Pentagon UFO Program Shows Clandestine Government Investigation
The recent revelation of a clandestine government program funded to study UFO phenomena has come as a surprise to many. As reported in the New York Times and Politico, a black budget operation was created to look into a multitude of reports detailing military and civilian encounters. This Pentagon UFO program ran from 2008 to 2012 at the request of then-Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, in search of a definitive answer to the phenomenon.
The Pentagon’s Black Budget
The U.S. government spends a large portion of its budget on defense. In fact, about half of discretionary spending – amounting to over half a trillion dollars – goes to Defense Department programs, funding operations at the CIA, NSA, Justice Department, and several other agencies. Of that money, over $50 billion is spent on covert operations, undisclosed to the public.
Before this elusive allocation was exposed by Edward Snowden, the majority of this money was being used for surreptitious data collection programs used ostensibly for counter-terrorist measures. Though it’s likely that nothing has changed in that regard, the latest leak to come from this budget details a five-year program, that may or may not be ongoing, which earmarked $22 million for the study.
The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP, was funded at the behest of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid between 2007-2012. Reid, along with fellow congressional members, Ted Stevens (R.-AK) and Daniel Inouye (D.-HI) allocated the money for Bigelow Aerospace, a private contractor working with NASA, founded by billionaire hotel magnate Robert Bigelow.
Senator Harry Reid
The program involved a small group of government employees at the Defense Department working in conjunction with Bigelow to study first-hand experiences by military servicemen, civilian experiences, and a trove of metal alloys recovered from the UFOs in question.
Based on the testimony of former intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, the program picked up where Project Blue Book left off in the late ‘60s, when it concluded that most UFO phenomena could be written off as having a mundane explanation, despite over 700 sightings that remained officially unexplained.
Revelatory reports surfaced this past weekend in The New York Times and Politico sparking subsequent stories across nearly every mainstream media outlet. The exposé came as the first major announcement from To the Stars Academy, a consortium of former high-level government employees and aerospace engineers working with former rock star, Tom DeLonge, to investigate the UFO phenomenon.
UFO Sightings and the Expected Response
Several videos accompanied the reporting this past weekend, showing spacecraft that elicited shocked responses from highly trained naval commanders. The videos were taken by pilots of F/A-18f Super Hornets who encountered spacecraft seeming to defy the laws of physics. These craft did not show signs of traditional jet propulsion or wings and flew at speeds never before seen.
Another article appeared in the Times the same day, which detailed the experiences of two pilots, Cmdr. David Fravor and Lt. Cmdr. Jim Slaight who were flying reconnaissance missions off the coast of San Diego from the U.S.S. Princeton. The Princeton had been tracking these mysterious aircraft for a few weeks, before their encounter that day in 2004.
courtesy nytimes.com
While on a routine mission, the two were told about a “real-world vector” at 80,000 feet. When they approached the UFO, it dropped out of sight, before they realized it was hovering 50 feet above the ocean, creating some sort of disturbance in the water. When the pilots attempted to reach the object again it shot off. Fravor and Slaight then began their return to a rendezvous point some 60-miles away, before the operations officer on board the Princeton notified them that the UFO was already hovering there.
The object was gone by the time they returned and no one was able to explain what it was. Aside from the video released by the DoD, there is no other record or explanation of what the object was. When the pilots returned to the Princeton, they were teased by their shipmates for having seen UFOs, an unsurprising reaction that is part of a systemic stigmatization when it comes to reporting such experiences.
Seth Shostak, senior astronomer for the SETI Institute at UC Berkeley, criticized the program for allowing Bigelow to direct its efforts. He criticized the billionaire for his long-held belief that we have been visited by extraterrestrials.
Shostak, himself, is in charge of a program searching for extraterrestrial intelligence in the universe. He also criticized the program for its use of $22 million in taxpayer money that “didn’t come up with anything.” Despite the video evidence and “reams of paperwork,” according to the report by Politico.
Aside from the fact that $22 million dollars is relatively insignificant in a $52 billion budget of undisclosed money, otherwise going toward weapons and surveillance, it’s strange that Shostak would be so quick to shoot down a project that has the same goals as his. Those $22 million dollars spent over the course of the program would amount to about a penny per year for individual American taxpayers.
Shostak’s sentiment may seem to some as perpetuating the stigma that prevents those who have had UFO experiences or bizarre encounters from talking about them. Bigelow, in the New York Times interview mentions this, stating he believes the U.S. perpetuates a culture of stigmatization in which a juvenile taboo keeps scientists from speaking out for fear of being ostracized.
Billionaire Robert Bigelow
Though Shostak and other skeptics criticize Bigelow for his eccentric views and lack of a scientific background, Bigelow Aerospace is currently contracted with NASA, having successfully inflated it’s novel BEAM module on the ISS.
Working in conjunction with NASA and Space-X merits some credit for a company that is receiving funding to study UFO phenomena, especially if it could potentially be considered a threat to security. And that was the reason Senator Reid and his compatriots were awarded the money in the first place, though virtually all of the military servicemen who experienced the phenomenon claimed that the UFOs did not appear to pose a threat.
It’s unclear whether the Pentagon is continuing to fund the AATIP, but Elizondo says he had a successor and believed it to remain in existence to this day. Whether the recent media hype will encourage the government to look deeper into this phenomenon remains to be seen. Meanwhile, To the Star Academy promises to continue publicizing its findings.
