that the Sumerians knew, not only of Pluto, but several of the other dwarf planets. It’s all wild speculation that looks and sounds good until you take the time to look at the evidence.

Here's the real point. We have an opportunity to listen to Tom DeLonge talk about what he knows about alien visitation, ancient history and UFOs. What we see is that he has not subjected this to any critical thought but rather talks of inside sources who know all this and who have shared it with him but he fails to identify those sources. Even a cursory search of various websites seems to indicate that little of this is true, and if this is the direction of his research and his new organization are taking, then there is little hope that it will accomplish anything except make money for a few people involved in it.

Josh Gates, the Ramey Memo and Me

As many of you know, I have been involved for years in an attempt to decipher the Ramey Memo. Many consider this the “smoking gun” which will prove that aliens have been visiting Earth. The problem is that the Memo is just beyond the range of our ability to read most of it. There have been various interpretations about what it says but there isn’t much in the way of consensus.

Me on the left and Josh Gates on the right. All photos on the
blog are copyright by Kevin Randle.

Last spring, I was contacted by the producers of Expedition Unknown starring Josh Gates. I have, over the last several years turned down opportunities to appear on various television shows, but this one had Josh Gates. I had been watching him since he had been doing Destination Truth on the Sci Fi Channel, now called Syfy for some reason that I don’t understand. (Well, maybe it was to move them from Science Fiction into some other realm so they could air programming that isn’t really Science Fiction.)

Expedition Unknown was going to do a segment on the Ramey Memo and asked for my help. My first thought was to tell them to call David Rudiak. I mentioned that David had spent years in his analysis of the Memo and would have some interesting insights into it. I told them that he had been to Fort Worth, to the Special Collections at the University of Texas at Arlington Library, in his attempts to read the Memo.

Josh Gates and Brenda McClurkin in the cold vault
reviewing the filing system for the negatives
kept there.

I don’t know if they contacted him or not, but they did say they would like me to help them. I told them that Brenda McClurkin, at the library was the person they needed to contact. I think they might have already chatted with her about getting into see the original negative of General Ramey holding the Memo. I also mentioned that here was a document with a provenance that could be clearly established. I mean, Ramey is holding it in his hand and we have a documented date for the photograph.

The producers arranged for me to meet Josh Gates at UTA to review the Ramey Memo scenario. On the morning that we were to go to the Special Collections, I was in the lobby waiting for a ride and began talking with Michael Primeau, who had been hired for the forensic analysis of the Memo. He had used the latest of the scans, supplied by UTA, but that had been created by David Rudiak and another team as part of another attempt to clarify the message on the Memo. That had taken place about two years earlier.

Josh Gates and Michael Primeau in the Library at the University of Texas, Arlington.

While we chatted, Michael mentioned that he didn’t know anything about the context of the Memo, only that he was asked to determine what he could see. The thinking had been to avoid bias. Yes, context is important when attempting to validate a document, and certainly context can help provide clues about what a document said if the lettering was obscured in a fashion similar to that on the Memo. We had learned years ago that priming, that is, giving people a little information about the Memo did influence their interpretation of it. That influence wasn’t universal, but it was a factor.

Cold Storage filing system in the basement of the library.

We did tour the cold vault where the negative is kept. It is filed with somewhere between 4 and 5 million negatives, some of them going back to the beginnings of photography in the late 19^th century. The cold is said to help preserve the negatives, especially those that are so old. People at the library had noticed that some of the older negatives were beginning to deteriorate, so the facility was created that should kept them in good shape for the next several centuries.

But, of course, the real interest was in what the negative had revealed on those earlier scans that had been made with Brenda and David contributing to the process. It had taken several days to get

Entrance to the Special Collections at UTA.

those necessary scans in that earlier attempt, and then Michael had subjected those scans to forensic analysis using his equipment. I want to make it clear that this is what he does for a living and has testified in various courts about his work and how his analyses had been made and his professional interpretation of the results. He is one of those expert witnesses that you often hear about.

The critical word or phrase, the one that had been identified by many of those who have looked at the Memo, is “victims of the wreck.” Others, in the last few years have suggested the critical word, “victims,” is actually, “viewing.” The difference in the two is important because one implies a flight crew who would be the victims and the other suggests that officers at the scene had merely viewed the wreckage. You can read about this in earlier postings at:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=viewing+the+wreck

(The problem is that this actually brings up several different articles about the Memo. To get to the specific article, just type “viewing the wreck,” into the search engine on the blog and that should narrow it down to the main article.)

