Metamaterial, Art Bell and the To The Stars Academy

For those of you keeping score at home, I am coming to this table a tad bit late. I just couldn’t get fired up about the TTSA’s acquisition of alien metallic debris they call metamaterials. I have heard so many stories about bits of debris circulating throughout the UFO community and beyond that I just don’t buy into it anymore. For nearly thirty years I have chased metallic debris, claims of photographs, diaries and letters. In all that time, not one of them has panned out* so I have become somewhat cynical.

In the last few weeks I have learned that the TTSA has acquired some debris and that the US Army is interested in it because it might help develop materials to

The late Art Bell.

protect our soldiers on the battlefield. Well, having been a soldier on a battlefield or two, I’m all for protecting the soldiers but I doubt that anything the TTSA has acquired will help in that mission.

So, let’s talk about the material that the TTSA acquired that I’m told they paid something like 35 grand for. Just what is that material and where did it come from (so many sentences ending in prepositions)?

It has been reliably reported that what we have here is something that was originally known as Art’s Parts because they were originally sent to late night talk show host Art Bell. He received them in a letter on April 10, 1996. That tells us that these parts have been around for a while. According to the letter that arrived anonymously with them:

Dear Mr. Bell,

I’ve followed your broadcasts over the last year or so, and have been considering whether or not to share with you and your listeners, some of the information related to the Roswell UFO crash.

My grandfather was a member of the Retrieval Team, sent to the crash site, just after the incident was reported. He died in 1974, but not before he had sat down with some of us, and talked about the incident.

I am currently serving in the military, and hold a Security Clearance, and do NOT wish to “go public”, and risk losing my career and commission.

Nonetheless, I would like to briefly tell you what my own grandfather told me about Roswell. In fact, I enclose for your safekeeping “samples” that were in the possession of my grandfather until he died, and which I have had since his own estate was settled. As I understand it, they came from the UFO debris, and were among a large batch subsequently sent to Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio from New Mexico.

My grandfather was able to “appropriate” them, and stated that the metallic samples are “pure extract aluminum”. You will note that they appear old & tempered, and they have been placed in tissue-paper, and in baggies for posterity.

I have had them since 1974, and after considerable thought and reflection, give them to you. Feel free to share them with any of your friends in the UFO Research Community.

I have listened to many people over the years discuss Roswell and the crash events, as reported by many who were either there or who heard about it from eyewitnesses.

The recent Roswell movie, was similar to my grandfather’s own account, but a critical element was left out, and it is that element which I would like to share.

As my granddad stated, the Team arrived at the crash site just after the AAF/USAF reported the ground zero location. They found two dead occupants, hurled free of the Disc.

A lone surviving occupant, was found within the Disc, and it was apparant [sic] it’s left leg was broken. There was a minimal radiation contamination, and it was quickly dispersed with a water/solvent wash, and soon the occupant was dispatched for medical assistance and isolation. The bodies were sent to the Wright-Patterson AFB, for dispersal. The debris was loaded onto three trucks which finished the on-load just before the sunset.

Granddad was part of the Team that went with the surviving occupant. The occupant communicated via telepathic means. It spoke perfect english [sic], and communicated the following:

The Disc was a “probeship” dispatched from a “launchship” that was stationed at the dimensional gateway to the Terran Solar System, 32 light years from Terra. They had been conducting operations on Terra for over 100 years.

Another group were exploring Mars, and Io [which I assume is a moon of Jupiter… funny how the aliens knew the names we gave to various astronomical bodies but keep referring to Earth as Terra… but I digress].

Each “probeship” carried a crew of three. A “launchship” had a crew of (100) one-hundred.

The Disc that crashed, had collided with a meteor in orbit of Terra, and was attempting to compensate it’s flight vector, but because of the collision, the inter-atmospheric propulsion system malfunctioned, and the occupants sent out a distress signal to their companions on Mars. The “launchship” commander made the decision to authorize an attempted soft-landing on the New Mexican desert. At the same time, the inter-atmospheric propulsion system had a massive electrical burn-out, and the Disc was soon virtually helpless.

There was another option available to the occupants, but it involved activating the Dimensional powerplant for deep space travel. However, it opens an energy vortex around the Disc for 1,500 miles in all directions. Activating the Dimensional powerplant, would have resulted in the annihilation of the states of New Mexico, Arizona, California and portions of Mexico. Possibly even further states would have been affected.

