David Grusch and the 1933 Italian UFO Crash

 

One of the problems we face after David Grusch began his whistle blowing campaign is that he provided almost no information about his sources, about the UFO crash retrievals he alleged were real and provided no documents to support his claims. All that was coming but given the rules, regulations and laws, he was unable to produce any of the required information that would allow us to vet anything he said and validate his tale.

However, we can deduce some of this by comments he has made, especially during the interview that was broadcast on one of the fledgling all-news cable channels. I’m going to ignore his comment about “The Program,” which might or might not be the real name of a clandestine program because there just isn’t enough information about it to make any analysis meaningful. I will say, however, that we know about Project Moon Dust that had a UFO component, and that after the name was compromised in the mid-1980s, the name was changed and we were told that even the name was classified. Not that the project had been cancelled, only that the name had been changed and was still gathering UFO related material under umbrella of national security.

David Grusch and his military resume.

Grusch did name two UFO crashes. He mentioned both a crash in Italy in 1933 and, of course, Roswell. There was no danger in mentioning Roswell because of the controversy wrapped around the story. While the government explanation was Project Mogul, the available documentation eliminates that answer. I have written about that explanation of Roswell for, literally, decades, and believe there is no viable, terrestrial explanation for what was recovered. For those who wish to pursue my reasons for that, I suggest typing Mogul into the search engine here, or read either Roswell in the 21^st Century or Understanding Roswell.

The real trouble comes from the reference to the 1933 crash in Italy. I had not heard about this and I have spent decades researching claims of UFO crashes. The Italian story comes from documents, received anonymously in the mail by Italian researchers. This smacks of the tales of MJ-12, documents that were received anonymously in the mail by American researchers. Those documents are considered to hoaxes by the majority of UFO researchers today.

Briefly, Grusch said that the UFO was retrieved in northern Italy in 1933, and was recovered by Mussolini’s fascist government. The Pope learned about it and told the US government. The material was recovered by the US after the end of the Second World War.

The story of the 1933 crash, as told by Roberto Pinotti, an Italian journalist and UFO researcher, was that the object fell in Magenta, Lambardy, Italy, on April 11, 1933. The object was described as “saucer-like” and the event resulted in an investigation by an Italian intelligence unit called RS/33 Cabinet. The UFO was stored in the hangars of SIAI Marchetti in Vergiate. Mussolini believed the craft was a secret weapon of either the Nazis or the Allies.

Pope Pius XII learned of the craft and may have been told about it by Mussolini himself. When Mussolini signed a treaty with Hitler, the Pope worried about the craft and told the US about the object. It was after the war that the craft made its way to the United States.

Lue Elizondo, who was involved in UFO investigations, said that he had seen documents from Mussolini’s office that he found, “compelling.” He seemed to suggest that the craft might not have been alien but was some sort of advanced craft using jet engines that had been developed by the Nazis. The timing, however, doesn’t seem to fit. April 1933 is too early for the development of the jet engines and the design might have been something created by the Horten brothers attempts to build a “tailless” aircraft.

There were tales of bodies that made their way, and I say allegedly here, to Wright Field. They were badly mangled, looking as if they had been in a car wreck, but whose heads were fairly intact. They were seven feet tall, had long blonde hair, clear blue eyes, small noses, small mouths, thin lips and no signs facial hair.  The conclusion, based on the examination of those bodies was that they were not human.

One of the gates to Wright-Patterson AFB. Photo by Kevin Randle.

Now here is a connection that will raise a few eyebrows. There is an account from another source to corroborate some of these details. William Brophy, said that his father, who was a lieutenant colonel, had seen the bodies at some point and told him, the son, about them. Yes, this is the same Lieutenant Colonel Brophy who supposedly flew over, or landed near, or was somehow a witness to the 1945 UFO crash described by Jacques Vallee in this book about the San Antonio (Trinity) crash. The younger Brophy’s entry into this case taints it, just as it has the San Antonio crash.

