Exmouth, Western Australia- a sighting the day after the classic sighting at U.S. Navy base

Background

On the evening of Thursday 25 October 1973, there was a notable UAP sighting, reported by two independent witnesses, near Exmouth, Western Australia. The full story has been carried in previous blog posts, and may be read here.

Exmouth in relation to Perth, W.A.

Introduction

On 18 May 2021 I was contacted by a Perth, Western Australia, resident who related brief details of an observation made by himself and two friends, on Friday 26 October 1973, again from Exmouth. Although, this is now 48 years ago, I believe it is well worth documenting for the record. Here then, are the details obtained via phone and email.

The observation

On Friday 26 October 1973 the three witnesses, Adrian, aged 12; Stuart, and Paul,  were at the Exmouth drive-in theatre, which was, between 1967 and 1983, located on the corner of Murat Road, and Welch Street, Exmouth, where the Exmouth Escape Resort now sits. 

Courtesy Google maps

 

The drive-in http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/49242

Here is the story in Adrian's words:

Report by:  Adrian Arnold at time of sighting 12 years old. (Currently 60 years of age,)

Witnesses present at time of sightings

Adrian Arnold

Stuart  (deceased)

Paul 

Location: Drive-in movie cinema Murat Road, Exmouth, Northwest Cape.

Image courtesy of Adrian Arnold

On this particular evening, I had been dropped by my father, to watch the usual Friday night movie session.

This time of year, it was still quite cold, so we grouped together to share blankets. I was sitting with two friends, Stuart my neighbor and a school mate Paul.

As shown in the pictures, we sat in the deck chairs, to the front right side of the projection box.  There were several external horn speakers for sound,  with rows of linked deck chairs for guests and the usual format for a Friday night program was, first advertisements, followed by a series of cartoons then more advertisements, after this we usually had the first movie, traditionally a repeat or old 60s re-run.  We were sitting in the left-hand front seats of this block of chairs, several of us were on a blanket on the slopping ground in front.

Image courtesy of Adrian Arrnold

This was just a normal Friday night at the movies, we did not have TV, Radio, or computers, we were very aware of things around us, including the Friday night drags that used to get started at about this time, the first cars would blast past the drive-in, to bate, tease the local police, this really was another time in no other town like it in Australia.   A big bit of America in Australia.  One road in, one traffic cop, CB radios and locals and yanks with hot American and local cars on Friday night.

 I used to love listening to them go past, looking up at the stars, seeing the heavens and wishing one day, to be on an adrenalin buss too, we were into the early skateboarding craze, just modified old roller skates, made into boards, the start of the lords of dog town, Exmouth.

This was the land scape, we were dreamers, rebels and had slingshots and thought we were hot, 

Image courtesy of Adrian Arnold

So when looking up on that night, at first I thought I had seen double,  three bright lights in close formation off the coast side toward the north west,  this was actually behind us, we would normally have been looking at the screen, sadly the first films were rubbish, on seeing these lights, at first they were stationary, they suddenly moved, I yelled at Paul and Stuart to look where I had seen them, Paul saw them straight away as they moved again,  Stuart was slow to pick up where they were, in that time they moved in a angular position in a zig zag away, getting wider in pattern, stopping at each line end,  this was not a plane, not a balloon, made no noise, a long way away, there was a very slight green pulse of a very faint color in between them, just noticeable,  all three maintained a set pattern to each other but seemed to distort a little.  After the last stop, they moved first at the same speed then accelerated of into the west north westerly direction and disappeared out over the gulf.

To this day I have not seen any other object do this except the second sighting in September 1975,  as luck would have it, it was Stuart that first picked them out on this night,  unfortunately he has passed away and is unable to confirm this, but a almost identical pattern of lights, more green in the center and was stationary for longer periods, as if watching, but still took of in almost a identical speed and direction as the 73 sighting.  Please note, the town drive-in is located about 40km from the second sighting, which was west of the flaming head light house, on a beach towards the dunes beach, surfing beach, now a well-known location.  Please see attached map.

