Congressional UAP Briefing

 

The anticipated open hearings on UAPs lasted less than 90 minutes and the blanket of national security was a topic that was addressed often, something that I had expected. Of course, when you’re talking about intelligence gathering, regardless of the focus of that intelligence gathering, means, methods and sources are something to be protected. As was mentioned more than once, we don’t want our competitors in the world to know what our abilities are… or what our shortcomings might be.

One of the first things we learned is that the pronunciation of the new office is AIMSOG and I was certainly glad that we could clear that up. And we were told that there had been no official investigation into UFOs, I mean, UAPs, since the closure of Project Blue Book, which, of course, ignored Moon Dust and other regulations that did require some reporting. There were also other investigations, or rather official panels, boards or organizations that dealt with the problem of UFOs, that the Air Force ran in the 1950s and 1960s.

The fellows on the hot seats were Ronald Moultrie, (seen here) listed as the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security and Scott Bray, the Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence.

To set the tone, the second question asked of Moultrie, was about his interest in science fiction. Moultrie confessed that he was interested in SF and that he had actually attended some science fiction conventions, but not in costume. He also mentioned that he had met with the chairman of the committee, André Carson, in the last week and I suspect the question was designed to mitigate attempts to belittle Moultrie by someone learning that he was interested in science fiction and therefore was a biased source or maybe somehow unqualified because he read science fiction.

It was clear from the questions of most of the congressmen in attendance that alien visitation wasn’t actually on their radar. The questions tended to be about the capabilities of our adversaries in the world and if they could be responsible for some of the intrusions into our airspace and the training areas. It was that national security thing again.

We learned that they now had 400 reports, some of which were historic in nature, meaning that they were mainly anecdotal, that they were just witness testimony, as if that was sufficient cause for them to be ignored. They did say that there were 18 of the reports that might represent an advance in technology, but I had the impression they thought that technology was terrestrially based and came from China or Russia.

There were two videos shown. One was a fleeting image, which, I suspect was selected because it demonstrated the fleeting nature of many observations. A look at any data base shows that there are many sightings that last less than ten seconds. For the most part, these sightings are nearly useless, and I believe that was why we were treated to Bray attempting to freeze the video to show the object in it and not having much luck in isolating the particular frame or frames. I’m not sure why he wasn’t prepared with a still image to show because someone should have anticipated the question.

Scott Bray attempting to point out the UAP in the video.

The second video was of a triangular-shaped object that we were told had been captured by using night vision goggles and a camera on two occasions in widely separated events. They explained, rather poorly I thought, that this image was an artifact generated by the use of the two electronic devices, the night vision goggles and a digital camera. I had reported on this months ago which included a YouTube video made of triangular-shaped object focused on a light source using night vision and a digital camera. In other words, we had the explanation months ago and I wonder why this was brought up at the hearing other than to suggest a terrestrial explanation. You can read my report on this here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=night+vision

And for those who don’t wish to read that report, you can find the video of that experiment and explanation here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=night+vision

The point is that we amateurs in the UFO field, along with those interested in finding answers, knew this already. You have to wonder, again, why these videos were the ones used at the hearings.

I will repeat here that we were warned about national security implications more than once, and, of course, about the hazards to our aircraft. Moultrie and Bray were asked if there had ever been a collision between one of these objects and one of our fighters. There had not, but there had been eleven close calls but we got no details about those incidents.

Back in the days of Project Blue Book, we learned that if a sighting had not been “officially” brought to the attention of Blue Book, it was pretty well ignored. We learn that there is a similar limiting factor here. That means that if it is not officially brought to the attention AIMSOG (I don’t really know if this is the correct way to display the acronym, but it’s the phonetic way of spelling it), then it will probably be ignored. It seems, based on what I heard, that the official reports are going to be restricted to military and government entities. Those made by civilians might simply be ignored. That lets them control the data and the narrative, which flies in the face of transparency.

In fact, at one point, they were talking about open-source reports, meaning those from the local news, magazines, Internet, civilian organizations and outside government secure channels, will not make it into their data base. Ed Ruppelt, back in 1951, as he reorganized Project Grudge, which would evolve into Project Blue Book, subscripted to a clipping service which sent him newspaper articles about UFOs. In this new investigation, that sort of information will be ignored.

They did take a shot at “amateur” groups, meaning organizations like MUFON and Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies. There is also a concern for individuals putting out misinformation or disinformation that is self-serving and not “factually” based. There was a brief discussion about creating some sort of penalty for putting out that sort of information. I thought of the Robertson Panel of 1953 which suggested a debunking program. We haven’t come all that far except to suggest some sort of criminal penalty for making false UFO reports.

About the only relevant questions for us here, meaning relating to alien visitation, was asked about the Malmstrom Air Force Base incident in which ten missiles, in their silos, were shut down as a large orange object hovered overhead. Not surprising, neither Moultrie nor Bray knew much about it, though one confessed to have heard rumors. For those interested in the details, you can read them here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/12/coast-to-coast-belt-montana-ufo-sighting.html

In the end, this was about what I suspected. Very little dealing with UAPs as extraterrestrial craft. I wonder if the creation of UAP is a way to separate this new study from the UFO studies of the past. A way to ignore the history because they did say that their research or interest begins in 2000. That enables them to ignore everything that began in 1947 and dismiss the research that has gone on before.

The concentration on a national security aspect of this does negate the University of Colorado study, known as the Condon Committee, done under the auspices of the Air Force in the late 1960s. One of the Committee’s conclusions was that UFOs (not UAPs) were not a threat to national security.

There was one other thing that caught my attention and that was a suggestion that there might have been some sort of RF emissions detected in relation to some of the sightings. I thought immediately of the Levelland, Texas, sightings in which close approach by the UFO stalled cars and filled radios with static. That simply means there is a great deal of data available about this sort of thing, not only in and around Levelland but around the world. In fact, there were Air Force officers who experienced the car stalling affect of the UFO but their reports are not part of Blue Book. All this was explained in my book cleverly titled, Levelland.

In the end, they mentioned the USS Nimitz sightings that sort of sparked this overall interest in the unexplained. They said that those sightings were unexplained but that they weren’t necessarily non-human. Again, an attempt to take us away from the alien and move us to some sort of technological glitch or strange weather phenomenon or maybe a black project that they haven’t bumped into. It all revolves around national security.

The other thing was that they wanted to protect against leaks. Of course, when you are dealing with sensitive collection methods or the ability of various sensor arrays, you don’t want our competitors to know what we can do and see. But that allows them to wrap the data in the mantle of national security and evade transparency. They were telling us not to expect much in the way of information and that was what I thought would happen.

In the end we didn’t learn much of anything other than the person appointed to head the AIMSOG has been found but not who it is. That they expect there to be multiple answers to the questions about what is being seen and reported, which I could have told them months ago. They expect to go where the evidence leads them, but we’ve heard that before. If the answer is not to the liking of the person in charge, well, then the answer is changed.

And sadly, we seen all this before, beginning in 1947 and various evolutions in the past. We are at Twining 2.0 and I suspect the ending has already been written.