Exclusive 60 Minutes with Luis Elizondo - Former Director of the AATIP

By Omni Talk Radio

On December 17th 2017, New York Times has published historic article on the front page titled: "Real U.F.O.s? Pentagon Unit Tried to Know". The article described Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program which had a mandate to evaluate UFOs. Luis Elizondo was a former director of that program. In this exclusive interview that I did for Croatian Television, he explains his involvement in the program and what was learned through the years. This is the uncut version of that interview.

Man launches himself in self-made rocket to prove flat Earth theory

Published on 25 Mar 2018

A man launched himself in a self-made rocket 1,875 feet above the desert to try and prove his theory that the Earth is flat.

2 airline pilots report seeing UFO while flying over Arizona

While flying at over 30,000 feet in the air over Arizona, two airline pilots claim an unidentified flying object flew over top their planes. CBS Denver reports that both planes reported the sighting. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has also released a recording of the radio broadcasts from the out-of-this-world incident.

According to the radio logs, two separate pilots of a Learjet operated by Phoenix Air and an American Airlines flight saw the object flying in the opposite direction of their planes on Feb. 24. In a copy of the conversation with the Albuquerque Center air traffic control, the Phoenix Air pilot makes the first sighting of the strange object at around 3:30 p.m. local time.

"Was anybody above us that passed us like 30 seconds ago?" the pilot asks in a tape released to the Phoenix New Times. The answer from the FAA was "negative."

With the Learjet's close encounter still on their minds, the FAA in Albuquerque alerts American Airlines Flight 1095 to keep an eye out for an object in the sky as they fly towards San Diego. Less than a minute after the warning, Flight 1095's pilot radios in that his plane was just passed by the UFO.

"Yeah, something just passed over us," the pilot reported. "I don't know what it was, but it was at least two-three thousand feet above us. Yeah, it passed right over the top of us."

The pilots couldn't determine if the unidentified object was hovering or actually flying but the American Airlines pilot can be heard saying the UFO had a "big reflection" and doubted it was a Google balloon.

"Other than the brief conversation between two aircraft, the controller was unable to verify that any other aircraft was in the area," the FAA's Lynn Lunsford told the New Times. Coincidentally, the UFO sighting took place just 500 miles away from Roswell, New Mexico. Roswell is home to the most famous UFO stories in U.S. history as a flying saucer allegedly crashed in the desert there in 1947.

In a statement to KOB-TV in Albuquerque, the FAA said it doesn't know what the object is either.

"We don't have any comment beyond what you hear," the statement read. "We have a close working relationship with a number of other agencies and safely handle military aircraft and civilian aircraft of all types in that area every day, including high-altitude weather balloons."

The radio logs come three months after video captured by U.S. Navy pilots offered an inside look at a secretive government program that investigated UFOs. The little-known Pentagon program had a budget of about $22 million, according to the civilian intelligence officer who used to run it. Most of the sightings it looked at were by U.S. military personnel, who have been reporting UFO sightings for decades.

Paul O’Grady claims he is being observed by ALIEN LIFE after spotting a UFO hovering above his orchard

The 62-year-old broadcaster said he had visions of coming face to face with ET

He realised he was being watched after hearing Kim Wilde talk about aliens

Miss Wilde said she saw a UFO 20 times larger than a plane in her back garden

Paul O’Grady has revealed he is ‘terrified’ that he is being watched by aliens.

The 62-year-old broadcaster claimed he is being observed by alien life after spotting a UFO hovering above his back garden and said he was having visions of waking up at night and coming face to face with ET.

He told listeners to his Radio 2 show, Paul O’Grady on the Wireless, that he had seen a UFO hovering above his orchard at 2am.

O’Grady said he had heard singer Kim Wilde talking about her belief in aliens and it made him realise that he was also being observed.

‘I was listening to Kim Wilde and she was going on about aliens,’ he said on his show on Sunday. ‘We’ve got ’em in Kent – I’m serious – over Folkestone, Dungeness and Hythe. I’ve seen them, and I’m not the only one – I’ve got witnesses, so I’m not going out of my mind.’

‘The Army say it’s not them sending flares up, so we don’t know, but I’m just terrified of waking up one night and there’s this thing at the bottom of my bed like ET.

‘You don’t know do you? It’s like I’m taking the dog round the orchard and I’ll look up and there are these weird lights. I’m being observed... at 2am.’

Miss Wilde, 57, has previously claimed that she watched a UFO ‘about 20 times the size of an aeroplane’ hovering above her back garden for two hours. The Kids in America singer, who has sold more than ten million albums worldwide, said she watched the ‘static and silent’ lights on the UFO in the summer of 2009 in her Hertfordshire garden.

