Jake Barber: UFO Retrieval Whistleblower

Last Saturday night, (January 18) NewsNation aired a segment that featured Jake Barber who claimed that he had seen a “nonhuman” egg-shaped aircraft and had been recruited for a top-secret government UFO crash/retrieval program. Unlike David Grusch who talked of hearing of such things from credible but unnamed sources, Barber said that he had participated in retrievals.

I probably should point out here that neither of these “whistleblowers” was the first to make claims of an involvement in some sort of government UFO crash retrieval program. Among the first was Clifford Stone, a mid-level Army NCO, who claimed to have been involved in several such operations and had even seen the “alien autopsy file,” not long after he had joined the Army. I mention this because Stones’ revelations were little more than invention that was not backed up by any sort of independent evidence.

The late Cliff Stone, who claimed to be on the inside
of a secret program involved with crash retrievals.

According to NewsNation, which had checked Barber’s records, he was a talented airplane mechanic who was deployed on several presidential support missions. He had been recruited into the Air Force’s Elite Combat Control unit suggesting he was a helicopter pilot (though it is unclear if he had been a military pilot), freefall parachutist, expert marksman and the recipient of a NATO top-secret security clearance, known as Cosmic Top Secret and service in Bosnia, for which he earned an unidentified valor award. They don’t reveal what award that might be. Stones’ records provided no corroboration for his tales.

To indicate the off-world nature of the retrievals, Barber said, “Just visually looking at the object on the ground, you could tell that it was extraordinary and anomalous. It was not human.” The craft was metallic, pearly white, and about the size of an SUV.

Normally, I am skeptical of these sorts of claims and I believe we all should be as well. However, my own experiences in both Air Force and Army intelligence suggests there might be some truth to it.

Because of my status in the military, that is as an intelligence officer, and because some knew of my interest in UFOs, I occasionally received nuggets of information about UFO cases that haven’t been reported or that have had little military interest. Bob Cornett and I might have been among the first to gain access to the Project Blue Book records while they were still housed as Maxwell Air Force Base and had not been redacted, taking out the names of the witnesses.

Bob Cornett reviewing UFO records while on assignment from
a magazine in the 1970s.

One of the first cases we wanted to see was from November 1953 that involved the disappearance of an Air Force fighter. The Blue Book file was just two pages and it was noted that it was an aircraft accident rather than a UFO report. According to an Air Force colonel who was stationed at Kinross Air Force Base said that in November 1953, a jet fighter was scrambled to intercept an unknown target, meaning a UFO, over the Soo Locks on Lake Superior. The intercept was watched on radar, the two blips, that is the UFO and the jet, merged but never separated. That single blip flew off the scope and disappeared in the distance. From the point of the merge, there had been no further communication with the fighter. The jet was never found. The colonel told me that there had been two schools of thought. One was that the UFO abducted the jet and the second was that it had crashed into the lake.

That is the sort of thing that I believe David Grusch heard when he talked about UFO crashes. People who were at the right place at the right time to know something more than the public provided that information. The colonel believed that the jet had been abducted, or in his words, the UFO took it. I wasn’t there, but the source had been. I knew him and he was credible but then where do you go with such a tale. If it is highly classified, how do I, as a civilian now, break through that barrier. Besides, attempts to learn more about it, other than the mundane and unclassified, have failed. I’m pointed back to the information and documentation that I already had.

In a somewhat similar vein, Don Schmitt and I interviewed a general at the Pentagon. Well, interviewed might be an over statement. He agreed to meet us in a snack bar on one of the lowest levels. The tables were about waist high or higher, so that people had a place to set a plate, but there were no stools. It was a get in, get your food, eat it and get out place.

We wanted to talk about the Roswell case. Don had apparently chatted with him at some point, explaining what we were after which is information about Roswell. By this time, we had talked to many witnesses to the crash and knew more about it. We had rejected the balloon answer and had even interviewed three of those who had been in General Ramey’s office on July 8, 1947.