Thus, the occupants, chose to ride the ship down, and hope of the best. They literally sacrificed their lives, rather then destroy the populations within their proximity.

The Dimensional powerplant was self-destructed, and the inter-atmospheric propulsion system was also deactivated, to prevent the technology from falling into the hands of the Terrans. This was done in accordance with their standing orders in regards to any compromise with contact experiences.

Granddad spent a total of 26 weeks in the Team that examined and debriefed the lone survivor of the Roswell crash. Granddad’s affiliation with the “project” ended, when the occupant was to be transported to a long-term facility. He was placed on-broad a USAF Transport aircraft, that was to be sent to Washington, D.C.

The aircraft and all aboard disappeared under mysterious and disturbing circumstances, enroute to Washington, D.C.

It may interest you that three Fighter aircraft, dispatched to investigate a distress call from the Transport experienced many electrical malfunctioning systems failures, as the entered the airspace of the transports [sic] last reported location. No crash or debris of the Transport was ever found. The Team was disbanded.

Well, I realize I have likely shocked you with this bizzare [sic] and incredible account, and seeking to remain “unknown” likely doesn’t do anything for my credibility… eh? And the metal “sample” only will likely add to the controversy.

But, I know you will take this with a “grain of salt”, and I don’t blame you, Mr. Bell.

I just hope that you can understand, my reasons and my own desire to maintain my career and commission.

I am passing through South Carolina with an Operational Readiness Mobility Exercise, and will mail this just prior to this Exercise, possibly from the Charleston area.

I will listen to your broadcast, to receive any acknowledging or confirmation, that you have received this package.

This letter and the contents of the package are given to you, with the hope that it helps contribute to the discussion of the subject of UFO Phenomena.

I agree with Neil Armstrong, a good friend of mine, who dared to say, at the WHITE HOUSE no less, that there are things “out there”, which boggle the mind and are far beyond our ability to comprehend.

Sign me,

A Friend

Well, there is a lot more nonsense to follow up with this, including some preliminary reports on the composition of the material. Almost all of the analyses suggested that the material is of Terran manufacture (being an old science fiction fan, I couldn’t resist using the science fiction name for Earth… Terra. BTW, I find the use of the name, Terra troubling and indicative of hoax since it is a science fiction term that wouldn’t have been known by many outside of science fiction fans in 1947… though, at one point I told Stan Friedman that I preferred the term Terran to Earthling, but I digress) You can read more of it here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20010815220312/http://www.artbell.com/rosreprt.html

If you wish for more confirmation that the TTSA material is the “Art’s Parts,” you can read about it here:

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/whitley-streiber-confirms-to-the-stars-alien-metal-is-just-1990s-era-arts-parts

For those who might need a little help with this, what we have is here is nonsense. It is an anonymous letter containing a few scraps of metal. There is no provenance for the metal other than a cockamamie story of some unknown guy who somehow managed to escape with some bits of metal that he said came from Roswell but offered no proof of that. We can’t check the name to see if the guy was ever really in Roswell because we have no name. We have various analyses of the metal which mostly suggest it is from Earth. It’s been around for a couple of decades until Linda Moulton Howe sold it to TTSA (way to go Linda) and now it is about to go another round of analysis that will prove nothing because THERE IS NO PROVENANCE for it. We trace it to Art Bell and no farther… and Bell is dead so that really is the end of the line.

But somehow, the TTSA academy convinced the Army to study the material because it might lead to a way to make military equipment that is more resistant to the strains of combat. Why the Army would agree to that is almost as big a mystery as who this anonymous letter writer with the anonymous grandfather is.

The original letter should be the giveaway. A base on Mars. Aliens sacrificing themselves to save New Mexico and a bunch of other places. A convenient plane crash (or disappearance) so that the people who knew the most about this are gone along with the surviving alien crew member (maybe that launchship snatched the airplane to save the lone survivor).

Anyway, the anonymous nature of the letter, the lack of real provenance for the metamaterial, the stupid story told in the letter, are all reasons I failed to tackle this before now. I just couldn’t get around to it… but here are some of the facts. You have to decide if the Army is really dumb enough to think that little bits of metamaterial sent to a late late talk show host are enough to waste the limited resources of that one Army unit’s research budget. I simply can’t believe that they fell for it. The anonymous letter writer has to be laughing his ass off.

