Page 17 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - Jan-Feb 2018, Vol 27, No 1

UFO Disclosure Deserves Skepticism 17

Why The NY Times

Pentagon UFO Disclosures

Deserve More Skepticism

By Andrew Whalen

On Saturday, The New York Times ran a
bedazzling exposé on a secret Defense
Department program that funneled money to a
hotel billionaire to research this century’s most
compelling UFO evidence. "Glowing Auras and
‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious
U.F.O. Program” is headed by a mind-melting
video of an unknown object tracked by a Navy
fighter pilot, just the first of several blockbuster
revelations, like a Las Vegas facility where
government contractors store “metal alloys and
other materials… recovered from unidentified
aerial phenomena.” But left unexplored are the
confounding motives for the secretive public-
private UFO program and background on
sources whose claims warrant a level of scrutiny like, say, Soviet military installations), got our species.”
not evident in the reporting. duped by psychic fraud Uri Geller and has since Now that it’s been revealed that
The New York Times reports that $22 been a major proponent of pseudoscientific Bigelow’s secret-hoarding has the backing of
million, masked as “black money” within the zero-point energy. If Puthoff is indicative of the powerful senators and government money, it’s
Defense Department’s $600 billion budget, caliber of researchers brought aboard by more important than ever that UFO disclosure
went to a Pentagon program called the Bigelow, then there’s likely to be far less step out from the cover of anonymous sources
Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification substance to the program’s findings than its and incomplete information to become the
Program, which investigated UFO most sensational claims suggest. rightful knowledge of the democratic citizenry
(Unidentified Flying Objects) reports. Evidence Even the video, with its mysterious, bankrolling Bigelow’s investigation. []
claimed by former military intelligence official barrel-rolling craft, might soon reveal some
Luis Elizondo, who ran the program, include obvious flaws. Reporter Leslie Kean (one of the
high velocity craft with “no visible signs of three sharing the NYT byline), author of UFOs: DID YOU KNOW...
propulsion,” anomalous materials and video Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go
recordings, complete with chilling audio from on the Record, has been instrumental in by
baffled pilots with movie-ready lines like bringing similarly enigmatic military footage to Rob McConnell
“There’s a whole fleet of them.” the public’s attention, including a video released
The program, originally greenlit by by the Chilean government at the beginning of
Nevada senator Harry Reid in 2007, either 2017. Kean’s reporting on that sighting
ended in 2012 or is ongoing. Despite the dismissed or downplayed convincing
Pentagon-centered framing, the Times story explanations provided by independent
reveals most of the money went to Bigelow investigators, focusing as much on the
Aerospace, which “hired subcontractors and legitimacy of their venue as their conclusions. A
solicited research for the program.” similar debunking of the Times' new footage is
Bigelow Aerospace is owned by Robert complicated by the Defense Department's
Bigelow, described as a “billionaire refusal to share the date and location of the
entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. sighting.
Reid’s.” Bigelow has donated tens of thousands There is no smoking gun that disproves
to Reid and Searchlight Leadership Fund, the existence of scientist-stumping UFO
Reid’s Political Action Committee, and the materials or provides a mundane explanation for
complete absence of their financial relationship extraordinary UFO sighting footage, but there
from the Times story neatly excises an alternate are more than enough unspoken assumptions,
interpretation of the Pentagon program as unannounced motives and dubious sources
essentially a pass-through for public money to present in the NYT’s report to justify far more
fund a billionaire donor’s pet project, making skepticism. And while it’s not ideal countering
the program’s secrecy as much about its big revelations with little more than insinuations Thousands of
political unseemliness as its explosive evidence. of untrustworthiness, it’s the only option made
Even more damning than the available by the outsized secrecy surrounding Facts and Trivia
unmentioned possibility of corruption is one of the privatization of UFO research. That Will Family and
the story’s sources: Harold E. Puthoff. In May, I called for Robert Bigelow to
Describing Puthoff as “an engineer who has put up or shut up about UFOs after a 60 Minutes Friends Alike.
conducted research on extrasensory perception appearance during which he said “There has This Book That Was
for the C.I.A. and later worked as a contractor” been and is an existing presence, an ET
for Bigelow’s program doesn’t come close to presence” on or around Earth: Limited To The Media Is
approaching the level of skepticism Puthoff’s “Bigelow should make a choice between Now Being Made Available
contribution to the story warrants. A former revealing what he knows — even if it means
Scientologist who used L. Ron Hubbard’s e- burning sources or leaking classified To You!
meter to search chicken eggs for psychic information — and relinquishing the rhetoric of
sensitivity, Puthoff conducted ludicrously certainty and insinuation. Otherwise we might DID YOU KNOW by Rob McConnell is
flawed, military-funded studies into “remote be lead to the conclusion that Bigelow is available at
viewing” (“seeing” distant targets with the mind deliberately withholding from the population of www.rel-mar.com/didyouknow
Earth the most important truth in the history of