News

April 21, 2022 — Stuart Davis has published an essay of interest.

“I wanted to take a look at two ways the Phenomenon can be viewed. As a control system or, as a developmental driver. Quick note in what follows, when I say Phenomenon, it’s with the big ‘P’, it includes all the phenomena from UFOs, UAP, abduction, contact, the presence of highly advanced non-human entities, all the spokes in the wheel. Jacques Vallee has long proffered that the Phenomenon is a control system…”

Read the essay: The Phenomenon: Control System, or Developmental Driver?

April 14, 2022 — The Department of Defense has fired the Director for Defense Intelligence, Garry Reid.

Sources who spoke with The Debrief described Reid as the person most directly responsible for preventing the release of additional UAP (UFO) videos, and accused him of retaliating against former AATIP director Lue Elizondo after Elizondo brought the subject of UAPs to the press.

“Days after Elizondo and AATIP made headlines in the New York Times,” explains The Debrief, “an investigation into Elizondo and the release of the three DoD videos depicting UAP incidents was launched.” … “a senior defense official who had firsthand knowledge of the incident told The Debrief they knew for certain that [the] investigation was done at the behest of Reid as a way of retaliating against Elizondo.”

Reid was not dismissed for these actions, but rather, for an ‘inappropriate relationship and favoritism’ with a colleague. That colleague has now taken Reid’s place, a peculiar situation that according to Elizondo has left people on the inside “not happy”.

While these events are only tangential to the subject of alien encounters, they will surely provide a bit of drama when the story of “UAP disclosure” is eventually made into a movie. A book by Elizondo is currently underway. Additional fighter plane videos of UAPs, rumored to include close-up recordings from “near misses”, have yet to be released or even formally acknowledged as existing.

Read more: “Sex, Lies, and UFOs: Pentagon’s Head of Counterintelligence and Security Ousted”, The Debrief, April 14, 2022

March 5, 2022 — Newspaper and magazine articles about Dr John Mack have been added to a free archive curated by Isaac Koi.

Mack probably wished the articles were less about him and more about the phenomenon. As he once remarked, reporters were primarily interested in why he was making a “fool” of himself, and they had little interest in the possible reality of alien encounters. Nonetheless, these news clippings may serve a useful research function if you are examining how the press dealt with the subject in the 1990s.

Koi’s archive is not affiliated with JEMI, but many of the scans are from clippings saved by Mack’s organization. They were originally filed in folders labelled “positive press”, “neutral press”, and “negative press”. You can determine which folder was thickest by visiting Koi’s website at: files.afu.se

December 21, 2021 — The PRETEND podcast by Javier Leiva delves into alien encounters. “There are people out there who claim they encountered beings from another planet just to seek attention. But, others carry these experiences in secret…”

Alien Abductions and Hypnosis (The Hypnotist Part 4)

Listen to the Preview:

November 24, 2021 — Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Asst Sec of Defense for Intelligence under Clinton and Bush, who stepped away from his government position to force the subject of Unexplained Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) into the public sphere, and Luis Elizondo, former Director of AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program), have both responded to this week’s announcement that the Department of Defense is creating a new working group to study UAPs.

Mellon’s open letter to Rep. Ruben Gallego (AZ) politely counsels the representative that placing the group within USDI (the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence) is ill-advised.

Elizondo warns that the USDI is “the same organization that has underplayed and tried to kill the UAP effort for years” and has “persecuted whistleblowers”.

There is speculation in The Washington Examiner that this office was announced now to undermine a bipartisan effort to create a new office to investigate these extraordinary events. The bipartisan plan detailed in Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (NY) amendment to the 2022 Defense Act would mandate “regular reporting, engagement with foreign allies, and a coordinated effort to research and possibly replicate UFO technologies”, whereas the plan announced by the Secretary of Defense does not.

The Pentagon’s announcement to which they are responding may be read at the following link:
Establishment of the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (pdf) (Nov 23, 2021)

Monthly Chosun (South Korea): A South Korean current affairs magazine, Monthly Chosun, touts “the first Korean media to interview ‘UFO abductees'” in its November issue. The article by Youngnam Kim includes interviews with Susan Manewich (contributor to JAR Magazine), Alan Steinfeld (editor of the new book Making Contact), and Will Bueché (archivist at the John E Mack Institute). Please note that Google’s translation services do not accurately convert Korean to English. A manual translation may become available later; we will update this item then. “‘UFO 납치 경험자들’ ‘외계인이 인종 개량을 위해 납치!’ (November 2021)

In the previous issue, Monthly Chosun covered the the US government’s report on UAPs (UFOs), presenting interviews with Leslie Kean, Ralph Blumenthal, and Avi Loeb. “미국 정부의 UFO 보고서 발표를 이끈 주역들 한국 언론 최초 인터뷰. 이제는 ‘미확인비행물체’가 아니라 ‘실존물체’다! (October 2021)

Astronomer Avi Loeb took a public stance against experiencers in a longer version of his interview that was published on a South Korean website. Loeb stated, “Science is not about listening to people. I don’t want to talk much about the people who claim to have been abducted. It’s not my concern,” explaining, “I don’t want to talk to people. I want to look through a telescope and analyze data through a computer. My work has nothing to do with people.” (These remarks were translated; his original phrasing may have been different, e.g., he may have said “My work does not rely on people”.)

