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'There’s something out there that was better than our airplane': UFO mystery makes it to 60 Minutes
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com ^ | | May 17, 2021 03:18 PM | by Jerry Dunleavy, Justice Department Reporter |

Posted on 05/17/2021 12:35:10 PM PDT by Red Badger

Ahead of a June deadline for an intelligence report on UFOs, the mystery over what the U.S. government calls “unidentified aerial phenomena” was featured on 60 Minutes for the first time. Navy pilot witnesses and former government officials argued this is a serious issue.

The declassified report on UFOs scheduled to be handed over next month was mandated thanks to the $2.3 trillion bill that former President Donald Trump signed into law in December, which contained a "committee comment" from the Senate Intelligence Committee, calling upon the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Pentagon to provide what they know.

Navy pilots such as Cmdr. Dave Fravor, Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich, and former Lt. Ryan Graves, the former head of the U.S. government’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, Luis Elizondo, and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, Christopher Mellon, all weighed in on Sunday to say that UFOs are real, though what, exactly, they are remains a mystery.

Fravor, the commander of an F/A-18F squadron on the USS Nimitz at the time of a November 2004 encounter with a UFO, and Dietrich, who had never spoken publicly about it until Sunday, spoke about what they saw when the ship asked them to investigate while separately piloting naval aircraft roughly 100 miles off the coast of San Diego, describing their bizarre encounter with a white “Tic Tac”-like UFO, the existence of which was also caught on camera and radar by the Navy, which they said they spotted hovering above a patch of whitewater in an otherwise calm ocean. They said that they and their respective co-pilots watched for about five minutes.

“So, as we’re looking at this, her backseater says, ‘Hey skipper, do you —‘ And about that got out, I said, ‘Dude, do you see that thing down there?’ And we saw this little white Tic Tac-looking object, and it’s just kinda moving above the whitewater area,” Fravor said, adding that its movements were “just like a ping pong ball — very, very random.”

Dietrich described its movements as looking like what happens if you drop your phone and it bounces around. Fravor said he spiraled down to get a closer look while Dietrich’s plane circled above.

“The Tic Tac is still pointing north-south — it goes ‘pop’ and just turns abruptly and starts mirroring me — so, as I’m coming down, it’s coming up … It was aware we were there,” Fravor said. “I want to see how close I can get, so, I go like this, and it’s climbing still, and when it gets right in front of me, it just disappears … Disappears, like, gone … When it turned and started coming up, it was like, ‘OK!’ Because we have nothing that goes that fast and just starts climbing at will.

“I felt the vulnerability of not having anything to defend ourselves, to not having any rounds, anything on the rails. If this was in fact a hostile threat, and we were engaged … I felt vulnerable, and then, I felt confused when it disappeared.”

PENTAGON CONFIRMS UFO PHOTOS ARE AUTHENTIC

The duo said the UFO appeared on the USS Princeton’s radar 60 miles away a few seconds later, and the “Tic Tac” was also caught on infrared video by another flight crew before it accelerated away. Fravor and Dietrich said they reported it right away and that the reaction on the ship was mostly to laugh about it, with Fravor saying that the crew “started giving us a lot of grief,” while Dietrich said they were met with “ridicule” as crew members proceeded to play Men In Black, Independence Day, and Signs on the ship’s TV.

Fravor said he believed the admiral staff made some phone calls but didn't take it too seriously.

“I’m not a UFO guy,” Fravor said. “Oh there's definitely something that — I don't know who's building it, who's got the technology, who's got the brains. But there's something out there that was better than our airplane.”

Last year, videos from the Navy were released through the Freedom of Information Act that showed UFOs moving at incredible speeds and performing impressive aerial maneuvers. One of the videos was shot in November 2004, featuring the so-called Nimitz encounter, while the other two were shot in January 2015. The three videos were code-named “FLIR1,” “Gimbal,” and “GoFast.” In the 2015 videos, Navy pilots can be heard expressing disbelief. All three UFO videos were captured by Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets.

The videos were made public and published in part through efforts by To The Stars Academy, which was founded by Tom DeLonge, a founder and vocalist for the rock band Blink-182. Elizondo worked to declassify the videos, and Mellon told 60 Minutes he then leaked them to the New York Times. These videos are said to have been a part of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which was founded in 2007 at the insistence of then-Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid but that the Pentagon said ended in 2012.

The Defense Department announced in August that it had approved the creation of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and that the group will be led by the Navy under the "cognizance" of the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security.