This question, was it victims or viewing, was the one that interested me the most. True, Michael had clarified, to his satisfaction, other aspects of the Memo, much of it merely the mundane language you would expect in a military teletype message. But he was convinced that “viewing” was the correct word.

I add parenthetically, that I found the lack of military jargon in the Memo a little disturbing. I mean, I have seen documents so filled with jargon that they were nearly incomprehensible and others that contained little or no real jargon. I just mention this because it is one of many considerations.

While we were there in the Special Collections area of the library, sitting behind Michael’s computer and watching as he changed filters and manipulated the Memo with contrast and the like, I saw the word “viewing” clearly, but as he changed things, I could also see the word “victims.” Not overly helpful from my point of view and certainly not answering the question.

That seems to be where we are on this. I give the nod to “viewing,” simply because it seemed to be clearer on some of the filtered images. “Victims,” was often less clear, but then, there are those who believe they can make a case for it. It was interesting to watch as Michael took us through his analysis, it was interesting to see the cold vault where the negative is stored and it was nice to meet, in person, some of the people I had talked with and emailed over the years but in the end, we only moved a little closer to an answer about the content of the Memo which had been the point. Unfortunately, there just wasn’t a consensus on some of the critical words and we are left with the hope that at some near future date the technology will improve to the point where we can see, clearly, what the Memo says. 

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Robert Powell and the SCU*

Robert Powell

This week I spoke to Robert Powell, one of the forces behind a new organization named Scientific Coalition for Ufology (SCU). According to their press release, and to what Powell told me, the mission is to “conduct, promote and encourage rigorous scientific examination of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), commonly known as Unidentified Flying Object (UFOs). You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/13125719

I did ask about the effect that Tom Delonge’s announcement, made not all that long ago about his organization, would have on the SCU. I learned that they had reached out to Delonge’s group but they had also attempted to incorporate others as well including the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies. Powell said that the emphasis here would be on investigation and the scientific method. That is something that would sometimes get lost by the UFO groups in the past. You can learn about the SCU here:

http://www.explorescu.org/

and here:

https://www.facebook.com/explorescu/

Part of our discussion centered around a UFO incident that involved Navy and Marine fighter pilots from the USS Nimitz. It was the same case that one of those associated with DeLonge had mentioned as well. Radar in one of the ships associated with the Nimitz battle group picked up an unknown object and fighters were directed to intercept. The pilots reported seeing something that resembled a “Tic-Tac,” that was maneuvering near the ship. Addition fighters were launched and the object eventually left the area. You can read the details here:

https://fightersweep.com/1460/x-files-edition/

We did, during the interview, discuss the difference between UFO and UAP, a notation that goes back to the 1960s. Powell said that UFO didn’t mean spaceship though that was the way it was interpreted by many. I said that I liked the term “flying saucer,” to mean spaceship. There would be no confusion there.

Next week’s guest: Derek Bartholomaus

Topic: Billy Meier

* Thanks to those folks over at the Anomalist for pointing this out to me. I sometimes do that. In Iraq I sometimes referred to the IED as IUD. Don't know why I do this, but hey, we all make mistakes...

Project Horse Fly - The Documents

My posting about General Exon and the project known as “Horse Fly” inspired one of those who visit here to file a FOIA request. Here is what he wrote:

Bombastic Bill has left a new comment on your post "Arthur Exon and the Investigative Teams":

So I recently filed a FOIA for Horse Fly for Wright Pat in the years listed above and I have received a reply from the Air Force: "A thorough search for these records by Office of Primary Responsibility (OPR) has not produced any responsive records relating to your request" So I don't know if Horse Fly is a bogus name or there was something I missed in filing the FOIA but as for the 1st time filling out a FOIA it was just nice to get a response! 

The question, I suppose, is how far back do their records go and do they retain any files that were part of Project Blue Book. We know, based on what Carmon Marano told us, that while the “official” files were sent to the Air Force Archives and later onto the National Archives, the “unofficial” files were going to be destroyed. He saved them and eventually they ended up in the hands of Rob Mercer.

Okay.