At any rate, this is the tale of the 1933 crash, not cluttered up with any sort of corroboration except for those documents that have been floating around for decades. The trouble there, according to an Italian researcher, Giuseppe Stilo, writing in UFO Rivista di Informazione Ufoligica, those documents are faked. The documents arrived anonymously and were reported to have originated in “archival sources that no one has been able to identify and verify.”

Another problem is that those holding what has been termed “The Fascist Files,” is that disinterested third parties, in this case the CISU (Centro Italiano Studi Ufogici, an Italian research group) requested an opportunity to examine the documents but that has not happened in more than twenty years.

Also disturbing, is the lack of citation of the sources. We have dealt here, on this blog, with anonymous sources in various public arenas and more often than not, when the original source is identified the information attributed to that source has been distorted, or worse, the source denied the information.

A second article, “Fascist files” Under Scrutiny, by Massimiliano Grandi, published in UFO Rivista di Informazione Ufoligica (number 29) provided more information on these documents. Published with the article are photos of the documents which demonstrates there are documents, but that doesn’t mean they are authentic because the originals have not been subjected to independent forensic examination. This is the same problem we had with the MJ-12 documents. The originals were not available for disinterested third party examination.

Grandi provides additional arguments about the authenticity of the documents and the failure to corroborate any of the sources or other information. He concludes, however:

…we would like to firmly reiterate that despite the critical tones – the intent of those who want to study such an affair cannot be to try to prove the ‘falsity’ of those papers. This would be illogical. This falsity is not proven now, but it was intended to point out that there are numerous serious weaknesses in the reasons made to support the importance of the documents.

On the basis of the evidence so far produced, we believe that an Abrahamic faith is indeed required to condition the conclusions drawn by Pinotti and Lissoni about the contents of these documents.

Or, in other words, they found nothing to indicate that the documents were authentic and without additional information, the case for the 1933 crash and retrieval is not proven. It is up to the supporters to provide that proof and for more than twenty years they have failed to do so.

If this revelation about the 1933 Italian UFO crash is accurate, then it casts a shadow over the whistle blower who suggested that he learned it from his inside sources. It means that he accepted the original publication of the material without critical thought or even making a basic Internet search because he assumed that the information was accurate. It would seem that an insider, with access to what must be highly classified information, would have been aware of the controversy surrounding this case. He wouldn’t have mentioned it as one of two that he believed to be authentic.

Since he didn’t mention the names of any of his sources, we are unable to vet them and their reliability. We now enter an area of speculation. I have run into information that Grusch had spent time at the Skinwalker Ranch. Jerry Clark had mentioned to me that linking Grusch to Skinwalker as a way of questioning his credibility was unfair. Many have traveled to Skinwalker. But my point wasn’t about the paranormal research going on there, but who conducted the research and who had visited there. That put Grusch in touch with some formerly high-ranking government and military officials, not to mention Bigelow Aerospace. Remember, Grusch had talked about some of the evidence of the crashes and the recovery of material from those crashes had been provided to corporate America. One of those specifically named by sources other than Grusch was Bigelow Aerospace.

Given that connection, then it follows that we can deduce some of the names of those involved, and we can deduce some of the other crashes that might have been mentioned. Given where some of the information has recently surfaced that included the names of Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, I believe that one of those crashes is the 1945 claim of the recovery of a craft near San Antonio, New Mexico. The story was told by two men, who had been boys in 1945, who saw the craft crash, saw the wrecked craft on the ground, the alien creatures that flew it, and the Army recovery operation.

Although the story has been accepted by some very smart people, some of them who have been around the UFO field for decades, Douglas Dean Johnson, in a comprehensive investigation that does cite sources and does provide documentation, has thoroughly debunked the tale. The shifting nature of the important features of the story suggest it is untrue. Tom Carey recorded an interview with Reme Baca, one of those witnesses, before the story received any wide spread treatment and the recording is of an event that doesn’t match much of the later story. You can read Johnson’s research and listen to Carey’s interview and analysis by other, disinterested third parties here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-file-the-reme-baca-smoking-gun-interview/