*We did discover a diary kept by Ruth Barnett for 1947, but there is nothing in it to suggest that Barney Barnett had seen a crashed saucer on the Plains of San Agustin. For the true believers, this was worse than finding no diary at all.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Dr. Michael Shermer

Dr. Michael Shermer, he of Skeptic magazine, was the guest on this week’s edition of A Different Perspective. We began by talking about the nature of evidence and what it takes to convince some about the possibility of alien visitation. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/20321523

We did discuss one of the problems of UFO research as I see it, which is that with some of the people and agencies involved with so many different agendas, that the truth somethings get lost in the arguments. I mentioned that during the Levelland

Dr. Michael Shermer

UFO sightings in 1957, the Air Force and Don Keyhoe of NICAP got involved in an argument over the number of witness to the UFO and its interaction with the environment. Had either side been interested in research rather than scoring debating points, then the tone of the conversation might have shifted to something that would have been useful.

We did get into a discussion of the Mogul solution for what had fallen at Roswell. Although he suggested the conventional skeptic points, he was unaware of Dr. Albert Crary’s field notes that seemed to eliminate Flight No. 4 as the culprit. I wanted to use that as a point that some skeptics tend to ignore the written record, relying instead on the memories of Charles Moore, one of those who worked on the project. I used the documentation that had been published in the thick Air Force report on the Roswell case. To his credit, Shermer was interested in these other data.

For me, this discussion, on Mogul, was of the most interest, but his opinions on other aspects of the UFO situation were also interesting. We did touch on the Wikileaks information that seemed to have uncovered no documents relating to UFOs, suggesting that there was nothing there to find. I countered with the idea that we know there have been classified UFO investigations going on such as Moon Dust and, of course, the most recent revelations. That would suggest that the Wikileaks information didn’t cover every aspect of the secrets the government wishes to keep.

Although I didn’t get to all the questions submitted for the show, I did get to a couple and I think others were covered as the discussions developed. Sometimes the show just takes a different track than I had planned. Sometimes the discussions that develop are just too interesting to divert.

Next week, I’ll be talking with Ryan Wood of MJ-12 research and the Crash Conferences fame. He has put out an appeal for us to look at Wikipedia because all the UFO related articles seem to have a skeptical slate. Sometimes that slant is more than a little biased and is based on faulty information. As always, submit questions in the comment section and I’ll try to get to them.

Oak Island - The Solution?

What ever happened to the search for the Money Pit? Wasn’t that the whole point of the show? To find the treasure that was supposed to be hidden at the bottom of the pit? Now we have them mucking about in the swamp (pun intended) trying to prove that it was manmade and that there is some sort of ship buried in the mud there.

Yes, we know that Smith’s Cove probably was created artificially and that the structures uncovered had nothing to do with the alleged flood system built to

The Money Pit, decades ago.

protect the treasure. Clearly this was a repair facility constructed in a location that was convenient in the New World. In the eighteenth century there just wasn’t the infrastructure that was needed. By the time the boys got to Oak Island in 1795 and invented the tale of a Money Pit, the east coast of the United States and Canada had built the port facilities that made Oak Island obsolete and unimportant. It was abandoned for the better facilities in a less hostile environment that sailors who’d spent months at sea would appreciate.

Remember back in the first season when they were looking for the original Money Pit? Remember Borehole 10X which supposedly revealed a long dead body, a tool or two, and a box that might hold some of the treasure? We saw, repeatedly, a video that seemed to show these things, but then a diver managed to get to the bottom of the Borehole and found… nothing. Some debris that had fallen into it from the surface, but nothing to indicate any sort of treasure. We aren’t treated to those videos any more because the dive had given us the answers about what was at the bottom of the borehole.

They continued their search to find the original Money Pit, even with the distractions of a Roman sword found in the ocean near the island that turned out to be a modern replica, the idea that the Knights Templar had somehow gotten to the New World before those in Europe knew about it so they could hide a treasure, and all the things found on the surface that suggested that people had used the island for decades before the boys began digging. But the point is that they found nothing to indicate a treasure buried deep on the island.

We keep hearing about the box drains that somehow supplied the booby traps with water that thwarted those boys when they dug too deep. But the real problem is that divers, who got down deep enough reported a current tugging at them. That indicates that the problem wasn’t a drain system, but an opening to the ocean that allowed the water in. Remember, it was reported that the depth of water in the Money Pit rose and fell with the tide. That wouldn’t have happened with a drain system created to booby trap the Money Pit.

