X-Zone Broadcast Network - Retrospective, AATIP, Robert Friend and Admiral Wilson

This week’s show wasn’t quite what I thought it was going to be, nor did it include Nick Redfern. Through no fault of Nick, nor really anyone, circumstances sort of dictated that we postpone Nick’s show until later in the summer. He was fine with that and it worked out for all of us. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/18392071

I used the opportunity to reflect on the past shows and what was going on in the

LTC Robert Friend

world of the UFO today. And I used the opportunity to mention the passing of retired Lieutenant Colonel Robert Friend. From everything that I have heard or found about him, he was a true American hero.

I had received some questions about the interview that had been published with Admiral Thomas Wilson. That interview and transcript came from Dr. Eric Davis, who, had mentioned at one point that the Del Rio UFO crash was real. Although I have looked into the Del Rio crash before, and into the background of Robert Willingham who is the sole source on this, I just don’t believe the tale is grounded in reality. To me, Davis’ belief in the Del Rio crash suggested he might not have been as deeply embedded in the inside as was thought. You can read about this here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Eric+Davis

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Robert+Willingham

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/07/del-rio-ufo-crash-and-mj-12.html

And some of these links will lead to other links as well so that a complete picture can be seen if you wish to follow it to its conclusion.

Because the AATIP is still a hot topic, I touched on it as well. Most of that has been discussed in the last month on the blog. That goes hand in hand with the Unidentified program on History.

Next week, while I’m in Roswell at the Festival there, we’ll have a “best of program.” The following week, we’ll be back with a new show.

Unidentified - Episodes Three and Four

I haven’t said much about the last two episodes of Unidentified because they seem to have crammed fifteen minutes of new programming into sixty minutes. Sure, there are 16 or 17 minutes of commercials and of course, those introductions and closing credits eat of up more time, so that when all is said and done there might be a forty-minute window for programming. Unidentified isn’t the only show with this problem, and some of those on the cable seem to be more commercials than

actual program but that only means that they have less time to fill with relevant content. Not to mention that the constant repeating of the information is unnecessary, distracting and often boring.

That doesn’t mean that those 15 minutes aren’t important in understanding what the Navy pilots, radar operators, and others saw and reported. Sorting through all the nonsense, repetition, and unimportant footage of car trips and motel rooms, there are some valuable revelations in both episodes.

I’m going to ignore most of episode three because, frankly, I don’t believe it advances their case all that much. They provided information that suggested the UFOs from the USS Nimitz sightings had headed south to a rocky island off Mexico. This is a restricted area, but local fisherman and a few others suggested they have seen strange things around the island. This, I find, completely unimpressive. Without some sort of additional evidence, this seems to be more of a red herring than something that advances our knowledge about the Navy sightings.

Episode four is better. Although it suffers from the same tactics of filler, meaning that they drag out the hour with repetition, this time we do get some important information. We learn about the other two short videos that we’ve seen dozens of times. Now we find that they were made by jet fighters from a carrier group in the Atlantic. I normally would say that this is just more video without much else, but one of the pilots involved is there to describe the sighting from his point of view. He recognizes one of the voices on the video as well. We now have the video and one eye witness, with the possibility of another. This becomes valuable information.

What was somewhat disturbing, was the interviews with others who served in that carrier group and provided some additional testimony, eventually they decided not to say much else. They feared for their careers. They were afraid of repercussions. You have to wonder if they just were reacting to the normal fear of ridicule associated with UFO sightings or if some pressure has been brought to bear. The point is, they backed out of the interviews and this is a relevant fact.

The real point here is that some formerly high-powered people are treating this investigation seriously. This isn’t a Blue Book investigation with the men going through the motions to a predetermined mundane conclusion. Here we have the video, we have the eye witness testimony, and we have the provenance. And the presentation has been sufficient to induce some United States senators to request more information. This resulted in a classified briefing given to them just this last week.

The topic is being treated more seriously than it has been in the past. There aren’t the news anchors reading the stories with their tongues stuck in their cheeks, but now with a tone suggesting that something is going on. Unidentified is one of the reasons for this. If that helps us learn what is happening, then the series is a worthwhile effort… as long as we look at the evidence and don’t get caught up in the politics of the UFO field.

