The Origins of AAWSAP

[NorCal Dave]

Here's an interesting little find I had not heard about before.

A Col. John Alexander, a former Green Beret who was into esoterica, created the Advanced Theoretical Physics Group within the DoD to look into UFOs in the mid '80s. Sort of a pre-runner to AATIP, assuming AATIP was an unofficial group looking into UFOs. And he latter hooked up with Bigelow and the Skinwalker Ranch gang (bold by me):

Alexander describes his assignment in 1971 as an infantry officer at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, during which time he went diving in the Bimini Islands in search of the mythological continent of Atlantis. During his career in the army he showed exceptional interest in esoteric techniques explored by Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon in his First Earth Battalion manual. An example is neuro-linguistic programming, with which he hoped to create "Jedi warriors" (according to his own account in his 1990 book The Warrior's Edge). He has published another book, UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities (ISBN 978-0-312-64834-3).

From 1982 to 1983, Alexander directly reported to Major General Albert Stubblebine as a self-described "freelance colonel" while Stubblebine redesigned the U.S. Army intelligence architecture to incorporate paranormal and New Age-influenced techniques (including Channon's research and remote viewing) during his time as commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command; reportedly, Alexander was one of Stubblebine's closest colleagues.[5]

In 1985, Alexander founded the Advanced Theoretical Physics Project, an informal cadre of "government officials" (including "people from the Army, Navy, and Air Force, plus several from the defense aerospace industries and some members from the Intelligence Community") who "took it upon themselves to find out whether there was a secret federal UFO project." Although Alexander restricted membership in the group to invitees with a demonstrable interest in the phenomenon and a minimum security clearance of Top Secret-SCI at SI-TK in the hope that "those involved [in a black program on UFOs] would probably be willing to work with a group that had appropriate clearances and could help disseminate information," the group ultimately concluded that "there was no program" and that information collection among the military, Intelligence Community and other federal agencies "was pretty much ad hoc."[6] At the 2011 MUFON Symposium, Alexander's speech on UFOs was jeered by attendees after he denied all government related conspiracies, and all claims of government "silencing" or harassment.[7]

He gets described this way in a largely credulous article by Franc Milburn published by THE BEGIN-SADAT CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES:

He is a former Pentagon insider and expert on UFOs and the potential use of remote viewing, psychokinesis, and other psychic skills in military operations. Dubbed by Luis Elizondo "a Godfather of everything weird and spooky at the Pentagon," he is a colleague and friend of Davis from NIDS and Skinwalker Ranch days.

Responding to Davis´s revelations, Col. Alexander told the author:

"In short, I agree with Eric. We worked together when he was with NIDS. Think I referred him to Bob [Bigelow] to get hired. As we discussed [in an earlier interview with the author], the objects are not made by humans. That said, the ET hypothesis is too simple. Trying to raise the complexity issues with [the general public is well beyond their comprehension—so simply stating "not man-made" should meet the needs of most people."

https://besacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/183web-UPDATED.pdf

So more people from the government looking for UFOs and other stuff and end up palling around in the Utah desert.

 

[TinFoilHat]

OOT: There' a "new" Beavis and Butt-head movie? Those guys have to well into their 40s by now!! At least one of them woulod be fat and bald at this point. Are they still running around in old AC/DC shirts and untied shoes?

Actually in the movie they show them get all fat and old. They have a metaverse version

 

[Mendel]

From another discussion:

Kirkpatrick linked to a NYP article on the statement "taxpayer money was being inappropriately spent on paranormal research at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah".

https://nypost.com/2023/03/21/ufo-believing-pentagon-bosses-missed-spy-craft-for-years/
View attachment 65587

In August 2008, the Pentagon awarded the program's $22 million contract to the sole bidder: Bigelow, owner of Skinwalker Ranch and a financial supporter of Reid's political career.

From 2009-2010, led by James Lacatski at DIA, the Bigelow AAWSAP contractors chased UFOs around the world and hunted monsters at Skinwalker Ranch.

According to Lacatski, he kept all this a secret from officials at the Pentagon because he feared the program would be shut down.

"They had no idea I was running Skinwalker Ranch. They had no idea whatsoever," Lacatski bragged during a rare public interview in 2021.

But once the AAWSAP contractors began submitting paranormal reports to the Department of Defense, the cat was out of the bag.

The article is very informative and one of the best unclassified reports you can find on the misappropriation of AAWSAP funds.

