In late March of 2012, we published a series of nine posts about the experiences of a man in Quebec who witnessed a UFO hovering in his backyard. His story and several others eventually became our book, Aliens in the Backyard: UFO Encounters, Abductions, & Synchronicity.
As soon as we put up the first post, we started noticing visits from government agencies – all the acronym security guys – NSA, DIA, FBI, DOD, CIA, Homeland Security, NINC, even the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. There were others, but those are the ones that immediately leap to mind.
That was when it became obvious to us that the U.S. government was more interested in UFOs than was publicly known. But why so many agencies? What was going on? Possibly, information on different aspects of the phenomenon was fragmented. One agency may know this piece of info, another agency knows that bit, and they were trying to find out what everyone else knew. Possibly one agency issued disinformation not only to confuse and confound the public, but also other agencies working on the puzzle.
However, the next year we noticed that our posts on UFOs and alien matters were getting less attention from these agencies. By 2015, they were no longer coming to our blog when we wrote about aliens or UFOs.
It seems that a piece of the puzzle fell into place today (12-16-17) when the New York Times reported that the Pentagon was investigating UFO related phenomenon from 2007-2012. The Pentagon spent $22 million of its $600 billion budget on the program that was buried under the name: Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. The title was intentionally obscure with no mention of UFOs, which of course would’ve immediately attracted unwanted attention.
The article was headlined: Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program, and the byline had three names, including Leslie Kean. Kean does not work for the New York Times. She’s an author of UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record, the most authoritative book on UFOs and the military. No doubt she brought the story to the Times.
Here are two key paragraphs from the New York Times story.
“The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say, officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other Defense Department duties.
“The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space.”
Bigelow is a well known figure in both the aerospace industry and in the UFO world, two fields that rarely come together, primarily because of the skepticism of mainstream science regarding UFOs. But Bigelow, a billionaire entrepreneur, follows his own path.
The program was operated out of the Pentagon by Luis Elizondo, a 22-year veteran of the department who has held top security clearance and worked on secret counterintelligence missions. In an interview with the Washington Post, Elizondo complained that videos and other evidence failed to generate the kind of high-level attention he believes is warranted.
As a result, he resigned and joined a private venture, To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences, to continue his pursuit of UFO investigations. As part of his decision to leave the Pentagon, he not only sought the release of videos but also penned a letter to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis complaining that a potential security threat was being ignored. If he received a response, he didn’t reference it.
Elizondo’s personal story has an uncanny resemblance to events in the life of J. Allen Hynek, who headed the government’s infamous Project Blue Book, and became disappointed in the government’s coverup of the subject. Like Elizondo, he later explored the topic on his own.
Three videos have been released related to Elizondo’s project. One of them can be found in the two articles mentioned.