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Friend has Died

I have wondered, for a long time, about the high number of African-Americans who rushed to join the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Growing up in the 1920s and the 1930s must have been very difficult with the overt racism throughout the country. Yet, even with that, they joined in large numbers.

Robert Friend, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, had an answer for that when he was asked about it. He said, “Because I’m an American and it was the right thing to do.”

Robert Friend, centered. Photo copyright by Auturo Interian

Such an attitude about the United States is something rare these days with various groups pulling and pushing agendas that are more divisive than uniting. Everyone seems to have found a reason to condemn the United States. Except Robert Friend.

Robert Friend, who died June 21, was one of the last Tuskegee Airman, a group of African-American, no, make that American, fighter and bomber pilots, who displayed their devotion to the Unites States with their heroism during the Second World War. Their hope, when they returned, would be a greater acceptance of who they were before they left to fight. Some of that acceptance came, but only years later… but we still seem to have failed in the greater vision that men like Friend held for the country.

Rather than recap his accomplishments, something that I did not all that long ago, I will direct those of you who are interested in the background of this fantastic man to read it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2019/02/project-blue-book-and-lt-col-robert.html

His importance to us in the UFO community was his position as the one time chief of Project Blue Book. After a number of other officers, all of whom were hostile to the idea of alien visitation, and who operated more as caretakers than investigators, Robert Friend was given the assignment. He attempted to reorganize the project and move it into something more than it was. He eventually left that assignment and retired from the Air Force.

After the movie Red Tails was made about seven years ago, Friend found himself asked to speak to many groups about his experiences during the war. It was something he enjoyed, even though he was in his 90s. His daughter, Karen Friend Crumlich, who cared from him after his wife died, drove him to the speaking engagements. She too, recognized the greatness in her father.

Friend was a frequent visitor to the Palm Springs Air Museum, California, and was one of those who assisted in restoring a P-51 Mustang like those flown by the Tuskegee Airman. The aircraft at the museum was painted in the colors, and with the registration numbers of the plane Friend had flown.

I never met him in person, only speaking to him on the telephone, and then rarely. Unlike some, he was always courteous and tried to give complete answers to my questions. Although he had been the man in charge of Blue Book at one time, when the Air Force policy was to debunk and dismiss UFO reports, he seemed to have believed there was something more to them than delusion, illusion, misidentification and hoax. To me he hinted, and I stress that word, that there was more to Roswell than the remains of a weather balloon.

Robert Friend was the epitome of an American soldier and an American citizen. For those who would like to learn more about Robert Friend take a look at the following articles:

https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/local/palm-springs/2019/06/21/tuskegee-airman-lt-col-robert-friend-dies/1530450001/

https://www.dailynews.com/2018/09/29/at-98-this-tuskegee-airman-still-has-a-mission-dont-forget/

https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2019/06/21/one-of-the-last-surviving-tuskegee-airmen-dies-surrounded-by-family/

About the last thing that can be said about him is that we have lost a true American hero.

Robert Friend, dead at 99.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Stephen Bassett (Disclosure)

This week I reached out to Stephen Bassett, he of Disclosure fame. Given what has been happening the last few weeks, with so much that is positive coming out, I thought it time to take another look at Disclosure. Bassett provided an interesting

Stephen Bassett. Photo
copyright by Kevin Randle

history of how we reached the point we have reached, including a suggestion of a plan for President Hillary Clinton to be the “Disclosure President.” Of course, that plan failed for the obvious reason. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/18321579

In the last several days, I have had some inquiries about Admiral Thomas Wilson, who apparently met with Dr. Eric Davis (formerly of NIDS). Davis took notes and those notes have recently been published in a number of forums. You can read the notes for yourself here:

https://richarddolanmembers.com/articles/article-ufo-leak-of-the-century-richard-dolan-analyzes-the-admiral-wilson-leak/

Davis had mentioned, on Coast-to-Coast, that the Del Rio UFO crash was real, which seemed to suggest that he wasn’t quite the authority on crash retrievals that he pretended to be. I discussed some of that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/09/dr-davis-confirms-del-rio-ufo-crash.html

The problem is that the Del Rio crash is a hoax. It was started by a fellow named Robert Willingham, and I have gone over this many times on the blog. Willingham claimed to have been a fighter pilot, Air Force officer, and eventually claimed to have been involved in seven UFO crash retrievals. You can read about all that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2012/02/willingham-1978-interview.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/04/eisenhower-briefing-document-mj-12-and.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/06/mj-12-and-cognitive-dissonance.html

(All of this is probably more detail than anyone really wants, but I believe it important to make it clear that the Del Rio data came from Willingham and Willingham is completely unreliable.)

