If you have not watched the History Channel series Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation,” you should. As regards its political implications it may be the most important series ever produced. There are many ways to watch it online (including free trials). You can find them HERE.

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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

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First it is worth noting a promotional tweet posted by Tom DeLonge in advance of the program:

No Signs of Aliens in the Closest 1,300 Stars, Hunt Funded byRussian Billionaire Reveals – Live Science, June 19, 2019

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The SETI concept (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) first emerges simultaneous with the launch of NASA via the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. Over the next six decades SETI programs would be financed with millions of dollars of tax payer funds. When Congress grew weary of this, private funding was obtained. Later government money would again turn up.

The legendary Stanton Friedman eventually coined a substitute acronym – Silly Effort To Investigate. Stanton was being too kind. The SETI programs, based on the amount of funding and length of tenure, are the greatest scientific fraud in human history.

In 1958 the U.S. Government had to create a civilian space program. The Russians were leading in space exploration and the U.S. had to respond. A secret military space program was not going to get the necessary vast sums of money needed. The public was excited about exploring space and aware of the extraterrestrial concept. They would support a civilian space program, but the U.S. Government had a big problem.

When NASA was established persons who mattered were quite aware since the 1940’s there was already an extraterrestrial presence engaging the planet. This truth along with all research and investigations were embargoed under the highest classification status within the military/intelligence complex (MIC).

NASA was going to generate more public interest in the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) and the UFO phenomena being reported worldwide. The government could not appear to ignore the ETH as that would raise suspicion. A program to search for extraterrestrial radio signals that would almost certainly never be found was the solution to their problem. SETI would be the buffer to keep pressure off NASA, avoid awkward questions and keep lying to a minimum.

Over the subsequent decades SETI built radio telescopes that do have use value and perhaps elevated the science of radio telescopy. A number of scientists made comfortable livings. Was that worth the hundreds of millions (in 2019) dollars in tax payer and private funding? Given the entire program was a con game in service to the government imposed truth embargo. No.

That said, PRG views the creation of SETI programs in 1958 as a matter of national security as a legal albeit distasteful policy. The threat of a nuclear war was real. However, over the years SETI scientists likely making north of $100,000 per year (in 2019 dollars) would appear in tandem with extraterrestrial phenomena researchers often making nothing to debunk their work and demean their credibility. Not nice.

PRG has often said, “One way or another the truth makes fools of us all.” This includes scientists whose careers were wasted and legacies destroyed. It also includes Russian billionaires. Somehow Yuri Milner managed to ignore sixty years of evidence amassed confirming the extraterrestrial presence and give $100 million dollars to keep on searching for those elusive ET signals.

One can only wonder what Mr. Milner’s mood will be when he learns the SETI program was a fraud from the day it was created and remains same to this day.

Steve Bassett
San Pedro, CA
July 4, 2019

Given today is the 6th anniversary of the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure held at the National Press Club, April 29 – May 3, 2013, it is a good time to revisit this event and what followed.

At the time it was PRG’s most important and ambitious project since PRG’s founding in 1996. It would be supplanted by the 2016 Election Initiative. More on that later.

As most reading this know, 42 witnesses and researchers were brought to Washington, DC to testify for 30 hours over five days to six former members of the U.S. Congress. The main ballroom of the National Press Club was configured to resemble a congressional hearing and similar protocols were followed.

The CHD was part of a larger strategy. The event itself was designed to show members of Congress how actual, comprehensive hearings on the UAP/ extraterrestrial issues might look, impress members of the press with the quality of the witnesses and evidence, attract media attention to Disclosure, give unprecedented exposure to witnesses and researchers and send a message to the President of the United States living just two blocks away. In these ways it succeeded.

Of greater significance was the CHD being the opening maneuver leading into the 2016 election campaign, and the timing was perfect. Early in 2013 it was clear the coming presidential election campaign would likely be the longest and most expensive in history and would feature a candidate well ahead in the polls who had a connection to the UAP/extraterrestrial issue going back to March of 1993. This connection would also include her likely campaign manager, her husband and the sitting president. There had never been and probably never would be a better opportunity to drive the extraterrestrial presence issue into the heart of a presidential election.

The plan of action was to first send a full, physical record of the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure to every member of Congress (535 voting, 6 non-voting). By intention the first day of testimony included three hours regarding the connection between the Clinton political team and the extraterrestrial issue. The DVDs were shipped on November 5, 2014.

In late November of 2014 I returned to Washington, DC to manage the two-year 2016 campaign political initiative. This was made possible by approximately $40,000 in funding support. First on the agenda was to hire back my publicist, Janet Donovan. Over 35 years Ms. Donovan had become a legend in Washington, DC famed for knowing just about everybody of importance in town, politics and media, including quite a few Hollywood celebs from out of town,

In December of 2014 we began to present the story of the Clinton/ET connection on the DC based national media. The first article springing from the political initiative was on November 24, 2014 in the Washington Times by Jennifer Harper. She would go on to write nine more.

The first ever mention of the phrase “Rockefeller Initiative” in a mainstream newspaper occurs in an article in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune by Billy Cox on January 12, 2015.

Between November 5, 2014 and February 12, 2015, twelve articles were written about the Clinton/ET connection. This would lead to the first statement from the Clinton campaign. It came from John Podesta.

However, it is worth noting the first response from the Clinton team to PRG’s strategy actually came prior to the election campaign in April of 2014. In March of 2014 PRG announced publicly it would launch the political initiative on March 31 with the shipping of the CHD DVDs to Congress. Knowing the DVD held three hours of testimony on the Rockefeller Initiative, President Clinton arranged to be interviewed by Jimmy Kimmel on April 2, 2014 and asked about the extraterrestrial issue. In DC parlance this is called “getting out in front.” The interview generated modest coverage on ABC News, CBS News, Time Magazine, the New York Daily News and elsewhere.

Unbeknownst to President Clinton PRG had delayed the DVD shipment. When that became public nothing more on the subject would be heard form the Clinton team until February 13, 2015 in the form of the now infamous “regret tweet.” Why?

PRG’s strategy was to put pressure on the Clinton campaign via articles in the MSM media and any complementary television coverage – there was little of that. More important than the articles was the way reporters at major newspapers do their job. If a reporter is contemplating writing or writing a story referencing public officials, let alone the leading candidate to be President of the United States, they have to call such persons to give them a chance to refute, corroborate, or comment on the story. So, reporters began to contact the office of John Podesta and the Clinton campaign office for comments. This created a dilemma.

While the Clinton/ET connection had been in the public arena since 2001 -though with minimal coverage – the campaign had no intention whatsoever to talk about ETs, UAPs or anything related. In their view it would be too risky. Whatever their plans regarding Disclosure, they would have to wait until Secretary Clinton was in the White House before that was put on the table.

