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.

It's Tic vs. Tac as the Media Goes Into a Frenzy

Back on December 16, 2017, the New York Times published a now-famous article on about the previously unknown Pentagon UFO study program, as reported by Tom DeLonge and his To The Stars Academy (TTSA), titled "Glowing Auras  and Black Money - The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program." It set off a media UFO frenzy that still continues. To show how little TTSA's people understand about what they are doing, the so-called "glowing auras" surrounding the objects represent nothing more than a processing artifact of the infrared image, but TTSa's "experts," as well as those who look up to them, don't know that and think it's mysterious.

Most people didn't notice that Leslie Kean, one of the authors of this piece, is a dedicated UFO promoter who has written a popular UFO book. She is also very gullible, at one point promoting a video of a fly buzzing around as if it were some great proof of high-performance UFOs. (And she still has not admitted that she was fooled by a fly.) Another author, Ralph Blumenthal, has also been a UFO believer for years.

Now the other shoe has dropped. On May 26, the New York Times carried another article by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean - the same three authors as the earlier piece - headlined "Wow, what is that?' Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects."

The strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind, appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast. Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes, but that they could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds.

“These things would be out there all day,” said Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who has been with the Navy for 10 years

One seriously wonders why, if unknown objects were supposedly seen "almost daily" for nearly a year, and hung around "all day," we don't have overwhelming video, photographic, and instrumental evidence of them, removing all doubt about their appearance and behavior? In reality, all we see are the same three blurry infrared videos promoted by Tom DeLonge's To The Stars Academy, over and over again. This makes no sense at all. Doesn't the Navy have any cameras?

The so-called "Tic Tac" UFO video, much hyped by "To The Stars," and now by the media.

Not surprisingly, the New York Times story spurred an avalanche of me-too stories in the Washington Post (which proclaimed "UFOs exist and everyone needs to adjust to that fact"), Fox News, and many other media outlets.

It is purely coincidence, I'm sure, that this is occurring just a few days before the May 31 premiere of the TV series "Unidentified," produced by Tom DeLonge.

Researcher Curt Collins of the Blue Blurry Lines blog notes on Facebook's UFO Updates that

The NYT story is previewing and promoting material from TTSA's show "Unidentified," not making news of its own. The story is getting spread far and wide, but so far just other sites quoting from it, not verifying or reporting anything else.

Exactly - just the sort of story that lazy reporters love, because they don't need to do any investigation of their own. Collins notes that Blumenthal said in a recent interview,

We knew the History Channel had put this series together, and we watched that and give them credit in the piece, and saw what they said in the series and went after them (witnesses) because obviously we weren’t going to take it from the TV; we wanted to conduct our own interview...

Collins also notes that Blumenthal admits they are trying to maintain the illusion of being an independent effort from TTSA:

We really try to keep our distance from To The Stars because we think it helps our credibility to be separate...

But apparently, they are not. The New York Times' reporters are simply repeating Tom DeLonge's "spin," and other journalists in major publications are copying them. Skeptical blogger Jason Colavito explains how "New York Times' UFO Coverage Still Just a Front for To the Stars and History Channel."

People seem to forget that DeLonge describes TTSA as an “independent multi-media entertainment company.” Apparently it is becoming a very successful one indeed.

But underneath all the hype, there are still so many unanswered questions about TTSA's claims, the exact provenance of their videos, and so on. On April 29, reporter George Knapp wrote a story purporting to show that the Pentagon really did release the videos, based on a form provided by Luis Elizondo. But the indefatigable John Greenewald of the Black Vault has shown how that claim, when closely examined, falls apart.

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?

 If TTSA expects to be taken seriously by anyone other than credulous reporters of the New York Times and the Washington Post, they will have to do better than this.

As for the so-called Tic Tac video of 2004, the best-known animal in TTSA's menagerie, serious fault lines are starting to appear in the differing accounts of various persons involved. David Fravor, the pilot who was vectored to the supposed location of the Tic Tac UFO but didn't see anything in the air at that location. Looking down, he saw a disturbance in the water, which he presumed was caused by the object that presumably had just been airborna. Of course, it is a big assumption that the two must necessarily be the same.