One of the points I wanted to make, but it got lost in the discussion, was that the Wilson interview had taken place in 1997, and while they talked about the Corso book, I didn’t really see that as a fatal flaw. Corso’s book came out that same year, and if you accept the crash of an alien spacecraft at Roswell as true, then Corso writing about it suggests that he might have had inside information. But the flaws in Corso’s book are many and I have written about them here as well. (Can’t be surprised by that, can you?) The relevant posts can be read here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/01/philip-corso-and-day-after-roswell-again.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/02/philip-corso-interview-with-budd.html

We ended with a discussion about the convoy from Roswell to Wright Field, Ohio. I was attempting to point out that it violated regulations… but was told that regulations were often violated. This is a standard response to such a question but it doesn’t negate the accuracy of the information. We just ran out of time before we could finish the discussion.

Next week, I’ll be joined by Nick Redfern to discuss his book, Cover ups and Secrets. If you have questions for Nick, send them along to the comments section and I’ll see about getting them answered.

And, remember, I’ll be interviewing some of the guests at the Roswell Festival. If you have questions, the same applies. Send them along to the comments section here.

President Trump, UFOs and Disclosure

And the story just keeps getting bigger. President Trump said that he has been briefed about the Navy UFO sightings. Interviewed by George Stephanopoulos, and asked about it, the President said, “I want them to think whatever they think,” meaning the Navy fighter pilots.

The President added, “I did have one very brief meeting on it. But people are saying they’re seeing UFOs. Do I believe it? Not particularly.”

All this comes on top of the announcement by the Navy that their protocols on reporting UFO sightings had been updated. According to the New York Times, and to History’s Unidentified, the pilots, including retired Commander Fravor, these craft were flying at hypersonic speeds at about 30,000 feet with no sign of engine or exhaust fumes.

Fox News and the New York Times have both reported on other sightings. Lt. Ryan Graves, a Super Hornet fighter pilot, said that he had reported sightings to both the Pentagon and Congress.

Another F/A-18 Hornet pilot, said that he had almost hit one of these objects. An official mishap report was filed. This incident seemed to spark a change in Navy policy and resulted in new guidelines being issued.

As I have said, this is somewhat different from the way things have been in the past. We have been talking about Disclosure here in the last few weeks and now it seems to be getting closer. In years past, we have been treated to a program of deception, in which various government officials have ridiculed the idea of alien visitation. The University of Colorado studied the subject for 18 months, concluding that nothing of a scientific value could be learned by further investigation and suggesting that those seeing UFOs might not be the swiftest of individuals.

But we have learned that 22 million dollars were recently spent to study the subject and although the project has been ended, some of the results have only just been released into the public arena. These include the statements by the Navy fighter pilots and video from the Heads Up Display. Since this has been released through the Pentagon and the AATIP project, it seems that the Navy and the military might becoming a little more candid on the subject.

Giving us a little more evidence that Disclosure might be around the corner, the President, when asked if there was evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, said, “I think our great pilots would know. And some of them see things a little bit different from the past. We’re watching, and you’ll be the first to know.”

Coming up on Wednesday, June 19, I’ll be chatting with Steve Bassett, one of those behind the Disclosure movement, about his thoughts on these developments. If you have questions for him, put them in the comments section and I’ll try to get them answered.

Unidentified and Luis Elizondo

For those who think I have missed it, I have, of course, seen the article and information about John Greenewald and his attempt to verify Luis Elizondo’s claim of leadership of the AATIP program. It is a disturbing document because it suggests that Elizondo wasn’t in a leadership position, although that it how he is

John Greenewald. Photo
copyright by Kevin Randle.

“credentialled” on History’s Unidentified program.