When reporters started calling their offices, they knew the wolves were at the door. The campaign understood they couldn’t just stonewall the press, but they couldn’t engage the press. John Podesta is a very smart political operative. He devised a brilliant plan involving making limited statements by the Clinton team in controlled conditions, but not engaging the press in Q&A. With this approach the press might be satisfied the campaign was not trying to pretend hundreds of articles about the Clinton/ET connection were not being printed. Feed the wolves some doggy treats and hope for the best.

The goal was to prevent at all costs the Clinton/ET connection coming up in any of the debates. Better to answer questions about Benghazi than ETs. It worked. Nothing came up in the debates and the campaign shut down any ET related comments after June 2, 2016.

Ultimately over 400 articles about the Clinton/ET connection were published worldwide through to the election. Some of those articles referred to a new facet of the connection involving a project led by musician and activist Tom DeLonge. Shortly thereafter Secretary Clinton lost the election.

The aforementioned project would come to be known as the To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science (TTS/AAS). It is the most important development in the history of the Disclosure movement. It will almost certainly be a critical part of ending the truth embargo. [Note: you can find hundreds of articles referencing the TTS/ASS and AATIP HERE  and over 100 related video and audio interviews HERE.]

The TTS/AAS was in development throughout 2015 and 2016. It is tempting to speculate the hundreds of articles PRG was generating about the Cinton/ET connection and the statements coming from the Clinton team played a role in shaping the decision by members of the military/intelligence complex to step into the public arena with such a bold project. Had DoD insiders, like PRG, come to the conclusion Secretary Clinton would move to disclose the ET presence when she became President Clinton? PRG looks forward to learning more about the complex internal decision process that led to the TTS/AAS.

To all the volunteers, production staff, committee members, witnesses, researchers and funders who made possible the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, thank you for helping to create an important event that made a difference and still makes a difference. Disclosure is inevitable. It’s not a matter of if, but when. I look forward to working with all of you in the post-Disclosure world.

This brief commentary is not meant to be a review of the new theatrical series launched on January 8, 2019 by History Channel built around the life of Dr J. Allen Hynek. Rather it addresses a point that is of particular importance for those individuals drawn to this series who have little or no idea who Dr. Hynek is or what he did.

I must admit to being a little conflicted, but I can deal with it. This series will introduce a legend within our community to millions of people over the coming months and years. History Channel has made a major commitment. Countless ads have been run on multiple networks including an ad during the College National Football Championship – not a trivial event. This is good.

Such a commitment costs a lot of money, and naturally there has to be a substantial return. That means a great deal of theatrical license is going to be taken. History Channel has done this with gusto and certainly will receive some criticism, but not from me.

That said, it is important to publicly point out the simple fact there is quite a gap between the theatrical presentation of Hynek’s life and the real life. It would be helpful if a fact vs. fiction page of quality was developed and updated as the series moves forward. Researchers and others might prepare for how they will respond to questions from the more confused viewers who watch and then Google.

Most importantly, however, is the need for a comprehensive documentary of quality covering the life and work of Dr. Hynek. Obviously this is a project the History Channel might want to commission.

Congratulations to all who helped bring this series to the screen and to Paul Hynek and the Hynek family for their permission and cooperation. A great man will begin to receive the credit and attention he deserves.

Now, lets move on to Dr. John E. Mack.

Stephen Bassett
January 9, 2019
Napa, CA

Paradigm Research Group            

[2/26/2023 – The “caretaker government option” was not taken, of course. A botched version was attemped much too late, and now the nation lives with consequences. To the credit of many the Disclosure process continued and now nears culmination. Truth has power lies, hate, corruption and incompetence can but envy.]

November 3, 2018

Washington, DC — Paradigm Research Group has released a report regarding the current status of the Disclosure movement along with a projection of how PRG expects the political leadership in Congress will resolve the ongoing constitutional crisis.

Disclosure Status Report: The Way Forward
#caretakergov

Disclosure is an event, the formal acknowledgement by heads of state of nations of an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race. The Truth Embargo is the refusal of governments, particularly the United States, to make such an acknowledgement. This embargo is entering its eighth decade.

The activist effort to end the Truth Embargo is an “exopolitical” movement. Exopolitics occurs when extraterrestrial presence related issues cross paths with traditional politics. This has happened on numerous occasions since 1947 usually resulting in suppression of the Disclosure process. However, since 2001 the intersection between traditional politics and exopolitics has intensified. Here are some examples:

(1947)  A quickly executed political decision by President Truman to reverse the announcement out of the Roswell Army Airfield of a recovered “saucer” literally prevented Disclosure from taking place in 1947.

(1953)  Subsequent to the CIA Robertson Panel President Eisenhower signed off on committing significant resources to formalizing the Truth Embargo.

(1958)  The National Aeronautics and Space Act creating a civilian agency decreed NASA must assign any and all matters impacting national security to the Department of Defense. This protected the Truth Embargo from any NASA extraterrestrial related findings.

(1966)  U. S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee Hearing on Unidentified Flying Objects was held in service to a powerful politician – House Minority Leader and later President Gerald Ford (much like the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was created in 2007 in service to a powerful politician – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid). Witnesses were limited to three members of the Air Force. The hearing was conducted to serve the Truth Embargo.

(1968)  U. S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Astronautics Unidentified Flying Objects Symposium was held in response to growing public pressure and was part of a complex process intended to pull the government out of the “UFO” issue. This included the soon to be released Condon Committee Report, the shutting down of Project Blue Book and the dismantling of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP).

(1977)  President Carter attempted to engage the extraterrestrial presence issue by initiating a White House study. The military/intelligence complex made a political decision to thwart this study. First to refuse to cooperate was CIA Director George H. W. Bush. Eventually a report titled The UFO Enigma was written by Marcia S. Smith and delivered to President Carter.

(1987)  President Ronald Reagan raises the prospect of an “alien threat” in an address to the United Nations. This reference is made on several other occasions and is thought to be tied to the failed Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) implying another basis for the SDI.

(1947-1991)  A matrix of political decisions by several countries led to the Cold War and nuclear arms race, which set the Truth Embargo in stone for 44 years.

(1993)  President Bill Clinton’s administration was drawn into the extraterrestrial presence issue by Laurance Rockefeller. This was the most positive exopolitical development up to that time. Political decisions were made by the Air Force and the Department of Defense to block Clinton and the Rockefeller Initiative, which was closed down for political reasons just prior to the 1996 election.

(2001)  The Disclosure Project held a major press conference in the main ballroom of the National Press Club on May 9, 2001. Testimony from dozens of witnesses was presented in person and on video. Significant momentum was developing around the activist movement. This abruptly ended with the events of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent political decisions to enter into a series of wars in the Middle East.

(1967 – 2010)  A national security based political decision was made to ignore and deny evidence and testimony regarding perhaps the most significant and telling events for an extraterrestrial presence – nuclear weapons tampering in the presence of antigravitic craft of unknown origin.