AAWSAP is an excellent example of a defense contractor attempting to evade oversight. And it connects to Grusch via Jay Stratton/"Axelrod".

 

[Mendel]

I've failed to find the legislation that established AAWSAP.

My clue is U-10-2552CE - IM - ATL.pdf from the https://www.dia.mil/FOIA/FOIA-Electronic-Reading-Room/ :

The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was first sponsored in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 Defense Supplemental Appropriation Act by Senators Reid and Inouye with a $10 million add. The purpose of this congressional add was to investigate foreign advanced aerospace weapon threats from the present out to the next 40 years and to build an infrastructure to house a center of expertise on advanced aerospace technologies. The potential threat posed by unconventional or "leap" aerospace vehicles that could pose national security implications for the United States was a specific area of interest.

The FY 2010 Defense Appropriations Act included a $12 million add for the project.

It appears the names of those bills are not as given. The 2010 bill is likely H.R.3326 - Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010, found at https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/house-bill/3326/text , but it doesn't contain the detailed budget items where AAWSAP would be listed.

(If you search yourself, the 110th Congress 2007-2008 and 111th Congress 2009-2010 are useful filters.)

 

[Mendel]

Article:

"I thought it was a little bizarre at the time," recalled a former senior intelligence official who knew about Reid's role first-hand. He asked those in the know: "Tell me what this is, and what we are doing and what is going on and that we aren't doing something that is nonsense here."

"I was concerned the money was being funneled through it to somebody else who was an associate of Harry Reid's," added the former official, who asked not to be identified. "The whole circle was kind of a bizarre piece."

Reid enlisted the support of Inouye, then chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, as well as Stevens, who two sources involved in the effort were told had related to Reid that as a pilot he had personally witnessed similar unexplained aerial phenomenon.

There was also interest among some analysts at the DIA who were concerned that the Russians or Chinese might have developed some more advanced systems. Reid's views on the subject were also shaped by a book about the Skinwalker Ranch, co-authored by his acquaintance George Knapp, the former congressional staffer said.

"When this was brought to Senator Reid he said, 'There is enough here and I am obligated if this is a national security issue to invest some money in this,'" he explained. "Stevens and Inouye agreed with this."

"I still remember coming back from that meeting and thinking of the implications of what Reid said," the former senior official said. "I remember being concerned about this. I wanted to make sure it was supervised and we were using the appropriation to do actual research on real threats to the United States.

He said he was assured that the research being done was valid. "It was not a rogue individual out of control."

The former staffer said that eventually, however, even Reid agreed it was not worth continuing.

"After a while the consensus was we really couldn't find anything of substance," he recalled. "They produced reams of paperwork. After all of that there was really nothing there that we could find. It all pretty much dissolved from that reason alone—and the interest level was losing steam. We only did it a couple years."

"There was really nothing there that we could justify using taxpayer money," he added. "We let it die a slow death. It was well-spent money in the beginning."

Source: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/16/pentagon-ufo-search-harry-reid-216111/

 

[FatPhil]

money was being funneled

Imagine my surprise!

 

[elvenwear]

...
AAWSAP is rarely mentioned, and if it is, it's as AATIP's original name. So, it was still just Elizondo checking out the FLIR/Nimitz case and other UFOs, in the popular understanding.
...

I've had a look at the FOIA link Mendel posted earlier in the thread here.

Forgive me if this has already been posted but it appears AATIP may never have been an official program.

Either way, this makes Elizondo's claims of never having anything to do with AAWSAP problematic.

 

[Mendel]

Forgive me if this has already been posted but it appears AATIP may never have been an official program.

Yes. See the discussion over at https://www.metabunk.org/threads/preview-of-luis-elizondos-ufo-book-imminent.13571/post-321553 .

As Lacatski wrote:

A new unclassified nickname, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), was created for use within the unclassified letter because it was decided for security reasons not to use the AAWSAP acronym.

(pp. 90-91)

The real reason was so that Elizondo could talk about the project and not mention the Skinwalker Ranch part of it.

 

[AllTheQuestionsToday]

I don't understand what the confusion is about the Elizondi-in-AATIP timeline at this point? It seems like the sourcing on the Wikipedia article for him on this is pretty simple and straightforward now with all the sources there, and there a bunch of news reports from a lot of reporters (even ones who don't like him apparently) that line up all the pieces.