First, however, let’s separate the UFO sightings on the USS Nimitz from this controversy around Elizondo. We do have the video, limited though it is, and the testimony from several members and former members of the US Navy including fighter pilots. The sighting should stand or fall on its own merits. The controversy around Elizondo has nothing to do with the sighting itself. We judge the sighting on the information we have and don’t discredit it because someone who was not there and had no role in the case, finds himself in wrapped controversy.

Now, we move onto the other part of this. What do we know about Luis Elizondo? Was he one of the leaders of the AATIP program? Or was his name merely on a distribution list? What has been learned?

John Greenewald attempted to answer some of these questions. In the article The Intercept that seems to kick off the controversy, Greenewald reported that Elizondo had no real role in AATIP. You can read the article here:

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/01/ufo-unidentified-history-channel-luis-elizondo-pentagon/

And you can pick up more information on this controversy at Curt Collin’s Blue Burry Lines blog that can be found here:

http://www.blueblurrylines.com/2019/06/documenting-luis-elizondos-leadership.html

The article in The Intercept, as you can see from the first link, was written by Keith Kloor, and said, in essence, that Elizondo “…had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program while he worked [in the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence], up until the time he resigned.”

Much of this was based on information provided by Greenewald. I will say that I know John, have talked with him on a number of occasions and have used his Black Vault in my research. I find him to be a careful researcher who does not leap to conclusions and doesn’t print anything until he is sure of the information. Greenewald’s suggestions about the accuracy of Elizondo’s job description is quite worrisome.

However, I have also learned that even those with good intentions and careful research methodology can make errors. In looking at this, I reached out to George

George Knapp. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle

Knapp. He responded to me quickly, but didn’t provide any useful information to me directly. I suspect now that he had put it all up on Twitter so that he assumed that I would see it there.

That tweet, or series of tweets, did not help. What he provided was a letter from Senator Harry Reid of Nevada that did have Elizondo’s name on an “FY 10 Preliminary Bigoted List of Government Personnel.” Elizondo was listed as a Special Agent, USDI (Gov’t). Interesting, but it doesn’t make Elizondo a leader of AATIP, only that he was on the list of those who knew about the program and had some sort of connection to it.

Harry Reid was interviewed on the radio about all this recently. He told the interviewer that he’d talked with Elizondo many times. He said, “So, I know Elizondo is a real guy. People are out there – a few people are trying to punch holes in what he is saying and what he does, but he was part of the Defense Department, no question about it, and a man of, I think, veracity.”

This doesn’t, however, provide us with any new information about Elizondo’s role in AATIP. It seems to be confirmed that Elizondo had a role in the DoD, and that Reid knew who he is, but that doesn’t make him the chief of ATTIP.

Hal Puthoff, who has hovered around the UFO field for a while and who is now a contractor of some sort with the To The Stars Academy, an organization with which Elizondo is also associated, told John Greenewald, “I have no problem asserting... Elizondo’s leadership and responsibility for maintaining continuity of the Program…”

An article in Politico, written by Bryan Bender, didn’t do much to clear up the controversy. According to Bender “Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White confirmed to POLITICO that the program [AATIP] existed and was run by Elizondo. But she could not say how long he was in charge of it and declined to answer detailed questions about the office or its work…”

Given the nature of classified programs, that really doesn’t surprise me. If the information is classified, then any spokesperson is going to be reluctant to answer questions about it. But she apparently no longer works in that same job, so you have to wonder about the value of her endorsement, which doesn’t really help us.

There is another player in all this and it is Wired. Apparently, they were able to confirm that Elizondo worked for the DoD but could not confirm that he had worked on AATIP. George Knapp’s letter does not confirm it either. It only confirms that Elizondo was on a distribution list for AATIP information or association.

John Greenewald got into it again, with another posting to his Black Vault website. He contacted Susan Gough, a Pentagon spokesperson. He asked her specifically about Luis Elizondo's name listed on Reid’s letter. As reported by Greenewald:

“I can confirm that the memo you’re referring to is authentic. DOD received it and responded to Sen. Reid,” Ms. Gough said. She then explains that her office is unable to provide The Black Vault a full copy of the response, since the Public Affairs office does not release Congressional correspondence, but she adds, “It makes no change to previous statements. Mr. Elizondo had no assigned responsibilities for AATIP while he was in OUSD(I). DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] administered AATIP, and Elizondo was never assigned to DIA. Elizondo did interact with the DIA office managing the program while the program was still ongoing, but he did not lead it.