(2013)  Twelve years to the month after the 2001 Disclosure Project press conference Paradigm Research Group produced a mock congressional hearing, the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, in the main ballroom of the National Press Club from April 29 to May 3. Six former members of Congress heard 30 hours of testimony from 42 witnesses over five days.

(2014)  Paradigm Research Group launched a political initiative targeting presidential candidate Secretary Hillary Clinton and her connection to the extraterrestrial presence issue going back to the Rockefeller Initiative. Hundreds of mainstream media print articles were generated forcing the Clinton political team (Secretary Clinton, President Clinton, John Podesta and President Obama) to address the extraterrestrial issue a dozen times during the campaign. Paradigm Research Group was convinced an elected Hillary Clinton fully intended to be the Disclosure President soon after taking office. This prospect ended with the election outcome.

(2017)  The To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science (TTS/AAS) was formally announced on October 11. This very significant project was developed during 2015/2016 and likely scheduled for launch just prior to or just after the 2016 election. The election outcome required some reorganization and a new timeline.

(2018)  As of this white paper the Disclosure movement has been significantly hampered for two years by the national political status – a constitutional crisis. Further progress to end the Truth Embargo will be limited until this crisis is resolved.

What’s Next?  A Caretaker Government and Disclosure?

The era of the “UFO” is over. The concept of Disclosure has now spread worldwide and people are excited and expectant. When will it happen? What is the current status?

At this time the nation is in the throes of a constitutional crisis that has forced many projects and initiatives into the background. Media coverage of extraterrestrial presence issues has fallen off substantially. The activist movement has been slowed to a crawl, and this will not change until the crisis has passed.

The following is a political, non-partisan assessment of how and when  the ongoing constitutional crisis will end and what that means for Disclosure.

Think of the current dilemma as a complex differential equation. These are equations that can have several solutions in which one may be the most useful. Right now the political leadership is trying to solve such an equation, and this assessment projects the solution they will choose.

The nation’s political institutions and processes are dysfunctional, but the political leadership is not stupid or suicidal. They will select the path forward that does the minimum damage to careers, legacies, fundraising and their parties. Some will even take into consideration the nation and the American people. There are a limited number of options, and each will generate considerable carnage. However, one stands well above the rest regarding minimal downside, maximum upside. Call it the “Caretaker Government” option.  #caretakergov

Paradigm Research Group believes this is the solution to the present constitutional crisis the political leadership will select. It would unfold as follows:

The Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives on January 3, 2019.

The Senate outcome will not be a factor.

Anticipating the Special Prosecutor reports, indictments, trials and convictions plus years of House committee hearings the Republican leadership will persuade the President to resign sometime between November 7 and January 3, 2019,

The current Vice President will become president and the House and Senate will elect a new vice president via Section 2 of the 25^th Amendment.

Under a prior agreement that may or may not have been made public, the new president will also resign.

The new vice president will move up to the presidency and another vice president will be elected by the House and Senate via the Section 2 of the 25th amendment.

The new president and vice president will agree not to run for national office in 2020 after which this restriction will be lifted. They will have been selected on a bipartisan basis and have considerable experience and positive approval ratings.

As of January 3, 2019 the nation would essentially have a caretaker government for the next two years. There would be time to reset normal order, institute a range of reforms, bolster the security of the election process, increase public trust, reestablish bipartisan engagement and conduct a constructive national election campaign in 2020. This option would minimize damage to the careers and legacies of all principals and minimize the number and length of investigations and congressional hearings.

Lastly, there are other options and each of them would result in a political bloodbath the likes of which the nation has not seen in the modern era.

Why does Paradigm Research Group bother to make and publish this assessment?

The caretaker government status described would be the ideal scenario wherein a U. S. president would Disclose the extraterrestrial presence to the American people (and the world). With less partisan executives in office not running in the next election the political legacy would be spread across party lines and involve more principals. The American people would have time to consider a new extraordinary worldview and factor that into their voting decisions in 2020.

If the caretaker government scenario comes to pass, expect the TTS/AAS and Paradigm Research Group to become much more aggressive early in 2019. The TTS/AAS will likely release significant new information and additional former members of the military/intelligence complex may come forward. The Truth Embargo will collapse and Disclosure could take place in 2019.

Those who support the Disclosure process and resonate with the above assessment are invited to share it via social media for vigorous discussion and use the hashtag:  #caretakergov

Stephen Bassett
Executive Director
Paradigm Research Group

Below is a comprehensive list of New York Times articles addressing the extraterrestrial presence issue from the years 2008 to 2018 plus some articles from 1947 to 2007.