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GQ magazine (UK edition): “This man ran the Pentagon’s secretive UFO programme for a decade. We had some questions.” by Charlie Burton. “Early last year, the US government officially acknowledged videos of ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ filmed by its Navy pilots. Was it evidence of extraterrestrials? Here, Luis Elizondo, the former Pentagon intelligence officer in charge of investigating these incidents, reveals (almost) all he knows…” (November 9, 2021)

October 19, 2021 — Sen. Bill Nelson, NASA administrator, spoke about the possibility of an alien presence in a podcast held by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

“[You’ve seen] what those Navy pilots saw in 2004. And there have been some 300 sightings since then. And I’ve talked to those pilots, and they know they saw something. Their radars locked onto it, and then all of a sudden it was here on the surface and then it’s there. And they don’t know what it is, and we don’t know what it is. We hope it’s not an adversary here on Earth that has that kind of technology. But it’s something. And so, this is a mission that we’re constantly looking at: What or who is out there? Who are we? How did we get here? How did we become as we are? How did we develop? How did we civilize? And are those same conditions out there in a universe that has billions of other suns in billions of other galaxies? It’s so large I can’t conceive it. […] My personal opinion is that the universe is so big, and now there are even theories that there might be other universes, and if that’s the case, who am I to say that planet Earth is the only location of a life form that is civilized and organized like ours? But I’ll tell you what that makes me think. I better be a better steward of what we have. Because we’re messing it up, and we’re messing it up even just the way we’re treating each other. And so I know what my mission is: to be a better steward of this planet and be a better citizen of planet Earth.” — Bill Nelson, former Senator and current head of NASA (Oct 19, 2021) Sen. Bill Nelson was sworn in as the 14th NASA administrator on May 3, 2021, tasked with carrying out the Biden-Harris administration’s vision for the agency. Nelson chaired the Space Subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives for six years and later served as the Ranking Member on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. During his time in Congress, Nelson was a strong advocate for NASA’s Earth science programs and authored numerous pieces of legislation to combat and mitigate the effects of climate change. Click for full bio at NASA.

October 4, 2021 — The following letter from the John E Mack Institute was sent to Lauren French, the communication director of Rep. Adam Schiff’s office.

Dear Lauren French, I encourage you to replace the word “threat” with the word “risk” in future press releases on this subject, to more accurately describe the behavior of the UAPs – which has been passive for the most part. Thank you for your consideration. Re: Press Releases: Chairman Schiff Applauds Passage of 2022 Intelligence Authorization Act “The provision will ensure that the task force will be able to fully draw on all classified reporting about UAPs as they continue to investigate this mysterious *threat* to U.S. airspace and our military forces.” Sincerely, Will Bueché John E Mack Institute

A roundtable discussion among the people featured in the article has been released by The Experiencer Group (recorded Sept 26, 2021). “This special episode came about spontaneously and organically while meeting as a group over Zoom to talk about the process of the article and ‘coming out’ as experiencers of non-human entities,” writes Jay King. “As the conversation progressed, the conversation turned toward how media has handled stories like this in the past, and being inspired to work toward a better way forward for public and private dialogue about anomalous and non-human experiences.” Learn more about The Experiencer Group at their website. An interview with the author of the article, from The Debrief‘s Cristina Gomez, is also available.

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September 30, 2021 — The 2022 Intelligence Authorization Act has passed, which states that “not less frequently than quarterly … the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, or successor entity, shall submit to the appropriate congressional committees a report on the findings of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, or successor entity”.

June 25, 2021 — The Department of Defense report on UAPs (UFOs) has been released.

“Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (the public report) may be downloaded now at dni.gov

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An outcome of the report is a DoD order to “develop a plan to formalize the mission”:

The Debrief: “Pentagon told to ‘formalize’ its investigation of UFOs, possibly expand UAP task force” Moments after the long anticipated UAP report was released to the public, the Department of Defense has been tasked to expand the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force’s efforts to improve their mostly inconclusive findings. (See official statement, “Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Assessment”, June 25, 2021)

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Curated links to coverage of the report:

Politico: “Government report can’t explain UFOs, but offers no evidence of aliens”

USA Today: “‘Important first step’: Highly anticipated UFO report released with no firm conclusions”

NBC News: “UFO report: Government can’t explain 143 of 144 mysterious flying objects, blames limited data”

BBC News: “UFO report: US ‘has no explanation’ for sightings”

CNN: “US intelligence community releases long-awaited UFO report”

Reuters: “US report on Pentagon-documented UFOs leaves sightings unexplained” A senior U.S. official, asked about the possibility of extraterrestrial explanations for the observations, said: “That’s not the purpose of the task force, to evaluate any sort of search for extraterrestrial life.”