In 2009 Lue was asked to take over security/CI for the program that was/had been AAWSAP but transitioned in ways that still aren't spelled out into AATIP. We got that sourced plenty. June 2009, Harry Reid as a Senator asks DOD to put Elizondo into AATIP here. The Sunday Times supports that here. The New Yorker has him entering the operation in 2010 here. The Pentagon confirmed Elizondo was a participant/involved to Politico here. That reporter Kloor who seems to otherwise hate Elizondo even confirms here that Elizondo took "over" the program to whatever end. No one disputes and lots of sources say the funding dried up/got cut circa 2012, and that Elizondo tried to keep "AATIP" in some form functional post-2012 through 2017 with whatever Pentagon/IC back channels he had.

There are quotes from Elizondo in various things and I think his IG complaint that Greenewald posted the declassified pieces of that Elizondo was privately tasked by "high up" in the Secrety of Defenses office to keep something going. We can't prove that but we know that 100% Elizondo was a high ranking member of Secretary of Defense Mattis's staff given his title was "Director for the National Programs Special Management Staff in the Office of the Secretary of Defense per this and this. Even Kloors UFO piece in 2019 has quotes all over from Elizondos Pentagon performance reviews, and they make him sound like a cross between Captain America and James Bond for his performance and importance.

Is there any actual logical dispute over Elizondo being AATIP as it "formally" existed for running it's security and counter-intelligence from somewhere presumably late 2009 through whenever funding ran out in 2012?

Whatever came before at minimum June 2009 had nothing to do with Elizondo, since that's when Reids letter went to DOD saying to add him to the program. He wasn't part of the Skinwalker stuff likely for very long at all, and was tasked into it by his superiors.

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

 

[Mendel]

Is there any actual logical dispute over Elizondo being AATIP as it "formally" existed for running it's security and counter-intelligence from somewhere presumably late 2009 through whenever funding ran out in 2012?

Yes.
• Lacatski, head of AAWSAP, wrote in his book on AAWSAP that AATIP was a nickname for AAWSAP to give it SAP status.
• Reid asked for this in his 2009 letter:

June 2009, Harry Reid as a Senator asks DOD to put Elizondo into AATIP here.

However, the request was denied, the paperwork is in the DIA FOIA reading room. https://www.dia.mil/FOIA/FOIA-Electronic-Reading-Room/
So AATIP never became a project while AAWSAP was running, late 2008 through the end of 2010.

No one disputes and lots of sources say the funding dried up/got cut circa 2012,

Lacatski, head of AAWSAP, wrote that funding was there until fiscal year 2010, then it dried up, DIA disconitued the project, and no new source of funding could be found. Read post #1 here in this thread, @NorCalDave laid it all out.

What Elizondo called AATIP from 2011 onward was an unofficial, unfunded effort.
Every government source says this.

Every newspaper (except the NYP https://nypost.com/2023/03/21/ufo-believing-pentagon-bosses-missed-spy-craft-for-years/ ) just parrots what Elizondo tells them, and so does Reid. His 2021 letter is provably counterfactual:

The $22 million went to AAWSAP. If you look at the 2009 letter, Reid describes AATIP as a technology program, not as a program investigating UAPs.

You can only think that Elizondo's take on AATIP is "undisputable" if you cherry-pick his statements not to contradict themselves. John Greenewald did a timeline a while ago which shows that clearly, at https://www.theblackvault.com/docum...sap-aatip-and-post-2017-ufo-timeline-project/ .

From the AARO Historical Report:

"AATIP was never an official DoD program."

See my original message at https://www.metabunk.org/threads/preview-of-luis-elizondos-ufo-book-imminent.13571/post-321553 , and read to the end of that thread.
Also look at the thread on "Imminent" from page 5 https://www.metabunk.org/threads/errors-in-luis-elizondos-ufo-book-imminent.13613/page-5

We've been over this back to front.

Lacatski and Elizondo, by their own admissions in their own books, have been misleading people about what AAWSAP was about; they invented the name AATIP and tried to give it legitimacy to not let people on that the government spent millions on ghost hunting and sci-fi papers. Any source that uncritically trusts Elizondo must be viewed skeptically.