• December 30, 2017 – Dad Believed in U.F.O.s. Turns Out He Wasn’t Alone – Dan Barry, New York Times
• December 18, 2017 – ‘Look at That Thing!’ U.S. Navy Jet Encounters Unknown Object – New York Times
• December 18, 2017 – On the Trail of a Secret Pentagon U.F.O. Program – Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times
• December 16, 2017 – 2 Navy Airmen and an Object That ‘Accelerated Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen’ – Helene Cooper, Leslie Kean, Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times
• December 16, 2017 – Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program – Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean, New York Times
• July 21, 2017 – Don’t Believe in God? Maybe You’ll Try U.F.O.s – Clay Routledge, New York Times
• April 25, 2016 – People Are Seeing U.F.O.s Everywhere, and This Book Proves It – Ralph Bluenthal, New York Times
• February 15, 2017 – Winston Churchill Wrote of Alien Life in a Lost Essay – Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, New York Times
• May 13, 2016 – Why We Keep Dreaming of Little Green Men – George Johnson, New York Times
• May 10, 2016 – Hillary Clinton, the First ‘E.T. Candidate,’ Has U.F.O. Fans in Thrall – Amy Chozick, New York Times
• February 5, 2016 – Edgar D. Mitchell, Sixth Moonwalking Astronaut, Dies at 85 – Richard Goldstein, New York Times
• November 12, 2015 – Bright Lights, Strange Shapes and Talk of U.F.O.’s – Jonah Bromwich, New York Times
• September 29, 2015 – Ionel Talpazan, Whose UFO Art Had Sightings All Over, Dies at 60 – New York Times
• October 11, 2014 – U.F.O. Landing Is Fact, Not Fantasy, the Russians Insist – Esther B Fein, New York Times
• August 22, 2013 – C.I.A. Acknowledges Area 51 Exists, but What About Those Little Green Men? – Adam Nagourney, New York Times
• May 3, 2013 – Visitors From Outer Space, Real or Not, Are Focus of Discussion in Washington – Andrew Siddons, New York Times
• March 30, 2013 – About Those Visitors From Other Planets – Nicolas Rapold, New York Times
• August 24, 2011 – Budd Hopkins, Abstract Expressionist and U.F.O. Author, Dies at 80 – Margalit Fox, New York Times
• May 15, 2011 – A Military Post’s Secrets: Espionage, Not Aliens – Janet Maslin, New York Times
• April 21, 2011 – ‘What on Earth? Probes Mysteries of Crop Circles – Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times
• March 3, 2011 – Behold the Sky: Full of Such Mischief, British U.F.O. Files Say – Sarah Lyall, New York Times
• December 10, 2010 – In Archive, New Light on Evolution of Eisenhower Speech – Sam Roberts, New York Times
• November 25, 2010 – Pit Stop for U.F.O.’s, and Humans Who Love Them – Kirk Johnson, New York Times
• October 8, 2010 – U.N. Weighs How to Answer a Knock on Earth’s Doo – Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times
• July 3, 2010 – Out of This World, Out of Our Minds – John Schwartz, New York Times
• February 18, 2010 – Keep Calm and Never Mind, Britain Says in Its X-Files – Sam Roberts, New York Times
• December 21, 2009 – U.S. to Declassify Secrets at Age 25 – Scott Shane, New York Times
• December 4, 2009 – Ex-Files: British Military Ends Its UFO Hot Line – New York Times
• December 1, 2009 – Attention All ETs, Denver May Be the Place for You – Kirk Johnson, New York Times
• June 22, 2009 – Ideas Online, Yes, but Some Not So Presidential – Saul Hansell, New York Times
• May 14, 2009 – A climate solution that’s out of this world – Anne C. Mulkern, New York Times
• July 30, 2008 – British Hacker Closer to Facing Trial in America – Mike Nizza, New York Times
• July 29, 2008 – Unidentified Flying Threats – Nick Pope, New York Times (editorial)
• July 24, 2008 – When an Astronaut Believes in Aliens – Mike Nizza, New York Times
• May 26, 2008 – British U.F.O. Shocker! Government Officials Were Telling the Truth  – Sarah Lyall, New York Times
• February 6, 2008 – Otherworldly Phenomena: Explainable? You Decide – Neil Genzlinger, New York Times
• December 22, 2007 – Former Pilots And Officials Call For New U.S. UFO Probe – Martin Fackler, New York Times
• June 26, 2007 – Trove of C.I.A. documents released – New York Times
• April 13, 2007 – Lonesome Highway to Another World? – Stephen Regenold, New York Times
• January 1, 2007 – A UFO at O’Hare? Some Pilots Thought So – New York Times
• August 9, 2005 – Explaining Those Vivid Memories Of Martian Kidnappers – Benedict Carey, New York Times
• February 24, 2005 – TV Review – ‘Peter Jennings Reporting’: An ABC Documentary Lands in UFO Territory – Alessandra Stanley, New York Times
• October 23, 2004 – Betty Hill, 85, Figure in Alien Abduction Case – Margalit Fox, New York Times
• July 27, 2003 – A Bad Trip Down Memory Lane – Bruce Grierson, New York Times
• July 6, 2002 – The C.I.A.’s Cover Has Been Blown?  Just Make Up Something About UFOs – Stephen Kinzer, New York Times
• January 11, 2000 – UFO Boom Doesn’t Worry Officials – Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times
• July 6, 1999 – Sleep Disorder May Explain Alien Abduction Stories Brain-body ‘disconnect’ can cause terror – Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times
• February 17, 1999 – NBC’s ‘Aliens’ riddled with questions – John Martin, New York Times
• February 15, 1998 – Politics: The X-Plank – New York Times
• June 30, 1997 – U.F.O. Believers and Debunkers Thrive on the Web – Patrick J. Lyons, New York Times
• June 25, 1997 – We’re Not Alone – Maureen Dowd, New York Times
• June 14, 1997 – Flying Saucer Buffs to Mark Half Century of Hazy History – Amy Harmon, New York Times
• August 29, 1995 – Reporter’s Notebook; Night Under the Stars for the Clintons – Todd S. Purdum, New York Times
• May 4, 1995 – Harvard Investigates a Professor Who Wrote of Space Aliens – William H. Honan, New York Times
• October 28, 1992 – Campus Journal; Taking U.F.O.’s for Credit, and for Real – Michael Decourcy Hinds, New York Times
• August 25, 1984 – Strange Sights Brighten The Night Skies Upstate – Schmalz, Jeffrey, New York Times
• December 18, 1969 – Air Force closes study of UFO’s – New York Times
• February 27, 1960 – AIR FORGE ORDER ON ‘SAUCERS’ CITED; Pamphlet by the Inspector General Called Objects a ‘Serious Business’ – New York Times
• April 11, 1952 – Balloon Project Men See Strange Aerial Objects – New York Times
• April 11, 1952 – The Saucers are Back – New York Times
• July 9, 1947 – ‘Disk’ Near Bomb Test Site Is Just a Weather Balloon; Warrant Officer Solves a Puzzle That Baffled His Superiors; ‘Flying Saucer’ Tales Pour in From Round the World –  Murray Schumach, New York Times

[Transcript provided to PRG by Joseph G. Buchman, PhD, who attended.]

There has been another development in the unfolding initiative of the To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science. Dr. Hal Puthoff rarely speaks publicly about his work on a range of exotic projects. June 8, 2018 in Las Vegas marked an exception to this policy when he spoke at a joint conference of the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE) and the International Remote Viewing Association (IRVA). Puthoff’s background is quite extraordinary and is summarized on the TTS/AAS website as follows:

• Dr. Harold E. Puthoff is the co-founder and Vice President of Science and Technology of TTS Academy. Since 1985, Dr. Puthoff has served as President and CEO of EarthTech International, Inc. (ETI), and Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin (IASA). He has published numerous papers on electron-beam devices, lasers and space propulsion and has patents issued in the laser, communications, and energy fields. Dr. Puthoff’s professional background spans more than five decades of research at General Electric, Sperry, the National Security Agency, Stanford University and SRI International. Dr. Puthoff regularly advises NASA , the Department of Defense and intelligence communities, corporations and foundations on leading-edge technologies and future technology trends. He earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1967 and won a Who’s Who Lifetime Achievement in 2017 that recognizes individuals that have achieved greatness in their industry and have excelled in their field for at least 20 years.

In his address to the SSE/IRVA conference Puthoff became the third member of the TTS/AAS team to publicly discuss the FLIR video released to and published by the New York Times on December 16, 2017. As with Christopher Mellon and Luis Elizondo, he made it quite clear the advanced aerospace object was not of human design without saying it was of extraterrestrial origin.

This is in keeping with TTS/AAS’s strategy to advance the Disclosure process without breaking any non-disclosure agreements, releasing any classified documents or directly stating, let alone confirming the phenomena extraterrestrial in origin. This approach was likely a condition for receiving clearance – from whom we do not know – to proceed with the project.

PRG has reviewed all the interviews of and statements by TTA/AAS team members, and this is the message PRG is hearing:

We’re Not Saying it’s Extraterrestrial
But It’s Extraterrestrial

Some of the more notable statements from Dr. Puthoff’s address are highlighted in bold text.