But it was in the Project Blue Book files that I found the reference to Horse Fly and the creation of teams to investigate UFO sightings. The documents were part of the administration files that were included with the Blue Book material. I found them on my microfilm and using my IPad, took several photographs off the microfilm reader. Not the best way to do it, but the way I could preserve the information for easy reference. More importantly, that provides the documentation seen here. These are the photographs.

They prove, only that the documentation exists, that FTD was involved and that there was a suggestion of creating the teams. When I get the chance, I’ll try to put up more of these documents.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Brad Steiger (Yes, that Brad Steiger).

Brad Steiger

This week, after months of frustrating attempts to coordinate our schedules, Brad Steiger and I were finally able to talk about UFOs and the Paranormal. After Brad said some very complimentary things about me, we launched into the interview. I had thought we would talk about some of the strangest of the UFO landing reports including bizarre looking aliens. We began, however, with a short description of the Socorro landing described by Lonnie Zamora and what he said that he had seen in 1964. I did surprise Brad by mentioning that there were additional witnesses to the case, as documented by a report made on the night of the sighting, though that evidence is somewhat thin. All that is laid out in detail in Encounter in the Desert which is, of course, my book about the Socorro landing. You can listen to the

interview here:

https://youtu.be/lYHkNcFMM0E

Our conversation, which seemed to be way too short for me, delved into some aspects of the UFO, but as Brad pointed out, there are alternative explanations for many sightings that don’t involve alien visitation. Brad suggested there might be some interdimensional contacts as well as alien visitation.

We also noted that descriptions of the aliens were not uniform, meaning that those in other countries didn’t see the same sort of aliens that we, here in the US, did. Some of those descriptions seemed to come from science fiction films such as Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. A photograph of one of those aliens from the movie, as described in a sighting from Argentina is seen at the left. We talked about the evolution of those descriptions from aliens who seemed to be wearing spacesuits (environmental suits?) complete with breathing apparatus, to the aliens of today who might be wearing flight suits but are breathing our atmosphere.

The other thing that would be of interest is the discussion of the publishing industry and how it was back forty or fifty years ago. I said that I had read his book, Strangers from the Skies in a high school study hall which dated both of us. Some of that discussion showed how things have evolved and proved this was a wide-ranging discussion.

Next week’s guest: Robert Powell

Topic: SCU (Yes, you’ll have to tune in to learn that that is.)

Curse of Oak Island - Season 5

Yes, I have seen the promos for the new season of Curse of Oak Island and it is filled with the same sort of hyperbole that has been teased in past seasons. Yes, they show an old key that unlocks an old chest but, of course, we don’t see the contents. And, yes, we hear the Laginas boys say that they have found the money pit. I still believe that if something truly spectacular had been found, the informtion would have leaked and the suspense would have been killed at that point.

Let’s unpack this and see what we can deduce.

Take that chest… we don’t know if they found it buried on Oak Island, though I suspect if it was, that would have been mentioned. It seemed that it was too good, meaning that a wooden chest buried for two hundred plus years would have deteriorated, especially in the environment of Oak Island. Too much water permeating the soil. It is difficult to believe there would have been much more than a pile of rotting wood and whatever was contained in the chest, unless it was clothes and books and the like. If the contents were metallic, they probably would have survived with the rotten wood collapsed on them.

Take the coin they find… once again it’s on the surface and looked like a blank disk in the promo. We’re told it’s from the 1600s but that doesn’t prove much of anything since it was apparently on the surface. This just fits in with what we’ve seen in past seasons. Coins found on or near the surface that are very old and look as if they have been out in the environment for a long time.

Take the claim they found the money pit… which could very well be true. But. They could be referring to the first excavation dug in 1795 by the boys who began digging there. It doesn’t mean that there is treasure at the bottom of the money pit, only that they know where that first pit was dug so long ago and have identified that location to their satisfaction.

In other words, the tease is just that… a tease. When we get into Season Five, which begins November 7, we’ll see the same thing that we’ve seen in the past. Remember the sword they found… that turned out to be a relatively modern replica? Remember the single coin they found that they took to Florida for someone to identify as being of Spanish origin in the 17^th century? Remember the campsite from British soldiers that proved… what, British soldiers had once camped on the island? Remember Bole Hole 10X with its chest at the bottom guarded by the remains of a human? Remember how they showed that over and over until the diver proved that there was no chest or human remains?