She said at first she thought it was Michael Jackson coming to haunt her. Miss Wilde was Jackson’s support act during his 1988 Bad tour and said she saw the UFO on June 26, 2009 – the day after he died.

‘I once saw a UFO in my back garden,’ Miss Wilde said last year. ‘It was the day after Michael Jackson died and I thought, “He is coming back to haunt me!”. It was on a Friday night and I saw two lights in the sky that were static and silent.

‘I stood watching them above my garden from about 11pm till one in the morning. It had a profound effect on me. It makes me think that somebody is looking after us.’ 

Gary Heseltine | Rendlesham and Abuse in the Field of UFOLOGY

A UFO sighting near Kangaroo Island: National Geographic

ISLAND OVERFLIGHT: The view from the window of the Qantas Dash-8 aircraft departing Kingscote Airport on March 25, 2018. Photo by Lee-Anne Eddie

The well-respected National Geographic website has published an article about an unusual sighting on radar over Kangaroo Island back in 1969. 

The article is about an apprentice radio technician named Alan Potter, who in August 1969 was servicing a radar at Adelaide Airport when he spotted something peculiar on the radar head.

The article reads: “Potter was tracking a Fokker Friendship flying from Adelaide to Kingscote on Kangaroo Island, but as the radar turned slowly, it pinged a large object approaching from Port Lincoln, it was like nothing he’d seen in the area before.

REMARKABLE ROCKS: Some of the big eroded stones on Kangaroo Island's Remarkable Rocks almost have an alien shape. Photo by Stan Gorton

“The Fokker flight was flying towards Kangaroo Island, when a small object, looked to leave the large object and fly in a line towards the Fokker plane.

“The two signals met over Rapid Bay before the smaller signal returned to the larger one.  Potter laughed at the idea the two signals could have been a UFO checking out the Fokker, but after further thought, there was nothing else it could be.

“Though Potter’s sighting was logged by the Australian UFO Research Network in 2004, no passengers or pilots on the Fokker reported anything out of the order.”

Read the full National Geographic article.

Have you ever seen any usual activity in the skies above Kangaroo island?

We would love to hear about it – please contact stan.gorton@fairfaxmedia.com.au 

Here are some of our reader comments posted on The Islander Facebook and sent to us directly:

A friend of mine tagged me in article in the National Geographic. I live on the Dudley peninsula not far from antechamber bay, around November last year myself a friend and my 7-year-old son all saw one night what we first thought was just a satellite. But then it became brighter also changing colours from white blue to green and erratically changing direction several times before speeding off and out of sight. – Leonard Deacon

Years ago, driving home- Nth coast road onto Pratt’s Rd, I saw a light in the sky to the west, like a star, but four times as big, and too high to be a house light. I pulled over and watched it for a while, thinking maybe it was a plane coming directly toward me, but it didn’t move. Eventually I went home, but when curiosity got to me I went back out to check it out again, but it was gone. I’ll never know what it was, but it was certainly unusual. – Liz Fogg

There was one time when i was about 10 it was above the hill and shot to ironstone point and back .we watched it for about 2 minutes then it vanished. Others saw it too. About 1975. Never forgotten it . A huge bright light. – ​Dallys Griffiths 

I used to see it quite often at certain times of the year. I think it was a star perhaps Venus low on the horizon to the west over Middle River. – ​Carol Houston

I had an experience years ago coming back from Kingscote to American River, I was watching a weird light then it disappeared then a minute later this bright light came flat out behind me then shot off was very strange indeed. – ​Nikki Redman 

I also remember Jane Bowering saying in the late 90's she had an encounter on platform highway one night. I don't think Jane is the kind of person to tell lies either. – Daniel Glasson 

Yep, and no one believed me, lol. Saw it in Kingscote. Can’t explain it, wasn’t a plane or anything else. – Simone Yvette Halloran 

An Edmonds Kind of UFO? Local attorney heads up group investigating sightings

Michael Hall of Edmonds shows off the photos he took in January 2012 of a UFO over his home in Edmonds.

Michael Hall grew up in the community, opened his law practice here in 1988 and served a stint on the Edmonds City Council. His mom, Laura Hall, served as Edmonds mayor between 1992 and 1995. Semi-retired now, Hall still practices law, still in Edmonds. But today other interests are taking center stage. And these extend beyond the borders of Edmonds, and beyond even the known universe.

Hall heads up the UFOiTeam (or on Facebook here), a group he describes as “paranormal field investigators who follow up on UFO sighting reports.”

“I’ve always been interested in the paranormal,” he explains. “And the recent uptick in reports of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and the fact that the U.S. government is finally officially ‘disclosing’ their existence is giving these sightings a new legitimacy.” (UAP, by the way, is fast replacing UFO as the preferred term to describe these types of sightings.)

