Tag: ufo

Navy Blocks Release of UAP Photos Amid Capitol Hill Hearing on Government Secrecy

The U.S. Navy has formally denied access to 78 “documents” containing photos marked as “unidentified aerial [anomalous] phenomena” (UAP). The denial, issued yesterday in response to a FOIA request filed by The Black Vault in 2022 and given case number DON-NAVY-2022-012661, highlights the Navy’s continued use of national defense and intelligence exemptions to keep UAP data classified. The response arrived less than an hour before a highly anticipated UAP hearing on Capitol Hill, where members of Congress heard testimony about the government’s lack of transparency on the issue.

The hearing, titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth,” was led yesterday by Chairwoman Nancy Mace and Congressman Glenn Grothman, heads of various Congressional subcommittees on cybersecurity, government innovation, and national security. This marked the second time Congress has convened specifically on UAP matters, with the hearing aimed at addressing the classified veil surrounding government-held UAP data. The witness panel included Navy Rear Admiral Dr. Tim Gallaudet, former Department of Defense official Luis Elizondo, NASA Associate Administrator Michael Gold, and journalist Michael Shellenberger. Each expressed concerns about the DoD’s ongoing reluctance to disclose UAP information.

The Navy’s response to the FOIA request, ironically timed alongside the Capitol Hill session, raises significant questions about the scope and depth of information kept from public scrutiny.

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Mystery high-speed object captured by fighter pilot ‘threatened multiple collisions’

A retired US Navy admiral has given ‘powerful testimony’ about an object filmed moving faster than any known human technology.  

Dr Tim Gallaudet told a Congressional committee that he was on a Navy exercise off the country’s East Coast when he received an email on a secure internal network headed ‘URGENT SAFETY OF FLIGHT ISSUE’.

He described how the ‘brief but alarming’ message referred to ‘multiple near mid-air collisions’ with the mystery object and contained an attachment of what is now known as the ‘go fast’ video captured on the forward-looking infrared sensor of an F/A-18 jet.

The former rear admiral, appearing before the GOP Oversight Committee on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), said he and other commanders were told that if the anomaly was not identified then the pre-deployment exercise, which included the Theodore Rosevelt Carrier Strike Group, would have to be shut down.

He told the hearing: ‘The now declassified video showed an unidentified object exhibiting flight and structural characteristics unlike anything in our arsenal. The implication of the email was clear.

‘The author was asking whether any of the recipients were aware of classified technology demonstrations that could explain these objects.

‘Because the DoD policy is to rigorously deconflict such demonstrations with live exercises I was confident this was not the case.’ 

Dr Galluadet, who is now CEO of Ocean STL Consulting, said that ‘the very next day’ in 2015 the email inexplicably disappeared from his account and those of the other recipients. 

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Startling claims made at UFO hearing in Congress, but lack direct evidence

US government employees have been injured by UFOs and the US government has conducted a secret UFO retrieval program, a former department of defense official told a congressional committee on Wednesday, though the hearing lacked any direct evidence to back up the startling claims.

The hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), which has become the more accepted term for UFO, also heard that the government has a “huge amount” of secret information on UAPs, including “photos, video, photos, other information”. But it also learned, following a query from Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert, that there is no evidence of aliens having a secret underwater “base” on this planet.

The hearing came more than a year after the Pentagon was accused of running a secret UFO retrieval program by whistleblower David Grusch, though no physical evidence has also ever emerged to back up these claims.

The lack of concrete proof has been a consistent thorn in the side of those who believe the government is harboring UAPs, with Wednesday’s hearing again focussing on testimony from people who said they were aware of secret government programs, rather than witnesses presenting actual hard evidence.

It followed a blockbuster congressional hearing last year in which Grusch, a former American intelligence official, claimed that the US government conducted a “multi-decade” program which collected and attempted to reverse-engineer, crashed UAPs, as members of Congress investigate allegations the government is hiding knowledge of alien craft and beings from lawmakers.

The two hearings reveal the remarkable extent to which discussions around UAPs – previously mostly the domain of conspiracy theorists and believers in aliens – have now penetrated the US military and the corridors of Congress.

