AARO UFO report proves grift by UFO personalities
Famous UFO personalities attempted — with some success — to spin UFO mania into lucrative government contracts for themselves.
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By now you’ve almost certainly heard the news that AARO (the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) has released the first part of its report, finding that the US government has never found any evidence of alien visitation, that no private companies have ever had alien technology in their possession, and that all the UFO mania in the news since 2017 is “the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence.”
And you probably also know that this is what many of us have been reporting for years — including myself, Steven Greenstreet of the NY Post, Keith Kloor, Jason Colavito, Art Levine, and others. My 2021 2-part podcast series “The UFO Rogues Gallery Takes Over America” is here and gives an overview of this “group of individuals.”
In short, it’s the 1996–2016 owner of Skinwalker Ranch Robert Bigelow and his many associates, including Lue Elizondo, Chris Mellon, Hal Puthoff, Leslie Kean, Colm Kelleher, Eric Davis, George Knapp, and others, all with the assistance of their former advocate on the Hill, the late senator Harry Reid.
The AARO report gives no names but makes frequent references to “Persons 1, 2, 3…” and “Interviewees 1, 2, 3…” and so on. We can very safely assume these lists are all the same people.
For a long time we’ve known that Reid was successfully lobbied to obtain $22 million for Bigelow’s Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Application Program (AAWSAP). This money was largely spent operating Skinwalker Ranch to investigate ghosts, shapeshifters, transdimensional poltergeists, and so on; and also for Puthoff to author a number of bizarre papers on science fiction ideas like antigravity, wormholes, stargates, and such. When AAWSAP’s money ran out, Bigelow and Elizondo continued it privately and informally under the name AATIP, which is what Leslie Kean “uncovered” in the infamous (and almost entirely false) New York Times article of 2017. The AARO report described AATIP like this:
AATIP was never an official DoD program. However, after AAWSAP was cancelled, the AATIP moniker was used by some individuals associated with an informal, unofficial UAP community of interest within DoD that researched UAP sightings from military observers as part of their ancillary job duties. This effort was not a recognized, official program, and had no dedicated personnel or budget.
So, that $22 million was grift #1, and we’ve known about that for a long time. What was news to me in this report is grift #2. From the report:
After AAWSAP/AATIP was terminated, its supporters unsuccessfully attempted to convince DHS to support a new version of this effort dubbed KONA BLUE…
KONA BLUE: A Proposed UAP Recovery and Reverse-Engineering Program
KONA BLUE was brought to AARO’s attention by interviewees who claimed that it was a sensitive DHS compartment to cover up the retrieval and exploitation of “non-human biologics.” KONA BLUE traces its origins to the DIA-managed AAWSAP/AATIP program, which was funded through a special appropriation and executed by its primary contractor, a private sector organization. DIA cancelled the program in 2012 due to lack of merit and the utility of the deliverables. As discussed in Section IV of this report, while the official purpose of AAWSAP/AATIP was to conduct research into 12 areas of cutting edge science, the contractor team, and at least one supportive government program manager, also conducted UAP and paranormal research at a property owned by the private sector organization. (An obvious reference to Skinwalker Ranch —BD)
When DIA cancelled this program, its supporters proposed to DHS that they create and fund a new version of AAWSAP/AATIP under a SAP. This proposal, codenamed KONA BLUE, would restart UAP investigations, paranormal research (including alleged “human consciousness anomalies”) and reverse-engineer any recovered off-world spacecraft that they hoped to acquire…
KONA BLUE’s advocates were convinced that the USG was hiding UAP technologies. They believed that creating this program under DHS would allow all of the technology and knowledge of these alleged programs to be moved under the KONA BLUE program…
It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected—this material was only assumed to exist by KONA BLUE advocates and its anticipated contract performers. This was the same assumption made by those same individuals involved with the AAWSAP/AATIP program. The SAP was never approved or stood up, and no data or material was transferred to DHS.
It’s fortunate that this failed, otherwise more of your tax dollars would have been thrown away at Skinwalker Ranch, investigating ghosts and “human consciousness anomalies”.
It would not surprise me to learn that federal prosecutors might be eyeing these programs closely. These were pitched as national security programs, identifying aerial threats and reverse-engineering imaginary captured alien technology — but there’s enormous evidence that the money was spent instead on the contractors’ personal interests like consciousness and life after death, things DHS should have little interest in.
I maintain my opinion that the vast majority of believers in alien visitation are honest in their convictions and haven’t the slightest interest in making money off of it, but it’s clear that’s not the case for everyone.
Trash “journalism”. Pure piece of garbage, poorly written, blatant omissions and plain ignorance. Stop writing ASAP. You’re not a scientist and you definitely don’t care to use a shred of critical thought. This, and other articles like it touted by your buddies you mentioned will not age well, and will end your puny careers as the trash writers you are.