So now we get to this season and the effort seems to be to find some sort of evidence in the swamp area. They are trying to find evidence that it is man-made. I think they have that right. The swamp is man-made. I think it worked something like a dry dock for wooden ship repair. I think the site was abandoned as better facilities farther south were built.

I have been interested in the mystery of Oak Island for fifty years. I have been interested in it since I first learned about it. I was fascinated with the story. And who isn’t captivated by a tale of pirate treasure? But we have the answer. The Laginas have done everything humanly possible to get to the bottom of the myth and I believe they have succeeded. They have proved the British were there decades before the Money Pit was “discovered.” The have found evidence of maritime activity associated with the island. They have opened up some very interesting historical avenues and, ironically, they have shown there is no treasure there.

I have followed stories of lost gold, of lost mines, of lost treasures for decades. Very few of them are true but most of them have a great historic tradition with lots of people trying to find them. But, most of them are just that. Stories. Oak Island was just one such story. We have a solid solution to it, thanks in no small part to the Laginas, but it is time to move on.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Colonel Charles Halt

Charles Halt, of Bentwaters fame, was the guest this week. The discussion was about the events of December 1980, what he personally saw, and the reaction of the senior officers of the Air Force to those events. He mentioned interrogations of the enlisted personnel that including hypnosis and chemical regression. His

Colonel Charles Halt

suspicion was that outsiders were responsible for these interrogations and that it was the CIA who conducted them. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/20149199

During the discussion, we touched on exactly what he had seen and who had been with him on that night. We learned that John Burroughs was involved on both the first night and on the third night, clearing up a problem I had seen in the testimony by Jim Penniston, who was interview on this program a couple of weeks earlier. You can listen to that interview here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Jim+Penniston

One of the things that caught my attention was Halt saying that there were more sightings than just the three nights that everyone talks about. He provided some

Jim Penniston. Photo
copyright by Kevin Randle

examples, including those in which the security force at the weapons facility had engaged intruders, suggesting that the intruders weren’t human.

There was a lot of information packed into the hour. Because his answers were short, we were able to get into several other events around the sightings. Halt confirmed that there were radar tracks of the UFO at the time of the sighting, but that someone, or rather a group of someones, had removed the tapes of the radar screens. Someone also took the various log books and police blotters that covered those nights in December. In other words, Halt was saying there was a cover up that extended up the chain of command and beyond, going all the way to Washington, D.C.

Next week, for a change of pace, I’ll be talking with Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine. The discussion should be interesting. If you have questions for him, send a note to the comments section and I’ll ask him during the show.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Jan Harzan MUFON

MUFON’s Executive Director, Jan Harzan was the guest on this edition of A Different Perspective. We began by talking about the trends in UFO reporting, if there are more sightings, fewer, or has it remained steady. I wondered if, in the world today, they were solving more of the cases than they had in the past. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/20014666

We talked about the To The Stars Academy, and if they communicated with one

Jan Harzan

another. Seems that there is interaction between the two, but there is a difference in the missions of the two organizations with MUFON more engaged in UFO research and TTSA following a somewhat different business model.

One of the things we talked about was the increase in the number of military witnesses coming forward. I wondered about the vetting of these witnesses because, in my experience, there were far too many who claimed military service or high military rank who either hadn’t served or were inflating their credentials. We did talk about the difficulty of vetting these witnesses given some of the roadblocks in getting the most accurate information.

There was one aspect of this that did bother me. I wondered if Jan had heard the skeptical argument that what the Navy pilots from the USS Nimitz had seen was a top- secret Army drone project. Jan suggested that Luis Elizondo had been in a position at the Pentagon, or in his job where he had an opportunity to review all the black projects. Had such a project existed, he would have known about it. I simply do not buy this sort of an argument.

I cite the situation in 1945, as the US raced to complete and test an atomic bomb, that Harry Truman, as vice president had not heard about it. He didn’t learn about it until President Roosevelt had died. At that point Truman became president and was briefed on it. Truman was the vice president at the time… not some fellow toiling away in the Department of Defense (and yes, I know that there was no Department of Defense in 1945… it was the Department of War and the Department of the Navy). The point is, that when you reach into the stratosphere of classified information, there really is no one who has access to everything. Sure, the president can get at it, if he knows what questions to ask, but seriously, would Elizondo be privy to everything?