ABC News: “Few answers in unclassified UFO report” “…we have no clear indications that there is any non-terrestrial explanation for them – but we will go wherever the data takes us,” said a senior U.S. government official.

The Verge: “Everything You Need to know about the Pentagon’s UFO Report”

The Debrief: “Government Releases Highly Anticipated Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” The report states that a majority of incidents that were examined “probably do represent physical objects,” noting that they were detected by multiple sensors [and] also visual observations…

New York Times: “US Has No Explanation for Unidentified Objects and Stops Short of Ruling Out Aliens” The nine-page document essentially declines to draw conclusions…

The New Yorker: “The Unexplained Phenomena of the UFO Report” A new intelligence document examines a hundred and forty-three sightings that might have been caused by errant balloons, foreign drones, or “Other” — a reserved way of saying aliens. (June 26, 2021)

Historical perspective: Astronomer Carl Sagan did not believe in alien encounters but he believed aliens existed among the billions of worlds that lay beyond our solar system. And like John Mack, he felt that communicating with such life could have a positive, unifying effect on humankind: “I think its one of the most fascinating questions that humans have ever asked: Are we the only kind of intelligent life that there is in the universe, or are there others, evolved under different physical circumstances, with different bodies and different ways of thinking with whom we can communicate? Its the ultimate attempt at deprovincialization, and I think its a very good objective for the human species at this critical moment when we are in this halting and tentative and not fully successful way trying to bind up all the peoples of the Earth into what we clearly are – one species and one planet. The very thought of there being other beings, different from all of us, can have a very useful, cohering role for the human species.” — Carl Sagan (“Carl Sagan on the search for intelligent life outside our solar system” CBC News, 1988)

June 4, 2021 — Officials have no idea what UAPs are, according to an early preview of the upcoming Department of Defense report. “…senior officials briefed on the intelligence conceded that the very ambiguity of the findings meant the government could not definitively rule out theories that the phenomena observed by military pilots might be alien spacecraft.”

Source: “U.S. Finds No Evidence of Alien Technology in Flying Objects, but Can’t Rule It Out, Either”, New York Times, June 4, 2021

Restatements of the New York Times article: Washington Post report on NY Times report, June 4  ·  The Guardian report on NY Times report, June 4  ·  CNN report on NY Times report, June 4  ·  NBC News report on NY Times report, June 4

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Related: Vladimir Duthiers and the rest of the CBS This Morning hosts are not impressed by the evasiveness (June 4, 2021):

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More June news coverage of the upcoming Department of Defense report on UAPs:

“Experts Weigh In on Pentagon UFO Report“, Scientific American (June 8, 2021)
There is not going to be any “big reveal,” says Robert Sheaffer… “There are no aliens here on Earth, and so the government cannot ‘disclose’ what it does not have.”
(Sheaffer is a former columnist for Skeptical Inquirer, and fellow of the skeptics’ society CSICOP)

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NBC News: “‘Truth embargo’: UFOs are suddenly all the talk in Washington” After 75 years of taboo and ridicule, serious people can finally discuss the mysterious flying objects, and even skeptics say that’s a good thing. (June 13, 2021)

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June 15, 2021 update: The House Intelligence Committee received a classified briefing on UAPs with U.S. Navy and FBI officials. This is the second briefing to have occurred in June and the first to include the FBI; it is unclear why the FBI was present. New York Post (June 16, 2021)

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BBC News made their own overview piece, featuring new interviews with Dietrich, Kean, and Mellon: BBC Breakfast via Reddit (June 20, 2021)

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Luis Elizondo, former Director of AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program), speaking on a live June 22, 2021 podcast, “Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal“, said that if the public knew information that he is aware of (but cannot speak of), the public’s first reaction will be “somber”, followed by “turning inward and trying to reflect on what this means to us and our species and ourselves.”

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Christopher Mellon, a former Deputy Asst Sec of Defense for Intelligence under Clinton and Bush, in a self-published essay, “Don’t Dismiss the Alien Hypothesis” (June 24, 2021), says if Russia and China are ruled out as the source of the Nimitz “Tic Tac” (which seems to be the conclusion that the DoD report will draw), then “non-human origin is presently the theory that best fits all the facts.”

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Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files tv series, has an editorial in The New York Times: “I Created ‘The X-Files.’ Here’s Why I’m Skeptical of the New UFO Report” (June 25, 2021). When we were dressing the original set for Agent Mulder’s office on “The X-Files,” I came up with the poster with a UFO on it that reads “I Want To Believe.” And I think that’s where most people come down on the whole extraterrestrial business. Not quite there yet, but waiting for a sign…

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Earlier: Comments by President Barack Obama, June 1, 2021:

Ezra Klein of the New York Times asks President Obama how he would be affected if the UAPs turn out to be alien-made but are only drones, with no evident way to contact their makers: Click to read and listen to the audio interview at NYTimes or download the podcast from Apple