UFOs Are Real on 60 Minutes – Where Are We Now?
There is no going back from what happened on May 16, 2021 on 60 Minutes:
Bill Whitaker: So, what you are telling me is that UFOs, unidentified flying objects, are real?
Lue Elizondo: Bill, I think we’re beyond that already. The government has already stated for the record that they’re real. I’m not telling you that. The United States government is telling you that.
On the May 16 edition of 60 Minutes Luis Elizondo who headed a Defense Department project called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) stated that the US Government is admitting there are real UFOs, or UAPs, unknown aircraft that repeatedly intrude into restricted airspace. As if that wasn’t monumental enough during the interviews, Chris Mellon, a former Deputy Director of National Intelligence stated we do not understand the technology that drives them because it seems to be years if not centuries beyond our current aeronautic capability, or that of any known foreign power. We do not know who or what is piloting them, and we do not why They are here.
In almost 40 years of studying the UFO Mystery, this is unprecedented public disclosure.
The summary of the encounter is that two Navy pilots piloting F/A-18-F fighter jets in November 2004 as part of the Strike Group from the USN Carrier Nimitz attempted to intercept an intelligently controlled vehicle of unknown origin and exhibiting flight technology by speed and maneuverability that is beyond anything we possess.
Those of us who have studied the UFO Mystery know these strange encounters have been going on since at least World War II with the Foo Fighters shadowing combat aircraft on both sides of the Axis. We also know that after 1947, these Military UFO Encounters were taken very seriously at the highest levels of command. I learned from my friend, June Crain, who had firsthand knowledge, that the Air Force Project Blue Book secretly diverted the most serious cases for in-depth investigation away from the public. The system for covert, internal reporting of UFO/UAP Reports was established by Air Force regulation in 1958. This is confirmed in declassified files from the CIA on their public website.[1]
The Air Force admitted the reality of UFOs/UAPs as early as 1947. The originally Secret Memorandum from Lt. General Nathan Twining to General Schulgen, commanding the Army Air Force stated plainly, “The phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious.”[2]
Now in 2021, the public is told directly UFOs/UAPs are real. The interviews on 60 Minutes were all serious business from the interview of Elizondo to the on-camera testimonies of Commander David Fravor and Lt. Commander Alex Dietrich. The 60 Minutes UAP segment was not an endorsement of Extraterrestrials as the explanation for the aerial vehicles described. But that explanation, also known as the ETH, was not completely dismissed, or ridiculed either.
There was more going on in this encounter that was not covered. The orders given to Fravor and Dietrich were to investigate “multiple anomalous aerial vehicles” that descended from an altitude of 80,000 feet to sea level in less than a second. The two fighter jets were directed to the predicted touchdown location. When they arrived, they discovered roiling whitewater the size of a 737 on the surface of an otherwise calm sea.
The fighter pilots and their weapons’ officers observed the Tic-Tac UAP moving above the surface of the whitewater area. This UAP was given the Tic-Tac moniker because it was whitish, a smooth rectangular shape with rounded corners about 40 feet long that could move in any direction. The object was under intelligent control – when Commander Fravor circled lower to get a closer look, the UAP mirrored his movements. It ascended towards his aircraft and then it accelerated so fast it seemed to disappear.
Was the whitewater area a surface effect of whatever technology powers the Tic-Tac UAP, or was there another, much larger object below the surface causing the roiling of the ocean? There is a long history of unexplainable large underwater objects seen by sailors on the surface or detected below. This subject was elegantly covered in a book by Ivan T. Sanderson from 1970 – Invisible Residents: The Reality of Underwater UFOs. Sanderson’s book is filled odd reports of lights, objects, and strange phenomena over the oceans of the world, some going back a century. These odd events were often recorded in ships’ logs.
If the ocean surface was disturbed because of a larger craft under the surface, then this one may have deployed the smaller, Tic-Tac UAP that Commander Fravor described as being about the same size as his fighter jet (40 plus feet long).
On December 19, 2017, in one of the original interviews of David Fravor that were published, he recounts looking back at the water surface when the Tic-Tac UAP vanished. “As I get closer, as my nose is starting to pull back up, it accelerates and it’s gone,” he told the Washington Post. “Faster than I’d ever seen anything in my life. We turn around, say let’s go see what’s in the water and there’s nothing. Just blue water.”
However, we truly do not know if the maneuvers and departure of the Tic-Tac UAP may have diverted attention from a fast submersion by whatever was below the surface. If you review some of the more dramatic UFO/UAP reports over or beneath bodies of water, these Unknown Aerial Vehicles can move through the water, and they can transit immediately from the water to the air at speeds beyond known aircraft or submersibles.
In the UFO community there is a predictable over-reaction to the Tic-Tac revelation on 60 Minutes – some are calling this DISCLOSURE with a capital “D.” But is it really?
Researchers like me will devour any UFO-related story that has high quality witnesses, people like Fravor and Dietrich who are professional, intelligent, and cautious in the conclusions they draw from their encounters with extraordinary aerial vehicles and whatever intelligence(s) operate them. But after we study the details of each report, we step back and examine the new revelations in a historical context.