__________________________________________________________________________________

BENGSTON (Dr. William Bengston, President of the Society for Scientific Exploration): This certificate says, “Tim Dinsdale Memorial Award recognizing significant contributions to the expansion of human understanding through the study of unexplained phenomena.  To Harold Puthoff for the application of sound scientific principles and methodologies to the study of remote perception; quantum, zero-point fluctuations; and unidentified aerial objects, and for recognizing the potential usefulness of these often-shunned phenomena in the real world.”  To Hal.

PUTHOFF:  Thank you, thank you.  I am very honored to receive this award. I’ve known many of the previous recipients of the Dinsdale Award over the years, and they were all really, truly excellent researchers pushing the boundaries into the frontier areas of science. So to join their ranks I consider really quite a privilege.

The three areas he named in giving me the award, quantum vacuum fluctuations – actually I still publish in that area in physics journals. The second area remote viewing, in fact it’s very serendipitous that I should receive this award for this particular meeting since we have this cosponsored event with the Society for Scientific Exploration on the one hand and IRVA, International Remote Viewing Association, on the other – I was a founding member of IRVA, so I’m really excited to see how people have picked up the ball and run with it in that area.

The third area, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, I have not published anything in. Why? Because the program I was involved in, in the Pentagon and in the intelligence community has been Top Secret, behind-the-scenes and only recently has there been release of information about the program.  So this is the first chance that I’ve had a chance to actually appear before the public and speak about details of the program and not go to jail. So I’m going to go along at a rapid clip; I’ve got a lot of information here. So here we go.

The SSE is no stranger to the subject of UFOs. Unidentified Aerial Phenomena is just a new acronym for UFOs. Back a couple of decades ago Peter Sturrock – one of our founding members of SSE – arranged with (Laurance) Rockefeller to hold a weeklong workshop at the Rockefeller residence. We brought in the best of the UFO researchers, and then a panel of independent experts, and had a weeklong discussion of physical evidence related to UFO objects of which there’s a significant amount of data. Laurance Rockefeller hosted the whole thing. It was a wonderful meeting.

Eventually after publishing in the SSE journal (“Physical Evidence Related to UFO Reports,” Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 12, NO. 2, pp. 179-229), Peter Sturrock put together a book, The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence (Warner Books, New York, NY, 1999) and it still one of the best books you can find out there to take a look at what are the physical aspects of UFOs that researchers have uncovered.

However, of course the government is also no stranger to the UFO phenomena. Anyone who follows the field would be familiar with Project Sign, Grudge and Blue Book, but in 1969 the Condon Committee shut it all down and said, really we don’t need to be involved in this area any more. We’re not learning anything. We’re not getting anywhere. It’s not clear this is a significant area. So for the average person on the street, that’s where it all kind of ended, at least serious government interest. In fact, that’s not true.

The very memo that shut down Blue Book written by General Bolender had as part of its language, “Reports of UFOs which could affect national security would continue to be handled through the standard Air Force procedures designed for this purpose.”

Nonetheless, as far as the public was concerned that was it. Even the Air Force public affairs office put out circulars all the time in response to questions saying, “We gave this up in 1969.” What, in fact, did occur was that there were programs going on behind the scenes anyway as required by the Bolender memo. Now most people did not know about these programs, they weren’t advertised, they weren’t responded to, FOIA requests usually went dry. But that all changed last December when the New York Times published a front-page story on how there was this program investigating this area – Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. (Helene Cooper, Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal. “2 Airmen and an Object That ‘Accelerated Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen’.” The New York Times, 16 December 2017, page A27.)

It was deeply buried, but the New York Times had good sources and they came up with information about the program, and so there’s been a lot of publicity about it. Since the New York Times broke the story, The Washington Post, CNN. Fox News – it’s been picked up all over the place.

One of the reasons why it’s attracted attention at this point is the quality of the sources going public. Ex-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is the one who initiated the program. Top-rated F-18 pilots who encountered Advanced Aerospace Vehicles at close range were permitted to come forward and tell their stories, which up till now they hadn’t because they didn’t want to lose their flight status by reporting what they had found, at least publicly.  And a number of significant Department of Defense and intelligence community officials have come forward to talk about the reality of this phenomena and the fact that there were programs going on. The program was nicknamed Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). People have had trouble trying to get documents out of the Pentagon by saying they want all documents on AATIP, and they have a hard time because that wasn’t the actual name of the program. “Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program” is the actual name of the program. But AATIP was the nickname it went by.

It began in June of 2007. The Defense Intelligence Agency was concerned about the fact that obvious observation had shown that Advanced Aerospace Vehicles – crafts, or drones of unknown origin, were flying all over the United States, over waters, in fact globally as was the case. So a Congressional budget was approved to address the issue behind the scenes. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from Nevada was the one who was the initiator of the program, joined by Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens. These are the people who generally approve programs that were in the black, under high security, behind the scenes, and so they set up this program.

Senator Reid has not walked this back since all the news came out. He’s been very forthright and has given a number of interviews. This particular statement sort of captures it all, “We don’t know the answers, but we have plenty of evidence to support the questions. This is about science and national security. If America doesn’t take the lead in answering these questions, others will.”

There is a two-fold nature to the threat. First of all, you’ve got these Advanced Aerospace Vehicles flying around that we don’t know where they come from, who’s driving them, what the intent is – possibly off-world even. But the future threat, was actually as far as the Department of Defense went and the intelligence community, one of the greater concerns. What happens if potential adversaries achieve significant breakthroughs by getting hold of advanced technology either based on their study of the phenomena, or from sensor data, or from crash retrieved materials?  That could provide a problem for the United States in the sense of threat. There’s reason to be concerned about that. This is a document in the program we dug up out of the Soviet Union (“Thread-3”). It’s a very thick document. It shows that the Soviet Union had a massive program also trying to get to the root of all of this. In this document a number of research institutes and military institutes are listed. Of course, they had the same concerns we did. Is there a threat from the phenomena or might the Americans make headway before us and that be a threat?

Just to give you an idea of what’s being observed, which many people have seen because it’s been in the news a lot lately. Back in November of 2004, the Nimitz Carrier Group was out on patrol off of San Diego, and on several occasions an Advanced Aerospace Vehicle would descend rapidly from 60,000 feet to 50 feet in seconds, then hover, and then take off like a bullet. When it first happened and happened over a number of weeks actually, two F-18 pilots were vectored on to the site where they were being observed by the radars to investigate, and what they saw was what they called a “Tic-Tac craft” – solid white, smooth, no edges, about 46-feet in length, uniformly colored, no nacelles, pylons or wings. The F-18’s could not obtain lock with their radars because they were stealthy, but Forward Looking Infrared Radar (FLIR) could pick them up to some degree based on their heat signatures. The Advanced Aerospace Vehicle appeared to demonstrate advanced acceleration, aerodynamic and propulsion capability beyond anything that we knew existed on the planet.

I am going to play a FLIR video that many of you may have seen.