We were inside the Pentagon for about fifteen or twenty minutes. The general didn’t look nervous. He just told us that there was an area in the Pentagon to which he had no access. He said that our Roswell information was there. He didn’t elaborate. Just hinted that highly classified information about Roswell was in that area, and those entering had to have a specific request and their time in that area was limited. I would later talk to another man who had said he had seen the classified version Project Blue Book and described for me. He said he saw some of the pictures of crashed UFOs and the recovery operations that had been conducted. I don’t know if these classified Blue Book files were part of that section of the Pentagon to which the general had referred.

I have also talked with another general who said he knew the photographer who photographed Roswell bodies, but didn’t provide very much information about that. I need to point out that by the time the information got to me, it was third-hand. The general hadn’t seen the pictures, he had just talked to one of those men who took them.

I suppose I should mention the retired MSGT who said that he’d provided the rawin target for the Roswell explanation. What he had said to Cornett and me, was that he had taken a balloon into an area to show the witnesses what they had seen. This was before I had talked with Irving Newton, the weather officer who identified the wreckage in Fort Worth. He said they didn’t have rawin targets on the FWAAF, but did know where to get one if it was needed.

The MSGT was careful about what he told us, but the implication was that he had taken the balloon around the Roswell area. I have assumed that it was part it was part of the 1947 cover up, but when Bob and I talked to him, neither of us knew much about the Roswell case. I had read Frank Edward’s laughable description of the Roswell case in his Flying Saucers – Serious Business, but that didn’t contain much information other than it happened near Roswell and the Air Force had explained it, in Edward’s words, as a pie tin hooked to a kite.

All these are incidents, in which I was involved to some extent. Like those being talked about today, they suggest that these retrievals do happen. Sometimes the information is limited and we must deduce where it is going. Sometimes it is more explicit. What it does confirm is there was a cover up then and it remains in place now. 

Immaculate Constellation - My Analysis

 

Last night, on my normal UFO segment on Coast-to-Coast AM, I mentioned something called Immaculate Constellation, which, according to a whistleblower, who is never identified, is a top-secret archive of UFO, well, UAP images. According to the whistleblower, the military and intelligence community are operating a database of videos and images taken from "infrared (IR), forward-looking infrared (FLIR), full motion video (FMV), and still photography of UAPs.

The whistleblower alleged that the Department of Defense created Immaculate Constellation under what's known as an Unacknowledged Special Access Program (USAP) in 2017 after The New York Times reported on an informal Pentagon UAP program known as AATIP.

Reporter Michael Shellenberger of Public said on "Joe Rogan Experience" that in the whistleblower's report, the Pentagon is "illegally" hiding information about this program from Congress.

The whistleblower said that simply printing the name "Immaculate Constellation" could trigger government surveillance of whoever publishes the name using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as probable cause. They won't comment on it, but talking about it will put you in the danger zone. I guess that means I am now in the “Danger Zone,” which sounds like a good name for a podcast or a rock band. BTW: Agents, if you come for me, please don’t crash through the door. I’ll happily open it for you.

DoD spokeswoman Sue Gough, who has been called on many times as UFO and UAP questions are asked, denied on Wednesday, any knowledge of a special access program known as Immaculate Constellation. I’m not sure that this is relevant because if it was a special access program which would also suggest a need to know and she might not have been in the loop. Would a spokeswoman, or spokesman for that matter, be read into every highly classified program? If they are not then they have plausible deniability, meaning that she can say such things as having no knowledge of a program and be telling the truth. Doesn’t mean the program doesn’t exist, only that she doesn’t know about it.

I am reminded that when the Moon Dust was inadvertently revealed in 1986, the Air Force denied that such a program existed. When shown official documents with the name Moon Dust on them, a higher-ranking Air Force officer said Moon Dust did exist but had not been used. Other documents refuted that claim as well. For more precise information on this see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2024/03/aaro-and-beginning-of-moon-dust.html

The point is that the first officer, Lieutenant Colonel John E. Madison, of the Congressional Inquiry Division, Office of Liaison, wrote, “There is no agency, nor has there ever been, at Fort Belvoir, Viriginia, which would deal with UFOs or have any information about the incident in Roswell. In addition, there is no Project Moon Dust or Operation Blue Fly. Those missions have never existed.”

Most of what Madison wrote was the truth. There may well not have been any agency at Fort Belvoir that dealt with UFOs or Roswell, which, course, doesn’t mean that such agencies might not exist at other installations. And he is accurate in saying there is no Project Moon Dust because Moon Dust was the code words dealing with UFO material.

