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LAS VEGAS - Science Writer Arthur C. Clarke once said that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." According to the Pentagon, something magical has been flying around the Las Vegas skies for a long time, now.

BY George Knapp I-Team 8 News Now 2-7-18

A secret study of Unidentified Flying Objects was made public last year. Much of the analysis was done in southern Nevada, and a main purpose of the study was to figure out how UFOs work.

The I-Team interviewed the man who ran the program at the Pentagon to ask about the physics of flying saucers.
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LAS VEGAS - Remember the UFO videos released by the Pentagon late in 2017? It turns out there are even more videos lurking in the military files.

By George Knapp www.lasvegasnow.com 2-1-18

A man who spent 10 years working on the government's secret study of UFOs says there have been many dramatic encounters with unknown technology that is far more advanced than anything in the U.S. military.
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Maybe the only tangible payoff for Dom Armentano as a result of last month’s revelations about the Pentagon’s UFO research project is that his golfing buddies don’t think he’s crazy anymore. That may not sound like a big deal, but consider: Armentano grew up in the 1950s, when the radical new communications technology of television began to find an audience. Sixty years ago this month, he tuned in to the Armstrong Circle Theatre, a live, scripted variety show

By Billy Cox De Void 1-30-18

produced by CBS that often dramatized current events. On that particular evening, retired USMC Maj. Donald Keyhoe was on deck. He’d written a number of articles and books on what were then called flying saucers, and he charged the Air Force with concealing information from the public.

The moment Keyhoe tried go off-script, the director cut his audio feed, with millions watching, a move that begat one of the original and enduring American conspiracy genres. The ensuing public clamor prompted CBS to issue an acknowledgement that “This program had been carefully cleared for security reasons,” with the paternalistic assertion that “public interest was served by the action taken by CBS.”

Two months later, in damage-control mode, CBS scheduled Keyhoe for an unrehearsed interview with a young Mike Wallace. Keyhoe showed Wallace a copy of his earlier prepared statement, the one military censors redacted prior to the Circle Theatre appearance. Keyhoe had wanted to challenge the USAF’s contention that just 1.9 percent of all UFO cases were unknown; in fact, the Air Force had hidden the real figures inside something called Blue Book Special Report 14, which indicated 19 percent were unknown. Wallace, ever the provocateur, confronted Keyhoe with a critique from a popular columnist who wrote that “flying saucers are products of, for the most part, quote, pranksters, half-wits, cranks, publicity hounds, fanatics in general, and screwballs.”

This was Armentano’s introduction to The Great Taboo. His career track – advocate for libertarian policies, economics professor at the University of Hartford, adjunct professor with the Cato Institute – guided him safely away from those labels, but he kept a close eye on news from the fringe. So when The Times delivered its 12/16/17 scoop about how the Defense Department maintained a UFO research program, Armentano felt absolved enough to crow about it to the Indian River Press Journal near his home in Vero Beach.

“The deep intelligence state has known for at least 70 years that some UFOs were real,” he argued in an op-ed on January 17. The “decades-long public policy of secrecy and denial,” Armentano went on, “is foolish and dangerous in the extreme and puts our entire democratic process at risk.” He reminded Press Journal readers what happened to him in 2008, immediately after the paper published his call for federal transparency on UFO. That’s when Cato terminated its relationship with him, even though Armentano’s article never mentioned or hinted at his affiliation with the libertarian think tank. A Press Journal editor had attached a Cato blurb to his byline.

“I won’t deny that this latest op-ed played a role in our decision,” Cato Executive Vice President David Boaz informed Armentano, even as the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification program was quietly conducting its business, from 2007-12, at a cost of $22M. “Some day we may look back and wish we’d listened to you. But for now this strikes us as not an issue that we want to have as part of Cato’s research agenda.”

Armentano never asked Cato to add UFOs to its agenda, but no matter, Boaz couldn’t handle it, and it didn’t end there. Armentano got another reality check the following year, this time when he approached the Christian Science Monitor about writing an editorial on UFOs. It wasn’t as if Armentano was some unknown Goober. In May 2009, CSM published one of his opinions about President Obama’s new antitrust regulations. But this time around, just four months later, the Monitor said sorry, no thanks.

“UFOs,” explained CSM editor Josh Burek in an email to De Void, “are simply not on the public policy radar screen, not at a time when we’re debating health care reform, cap and trade, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, North Korea, the recession, etc.” Furthermore, “Dom’s essay, like so many others, simply didn’t rise to a sufficient level of public salience and/or newsworthiness.”

That last part was a little peculiar, because Armentano hadn’t even submitted his essay for review, only as a topic proposal. Anyhow, Burek’s judiciousness apparently served him well. Today, he’s the director of Global Communications and Strategy for Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center of Science and International Affairs.

