To The Stars' Cable TV Series "Unidentified" Launches Amid a Frenzy in the Credulous Media

Watching the long-anticipated premiere of the series "Unidentified" on the "History" Channel, I saw little that was new or unexpected. Produced by Tom DeLonge, who organized "To The Stars Academy" (TTSA) which has more or less dominated UFO news for the past two years, it repeated the same claims that I and others have have already written about many times. Sandwiched between episodes of "Ancient Aliens," the first of six episodes of "Unidentified" concentrated on the so-called "Tic Tac" UFO, an incident involving U.S. Navy personnel in the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group off the coast of southern California in 2004. I will assume that the reader has seen the episode in question, or is at least familiar with TTSA's description of the incident. Here are a few things about that episode that I found to be misleading or incorrect:

• Much is made of the fact that reports were made by highly trained military pilots, some with combat experience. The implication is that their observations are far more credible than those of just ordinary folks. But longtime UFO researchers recall that Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the former U. S. Air Force Project Blue Book scientific consultant,  wrote "Surprisingly, commercial and military pilots appear to make relatively poor witnesses" (The Hynek UFO Report, 1977, p. 271). The pilot is, and must be, focused on keeping the aircraft safely aloft, and not on watching some strange-looking object.
• The Pentagon did not "disclose" or "release" anything about UFOs. This whole "disclosure" line came about from statements by TTSA's Luis Elizondo and others, and not from any internal Pentagon activity. The Defense Department's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) came about  because multimillionaire investor (and longtime UFO believer) Robert Bigelow, a  campaign contributor to Sen. Harry Reid, prevailed upon Reid, then the Democratic leader in the Senate, to set up the AATIP program. AATIP then funneled $22 million in contracts to Bigelow's company (that's how things are done in Washington). The only thing that AATIP is known to have produced are 38 papers in weird physics, like anti-gravity, wormholes, and negative mass propulsion.

  

  Chris Cooke claiming in an episode preview that the Tic Tac displayed 'instantaneous acceleration'

• TTSA has claimed from its inception that the Pentagon released the three blurry infrared videos that they ceaselesslly show us. They claim to have 'chain of custody' documentation for the videos, but nobody has ever seen this documentation. Elizondo recently released to George Knapp, a reporter friendly to TTSA (and it seems to anybody else making UFO claims) a copy of a document purporting to show the videos' release. But a careful analysis by John Greenewald of The Black Vault shows beyond any doubt that the document does not prove what Elizondo claims it does. Greenewald notes,

"we have no proof of any [official Pentagon] release, let alone what is being touted [the videos] is even the same evidence connected to this DD Form 1910. If we see a blatant disregard for the truth by Mr. Elizondo on display with this DD Form 1910, and we see the same disregard for the truth by To The Stars Academy as they have touted documents proving a public release – how can we believe everything or anything else from the same sources?"

Elizondo's slide showing the 'five observables'

In the first episode, Luis Elizondo spoke again about his "five observables", which I wrote about September of 2018. One of them was "Instantaneous acceleration," supposedly shown by the Tic Tac UFO's rapid disappearance from the IR video. In a preview segment from "Unidentified" shown on Fox News, TTSA's Chris Cooke attributes this movement to the object itself. Elizondo has  made this claim in his lectures many times. In reality, Mick West of the excellent Metabunk showed that the 'sudden acceleration' of the object was, in fact, due to a change in the zoom factor of the camera at that point.  Surprisingly, that comment was cut from the final show; instead, Cooke is heard to say "Somebody changed the zoom." But Elizondo repeated the 'instantaneous acceleration' claim on Tucker Carlson's show on Fox news just a few hours before the series premiere. As for the other four "observables," they are more accurately called "assumables" than "observables".

One recent development that is significant, and is not mentioned on the program or by TTSA: According to an article in The Drive by Joseph Trevithick and Tyler Rogoway:

the Times' story doesn't mention that between 2014 and 2015, Graves and Accoin, and all the other personnel assigned to Carrier Air Wing One (CVW-1) and the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, as well as everyone else in the associated carrier strike group, or CSG, were taking part in series of particularly significant exercises. The carrier had only returned to the fleet after major four-year-long overhaul, also known as a Refueling and Complex Overhaul (RCOH), in August 2013. This process included installing various upgrades, such as systems associated with the latest operational iteration of the Navy's Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) and its embedded Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) architecture.

This is a critical detail. When the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group encountered the Tic Tac in 2004, it was in the midst of the first ever CSG-level operations of the initial iteration of the CEC.

In other words, in 2004 the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group got its radar upgrade, and soon was reporting 'unidentified objects' including the Tic Tac. In 2014-15, Carrier Air Wing One  got its radar upgrade, and soon they, too, were reporting UFOs galore. One could interpret this to mean that the radars had finally gotten powerful enough to detect the UFOs that had long been knocking about. But I think that a better interpretation is: the radars had gotten powerful enough to begin detecting birds, small balloons, insect clouds, ice crystals, windborne debris, and various other insignificant things found up in the air. Arguing in favor of the latter interpretation is that these radars are apparently no longer detecting anomalous objects, which itself is extremely significant. It suggests that, in all likelihood, after being puzzled by anomalous objects appearing on the radar, the operators finally figured out what was happening, and no longer are troubled by anomalies.

And in a last-minute bombshell, reporter Keith Kloor finally did what reporters are supposed to do, and ask tough questions about persons in the news making claims. Writing in The Intercept on June 1, Kloor's piece is headlined "The Media loves the UFO expert who says he worked for an obscure Pentagon program. Did he?" Kloor writes,

there is one crucial detail missing from “Unidentified,” as well as from all the many stories that have quoted Elizondo since he outed himself nearly two years ago to a wide-eyed news media: There is no discernible evidence that he ever worked for a government UFO program, much less led one.

Yes, AATIP existed, and it “did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena,” Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood told me. However, he added: “Mr. Elizondo had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program while he worked in OUSDI [the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence], up until the time he resigned effective 10/4/2017.”

That directly contradicts an email sent by a spokesperson for To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, a UFO research and entertainment company that Elizondo joined after he left the Defense Department.

Kloor notes that the only supposed confirmation of Elizondo's involvement with AATIP comes from Bryan Bender of Politico:

“Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White confirmed to Politico that the program existed and was run by Elizondo,” Bryan Bender wrote in December 2017. (Earlier this year, White, a Trump administration political appointee, resigned amid an internal probe into charges of misconduct.)

But Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood told me that he “cannot confirm” White’s statement.

As it happens, Bender, who is Politico’s defense editor, had a recurring role in the first episode of “Unidentified.” He appeared on camera numerous times as a kind of authoritative character witness for Elizondo, Mellon, and their UFO investigations.

So Bender cannot be considered an objective reporter on TTSA, and Elzondo's supposed involvement with AATIP is supported only on his own word. Kloor further notes that Elizondo will not respond to his inquiries, but obviously has no difficulty being interviewed by other reporters who give him softball questions. I have seen this behavior time and again among UFOlogists who are peddling dubious claims.

Not everyone is happy about Kloor's expose. "Disclosure" advocate Stephen Basset of the Paradigm Research Group writes,

It is the most egregious hit piece directed at the extraterrestrial presence issue and Disclosure I have ever read in 22 years. It measures up to some of the worst such articles written by Phil Klass, the most vicious debunker on record. Stanton Friedman presented a cogent case that Klass was in the direct employ of the CIA during his disgraceful career.

Note that Basset does not point out anything wrong in what Kloor has written, but he just knows it's got to be wrong. Clearly the piece has hit a nerve with E.T. proponents. And what Basset says about Klass is Loony Tunes.