The 60 Minutes UFO/UAP story precedes the submission next month of an Unclassified Report to the Senate on the national security implications of UAP encounters. Do not forget this will be an UNCLASSIFIED report – the public will not be privy to anything that might upset voter confidence or undermine the status quo, or anything that might compromise security. Politics is always part of the equation – information is disclosed because it benefits someone or some agency. Information is kept classified for precisely the same reason.
Finally, to keep my perspective in this field of researching often impossible to verify reports, I try to remember Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the Football.[3] How many times did I believe that the next seemingly game-changing development in the field of Ufology would be the one to identify our mysterious Visitors and forever resolve the question of whether Mankind was alone in the Universe? And when I ran forward, thinking we would launch the best kick ever into the end zone of UFO Reality, the ball was yanked away, and I ended up flat on my butt. Sadly, in the history of UFO Research there are so many examples we might learn from, but we almost never do. Perhaps the most atrocious example in recent years was the 2015 Cinco de Mayo Massacre of Ufology aka The Roswell Slides fiasco.
If the Media decides you are a UFO “Rockstar,” then you are now a sculptor of public opinion about the reality of UFOs/UAPs in our world. This is a powerful position, and that power has not always been used kindly. I think of ruined lives and careers in UFO history – the fate of Portage County Ohio Deputy Dale Spaur who tried to honestly report one of the longest and strangest police pursuits ever, or Paul Bennewitz, a scientist trying to report his concerns about strange radio signals over a classified weapon storage area to Air Force Special Agent Doty, who then led an organized campaign that broke multiple laws to drive an innocent man into a complete mental breakdown. There have been others.
In the world of UFO/UAP postings on the Internet, it appears we have collectively forgotten how the Tic-Tac UFO/UAP story was originally released. On December 16, 2017, the NY Times carried Commander David Fravor’s account of his 2004 encounter off the San Diego Coast. The story was titled 2 Navy Airmen and an Object That ‘Accelerated Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen.’ For a little over three years, this UFO/UAP report has been used as a focus to create “one stop shopping” for information. I submit that the military-intelligence leaders have learned from the entertainment-advertising world, and the result is Luis Elizondo and the To The Stars Academy all over the media.
Not long after the Tic-Tac UFO hit the news in late 2017, the primary focus of the UFO Community was shifted to the To The Stars Academy through an advertising blitz. The face of that effort was a rock star named Tom Delonge. The company was a merge of DeLonge’s publishing company which released books on sci-fi and the supernatural with a new research company devised by a veteran CIA officer. Donations were solicited; shares were sold, and a prospectus was published indicating that TTSA would use the funds to tackle advanced technological challenges, from alternative power sources to powerplants for interstellar spacecraft.
The Board of TTSA is a brain trust of experimental scientists like Hal Puthoff, but it also had a strong former intelligence expert presence: Jim Semivan, co-founder with 25 years in the CIA Director of Operations Office, Dr. Norm Kahn with over 30 years with an extraordinarily strong background in Bio-Warfare and the CIA. The group also included Chris Mellon, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence for President Clinton and President GW Bush. It certainly is impressive how rock star Tom DeLonge walked into the offices of the CIA and convinced seasoned professionals to go “rogue” and begin telling the public that UFOs/UAPs are real.
I watched several episodes of Unidentified and I began to feel like UFO History was being rewritten – Tom DeLonge had gone to the authorities in Washington DC to bring “UFO Truth” to the masses. And the inference was that nothing had been learned and no one had accomplished anything in the UFO field until 2017. As this new mythos took hold, DeLonge moved out of the media spotlight to be replaced with Luis Elizondo, a former head of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Luis Elizondo’s image was even more carefully crafted – the brave loner, facing down the dark forces of UFO Secrecy in the labyrinthine corridors of the Pentagon.
Reality check: Who among any of the TTSA personnel have released any UFO/UAP information without prior review and authorization so that they do not violate their security oaths and non-disclosure agreements? I am not saying this is necessarily sinister. Perhaps now is the time to get the public accustomed to UFO/UAP Reality. Those in charge may know what is coming.
But we, the public, do not see far beyond the current news cycle. Perhaps it is too cynical of a perspective, but it does appear that whatever UFO/UAP “Disclosure” is in progress, it is being done systematically by a consortium of the advertising and entertainment industry, the military, and the intelligence agencies. They are highly educated and experienced professionals with extensive scientific accomplishments; if they are disclosing that UFOs/UAPs are real and these “Visitors” are not from the USA or any other Earthly superpower, then I am certain the decision to inform the public was made very carefully. I am wondering if our concept of the Earth as the only location for intelligent life is about to be rendered as obsolete and absurd as believing the Earth is flat.
Perhaps the airing of the 60 Minutes segment on UFOs/UAPs on May 16 may be remembered as the day that Mankind started to grow up, but that does not mean we can stop asking questions or wondering who is standing behind the curtain and pulling the levers just because we finally arrived in Oz.
James E. Clarkson
Port Townsend, WA USA
May 21, 2021
[1] From Air Force Regulation 200-2 adopted by the AF on February 5, 1958. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81R00560R000100040072-9.pdf
[2] From Project 1947 files: https://www.project1947.com/fig/twinng47.htm
[3] With apologies to Charles M. Schulz. I think he would understand.