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-the-trinity-ufo-crash-hoax/

https://www.davidhalperin.net/

Given the direction of all this, I wonder if the Del Rio UFO crash in northern Mexico, just across the border from Texas, isn’t on the list. This tale appears in the MJ-12 Eisenhower Briefing Document as one of the authentic crashes, though they have moved it from Del Rio to the south, in the area of El Indio/Guerrero. There are those who believe the story because a retired Air Force colonel was the one who told it and he signed an affidavit attesting to the authenticity of his information. However, it turned out the witness, Robert Willingham, was not an Air Force colonel and his story had more changes than that of Reme Baca. You can read about how it unraveled here and that will also provide links to other Willingham and MJ-12 analysis:

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

I would guess that another of the crashes that Grusch might promote is the Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, event of December 9, 1965. Stan Gordon has spent decades in research of this case and is convinced that it was an alien spacecraft that crashed. Leslie Kean, along with Gordon attempted to recover records of the crash from NASA. Gordon has found many people who saw part of the final flight of what he thinks of as alien spacecraft. I too, thought that this was one of the best UFO crash stories, and Gordon has produced some compelling evidence. However, in the world today, the answer for that event might be a meteor. A bolide, which is a very bright meteor, fell about that time, with remnants found in southern Canada.

Stan Gordon of Kecksburg UFO Crash fame.

I wonder if Shag Harbour might not be on the list. This case had many witnesses who saw something fall into Shag Harbour in 1967. There was both a law enforcement response as well as a military one. The object was not recovered, and the evidence seems to suggest that it eventually managed to leave the harbour for deeper waters. Not so much of a crash as an emergency landing. There are many witnesses, as I noted, and there are many official documents about it. Chris Styles and Don Ledger are responsible for finding the documentation and the other information that suggests that this was an anomalous event.

These are some of the obvious tales of UFO crashes that had received mention in various books, magazine articles and TV documentaries. These are the prominent ones that many accept as authentic crashes. There are some lesser known crashes that might make the list such as the one over Las Vegas in April, 1962.

There was a report of a “brilliant red explosion” over Las Vegas that was witnessed by dozens, if not hundreds. Couple this to events in Utah of an oval-shaped craft landing and then taking off, and there is a hint of a “forced landing,” if not an actual crash. Sheriff’s deputies told me of a search for the downed craft that was never located. At this point, my investigation suggests that the Las Vega end of it was a bolide that exploded in the upper atmosphere.

I suppose I could go on with this speculation, but without Grusch telling us what specific events he had encountered, what he had heard from those highly-placed sources, and what is on those documents that he has seen but hasn’t produced, all we can do is speculate.

What I do know at this point is that Grusch’s mention of the Italian crash calls part of his story and one or more of his sources into question. Insiders would know the truth about this case, if they had heard about it. That casts something of a shadow over his whistle blowing.

However, those of us who have been around the UFO field long enough have been fooled by sources that seem to have inside information, only to learn that their sources were no better than ours. The UFO field is littered with the tall tales that, originally looked good but have fallen when better research was presented. Four of the most recent examples are the MJ-12 documents, the Alien Autopsy, the Project Mogul explanation for Roswell, and what I have called the Roswell Slides. The truth about all these has been published and you can read about it on this blog by typing in the keywords, or read about in my latest books about Roswell mentioned earlier.

At this point, I’m hopeful that Grusch will be able to provide the information we need to vet his tales, but as we said in the military, “Hope is not an option.” All I can really say is there are a few red flags but these simply are not enough to reject the information that Grusch has provided. As Jerry Clark said to me, we do need to wait to see how this plays out and where the truth finally is found.

 

Coast to Coast AM - Christopher Mellon and Cigar Shaped UFO Sightings

 

Christopher Mellon, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Clinton  and George W. Bush Administrations and a the Staff Director of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, published a long article about the Air Force lack of transparency in the current crop of UAP sightings.