Fravor spoke at the recent UFO Fest in McMinnville, Oregon (held annually to honor the famous Trent UFO Photos, taken just outside that town). Reporter George Knapp and documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell were also on the panel. Fravor  sharply criticized the accounts of certain other people who were involved and have been speaking about the incident. He seemed to be singling out the account of the radar operator, Kevin Day, as being non-factual. He dismissed claims of Air Force personnel coming on board the Nimitz and confiscating evidence as being untrue. Fravor also  referred to Dave Beaty's "Nimitz UFO Encounters" documentary as a "cartoon."  This prompted Knapp to say to Fravor, "I guess you're being diplomatic, but some of the stories and claims that have been made by people, who may have been on those ships, are just bullshit." When people began commenting about these remarkable disagreements, Corbell pulled the video off YouTube.

We have seen this happen before with major UFO cases. What starts out as a tiny acorn of an unexplained sighting or incident gradually becomes a mighty oak tree of misinformation. That process is obviously well underway with the Tic Tac UFO incident.

Travis Walton Saw a Giant Black Triangle UFO, but Apparently Forgot to Mention it.

On May 22, 2019, Tucker Carlson's program on Fox News carried a cute little puff piece about a UFO Festival being held in Pine Bush, New York.

One of the people at the UFO festival was Travis Walton, the famous "UFO abductee" who was allegedly held by the aliens for five days in 1975. When asked by the reporter if he had seen anything since then, Walton replied,

It was February 19, 2014. A giant black triangle came over, stopped right over the top of us. Rotated 90 degrees, and shot off toward the ocean. It was quite amazing because I didn't believe anything that big could actually fly.

Walton does not say where this alleged sighting occurred, or who else was with him. Walton has been on numerous UFO programs and panels since 2014, but has somehow forgotten to mention this sensational,  dramatic sighting.

Travis Walton describes seeing a giant black flying triangle in 2014.

I posted this information in the Facebook group UFO Updates, which contains some of the most knowledgeable and active current UFO researchers. Everyone else seemed to be as surprised to hear this as I was.

My page debunking Walton's "abduction" claim is here.

Tucker Carlson's commentary stated, "Big news tonight! Finally, after many decades, the Pentagon has officially confirmed what has long been obvious: they are in fact, and have long been in fact, investigating UFO sightings." This represents To The Stars' "spin" on the Pentagon UFO matter, and is a gross exaggeration of the facts, as I explained in the previous entry. 

Tucker Carlson recyclesa long-debunked photo of a contrail that was supposedly a UFO.

Carlson's commentary was illustrated by the long-debunked photo of a black contrail that is supposed to represent a 'genuine UFO.' Tucker Carlson needs to be more skeptical about claims made by UFOlogists. Nick Pope and other UFO proponents have appeared on his show several times, but he has never interviewed a UFO skeptic.

Did the Navy Just Admit that UFOs are Real?

Well, Tom DeLonge says that they did!

In the past few days there has been quite a storm over the Navy's announced "new guidelines" for reporting unidentified objects. A story by Bryan Bender in Politico on April 23 says,

The U.S. Navy is drafting new guidelines for pilots and other personnel to report encounters with "unidentified aircraft," a significant new step in creating a formal process to collect and analyze the unexplained sightings — and destigmatize them.

The previously unreported move is in response to a series of sightings of unknown, highly advanced aircraft intruding on Navy strike groups and other sensitive military formations and facilities.

Analysis of "Go Fast" IR video from To The Stars Academy

 And our old friend Tom DeLonge is giving full credit for this change to lobbying by his To The Stars Academy. He wrote on his Facebook page on April 23,

This is a DIRECT RESULT of @tothestarsacademy’s quiet efforts coordinating briefings to the Legislative and Executive Branch, working with the Navy and others at the highest levels to help create an architecture for dealing with the reality of UFOs. Chris Mellon, Chairman of the TTSA ADVISORY BOARD, worked for the greater part of the year on this breakthrough National Security Policy—- And yes, this is an admission that these Unidentified Aerial Vehicles are real, and @tothestarsacademy organized this entire effort. Thank you to everyone for believing in us... But, there is much more to come.

And there were many breathless stories gushing on about the supposed significance of this. In one, Thomas Gnau asked in the Dayton Daily News (for which the Air Force's Project Blue Book was a local story),

The U.S. Navy is updating guidelines for pilots who encounter unexplained aerial phenomena or unidentified flying objects — known everywhere as “UFOs.” Can the U.S. Air Force be far behind?