About the Author
UFOS: The Evidence No One Is Talking About
UFOs… whether you’re a believer or a skeptic, there is actually a mounting body of evidence regarding the UFO phenomenon that can no longer be ignored. If you look past all of the alien horror films, the fake blurry UFO videos, and the Ancient Aliens memes, you’d be surprised at how many former high ranking government officials, scientists, and military contractors believe that UFOs should be taken more seriously.
Former Canadian Minister of National Defense, Paul Hellyer, believes we’re already being visited: “At least four alien species have been visiting Earth for thousands of years.” In 2016, Hillary Clinton stated on Jimmy Kimmel that she would search for more UFO files if elected. Hillary’s former campaign manager and former Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton and Obama, John Podesta, has repeatedly said he believes the UFO phenomenon is something very serious and worth investigating. Before Podesta left his position at the White House, he tweeted, “Finally, my biggest failure of 2014: Once again not securing the #disclosure of the UFO files. #thetruthisoutthere”
10-year-NASA contractor, Rob Bigelow, who develops space habitat pods, gave this shocking statement during a 60 Minutes interview: “There has been and is an existing presence, an E.T. presence. And I spent millions and millions and millions – I probably spent more as an individual than anybody else in the United States has ever spent on this subject.” Those millions of dollars Bigelow spent was authorized by the Pentagon’s top secret UFO research program called the Aerial Threat Identification Program. Rob Bigelow was the sole contractor.
Bigelow continued to explain that you don’t have to go anywhere to find ET life because it’s right underneath our noses. He also said he’s had his own close encounter with an ET. He declined to go into further details. In The New York Times article “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program” they mentioned Bigelow even has recovered UFO debris and metal alloys stored in one of his facilities in Las Vegas. They stated, “researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes.”
When former Nevada senator and co-founder of the UFO research program, Harry Reid, was interviewed about the debris on CBS 8 Las Vegas, he said he knew nothing about it. However, he was glad that they declassified the program because “now we have scientific evidence.” What scientific evidence is Reid referring to? Whatever the case may be, the Pentagon spent nearly $110 million dollars on the program, proving our government takes UFOs seriously.
The last time the government publically had this level of interest in UFOs was in the 1950’s when UFO sightings were all the craze and were being investigated by the U.S. Air Force under Project Blue Book. After 17 years of research, Blue Book ended in 1968 when the Air Force concluded that most of UFO sightings could be debunked as Venus, satellites, birds, and swamp gas. But here’s what most people don’t know. In 1993, declassified documents from 1952 revealed that the CIA’s Psychological Strategy Board made it a mandate to purposefully debunk all UFO reports for national security concerns. They concluded that when it came to the subject of UFOs, the American people were dangerously gullible and prone to, “hysterical mass behavior.” They feared the Soviets would use UFOs as a distraction to overload intelligence channels and then carry out a genuine attack on American soil.
These documents also revealed that the CIA planned on partnering with the mass media, Hollywood, business clubs, and even the Disney Corporation to discredit all UFO research. How effective they were at implementing that plan is unknown. However, the CIA was successful at debunking UFOs using Project Blue Book.
After reviewing 6 years of data in only 12 hours (just 1% of all the research), the CIA made a hasty conclusion that most of the UFO reports could be explained and that further investigation was not worth the effort. The CIA then ordered the Air Force to stop talking about UFOs and begin a debunking campaign to lessen public interest.
U.S. Congressional hearings in the 1960’s later revealed that Project Blue Book was completely incompetent. Personnel were using improper scientific methods, they were completely understaffed, and were horribly trained. Scientific advisor to Project Blue Book, J. Allen Hynek, an initial skeptic of UFOs, later admitted the Air Force were improperly labeling UFO sightings as explained, despite the absence of any substantial evidence. After Blue Book, Hynek became a ufologist and said that the UFO phenomenon deserved serious scientific examination.
Regardless of the backlash, the CIA and Air Force’s debunking campaigns still worked. UFO research became taboo, people became disillusioned, and the media covered UFOs less and less. The influence of these disinformation campaigns have even discouraged government officials from speaking out. The former governor of Phoenix, Arizona, Fife Symington, during the 1997 Phoenix Lights event is a perfect example.
The Phoenix Lights were witnessed by 20,000 people or more. Shortly after the sighting, the governor made a huge joke about the event during a national press conference. He had a handcuffed man in an alien costume enter the room and said people are taking all of this too seriously. The explanation given at the time was that the lights were flare exercises conducted by the Air Force. However, in 2011, the governor later came forward in the documentary “Secret Access: UFOs on the Record” and confessed that he saw the lights right above him near his house. On CNN he said, “it was probably some form of an alien spacecraft.” Symington explained at the time he was driven to give an explanation instead of just saying “I don’t know” and admitting to complete vulnerability. He continued to say public officials need to be more open and more courageous in dealing with issues like this and that it’s time to square up and do the right thing. The Air Force’s flare explanation was later debunked because they conducted their exercise at 10pm. Thousands of people were reporting the lights as early as 8:30pm.
The UFO ridicule factor, created by the CIA, has succeeded in deterring citizens and public officials from the public discussion of UFOs. However, in the last two decades, more than 500 former government officials, scientists, and contractors have come forward about their concerns over the phenomenon. Hundreds of declassified and leaked UFO documents can be found online, thanks to FOIA requests and tireless researchers. Hopefully more people will learn the truth on the government suppression of UFO research and begin to study the UFO phenomenon with proper scientific methods and an open mind.