[Video of UAP intercept begins.]

“That is a [expletive deleted] drone, bro.”

“There is a whole fleet of them, look on the ASA!”

“My gosh!”

“They are all going against the wind; the wind is 120 knots from the west. Look at that thing, dude!”

“That’s not . . . I don’t understand. Look at that thing!”

“It’s rotating.”

[End of video.]

Now you might ask yourself, what can you prove from a videotape? I mean, you can see videotapes all over the Internet and so on. But this was data fusion. They are gun-camera tapes. There are these videotapes from the pilots, voice recordings, data link recordings from Aegis and many other military platforms, expert witnesses. So, in fact, the data density – and this is what’s changed the field a lot – our detection capability has gotten so advanced that we’re losing our inability to see exactly what’s going on.

The FLIR displays were recorded. There are detailed debriefs of the pilots. In that original New York Times article you can see a page-long debrief of Dave Fravor.

Key Assessments:

• The Advanced Aerospace Vehicle is no-known air vehicle in the inventory of the U.S. or foreign nation as far as we can tell.
• Low-observable characteristics, they are stealthy.
• They exhibit advanced aerodynamic performance that we can’t imagine how they do it.
• Recognize that these are infrared tapes from the pilots, so if there was some kind of hot propulsion gasses coming out the back you would have seen it, but we don’t see that.
• They had the advanced capability to remain stationary and then take off like a shot. Dave Fravor said it was like somebody had suddenly shot a bullet.

So, how to respond to this? The Defense Intelligence Agency put out a Broad Area Announcement, in fact it was unclassified. They wanted to evaluate twelve potential threat areas with regard to these Advanced Aerospace Vehicles. There’s a list of them. Exactly what you think you’d want to know: lift, propulsion, signature reduction, human effects and so on. Now, it turned out that anyone, any aerospace corporation could apply, could send in a proposal. DIA chose Bigelow Aerospace as the contractor to address the threat. Now there’s been buzz on the Internet about, ok well, Senator Reid came from Nevada and Bigelow Aerospace is in Nevada, so wasn’t this some sort of sweetheart deal? In fact, that’s not the case. It was a Broad Area Announcement; anybody could go for it. Bigelow was actually a good choice. He’d spent a lot of his own money because he was interested in this area up to this point investigating the phenomena, and he had the best proposal. So he was tasked. He set up a special organization called Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies – we call it BAASS – to do all the things you’d expect a program like this to do. BAASS connected me at EarthTech International to collaborate as a subcontractor, and I agreed to do that.

Okay, what did I address as a subcontractor? One of the critical issues there’s so much high-level security and compartmentalization in this subject area, and there’s a lot of it, it’s difficult for contractors to obtain expert opinions on advanced technologies because they would expose why they are interested. So, I acted as a surrogate. I was contracted to commission mostly unclassified whitepapers from experts around the globe about where their particular subject areas would be in (the year) 2050 as like a general survey of aerospace futures. I decided this would be the best way to get the best knowledge we had across many technologies without actually exposing why we wanted to know.

So, I let out 38 contracts over a two-year period. I’ll show you what the studies were on. You can read them there: positron aerospace propulsion, IEC fusion as a compact energy source, warp drive, dark energy, extra dimensions, metallic glasses for aerospace use. Really cutting edge kinds of things.

Here are some more of the papers that I commissioned: negative mass propulsion, antigravity for aerospace applications, programmable matter, invisibility cloaking – these are just the kind of things that we needed to have maximum technical input from the best people around the globe. And so, that’s what we did, that’s what I did.

Now we could wait, we told these people they could publish their reports in physics journals and engineering journals, but of course the contractors didn’t want to wait for that, so the Defense Intelligence Agency bundled up these 38 papers and put them out as Defense Intelligence Reference Documents posted on a JWICS server that anyone in the government or contractors could get access to. By and large they have not been released to the public yet; a couple of them leaked out.

So let me give you an example of, how this stuff helps people who are chasing these really difficult problems. I’m choosing one here: metamaterials for aerospace use. I’d love to talk about really fancy materials, but they’re classified. However, there’s a lot of materials that have been picked up or provided even in the public domain. I’m going to give an example because it shows exactly what the structure is for how to deal with this. This is an open source sample. It was sent anonymously to talk show host Art Bell. The fellow claimed to be in the military. He said that this sample was picked up in a crash retrieval, and so he sent it by email. So what does that mean? Chain of custody non-existent.  Provenance questionable.  Could be a hoax. Could be some slag off of some foundry floor or whatever. However, it was an unusual sample, so we decided to take a look at it.

It was a multilayered bismuth and magnesium sample. Bismuth layers less than a human hair. Magnesium samples about ten-times the size of a human hair. Supposedly picked up in the crash retrieval of an Advanced Aerospace Vehicle. It looks like it’s been in a crash. The white lines are the bismuth; the darker areas are the magnesium separations. So the question was what about this material, so naturally we looked in all the national labs, we talked to metallurgists, we combed the entire structure of published papers. Nowhere could we find any evidence that anybody ever made one of these.

Secondly, some attempts were made to try to reproduce this material, but they couldn’t get the bismuth and magnesium layers to bond.

Thirdly, when we talked to people in the materials field who should know, they said we don’t know why anybody would want to make anything like this. It’s not obvious that it has any function.

Well, years later, decades later actually, finally our own science moves along. We move into an area called metamaterials, and it turns out exactly this combination of materials at exactly those dimensions turn out to be an excellent microscopic waveguide for very high frequency electromagnetic radiation terahertz frequencies. So, the wavelength is 60 microns, which is a pretty small size. But it turns out because of the metamaterial aspect of this material, those bismuth layers that act as waveguides can be one twentieth the size of the wavelength, and usually when you make a waveguide it’s gotta be about the size of the wavelength. So, in fact this turned out to be a material that would propagate sub-wavelength waveguide effects. Why somebody wants to do that we still don’t know the answer to that.

But anyway, it’s amazing we’ve gone through this and this is the kind of structure we go through a lot. You get a material sample with unusual characteristics to be evaluated, the method of manufacture is difficult to assess or reproduce, the purpose of the function is not readily apparent – as with our sample here, and then as our own technical knowledge moves forward we finally see a possible purpose or function comes to light. That sequence is repeated over and over in this particular area.

I’ll pick a second one here for the engineers or physicists in the crowd. Probably be more interesting – spacetime metric engineering. This happens to be the paper that I myself provided. One of the questions is: can the reported anomalous observables of these Advanced Aerospace Vehicles be accounted for on the basis of known physics? You hear people describing craft taking right angle turns at high speeds, other things with the hovering and rapid acceleration and so on, as if the craft didn’t have any inertial mass. Well, it turns out although Einstein’s general relativity is usually used in astrophysical applications and gravity studies and so on, you can look at it from an engineering standpoint. So, if you take an engineering approach to general relativity, what I just showed can be understood. If you could change the spacetime metric the way general relativity – I’m talking about textbook, not some fanciful physics – you could even get faster-than-light travel. Alcubierre warp drive as in Star Trek. Again, you might think that’s a fanciful kind of thing, but that paper was published in one of the top general relativity journals, Miguel Alcubierre, “The Warp Drive: Hyper-Fast Travel within General Relativity,” Classical and Quantum Gravity (11:L73-L77,1994). So, if you engineer spacetime metric, you can begin to line up observables with physics that we know and love even if we can’t reproduce it.

