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Are We Alone?

Author //
Ross Coulthart
Published //
20/05/2024
The Pale Blue Dot - earth from outside the solar system
NASA/JPL-Caltech

For thousands of years people across the world have seen anomalous objects doing weird things – hovering glowing orbs, metallic or charcoal spheres, even triangular, wedge, pill/ tic-tac shaped or discs (perhaps, craft?) moving through our skies, in orbit, and even in our oceans.

They often appear to be intelligently controlled and, despite ridicule, many witnesses even persistently claim to have encountered aliens – now officially termed NHIs (Non-Human Intelligences) or ‘Biologics’.

The mystery behind these objects has intrigued humans for millennia. Behind it all is arguably the greatest secret in human history: Are We Alone?

Whatever these Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena are, they are now defined by what are called:

THE FIVE OBSERVABLES:

  1. These objects do instantaneous hypersonic speeds.
  2. They also perform instantaneous sharp turns and manoeuvres that would induce G-forces far beyond human endurance in any known technology.
  3. They show a stealth capability - transforming themselves to be translucent or apparently invisible.
  4. They are trans-medium, often seen moving from air to sea and even into outer space.
  5. Perhaps most intriguing of all, they show themselves to be capable of positive lift without any visible means of propulsion – perhaps displaying anti-gravity.
  6. There may also be a sixth observable: humans who come into close proximity with these objects sometimes report biological effects, physical injuries or changes to the body and influences on the brain seemingly caused by these objects. There is even speculation that these objects can somehow influence human perception.

Contrary to what some debunkers suggest, these UAP events do not only happen in continental America; these sightings are happening world-wide, including (as you will see in the NHIR Institute’s online archives) here in Australia, across cultures, religions and nationalities – often raising concern in official reports written by Governments and backed by highly credible military and civilian witnesses. And the historical record suggests they’ve been around for as long as we have.

For at least 70 years there’s been a vociferous hard-line position heeded by Governments, media and the military, hostilely ridiculing and stigmatising anyone giving credibility to the phenomenon of UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects), better known today as UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena).

Most often, in polite company, if anyone raises the subject of ‘flying saucers’, or the possibility of non-human intelligent life, they’re generally dismissed with a derisory titter and snide references to tin-foil hat-wearing swivel-eyed loonies. Just admitting that he saw a UAP destroyed the political campaign of one US Democratic Party presidential candidate, Dennis Kucinich in 2008. But is the mockery justified? Why do we attack people who report seeing anomalous phenomena? Are the millions of witnesses who say they have experienced this high strangeness across the world truly all deluded? This is what the NHIR Institute is determined to investigate.

Over the past seven years, momentous allegations have been unfolding, largely in secret, in private hearings, in the United States’ Congress, that may soon turn humanity’s understanding of this anomalous phenomena, and the stigma attached to it, on its head. Are non-human intelligences [NHI] real and are they secretly interacting with humans on this planet? Long the stuff of science-fiction, this possibility is now being very seriously mooted by some very high powered and well-informed people.

Politicians, scientists, and intelligence community and military whistle-blowers are now openly accusing the US Government of a massive decades-long cover-up. They’re suggesting the World has been egregiously misled in a deliberate disinformation campaign designed to suppress interest in a phenomenon that, contrary to its public position, the US has in fact always taken very seriously indeed.

Through 2023, there was a determined effort by a bipartisan group of senior United States’ politicians to introduce extraordinary legislation that inserted UAP transparency and disclosure provisions into America’s annual Defense budget appropriations bill. What finally passed into law[1] mandated a government wide UAP records collection to be held by the US National Archives. All Government offices are now required by law to transfer their UAP records to the collection and they will be reviewed for disclosure (or not) against a set of criteria under which public release could be “postponed.”

A key provision in the Bill that would have mandated ‘eminent domain’, the confiscation, of UAP-related material controlled by private individuals or perhaps private aerospace corporations, was struck down. The mere fact however that senior politicians were prepared to put their name to legislation that mandated the confiscation of ‘non-human technology’ suggests very strongly that Congress knows a lot more than it is currently prepared to publicly admit.