I will predict that when we get to the end of the season, there will be no treasure, except for the 1.5 million that Nova Scotia provided for the production. There won’t be a big treasure hidden by pirates or Knights Templar or the French crown jewels or the manuscripts of Shakespeare. There will be just another hole dug deep into Oak Island that will yield nothing of real value.

And yes, I would love to see them recover a treasure but does anyone think that

Joy Steele

those in the 17^th century could have dug a pit 200 feet deep with a series of booby traps to protect their treasure? The engineering problems seem to be just too great for this to have been done. The water table on the island suggests that there are no real booby traps and that would mean that the pit couldn’t have been dug so deep.

This will be another season with great teases but no payoff. They might have reached the “end game,” but that end game won’t provide treasure. Joy Steele probably found the real answer to this, as mentioned in my interview with her about this on the X-Zone Broadcast Network (xzbn.net). The money pit is the remains of a ship’s stores operation and not any sort of treasure. You can read my original post about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-mystery-of-oak-island-solved-by-joy.html

and, of course, listen to the interview with Joy Steele here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIwY6yiuN1w

But, as I say, I’ll be watching the new season and will undoubtedly be disappointed in what I see. But then, isn’t reality television about unreal situations?

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Tony Angiola and Ben Moss

Ben Moss

A few weeks ago, I had said that I’d have Ben Moss on the program, but various problems kept that from happening. This week I had planned to talk with Tony Angiola and we were able to get Ben to the microphone as well. The topic was the Socorro UFO landing. They had been continuing their investigation into the sighting, and as I said, some of the things they had told me a year ago sparked my interest in the case. For example, they had said that three people had called the Socorro Police Department to say that they had seen a blue flame or a light in the sky the same evening that Zamora had found the landed craft. I was able to find a report written by Captain Richard Holder that very night that mentioned those telephone calls (Well, it wasn’t much of a find because it was right there in the Project Blue Book files for all to see so we have a very good provenance for it.) What was interesting was that the calls were

Tony Angiola

made prior to Zamora reporting anything about the landing to the police dispatcher. Unfortunately, the police dispatcher didn’t take the names of those reporting the sighting. Holder’s report does verify that the calls had been made and what was said. You can listen to the program here:

https://youtu.be/S7o7uFf4UXM

In my book, published in the last few days, I report on the trail to that specific information that tends to corroborate Zamora after a fashion, and the documents created at the time that do verify the telephone calls. During the program we do talk about why no one in Socorro in 1964 tried to find those witnesses. It wouldn’t have been all that difficult since the path of the object over Socorro was known, Socorro wasn’t all that large, and there was huge interest in the story… though, I suppose the counter argument would be why didn’t those people come forward with their information.

For those who wish to learn more about the Socorro case, including what I discovered in my investigation over the last year, you can find the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Encounter-Desert-Alien-Contact-Socorro/dp/1632651130/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1508096455&sr=8-1&keywords=encounter+in+the+desert

The cover of the book, obviously.

I should also point out that the Socorro landing didn’t happen in a vacuum. There were other sightings around that time in New Mexico. True, some of them were hoaxes, and I believe that two men who claimed to have been driving through Socorro at the time of the sightings were not telling the truth. However, we did talk about some of the good sightings that happened within days of the Socorro landing. We gave a good overview, but for those who want the full story, take a look at Encounter in the Desert, my book about this.

Next week’s guest: Brad Steiger

Our topic: Halloween Spooktacular (yeah, I’m a little embarrassed about resorting to that Spooktacular phrase, but hey, it fits… more or less.)

Tom DeLonge and UFOs

I must be doing something wrong.

For months I have been hearing about Tom DeLonge, he formerly of Blink-182, who has entered the UFO arena with, allegedly, some highly-place contacts who will assist him in bringing the truth about alien visitation to the public. This began around 2015.

According to Rolling Stone:

DeLonge contacted [John] Podesta [Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager] again this January [2016], sending an email with the subject, "General McCasland," apparently a reference to a former Air Force official with (according to DeLonge) information relating to the infamous Roswell crash. In the email, DeLonge insisted that McCasland was not a skeptic — despite the General's own previous insistence — and added, "When Roswell crashed, they shipped it to the laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. General McCasland was in charge of that exact laboratory up to a couple years ago. He not only knows what I'm trying to achieve, he helped assemble my advisory team. He's a very important man."