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the Department of Defense agency which investigates UAPs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the Pentagon has previously denied the existence of any secret government programs to retrieve alien spacecraft and no evidence of these programs has ever emerged.

A standout moment on Wednesday came when Nancy Mace, the chair of the hearing, questioned Luiz Elizondo, a former department of defense official who this year claimed in a memoir that the US is “in possession of advanced technology made off-world by non-human intelligence”.

“Has the government conducted secret UAP crash retrieval programs? Yes or no?” Mace asked. Elizondo, who was speaking under oath, said yes.

“Were they designed to identify and reverse engineer alien craft? Yes or no?” Mace said. Elizondo said yes.

Mace continued: “In your book, you mentioned government employees who’ve been injured by UAPs placed on leave and receiving government compensation for their injuries. Is that correct?” Elizondo said it was correct.

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“Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth” Hearing – November 13, 2024

The Black Vault has launched a dedicated page to document all materials related to the upcoming congressional hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs). Scheduled for November 13, 2024, the joint hearing, titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth,” will be led by Chairwomen Nancy Mace and Glenn Grothman from the Subcommittees on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, Government Innovation, and National Security, respectively.

This session marks the second UAP-focused hearing by Congress, aiming to bring greater transparency to government research on UAPs and address the Department of Defense’s (DoD) reluctance to declassify information. The hearing will include testimony from witnesses Navy Rear Admiral Dr. Tim Gallaudet, former DoD official Luis Elizondo, former NASA Associate Administrator Michael Gold, and journalist Michael Shellenberger.

This page will archive these proceedings, related documents, and transcripts, providing a comprehensive resource on government transparency efforts around UAPs.

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U.S. Advocates Urge White House Support for ‘RISE’ Initiative to Keep U.S. Ahead in ‘Edge Science’

A coalition of scientists and former intelligence officials is urging White House support for an initiative to advance U.S. research in ‘edge science’ and controversial fields like quantum computing and consciousness studies, The Debrief has learned.

As American advancements in technology and science rapidly evolve amid global competition, officials from the Executive Office of the President at the White House in Washington, D.C. recently met with a group of scientists and former intelligence officials advocating for a groundbreaking new initiative, Research and Innovation at the Scientific Edge (RISE), which aims to push the boundaries of scientific exploration.

RISE seeks support for projects dedicated to unconventional or cutting-edge research areas, such as quantum computing, consciousness studies, remote viewing, micro-psychokinesis (PK), time-agnostic cryptography, evidence-based tools informed by Indigenous knowledge, and potential applications for the study of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). RISE advocates argue that pursuing these fields is essential to maintain America’s competitive edge against rapidly advancing nations like China.

The initiative’s proponents further argue that the U.S. can overcome obstacles and stigma surrounding unconventional research with Chief Executive support, allowing the U.S. to develop game-changing advantages related to everything from national security to human resilience.

The organization consists of heavy hitters from not only the science community, but former internal government officials with a diversity of agency insights, including Neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, Ph.D.; Chitra Sivanandam from the National Security Institute; Daniel “Rags” Rasgdale, Ph.D., Former Assistant Director for Cyber in the Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (Research & Technology); and Carmen Medina, a retired Senior Federal Executive with more than three decades in the Intelligence Community, including work with the CIA.

“During my more than 30 years in national security, too many times we were surprised by things that others claimed could never happen,” Medina said in a recent statement announcing the initiative. “The best way to prevent that in the future in the science and technology domains is to have a dedicated program to scan the horizon for new discoveries.”

Discussions about foreign adversaries gaining a technological edge have recently intensified, with reports suggesting that China is investing significantly in fields like quantum computing, photonics, and brain-machine interfaces.

In July, the Chinese government announced an ambitious goal to set a new world standard for brain-machine interfaces. Parallel to these efforts, China has already invested $15.3 billion in quantum technology compared to the U.S.’s $3.7 billion, an investment gap that highlights the urgent need for the U.S. to prioritize advanced research.

Along similar lines, a February 2022 RAND Corporation report comparing the U.S. and Chinese industrial bases with relation to advancements in quantum technology emphasized that Chinese efforts are primarily concentrated in government-funded laboratories, some of which have made rapid progress.