You can read all of what Greenewald had to say in the article he posted to the Black Vault here:

https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/pentagon-reinforces-mr-luis-elizondo-had-no-responsibilities-on-aatip-senator-harry-reids-2009-memo-changes-nothing/

Everything seems to suggest that Elizondo had some sort of involvement with the program, but that suggesting he was leading it appears to be something of an embellishment. But you have to wonder if there isn’t something else going on here… oh, not about the USS Nimitz and the UFO sighting, but in the promotion of the television show. Having the leader of the AATIP program leading the TV investigation makes it a little more credible. But that only works if the credential can be verified. Does merely having some association with the program, rather than actually leading it reduce the credibility? Or more importantly, does embellishing the role of the lead investigator on the History program diminish that credibility of that program?

The question arises from that. In a world in which so much information is now available to so many of us with so little effort, isn’t it a little reckless to inflate credentials? In the end, if the inflation is discovered, and it will be if it exists, it hurts the overall program and in fact, hides the importance of the USS Nimitz sightings. You almost have to wonder if that wasn’t the whole point.

Again, all this controversy about Elizondo (which could be cleared up in a candid statement) does not detract from the AATIP program nor the sightings by those in the USS Nimitz battle group. They are separate issues. I suppose I’m suggesting that we ignore the trouble about Elizondo until it can be resolved and concentrate on the information from the witnesses and attempt to learn more about the video that has been released. One does not depend on the other and we shouldn’t get caught up in the controversy to the exclusion of investigation of the sighting. Surely, there will be more about that in the weeks to come.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Bruce Fenton

This week I spoke with Bruce Fenton, who, with his wife Danielle, wrote Hybrid Humans: Scientific Evidence of Our 800,000 Year-Old Alien Legacy. The suggestion being that alien creatures from the Pleiades manipulated the genetic material of our pre-homo sapiens ancestors with an eye to developing our intelligence. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/18253724

What bothered me was that the information that he was attempting to validate

Bruce Fenton

about this theory was developed, according to him, from an aboriginal artifact that had communicated with an Australian woman, Valerie Burrow. I wasn’t really on board with this idea, but got wrapped up in the validation that Bruce had discovered. I wasn’t really clear on how that this information transfer had worked and it seemed to me that there might be natural solutions for these validations, which, of course would invalidate this evidence.

But what this came down to was information that had been developed by a woman in telepathic or psychic communication with an artifact rather than some sort of intelligence… as I say, I wasn’t clear on exactly how this worked. I never did get it clarified but that was probably my fault rather than anything said by Bruce. But, since he had mentioned Valerie Burrow, I thought I would see what she said. You can find her website here:

https://www.valeriebarrow.com/

I’m no longer sure how much of the information was developed by her communication with the artifact, but did find another explanation on how she learned of the crash of a Pleiadean spacecraft all those millennia ago. According to the information on her website:

When she visited the hieroglyph rock carvings in Kariong NSW [New South Wales] she had a vivid past life memory reliving the moment that she was on board of a Star ship that crashed into the Earth [emphasis added), coming here to bring more light to the Earth. The many people that started coming to Valerie after this experience wanting a regression, all were part of this event and had a piece of the puzzle of what really happened all this time ago.

At this point, I believed all the credibility was sucked out of the story, and wondered if the validations that Bruce had offered were little more than misinterpretations of the evidence. Maybe there were solutions for all this with which I was unfamiliar.

The other thing that bothered me was his continued harping on this information he was using to support her had not been discovered until after her book was published. I thought that argument was weak, and had I known about this “past life” revelation, I would have been a little more forceful in my questioning him. I certainly would have asked about it and if that didn’t cause a little consternation.

Too be fair, it did seem that he had a fair grasp of the science that he used to validate these claims, and did suggest places where we all could read the about these facts. I wasn’t sure how they validated the tale, but did add a note of interest to them.

Frankly, this was just another of those tales, such as the time traveling teenager who was abducted from his bed, fought a war on Mars for 20 years and was returned to his bed only fifteen minutes after he was taken. I just can’t get behind it, and wasn’t thrilled to learn that Burrow had been on a Pleiadean spacecraft.