Of course, I suppose, we could look at this as so much hyperbole. It does sound impressive to say that he was in communication with an Air Force general who was

Tom DeLonge

in charge of the exact laboratory where the Roswell material was sent. The problem is that William McCasland didn’t take over the post until 2011, according to his official Air Force biography and the laboratory was created in October 1997. It was, however, a combination of four other labs, but there is no way of knowing if any of them were the ones to which Roswell material would have been sent in 1947 or if material had been sent there it would have remained until 2011.

Anyway, that just sort of shows that DeLonge had been talking about UFOs and mentioning Roswell for a number of years. He did have, and does have, the ear of some people with impressive sounding credentials, which, of course, doesn’t mean they have anything of interest to say about UFOs or Roswell, only that they have been around the government for a very long time and moved in some of the rarified atmosphere in Washington, D.C.

However, it does seem that DeLonge’s messages have been heard by the UFO community. In February, 2017, at the International UFO Congress, he was named UFO Researcher of the Year. This seemed a tad bit odd since he hadn’t done much in the way of original research or published much in the way of what he had learned that hadn’t been said before. He did say that in a couple of months that he would make an announcement about some “serious sh*t” he was into and that he was making some serious progress.

During the next several months, there had been hints about this announcement, some of them centering around Disclosure and some of them hinting about new information or new evidence concerning the Roswell crash. The speculation was that he had some incredible inside information that came about through his association with his former band. Somehow that had resulted in the contacts that provided the information.

After months of waiting, the announcement came on October 11. No, there wasn’t anything about new UFO evidence, it had nothing to do with Disclosure or government secrecy but everything to do with making money. Let’s look at that.

According to a story in the Huffington Post, by Leslie Kean, there had been “something extraordinary revealed today [October 11].” It told of high-level officials and scientists who had not been seen by many but who, apparently “have long-standing connections to government agencies which may have programs investigating unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP/UFOs). You can read the whole article here:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fmr-manager-of-dod-aerospace-threat-program-ufos_us_59de2f4be4b0b992a8214874.

What strikes me in that very first paragraph is that we have been provided with a number of conditions. They have connections to agencies that may have been investigating UFOs… but then, may not. We eventually find out who these people are, but they are those in middle management or maybe in second tier bureaucrats but not the top people.

Then we learn that this is not about Disclosure, or about providing some stunning evidence of alien visitation, but about the “official launch of To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science,” or as they abbreviate it, TTS/AAS which they describe as a public benefit corporation. This organization will have three components, which are science, aerospace and entertainment. That last concerns me. Entertainment is not necessarily restricted to fact and we learn in other places that DeLonge has been planning the entertainment aspect since he left Blink-182. According to Rolling Stone:

But since DeLonge parted ways with Blink-182 in 2015, his interest in extraterrestrials has become more than a hobby. "The more I got into it, the more I realized it was all real," he tells Rolling Stone. "Then I was like, 'OK, what am I going to do about it?'" So he started spreading the word. He began creating a multi-part, multi-platform rollout of an entirely new philosophy, one based on the theory that aliens have been visiting Earth for most of our species' existence – and the only way for us to have a prosperous future on the planet is if we take that into account, and soon.

The newest addition to this project is the book Sekret Machines: Gods, the first in a non-fiction trilogy he's co-writing with occult historian Peter Levanda.

Already we see some promotion for the books that DeLonge is writing which would be incorporated under the umbrella of TTS/AAS and get a hint about the financial aspects of all of this. In fact, Jason Colavito, on his website, looked deeper into the financial arrangements of the organization. You can read his entire analysis here:

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/not-quite-a-ufo-ipo-tom-delonge-is-seeking-your-investment-in-to-the-stars-to-give-himself-a-700000-or-more-payday

Colavito lays out, in detail, how money will be raised by selling stock in the company and how much DeLonge is guaranteed for his part in all this. Colavito wrote:

DeLonge is soliciting investment by registering TTS AAS as a public benefit corporation—notably not a nonprofit—and he is framing his sale of $5 per share stock in the company as a chance to democratize investment. Under the 2012 JOBS Act, companies may sell stock directly to the public through a crowd funding website without needing to file an IPO with the SEC. DeLonge is taking advantage of this to sell $200 stock packages. The 2015 Title IV Regulation A+ allows companies to raise up to $50 million without a formal IPO…