So, Madison wasn’t lying, he just didn’t have access to all the information he needed to properly answer the questions put to him. However, when the documents were presented and properly vetted, meaning the source of the documents was legitimate, Colonel George M. Mattingley, Jr., wrote, “…Upon further review of the case (which was aided by the several attachments to Mr. Stone’s letter), we wish to amend the statements contained in the previous response…”

Cliff Stone

The point is that even people at the highest levels aren’t read into all programs and a denial by Gough that she had no knowledge of such a program doesn’t mean there is no such program.

The real problem here is that Shellenberger has not identified his source. Years ago, decades really, we were presented with documents suggesting a cover up of the Roswell UFO crash. These papers, known as MJ-12, appeared at the home of a UFO researcher. Well, photographic film arrived and when developed, revealed the existence of a special group known as MJ-12 to exploit and direct the recovery of the Roswell UFO.

The trouble with these documents was that we didn’t know who had sent them. We didn’t know where they originated. Finally, we didn’t have the originals which could have been tested. What good would it do to test the paper on which they were printed? We all know that it was photographic paper.

Investigation into the information provided by the MJ-12 documents suggested they had been created in 1984 rather than 1952 as alleged on the documents. In 1984, there was a believe that the Del Rio UFO crash, which in the MJ-12 documents, is mentioned as El Indio-Guerrero crash. But there is no evidence and the lone witness changed so much about it over the years, that it is clear that it was invented. You can read one analysis of the case here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/08/absense-of-evidence.html

The point is that originally the MJ-12 documents caused a stir not only in the UFO community but among the news media and those interested in UFOs. Investigation revealed the flaws and the major flaw was we didn’t know the original source. Without that, we were left with an interesting aside into the possibility of a cover up. Eventually, nearly everyone agreed that the documents were a hoax and that was underscored by the lack of the original source.

That’s where we are with Immaculate Constellation. We have no source and we don’t even have copies of documents suggesting there is something to the claims. At least, MJ-12 had documents, which led to the revelation that it was a hoax. For an in depth analysis see Case MJ-12: Updated.

I’ll note here that for years Stan Friedman held up several documents that related to UFOs that were nearly all redacted. There were only one or two words on a page that could be read. This was proof of the cover up. However, we now have the unredacted versions of those documents and realize that the missing information had nothing to do with UFOs but with intelligence collection methods in certain parts of the world. That information would have been of value to our competitors in the world and was rightly redacted. This merely shows that sometimes, we over react to government secrecy.

We can look to whistleblower David Grusch. He talked of high-level, important people who told him about UFO crashes, but he supplied no names. I can deduce some of those names and while they had once held important posts in the government or were respected scientists, that didn’t say anything about Grusch’s sources other than we have the names. Didn’t prove what they had told Grush, or that Grush overheard, was accurate information, only that they might have said it.

I point all this out because we now have more information about an important government program hidden from the public which, supposedly hides information about UFOs or rather UAP. But we have no way of vetting the information. We have no way of finding corroboration. We just must believe the stories told by this unidentified source. And I ask, “Why?”

Here's something else that hasn’t been considered and that is that this collection of UFO images might not have a thing to do with alien visitation, but is, instead, images of terrestrial craft that have been flying around various locations in the US. It might be that the images are held in secrecy because revelation of them might provide information of intelligence value to our competitors. In other word, national security might have raised its ugly head.

I could go on about other great stories circulating or circulated in the UFO field that intrigued and excited people inside and outside the UFO community that blew up when we finally were able to get to the sources.

Right now, I can’t verify that Immaculate Constellation exists, but then I can’t reject the tale either because the evidence to do that doesn’t yet exist. I can only caution against drawing any concrete conclusions now because we simply don’t have enough information to just either way to justify any conclusion.

The July 26 Congressional Hearing

 

For those interested, yes, I did sit through the whole UFO, I mean UAP, Congressional Hearing. And, no, unlike so many of my colleagues, I was unimpressed. I heard and saw nothing new here. I knew days ago, who the witnesses would be, and hoped that some of David Grusch’s sources would be revealed. With hints about sources, we could have begun the process of verification but without them, we just have some interesting tales that might be more fiction than fact.