But not everyone was swept up by the excitement. John Greenewald asks in the Black Vault, "What Does That Mean?". He notes that Navy and CIA documents seem to be concerned with "unidentified aircraft," rather than "flying saucers" or UFOs. Greenewald has been scrutinizing statements made by Luis Elizondo and other TTSA officials, and has found them to be hopelessly confused and inconsistent. His candor has apparently made him quite unpopular in certain UFO circles. Of course, those are the people who aren't interested in facts, they want to defend certain irrational beliefs.

We have a sober analysis of the question from Mick West over on the excellent Metabunk:

there's a rush of media stories about this. The problem is they all seem to be conflating two things:

A) The statement from the Navy
B) The spin from TTSA

And then presenting B (the spin) as if it's something official. It's not. All we have that is official is a very reasonable statement about

1) Planned (but undescribed) new guidelines for reporting unauthorized and/or unidentified airspace incursions.
2) Some briefings on the dangers of these incursions by the Navy to some congressmen and/or their staff.

Note the first thing there: "unauthorized airspace incursions." That basically means a plane flies into a region that it should not be in. The Navy Document OPNAVINST 3770.2L calls it a "spill-in". Note in this new press release they say: "the Navy and the USAF take these reports very seriously and investigate each and every report." So clearly the reports they talk about are not considered "career enders" (as some have suggested). These are reports that are already being made, and are being taken seriously, and investigated. All that seems to be happening now is an improvement to the way in which such incursions can be reported.

For better or for worse, we will be hearing a lot more about Tom DeLonge and TTSA in the months to come. The "History" Channel recently announced,

HISTORY® GREENLIGHTS NEW GROUNDBREAKING LIMITED NON-FICTION SERIES ‘UNIDENTIFIED: INSIDE AMERICA’S UFO INVESTIGATION™’ EXPOSING NEW EVIDENCE ON UFOs LEAD BY THE FORMER SPECIAL AGENT IN-CHARGE AND DIRECTOR OF THE GOVERNMENT’S TOP SECRET PROGRAM AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY TOM DELONGE

Former Government Officials disclose new information in an effort to change Government Policy about the potential threats UFOs pose to U.S. National Security

We find this information on the TTSA website:

 Now, as a part of HISTORY’s groundbreaking new six-part, one-hour limited series “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation™,” Elizondo is speaking out for the first time with Tom DeLonge, co-founder and President of To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science and Chris Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Intelligence, to expose a series of startling encounters and embark on fascinating new investigations that will urge the public to ask questions and look for answers. From A+E Originals, DeLonge serves as executive producer.

Says DeLonge, “With this show, the real conversation can finally begin. I’m thankful to HISTORY for giving the To The Stars Academy team of world-class scientists, engineers and intelligence experts the opportunity to tell the story in a comprehensive and compelling way.  I think everyone that watches the show will walk away with questions answered and a feeling of, “wow, I get it now.”’

 The first episode is set to run on May 31. Expect to hear nonsense piled high and deep when that happens.

The Anti-Gravity Lawsuit

Robert Kiviat was the producer of the famous Alien Autopsy TV program and many other far-out programs. First, he profited from the extremely high ratings of the Alien Autopsy program, then he produced a program debunking his original alien autopsy, which also got high ratings. He also produced programs on prophecies, ghosts, and "Aliens on the Moon." Kiviat now is suing certain individuals and organizations for money that he says they owe him for his work on anti-gravity systems.

The first person named in the suit is Joseph Firmage, a onetime Silicon Valley multi-millionaire (now apparently former multi-millionaire) who might be said to have founded the first "To The Stars" venture with his International Space Sciences Organization (ISSO) in 1999, which lasted only eighteen months. According to American Antigravity,

In 2001, a California defense contractor built a small replication of the Nazi Bell device, and it produced effects just as Igor Witkowski and Nick Cook had reported on the original project. The Nazi Bell replication was built by SARA under funding from Joe Firmage’s ISSO startup, and developed around an applied engineering model of Einstein’s Unified Field Theory. In short, it was a modern attempt at a scale replication of the original Nazi Bell experiment, based largely on their interpretation of the original Bell design. The Nazi Bell replication is important because it offers validation for the research of Igor Witkowski and Nick Cook, but also because it demonstrates the application of theories proposed by Dr. James Corum and John Dering that offer explanations for not only the Nazi Bell experiment, but for the Philadelphia Experiment and the Hutchison Effect as well. In short, these are Unified Field Theory effects, which explains their strange side effects and unpredictable nature.