Given such concerning advancements by adversary nations, a related area of focus for RISE also involves problems associated with over-classification within the U.S. intelligence community, which even U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines has said potentially “undermines critical democratic objectives” by limiting access to information that could help advance U.S. capabilities.

“Over-classification is a considerable burden,” said neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, Ph.D., in an email to The Debrief. “Even just bureaucratically, it weighs down government functioning. But beyond that, it has a dampening effect on science and technology ecosystems, any form of exploration, and democracy itself.”

Mossbridge told The Debrief that problems like over-classification are paralleled by separate issues that include stigmas that have long hampered serious studies into unconventional research topics.

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Series of Missouri UFO Sightings Continue to Baffle

Missouri resident Justin Johnson captured something extraordinary on his phone– a silver cube spinning like a disco ball. But what was it? Johnson is still waiting for an answer. He reached out to weather balloon enthusiasts and air traffic controllers, but no one could identify the hovering object. He tried to follow it in his pickup truck but lost sight of it. Three years later, the memory still baffles him. At the time, it was hard to find someone to objectively assess the video.

Just a few weeks ago, Johnson recorded a new video that shows enigmatic white light objects moving in the sky at sunrise. But today, he has a new option for analysis– an app called Enigma that allows users to upload videos and information about unexplained objects in the sky. The goal is to create a comprehensive database of these sightings for researchers to analyze.

Alejandro Rojas, a consultant to Enigma Labs, says most cases are simply explained– airplanes, drones, military flares, or satellites. But sometimes, Enigma’s experts encounter something more puzzling, like footage an airline passenger recorded of a thin, white object zooming across the sky over north central Missouri.

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Shocking UFO allegations make the case for the Disclosure Act

Amid the political spectacle of the election, former President Donald Trump appeared on Joe Rogan’s popular podcast and spoke about UFOs. According to Trump, Air Force pilots told him how mysterious spherical objects outperformed one of the most advanced fighter jets America has.

Similar accounts date back to at least the 1940s. More recently, military encounters with spherical objects and other unknown craft that exhibit seemingly extraordinary capabilities generated a series of eyebrow-raising headlines.

But a host of other, ostensibly credible UFO-related allegations is even more remarkable.

Last month, Kirk McConnell, a recently retired 37-year veteran professional staff member on the congressional armed services and intelligence committees, confirmed publicly that whistleblowers provided firsthand testimony to Congress alleging the existence of ultra-secret programs that retrieve and seek to reverse engineer advanced craft of unknown or non-human origin.

McConnell is not alone. He joins Sen Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; former House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.); and ex-intelligence official David Grusch, who have all stated publicly that individuals with firsthand knowledge have confirmed the existence of such efforts to Congress or to the internal watchdog that oversees America’s spy agencies.

Such remarkable statements provide important context for what is arguably the most extraordinary legislation ever proposed in Congress.

Introduced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act defines “non-human intelligence,” “technologies of unknown origin” and “legacy program.”

As characterized in the bipartisan Disclosure Act, “legacy program” refers to any “endeavors to collect, exploit, or reverse engineer technologies of unknown origin or examine biological evidence of living or deceased non-human intelligence.” The term “non-human intelligence” appears two dozen times throughout the 64-page legislation.

The Disclosure Act would also require the U.S. government to take possession of “any and all” recovered UFOs and “biological evidence of non-human intelligence” transferred to private defense contractors.

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Pentagon UFO chief reveals US military’s new ‘alien tech’ crash retrieval program

The Pentagon‘s former chief UFO investigator has revealed a sensitive new government program to recover ‘alleged alien tech’ in the event of a ‘shoot down.’

Dr Sean Kirkpatrick — a longtime CIA scientist who headed the US military’s UFO-chasing All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) — admitted to the program’s existence when pressed during a new interview.

The retrieval program’s protocols were for ‘any UAP recovery’ involving ‘everything from balloons to drones to alleged alien tech,’ as Dr Kirkpatrick told podcast host John Michael Godier.

In recent years, Pentagon brass, NASA experts and academics have all reframed what were once called ‘flying saucers’ as ‘unidentified anomalous phenomena’ (UAP).

