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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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VIDEO AT LINK.........................
1 posted on 05/17/2021 12:35:10 PM PDT by Red Badger
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To: Red Badger

When was the last time you ever, ever heard a fighter pilot describe there fighter, etc. as an ‘airplane’? Go figure.


2 posted on 05/17/2021 12:37:53 PM PDT by cranked
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To: Red Badger
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...

So why didn’t Biden cancel this piece of Trump work like he cancelled everything else Trump?

3 posted on 05/17/2021 12:39:21 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom (“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session" - Gideon J. Tucker)
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To: Red Badger

Luis Elizondo is a complete kook...citing him ruins any credibility this article would otherwise have.


4 posted on 05/17/2021 12:39:46 PM PDT by dinodino ( )
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To: Red Badger

What happened when these Navy guys tried to shoot it down?


5 posted on 05/17/2021 12:40:01 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: Red Badger

“We are not alone. We’ve never been alone...”


6 posted on 05/17/2021 12:40:18 PM PDT by Carriage Hill (A society grows great when old men plant trees, in whose shade they know they will never sit..)
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To: BenLurkin

Top Secret....................


7 posted on 05/17/2021 12:41:43 PM PDT by Red Badger (Jesus said there is no marriage in Heaven. That's why they call it Heaven.....................)
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To: carriage_hill

Bill Clinton thought he was alone................. with Monica..................


8 posted on 05/17/2021 12:42:22 PM PDT by Red Badger (Jesus said there is no marriage in Heaven. That's why they call it Heaven.....................)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Because he can’t. Presidents can’t undo statutory language with an Executive Order.

Everything Biden has undone of Trump’s was originally done by Trump with an EO. Had Ryan & McConnell worked with Trump the two-years they held the Congress while Trump held the White House, Biden would have been SOL. But, they didn’t instead limiting their cooperation on a tax package that provided significant benefit corporate America.

They could have codified the construction of the wall, enforcement of the border, protection against this woke and TRANS bs we’re dealing with now, but didn’t because that’s not what the Chamber of Commerce was telling McConnel & Ryan to do.


9 posted on 05/17/2021 12:44:17 PM PDT by ScubaDiver (Reddit refugee.)
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To: dinodino

Why, he was running the AATIP program in the Pentagon and had the support of a very high ranking civilian official also in the story in advancing this report....


10 posted on 05/17/2021 12:44:27 PM PDT by srmanuel (`)
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To: BenLurkin

They’re rarely armed during a training cruise unless they’re in a live-fire range.


11 posted on 05/17/2021 12:45:55 PM PDT by ScubaDiver (Reddit refugee.)
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To: ScubaDiver

Thanks for the clear and good explanation, Scuba. What you say is obvious, but I completely overlooked that.


12 posted on 05/17/2021 12:46:13 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom (“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session" - Gideon J. Tucker)
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To: dinodino
Nonsense. On what do you base such a personal attack other than you are skeered of this subject?

Enlighten us please.

13 posted on 05/17/2021 12:47:06 PM PDT by RoosterRedux
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

The aliens told him not to. ;)


14 posted on 05/17/2021 12:49:20 PM PDT by cuban leaf (We killed our economy and damaged our culture. In 2021 we will pine for the salad days of 2020.)
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To: RoosterRedux

I’ll be happy to. This quack has been making the rounds for years. Here’s a recent article calling into question his background:

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/01/ufo-unidentified-history-channel-luis-elizondo-pentagon/


15 posted on 05/17/2021 12:50:01 PM PDT by dinodino ( )
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To: ScubaDiver

Makes sense.


16 posted on 05/17/2021 12:50:22 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: srmanuel; dinodino
Attacking Elizondo is just the old trick of attacking the messenger when you can't attack the message.

But in all due respect to Freeper DinoDino, this is a troubling matter.

If these things turn out to belong to our enemies, our military is inadequate to the task of our defense.

If these things turn out to belong to something not human, well...it's a whole new ball game.

17 posted on 05/17/2021 12:51:46 PM PDT by RoosterRedux
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To: Red Badger

When first person reports include totally clear photos that (a) are unmistakably NOT tampered with and (b) totally clearly identity the actual vessel, and it is (c) totally clearly not known to any humans as human created, THEN everyone will have to pay attention.

Meanwhile it is all a lot of “chatter”.


18 posted on 05/17/2021 12:52:39 PM PDT by Wuli
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To: RoosterRedux

Read this, and then decide for yourself:

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/01/ufo-unidentified-history-channel-luis-elizondo-pentagon/


19 posted on 05/17/2021 12:53:21 PM PDT by dinodino ( )
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To: RoosterRedux

They’re definitely not nothing so they’re either ours, theirs (China/Russia) or off world/dimension. What other explanations could there be?


20 posted on 05/17/2021 12:54:23 PM PDT by Levy78
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