The Nazi Bell replication that Coruma and Dering participated in was related to WW-II German research, but the modern replication had been financed by Joe Firmage’s ISSO startup for about 1.2 million dollars, and wasn’t an exact replica of the original device. SARA’s version was much smaller (about 100 watts) and they’d modified the design, since they didn’t actually know many of the details of the original Bell’s construction (emphasis added).

The author's photo of Joe Firmage in 2000 with Betty Hill and
"Junior," her supposed alien abductor, sculpted by Marjorie Fish.

The so-called "Nazi Bell" is a supposed prototype Nazi "super weapon" developed in secret during World War II. According to some, the Bell was the power source behind Nazi flying saucers. Of course, there is no real evidence that such a "Bell" ever existed, or that Firmage's ISSO built one.

In September, 2000, Firmage sponsored a by-invitation-only conference, Encounters at Indian Head, to look at the famous alleged UFO abduction of Betty and Barney Hill. This conference, in which I participated, was "secret" at the time, and was only "declassified," so to speak, several years later, when its proceedings were finally published.

Firmage teamed up at least briefly with Ann Druyan, the widow of Carl Sagan, in a venture, "One Cosmos." This sounds so much like To The Stars that it makes me wonder if they copied One Cosmos in their business plan. (At the time, I contacted Ms. Druyan to suggest that a partnership with Firmage might not be a wise idea, but she replied that she had her eyes open and was not too concerned.)

OneCosmos, under the leadership of Joe Firmage and Ann Druyan, is forming a new type of visionary alliance of partners in finance, science, learning, media, and entertainment to create an "integrated experience network." Our canvas is an Internet portal, a studio, and a press. With them, we aspire to demonstrate convergence of remarkable and responsible learning and entertainment.

Our success will be measured in three ways: commercially in return to our employees and shareholders, ideologically in our commitment to the intellectual and spiritual nourishment of humanity, and in the remarkable things the founders will do with their personal equity. 

The venture was not financially successful. Some of Firmange's other weird ventures include ManyOne Networks, Intend Change, International Academy of Science and Arts (InterNASA), and Motion Physics, none of which seems to have been particularly successful. 

Here is an excerpt from Firmage's presentation to a "Planetwork" conference in San Francisco back in 2003.  

Our mission is about the possibility that we will be able to explore the Milky Way galaxy in an interstellar spacecraft within your lifetime. Our mission is about helping to enable a renewal of human civilization, and Nature as a whole.
Motion Sciences Organization is therefore truly a public enterprise and if we're successful, the proceeds yielded from technologies sponsored by Motion Sciences will be given back to humanity through select philanthropies. As a not-for-profit 501(c)3, our success in these missions will be dependent upon the support of visionary sponsors and citizens of Earth. People like you. We have a goal for the 2001 calendar year: engaging the support of 100,000 citizens of Earth, becoming members of the Motion Sciences Community...

The theoretical group within Motion Sciences has operated for two years as the California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics (CIPA), and is led by Dr. Bernard Haisch, formerly of Lockheed-Martin, whose work in this field is an outgrowth of NASA Research Contract NASW-5050, "Inertia and Gravitation in the Zero-Point Field Model" (1996-2000) awarded to the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center. This contract in turn resulted from a seminal paper published in 1994 in the journal Physical Review A entitled: "Inertia as a zero-point field Lorentz force" by B. Haisch, A. Rueda and H. E. Puthoff. Based on work carried out at California State University at Long Beach, the Lockheed Palo Alto Research Lab, and the Max Planck Institute fur extraterrestrische Physik in Germany, a significantly new insight into the nature of mass was proposed in that paper. Thereafter, work under the NASA contract published in subsequent papers confirmed and indeed strengthened the proposed connection between inertial mass and the quantum vacuum. In recent years, the explorations of the relation between mass and the quantum vacuum have been extended with possibly significant insights into the nature of gravitation. Possible implications of this and of a rapidly widening body work in the domain of quantum vacuum physics are that: It may be possible to generate propulsive forces without the ejection of material propellant or reaction masses.