Mellon, who had worked at the Pentagon under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said, “In the case of the Nimitz, these vehicles seem to have unlimited loiter time, which we don’t have. We’re limited in terms of altitude. It’s hard to design something that functions well at ground level that can go to 60,000 or 80,000 feet … and then drop down to the deck or drop to 20,000 feet, and it’s like a straight vertical line … in seconds. … I’ve talked to some of the radar operators who’ve observed that. Then, the acceleration is far beyond anything we’re capable of … There’s nothing we can build that would be strong enough to endure that amount of force and acceleration.”

Elizondo, who spent a couple decades helping run military intelligence operations before joining the AATIP, said in his interview, “Imagine a technology that can do 6 to 700 G-forces, that can fly at 13,000 miles an hour, that can evade radar, and that can fly through air and water and possibly space, and oh, by the way, has no obvious signs of propulsion, no wings, no control surfaces, and yet still can defy the natural effects of Earth's gravity. That's precisely what we're seeing.”

Graves said that in 2014, his own F/A-18F flight crew repeatedly detected UFOs in restricted airspace close to Virginia Beach, saying that this occurred “every day for at least a couple years.” He speculated it was a “threat observation program” potentially of Russian or Chinese origin and said he was worried because “if these were tactical jets from another country that were hanging out up there, it would be a massive issue, but because it looks slightly different, we're not willing to actually look at the problem in the face. We're happy to just ignore the fact that these are out there, watching us every day.”

The Pentagon has recently begun confirming the authenticity of leaked UFO videos and photos, though it has not said what conclusions it has reached about them. The Biden administration may miss the deadline to release its UFO report, according to Sen. Marco Rubio, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee when it wrote up a 180-day directive for such a disclosure. The deadline is June, and a spokesperson for Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines would tell the Washington Examiner only that the intelligence community is "aware of the requirement and will respond accordingly.”

Rubio told 60 Minutes: "There's a stigma on Capitol Hill. I mean, some of my colleagues are very interested in this topic and some kinda, you know, giggle when you bring it up, but I don't think we can allow the stigma to keep us from having an answer to a very fundamental question."


TOPICS: Business/Economy; History; Science; UFO's
KEYWORDS: ajntsa; christophermellon; con; luiselizondo; military; pentagon; ufo
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To: BenLurkin

“I’m just a lowly civilian puke, but am pretty sure that we have air to air missiles that can fly faster than our planes.”

It’s not just a question of speed, but also maneuverability if they even are physically real objects.


41 posted on 05/17/2021 1:15:02 PM PDT by PLMerite ("They say that we were Cold Warriors. Yes, and a bloody good show, too." - Robert Conquest )
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To: Red Badger
Smile for the group photo.


42 posted on 05/17/2021 1:16:27 PM PDT by Grampa Dave (Don’t mask! Don’t tell! by GranTorino!!)
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To: RoosterRedux
that some BIG news is coming in the next 30 days...

The KRAKEN is finally unleashed!

43 posted on 05/17/2021 1:18:12 PM PDT by Hot Tabasco
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To: RoosterRedux

If they belong to any military including our own, think of how destabilizing it would be...one military in the world has technology that is light years ahead of anyone else..

They can penetrate another countries air space with impunity, they can fly at speeds that no military can deal with....and probably can deliver some type of destructive power that can’t be defended against....

It might cause a potential enemy to attack without warning trying to get in the first shot...


44 posted on 05/17/2021 1:18:28 PM PDT by srmanuel (`)
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To: PLMerite
if they even are physically real objects

Important point.

Pretty sure radar can be "spoofed" and technology seems to be racing to where visual mages can be as well.

45 posted on 05/17/2021 1:19:01 PM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion, or satire. Or both.)
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To: dragnet2

“Dated story?” That link is only two years old, and Elizondo has been out peddling his nonsense for much, much longer than that. Do a bit of reading about the guy, and then decide if you want to put faith in what he says.


46 posted on 05/17/2021 1:19:02 PM PDT by dinodino ( )
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To: dinodino

Is Luis Elizondo the one making/fabricating these videos from the cockpits? Is he the one in the Pentagon saying that the videos are authentic?

Is Tom Rogan also a complete kook? Were Ronald Reagan and General MacArthur kooks — both commented on the possibility of an invasion from outer space.


47 posted on 05/17/2021 1:19:10 PM PDT by odawg
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To: Vermont Lt

Sorry, but Harry Reid doesn’t count as a credible character witness in my book.