Last week, career intelligence officer and former CIA director John Brennan told the Herald-Tribune he was well aware of official government inquiries into the UFO dilemma, and he voiced support for sustained research. But Armentano’s Press Journal piece, which called for “open Congressional hearings and full disclosure,” merely echoed the position Brennan’s distant predecessor, Vice Admiral R. H. Hillenkoetter, took in 1960.

In a UPI article carried by the Times, Hillenkoetter, the nation’s first CIA director (1947-50), voiced his dismay over the military’s hoarding of UFO data. “Behind the scenes,” Hillenkoetter declared, “high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense.” He accused the USAF of imposing a gag order on its personnel.

So it’s been a long journey for Armentano. A decade ago, “most of my professional colleagues in law and economics thought I’d lost my mind” following the Cato fiasco, he declared in the Press Journal this time around. Now that the former director of the Pentagon program has gone public, the Conspiracy Nut moniker doesn’t fit anymore, and Armentano’s golfing partners aren’t giving him much crap lately. Are they bringing new eyes to the subject now?

“No, not really,” Armentano tells De Void. “I don’t think they’re all that interested.”

Psst — NY Times. Time for the followup.
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On Dec. 16, three experienced journalists posted a bombshell story on the New York Times website: The Pentagon had authorized a secret research project (2007-2012) to study unidentified flying objects.

By Dom Armentano tcpalm.com 1-16-18

Even more importantly, Luis Elizondo, the Pentagon project coordinator and a career intelligence officer, later asserted that in his opinion some UFOs were real objects and appeared to demonstrate a technology that the U.S. did not have and did not understand.


In short, the deep intelligence state has known for at least 70 years that some UFOs were real; yet it has chosen to keep the information in support of that conclusion either confidential or simply denied that it even existed. But a decades-long public policy of secrecy and denial on a subject as important and mind-bending as UFOs is foolish and dangerous in the extreme and puts our entire democratic process at risk.
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The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) provided an interim response for an FOIA request seeking clarification about the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP). The DIA indicated more time is needed to process the request. A letter dated Jan. 10, 2018, and composed by FOIA and Declassification Services Office Chief Alesia Y. Williams, stated in part: This is an interim response to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request dated December 23, 2017, requesting copies of all contracts pertaining to the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, (AATIP) this includes contracts undertaken and funding provided to Bigelow Aerospace...

By Jack Brewer The UFO Trail 1-20-18

We will be unable to respond to your request within the FOIA's 20 day statutory time period due to unusual circumstances. These unusual circumstances could be: (a) the need to search for and collect records from a facility geographically separated from this office; (b) the potential volume of records responsive to your request; and (c) the need for consultation with one or more other agencies which have substantial interest in either the determination or the subject matter of the records. For these reasons, your request has been placed in our queue and will be worked in the order the request was received. Our current administrative workload is in excess of 1,139 requests.

The body of the original Dec. 23, 2017, FOIA request contained the following:

Please provide copies of all contracts pertaining to the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program. This includes contracts undertaken with and funding provided to Bigelow Aerospace.

All paperwork is requested concerning the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, as recently reported by major news outlets to have operated no less than 2007 to 2012. Requested are all reports composed by personnel of the program, reports submitted by funding recipients of the program, lists of contractors and subcontractors, and any related files and information.

A second similar request was submitted, seeking "copies of all contracts undertaken with and funding provided to the National Institute for Discovery Science. Likely date ranges would include 1995 to 2004."

Chief Williams responded, indicating once again that more time was required for "unusual circumstances" listed the same as above. Both interim response letters were dated Jan. 10, 2018.
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Shortly before taking the stage Monday morning at Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall in Sarasota to discuss his career as a Central Intelligence Agency officer, John Brennan paused backstage for a few questions from the press. Thirty-seven years in intel, his last four as President Obama’s CIA chief, 2013-17, Brennan had the ear of the president in 1994-95. That’s when he delivered Bill Clinton’s President’s Daily Brief. And this was the so-called Rockefeller Initiative era, when billionaire Laurance Rockefeller persistently lobbied Clinton’s White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to release all government documents on the UFO issue.

By Billy Cox De Void 1-22-18

Clinton left office without finding those documents, but former First Lady/former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attempted to make UFO transparency an issue during her 2016 presidential run. Last month, The New York Times broke the story about the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification program, complete with F-18 pursuit videos and interviews with pilots and the project director, Luis Elizondo. The $22 million study was officially conducted between 2007 and 2012, but Elizondo said research is ongoing. The AATI program is said to have generated three dozen separate reports, none of which have been released.