What about the velocity of light constraint? People are always saying that. How could you have a wormhole that lets you go from one side of the universe to the other? Aren’t you beating the speed of light? What does the physicist and engineer mean by the speed of light? He means this little equation here where the speed of light is given by 1 over the square root of the permittivity times the permeability of the vacuum. So the point is if you reengineer those vacuum parameters, then you can make the effective speed of light higher in the engineered region.  Those are the solutions in general relativity that are called wormholes, and again, it’s not science fiction. This is just right-off-the-shelf, standard text book general relativity applications.

So, what that means is a reduced time interstellar travel is not as skeptics would say, “You can’t get from there to here.” Advanced ET civilizations now, or ourselves in the future are not fundamentally constrained by physical principals. The exotic physics for such can be addressed in engineering terms – some metric engineering as it were. Does this have any help? Again, by the way, this paper was also published as one of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s reference documents. And since we are permitted to publish in the open literature, I published that paper in a British interplanetary science journal, an engineering journal, so if you’re interested in looking at the details, you can learn as much as you want to know about metric engineering. (Advanced Space Propulsion Based on Vacuum (Spacetime Metirc) Engineering, H. Puthoff (2010), Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 63, 82-89.)

That helped us understand some of the aspects, I mean you may have heard the phrase, “dense stars you get red-shift.” It turns out in this engineered technology you get so called “blue shift.” That is, frequencies are up-shifted to higher frequencies. So, for example in this room most of the radiation coming off our bodies, off the walls and so on is in fact in the infrared. But we see things in the visible range. What happens when you get into a volume of space where the vacuum has been engineered in the way I’ve been discussing? It turns out you get a blue shift. So, in fact the infrared that you don’t ordinarily see can get blue shifted up into the visible so it’s not surprising that all these craft should be so luminous. Now the downside from all of this is the fact that visible light, which doesn’t have any particularly harmful effects, gets blue shifted up into the ultraviolet, so if you get too close to a landed craft, you might get a sunburn, or off into the soft X-ray regions so there’s a chance of radiation poisoning. If you run across one of these sitting on the ground and it’s powered up, I recommend you don’t rush up.

Well, that helped us to understand. We as part of this program looked at some cases that were really good from Brazil. In 1977, 78, it was like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. A thousand pages of documents all done by the Brazilian Air Force investigative team, 500 photographs, 15 hours of motion film, a lot of medical injuries. This is a list of the different kinds of medical injuries that occurred when people encountered these craft at close range, and it has some overlap with cases that we’ve investigated during the program, of injuries occurring.

Despite the progress in the AATIP program, let’s face it, the topic is inherently anomalous, right? Therefore, despite the reality of the observations and all the people that we interact with in the intelligence community and the Pentagon agree – the data is there, it is real. Nonetheless the topic doesn’t fit smoothly into known profiles of the government programs for sure. And by virtue of national security implications it’s a high compartmentalizational topic, therefore a slow pace of cumulative progress and integration. We call ’em “stovepipes.” You have a lot of people with lots of detailed information about some particular aspect, but they don’t talk each other even if it is sitting at the next desk. And let’s face it, advocacy of this issue in government circles is not viewed as career enhancing in part because, despite the weirdness of the subject, if you don’t make a lot of progress, you know, it doesn’t look good on your resume that you’re moving up the line.

So, because of that, there’s a forward story. Many of us involved in the program decided that there should be an outreach program in the public sector. So this is the forward story. The goal was to establish a broad-based, high-quality scientific community-of-interest in the public sector concerning these Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and other related leading-edge topics. And so we got together and formed a company called, To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science. It was cofounded by entrepreneur Tom DeLonge – I’ll talk about him in a minute – senior intelligence officers from the Department of Defense and CIA and distinguished research scientists. We all banded together to form this academy. It was set up as a public benefit corporation so the public can invest and therefore it’s owned by the public. So this is something new. Whatever comes out of any of the research or any of the releases of information is actually going to be owned by the public.  It is not going to disappear into a black hole. A very transparent structure, if you go to the website you can see everything from the financial structure to the activities, and we do have a web-based community-of-interest where things get posted. For example, the F-18 FLIR tape I showed, we now have three of them up there and probably more to come.

Alright, who are the principals of this organization? Tom DeLonge, Blink 182 rock star. Frankly, I’d never heard of Blink 182, but my son told me, “Oh yeah, we know about Blink 182.” But anyway, in addition to being the rock star that he is, he’s also a director and producer, puts out books and music and film and so on, and he’s had a lifelong interest in the UFO area. So, he started talking with various people and he was kind of the I guess you could say the action-oriented person, who said “Why don’t you set up something. Why don’t we make this more available to the public?” and he got to a number of us, and so we all began to band together. Lou Elizondo, who was in fact the Department of Defense’s, the Pentagon’s AATIP program director resigned from the Pentagon and joined us.

Chris Mellon, 20-year career, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Minority Staff Director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, he joined us. We got Jim Semivan, 25-year career and CIA’s Director of Operation. He was the real James Bond kind of guy. Steve Justice just retired as program director for the billion-dollar programs at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. He joined us.

And then, I agreed to be on the Board. So, I joined them. In addition to my science and engineering background, I’ve had a lot of activity in classified areas so it was a natural fit for me interacting with all these people.

We also put together a policy and scientific advisory panel of the best people we could find. Chris Mellon agreed to be the Chair. Dr. Colm Kelleher, he was actually the deputy administrator at Bigelow Aerospace to run the AATIP program out of the Pentagon. Dr. Gary Nolan, top genetics professor at Stanford University. Dr. Kahn, 30 year career with the CIA counter biological weapons program. Dr. Rapp, professor of military and emergency medicine, Uniform Services University. Dr. Gilpin, consultant on academic biomedical research and research law.

So, we put together a team as panelists to keep us on the straight and narrow of really top people who have wonderful backgrounds and really want to see scientific work be done in this area.

So, the goals for the To the Stars Academy are to,

• Promote the concept that such forefront topics as UFOs, SETI, consciousness studies, even telepathy and psychokinesis should not be considered taboo for serious scientific consideration. So, it’s a perfect match to the SSE because that’s our goal in the SSE as well.
• And of course, big ideas that generate funding to underwrite significant research in these areas
• Develop user friendly data bases so information that is generated can be accessed by anyone
• Provide positive support for collaborative government, aerospace industry, and academic efforts to accomplish all of the above.