Hall is referring to a December 2017 front-page expose in the New York Times documenting the long-running efforts of the Defense Department’s multi-million dollar program to study, investigate and document UFO sightings and reports.

According to Hall, this knowledge has been there for decades, but has been kept under wraps and only recently is coming to the fore.

“Most folks have heard about the 1947 incident in Roswell, New Mexico, that reportedly found parts of downed alien craft and even bodies of alien life forms” Hall explained. “But what many don’t know is that earlier that same year there were two sightings right here in Washington state, one on Maury Island involving six donut-shaped craft, and the other over Mount Rainier where nine crescent-shaped craft were seen flying in formation.”

It got personal for Hall on a clear chilly January evening in 2012.

“It was about 9:30 p.m. and I was coming home from the monthly parent-teacher meeting at Maplewood School,” he recalls. “As I was walking into my house I couldn’t help noticing the bright, clear moon. I took out my iPhone and snapped a few photos of it. The next day I looked closely at the photos on the big computer screen, and saw a strange red dot in the corner by the moon.”

Using several photo-enhancing apps, Hall zeroed in on the dot and what emerged was nothing short of amazing.

One of the enhanced images taken on January 10, 2012 by Michael Hall showing a cone-shaped UFO in the skies over Edmonds.

“I saw a cone-like shape just below the moon that just didn’t seem to belong there,” he said. “Now I don’t like loose ends. As a naturally curious individual, I found myself driven to get to the bottom of this.”

And the deeper he got, the stranger things became.

All iPhones keep a photo stream folder, where photos are stored in sequence based on the time they were taken. Examining the photo stream folder in his phone, Hall was amazed to discover that his moon photos were out of sequence. Specifically, according the file metadata, they were taken not at 9:30 p.m. when he actually took them, but 17 hours earlier, shortly after 3 a.m. that morning, when the moon was in an entirely different position in the sky.

Following the trail, he sent the photos to Bruce Maccabee of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), for further analysis. MUFON has access to sophisticated analytic tools that can determine a wide array of information from an image, including the exact coordinates, altitude and direction.

The results only deepened the mystery.

According to Hall, Maccabee found that the photo appears to have been taken from inside a vehicle that was hovering approximately 40 feet above his backyard, showing the image of a second vehicle as seen through a window of the first.

So how did these images get on Hall’s iPhone?

“I can’t explain that,” he confesses. “As far as I know I was asleep at the time. But the images are unequivocally there, and metadata doesn’t lie. Right now the only explanations that fit involve some sort of intercession by others employing knowledge and techniques beyond our current understanding. And it’s a good bet that these others are not of this world.”

With increasing reports of similar incidents coming in from around the globe, and the disclosure by the U.S. government of the existence of these phenomena, “the whole question of whether these exist is fast becoming moot,” says Hall.

“Think of the implications,” he continued. “We could gain access to superior technologies that could solve our terrestrial problems of energy supply, clean air and water, aging, cures for diseases and more. Things that could benefit our everyday lives, cure famine or even cure Aunt Betty of cancer.”

Hall invites anyone interested in learning more or becoming part of this adventure to drop in at any weekly UFOiTeam meeting (meetings are held Wednesday evenings 6-8 p.m. at the Lynnwood Denny’s, 4109 196^th St. S.W.), visit the UFOiTeam website or Facebook page or contact him directly by phone at 425-245-4661 or email at michaelhall3200@gmail.com.

UFO sightings should be reported to the National UFO Reporting Center, 206-722-3000. Visitors to their website can also view data on recent sightings and reports.

A Sociologist Unpacks Our Fixation With Aliens

By Katie Heaney

Joseph O. Baker, associate professor of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at East Tennessee State University, is the co-author of the 2011 book Paranormal America, an exploration of the belief in UFOs, ghosts, Bigfoot, and beyond. Here, Baker explains where our schema of aliens comes from.

Why, when we think of aliens, do they all look the same — three feet tall, gray or green, big black eyes?
It didn’t used to be that way. UFO narratives became much more popular in the 1950s and ’60s, and during that era the descriptions of the aliens would be almost humanlike in form. If you see drawings that some of the so-called contactees made, the aliens almost look like Swedish people — very attractive blond types with shining eyes. Now, if I’m in class, and I ask a student to go draw an alien on the board, they all draw the little gray abductor. The abductee narrative really took over pop culture in the 1970s and 1980s, and after that, there’s this homogenization of the public perception.