 

[Mendel]

To be clear, the best sources are:
• DIA FOIA electronic reading room https://www.dia.mil/FOIA/FOIA-Electronic-Reading-Room/
• Skinwalkers at the Pentagon co-authored by AASWAP head Lacatski
• AARO Historical Report Volume 1
• Imminent by Elizondo

These are the primary sources, or in the case of AARO, written by people with full access to the primary sources, and even they contradict themselves and each other at times.
You can cite post-2017 newspapers all you want, they're third-hand at best.

My own timeline, based on these sources:

2008:
• allegedly, Reid gets Congress to budget $12 million in Fiscal Year 08 for AAWSAP (DIA memo).
• A contract is solicited and entered with BAASS, running for a year, and 4 1-year extension options. (DIA SOW)

2009
• Elizondo hired to do security for AAWSAP (Imminent).
• June 24 Reid sends letter requesting to create AATIP as SAP: first recorded instance of "AATIP", request denied (DIA documents).
• FY10 budget gives another $10 million to AAWSAP.

2010
• AAWSAP continued through Dec 31st (no cost extension), then DIA cans the project.
• Attempts to relocate it (see e.g. the KONA BLUE proposal) fail. Lacatski leaves the picture.

2011-2017
Elizondo runs AATIP unofficially and unfunded from his office.

 

[NorCal Dave]

I don't understand what the confusion is about the Elizondi-in-AATIP timeline at this point? It seems like the sourcing on the Wikipedia article for him on this is pretty simple and straightforward now with all the sources there, and there a bunch of news reports from a lot of reporters (even ones who don't like him apparently) that line up all the pieces.

As @Mendal pointed out above, much of this sourcing is from 2017 or so, right when Elizondo went public AND was trying to attract investors to TTSA.

When you make a statement, don't just put a link, include the relevant part from the link so we don't have to chase it down. For example:

The Pentagon confirmed Elizondo was a participant/involved to Politico here.

This is from a 2017 article, so long before anyone had heard of AAWSAP, the real DIA program that funneled $22 million on to Bigelow's BAASS, though the article in question does hint at it:

The more recent effort, which was established inside the Defense Intelligence Agency, compiled "reams of paperwork," but little else, the former staffer said.

The relevant quotes about Elizondo appear to be:

According to a Pentagon official, the AATIP program was ended "in the 2012 time frame," but it has recently attracted attention because of the resignation in early October of Luis Elizondo, the career intelligence officer who ran the initiative.

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White confirmed to POLITICO that the program existed and was run by Elizondo. But she could not say how long he was in charge of it and declined to answer detailed questions about the office or its work, citing concerns about the closely held nature of the program.

https://web.archive.org/web/2019060...7/12/16/pentagon-ufo-search-harry-reid-216111

So, at best we have an unnamed person and Ms. White saying Elizondo ran a program called AATIP. But his own book spells out that it was an unofficial and unfunded side-gig he and Stratton did. He MAY have done something security related to AAWSAP, but Lacatski was always in charge of AAWSAP and the $22 million that was going to BAASS. Elizondo's own book says he misused allocated funds at his discretion for some AATIP work, but it was never official. And the 2012 time frame is inaccurate as relates to AAWSAP, as that funding ended in FY 2010, unless this statement is related to Lacastski and Reid shopping AAWSAP around in and out of the DoD and DHS, possibly as Kona Blue.

The only officially funded UFO/paranormal/Skinwalker Ranch program was AAWSAP. It was funded for FY '09-'10 and paid out $22 million to BAASS. And it's very likely, only Lacatski ever ran it.

That reporter Kloor who seems to otherwise hate Elizondo even confirms here that Elizondo took "over" the program to whatever end

Same problem as above. This is from 2017, when most of the reporting about AATIP was coming from Elizondo himself, or Chris Mellon, who like Elizondo was cheerleading TTSA where they were investors and stood to make money if TTSA had taken off. To wit, the relevant quotes:

When Luis Elizondo was at the Pentagon in the late 2000s, he was asked to take over security for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). He had experience in technology protection, having previously worked with Boeing and its Apache Longbow helicopter, and also with Raytheon and some of its cruise missile technology. A new aerospace-related assignment made sense.

But AATIP was different than anything he had worked on before. It was created in 2007 to study "anomalous aerospace threats," a euphemism for UFOs. His job, he explained to me, was "making sure the Russians, the Chinese, our foreign adversaries, weren't penetrating [AATIP] or developing some sort of deception campaign." He cut himself off at this point. "I have to be careful, because we can get into classified stuff pretty quick."

https://web.archive.org/web/20190404113127/https://issues.org/ufos-wont-go-away/

It seems here, that the source is Elizondo himself.