So, we want to act as the glue in the public sector and create entertainment properties, books and documentaries and so on so whatever is learned can be delivered out to the public.

The structure of the organization has a science structure, an aerospace structure, and an entertainment division. What are the activities of this organization to date? Actually we were responsible for legitimizing the topic in the mainstream press. That story that came out in The New York Times and so on, which then got picked up by the Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, was based on agreed-upon interviews with those of us I’ve just gone through a list of. And given the quality of sources coming out from the shadows, for example Ex-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, top F-18 pilots, significant Department of Defense and intelligence community officials, the bar has been raised on the legitimization of this topic in the public arena.  We think that’s an accomplished goal to date.

And via the community-of-interest postings on the website, we now have three high quality F-18 video tapes of unidentified aerial phenomena encounters. They’ve been previously languishing in the Pentagon servers, nobody doing that much with them. These are still being generated. One of the tapes is from 2016 off the East Coast of the United States. There are a lot more tapes. Hopefully we’ll get a lot more of them posted.

We don’t just produce positive results or what people would think would be supportive results. One of our scientists, science advisers is Garry Nolan from Stanford University, who’s a genetics expert.  There had been claims that some small humanoid skeleton found in Chile – the so called Atacama Humanoid – might be ET. We could see why somebody might think that if you see the structure. But anyway, Nolan and people from other universities put together a complete genetics thing and did the entire genome and found in fact no unfortunately this is not evidence of ET, it’s a deformed human. That’s up on the website if you to read the paper. It was published in one of the top genetics journals – very well peer-reviewed.  (Bhattacharya S, Li J, Sockell A, Kan MJ, Bava FA, Chen SC, Ávila-Arcos MC, Ji X, Smith E, Asadi NB, Lachman RS, Lam HYK, Bustamante CD, Butte AJ, Nolan GP. “Whole-genome sequencing of Atacama skeleton shows novel mutations linked with dysplasia.” Genome Research 2018 Apr;28(4):423-431.)

Meetings are being set up with people from other countries because other countries, who also have materials, don’t necessarily want to give them to the U.S. Government because they disappear into a black hole and they never learn anything. But given our commitment as a public benefit corporation, that’s not gonna happen with us. They are now talking to us and we are collaborating on obtaining materials from foreign countries.

We are negotiating with media outlets to get all this out in the public in the form of documentaries or TV shows, whatever. So basically that’s the back story, the forward story and I’m glad to answer any questions. I’ll answer any I can.

QUESTIONER: Your good friend John Alexander published a book, and I know I’ll have a chance to ask him this too. Why was it so hard for him to find who is doing the research, who was holding files on UFOs? In his book he said “Everybody thought someone else was doing it” and everybody said in all the departments “it’s not me, it’s somebody else that is doing it.”

PUTHOFF: It was somebody else doing it.

(Laughter)

PUTHOFF: If materials are being held in Special Access Programs, casual conversation even with high-level people who know your interest and they’re interested, too, won’t necessarily reveal the facts.

QUESTIONER: I think Luis Elizondo even said his own boss wasn’t quite sure what he was doing. Is that true?

PUTHOFF: That’s true.

BUCHMAN: My name is Joe Buchman, I was one of the organizers of the 2013 Citizen’s Hearing which was also an attempt to gather the best evidence on ETs or UFOs. I don’t know if you are aware of those hearings, if you are, I’d be interested in your take on it.  But my second question though would be about the other tapes.  You said there are a lot of other tapes.  Are those classified? If not, or even if they are, can you characterize them in any way or tell us more about them?

PUTHOFF: They’re not a lot different from this. Some of them were classified because of where they were taken. But as far as the content of what we are interested from the technical standpoint, they’re not that different. Provided you strike out the location and so on, then there’s a chance of getting them declassified and we are working on that.

BUCHMAN: Specifically regarding the Citizen Hearing, is there any of the data presented there that you found particularly useful?

Answer: Well, you have to pick and choose among the data. I’m familiar with the Citizen Hearing and so on and certainly the depositions by the individuals who were in the launch towers for missiles . . .

BUCHMAN: Bob Salas.

PUTHOFF: Bob Salas for example – that’s all really good data. And the FAA administrator who came forward (John Callahan) – all good data.

BUCHMAN: Thank you.

QUESTIONER: Thanks very much for your talk.  I wanted to bring up something as to the nature of the release.  I guess the figure was 22 million dollars and then the program was closed? It may be a leap, but I think it’s common knowledge among UFO researchers that the spending in actuality is in the billions if not more.  So some people in the UFO research community have raised the question, is this a duck on the pond, to state a figure as low as 22 million and then state that the program no longer exists.  I was hoping you might have some comments on the great deal of concern that has arisen from these statements.

PUTHOFF: That’s a fair concern.  This 22 million dollar program was one particular program. That does not say that there were not other programs with other funding levels. It isn’t like, suddenly there was this one program that did not last long and did not have that much money and it shut down.

Interest is continuing. Negotiations are continuing. The programs are being looked at. A lot is going on.  I and my colleagues spend a lot of time in Washington talking to committees that are looking at this from many different angles.  So the general view that, “Oh, it was just one program that came forward and didn’t provide much of value and then it got cancelled . . .”. That’s not really the case.

Also those figures are associated with the figures that went out to contractors. But that does not mean that people within the system aren’t still working on it.

QUESTIONER: For all of us inventors working in our garages, on metric engineering devices, is there going to be a clearinghouse for people to trade discoveries? Just the thing about the frequency shift (to blue). We can all be looking for line shifts with lasers to see if we can generate generate micro effects. Something like that would be incredibly valuable. How can that come out?”

PUTHOFF: We have a Maverick Inventor Program at EarthTech International, my organization, and also at the To The Stars Academy is putting together a research organization. So, if you are doing some metric engineering in your lab and you’ve got some laser shifting a frequency, bring them on; we will look at them.

[END]

April 21, 2018
Stephen Bassett

As was to be expected there has been a great deal of attention given to the efforts of one Tom DeLonge to engage the ET/Disclosure issues. The To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science (probably should have stopped at “Stars”) project is a collaboration between Mr. DeLonge and some very serious former MIC insiders. For this reason alone there has been severe attention, skepticism and criticism of the project, and that is appropriate. In the 70 years since the 1947 events at Roswell, New Mexico, the U.S. Government has given the American people ample justification for the distrust now endemic in the nation. The more important the issue, the more necessary full scrutiny. Presently PRG supports the TTS/AAS initiatives and the persons involved. If that changes, I’ll let you know.

Whatever one thinks of these recent developments, one question is often asked, “Why Tom DeLonge?” Rather than answer that question directly I turn to a most respected journalist who has fearlessly engaged the ET issues for decades. To the question, “Why Tom DeLonge?” posed to him by my colleague Teresa Tindal he replied:

“Short answer—Tom worked it.