At the end of the program, I mentioned Don Burleson’s article that appeared in a recent issue of The MUFON Journal. When Don appeared on this program, I asked him about some of this and while I don’t mean to pick on Don, I was concerned about the “speculation” in the article that could be read as established fact. For those who missed that interview, you can listen to it here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/19428012

Next week, I’ll be talking with Charles Halt about the Rendlesham Forest encounter. The following week is Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine. If you have questions, put them in the comments section here and I’ll get them asked on the program.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Jim Willis

Jim Willis, author of Lost Civilizations: The Secret Histories and Suppressed Technologies of the Ancients, published by Visible Ink, was this week’s guest. Although his book didn’t do more than touch on the idea of Ancient Astronauts, that was sort of the theme that I explored with him. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/19895196

I did start with something of a snarky comment, asking him what sort of background he had in anthropology and archaeology. His bio suggested that his professional education had been in music and theology. He did say that he had taken some courses in archaeology over the years. I had asked the question

Jim Willis

because, in his book, he had suggested that archaeologists didn’t pay much attention to the myths of the past. Willis thought these myths might provide clues to archaeological discoveries. I suggested that archaeologists do use those myths as part of their research when appropriate.

We talked about the Clovis people who inhabited an area around Clovis, New Mexico, some 13,000 years ago. But Willis pointed out that a Clovis site had been found on the east coast and was dated some what earlier than the original site. There were suggestions in the material recovered there that connected it to France. Traditional archaeology hasn’t completely accepted this theory but certainly has its supporters.

I wanted to explore the location of Atlantis, being a fan of the Minoan culture and the destruction of Santorini as model for the Atlantis myth. Willis thought that the Caribbean, with some of the islands such as Cuba as the remnants of Atlantis.

We also took something of a flyer as Willis talked about fossil fuel, or rather evidence of global warming had been found in ice cores of the world long ago that suggested a use of fossil fuels in antiquity. He suggested this might be the result of other civilizations creating a situation not unlike that we have today. I suggested that the Milankovitch Cycles might be an alternative explanation for some of this.

During the conversations, we did discuss how the ancients had moved such big stones in building their monuments or pyramids with such precision. The point is that there are some things that we just don’t know for certain, though there are theories to cover the points.

Next week I will be talking with Jan Harzan of MUFON fame. If you have questions for him, append them in the comments section and I’ll get to them.

Oak Island, Episode 1 - Disappoints... Again

I’m truly sorry but this show has jumped the shark more than once. Last night, as they were tearing up the swamp and finding rocks that were smooth, they keep talking about pirate ships or treasures that might have been purposefully sunk in the swamp. My question is, “Why does it have to be a treasure ship?”

Everything they find leads them to the conclusion that the treasure is real. They make no room for the very distinct possibility that the landing of ships on the island has nothing to do with hiding a treasure there. They are looking for the

Oak Island, obviously.

remains of a ship in the swamp and assume it would be a treasure galleon. They just use everything to prove their point apparently unaware of confirmation bias.

They find a button that their expert says was made sometime between 1650 and 1750. It proves that someone was on the island decades before the boys discovered the alleged money pit. It proves nothing of the sort. It just proves that someone had a button manufactured in the late 17^th or 18^th century but it tells us nothing about when it was lost on the island.

That’s the thing that I have noticed over the years. They just can’t seem to wrap their heads around the idea that there are alternative explanations for what they are finding on the island. If Joy Steele is right, then what they are finding is more likely to confirm her theory than suggest a booby-trapped money pit. Her theory explains all that they are finding today. Her theory, as I have noted in the past, suggests that Oak Island was used as a repair facility for British ships in the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries. By the time the boys arrived with their picks and shovels to begin this two centuries plus search, the British had left… but their trash remains.

In the years since the Laginas began to tear up the island, they have found nothing to suggest a treasure was ever hidden there. They don’t seem to wonder about the engineering ability of those who allegedly hide the treasure. They don’t wonder how they created the money pit, how they made the booby traps, or how they would have recovered the treasure when they came back for it. In all the years and all the various attempts to find the treasure, no one had actually found anything to suggest the treasure was there. It all goes back to the teenagers who spent a summer on a wild goose chase for an imagined treasure.