The revelation is the first time that the US government has officially acknowledged a UAP or UFO retrieval program, despite decades of speculation and whistleblower testimony that America has already been in possession of alien craft for decades.

It also comes amid multiple federal investigations into ‘mothership’ UFOs over key US military sites, releasing hard to identify, much less catch, ‘drone swarm’ UFOs.

This week, the Pentagon’s North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) admitted that America’s military installations have been plagued, since 2022, by at least 600 so-called ‘drone’ incursions, many still unexplained.

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Inside America’s UFO Cults: A Look at Manipulation and Misinformation in the UFO Counterculture 

In the perplexing subculture of UFO beliefs, individuals with cult-like followings and frequent claims associated with dubious “whistleblowers” aren’t uncommon. But how can you separate genuine voices from those leveraging UFO lore for personal or financial gain?

In a new documentary, Dark Alliance: The Inside Story of the Cosmic Con, filmmaker Darcy Weir dives into one section of the UFO counterculture, narrowing in on two well-known figures: David Wilcock and Corey Goode, presenting them as case studies in manipulation and the spread of misinformation within the UFO community and its associated areas of belief. 

In Dark Alliance, Weir takes his viewers on a journey of exploration into how these two controversial figures came to fool not only the community they serve, but also some of the people who brought them to the top.

However, the cautionary tale Weir presents is far from new: the events he chronicles echo the actions of cults and similar groups from over the years, many of which bear a resemblance to some of today’s alleged UFO whistleblowers, self-proclaimed insiders, and cult leaders.

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Pentagon chief reveals high-res photo of a UFO ‘mothership’: ‘A huge mini city floating in the sky’

An ex-Pentagon official, who gained fame for blowing the lid off a $22-million, secretive government UFO program, has revealed an image of an alleged UFO ‘mothership.’

Luis Elizondo, a career US Army counterintelligence specialist, previously ran the military’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.

Monday night in Philadelphia at a private UFO event, Elizondo dropped what he described as a craft ‘looking like the mothership from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,”‘ referring to the 1977 Steven Spielberg film. 

‘Guess what we caught in Romania in 2022? By the way, the US Embassy,’ as Elizondo told attendees at the paid event, gesturing to the photo: ‘That.’

He went on to describe it as a ‘huge mini city floating in the sky.’ 

But the UFO, which resembles a gleaming disc-shaped craft, has already drawn withering critiques from skeptics, believers and even military UFO witnesses alike, who claim to have traced the photo to, not to the US Embassy, but a Facebook page.

One suggested to DailyMail.com that Elizondo has been lax in his vetting of such images in a bid to add sensational new material to his ‘paid speaking engagements.’

Veteran US Air Force Staff Sergeant, Jeremy McGowan, who witnessed a dramatic UFO encounter himself in the Middle East decades ago, told DailyMail.com that Elizondo’s dubious ‘mothership’ UFO fits a pattern with the man’s past claims. 

‘This unfortunate situation with Lue follows my experiences with him nearly exactly,’ McGowan said. ‘I witnessed him exaggerate or outright fabricate information that simply wasn’t true.’

Elizondo unveiled the 2022 Romanian UFO photo at an October 28, 2004 event held at The City Winery, a wine bar in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for $50-$30 per ticket.

‘There’s a whole lot more here folks,’ Elizondo told the audience in a leaked clip. ‘I just want to give you kind of a small taste of what’s going on “behind the scenes.”‘

‘We’re having pilots, military pilots and civilian pilots in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East, report what unimaginably seems impossible,’ as Elizondo began to explain his ‘real photo’ of a UFO.

‘They described it literally ‘the mothership,” Elizondo said.

But despite credible federal reports of ‘mothership’ UFOs over domestic US military sites — investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), an FBI task force, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) and 16 local sheriff’s offices — internet sleuths quickly managed to poke holes in Elizondo’s 2022 Romanian UFO.

John Greenewald Jr, a longtime government transparency advocate who runs The Black Vault, quickly tracked the photo back to a September 13, 2023 post in a Facebook group titled ‘Mysterious Ancient Discoveries.’

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