Christopher Mellon

I mention this because, in his analysis, he failed to mention the deceit of the Condon Committee. That was the University of Colorado study, funded by the Air Force, in which the conclusions were written before the study was conducted. A letter from an Air Force officer told the Committee members what the conclusions were to be and those were the conclusions reached. This alleged scientific study is often cited by skeptics as evidence that there is no alien visitation. This is why I’m somewhat critical of the renewed efforts to resolve the UFO situation. You can see the Hippler letter here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/03/hippler-letter.html

And you can read the entire Mellon article here:

https://thedebrief.org/why-is-the-air-force-awol-on-the-uap-issue/

There is another aspect to this that worries me and it had to do with a quote from Mellon. Leslie Kean reported Mellon said:

I highly doubt DoD or any other government agency is concealing UFO information. I participated in a comprehensive review of DoD's black programs and spent over a decade conducting oversight of the national foreign intelligence program, an almost totally separate world of secrets. I visited Area 51 and other military, intelligence and research facilities. During all those years, I never detected the faintest hint of government interest or involvement in UFOs. ... While a few new, previously overlooked documents might turn up (the bureaucracy is never perfect), I do not believe they would resolve the UFO issue or provide significant new insights. I can think of one lengthy UFO report that is classified only due to concerns over sources and methods. In fact, it identified a convincing conventional explanation for the pilot sightings in this particular case. There are lots of classified documents related to activities at Area 51, where high security is needed. But this is all legitimate stuff the American people would support. They have nothing to do with UFOs, to the best of my knowledge.

While I understand that people can modify an opinion based on new and additional information, it is disturbing to read that Mellon said he was involved in reviewing black projects and found the least interest in UFOs by the government. This statement is inaccurate because government interest in UFOs transcended the end of the Condon Committee, transcended the end of Project Blue Book and survived the compromise of Moon Dust. In other words, those of us on the outside of these inner government circles can point to government interest. And I haven’t even mentioned the poor explanations for some very puzzling cases.

Since you asked, I will point to the Levelland sightings of November 1957. No matter what you think about alien visitation, you must admit that ball lightning does not explain the stalling of car engines over a period of two hours and at multiple locations. I just published a comprehensive look at the Levelland sightings.

All this does suggest the latest trend in the UFO field, which is a renewed, official interest in UFOs, even if we can see the government playing fast and loose with the facts. How else to explain the continual delay in providing the proper and accurate information to Congress and to those of us outside of Washington, D.C.

 Another trend is the  increased sightings of cigar-shaped craft, many of them reported to MUFON. On December 12, 2021, the witness, in Titlow Hill, California, saw a dark object with a cigar shape. It moved at a constant speed and made no noise. The witness watched the UFO through a finder scope attached to a larger telescope. He said that the UFO was barely visible against a very dark gray sky. There was a pair of lights on the front end, one on the nose and the other lower on the leading edge. There was a line of rectangular lights along the center of the craft.

He watched as the object changed direction and moved closer. It then disappeared behind a tree line to the east. When the object disappeared, he grabbed his binoculars. He did run across the road in an attempt to spot the object again, but it was gone.

Also on December 12, of last year, the witness, in Rancho Mirage, California, saw several lights moving slowly. The craft was cigar shaped. It moved from south to north and then seemed to dissolve. There were no clouds where it disappeared and he could see stars in the area. He spotted several private planes but they were not flying as high as the UFO. Instead, it seemed to be at the same level as commercial aircraft, and was about the size of four of them put together. He did say that he had seen the Star Link Satellites before and that this was nothing like that.

On December 3, the witness, on the way to his girlfriend’s house in Chesterfield, Virginia, spotted something strange off to the left. He thought it might be a reflection or some other rather mundane object but then realized this was a massive craft. He said that it was cigar shaped, seemed somewhat bulky, and that it had a large light that looked like windows that were sectioned off.

Finally, on December 3, 2021, the witness saw a distant object hover for about twenty minutes. It flashed two red lights and one gold light sequentially and it had two other white lights on it. The UFO moved slowly to the north and then did a circular loop. He said that it was big and cigar like. He said that hovered after the loop and then sped away.

As I say, each of the sightings lasted much more than a minute and several of them were accompanied with video, which was reported to MUFON and are now part of their Case Management System.