For, what is very unusual about the push in Congress for this greater UAP disclosure, on an issue that many people still regard as fantasy, is that it is backed by high-powered politicians on both sides of the House, among them Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D- NY), the Republican vice-chairman of the Senate Select Committee Senator Marco Rubio (R – FL), Republican Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD), ranking member of the subcommittee on Cybersecurity for the Armed Services Committee and Democrat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) who serves on the Senate Committees for both Intelligence and Armed Services.

A previous highly respected Senate Majority Leader, the late Senator Harry Reid (D – NV) also played a major role in pushing Congress to make these laws and begin aggressively investigating what the Government knows about UAPs. Why would two Senate Majority Leaders, members of the so-called Gang of Eight, which is briefed on all of America’s most sensitive national security secrets, put their reputations on the line to promote disclosure of a supposedly non-existent non-human intelligence and technology operating secretly on our planet?

There are also Lower House politicians pushing for public Congressional hearings into UAPs, just as happened in the 1970s Watergate and Church Committee hearings, where whistle-blowers would get their chance to testify under oath. After the Pentagon’s UAP investigation office AARO issued a report[2] in February 2024 categorically denying the existence of illicit UAP efforts with retrieved extraterrestrial technology, Senator Gillibrand stated, “Oh, it’s definitely not case closed."[3] She told Matt Laslo’s Ask-A-Pol news service said she would like a public hearing in the US Summer of 2024. Her comments and those of other politicians suggest Congress suspects something is being concealed on UAPs, and it is now determined to investigate.

Inside the US Pentagon, the Department of Defence, there is now a unit, mandated by Congress, dedicated to investigating the phenomenon named AARO, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office[4]. Its stated mission is to:

…minimize technical and intelligence surprise by synchronizing scientific, intelligence, and operational detection identification, attribution, and mitigation of unidentified anomalous phenomena in the vicinity of national security areas.[5]

Congress also already passed laws in December 2022 demanding cooperation by all US intelligence and defence agencies to allow former or serving Government and private contractor employees to blow the whistle on UAP secrets, ensuring there are protections against them losing their job for revealing what they know in breach of non-disclosure agreements or security oaths. The law also required AARO to prepare a report to Congress on all US Government involvement in UAP matters going back to 1 January 1945. The report is to include

any program or activity that was protected by restricted access that has not been explicitly and clearly reported to Congress… & …any efforts to obfuscate, manipulate public opinion, hide, or otherwise provide incorrect unclassified or classified information about unidentified anomalous phenomena or related activities.[6]

Other laws, pushed in a bipartisan initiative by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Senator Marco Rubio, cut off any Government funding for undisclosed UAP programs. [7]

Congressional representatives and Senators are now more sceptically questioning the Pentagon and intelligence services, whom it suspects are holding back on UAPs. Questions are also being directed to private aerospace contractors rumoured to be holding NHI technology. This is because of evidence obtained by Congressional investigators from private briefings with first-hand witnesses behind closed doors in secure hearing rooms, including dramatic videos shot by military pilots.

Extraordinary allegations have already been aired. The New York Times reported in 2020[8] that a defence contractor astrophysicist Dr Eric W. Davis, who spent years working as a consultant for the Pentagon’s UAP investigation program, gave a classified briefing to the US Defence Department on what he called

…off-world vehicles not made on this earth.

Multiple witnesses have told Congress of the seemingly incredible, that the US is be in possession of advanced alien technology, including NHI bodies.

In June 2023, David Grusch, a former USAF Major and civilian GS-15 level intelligence official (the military equivalent of a full bird Colonel), who worked in the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, and was from 2019 to 2021 the NRO representative to the Pentagon’s then Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force [UAPTF], went public with both The Debrief[9] and TV news network News Nation [10] alleging the US runs a secretive UAP retrieval and reverse engineering program and that it is in possession of non-human technology, including craft, along with their dead pilots (“biologics”).

In 2022 Grusch filed a whistleblower complaint with the US Intelligence Community Inspector General [the ICIG], which deemed his allegations, including alleging the existence of a secret UAP retrieval and reverse-engineering program, “urgent and credible”. That ICIG investigation was still on-going at time of writing.