Next week, I’ll try to return to UFOs in this century. I’ll be chatting with Steven Bassett about his thoughts on Disclosure, given what has been happening lately and the new UFO series on History. If you have questions, append them to the comments section, and I’ll do my best to get them answered during the program.

And, take a look at the Roswell UFO Festival website. I’ll be attempting to interview some of the guest there, so let me know which guests you’d like to hear from and the questions you’d like answered.

Unidentified - It was Raining UFOs

The second installment of Unidentified suffered from the same problems as the first which were repeated bits of video, repeated statements by the witnesses, and a seemingly ignorance of the history of UFOs.

But before we get into that, let’s look at the good. I have said for years that the best UFO cases need multiple chains of evidence. In this case there are the video clips from the attempted intercepts of the UFOs. Although what we have seen is rather limited, there are hints that more exists, it’s just not in the hands of those of us in the civilian world. More video might provide the identity of the objects, or it might complicate things because it shows something that is truly unidentified.

The second chain are the witness testimonies. Here there are highly qualified Navy pilots whose job, and whose lives, depend upon their ability to identify craft at a distance. In a combat environment there isn’t much time to determine if the oncoming craft is friend or foe. They must identify that craft quickly and here they got a good look at the object, or objects, and were unable to identify them. This tends to support the suggestion that the object is not anything conventional. The eyewitnesses add to the conclusion that what was seen was not something that was manufactured on Earth.

This idea was later underscored by the appearance of another member of Luis Elizondo’s team. He was a man who had worked at the famous Skunk Works, and who was familiar with what was being developed in the way of the next generation of military aircraft. According to him, there was nothing being planned, let alone that was operational in the sense of being tested in 2004, that could account for the sightings from the Nimitz battle group.

So, we have witness testimony that is backed up by the limited video that has been released. But we are then told of a third chain of evidence, that is, radar sightings. Now, one of the sailors, a man well versed in the capabilities of the radar, an expert in its operation, tells us that he had tracked these same objects on radar. He was able to watch them as they paraded over his radarscope, flying at very high altitudes at speeds that were so slow that they seemed to rule out conventional aircraft. It even resulted in the ship’s captain suggesting that the objects be intercepted and that resulted in the visual sightings and the video footage and a new estimate of the speed. The “tic tac” dived out of the sky at such speed that it would have ripped any conventional aircraft into pieces.

There are now three distinct chains of evidence, that when combined, created a persuasive picture of the events around the USS Nimitz. If we had access to all of the additional evidence, there might be terrestrial answer buried in there… or more likely there might be the best evidence to date of something truly extraterrestrial is flying around in our atmosphere. But there is a problem.

Those data seem to be missing. The recordings from the radar and the airborne conversations has supposedly disappeared. According to the witness, when he was putting together an after-action report, he attempted to retrieve the data but found all the recordings had disappeared. He found that highly suspicious.

A secondary back up would be the ship’s deck logs, But Christopher Mellon said that they too, were missing. Not the whole deck log, but those for the relevant days. They should have been at the National Archives, but were not.

This means, unfortunately, that important parts of the corroborative evidence are missing. According to one witness, a mystery helicopter had arrived at his ship. The records apparently disappeared with the passengers of that helicopter as they departed.

And, just as I mentioned last week, this has happened before. During the Washington National sightings of July 1952, there were radar sightings, there were attempted intercepts, and there were visual sightings by commercial airline crews. But there was no reliable photographic evidence of the sightings.

The Air Force dismissed everything then as the result of a temperature inversion that was claimed to have been over the city at the time. However, those in the radar room on those consecutive Saturday nights said that the objects being tracked on radar were not weather related. I spoke with two of those men, Major Dewey Fournet and Al Chop, and they said that the images on the radar were not caused by weather. So did the radar operators and the Navy radar expert who was there with Fournet and Chop. Both of Fournet and Chop told me that one of the intercepts that got a little “hairy.” That told me that there was something real going on that did not involve temperature inversions and illusions.

The “hairy” incident involved one of the pilots in one of the fighters who found his plane surrounded by glowing objects. Other pilots, in commercial planes, when asked to look for the objects, reported that they did see them. In other words, as in the case of the USS Nimitz, there were blips on the radars and visual sightings by pilots. A wonderful combination of information that was ignored in the race to find an explanation that would appease the public.