The New Yorker has him entering the operation in 2010 here.

Once again, this is likely straight from Elizondo:

It appears he was recruited in 2008?

Other participants were recruited from within the Pentagon's ranks. In 2008, Luis Elizondo, a longtime counterintelligence officer working in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, was visited by two people who asked him what he thought about U.F.O.s. He replied that he didn't think about them, which was apparently the correct answer, and he was asked to join.

That would have been when AAWSAP was getting up and running and Bigelow was starting BAASS. IF true, it would mean Elizondo did infact work with AAWSAP, something he now denies publicly:

Then he claims he created AATIP from what came before (AAWSAP):

Soon afterward, Elizondo, the counterintelligence officer, was asked to take over the program. Beginning in 2010, he turned an outsourced study of Utah cryptids into the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP, an in-house effort that focussed on the national-security implications of military U.A.P. encounters. According to Elizondo, the program studied a number of incidents in depth, including what later became known as the "Nimitz encounter."

https://web.archive.org/web/2021042...ow-the-pentagon-started-taking-ufos-seriously

And the above quote pretty much outlines what I and others have been saying. The not mentioned AAWSAP, "outsourced (the) study of Utah cryptids" and Elizondo took over in 2010, when funding ran out, and turned it "into...AATIP". He created ATTIP, an unfunded, unofficial side hustle, likely with Stratton and then passed it off to people like Kean and Blumenthal as a $22 million UFO program. It wasn't.

So, if he didn't work for AAWSAP, but did work with the creators and managers of AAWSAP in 2008 what was he doing and for whom? And if he turned the "study of Utah cryptids" (which is code speak for AAWSAP) into AATIP, than it must have been AAWSAP, or not AATIP, before, right?

The rest of this New Yorker article is exceedingly long, in I guess New Yorker fashion, with a chunk of it reading like a hagiography for Lesle Kean. The author does talk to Mick, but finds him demoralizing:

West is a thoughtful, intelligent man. His e-mails feature numbered and lettered lists and light math. Everything he told me was perfectly persuasive, but even an hour on the phone with him left me feeling vaguely demoralized.

He was questioning sacredly held beliefs for UFOlogist. They don't want evidence, they want confirmation. And this confermation helps them find solace of some sort:

He seemed unable to envisage that someone might find solace in the decentering prospect that we are not alone in a universe we ultimately know very little about.

Which misses the point. Mick has said repeatedly that the possibility of aliens is real and would be fun and interesting, when the proper evidence is presented. But that's not the point for UFOologist, as Kean notes: She wants him to look at a video and NOT debunk it and just agree with her that it's "weird". I guess "weird" means leaving a blob on a video as evidence of aliens, and not figure out it's an airliner bound for Spain:

During one of my phone calls with Kean—greatly pleasurable distractions that tended to absorb entire afternoons—I mentioned to her that I had been in touch with Mick West. It was the only time I had known her to grow peevish. "If Mick were really interested in this stuff, he wouldn't debunk every single video," she said, almost pityingly. "He would admit that at least some of them are genuinely weird."

https://web.archive.org/web/2021042...ow-the-pentagon-started-taking-ufos-seriously

Is there any actual logical dispute over Elizondo being AATIP as it "formally" existed for running it's security and counter-intelligence from somewhere presumably late 2009 through whenever funding ran out in 2012?

Yes, he now says he never worked for AAWSAP. That was the only ever funded UFO program in the time period in question. As noted above it didn't even last until 2012, it was only funded for FY '09-'10. There was supposedly funding for FY'12, but Lacatski and Reid couldn't find a suitable place for the program before missing the deadline:

Money was available for FY12, but money was not the only issue.

As the AAWSAP program manager since its beginning at DIA, Lacatski knew that in order to continue the successes achieved and to reach its full potential, the program needed to move out of the Department of Defense (DoD). For FY12, DIA leadership had tried to transfer the program within the DoD, but without success and, unfortunately, missing the fiscal year's appropriation deadline. Since AAWSAP was not strictly defense-oriented in nature, on February 7, 2011, Lacatski gave a very in depth briefing to colleagues at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate.

pg: 27-28

So, there was no AAWSAP after 2010, though there was some money that was never used. Reid and Lacatski continued to try to fund AAWSAP up until 2016, but failed:

For FY14 with the assistance of Congressman Steny Hoyer, and again in FY15, Senator Reid and Lacatski attempted to fund AAWSAP through the DoD. Both attempts failed. Finally, on May 13, 2016, Lacatski retired from government service. So, after nine years of effort, the work of AAWSAP ended.

pg: 29 Kelleher, Colm A.. Knapp, George. Lacatski, James. Skinwalkers at the Pentagon: An Insiders' Account of the Secret Government UFO Program. RTMA, LLC. Kindle Edition.