There is one additional case to be mentioned because there is some interesting video that goes with it. This was an object reported over Norway. It might be returning space debris, and at one point, the first video goes out of focus so that the object looks like a fuzzy orb. I mention this case, only because of the videos that go with it. You can see the video here:

https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/2022/02/really-fast-ufo-sighting-over-northern-parts-of-norway-2022-norwegian-mainstream-medias-reports.html 

As always, I’ll keep my eyes open and if there is additional information about any of the cases mentioned here, I’ll publish it as well.

UAV's and a Little Corroboration for the Latest Story

In Ufology, it seems that every time there is an issue that has a clear solution, someone, somewhere comes up with a new problem. Just last week Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal reported on the continuation of a secret program to gather UFO information. There had been some definitive statements made about crash retrievals and “off world vehicles not made on this earth.”

I talked with John Greenewald about this and he offered an interesting scenario that suggested the “notes” provided by Dr. Eric Davis read more like a scene from a movie script than it did the sort of thing that would be written down during a meeting. His theory is interesting and not completely outside the realm of possibility. You can listen to our discussion here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/39906317

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/39906311

I had said that Davis’ brief mention of the Del Rio UFO crash as a real event was problematic. It was single witness and he had radically altered his story from his first telling of it. Robert Willingham, contrary to his claims, had not been an Air Force fighter pilot and had not retired as an Air Force colonel. With those revelations, he took down the Del Rio crash proving it was a hoax. He lied about who he was and how he had been involved. Given that Davis seemed to accept this tale as true suggested that Davis was not the insider he claimed to be.

Now, however, I learned that Lisa Rein, who is the Digital Librarian for the Timothy Leary Archives, has released an interview that she conducted with Dr. Edgar Mitchell in 2010. During that interview, Mitchell said, “…another contact… [ellipses in original] encountered the Admiral in Las Vegas, where he had been looking for and trying to get into the so-called ‘strategic access program’ around the UFO incident and had been denied.”

This sounds suspiciously like the tale that was told to Davis by Admiral Thomas Wilson. Of course, those of you who have been paying attention, realize that no names were appended to this revelation and that Mitchell apparently never said anything like this to anyone else… not to mention that Wilson has denied that the conversation ever took place. So this might refer to something else.

I’m not a fan of plugging in the names here so that it fits with one of the current stories going around the UFO field. I mention this in the interest of fairness, because it is suggestive of some sort of reality behind what Davis has claimed. There are the other problems with Davis’ version of some events and his seeming lack of knowledge about the discredited Del Rio UFO crash is evidence of that. This isn’t actually enough to validate the claim but it is enough for us to say, “Well, maybe, but probably not.”    

Unexplained Aerial Vehicles, the New Times, and Eric Davis

In what I suspect The New York Times thinks of as an exclusive story, Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal reported that the AATIP program, which had supposedly been suspended and disbanded, still existed. The name had been changed and the location changed but the Office of Naval Intelligence was still gathering information on UAPs, which is the new and improved name for UFOs.

We learn that the program, now known as the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force (UAPTF) was to “standardize collection and reporting” on these UAP sightings or what has been described as unexplained aerial vehicles which seems to put back into that acronym some of the trouble found with UFO. UFO, an Unidentified Flying Object implied, in the name, that there was an object and that it was flying as if under some sort of control.

An Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon brought none of that baggage to the discussion because a cloud, under bizarre conditions, could be described as an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon.

But I digress…

According to the Times report, the findings of this renamed and relocated organization, would be made public every six months (which should have actually said, that the director of national intelligence is supposed to report 180 days after the enactment of the authorization and not every six months). The Times noted that some of the retired senior officials hoped “the program will seek evidence of vehicles from other worlds,” but the main focus would be to discover if our competitors on the world stage have developed an aerial platform that allows them to penetrate our air space and well, basically, spy on US military facilities.

Senator Marco Rubio, the acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that they were worried about “unidentified aircraft” over US military bases. Rubio said that some of the unidentified aerial vehicles (and now another new acronym: UAV, which also means Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) possibly exhibited technologies that are not available to US military forces but he also suggested that there might be “a completely, sort of, boring explanation for it…”

All of which strikes me as a bunch of weasel worded statements meant in an attempt to spice up a story about nothing. Might be, possibly, maybe and the like. No one came out and said what he or she really thought about it because in the world of politics it is necessary to carefully phrase a statement so that, if it turns out to be wrong, the speaker can deflect the criticism.