What happened in the 1970s and 1980s that made the little gray abductor such a dominant trope in these fantasies?
The short answer is media — stories, TV, movies about abductions. Those came partly from people’s experiences — in particular Travis Walton, whom they made Fire in the Sky about. That was a really influential movie. That representation diffused that narrative more widely. Betty and Barney Hill are another pair of famous abductees who put their story out there. As far as why these folks were putting their stories out there then and not reporting them earlier, that’s hard to say.

In terms of why that caught on, I think there is something to be said for a lack of faith in government and institutions in that era, and that coincided with UFOs’ rise in popularity. The lack of trust in the government, and the idea that the government knows something about this — those two things went together, and you can see it in the public reaction post-Vietnam, to Watergate, all that stuff. That’s speculation, though; it’s hard to prove that.

Even those little gray abductors look pretty human, when you think about it — four limbs, heads with eyes. Why do we have such a hard time imagining radically different forms of life?
We’re the people doing the projecting here. Much the same way people do with God — people anthropomorphize God, when really what sense does it make for a supernatural entity to have a gender or be humanoid? I think it’s a reflection of the fact that humans are the ones doing the imagining, so they’re making this in their own image typically. Anthropomorphized supernatural entities tend to be more compelling to us.

On the topic of abduction, is there a reason so many of these stories feature “probing”? Is probing a predominantly male fantasy/story? Is there an equivalent female trope?
Women report being probed in various ways too. A lot of times in these stories there is a sexual element. Men will report having sperm extraction, and women will report having eggs extracted. It kind of goes both ways.

The probe part of the abduction narrative took over in some sense because it tends to be the most salacious aspect of these stories. It’s become almost become shorthand for alien abduction. But the stories of abduction among believers are really diverse, and usually probing is only one small part of it. There are still more people who claim positive forms of contact than claim negative forms of contact, despite the fact that the negative abduction narrative is the one that predominates in popular culture.

What do some of those positive abduction narratives sound like?
They tend to be akin to religion in some ways. Inside the UFO subculture, a lot of times contactee narratives fit this enlightenment model, in which beings of higher enlightenment show people the errors of humanity, or help them reach a higher plane of consciousness. They oftentimes have a religious feel to them. In contrast, the abduction narratives are usually perceived as a negative experience, and when people talk about those, they’re mainly trying to prove to other people that their trauma is real.

Are there any conclusions you’ve been able to draw about the type of people who believe?
Men are more likely to believe and people with lower levels of income are more likely to believe. Interestingly, though the stereotype is that it’s tinfoil-hat wearers, that doesn’t hold at all. We don’t really find strong patterns by education, and if we do, there’s usually a slight positive effect. It’s not ignorance, and it’s not low education.

One of the other strongest predictors is not participating as strongly in forms of organized religion. In some sense, there’s a bit of a clue there about what’s going on with belief — it’s providing an alternative belief system. If you look at religious-service attendance, there will be a strong negative effect there for belief in UFOs.

I’ve heard that sightings are way down in the smartphone era, when people presumably don’t take a story as proof enough — what do we know about the prevalence of belief in UFOs and aliens? And about the frequency of sightings over the decades?
There are only a few surveys that asked subjects about witnessing UFOs in the ’80s and ’90s, but as far as I’ve seen, rates of reported sightings and rate of belief have been pretty stable. The 2005 Baylor Religion survey found that 26 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “Some UFOs are probably spaceships from other worlds.” The 2014 Chapman Survey of American Fears found that 42 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “Some UFOs are really spaceships from another planet.” In the CSAF survey, they didn’t offer a neutral/“don’t know” option, so that drove up the numbers there. My sense is that stability is actually the answer once you remove question-modifier effects.

It’s true that it’s easier to hoax things now than it used to be. I would think that an increased availability of videos, if it was going to do anything, might lead to more belief, but from most of what I’ve seen, it looks more like stasis.

Most alien-encounter stories give aliens one of two motives — either they want something from us, or they want to kill us. What does that say about us?
It shows that we have a high level of perceived self-importance. The idea that in this vast universe, these beings sought us out in this tiny corner of the spiral arm of the Milky Way to come learn something from us is a bit flattering. So it also serves the role for us of saying we’re an important part of the universe. In some of the more negative stories, aliens treat us like we’re in a zoo, and I suppose that downplays our importance some. The standard abduction story subordinates us and makes us feel inferior.

I wonder if part of the reason the most popular image of an alien is three feet tall is so it feels less threatening.
If you see the way people describe the grays, they’re sadistic little bastards. They may be little, but you probably don’t want to trifle with them.

That said, one of the strongest predictors you can find for believers is their extreme distrust of the government. To the extent that Trump undermines the legitimacy of the government, that might actually increase belief in UFOs. If more people distrust government, that’s only going to be a boon for UFO subculture.