That is in line with the idea of Elizondo creating his own unfunded side gig and calling AATIP sometime after 2012. What he did for AAWSAP and when, he contradicts himself.

 

[Ann K]

Mick has said repeatedly that the possibility of aliens is real and would be fun and interesting, when the proper evidence is presented. But that's not the point for UFOologist, as Kean notes: She wants him to look at a video and NOT debunk it and just agree with her that it's "weird".

As has been pointed out before, if we have had no "alien visitations", then yes, they CAN all be wrong. Kean is "shooting the messenger"; she wants to blame the debunker, instead of blaming the lack of evidence.

 

[Mendel]

And the 2012 time frame is inaccurate as relates to AAWSAP, as that funding ended in FY 2010, unless this statement is related to Lacastski and Reid shopping AAWSAP around in and out of the DoD and DHS, possibly as Kona Blue.

My guess as to where the 2012 end date comes from is that the original contract solicitation had 4 one-year extension options, so someone looking at that and lacking information/being confused by the name change/hearing from Elizondo the project was "transitioned" to the DoD might conclude that these options were exercised.

But Lacatski, head of AAWSAP, writes in his book that they weren't. This is not something he'd get wrong, and it's corroborated by the Kona Blue proposal etc.

 

[FatPhil]

"If Mick were really interested in this stuff, he wouldn't debunk every single video," she said, almost pityingly. "He would admit that at least some of them are genuinely weird."

As has been pointed out before, if we have had no "alien visitations", then yes, they CAN all be wrong. Kean is "shooting the messenger"; she wants to blame the debunker, instead of blaming the lack of evidence.

Yup, that paragraph jumped out at me too. Why would being weird be a reason not to debunk something? She clearly doesn't understand the debunking brain - I'd be tempted to say that the weirder it is, the stronger the draw to debunking is. The obviously mundane are tedious. She also seems to think that wierdness of evidence is somehow closer to being evidence of the actual weird, no more than a drunk driver wrapping himself around a lamppost is evidence of a highly trained stunt driver being involved (unless you're on a film set, in which case, it's not evidence of a drunk driver). That's looking only at the superficial.

 

[Mendel]

Flat Earth does the same thing: they have lots of weird pictures ("black swan") that "prove the Earth is not a globe". Still, none of them "genuinely" do, obviously.

 

[JMartJr]

As has been pointed out before, if we have had no "alien visitations", then yes, they CAN all be wrong. Kean is "shooting the messenger"; she wants to blame the debunker, instead of blaming the lack of evidence.

I guess it is understandable to dislike the debunking of any case, as every case solved as something mundane is a reminder that some very weird cases have turned out to be nothing much, which is an unwelcome reminder if one is in business selling the really weird cases!

 

[NorCal Dave]

Yup, that paragraph jumped out at me too. Why would being weird be a reason not to debunk something? She clearly doesn't understand the debunking brain - I'd be tempted to say that the weirder it is, the stronger the draw to debunking is. The obviously mundane are tedious. She also seems to think that wierdness of evidence is somehow closer to being evidence of the actual weird, no more than a drunk driver wrapping himself around a lamppost is evidence of a highly trained stunt driver being involved (unless you're on a film set, in which case, it's not evidence of a drunk driver). That's looking only at the superficial.

Off topic a bit here, but not completely. Kean's NYT story from 2017 got the ball rolling on AATIP and ultimately AAWSAP. She was the right "journalist" for Elizondo and maybe Mellon to get in touch with to roll out the AATIP story, which also conveniently coincided with the roll out of TTSA. A for profit enterprise looking for investors.

The New Yorker article is by a staff writer named Gidion Lewis-Krause and published in April of 2021, so about 6 months before Skywalkers at the Pentagon was published in October. That might explain how AAWSAP is never mentioned. And I'm not really joking when I say parts of it read like a hagiography for Kean.