Five years ago, same venue, Ringling College Library Association Town Hall Lecture Series, Sarasota, Van Wezel, backstage, De Void grabbed a sound bite from one of Brennan’s predecessors, then-recently retired CIA director/Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Months earlier, the CIA’s ex-Hollywood image-spinner, a guy named Chase Brandon, had gone on record about finding a box in the CIA Historical Intelligence Collection crammed with official documentation of the alleged 1947 UFO crash in Roswell, N.M. Said he found it during the mid-1990s. Gates, a friend and colleague of Chase Brandon, declined to challenge Brandon’s story.

“As director of the CIA and Secretary of Defense,” Gates told De Void in 2013, “I think I have had every security clearance that there is available in the United States government. I first joined the government 46 years ago and I have never seen one shred of evidence or one report of any kind of UFO or remains or cadavers or anything.”

That said, here’s Brennan, the man who worked Gates’ old job until 2017, on the record today, when queried about the Pentagon AATI initiative. America’s spymaster was cordial and unblinking:

“I think over the past several decades there have been a number of phenomena that have been observed by pilots, both commercial pilots, both military pilots, that are basically unexplained. Maybe it’s the result of some type of atmospheric conditions or something else. And so I think the Pentagon rightly is trying to understand whether or not any of these phenomena have implications as far as national security is concerned. Some people refer to it as UFO, an unidentified flying object, it’s something that is observed but there is no determination about what its origin or provenance is.

“During the course of my career, both in the CIA as well as the White House, I was aware that there were endeavors to try to discern what some of these phenomena are.” Me: What did you learn? “That most of them remain unexplained. But that shouldn’t mean that we don’t continue to pursue it. And try to apply the latest technologies and the latest science to understand what may be going on.

“We know that a number of our adversaries continue to try to look for gaps and vulnerabilities in our national defense so anything that might take place in the air, in the atmosphere, is something that I think is rightly an area for pursuit on the part of our intelligence community and Defense Department.”

The schedule was tight. Onto the next question.

My kingdom for another five minutes …

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The former director of the Pentagon program dedicated to investigating possible sightings of UFOs explains in the importance of continuing with this type of program.

By W Radio 1-10-18 Transcribed By Dave Haith

W Radio: Mr Luis Elizondo, good morning and thank you very much for being with us at W radio.

I would like to ask you if you as an official at the Pentagon, had enough proof, or solid proof, that could lead you to believe that there's life outside of the Earth?

Luis Elizando: Thank you very much for having me on your program. What we looked at on our program was two fold - what was it and how it worked?

As a result of our analysis and ten years worth of study and information, leads us to believe that these phenomena are not from any one country that we know. So the question is, if they from outer space, or inner space or any space in between, that is a question that we still don't know, but we are fairly certain they're not from here.

W Radio: Mr Elizondo, why the Pentagon wanted to have a secret program watching the phenomena and these UFOs? Why wouldn't it publish this material this proof or this analysis that the Pentagon had?

Luis Elizando: I believe the answer is for two reasons. One, there is a tremendous social stigma or taboo against officially recognizing the phenomena and, two, I believe it is very difficult for any national security apparatus to have identified a problem or potential threat and not offer a solution. In this case you have phenomena that are in a certain air space. We do not know what it is, we do not know how it works, and there's nothing we can do about it. And that is a very uncomfortable topic for any government to have internally or externally.

W Radio: Mr Elizondo, from the phenomena and incidents that you knew when you were at this program, what was the one that really surprised you or the one that you said, ok this is what makes me believe that there's life outside of the Earth?

Luis Elizando: I think every day was a surprise. There was no one single incident. It was a slow steady flow of information coming in, either through eye-witness accounts or through radar or through video, that began to paint a very compelling picture for all of us.

I think furthermore for your listeners' understanding, we are talking about objects that can be sub-categorized in five different observables. Those observables include extreme maneuverability, hyper-sonic velocities, low observability, transmedium travel and, lastly, positive lift without any type of obvious signs of aerodynamics or thrust, or propulsion. These objects are displaying characteristics that far exceed anything we know currently in the world's inventory.

W Radio: Mr Elizando, regarding the name of the program at the Pentagon that you worked with, it is described as a 'threat', do you really think there is an actual threat from outer space to the Earth, to our planet?

Luis Elizando: I think in national security, we always have to assume anything can be a threat until we can prove it is not a threat.....as an example, we lock our doors and night, we turn on our alarm systems and we lock our windows because there is a potential there might be a threat. There probably won't be, but there might be.
In this particular case, if you can imagine waking up every morning and seeing muddy boot prints in your living room, every morning even though you've locked your doors and you've locked your windows and your alarm is on.

In this particular case, nothing is stolen from your house, nothing is missing, no-one is hurt but at the end of the day you still have muddy boot-prints that aren't yours in your house.

