X-Zone Broadcast Network - Stephen Bassett and Unidentified

I had been watching Unidentified on History. I wasn’t a big fan of the show, though it seemed to be presenting UFO research and government investigation into the phenomenon in a positive light. My pals Rich Reynolds and Stephen Bassett had a higher opinion of the show than did I. After the season finale, both seemed more

Stephen Bassett. Photo
copyright by Kevin Randle.

than a little annoyed. Both were critical of that episode and what it suggested or what it had implied. Bassett published a highly critical review of that show which is reprinted at the end of this post. This inspired me to invite Bassett back on my radio show to explain his thinking on this. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/18575335

I will note that my last week’s show, with Robert Sheaffer, a well-known skeptic, provided additional detail about that particular episode of Unidentified. It was surprising to me that both men, Sheaffer and Bassett, seem to have reached similar conclusions about the evidence presented in this last Unidentified episode. In other words, both thought the investigation trip to Italy and the details of the helicopter incident and burned areas had nothing to do with UFOs. The helicopter had been forced down by birds through the rotors and the burned areas were shown to be arson.

During our discussion on all this and the relation of it to the To the Stars Academy, Bassett raised some disturbing points about Tom DeLong, his involvement with UFOs and a few things that he had said in the past. You can take a look at some of that here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CJdBo0DnKaqCCr7wenAZt7cGH6jjgTa0UPapFw1aylY/edit#

https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/c4o51n/ttsa_disclosure_plan_revealed_trough_tom_delonge/

https://ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com/2019/07/ttsa-new-filing-with-us-securities-and.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR1FeotAN8eTITCW9ycFoz4L5hlBnmSU-G7rV0-Ksdt-8D9ZfCpJp5jXl_0

Our discussion did provide some history about the last couple of years, the creation of the To the Stars Academy, and how this might be pushing us closer to Disclosure. Bassett did suggest a few things that were somewhat disturbing about various alien groups who have visited Earth, and proxy wars fought using humans. DeLong suggested that the major wars had been instigated by these various alien races. The links above note some of this.

This was something of a wild program, given some of the information provided and gives us a glimpse into some of the factors that have dogged UFO research for decades. You’ll have do decide just how much of that information is important for your own research and how much you wish to reject. If nothing else, it is interesting.

For those interested in what inspired the invitation to Stephen Bassett, here is the analysis he published:

From its launch on October 11, 2017 Paradigm Research Group has aggressively supported the core mission of the To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science in lectures and media interviews, on Facebook and Twitter, and to the PRG international email list. Hundreds of links to TTS/AAS related articles and media interviews are earmarked on PRG's website.

PRG fully expected this initiative to be heavily scrutinized and criticized, and has tried to impress upon the public the complexity and degree of difficulty in putting together this unprecedented effort from within the military/intelligence complex (MIC). Seven decades of government imposed embargo on confirming the extraterrestrial presence created considerable distrust and frustration particularly with those researcher/activists quite familiar with the evidentiary basis underpinning the reality of the phenomena. Many other actions by political leadership in concert with the MIC over the same period have added to this distrust. 

PRG's support of the TTS/AAS mission continues, but not without nontrivial concern regarding a narrative thread running through the Identified series. That narrative is about the UAP "threat."

The research program impelled upon the Pentagon by Senator Harry Reid was eventually named the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). This was appropriate to ensure a basic acceptance within the DOD and avoid push back, as well as receiving high level media coverage such as the New York Times.

The Unidentified series would bring with detail the mission of the TTS/AAS to a large audience over a six episode season that ended on Friday, July 5. PRG watched the series with keen interest in how the TTS/AAS would address the threat meme.

There is a distinctive difference between "threat" and "potential threat." PRG noted "potential threat" was never used, or was used perhaps once or twice. On the other hand direct and indirect references to the threat posed by the UAPs escalated as the series progressed culminating in he final episode - The Revelation.

The sixth episode of Unidentified was flawed to the point of being grotesque. Every aspect of the production was designed to be dark including the cinematography, editing, and content, which was drenched in "threat" projection.

The TTS/AAS decided to go to Italy to address an incident involving a helicopter allegedly damaged and forced to land by a UAP. Meetings were held with Italian officials and researchers. Within the context of these meetings there was reference to a series of mysterious fires that occurred in the Italian village of Canetto di Caronia in 2004, 2005 and 2014. It was suggested these fires were caused by rays beaming out the sea where a UAP underwater base was located. Really?

It seemed clear to PRG the TTS/AAS had gone to some length to find a case that involved an "attack" by a UAP on a military vehicle. PRG was surprised at the TTS/AAS's lack of credulity regarding these assertions by the Italians.

The fires. In March of 2015 Giuseppe Pezzino and his father Antonio Pezzino were arrested and charged with arson, conspiracy to commit fraud, and sounding a false alarms pertaining to the events in Canetto di Caronia. Insurance fraud was the likely motivation. The Italian military police had installed hidden cameras in the streets after the fires started again in July 2014. Video captured about 40 incidents implicating Giuseppe and Antonio. There was also phone tap evidence. They were found guilty.

The TTS/ASS could have found this information on the Internet in 10 minutes.

The helicopter. Helicopter rotors hit birds. Also, it was not a "military" helicopter. It was the equivalent to a "police" helicopter.

How intense was the treat meme in Episode 6? Researcher Vern Lovic transcribed threat related statements from the Episode. Many of these takes are shown below this statement. That said, only by watching the full episode can one truly appreciate how drenched in threat was this program.

The TTS/AAS has been meeting with members of Congress - including committee chairs - for over a year. The potential threat aspect of UAPs would be helpful in bringing those members to the table and in convincing committees to hold the needed hearings. The concern is whether or not this is a strategic maneuver to get the appropriate attention (if so, then use "potential threat") or is it a core mission of the TTS/AAS to drive fear into the politicians and the American people leading to massive funding of a "space force."

If the latter, the TTS/AAS should not underestimate the knowledge base of the citizen ET researcher/activist community, its collective power or the ability of that community to marshal the media to push back.

If the TTS/AAS team has clear, compelling evidence UAPs and their creators are not just a potential threat, but a real and present danger, they should produce that evidence sooner not later.

Stephen Bassett

San Pedro, CA

July 9, 2019

His website is: https://paradigmresearchgroup.org/

Next week, as promised earlier, I’ll be talking with Don Schmitt about the Festival in Roswell in the beginning of July.

Unidentified - The New History Series

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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