In fact, these sightings resulted in the creation of a CIA sponsored panel to investigate the reports in particular and UFOs in general. Known as the Robertson Panel, their conclusion was that there was nothing to the UFO reports and that interest in flying saucers should be challenged in such a way as to dissuade the public from interest in them. Interestingly, Dan Wright, who appeared on A Different Perspective just a few days ago, had found CIA documents that suggested the CIA do everything to convince people that there was no CIA interest in UFOs. You can listen to that interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/18186330

Once we wade through all the repetition on Unidentified (Yes, we heard the witness say it was “Raining UFOs,” about 96 times), the number of witnesses is increasing, they had multiple tasks and multiple roles, and the eyewitness nature of the sightings, coupled to the video and radar images, suggests something more than a mistake on the parts of those involved. It is difficult to ignore those witnesses and the information they gathered.

The big worry is the lack of recordings and other written records. Not that the recordings and records suggest something different, but that the records have disappeared. Without those records it is difficult to support the case, but then, it is also difficult to reject it. Those missing records would supply some important answers. If the Navy didn’t want that corroboration, they could have made the records disappear…

I’m waiting for the next show, to see what they can present in the way of new evidence. They seem to be building to that point by dribbling out the information. It will be interesting to see what the end game is.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Dan Wright

The CIA and UFOs, a soon to be published book by Dan Wright was the topic this week. Wright provided insight into the million-page UFO document dump made by the CIA a while back. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/18186330

What I found most interesting here was that the number of the document pages that actually dealt with UFOs was far smaller than the claimed million. Wright

deserved a few kudos for wading through all those documents that dealt with all sorts of things that didn’t have anything to do with UFOs. Those he did find gave us a real insight into the CIA attitude which seemed to be to deny everything about UFOs. They didn’t want to give any credibility to the subject, but they were very interested in it. They gathered data carefully so that the general public, meaning us, didn’t have a clue about their real interest. According to Wright, there are documents spelling out this attitude.

The other interesting point was that he suspected that the CIA file clerks dumped everything into the UFO file when they didn’t know where else to file it. That explains why there was so many documents that had nothing to do with UFOs found in this UFO document dump.

The book, coming soon, by the end of August, possibly, is The CIA UFO Papers. It is published in collaboration with MUFON. Given the tone of the interview with Wright, this is something that will be of interest to anyone with an interest in the various governmental agencies’ response to UFO sightings.

Next week, I will speak with Bruce Fenton and what he can tell us about Hybrid Humans. If you’re fond of Ancient Astronaut theories and the like, this will be something of interest to you. If you have questions, let me know in the comments section and I’ll do my best to get them.

Unidentified - The New History Series

Yes, like many of you, I tuned in for the first installment of Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation, Friday night. Let me say, up front, that there really was nothing new here, except that it had the trappings of a serious program. Before I explain what I mean by “nothing new,” let point out a couple of other things.

We open, more or less, with the tale by a Navy pilot with her face blacked out and a warning to never mention her name, even in private emails. She’s worried about her career if she talks about seeing a flying saucer. But we learn that she was assigned to the USS Nimitz, and the 41 Squadron, which would serve to identify her for the Navy, if they chose to pursue it. How many female pilots were in that particular unit on that particular ship at that particular time? Her identify is hidden only from those of us out here in the civilian world… but this sort of thing makes for good television.

We do learn the name of the lead pilot , CMR David Fravor, and we see him in his rather nice house. He tells the story that he has been told before. He tells of seeing the object, shaped like a tic-tac, that is about 40 feet in diameter, and which makes amazing maneuvers that are impossible for any aircraft in the current inventory. There is video footage from the Heads Up Display that tends to corroborate what he is saying… though no real analysis of the image was presented. You can watch an interview with him here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUyGnFFilP0&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR0iUiJW-w8gqEAJHNjQrn5PHB-0Wm9_XlmHFHdGfXpcRzBxBzIpRZcBSQ4

We do hear from a number of former power players from the Washington establishment, though John Podesta has been talking about UFOs for a long time. Luis Elizondo was part of the AATIP program, that is, the newest and latest of the government investigations about UFOs. However, John Greenewald has supplied some disturbing information about this. You can read about this aspect of it here:

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/01/ufo-unidentified-history-channel-luis-elizondo-pentagon/

I will note that George Knapp has allegedly released a document that has Elizondo’s name on some sort of distribution list. I haven’t been able to find it, and a name on a distribution list does nothing to confirm the claim that Elizondo was in charge of the AATIP program. This is one of those things that pop up in UFO research all the time to complicate matters.

