UAPs, Bigelow, and the "Invisible College"

[Tezcatlipoca]

I'm sorry Arthur, but I really don't know what you're trying to say here. These questions are followed up by what looks like a header for a Greenstreet story in the NYP but nothing else. A cryptic X post with a bunch of UFOlogists and a link for a 20+ minute.

What are you trying to say? If there is something in the video we're supposed to see, tell us and include a timestamp. Better yet, many YouTube videos have transcriptions that one can copy and paste so we don't have to watch an entire video to get your point.

Be happy to discuss with you, but I'm not sure what we're discussing.



Not necessarily. Elizondo was heavily involved with TTSA as was Mellon. Putoff is one the founders, along with DeLong and Semivan of TTSA. They have their different groups, but there is a lot of overlap and cross pollination.



Many people have used the term "Invisible Collage" to refer to a group of "scientists" that work on UFOs or other esoteric subjects but don't want their name associated with that work or possible to a group of non-existent scientists. Australian UFO researcher Bill Chalker was using the term in the late '90s in reference to some supposed hair/alien DNA samples that he had tested by his "Invisible College".

The Invisible College talked about here is related to Vallee and Putoff and does predate NIDS which was set up in '95 and closed shop in '04.



Putoff and Kit Green, for sure, but Lacatski doesn't seem to get involved until the mid '00s, eventually setting up AASWAP in ~2010.

They can be part of the same group but make up a network within the group. Yes, they all co-interact, but some of them, like Puthoff and Green as primary examples, have very limited documented interaction with say Elizondo and Mellon. A bulk of the documentation we have between the networks can be drawn to relatively specific organizations or events, while if you look within certain networks (ie Elizondo-Stratton-Mellon), there is far greater interaction that is observable and documented between those folks.
And yes, I know the lineage of the term "invisible collage". Some of these individuals, like Puthoff and Green, have interactions that far pre-date the first use of the term "invisible college" or their formal grouping together, while still looking into the topic. My point there was more in reference to both of those two cumulatively.

 

[NorCal Dave]

I want to know what this invisible college is and it's history/membership.

I want to know how many different sub groups there are?

How much influence do they have on what the UFO community's current narrative is?

How are these group/groups structured internally? Are we dealing with a hirarchacical structure like the church of Scientology?

Is there a direct connection to the Church of Scientology and these UFO group/groups?

How do these groups communicate? Secret weekly meetings? Discord/Signal/In Person? Is there a oath of secrecy you take to gain entry?

Who is the Leader of the TTSA effort?

Is there funding being provided to these groups/clubs/networks?

Are these group/groups aligned with any well know power structures such as political parties or cooperate special interests?

That's a lot of questions. What does any of your own research show?

First of all, there is no set roster and as far as I know, no formal organization. It's not like the Masons with chapters and a hierarchy of officers. Jaque Vallee first started using the phrase back in the '70s in reference to a loose association of like-minded UFO researchers. As I noted above, others have used the phrase as well, but there is no set club, no initiation and no secret handshake. Of course, if there were, I wouldn't know about it, right?

I think in the context of this thread, Jason Colovito, who was interviewed by Mick in the OP, is using the phrase as a catch-all for the various interrelated folks in the UFO world.

There are a number of prominent UFOlogist that often interact with each other and are influential on the subject. Some have been around for decades, like Vallee and Putoff, others are newer to the scene like Elizondo and DeLong. The level of interaction between them varies as does the level of influence.

Different people get funding and money from different places. Puthoff, a Scientologist at the time, started getting government money while looking into Psy for the CIA and military back in the '70s. That gig ended when his experiments were found lacking. He got funding from Bigelow in the '90s as part of NIDS along with Vallee and others out at Skinwalker Ranch. After NIDS folded, he got some more government money through Bigelow's BAASS from AASWAP via Lacatski, also at Skinwalker Ranch. After that, he hooked up with ex-CIA guy Semivan and punk/pop rocker DeLong to found TTSA which earned money selling books, TV shows and tried to get public funding through stock sales.

Elizondo and Mellon were big parts of TTSA in the beginning.

Linda Muton Howe got Art's Parts from Coast to Coast AM host Art Bell. Bits of junk and industrial waste supposedly from the Roswell UFO crash. She had them repeatedly tested, including by Travis Taylor in the '90s. Taylor ended up on the TV shows Ancient Aliens and Skinwalker Ranch while also having a gig as chief scientist on the government's UAP Task Force working with Jay Stratton from AASWAP.

Howe gave/sold Art's Parts to DeLong who then sold them to his own company, TTSA, for $35,000 so Puthoff could research them.