It may be possible to extract energy from the quantum vacuum. Both inertial mass and gravitational mass may be electromagnetic phenomena, which would open the door to the possibility of manipulating inertia and/or gravitation.

Note that the work of Hal Puthoff, "co-founder and Vice President of Science and Technology" of Tom Delonge's To The Stars Academy, is cited here. That 'free energy from a vacuum' (or "Zero Point energy") is one of his main claims.

More recently, Firmage claims to be developing an anti-gravity, faster-than-light propulsion system, and he has a video promoting it. It supposedly will provide not only anti-gravity lift, but faster-than-light travel. Suposedly the device entered functional testing in October, 2015. However, no further information about it has been released.

Joe Firmage with his Anti-Gravity device. (from his video)

Kal Korff interviewed Kiviat about the lawsuit:

"because I had been investigating the latest anti-gravity research developments, I was amazed that Pandolfi definitely was supporting the activities of controversial UFO researcher and “Contactee” Joe Firmage. Firmage when approached, eventually offered me a position that would not only afford me the opportunity to document the supposed anti-gravity breakthrough Pandolfi was supporting. But also I’d be in a great position to determine its veracity” [said Kiviat].

Soon after Kiviat signed the employment contract with Firmage, Firmage expected Kiviat not only to plan a six month public roll-out of the device which Firmage was supposedly inventing, leading to a live demonstration; but Kiviat was also expected to develop and sell the network television series that would tell the Joe Firmage anti-gravity story, and also the story of the Aviary UFO history as seen through the eyes of Pandolfi. But it gets even better! Pandolfi, through his closest operative, also wanted Kiviat to tell the incredibly bizarre story of how his Pakistani wife allegedly from Kashmir, purportedly arrived on Earth via a “inter-dimensional portal,” and other tall tales which would be hard for even Hollywood to make up.

Kiviat has even started a GoFundMe page to "Help My Lawsuit To End Govt. UFO Secrecy." Kiviat's  GoFundMe page offers additional explanation of what this lawsuit is all about:

I began talking with a company called InterNASA, directly with its CEO (former Silicon Valley millionaire and entrepreneur Joe Firmage) who told me he was being backed by Ron Pandolfi, the aforementioned top CIA scientist.  Firmage also claimed to be on the verge of proving "gravity control" was a reality.

After Firmage had assured my attorney he had secured the necessary operating capital, I accepted a contracted employment position to run the company's news, PR and overall media division.  But when my dedicated work, covering many critical aspects of the company's activities, went unpaid for many months, and the prototype "gravity control" device stalled in development, I investigated and found out that Pandolfi - who ran something called the CIA's "weird desk" - has seemingly been orchestrating a disinformation operation all along known as a “flytrap” scheme,  where honest people's skills, talents, and in my case, considerable TV and media experience, are usurped and played with, somewhat maliciously, without any concern for proper financial compensation to those involved... Presently, [former Congressman] Marriott is only covering "technical improvements" on InterNASA's "gravity-control" device, motivated by Pandolfi, with the exception of a  $5000 payment to me which Marriott's lawyers now claim  was "just to be nice."  

Since Pandolfi is essentially the one CIA science officer who’s also widely thought to be the keeper of America's most  guarded UFO secrets, I decided to file the civil lawsuit to not only receive the substantial contracted employment salary arrears InterNASA currently owes me - which I sorely need with one teenage son about to enter college and another soon thereafter -  but also use the vast power of the Court of law as a result of this legal action to get to the bottom of the UFO enigma and what our government actually knows. 

As of this writing, Kiviat has raised $320 out of a targeted $250,000, which means that he is well over  1/1000 the way to his goal. We hope that Kiviat succeeds in smoking out all of the CIA's deep secrets about UFOs.

In recent years, Firmage seems to have fallen on hard times. He continues to pursue business ventures, but apparently without a lot of success. Firmage was arrested for DUI in February 2011, in June and again in  November 2013, and in March 2014. In 2016 Joe Firmage and his mother filed for bankruptcy to avoid the sale of jointly-owned real properties. His venture Manyone Networks apparently did not pay its employees for about a year. Even if Kiviat does get a judgment against Firmage, it doesn't seem likely that he could collect very much.