It's interesting to see the difference between TTS AAS’s public face and what they confess in their financial filings. Publicly, TTS AAS is an educational enterprise divided into a number of units focused on cutting-edge fringe research. The science division is pursuing consciousness research and psychic phenomena. The aerospace division is looking for exotic propulsion technologies. The entertainment division is producing the Sekret Machines books, and a dystopian young adult franchise. Note carefully that space aliens and “disclosure” don’t occur as a research subject or a purpose for the company. And yet, the public protestations about using the company to promote human knowledge are belied by what we see in the financial documents. That’s not to say that there won’t be “educational” material, only that the company’s primary purpose isn’t science and education, as it pretends…

DeLonge, though, is certainly a beneficiary. Documents laying out what he gets paid make pretty clear that this is intended to be a very lucrative investment for him. DeLonge has a constellation of corporate entities that control the intellectual property he creates as a musician and now filmmaker. TSA, which the company abbreviates as TTS AAS, is legally obligated to pay all of DeLonge’s expenses in using his existing intellectual property to develop new TTS AAS multimedia products.

But, those of us interested in all aspects of UFOs and not the inner workings of a corporation created to make some money and produce multi-media products wanted to hear something about UFO sightings. Eventually we treated to one UFO report provided by “TTS Academy member Chris Mellon” who was, at one time, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence for two administrations. “He gave a synopsis of an event from 2004 that involved the battleship [sic] USS Nimitz.” I’ll give Mellon the benefit of the doubt here by saying that in his position he should have known that the Nimitz was an aircraft carrier and not a battleship. I suspect the reporter got it wrong. According to the story:

“Two F-18s approach, the four aviators see that the object has no wings or exhaust — it is white, oblong, some 40 ft long and perhaps 12 ft thick”, he [Mellon] said. “One pilot pursues the craft while his wingman stays high. The pilots are astonished to see the object suddenly reorient itself toward the approaching F-18. In a series of discrete tumbling maneuvers that seem to defy the laws of physics, the object takes a position directly behind the approaching F-18.”

The lengthy event occurred in broad daylight off the California coast, and gun camera footage was taken. At one point the object went from hovering at 80,000 feet to dropping at supersonic speeds, and came to a complete stop at 50 feet above the ocean. “More F-18’s are dispatched but with similar results,” Mellon stated. “The secret machine easily evades the F-18s. Dozens of military personnel aboard the various planes and ships involved are privy to these interactions.”

Okay. Not an overly spectacular sighting but it does suggest some evidence in the form of gun camera footage. It mirrors other sightings that have been reported over

USS Nimitz complete with aircraft.

the years that include radar images, photographs of the radarscopes and many witnesses on the ships involved. Investigation into them have yet to provide the evidence to prove that there is alien visitation.

There was one other aspect of all this that bothered me as well. One of those now part of this was identified as Luis Elizondo. The Huffington Post reported:

Lue had resigned his position at the DOD literally the day before we met. I was able to verify who he was and what his tasks were at the Pentagon. He received the highest commendatons [sic] from his superiors. I was told that important unclassified [emphasis added] data and documentation are expected to be released through the Academy’s on-line Community of Interest (COI) in collaboration with the US government, which will be set up soon.

Unclassified data? The Internet is awash in unclassified data. The vast majority of the Project Blue Book files can be found at Fold3. John Greenewald’s Black Vault is loaded with all sorts of unclassified documents relating to UFOs. Even the FBI’s website provides information about UFOs. And now we are to be treated to another source that will provide us with unclassified documents. Wow.

In fact, this was underscored when Rolling Stone reported, “Subsequent books in the Sekret Machines trilogy will move away from ancient texts to focus on claims of interactions with aliens documented by government agencies since the 1940s, many of which are available by Freedom of Information Act requests and a recently digitized cache of CIA documents.” More unclassified documents that can be obtained by anyone who cares to do so.