Lewis-Krause says Kean wasn't really interested in UFOs, until she read the French report known as COMETA in 1999 and realized UFOs are a "transcended" subject (bold by me)

Kean had read Whitley Strieber's "Communion," the 1987 cult best-seller about alien abduction, but until receiving the French findings she had never had more than a mild interest in U.F.O.s. "I had spent years at KPFA reporting on the horrors of the world, injustice and oppression, and giving voice to the voiceless," she recalled. As she acquainted herself with the plenitude of odd episodes, it was as if she'd seen beyond our own dismal reality and the limitations of conventional thinking, and caught a glimpse of an enchanted cosmos. "To me, this just transcended the endless struggle of human beings," she told me, during a long walk around her neighborhood. "It was a planetary concern." She stopped in the middle of the street. Gesturing toward a heavily overcast sky, she said, "Why should we assume we already understand everything there is to know, in our infancy here on this planet?"

So, when Mick or others point out that a supposed UFO/alien is actually an airliner, he's not just "debunking" a video. He's reaffirming "our own dismal reality and limitations of conventional thinking". Or as my wife jokes, "Micks a fun-sucker!"

Lewis-Krause and Kean are clearly kindred spirits in this journey and people like Mick, while a "thoughtful and intelligent man" is killing the vibe. The aliens are transcendent answers to the cruel, unjust and dismal reality we are stuck in and pointing out that aliens are just airliners keeps us trapped here.

Lewis-Krause also fails to mention that Kean had been in a relationship with abductee proponent Bud Hopkins near the end of his life in the mid '00s. His views were unique:

Mr. Hopkins's three marriages, to Joan Baer, April Kingsley and Carol Rainey, ended in divorce. Besides his daughter, Grace, from his marriage to Ms. Kingsley, he is survived by his companion, Leslie Kean; a sister, Eleanor Whiteley; and a grandchild.

Their condition, Mr. Hopkins said, was not as rare as one might suppose. By his reckoning, 1 in 50 Americans has been abducted by an alien and simply does not know it.

These narratives, Mr. Hopkins wrote, led him to a distasteful but inescapable conclusion: The aliens — or "visitors," as he preferred to call them — were practicing a form of extraterrestrial eugenics, aiming to shore up their declining race by crossbreeding with Homo sapiens.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/...ct-artist-and-ufo-author-dies-at-80.html?_r=0

While Lewis-Krause tries to be even handed and look at all aspects of the story, it' clear where his sympathies lie. As noted above, when taking to Mick:

Everything he told me was perfectly persuasive, but even an hour on the phone with him left me feeling vaguely demoralized.

He seemed unable to envisage that someone might find solace in the decentering prospect that we are not alone in a universe we ultimately know very little about.

Whereas a conversation with Kean could go on for hours:

During one of my phone calls with Kean—greatly pleasurable distractions that tended to absorb entire afternoons-

He's not talking about evidence, he's talking about emotions and feelings. While he does find himself perturbed that Kean shrugged off Ian Redpaths very complete explanation for the Rendlesham Forest incident, he ultimately gives her a pass because she is pursuing something that again, brings a bit of "solace" to "our own dismal reality".

One dogged British researcher has convincingly shown that the Rendlesham case, or Britain's Roswell, probably consisted of a concatenation of a meteor, a lighthouse perceived through woods and fog, and the uncanny sounds made by a muntjac deer. Eyewitness reports are subject to considerable embroidery over time, and strings of improbable coincidences can easily be rendered into an occult pattern by a human mind prone to misapprehension and eager for meaning. The researcher had exhaustively demystified the case, and I was perturbed to learn that Kean seemed unfazed by his verdict. When I asked her about it, she did little more than shrug, as though to suggest that such fluky accounts violated Occam's razor. Even if Rendlesham was "complex," she said, it was still "one of the top ten U.F.O. encounters of all time." And, besides, there were always other cases.

https://web.archive.org/web/2021042...ow-the-pentagon-started-taking-ufos-seriously

 

[FatPhil]

Skywalkers at the Pentagon

And who can forget the bit where Lue Skywalker walked into the X wing of the Whitehouse and someone exclaimed "that's no loon!"

 

[NorCal Dave]

And who can forget the bit where Lue Skywalker walked into the X wing of the Whitehouse and someone exclaimed "that's no loon!"

Must of been the autocorrect! I don't know which is funnier, my screw up or the idea of Skinwalkers at the Pentagon?