Moving on, the interesting thing about this new television series, was that rather than delving into all the wild theories and putting up fake documents as if they were real, they stuck to a conservative point of view. We are shown, for the most part, the witnesses and we see their testimony corroborated by video. We learn that many military pilots have seen UFOs, interacted with them, but fail to report the sightings because of the stigma attached to them. No rational person wants to be tarred with the nut case label that so often accompanies a UFO report.

Now, I said earlier that there wasn’t really anything new here. I meant, simply, that this program could have been made 75 years ago, if we had TV documentaries then. We had military pilots reporting UFOs. We had high-level military and government officials worried about these craft. We had serious research being conducted.

As first example, an Army Air Corps National Guard pilot flying near Mt. Baldy, California, on July 8, 1947, reported a UFO. The flat object, reflecting light, was about the size of a fighter. The pilot said that he gave chase attempting to keep the object in sight but was unable to do so. He, of course, didn’t have a Heads Up Display, or in this case gun camera film to back up his report. Technology had moved a long way in the last 75 years.

And then there is this sighting: Three airmen, including Major Archie B. Browning, flying a B-25, near Clay Center, Kansas said they saw a silver-colored object pacing their aircraft at 1:45 p.m. Browning said that a bright flash called his attention to the object, which he said was thirty to fifty feet in diameter and very bright. He said the object appeared to be pacing the aircraft at 210 miles an hour. When they turned toward it, the object seemed to accelerate to high speed and disappeared.  Again, the technology didn’t allow for any sort of photographic evidence. Eventually, the Air Force would suggest that the sighting was caused by a sunshine reflection on the windshield.

The point is that here are military pilots who were seeing something they could not explain and who had reported it for the last 75 years. They did not have the ability to record the event, given the technology in 1947, but that is about the only difference. These sightings were originally taken seriously by Army intelligence officers, and were reported up the chain of command. Eventually, a curtain of ridicule has been pulled down and the pilots are said to have mistaken sunshine reflections for real objects.

In fact, the movie, UFO, was released in 1956 that had the same trappings of authenticity as Friday night’s documentary. UFO included movie footage and pilot reports and eyewitness testimony. The Air Force moved quickly to undermine the film’s credibility.

There was another aspect to this that I thought of as slightly overblown. Elizondo was in his car when he received a telephone call about a secret briefing given to selected members of Congress. We don’t know who they were, but we hear that this is a history making breakthrough. UFO witnesses and members of Congress seriously discussing flying saucers… except it wasn’t the first time that it happened. Two decades ago Jesse Marcel, Jr. met, secretly, with members of Congress to discuss his handling of the strange metallic debris recovered near Roswell, New Mexico. This meeting did not inspire a change in the situation. The status quo had been preserved.

At the end of the program was one final thing that bothered me. One of the men said that the only thing we didn’t know was if we would meet E.T. or Independence Day.” He was wondering if those flying the UFOs were interested in benign contact or an invasion of Earth.

Back in the summer of 1947, according to Ed Ruppelt, who had been the chief of Project Blue Book in 1952, the Pentagon was in a panic. They didn’t know what the flying saucers represented. Could it be a terrestrial threat or one from outer space? Could alien invasion be far off?

Now, some 75 years later, we can answer half the question. It doesn’t seem to be Independence Day. After 75 years, there is little chance that an invasion was coming. That might be the reason that the panic evaporated 75 years ago. They realized that there was no invasion fleet and that they had time to try to understand what was going on. Since then, it appears that they have failed to find any additional answers, at least according to what we know.

Now, we’re beginning all over again, with the same type of investigation, with some formerly highly placed people saying the same things that we have heard for decades from other formerly important people. The problem is, at this point, we have nothing but the eyewitness testimony of the military pilots and the interest of some formerly important people which doesn’t really move the needle. We are in the same place we were nearly three-quarters of a century ago… there is just more hype today than there was then.