The Hearing Room and the witnesses, back to the camera.

Here are some of the things that I noticed. There was a great deal of talk about transparency, but little talk about sources, sightings or results. There was a great deal of talk about national security, and most of us could figure out what that meant. Revelation that the US was in possession of alien spacecraft, or rather proof of that, could certainly affect national security. Our competitors in world would fear what we might learn about the operation of alien spacecraft and what sort of an advantage that would give us.

Representative Glenn Grothman, who chaired the panel asked if the witnesses thought that UAP pose a threat to national security.

Hearing chair, Rep. Glenn Grothman.

Commander David Fravor, the Navy pilot involved with the tic-tac sighting said, “Yes, and here’s why. The technology we faced was far superior to anything that we had… if you have one and you reversed engineered one, you could go into space, go someplace, drop down in a matter of seconds and do whatever it wants and leaves and there is nothing we can do about it.”

Grothman asked about what kind of information is being hidden. Grusch, the alleged whistleblower said, “I can speak to that briefly in an unclassified matter…” But said nothing that he hadn’t said before and offered nothing in the way of evidence for his opinion.

Grusch was the one I wanted to hear and he was asked, finally, about the US having UAPs (he meant alien spacecraft) and said, “Absolutely, after interviewing over 40 witnesses over four years, I know the exact locations and those locations were supplied to the Inspector General… I actually had some people with first-hand knowledge provide protected disclosure to the Inspector General…”

David Grusch testifying in front of the Committee.

Which, of course, told us nothing that we didn’t know. As I have said, repeatedly, Don Schmitt, Tom Carey and I have talked with first-hand witnesses and we didn’t suggest it was information that couldn’t be shared in an open forum. We named names, cited locations, and even have some documentation related to all this.

Representative Tim Burchett asked if anyone had been harmed and Grusch said, “Yes, personally.” But it seemed that he was referring to interference with his job and bullying by his superiors. He said, “It was very brutal and very unfortunate, some of the tactics used to hurt me both professionally and personally.”

Representative Tim Burchett asking questions.

Again, Don, Tom and I have interviewed many people who reported they had been threatened. We specifically mentioned threats related to the Roswell UFO crash that included members of the military, the sheriff and several civilians. All documented in the various books that include names and dates. Just this month, I reviewed one of those cases when I spoke to Tim Saunders about what his father, Patrick Saunders had told him. You can read all that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2023/07/patrick-saunders-covert-roswell.html

Burchett asked if he knew of anyone having been murdered. Grusch said, “I have to be careful answering that question. I directed people with the that knowledge to the appropriate authorities.” He said he was willing to discuss this in a closed environment, but gave us no hints about who that might have been killed, when the murder or murders might have happened, and where the investigation now stood.

Grusch continued in this vein throughout the hearing. He was asked for specifics, provided none, but suggested he would get into that in closed hearings. So much for transparency.

Representative Jared Moskowitz asked if he, Grusch, had met with people with a direct knowledge of non-human craft. Grusch said that he had personally interviewed those individuals. Again, Don, Tom, and I can say the same thing, citing specific generals and colonels, all of whom can be placed in positions to have witnessed these things. We talked with former counterintelligence agents (later Air Force OSI agents who had direct knowledge). We have also talked with civilians who had specific and direct knowledge such as Bill Brazel.

Moskowitz followed up by asking about crash sites and crash imagery. Grusch said, “I can’t go beyond what I have already stated publicly.” I thought that was a nice dodge of the question. This was the sort of thing that interested me, but each time someone had approached specifics, the answer was the same. Can’t go into it beyond what he had already said.

In what was an important question that I think was missed by many, Rep. Burchett asked about when the US became aware of these alien craft. Grusch said, “I like to use the term non-human (who really cares what you like). I don’t like to denote origin. It keeps the aperture open both scientifically and (he trailed off here and didn’t finish that thought)” and then said, “Like I have discussed publicly, the 1930s.”