But I digress, again…

The real problem with this latest expose is that one of the sources quoted is Dr. Eric Davis, who had earlier claimed that in private conversation with Admiral Thomas Wilson, he had learned about the on-going UFO or UAP studies, and that there had been crash retrievals. That meant that the technology had failed and that US authorities were in possession of that technology. In passing, in a comment on national radio, Davis suggested that the Del Rio UFO crash was real. He refused to expand on this.

Dr. Eric Davis

To me, that suggested that Davis might not be as inside as he would like us all to believe. The Del Rio UFO crash is based on the testimony and affidavit of a single source, a man who claimed to be a retired Air Force colonel and fighter pilot. Robert Willingham first told his story in March 1968 in an issue of MUFON’s first magazine known as Skylook.

In that earliest, 1948 version of the story Willingham had said that he was flying an F-94, when he was alerted by the Dew Line (a radar fence built in Canada) that a UFO had been tracked. Willingham said that he saw three objects, one of which was in trouble. It eventually crashed just south of the Mexico-Texas border near Del Rio. He managed to get there to witness part of that retrieval operation.

In the 1970s, Willingham provided an affidavit about the crash, altering some of the details. Eventually, it was claimed that the crash of a single object had taken place in 1950. Later still, Willingham changed the date to the mid-1950s. There were other problems with his tale, and the lack of proof that he had been an Air Force officer, let alone a colonel didn’t help. I went over all this on this blog and you can read about it here:

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

The point here, however, is that if Davis was on the inside of these sorts of things, he would have known, as so many of us do, that the Del Rio crash is a hoax. I published that information more than a

Robert Willingham in
his CAP uniform.

decade ago along with the reasons the story is not true. But that is not the only credibility issue here.

In his “notes” about his discussion with Admiral Wilson, who denies everything about this alleged 2002 meeting, he said that Wilson had met with or talked to General Michael Kostenlnik sometime in April, May or June 1997 about a Special Access Program which dealt with UFOs. Chris Lambright discovered that Kostelnik was not involved in the SAPs and he had left his position in the Pentagon in the Secretary of Defense Office some two years before Wilson attempted to gather the information. When Davis alleged that Wilson had met or talked with Kostelnik as the director, Kostelnik was assigned to a new job at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

To be accurate, Wilson, if he truly told Davis anything, should have mentioned Kostelnik’s successor rather than Kostelnik. Both of these items, his belief in the Del Rio crash and his job at the Pentagon should raise red flags about the reliability of Davis’ information because it demonstrates a problem the value of his information. At best, it was out of date and at worse it is based on Internet searches to provide a note of credibility to what is, in fact, an incredible story.

John Greenewald published his own analysis about those notes, suggesting it read more like an early treatment for some sort of drama as opposed to actual notes taken during a meeting. You can listen to him describe that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/07/x-zone-broadcast-network-john-greenewald.html

In the final analysis, there is not much to this story. We already knew that former Senator Harry Reid had been involved in securing the financing for the AATIP program. We had already seen the trouble with the three Nimitz videos released into the public arena and we had listened to the various Pentagon statements about them.

To make matters worse, the Times posted a correction to an earlier version of the story. According to them, Senator Reid had been quoted as saying that he had not said that “[UFO] crashes had occurred and that retrieved material had been secretly studied for decades.” He had said that he believed it, which removes a great deal of importance from his statement. In fact, it changes the revelations from authenticated and moves them into a realm of speculation that has been discussed, literally, for decades.

When this latest “Breaking News” is digested, it turns out to be little more than rumor based on the tales Eric Davis, whose inside information is no better than that of a ten-year-old kid with Internet access. Given all that is known about this news inside the UFO community is it astonishing that no reporter thought to ask a few questions that would have put this latest information into its proper perspective… interesting but nothing newsworthy.

Tom DeLonge and UFOs

I must be doing something wrong.

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

According to Rolling Stone:

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

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

Tom DeLonge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

USS Nimitz complete with aircraft.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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