---

 

Update April 2023: The anti-gravity lawsuit has been dismissed. Details are here:
https://www.expandingfrontiersresearch.org/post/manyone

 

One of the major investors in Firmage's dubious technologies was Brandon Fugal, the owner of Skinwalker Ranch.

AAWSAP Meets the SERPO hoax

Yet another weird thing has surfaced. Perhaps many of you recall the SERPO hoax that first surfaced in  2005. Tom Delonge, founder of To The Stars Academy, knows all about SERPO. In accepting the 2017 UFO Researcher award at the International UFO Congress, Delonge said,

I’m just like you guys. I spent 20 years up all night, reading about Roswell, Dulce, Serpo, Churchill, the crashes here, Nazis building craft there, Antarctica, what’s on Mars, what’s on the back of the moon, and structures and anomalous this etc. I mean, I’ve done it all. I know it all. I read all the same authors as you guys, hundreds of books. I look at all the same sites. I listen to all the Coast To Coast stuff that you guys do. I’m the same.

The SERPO story goes like this:

the survivor [of the Roswell crash] provided them with the location of its home planet and continued to cooperate until its death in 1952. The alien provided information regarding the items found inside the crashed UFOs. One of the items was a communication device that it was allowed to use, contacting its home planet.

Fake alien image, supposedly from SERPO.

A meeting was set for April 1964, when an alien craft landed near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Upon retrieving the bodies of their dead comrades, the extraterrestrials engaged in an information exchange that was carried out in English, thanks to the aliens’ translation device. One thing led to another and in 1965, the aliens accepted to take a group of humans back to their planet as part of the exchange program. Twelve military personnel were carefully selected for a ten year stay on Serpo. The ten men and two women were specialists in various fields and their task was to gather as much information as possible, regarding all aspects of life, society and technology on the alien planet. They were three years late and four people short when they finally returned in 1978. Two men had died on the alien planet. One man and one woman had decided to stay. The journey to Serpo, located 37 light years from Earth, took only nine months aboard the alien craft.

Needless to say, the story is total bollocks, as the Brits would say. The reason this is coming up again right now is because of the people involved. One of them is Richard Doty, a well-known UFO fabulist, which is no surprise. He has confessed to supposedly providing disinformation to the poor, mad Paul Bennewitz on behalf of the Air Force. (I say that Bennewitz (1927-2003) was "mad" because he was literally using tinfoil to keep out alien thought rays, even before he had any contact with the Air Force.) Although in my view it's much more likely that Doty was operating as a free-lance disinformation agent, telling B.S. stories to Bennewitz for his own inscrutable reasons.

But two other names are indeed a big surprise, especially in the present-day context of UFOology:

•  Dr. Harold (Hal) E. Puthoff (Director of the CIA-DIA-funded remote viewing project at SRI)

• Christopher ‘Kit’ Green, M.D. (CIA Analyst, retired)  "Kit is also a close and long-standing friend of Rick Doty, who he talked about with unguarded warmth and respect, though he was forced to admit that sometimes Rick's actions could be both puzzling and frustrating ... at a Denny's restaurant back in 1986 he, along with physicist Hal Puthoff and computer scientist and ufologist Jacques Vallee, distilled what they knew about the subject into what has become known as the 'core story.' Simply put, the core story, according to Kit, is this: "The ETs came here, maybe once, maybe a few times. Either through accident or design, the US Government acquired one of their craft. The only problem was that the physics that powered the craft were so advanced that for decades we humans have struggled to understand it or to replicate it." (quote is from Mark Pilkington's book Mirage Men, p.278-9. From the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena blog.)

Hal Puthoff (left), and Kit Green, from a video posted by Radio Misterioso.

Why this is surprising is that both these people were contracted to write papers for AAWSAP (AATIP), the Pentagon's once-secret but now-famous UFO program. Puthoff is "co-founder and Vice President of Science and Technology of TTS Academy," and their all-around go-to guy for weird physics. Here is a collection of SERPO-related emails from 2006 involving Doty, Green, Puthoff, and others. Maybe somebody can explain to us exactly what is going on? Some of these comments sound quite suspicious, to say the least:

Green to several others: "How much did you two guys tell this lady about Hal, Rick, Kit...use our names ever? Say what we were doing with the Team of Five? Give our backgrounds or credentials? Any of our emails?: (p. 8).