This is a reference to the 1933 Italian crash, which colleagues in Italy have said is a hoax. I will note that even if true, the US wouldn’t have learned about it until the mid-1940s. I did a longer post on it and you can read it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2023/06/david-grush-and-1933-italian-ufo-crash.html

Now we come to the nitty gritty. Burchett asked for the names and the titles of the people with direct first-hand knowledge about crash retrievals. And Grusch said, ‘I can’t discuss that publicly, but I did provide that information to both the intel committees and the Inspector General.”

This was what I had waited for. Names, organizations, maybe even a date or two but Grusch provided nothing other than that vague reference to the 1930s. He had said all this before.

While Ryan Graves, the other Navy pilot talked about interviewing some thirty other pilots about their encounters (without providing any names) he did mention a big sighting at Edwards Air Force Base by Boeing engineers and contractors. I mention this only because I didn’t want to leave him out. He was the third witness who didn’t add much to what we already knew about his experiences.

I suppose I should mention that I had written, in The Washington Nationals, a book about the sightings of UFOs over Washington, D.C., information about pilot sightings at that time, including interviews with Air Force pilots involved in attempted intercepts of UFOs. Again, complete with names, locations and other source material.

And, of course, the Project Blue Book files are filled with the names of pilots who had reported UFOs. Since the end of Blue Book, hundreds of other pilots have reported seeing UFOs. In fact, I interviewed a man who had been an alternative pilot on Air Force One during the Kennedy administration who told me that he had seen a domed disk flying off the wing of his fighter in the years before he had flown Air Force One.

Finally, I mention this only because it was so jarring. Representative Eric Burlison wondered how these craft could travel billions of light years and then crash. It seemed to boggle his mind that a race that could conquer interstellar flight would end up crashing. Of course, they really didn’t have to travel billions of light years. The closest star system to Earth is a mere 4.1 light years away. And yes, the technology that would allow travel across that distance is still beyond our capability but his point was irrelevant.

In the end, we heard more about transparency and national security, and there were even some questions about black funding that had little to do with the purpose of the hearing. We didn’t get any specifics that we didn’t already have and we learned nothing that we didn’t already know… except that Grusch sticks with the 1933 Italian crash. Someone should tell him that it might just be a hoax and he should forget about it.

David Grusch and the Canadian Letter

 

For all those who had asked, yes, I have seen the Canadian letter that George Knapp and Jeremy Corbell talked about. Yes, it is interesting, but not necessarily for the reasons some have suggested. And while it is interesting, it doesn’t, exactly, validate the information shared by David Grusch but does suggest an interest in the topic of UFO crashes by a Canadian government official.

George Knapp

Oh, and while some have questioned the authenticity of the letter, it is real.

In the last several weeks, we have been bombarded by UFO stories, NASA committee meetings and Senate hearings. Although nothing of real substance came from the meetings, hearings and now this letter, it does suggest a change in attitude. The letter does not confirm what David Crush was saying, but it does demonstrate a new interest in the topic at the higher levels of various governments. No longer are we subjected to the tongue-in-the-cheek snide comments by educated people who are too sophisticated to believe that UFOs might represent an alien technology. Now, we see those educated people wondering if the information leaking might not have an undercurrent of legitimacy. Just maybe this is something that should be watched.

I see from the various Internet discussions I have with colleagues around the world, that all this demands a cautious approach. We don’t want to be overly enthusiastic about the information without having the opportunity to vet that information. We need sources and documents to do that.

There is one point in the Canadian Letter that I haven’t seen addressed anywhere and that refers to a 1950 interest in the topic. A Manitoba member of Parliament, Larry Maguire, wrote to the Canadian Minister of Defence, concerning the new or renewed interest in what is now called UAPs. The sentence that caught my eye said, “As Minister of National Defence, you may not be aware Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) has participated in efforts to analyze UAP [UFO], which is publicly traceable to circa 1950.”

Larry Maguire

It was the 1950 date that drew my attention because that seems to relate to what has become known as the Sarbacher episode. According to William Steinman, he received a copy of an interview between Robert I. Sarbacher and Wilbert B. Smith that was conducted on September 15, 1950. The interview notes apparently were made by Lieutenant Colonel Bremer:

Smith: I am doing some work on the collapse of the earth’s magnetic field as a source of energy, and I think our work may have a bearing on the flying saucers.

