We May Not Be Alone, Former Pentagon

UFO Investigator Says

By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor | December 20, 2017 02:27pm ET

Luis Elizondo, the former head of a Pentagon program to investigate U.F.O. sightings by the
U.S. military, says we may not be alone.
Credit: Shutterstock
The former head of a secret government program to investigate UFO sightings told several media
outlets that extraterrestrial life may exist. Simultaneously, the public benefit corporation he is
affiliated with has raised more than $2.2 million to research "exotic technologies" affiliated with
"unidentified aerial phenomena."
"My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone," said
Luis Elizondo, the person who formerly managed the Pentagon Advanced Aviation Threat
Identification Program, in an interview with CNN.
Elizondo said the program had found "a lot" of strange aircraft while it was in existence. "These
aircraft — we'll call them aircraft — are displaying characteristics that are not currently within
the U.S. inventory nor in any foreign inventory that we are aware of," he said. [Related: Navy
Pilot 'Pretty Weirded Out' by 2004 Encounter]
In a separate interview with National Public Radio (NPR), Elizondo added that his remarks don't
necessarily mean the craft were extraterrestrial, as his focus was more on learning about any
potential problems with national security.

"If you're asking my personal opinion from here, look, I've got to be honest with you, I don't
know where it's from. But we're pretty sure it's not here," Elizondo told NPR. "Now does that
mean it's 'out there'? Whether or not it's Russian or Chinese inside, or little green men from
Mars, or frankly, your neighbor's dog, I wanted to purposely steer away from that [speculation],
because I wanted to focus on truly the raw science: What were we seeing, and did it pose a threat
to national security?"

Elizondo resigned from the Defense Department program on Oct. 4, writing in his resignation
letter that there needs to be more attention paid to "the many accounts from the Navy and other
services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying
beyond-next-generation capabilities," according to The New York Times.

Fundraising for "aerial phenomena" research

Elizondo and two other former Defense Department officials — Christopher K. Mellon and
Harold E. Puthoff — have created a venture called To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science,
which aims to investigate "exotic science and technologies", according to its website.
ADVERTISING
inRead invented by Teads
"We believe there is sufficient credible evidence of unidentified aerial phenomena that proves
exotic technologies exist that could revolutionize the human experience," the organization's
website states. The company has fundraised more than $2.2 million from nearly 2,500 individual
investors.

Elizondo's remarks come amid recent revelations that the U.S. government had a secret, $22
million program to seek out UFOs that ran between 2007 and 2012. The Times reports the
program is still ongoing, although the Defense Department said a lack of funding shut the effort
down.
Also, in recent days, Navy pilots reported that they spotted a UFO during a training mission off
the coast of San Diego in 2004. "It accelerated like nothing I've ever seen," said Cmdr. David
Fravor in an interview with the Times, adding that he was "pretty weirded out." To the Stars
references these reports frequently on its website.

To the Stars' mission is to examine science that was "suffocated by mainstream ideology and
bureaucratic constraint," the venture's website says. It plans a fusion of science, aerospace and
entertainment to "work collectively to allow gifted researchers the freedom to explore exotic
science and technologies," according to the website.

"What people sometimes don't get about science is that we often have phenomena that
remain unexplained," said an astrophysicist at MIT http://nyti.ms/2oDSel5

Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program
The shadowy program began in 2007 and was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the
former Senate majority leader, who has had a longtime interest in space phenomena.
nytimes.com
E.T. hunts by governments (and pop culture)
While the evidence for intelligent extraterrestrial life is still far from firmed up, the U.S.
government has searched for UFOs across several other programs. Those include Project Sign (in
the 1940s), Project Grudge (in the 1940s and 1950s) and the more famous Project Blue Book,
which was dissolved in 1969. In 2016, the Central Intelligence Agency released many classified
documents related to UFOs.
Meanwhile, independent projects such as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and
Breakthrough Listen keep their ears open for radio signals that could be explained by intelligent
alien life. (Breakthrough Listen was recently in the news because it listened for signals from an
interstellar object that entered our solar system, but that search came up empty.)
Scientists also search for alien microbial life. NASA, for example, has an astrobiology program
seeking to learn the ways in which extreme microbes could survive on icy moons such
as Europa (a water-spouting moon near Jupiter) or Enceladus (which has dozens of water geysers
and orbits Saturn). Searches for past life continue on Mars, with the upcoming Mars 2020
roverdesigned to directly cache samples where purported Martian microbes might have lived.
Alien life has also resurged in popular culture lately. The "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" franchises
each premiered several movies in theaters in the past few years. In 2017 alone, "Star Wars" fans
got to see "The Last Jedi" while Trekkies got an entire new TV series called "Star Trek
Discovery." Meanwhile, the 2016 movie "Arrival" explored what could happen after aliens arrive
at Earth.
Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

https://www.space.com/39169-aliens-may-exist-pentagon-ufo-program-chief.html
NY Times: Pentagon study of UFOs revealed
By Jamie Crawford, National Security Producer
Updated 1134 GMT (1934 HKT) December 19, 2017

(CNN)Beyond preparing for the next field of battle, or advancing a massive arsenal that
includes nuclear weapons, the Pentagon has also researched the possible existence of
UFOs.

The New York Times reported Saturday on the once completely classified project that
began because of the intense interest in the subject by former Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada.
According to the Times, the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program was launched
in 2007 after the Nevada Democrat spoke to his longtime friend, Robert Bigelow, the
billionaire founder of an aerospace company. Bigelow has spoken about his belief in UFOs
visiting the United States as well as the existence of aliens.
Among the anomalies the program studied, the paper said, were video and audio
recordings of aerial encounters by military pilots and unknown objects, as well as interviews
with people who said they had experienced physical encounters with such objects.
In one instance, the program looked at video footage of a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet
surrounded by a glowing object of unknown origin traveling at a high rate of speed in a
location that officials declined to identify, the paper said.
The Pentagon says the program has since been shuttered.
"The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program ended in the 2012 timeframe,"
Pentagon spokesman Tom Crosson told CNN. "It was determined that there were other,
higher priority issues that merited funding and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make
a change."
But according to the Times, certain aspects of the program still exist with officials from the
program continuing to investigate encounters brought to them by service members, while
these officials still carry out their other duties within the Defense Department.
The former director of the program told the paper that he worked with officials from the Navy
and CIA from his office in the Pentagon until this past October, when he resigned in protest.
He said a replacement had been named, but he declined to identify them.
Reid, the Times says, was also supported in his efforts to fund the program by the late
Sens. Ted Stevens of Alaska, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, and John Glenn of Ohio, the first
American to orbit the Earth, who told Reid the federal government should take a serious
look at UFOs.
And working to keep a program that he was sure would draw scrutiny from others, Reid said
he, Stevens and Inouye made sure there was never any public debate about the program
on the Senate floor during budget debates.
"This was so-called black money," Reid told the Times regarding the Defense Department
budget for classified programs.

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/16/politics/pentagon-ufo-project/index.html