Grusch gave hours of classified testimony, in a secure secret hearing room (a SCIF – a sensitive compartmented information facility), to the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence, the prime intelligence oversight committee. Much of his evidence is still highly classified and remains under investigation. Mr Grusch has made it very clear in his public comments that he provided specific names and locations for what is termed ‘The Program’: a secret operation he alleges is being conducted from within government and private aerospace coordinating the retrieval and reverse-engineering of alleged non-human technology and biologics.

Grusch subsequently gave evidence under oath publicly in July 2023, detailing his allegations to the House of Congress’ Oversight Committee[11] , explaining that his allegations were grounded on information he had been given by:

…individuals with a longstanding track record of legitimacy and service to this country – many of whom also shared compelling evidence in the form of photography, official documentation, and classified oral testimony. I have taken every step I can to corroborate this evidence over a period of 4 years and to my due diligence on the individuals sharing it, and it is because of these steps that I believe strongly in the importance of bringing this information before you.

Grusch explained under oath how in 2019 he was tasked by the Pentagon’s UAPTF director to identify all Special Access Programs and Controlled Access Programs related to UAPs.

I was informed, in the course of my official duties, of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access to those additional read-on’s.

Grusch alleged that the programs he uncovered were operating in breach of oversight rules that mandated Congress must be informed about all such secret programs. The US Defence Department has conspicuously not commented about Mr Grusch or his specific allegations. All public comments from DoD have been directed through AARO, the Pentagon’s Congressionally-mandated UAP investigation office. But AARO is only as good as the information it is given and impressions to date suggest that most witnesses with direct knowledge of the legacy retrieval and reverse engineering program do not trust the Pentagon to investigate alleged misfeasance and illegality within its own control. Even AARO’s former director Dr Sean Kirkpatrick has complained that David Grusch never spoke to AARO.

However, in March 2024, the first part of the US Pentagon AARO office’s Historical Review Report into the history of US Government involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, was released. It poured cold water on the possibility that outstanding UAP sightings might be anomalous and it rejected broad allegations that the US had recovered NHI technology:

To date, AARO has not discovered any empirical evidence that any sighting of a UAP represented off-world technology or the existence [of] a classified program that had not been properly reported to Congress. Investigative efforts determined that most sightings were the result of misidentification of ordinary objects and phenomena. Although many UAP reports remain unsolved, AARO assesses that if additional, quality data were available, most of these cases also could be identified and resolved as ordinary objects or phenomena.[12]

There is an inherent non sequitur in the AARO acknowledgement that many UAP reports remained unsolved but AARO somehow felt able to declare, without presenting any evidence to back such a claim, that most of these unsolved cases would be capable of prosaic explanation. Such a contention is at best unscientific and lacking in objectivity. How could any conclusion be reached before the empirical data was considered. How could AARO possibly declare that if quality data was available, most cases could be resolved as prosaic phenomena? This statement belied a lack of objective rigour by the AARO investigators and suggested a pre-conceived conclusion as to whether these objects could possibly be anomalous.

Many commentators, including senior politicians in Congress, have strongly criticised the AARO Historical Review Report for not doing a proper investigation into the allegations raised by Grusch and many other witnesses. It has also been reported that many witnesses declined to speak to AARO because they did not trust the Pentagon to allow an objective and fair investigation.

Conspicuously, there has also been no specific public response to David Grusch’s allegations from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [ODNI] the independent intelligence czar that, since the catastrophic intelligence failures of 9-11, oversees and coordinates all the US’ intelligence agencies. In fact, in its 2022 Annual Report on UAPs to Congress, ODNI appeared to be at odds with the Pentagon and AARO’s complacency about UAPs, stating:

UAP events continue to occur in restricted or sensitive airspace, highlighting possible concerns for safety of flight or adversary collection activity.[13]

Later in the same report, ODNI stated:

UAP pose a safety of flight and collision hazard to air assets, potentially requiring aircraft operators to adjust flight patterns in response to their unauthorized presence in the airspace, operating outside of air traffic control standards and instruction.[14]

Instructive also that ODNI went on to state:

UAP continue to represent a hazard to flight safety and pose a possible adversary collection threat. Since the publication of the ODNI preliminary assessment in June 2021, UAP reporting has increased, partially due to a concentrated effort to destigmatize the topic of UAP and instead recognize the potential risks that it poses as both a safety of flight hazard and potential adversarial activity. Whereas there were previously 144 UAP reports covered during the 17 years of UAP reporting included in the ODNI preliminary assessment on UAP, there have been 247 more UAP reports during the 17 months since.[15]