W Radio: Mr Elizando, I would like to ask your opinion around the possibility of this topic that these investigations and analysis, could be a main part of a President Trump administration or that this program could be re-opened in the near future?

Luis Elizando: Well, I think that's a very good question. We, in the office that I came from, are all apolitical, meaning we don't get paid to take sides, so whether it's Democrat or Republican or an Independent in office is really inconsequential for us, but our hope is that whoever is in office, whether it's Trump or it's anybody else, we'll look at the data and allow the data to speak for itself, then at that point, hopefully be able to increase funding and the necessary budget to continue the program in a far more robust manner.

I think it's important for you listeners to know the program never went away. The program was never officially disestablished. Parts of the funding may have ended in 2012 but then more funding came in 2013 but more importantly than that, is that the effort was never stopped, never halted. So the program continues to move forward and in my opinion, whoever's in charge, whoever is the President at the time, needs to allow the data to speak for itself and increase funding for additional research and analysis into the phenomena.

W Radio: Mr Elizando, there are two different scenarios: one is that life in outer space is possible and that it actually exists, and the other one, is that this different life that lives outside of Planet Earth might come to this planet and visit us. So this solid proof remains unknown for us to understand that this life really happens and they might come to Planet Earth. NASA hasn't even recognized this possibility.

Why, if you have observed that there is life at outer space, no-one including NASA has recognized it?

Luis Elizando: Well, keeping in mind that NASA has already recognized the possibility in fact they funded in part our SETI program. SETI is by definition Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence and millions and millions of dollars were invested of US taxpayer money to build radio telescopes for exactly that purpose.

I would submit to you, if we are willing to invest millions of dollars on the off-chance we might hear a conversation somewhere in deep space, and here we have pilots who are in charge of multi-million dollar weapon systems with top secret clearances who are telling you they are seeing something right here, right now. I would submit to you, our money is probably better spent listening to the pilots and looking at the hard radar data, and looking at the videos, and trying to figure that out, instead of hoping that we might hear some conversation maybe ten million light years away.

NASA has already acknowledged the high degree of possibility that we are not alone in this universe.

I am not saying that what we are seeing here is necessarily outer space, or as I said before, or inner space or the space in between. I have my personal opinion. But if it's not from here, it's from somewhere else. The binary discussion of, is it from here, or is it from outer space from an alien or is it not - I'm not sure if that's even the right question because there's a lot of different scenarios and possibilities. I do not think it's an either/or question. I think there are several other options of the origins of what we're looking at.

W Radio: Mr Elizando, I would like to know your personal opinion about or around these UFOs might have for coming to Planet Earth or our planet - why would they want to do that?

Luis Elizando: All I can do is put this in a human context. So let's look at this question from the human perspective. Why does mankind do anything we do and why do we explore the horizons? Sometimes we explore the horizons for our sheer curiosity. It's in our DNA, it's in our genetics. Other times we explore to exploit - to take resources and to do something that is to our advantage as a species.

Other times we do it to study and to learn. There's many reasons why mankind goes... pushes the limits and goes beyond his horizon and it could well be the same thing for any other living organism out there.

Again I can only speak to the intentions looking at mankind and our history, why we do what we do.

There could be a whole range of reasons: they could be natural resources, it could be the fact that hydrogen is so abundant here in a very dense form with water, it could be to observe our evolution as a species, it could be reconnaissance, in some cases I've heard people say it could be what we refer to as preparation of the battlefield, you know, to determine if this planet we live on is something... that is something attractive for another species.

I can't answer that question very well, cos it's simply put - I just don't know. I think there's a whole, if you will, spectrum of reasons why something or someone should be interested in this planet. Why are we interested in Mars? Why are we interested in putting mankind on Mars? Why are we interested in putting human beings in outer space in space stations?

W Radio: Well Mr Luis Elizando thank you very much for being with us on W Radio. Have a good day.
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Seth Shostak took to his FaceBook page to do a one man stand-up show, performing his shtick last Thursday (1-18-18) and taking questions in the aftermath. For those who presumed that the revelation of a 5 year secret UFO investigation perpetrated by the

By Frank Warren The UFO Chronicles 1-21-18

Department of Defense, along with Navy pilots coming forward who engaged a UFO, supported by radar and FLIR video, would give Shostak pause re Ufology—it ain’t happenin’!

Shostak, in my view seemed only to have taken a cursory look at the reports surrounding the disclosure of the formerly secret UFO program. At one point he couldn’t recall what the acronym, AATIP (Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program) meant—the very subject of what he was addressing! If a university student gave such a presentation, he would have been given a failing grade.

Ironically, Shostak spoke a bit about arguments from ignorance ….
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