Sarbacher: What do you want to know?

Smith: I have read Scully’s book [Behind the Flying Saucers] on the saucers and I would like to know how much of it is true.

Sarbacher: The facts reported in the book are substantially true.

Smith: Then the saucers exist?

Sarbacher: Yes, they exist.

Smith: Do they operate as Scully suggests on magnetic principles?

Sarbacher: We have not been able to duplicate their performance.

Smith: Do they come from some other planet?

Sarbacher: All we know is, we didn’t make them, and it’s pretty certain they didn’t originate on earth.

Smith: I understand the whole subject of saucers is classified.

Sarbacher: Yes, it is classified two points higher than the H-bomb. In fact it is the most highly classified subject in the U.S. Government at the present time.

Smith: May I ask the reason for the classification?

Sarbacher: You may ask, but I can’t tell you.

There was a final note that said the interview was written from memory but he, and I don’t know which he it was, though I suspect it was Lieutenant Colonel Bremer who “tried to keep it as nearly verbatum [sic] as possible.”

Steinman contacted Sarbacher about the conversation. Sarbacher confirmed that the interview had taken place. Steinman followed up with additional questions, which Sarbacher answered. On November 29, 1983, Sarbacher sent a letter to Steinman. The pertinent parts of that letter follow:

Relating to my own experiences regarding recovered flying saucers, I had no association with any of the people involved in the recovery [Steinman had supplied a list of names who were alleged members of MJ-12] and have no knowledge regarding the dates of recovery.

I did receive some official reports when I was in my office at the Pentagon but all those were left there as at the time, we were never supposed to take them out of the office.

About the only thing I remember at this time is that certain material reported to have come from flying saucer crashes were extremely light and tough.

I will note here that this exchange took place in 1983, after the publication of The Roswell Incident, but the idea of UFO crashes was not wide spread in the general public and I have no way of knowing if Sarbacher was familiar with the story. It was only after 1990 that the Roswell information exploded.

However, and relevant to the discussion is information reported by others. According to Dr. Bruce Maccabee and Jerry Clark, Sarbacher was “ignorant of UFO history.” They reported that he didn’t even know what Project Blue Book was, which suggests that Sarbacher had not been contaminated by all the reporting about the Roswell crash.

Sarbacher, in that same letter, wrote, “I remember in talking with some of the people at the office that I got the impression these ‘aliens’ were constructed like certain insects we have observed on earth, wherein because of the low mass the inertial forces involved in operation of these instruments would be quite low.”

This story received widespread coverage in the UFO community. Both Stan Friedman and Jerry Clark contacted Sarbacher and he confirmed the accuracy of what Steinman had reported, meaning that the notes and conclusions were accurate, but the information might be considered speculative. It was also noted that Sarbacher’s information was all second hand. He had read reports, he had talked with people involved but he had seen nothing himself.

There is one other important point. Sarbacher had been a member of the Research and Development Board, where some of the UFO information had been discussed. T. Scott Crain interviewed Fred A. Darwin who had served as the executive director of the board. Darwin told Crain:

Bob Sarbacher… had virtually no connection with the activities of the Research and Development Board… I got Bob appointed to membership on the Guidance and Control Panel. After a couple of months, the Chairman requested his replacement; he never came to the meetings.

This does not, of course, negate what Sarbacher had written to Steinman and told others. It only suggests that his information about the flying saucer crashes falls into the category of hearsay rather than observation.

I believe that the reference in Maguire’s letter was to this information, the Canadian connection to it and a desire to ensure that proper authorities in Canada were aware of some of the UFO history.

What this letter tells me is that Maguire was concerned about Canadian involvement in the renewed interest in UFOs, and that he wanted to alert the Defence Minister about it, in case he wasn’t current on UFO history.

While the letter does mention the renewed interest in UFOs, and the US Congress interest in the topic, it says nothing about the reliability of David Grusch’s information. And, if he was referring to the 1950 information, I suspect he was, then this does little to validate that data. We are left right where we began, which is without public corroboration of Grusch’s claims. It is just another instant of second-hand stories that seem to provide important clues about UFOs and it does suggest where some of the information that Grusch talks about originated. It just is not the smoking gun that we need.