In December 2023, after House members led by Ohio Congressman Mike Turner rejected key provisions proposed in Senator Schumer’s UAP disclosure amendment, Senate Majority Leader Schumer dramatically confirmed to the Senate that he believed the US Government was indeed refusing to share information on UAPs with the American people:

Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena are of immense interest and curiosity to the American people. But with that curiosity comes the risk for confusion, misinformation, and mistrust especially if the government isn’t prepared to be transparent. The United States government has gathered a great deal of information about UAPs over many decades but has refused to share it with the American people. That is wrong and additionally breeds mistrust. We have also been notified by multiple credible sources that information on UAPs has also been withheld from Congress, which if true is a violation of laws requiring full notification to the legislative branch – especially as it relates to the four congressional leaders, the defense committees, and the intelligence committee. [16]

It would appear also that, in apparent defiance of the Pentagon AARO office’s efforts to downplay the UAP issue, the senior so-called J3 intelligence Joint Chiefs’ staff advising America’s Joint Chiefs of Staff are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. In a Freedom of Information Act request obtained by researcher Douglas Johnson, Joint Chiefs’ orders sent out in May 2023 were made public in 2024.[17] The documents reveal a memorandum was sent to all US military commands worldwide mandating a set of uniform procedures to be followed for gathering data and reporting on contemporary military encounters with UAPs. It told all commands:

The US Government has observed UAP in or near the territory and/or operating areas of the United States, of its allies, and of its adversaries, and observing, identifying, and potentially mitigating UAP has become a growing priority for US policymakers, lawmakers and warfighters. The potentially ubiquitous presence of UAP defines the national security implications of those anomalies, which range from operational hazards and threats to technological and intelligence surprise to adversaries’ strategic miscalculations. It is imperative that DoD provide UAP incident, incursion, and engagement … for the Department’s detection and mitigation of potential threats, exploitation of advanced technologies; and informing policymaker and warfighter decisions. [18]

The reference to ‘anomalies’ in the Joint Chiefs document puts the Pentagon’s most senior commanders in apparent conflict with their own UAP investigation office, which of course expressly dismissed the prejudged conclusion in its historical review report the likelihood that any such anomalies could actually exist. The Joint Chiefs document went on to stipulate how ‘anomalous detections’:

…include but are not limited to phenomena that demonstrate apparent capabilities or material that exceed known performance envelopes. A UAP may consist of one or more unidentified anomalous objects and may persist over an extended period of time.[19]

This official US military memorandum also specifically defines four types of “anomalous” UAP: Spaceborne, airborne, Seaborne and Transmedium. For example it says, “…SPACEBORNE UAP are sources of anomalous detections above the Karman line (ie: 100km above Earth’s mean sea level)”. Transmedium is defined as an anomalous detection that transits more than one domain. The document does read speculatively; it is demanding that all of its commands report all such anomalous phenomena, in the clear presumption that it exists.

Since the US Air Force’s Project Blue Book investigation into UAPs was shut down in 1970, the official position of most western governments has been to reject any suggestion that UAPs might pose any threat to national security or flight safety. But, crucially importantly, that ‘no-threat’ position was expressly denied in the 2022 report of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The implication is that the Government knows something about UAPs that it is not prepared to publicly admit. Since the US Project Blue Book findings, public inquiries about UAPs have been fobbed off with assurances that no further investigation into the phenomenon is justified. Now, there is a clear change emerging from both policymakers and the military and intelligence community.

It is clear that the US Department of Defence secretly kept on studying UAPs since the 1970s; the evidence suggests it never really stopped its investigations into the phenomena at all. In December 2017, the New York Times revealed[20][21] the existence of a secret Pentagon UAP investigation probing, among other incidents, a spate of unidentified objects swarming around US Navy vessels off both the west and east coast of America in 2004 and through 2014-2015.