Bill Ryan writes to Green: "Remember: WJ, Shawnna xxxxxxxx and “Valhall” (real name xxxxxxxxxxx, “Springer”s wife) also know your involvement in the team of five. All three will be harboring grudges." "Springer" is a well-known moderator on Above Top Secret (p. 12).

Green writes to the others: "I don't know who besides the two of you know that Hal, myself, and Rick are working an issue together on Serpo (with the two of you...who are mysteriously missing from the addressee line.) No one else...ever in the entire period has ever sent a note like this linking specifically the three of us, and just the three of us. Not even Sarfatti knows, or Dan, or Collins, or WJ. Until now, maybe." (p. 12)

Green writes to the others: "to the extent this is a true story (SERPO) that is, and that at LEAST 50% is true...mixed with 50% untrue (to allow plausible deniability, as is done officially all the time) and that there is a "battle" going on with some of the insiders now being in power to stop the SERPO release officially" (p. 29). "For the nth time, and for the nth time on record...my summary remains the same: SERPO is not true...it is a hoax because it looks like a hoax, smells like a hoax, feels like a hoax. But it doesn't WALK like a hoax; it "walks" like someone is in or has access to official capability, or knows very advanced IT technology to legally appear they do...and may be engaged in something we simply do not understand. An Alternative Reality Game....purposely inserting memes and engrams in the collective consciousness by using a viral marketing model...fits 100% of the data I have seen. It may even be legal..and it may only be us who ends up thinking that the hurt it causes people is unethical. (p. 30).

Green writes to the others: "Well, if Hal and myself are "OUTED" we sure know who caused that, don't we?" (p. 39)

Green writes to Doty and Puthoff: "I have lost a great deal of trust in the ability of the team to either keep secrets, do what we say, and more." (p. 65).

Green is obviously very concerned about "who knows what we are doing here?" Frankly, this smells quite suspicious. Note that the website the "Team of Five" is worried about is serpo.info, which is a site debunking the SERPO story. According to Shawwna at that website, "The "Team of 5" consists of: Christopher 'Kit' Green, MD, Harold Puthoff, Richard C. Doty, Victor Martinez, and Bill Ryan  In other words, they are frantic to find out 'who has been leaking information about us to the debunking website?' Puthoff and Green owe us a very good explanation of their role in the SERPO hoax and the "Team of Five" if they want to be taken seriously.

(Thanks to Curt Collins for research assistance on this and the previous posting.😃 The story of the Anti-Gravity Lawsuit will be in the next posting.)

Bigelow's Other Haunted Ranch, and More Zondo Boo-Boos

Most everyone has heard about the so-called "Skinwalker Ranch" near Ft. Duchesne, Utah, where weird paranormal events supposedly happen all the time, but somehow a bunch of smart guys with expensive cameras and state-of-the-art electronic equipment couldn't seem to capture anything over a period of several years. The ranch was purchased by the famous UFO magnate Robert Bigelow so that the people in his National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) could investigate it. They ended up with a lot of exciting stories, but little else. See the book, The Hunt for the Skinwalker by Colm Kelleher and George Knapp. (A 2018 documentary of that same name adds little.) In 2016 Bigelow sold the ranch, cryptids and all, to a corporation called Adamantium Real Estate, LLC, whose description says that it provides "recreational facilities" and "special events" for "social entertainment purposes." However, "for business purposes the owner of Adamantium Real Estate has to remain anonymous." Reportedly a forthcoming documentary will reveal the new owner, but this has not been confirmed. Today a lot of effort is going into promoting the Skinwalker "mysteries," but that's a story for another day.

Former senator Harry Reid, who appears to have created the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP, sometimes also AATIP) as a favor to his longtime campaign contributor Bigelow, said according to reporter George Knapp that "part of the [AAWSAP] focus was on a mysterious ranch in northeastern Utah, a property once owned by businessman Robert Bigelow."

According to Ancient Astronauts magazine in 1978, Jacques Vallee
might actually be the mysterious Count of Saint Germain.

