Pentagon Continued UFO Investigation Program Using ‘Black Money’
A video shows what’s said to be an encounter between a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet and an unknown object. (Department of Defense via New York Times)
Original Article | Author: Alan Boyle (Geek Wire)
The U.S. Department of Defense funded a program to investigate unidentified flying objects until 2012, and the program may well be continuing with alternate funding, The New York Times reported today.
The Times says its report is based on a range of interviews with people familiar with the program — including the military intelligence official who ran it until a couple of months ago, Luis Elizondo; and the now-retired U.S. senator who helped get $22 million in funding for the program, Nevada Democrat Harry Reid.
“This was so-called ‘black money,'” Reid told the Times.
The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program is also discussed today in a report published by Politico.
A share of the federal funding reportedly went to a company headed by Robert Bigelow, the Nevada billionaire who has long held that aliens were visiting Earth in UFOs. Bigelow’s company, Bigelow Aerospace, is currently involved in a NASA-backed program to develop expandable space modules, and one of its modules is being tested on the International Space Station.
“I’m not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing going,” the Times quoted Reid as saying. “I think it’s one of the good things I did in my congressional service. I’ve done something that no one has done before.”
The Times published a video clip that was recorded by a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet and retained by the Pentagon’s UFO program.
The black-and-white video clip, which dates back to 2004, appears to show an object moving against a cloudy background and zooming away at high speed, off California’s coast near San Diego. In an accompanying story, the Times provides retired Navy pilot David Fravor’s account of the encounter with what he said was a whitish oval object.
Defense Department officials are quoted as saying that the program was funded until 2012, and Elizondo told the Times that he continued to work with the Navy and the CIA after that time.
Elizondo left his Pentagon post in October and is now director of global security and special programs for a company called To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science. In a news release issued today, Elizondo said he was “honored to serve at the DOD and took my mission of exploring unexplained aerial phenomena quite seriously.”
“In the end, however, I couldn’t carry out that mission, because the department — which was understandably overstretched — couldn’t give it the resources that the mounting evidence deserved,” he said.
Elizondo said he left the Pentagon “under very good terms” to join To The Stars, where the investigation would be “priority number one.” Toward that end, To The Stars has set up a “Community of Interest” website to serve as a central database and online hub for information related to unidentified aerial phenomena.
The Times quoted Elizondo as saying that his successor at the Pentagon was continuing with investigative efforts.