As I have said in the past, I was enthused about this. I was hoping they would find a treasure because, well, that’s the most exciting solution. But I now think they have found an answer. There is no treasure but there is too much money to be had with the program. Obviously, History is making money even with the millions spent on everything they have done. Obviously, there is an audience for the show and the ratings are high. This will probably go on until the public loses interest, they start lose money, or the ratings collapse. And yes, I’ll be there at the end. I hate to say it, I’m still interested in the final outcome, but there is no treasure.

The Curse of Oak Island - Season Seven

Yes, I know that a new season of The Curse of Oak Island is beginning, but I’m just not sure I have the patience or the stamina to participate in it. There are too many unanswered questions that no one on Oak Island wants to answer.

Oh, you want an example.

Oak Island

They mention that stone tablet found at the 90-foot level with a strange code on it, that has been deciphered as saying that below is more than two million pounds. No one seems to want to know why those who buried the mythical treasure would leave such an artifact. It serves no useful purpose for those who buried the treasure. They know what is down there. They put it there. They would have no reason to advertise the fact.

However, if I’m looking for investors in my company with a mission to find the treasure, then such an artifact would be valuable. It is hard evidence (pun intended) that the treasure exists. Of course, the stone has disappeared… or rather, it seems to have been traced to a book bindery operation that used the stone in part of the binding process. They have found what might be a couple of letters on that stone, but why, if it is valuable and related to the treasure, was it allowed to be ruined in that fashion?

And there is one clue that no one seems to notice. The alleged code refers to two million pounds… is that the weight of the treasure (unlikely) or a reference to the monetary system of the English. Doesn’t this rule out pirates and others who weren’t from England? Doesn’t that suggest something about the treasure that tells us that it wasn’t the Knights Templar (as opposed to the Night King)? Doesn’t that rule out the manuscripts of Shakespeare, or the Arc of the Covenant or some of the other speculations?

No one seems to question the story of the teenagers who started this whole thing with their attempted excavations back in 1795. Has anyone ever seen teenagers get obsessed with something? Can you imagine the teenagers sitting round, spotting what they think might be an indication that something had been buried and escalated that into pirate gold and buried treasure? Has no one ever wondered if they just didn’t make it up about the treasure as a way to spend an afternoon? Maybe there is treasure down there. Maybe it’s pirate treasure. We might be about to become rich… and then overwhelmed with their speculations and imagination they begin to dig.

Has no one worried that nearly everything they have found is on the surface of the island? It is no secret that people had been around it for more than 200 years. But the discoveries in Smith’s Cove seem to suggest something of a port facility or an

Joy Steele

emergency repair facility rather than anything to do with pirates. Joy Steele’s theory makes more sense each time they make another find in Smith’s Cove. The island wasn’t used to hide a treasure but as a repair facility for British ships.

Has no one wondered why the “discoveries” of the past haven’t been found again. I mean, there was talk of a buried vault found decades ago. Though they know the approximate location, they have not been able to find it with all the modern equipment and technology that they bring to the search. Could it be that the “evidence” of the vault was little more than finding the remains of attempts to get at the treasure some time earlier? I mean, they hit the beams and logs bracing those tunnels dug early in the search rather than some sort of a treasure vault.

Does no one remember the exciting finds that would suggest a treasure that have shown nothing of the sort? Dan Blankenship dug Borehole 10X and put a camera down it. The poor video seemed to suggest abandoned tools, a box of some sort and human remains. This was touted as evidence of the treasure in the early years of The Curse of Oak Island. But when a diver finally reached the bottom of the hole, he found nothing of the sort. The alleged artifacts were optical illusions recorded by the video camera rather than actual artifacts.

I could go on but there really is little point. We have been disappointed time and again by this hunt. Last week’s “astonishing” find is replaced by this week’s “astonishing” find. Do any of you remember the Roman sword found so long ago? Here was evidence that Europeans had arrived at Oak Island centuries before Columbus… but analysis showed it to be a modern replica.

Yes, I have been interested in Oak Island for half a century. I have mentioned this before. I have read the books and the magazine articles. In fact, in a book I wrote in the mid-1990s, I had a long chapter on Oak Island. I concluded the long discussion of Oak Island, writing:

It seems that we’ll have the answers in just a few years. When the story began in 1795 the technology to recover the treasure didn’t exist. The booby traps were big and clever enough to prevent the boys from finding anything. It could have been recovered fifty or hundred years ago if the work had been well planned and sufficient financing had been in place. Those problems are being resolved. Once they are, it seems that the Triton Alliance, or any of the treasure hunters that follow them, will finally solve the puzzle. The only downside will be if the treasure is so small that it doesn’t cover the expense of the search.