I have not until recently, last year, that I actually came across other people who were aware of these sightings, but back when these happened, it was talked about at school by quite a few people, a lot thought it was made up,  there was talk in the town about it and after the 75 sighting, both my parents and others in town were aware these had been seen north as far as Dampier and south as Carnarvon.

My interest in this was reignited when I worked with Stan Dayo in the late 1980s helping set up the Perth TAFE film school, in Aberdene Street, Stan was the author of the Cosmic conspiracy, was to be blunt very interested in my time in Exmouth, particularly As I was neighbors, lived next door to the house that all the US Navy Captains lived in,  we were very close to most of them,  particularly Captain Cunningham, I skateboarded with his son Mark.    

I am now becoming aware that this is not just a one off sighting,  I hope with Paul’s version, memory of this event, you will be able to add to the jigsaw of information that is painting a quite interesting picture, we may not be alone.

Comments

1. Exmouth is at latitude 21.93 degrees south and longitude 114.12 degrees east.

2. On 26 October 1973, the Sun, as seen from that location, set at 6.30pm local time (UTC + 8 hours.)

3. A check with Stellarium, an astronomical sky program found that the Sun had indeed set by 7.30pm and it would have been dark. The Moon was below the horizon at this time, so there was no Moonlight. The planet Venus was a bright object at 32 degrees elevation, azimuth 252 degrees (just south of West.) The lesser bright planet, Jupiter was also visible at 75 degreed elevation and azimuth 274 degrees (just north of west.)

4. A check of the nearest upper atmospheric soundings station, based at Learmonth, 31 kilometres south of Exmouth revealed that they did not keep records in 1973.

5. The freely available online Bureau of Meteorology weather records for Learmonth extend back only 13 months. 

Australian Department of Defence responds to some UAP related questions

 Background

The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF,)  part of the broader Australian Department of Defence (DoD,) was charged with the responsibility of investigating the UFO phenomenon, from the early 1950's to 1994. Since then, the DoD has referred anyone in Australia wishing to report a sighting of a UFO, to Police or state level civilian UFO organisations.

A project facilitated by myself, between 2003-2008 located, and had digitised, a large number of Australian government agency files on UAP. Details of these files may be read here.  For a comprehensive treatment of what these files contained, click here. 

So, since 1994 there has been no overt interest in the subject, by any Australian government agency. I say overt, because due to the nature of the phenomenon, I have always suspected that some analyst in an agency such as the Defence Science andTechnology Group (DSTG) or in the Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO,) will have a brief to quietly keep across the topic.

The DoD and UAP

In June 2019, I wanted to see what the current Australian DoD position was in respect to the topic of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP.) I therefore provided them with some context, and then sought a response from the DoD to the following questions:

1. On 23 April 2019 the U.S. Politico magazine carried a story that the U.S. Navy was issuing new guidelines for the reporting of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

2. On 26 May 2019 the New York Times newspaper carried a story that U.S. Naval aviators had interacted with Unidentified Aerial Phenomena as recently as 2015.

My questions were:

1. Has the Australian Department of Defence any current guidelines concerning the reporting by Department of Defence personnel of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena? If so, may I obtain a copy?

2. If there are no current DoD guidelines, is there any section of the DoD which acts as a collection point for unsolicited reports of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena which might come from service personnel, e.g. through an aviation hazard reporting system? If so, might I have details?

3. Has the DoD any plans, based on U.S. policy changes, to issue instructions to service personnel to report Unidentified Aerial Phenomena?

The response, attributed to a spokesperson from Defence was:

"Defence does not have a protocol that covers recording or reporting of UFO sightings."

2021

Given the current official interest in UAP shown by the U.S. Department of Defense I recently posed another set of questions to the Australian Department of Defence. These were:

Q1: Is the Department aware of recent global media reporting of a briefing to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Intelligence on the topic of UAP, such briefing leading to Congressional members stating that UAP represent a threat to their national security?

Q2: Is the Department aware of a forthcoming report by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, to the U.S. Congress on U.S. government agencies' knowledge of UAP?

Q3: Has the Australian Department of Defence been approached  in recent times by the U.S. Department of Defense to liaise on the subject of UAP? If so, are details of any such liaison available?