The eternal Jacques Vallee has published a fourth volume of his life story Forbidden Science, which covers the 1990s. (Amazon has a long preview excerpt from this book, which might not be available to readers outside the US.) I have read the previous three volumes, and strongly recommend them to anyone interested in the history of UFO and paranormal investigations. I called Vallee "eternal" as a kind of tribute to his longevity and seeming permanence as an active UFO investigator. His career of sixty years is surely one of the very longest ever. But the suggestion was earlier made that Vallee is actually the mysterious and famous 18th Century Count of Saint Germain, who claimed to be some kind of ancient alchemical immortal. Ann Shapiro wrote in the January, 1978 issue of Ancient Astronauts magazine that Vallee might literally be the current identity used by Saint Germain, "a mysterious creature with superhuman powers." I really doubt that's true, since Vallee looks quite a bit older than he did fifty years ago. But maybe that's just to trick us? 😏

The reason I brought up Vallee is that the main point people are taking from that long excerpt from Volume 4 (I haven't had a chance to read all of it yet) is his discussion of Bigelow's other Haunted Ranch, the Mt Wilson Ranch about 180 miles northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada, which Vallee visited. I had not heard of this ranch before, and apparently hardly anyone else had, either.

According to some, lots of spooky stuff is going on at Bigelow's Mt. Wilson Ranch. Tables float in the air, and strange entities menace visitors. People are reacting as if Vallee had revealed some secret place known only to "insiders." I'm wondering how "secret" some place can actually be when it offers rooms for rent to the public? I trust that some enterprising investigator will soon book a vacation up there, then give us a report on the spooky things that did or didn't happen.

How "secret" can Bigelow's other Haunted Ranch be if it is renting out rooms to vacationers?

We reported last October how, when To The Stars went to Rome to meet with Italian UFO groups, good old Luis Elizondo, their supposed authority on UFOs, made numerous major boo-boos when talking about the famous Washington, DC UFO flap of 1952. Well, Zondo has done it again. His article "Enter The Quantum World: What The Mechanics Of Subatomic Particles Mean For The Study Of UAP, Our Universe, And Beyond" was posted on March 5. It dramatically reveals how little TTSA's go-to UFO expert, Luis Elizondo, knows about the UFO subject. In it he makes the usual sort of weird science claims like "Quantum physics helps us explain the behavior of UAP" (Quantum!!!).

But what is really revealing are his huge blunders concerning UFO history. Zondo informs us,

With Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force compiled reports of tens of thousands of UFO sightings over 17 years. But in 1966, another Air Force committee published the Condon Report, which concluded that most of the sightings examined were explainable.

Then the 2017 DoD disclosure occurred, directly contradicting the findings in the Condon Report.

Let's see: While it's true that Project Blue Book operated for seventeen years, earlier U.S. Air Force projects (Project Sign and Project Grudge) began in 1947, so the Air Force actually investigated UFOs for a total of 22 years. But more significantly, Zondo writes, "in 1966, another Air Force committee published the Condon Report." First, the Condon Report was prepared and published by the University of Colorado, under contract to the Air Force, not by an "Air Force committee." Dr. Edward U. Condon was a physicist at that university. The report was published in 1968, not 1966. These were not extemporaneous comments by Elizondo, but from a published article, which he obviously did not properly research.

But the most absurd is his claim that "DoD disclosure" happened in 2017. The Defense Department did not "disclose" anything in 2017. All that happened in such matters in 2017 was that Elizondo and a few others who were knowledgeable about the AAWSAP began to talk about it publicly. The program does not appear to have actually been classified, although its existence was not announced to the public. To The Stars claims to have chain-of-custody documentation for the DoD's supposed release of those three blurry infrared UFO videos they are so proud of, but nobody has ever seen such documentation, and the DoD denies ever having released any such thing.

As for the AAWSAP, it's not even clear if its purpose ever had much to do with UFOs. The only deliverable that AAWSAP is known at this time to have produced are thirty-eight papers on weird physics, none of which have to do with UFO investigations. So nothing has actually been "disclosed," except by TTSA itself, and by now we have all seen how credible their information isn't.

(Next: AAWSAP meets  SERPO, then later a very strange anti-gravity lawsuit).