John Alexander | The Department of Defense and UFOs Redux

In December 2017 the New York Times broke the news about a classified UFO program that had been conducted by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Concurrently announced was the creation of a new organization called To The Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences (TTSAAS). Headed by a rock star, Tom DeLonge, it boasted a stellar cast of former U.S. government intelligence executives and scientists, all of whom had an interest in UFOs.

Long before Senator Harry Reid was able to earmark funding for the DIA project, I ran a similar effort for several years in the 1980s. Participants all had Top Secret/SCI level clearances. They came from all DOD Services, the Intelligence Community, and civilian aerospace companies. Despite the funds available for the more recent DIA program, it appears that the fundamental findings were the same. Key is the fact that although no- body is in charge or has institutional responsibility for this area, credible, multisensory events were documented displaying physical characteristics and capabilities that defy all known human technology. While the recent DIA study did add to the body of knowledge, their lack of transparency has fostered considerable angst amongst the UFO community. The technical and organizational observations during the prior study will be compared with those revealed though the efforts of TTSAAS.

This presentation also addresses other aspects of the study of UFOs. Specifically, what is the appropriate role of the U. S. Government in studying this topic? As global phenomena, sightings by U.S. Government agencies represent a tiny, but significant, portion of recorded events. What DoD does have are a variety of advanced sensors, some of which they choose to keep as classified. The UFO community has little understanding of how these complex institutions function, while the issue of unnecessary secrecy further invigorates their confabulations.

Covered will be the critical factors facing senior government officials with fiduciary responsibilities in funding any project with little probability of demonstrable return on investment. This includes the zero-sum game that befalls all programs, including those in the black world, the use of contractors to hide reports from FOIA requests, and the impact of personal belief systems on these studies.

As funding is signal issue, a comparative analysis will be made between money and resources available for studies of UFOs and related phenomena and those afforded more conventional, intrinsically complex problems such as AIDS, cancer, or the fundamental physics search for elusive God Particle.

Bio: John B. Alexander, Ph.D. is a former three- term SSE council member, past president of the International Assn for Near Death Studies, founding board member of the International Remote Viewer’s Association. He is a retired senior Army officer and also retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is the author of UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities (St. Martin’s Press, 2011), Reality Denied: Firsthand Experiences with Things That Can’t Happen – But Did (Anomalist Books, 2017) and many others books and articles.

Recorded at the Society for Scientific Exploration Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada 2018.

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Published on December 23, 2020

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