The Laginas have done everything they possible could to find the treasure. Their efforts have been extraordinary. What they have discovered, instead of a treasure, large or small, is that nothing of consequence is buried on Oak Island. It had been an exciting journey, but one that should have ended a couple of seasons ago.

UFOs and Edward Snowden

Normally, I would have put a mention of the following on the post about my interview with John Greenewald. We did talk, briefly, about Edward Snowden and his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, podcast #1368. Snowden had said that he had searched for UFO related documents but that he had found nothing. While this might be an extraordinary claim that suggests there is nothing hidden in government files about UFOs, it presumes that Snowden had access to

Edward Snowden

everything and that nothing is hidden away in databases or archives to which he had no access.

Here's why I can say something like this. The most obvious example is the Navy videos that were released after Snowden had made his document dump. Clearly there seems to be a UFO component here, but the Navy didn’t refer to the Nimitz incident as anything to do with UFOs. They talked about UAP. That might be why Snowden found nothing and this alone undercuts the importance of his revelation about UFOs.

But that’s not the only problem. Many UFO documents were copied to the CIA and the NSA as reported by both Jan Aldrich and Brad Sparks. This means, if nothing else, if you were searching for UFO related material, and if you used the correct search parameters, you should have found something. Anything. There were UFO documents out in the classified areas that would suggest some importance to them.

We learned, in 1986, about something called Moon Dust. The documents, first found by Robert Todd during a FOIA search, revealed this classified project that had a UFO component to it. I found four cases in the Project Blue Book files that were labeled as Moon Dust. Granted, they were crappy cases and I think they all had terrestrial explanations but the real point is that they landed in Project Blue Book, which had the mission of UFO investigation.

Once the Moon Dust name was compromised, it was changed. Todd, among others, attempted to learn the new name but were told that even the name was classified. That told us that Moon Dust had survived the compromise and that the code words for the mission had changed.

All of this suggests that Snowden’s effort to learn about UFOs, alien visitation, and investigation of UAPs, should have found something. This would not be something Earth shattering, but probably more of the Moon Dust type of material that we all saw years ago. Maybe it would have compromised the new code name but the point is, there should have been something.

Since Snowden found nothing, it is more than likely he didn’t have access to the database that contained that information. There are networks inside the government, computer networks that are not accessible to every computer in the government. Some are separated so that those who do not have a need to know can’t just logon through one database and end up seeing something they shouldn’t.

I’m reminded of Robert Dean’s claim to have seen a top secret cosmic document that he said contained information about a UFO crash retrieval in Europe. He said that he had been in the command post, or somewhere, on night duty. He was having trouble staying awake when an Air Force officer dropped The Assessment on his desk, telling him that it should keep him awake. The Assessment outlined the retrieval operation.

This story is bunk because no officer is going to provide anyone a top-secret document without being assured that he was cleared to see it and that he had a need to know what it contained. Highly classified material just isn’t passed round like that. It has to be signed out and then signed back in. Records are kept.

No, I’m not suggesting that Snowden should have found some reference to The Assessment, or to the MJ-12 documents for that matter, but that highly classified documents are carefully guarded to prevent compromise. They are compartmentalized. They are separated and the more sensitive the material, the more access is restricted. If we are talking about the proof positive of alien visitation, then that information would be among the most restricted and the most difficult to penetrate.

BTW, I’m not suggesting that either The Assessment or MJ-12 are real. There would be no mention of them in any classified database because both are hoaxes and therefore were not classified. But other information about UFOs or UAPs, would have found their way into classified databases. We know this because, as noted, some of that classified information has been declassified after Snowden’s document dump. Had he found something about them, then his conclusion, or speculation might have told his something. That he found nothing tells us something else.

It is not outside the realm of possibility that the UFO material was contained in databases and computer networks that were beyond Snowden’s capability to access. He found nothing because he couldn’t find the right network to compromise. It suggests that the CIA, the Air Force, the DoD, or the Navy might not store this sort of thing in a database. Those who need it might just have to travel, physically, to the point where the information, in hard form is stored to review. Such an extreme step would, of course, prevent a computer breach compromise. I don’t know that. All I’m saying here is that Snowden’s revelation might not be important because he couldn’t access the right network.