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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: PIF
Thx for that.

Smearing Elizondo is a rather pitiful attempt to damage a story that is now coming from the Pentagon itself.

81 posted on 05/17/2021 1:50:09 PM PDT by RoosterRedux
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To: dinodino
What do you call a 2 year old dated report? Breaking news? C'mon man!

And you keep focusing on one person....What about all the Navy personnel, witnesses, radar operators, radar tracks, ship/aircraft video from Navy aircraft and Navy warships?

82 posted on 05/17/2021 1:50:42 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: Levy78

“there are virtually no significant military and tech secrets among the global powers these days.”
BS there are so many things that go on in DARPA and elsewhere that nobody knows about, even our enemies. How many of the publicized stories of spies in the US being caught passing US military secrets to the Russians and/or Chinese are actually true? What I mean is how many of them were actually selling real secrets, and how many were doubles, unbeknowst to themselves? When one is shown to be a spy the best way to deal with that, counter-espionage wise, is to subtely start feeding that spy with information that is true for the most part to lend credence to the rest of the information which is actually dis-information. And it is best to do this without the spy ever knowing its being done. For instance, Russia and China cannot make their stealth tech work nearly as well as ours, Russia because they’re just not that good at very precise manufacturing, and China because every bit of the stealth tech they possess was stolen, the Chinese have created or discovered very little of the tech their military uses and that is their Achilles Heel, because by stealing our tech, it makes the Chinese very vulenrable to the kind of operations I described. And having read reports about the state of Chinese stealth, I think there is no doubt the Chinese have been snookered several times in that way, and as I said, the proof is in the pudding, Chinese stealth is crap and will not stand a chance against US stealthy platforms like the F-22 or the F-35.


83 posted on 05/17/2021 1:52:50 PM PDT by fatman6502002 ((The Team The Team The Team - Bo Schembechler circa 1969))
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To: Roman_War_Criminal

The inter-dimensional concept definitely predominates popular thinking of those who have worked with abduction victims (like John Mack, Budd Hopkins, and David Jacobs).


84 posted on 05/17/2021 1:53:09 PM PDT by RoosterRedux
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To: dragnet2

I have stated repeatedly on this forum that I do *not* believe that these objects are unknown to our military. I believe, in fact, that our military is responsible for them, and that this publicity is part of a disinformation campaign by the government. Does that mean that *everyone* in the military knows about these black programs? Absolutely not!

By the way, you can go back a lot further than two years to find serious concerns about Elizondo’s credibility. I don’t know why you are so quick to believe this shyster.


85 posted on 05/17/2021 1:56:12 PM PDT by dinodino ( )
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To: BDParrish

I do not deny your premise - that sight is not everything.

However, one person cannot record the smell and accurately relay that exact smell to someone else. People can record sound, but in most UFO instances they rarely do and/or the distance to what they see from where they stand is so great there is likely no local sound that seems to be identified with the object. The object does not land so they cannot touch it and even if it did land and they touched it, we do not have super objective “touch recorders” we only have human’s subjective touch descriptions.

So, that does leave sight, and what was seen and EXACTLY what the object looked like. BUT that one attribute that can be done and can be done clearly is usally not done or not done clearly.

So any kind of “evidence” that is transmissible with complete transparency is always absent.

Any other kinds of “proof” may render a “belief” that is “true” to the believer, but that does nothing to convince anyone else.

Only the unmistakable pictures will start to end the mystery.


86 posted on 05/17/2021 1:56:33 PM PDT by Wuli
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To: Mark17

Ping


87 posted on 05/17/2021 1:56:47 PM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal (Jesus + Something = Nothing ; Jesus + Nothing = Everything )
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To: Roman_War_Criminal
The technology is out there to fake this in front of our lying eyes.

Does that apply to warship radar images, aircraft wing cameras, including infrared imaging, Navy pilots witnesses et al.

What is this technology that's, "Out there" and able to do all this?

88 posted on 05/17/2021 1:57:08 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: Roman_War_Criminal

The way I get folks to “change their thinking” about something like this is to imagine that the year is 1494 and they are there at the most important moment in the history of mankind of that time—The Treaty of Tordesillas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas

(I know, nobody has ever heard of it—but that is the point!)