USS Nimitz
USS Nimitz (iStock / shaunl)
USS Nimitz

A turning point was the so-called Tic-Tac sighting incident, involving a carrier battlegroup of ships escorting the USS Nimitz off the California coast in 2004. Multiple sensor systems, comprising advanced radar, ATFLIR – forward looking infra-red imaging, and other optical sensor systems, corroborated the accounts of pilot eyewitnesses who testified that they saw an object that looked like a giant peppermint tic-tac, possibly a craft of some kind, doing manoeuvres far beyond the capabilities of known human science. These objects had no visible means of propulsion, yet they reportedly moved at hypersonic speeds, sometimes instantaneously.

More recent encounters were recorded by US Navy pilots on video, and it is these recordings that were shown to politicians in closed hearings. These mysterious sightings encounters are still occurring and that there are growing fears there could soon be a collision or confrontation with one of these objects (or perhaps, craft?).

In December 2023, what the US Department of Defence attempted to explain away as ‘drones’ were seen hovering for several nights over the USAF’s Langley Air Force Base in Virginia[22]. Despite tens of millions of dollars being spent by US taxpayers on anti-drone technology, designed to disable intruder drones and bring them down, no evidence of these objects being drones has ever been provided by the USAF. Whatever they were, they appeared to be able to hover with impunity over one of America’s most sensitive Air Force bases for several evenings – a clear national security threat. These incursions continue across not only the US but over sensitive military installations around the World.

In April 2024, the Pentagon’s UAP investigation office AARO published a report[23] into another incident over the Gulf of Mexico involving a fighter deployed from Eglin Air Force Base in January 2023. AARO declared, with “moderate certainty” that the object reported by the concerned pilot was merely a commercial industrial lighting balloon. The incident received major media attention because a Florida congressman Rep. Matt Gaetz revealed he had received a protected disclosure from the pilot, who was clearly concerned that this incident posed a flight safety and national security risk.

Rep. Gaetz, a serving member of the House Armed Services Committee, was begrudgingly permitted to view imagery of one of the objects. He said the object he saw and was briefed about demonstrated capabilities that he was:

…not able to attach to any human capability, either from the United States or from any of our adversaries.[24]

Gaetz was told how the fighter jet’s radar stopped working as it closed with the object and the infrared camera also inexplicably malfunctioned, the clear implication being that the object, whatever it was, had somehow interfered with the jet fighter’s systems.

However, the Pentagon report asserted, unconvincingly, that the object was likely a large commercial lighting balloon. Media investigations subsequently revealed that explanation to be absurdly unlikely because no such industrial-grade balloon would or had ever been reported to have been lost. Nor did the lame explanation explain the fact that radar had detected four subjects. This demonstrably poor standard of investigation by the AARO investigators does little to reassure the public that the Pentagon is serious about doing proper investigations into UAP sightings.

What is not commonly understood is that the dismissive debunking strategy towards UAP sightings by the US Department of Defence is part of an official policy developed 70 years ago by the so-called Robertson Panel, which is officially acknowledged in now declassified public records. A decision was made in secret by a group of scientists, military officers and spies that public interest in UFOs, what we today call UAPs – Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, should be debunked and discredited. A secret report was prepared for the United States’ spy agency, the CIA (the Central Intelligence Agency), recommending a mass media campaign that would “strip” Unidentified Flying Objects of their so-called ‘aura of mystery.’ The report said:

The debunking aim would result in reduction in public interest in ‘flying saucers’ which today evoke a strong psychological reaction. This education could be accomplished by mass media such [as] television, motion pictures and popular articles. Basis of such education would be actual case histories which had been puzzling at first but later explained. As in the case of conjuring tricks, there is much less stimulation if the ‘secret’ is known. Such a program should tend to reduce the current gullibility of the public and consequently their susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda.[25]

In truth, the now declassified Robertson Panel report records that while at least one scientist member of the panel concluded that an extra-terrestrial explanation was the only possible conclusion for ‘many cases’, he was overruled by the rest of the panel. The panel’s decision to debunk UAPs appears to have been a fix, a forgone conclusion.

This Robertson Panel decision to suppress public interest into UAPs began the now 70-year-long campaign of ridicule and stigma attached to almost any UAP sighting.

It would appear some in America’s national security establishment, and many other governments around the world colluding in such a strategy, would prefer that suppression of the UAP subject continues.