Politically, Senator Reid of Nevada helped get funds for Bigelow's (a campaign donor) BAASS and AASWAP. George Knapp pretty much invented Skinwalker Ranch and wrote 2 books about it, 1 with Lacatski about AASWAP and of course, Skinwalker Ranch. Now he's hooked up with Jeremy Corbel and they both got a shout out from Congressman Burchette at the UFO hearings. Knapp got to enter a statement no less while he and Corbel sat behind Grusch. Knapp brought us John Lear who brought us Bill Cooper.

30 years on, Knapp is still touting the very dubious claims of Bob Lazar while Vallee has a new book about a UFO crash in 1945 New Mexico. A book sourced almost entirely from the memories and clams of some octogenarians recalling what happened when they were 8. And Vallee still thinks a piece from a weathervane might have come from inside the crashed UFO.

And so it goes. This is the Invisible College, it goes round and round.

We have multiple threads on many of these people and programs.

 

[FatPhil]

And so it goes. This is the Invisible College, it goes round and round.

We have multiple threads on many of these people and programs.

I think someone (perhaps not a MB-er) tried to create a red-string diagram for the various entities who align with each other (some by flinging money at each other, others by referencing each other's anecdotes, others by actively promoting each other, etc.). I'm not sure how up to date that is, nor what thread it could be found on, as it was posted here at least once - perhaps in a "skinwalker ranch" thread (as govt/funding was an important component), but there have been several of those.

 

[Mendel]

I think someone (perhaps not a MB-er) tried to create a red-string diagram for the various entities who align with each other (some by flinging money at each other, others by referencing each other's anecdotes, others by actively promoting each other, etc.). I'm not sure how up to date that is, nor what thread it could be found on, as it was posted here at least once - perhaps in a "skinwalker ranch" thread (as govt/funding was an important component), but there have been several of those.

It's upthread.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/uaps-bigelow-and-the-invisible-college.11850/post-278051

 

[NorCal Dave]

Just an example here of how the Invisible College gets woven into the fabric of UFOlogy.

Over in another thread we've been discussing Ross Coulthart's claim that one of his anonymous sources shared a story told to him by his Great Uncle about UFOs at Area 51:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ro...reverse-engineering-program-at-area-51.13109/

Long complicated story short, it's a 3rd hand account about how this guy's great Uncle Sam was told about a UFO being reverse engineered at Area 51 by employees of defense contractor EG&G and he later saw a classified photo of it. The late Great Uncle Sam also worked for EG&G and had giving his nephew a patch while passing on the story. The patched proved he was a real EG&G employee.

The source recently went public in an interview with UK paper (tabloid?) the Daily Mail where he confirms who his late Uncle Sam was and his employment with EG&G at Area 51. In the article he rehashes the story his Uncle Sam was supposedly told by an anonymous engineer and passed on to him and on to Coulthart. The article mentions the nephew going to AARO with his story, descriptions of the supposed UFO, the photo, some mention of Bob Lazar, because Area 51, but then 3/4 of the way in, we get a photo of Eric Davis:



And the so-called Wilson Memo:

Physicist and intelligence official Dr. Eric Davis allegedly met with then-deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson, in the parking lot of an EG&G site in Las Vegas in October 2002, and wrote notes of what Wilson told him.

According to the notes, the Vice Admiral told Davis that in the early 2000s he uncovered – but was denied access to – a secret program run by a defense contractor that retrieved and attempted to reverse engineer UFOs.

The bombshell, controversial documents claim Wilson found discrepancies in budgets that led him to the program run by 'an aerospace technology contractor – one of the top ones in [the] US'.

Notes allegedly written by Davis documenting the conversation were leaked from the estate of late astronaut Edgar Mitchell in 2018.

Davis has declined to publicly confirm their authenticity, though his friend and ex-senior Pentagon official Christopher Mellon wrote on his blog last year that Davis is in fact the author.

Wilson has vociferously denied ever meeting Davis, telling journalist Ross Coulthart that he was in an isolated camp in Maine during October 2002, and had only been to Las Vegas once: a deployment to Nellis Air Force base in 1979 or 1980.

Content from External Source

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...gg-shaped-UFO-1980s-whistleblower-claims.html

I guess the implication is that as the supposed conversation took place in an EG&G parking lot, it's relevant to this story. Davis may not be on par with Vallee and Puthoff in the IC, but he's been in and around for decades. A longtime associate of Puthoff, he often worked for Puthoff's EarthTech Sciences company. He was involved in NIDS and AASWAP as well as TTSA. He claims that as an intelligence officer or person(?), Grusch was part of his security detail.

In the context of this Mail article, they could have correctly pointed out that EG&G was defense contractor and had employees at Area 51. They could have brought up the idea that in UFOlogy, EG&G is big deal and often associated with reverse engineering of UFOs.

Instead, we get the Wilson Memo. A claim Wilson totally denies (coverup) and even Davis wont publicly confirm that it happened or that he wrote it. That's the Invisible College. A few dozen people that get woven or recycled into lots of UFO stories, even when they have little relevance.