48 posted on 05/17/2021 1:19:24 PM PDT by dinodino ( )
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To: BenLurkin

The one they witnessed on Radar dropped 80,000 ft in one second.

Pretty sure that kind of mechanics would be considered “better” than anything we have.

They stop in mid air. They turn. They shoot off so fast they cannot be tracked.

I know you are a skeptic. I understand you spend a great deal of time thinking about why something cannot be real.

There is almost universal agreement that these things ARE real. They do things we don’t know how to do.

Are they little green men? Or inter dimensional craft—I don’t know.

I don’t know if people are going to be happy to find out they are “ours” or if they are going to be pissed?

Instead of shitting on every post you read on every subject...how about you consider that stuff outside your personal realm of experience might just be possible.


49 posted on 05/17/2021 1:19:39 PM PDT by Vermont Lt (. )
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To: Gideon7
The Pentagon has only released and/or leaked a handful of images (infrared, flir, night vision, radar for the most part).

We really don't know what the military has but SNOOPIE teams were activated during the USS Kidd destroyer group's UAP contacts off LA in 2019. Each SNOOPIE team has top-of-the-line photographic and imaging equipment used for identifying potential enemy vessels that come in range.

50 posted on 05/17/2021 1:19:54 PM PDT by RoosterRedux
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To: BenLurkin
But in the meantime, don’t claim these things are “better” because we really don’t know until we see if they can be shot down.

Lets put it this way, some of these objects out perform and out maneuver all of our aircraft without question. The best, highest tech aircraft we have would disintegrate if they were subjected to the same gravitational forces. Btw, attempting to shoot down a target where we have no idea who they are, what they are, their capabilities, motives etc, would not be a smart move.

51 posted on 05/17/2021 1:20:08 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: Grampa Dave

Nice, a picture of a mylar party balloon. So what?


52 posted on 05/17/2021 1:20:35 PM PDT by dinodino ( )
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To: srmanuel

I know for a fact these things were around in 1996. So if there are human/earth based then this tech was around a long time ago. I’d think that kind of tech would have been actively used by now in one conflict or another.


53 posted on 05/17/2021 1:23:10 PM PDT by StolarStorm
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To: dinodino
I've seen hours and hours of Elizondo's and Mellon's interviews. They are both credible.

On top of that, the military has itself said all these images are theirs and they don't know what they are...so Elizondo and Mellon have been backed up by the Pentagon.

54 posted on 05/17/2021 1:23:52 PM PDT by RoosterRedux
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To: Red Badger; metmom; SaveFerris

Notice this is mainstream now.

Conditioning...


55 posted on 05/17/2021 1:25:07 PM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal (Jesus + Something = Nothing ; Jesus + Nothing = Everything )
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To: dinodino

Thanks for your posts.

I have been fascinated by this field for decades, and there seems to be an inverse relationship to how much media coverage someone gets and how much they actually know.

;-)

Imho one of the purposes of the UFOs is to undermine human science and the military. Those attempting to use science or the military to investigate them end up chasing their tails.

Some of the “smartest folks in the room” who “get this” imho are Jacque Vallee, Terence McKenna and John Mack.

Here are one McKenna podcast worth a listen:

https://psychedelicsalon.com/podcast-261-the-definitive-ufo-tape/

Jacque Vallee’s breakthrough book:

https://www.amazon.com/Passport-Magonia-Folklore-Flying-Saucers/dp/0987422480

John Mack eventually started asking the right questions:

https://www.amazon.com/Passport-Cosmos-John-Mack/dp/1907661816


56 posted on 05/17/2021 1:25:38 PM PDT by cgbg (A kleptocracy--if they can keep it. Think of it as the Cantillon Effect in action.)
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To: Hot Tabasco
[The KRAKEN is finally unleashed! ]

Hopefully not like this:


57 posted on 05/17/2021 1:27:40 PM PDT by PLMerite ("They say that we were Cold Warriors. Yes, and a bloody good show, too." - Robert Conquest )
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To: Levy78

And more than likely that is exactly what will happen.

We are now deep into the conditioning phase with this ‘report’ making it to 60 minutes.

Covid, lockdowns, UFOs, and the Great Reset are all intertwined IMHO.


58 posted on 05/17/2021 1:30:43 PM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal (Jesus + Something = Nothing ; Jesus + Nothing = Everything )
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To: RoosterRedux

Agreed. If these are terrestrial rival craft (Russia/China) then we better get our damn money back from Lockheed and Boing.


59 posted on 05/17/2021 1:30:54 PM PDT by miliantnutcase
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Comment #60 Removed by Moderator


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