The King of Spain and the King of Portugal divided the world in half, and claimed each for their country....

Forever!

That was a little over six hundred years ago—and now Spain and Portugal are tiny little countries you can barely find on a map—with tiny economies and pathetic military forces.

Now—imagine the world six hundred years in the future.

_Anything_ is possible.

The certainty of today may well be the punch line of obscure jokes known only to medieval scholars.

Future technology will be off the charts insane, crazy, impossible, ridiculous.

Once folks get that, they stop saying “can’t be” and “never” and start paying attention...


89 posted on 05/17/2021 1:57:54 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: BenLurkin

“I’ll do anything for love, but I won’t do THAT!”


90 posted on 05/17/2021 2:00:16 PM PDT by StolarStorm
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To: RoosterRedux

Not if they wanted them to be deterrents to Russia and China doing military things we don’t want them to do. In that case we want them, maybe not to know for absolute certain because we always want some level of ambiquity, but we would want them to take very seriously the notion that they could be of US origin, because one thing we do know for certain; the Russians and Chinese know these things are not theirs. In fact, if they’re not proven to be of alien origin, there is really only one country that could have possibly created this kind of tech and that is the good ole USA.


91 posted on 05/17/2021 2:00:36 PM PDT by fatman6502002 ((The Team The Team The Team - Bo Schembechler circa 1969))
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To: BenLurkin

But you don’t debate. You always tear down stories and hardly ever add to them.


92 posted on 05/17/2021 2:00:37 PM PDT by Vermont Lt (. )
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To: dinodino
I do *not* believe that these objects are unknown to our military.

You're free to believe whatever you want, but it certainly don't mean it's a fact. I have no idea what these objects are, but I do know there is a hell of a lot of evidence which supports their existence.

93 posted on 05/17/2021 2:00:52 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: Red Badger

Probably electromagnetic and/or hypersonic tests of missles


94 posted on 05/17/2021 2:02:27 PM PDT by Fledermaus (The Republican Party is DEAD! It took 160 years but The Whigs Struck Back!)
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To: Wuli

I see what you are saying. What I meant to say is that the persons who have told me their stories always confirm that there is no other effect on the environment at the time they witnessed it. ONLY a sight. Even in cases where the UFO was only 100feet away.


95 posted on 05/17/2021 2:02:46 PM PDT by BDParrish (God called, He said He'd take you back!)
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To: Vermont Lt

If that’s how I come across, I apologize.

Here is a topic for discussion.

More of a dumb question, perhaps,

What is all of the evidence that a uap dropped 80,000 feet almost instantaeuosly?


96 posted on 05/17/2021 2:04:18 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: fatman6502002
the Russians and Chinese know these things are not theirs. In fact, if they’re not proven to be of alien origin, there is really only one country that could have possibly created this kind of tech and that is the good ole USA.

Yep. That's true.

But unfortunately the pilots who have seen these things and folks from the Pentagon and Senate Committees (on Intel) say that they are too advanced to be our tech.

97 posted on 05/17/2021 2:08:06 PM PDT by RoosterRedux
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To: dinodino
I believe, in fact, that our military is responsible for them

That begs the question, what's their motive for doing all this and then pretending they have no idea what they are?

98 posted on 05/17/2021 2:10:45 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: Red Badger

Do not trust any being that needs a physical ship.

The weeds are arriving.


99 posted on 05/17/2021 2:11:53 PM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings )
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To: dinodino
You can find plenty more negative info on Elizondo...I only showed you one such article.

Full disclosure: I don't know of this guy and have no dog in this fight.

This reminds me of the early days here and a poster with the screen name "Michael Rivero" who claimed some level of expertise because he had "worked for NASA" at some point in his career.

Any post he made about technical details related to aviation or space were way off.

It was all bluster and tinfoil, but he had lots of followers here.

It turned out later that his job at NASA was as a graphic artist. Nothing against graphic artists, but drawing stick figures of moon landings rarely leads to a detailed aerospace knowledgebase.

100 posted on 05/17/2021 2:12:34 PM PDT by TankerKC (Be first with the truth. )
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