Which, of course, moves us away from any meaningful research and puts us back in the entertainment camp. There are too many shows today that rely not on solid research but on the entertainment value of the show. Tell us a story, no matter how ridiculous and we’ll climb onboard even if it is so incredible that it can’t be true. Entertain us first and worry about the reality later. Ironically DeLonge and his co-author had something to say about that. According to Rolling Stone, “…they’re not claiming that everything you've seen on shows like Ancient Aliens is real. ‘Humans are responsible for building the pyramids, for instance,’ says [Peter] Levanda. ‘I think we can agree on that. But what was the impetus behind it? What we're saying is the initial contact is what prompted all this. Not that there were aliens out there telling us how to build pyramids. I think that just devalues the entire conversation, and we're trying to get beyond that.’"

That, of course, is something that many of us have said for years. I didn’t single out Ancient Aliens in the past but have pointed a finger at Hangar 1 and Unsealed: Alien Files which seemed to be based more on speculation and wild stories than on cases that added some real value to UFO research.

There is one other point that has been mentioned in the past that should be bothersome to all those interested in UFO research. According to Rolling Stone, “DeLonge's plan is bigger than just a few books. In addition to the nonfiction series, he is writing a historical-fiction trilogy with novelist A.J. Hartley, the first book of which was released last spring, as well as a documentary and a scripted film, all of which discuss the theory that we're not alone.”

And the additional irony here is that I point this out. Almost since I published my first book on UFOs, one of the criticisms is that I also write science fiction as well. I have kept the science fiction away from my UFO writings and I’m not the only one who has investigated UFOs and who has written science fiction. Bruce Maccabee, Whitley Strieber, Don Ecker and Nick Pope have all written fiction. The difference here, subtle though it might be, is that we have not put the science fiction under the same umbrella as our UFO research. And, of course, DeLong’s plan might not affect the rest of the organization’s goals, but it is just one more worrisome aspect of all this.

We learn, at the end of the news conference, that TTS/AAS “… intends to release game-changing information of the type interested people have been seeking for a long time.”

But the problem here is that this is the same claim that has been made for months about DeLonge’s research and activities and no matter who he has pulled in, he has yet to make any stunning revelations, other than he is forming a corporation to exploit the UFO field. This announcement ended, not so much with a bang, but with a whimper. We have learned nothing that we didn’t already know and it seems that we were promised much the same thing that has been promised by so many others over the last half century. The real point doesn’t seem to be research but entertainment, which, of course, is not always a bad thing… it’s just there has been too much entertainment in the UFO field and not enough research.

The Bernalillo "UFO" - Identified

Proving, once again, what a wonderful tool that the Internet can be, it seems that we have a solution for the pictures that Rob Swiatek mentioned on the radio show and that I posted to my blog. Remember, I mentioned, several times, the blog’s address and that the pictures were there for all to see.

Also remember that both Rob and I believed that the solution was something manmade and something on the ground. The pictures and later the video showed, basically, the same array of lights. They were taken months apart which argued for a mundane solution, not one that involved alien visitation.

Less than 48 hours after posting the pictures, we have the answer. Someone named, or rather identifying him or herself as Rossome, posted the following:

I am quite certain that the photographs are of the Ivanpah Solar field near the Nevada/California border north of I-15. The design is not based on solar collectors, but rather, thousands of mirrors that aim the sunlight toward a tower (the center of each of the three arrays of mirrors). The focused sunlight then heats the water system to turn to turbines and make electricity. This facility is in fact visible from the ground as well (seen a few times) and look pretty interesting. I have photos from the ground if anyone is interested.

Well, I would have been interested, but then I learned of pictures of the Ivanpah Solar Field from the Internet and recovered several pictures from various sites. There seems to be little doubt that Rossome was correct with the information. One of the pictures shows an aerial view of the array, minus the bright lights, in about the same “formation.”

I passed the information along to Rob because I don’t know how often he visits the blog, but he responded in a couple of hours. He wrote:

Wow!  That cinches it, beyond the shadow of a doubt.  I compared online pictures of the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility with the lights and terrain in the CMS photos and it’s a match.  It can’t be anything but the Ivanpah Facility.  It also appears the towers of the Facility generate a certain amount of light—at least at times during their operation—so this would account for the brightness across a long slant range during the day.  As Bruce Maccabee depicts in his recent book on the Arnold sighting, a square of highly reflective material (the Ivanpah towers have a square cross-section) appears as a circle when seen from a distance.

We can now write this off as a true IFO – Identified Flying Object – which, of course, is merely the vernacular for UFO sightings that have been identified. I suppose we could call it an Identified Grounded Object, but whatever the term, this is no longer part of the UFO phenomenon.