Q4: I am aware that the RAAF devoted resources in the time period 1950-1994 to the study of UAP. In the light of the above, is anyone in the Australian Department of Defence currently monitoring the subject of UAP? If not, why not? 

Today, 25 June 2021 I received a response, attributed to a Defence spokesperson:

"Defence does not have a protocol that covers recording or reporting of unidentified aerial phenomena/unidentified flying object sightings.

The US Department of Defense Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force actions or reporting are outside of Defence's remit. Queries regarding that organisation should be directed to the US Department of Defense."

 My comments:

1. As you can see, there is a repeating of their 2019 position, namely that "Defence does not have a protocol that covers recording or reporting of UFO sightings."

2. However, if you read my 2021 questions again, you will see that I did not mention the UAP Task Force at all. So, either my questions necessitated someone in DoD taking a look at the global media reporting and came across the UAPTF; or my suggestion that there is some analyst in the DoD who monitors the topic, may have some merit.

Update: 26 June 2021

ABC journalist Matthew Eaton, published a digital online article after contacting the Australian DoD. Eaton received the exact same response from the DoD that I did. 

Current Director of UAP Task Force named

 Politico

In an article in Politico, dated 23 June 2021, author Andrew Desiderio reported on the upcoming UAP report to Congress. Included in the article was the following:

"Last week, though, members of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Armed Services Committee were briefed by Brennan McKernan, the director of the Pentagon's UAP task force, and Scott Bray, the deputy director of naval intelligence."

Up until then, the name of the current director of the UAP Task Force was publicly unknown. 

What is known about Brennan McKernan?

http://www.usnpaa.org/uploads/6/8/0/3/6803713/sightings_dec_2019_.pdf

McKernan is mentioned in Volume 24, Number 5, dated December 2019 of "Sightings" a publication of the United States Navy Public Affairs Association. The Association held one of its professional development luncheons in November 2019 at which Brennan McKernan was the guest speaker. In an article in that issue McKernan was described as:

"...a Navy Intelligence analyst, and he spoke to us about the threat from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea."

http://www.usnpaa.org/uploads/6/8/0/3/6803713/sightings_dec_2019_.pdf

The Navy Needs HUMINT

McKernan was also co-author of an article in Volume 143/8/1,374, August 2017 of the "Proceedings" of the U.S. Naval Institute. The article was titled "Professional notes - The Navy Needs HUMINT" authored by Lynn Wright; Mark A. Assur and Brennan McKernan. The article argues that the U.S. Navy, in recent years, has focused on signals and imagery collection at the expense of human intelligence.

In a previous blog post, B. Lynn Wright was found to be SES USN DCNO N2N6,  ADINO for Information Warfare (Acting) OPNAV N2N6B, Deputy Director, Naval Intelligence, formerly of the Defense Intelligence Agency. 

Office of Naval Intelligence

The U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence is the area of the U.S Navy responsible for the collection, analysis and promulgation of maritime intelligence. Naval intelligence analysts such as John F. Stratton (see here for his official Navy biography) have previously been identified as working on UAP. In 2020 Stratton was with the USN Nimitz OPINTELCEN area of ONI.   A search of keywords on the ONI website failed to reveal any information there concerning McKernan.

LinkedIn

A search of the LinkedIn website located a profile for Brennan M. Defense Strategy and Policy at US Navy, New Alexandria, Virginia, USA. His experience is shown as OPNAV Strategy and Policy, August 2008-present. Educated at the US Naval Academy between 1992 and 1996, obtaining a BSc. He was a Navy officer between July 1992 and December 2003. 

Here is a job ad for a Strategy and Policy Analysts with OPNAV which will give you an idea of what that role entails.

Update: 24 June 2021

1t was previously reported that Congressman Andre Carson, chaired a classified briefing on UAP for the sub-committee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and counter proliferation, House Select Committee on Intelligence, on Wednesday 16 June 2021. For a fuller story on this, including a statement by Andre Carson, click here.

The search for the U.S. DoD Security Classification Guide for UAP

 Background

In a blog post dated 20 March 2021, I posed the question "what security classification level does the U.S. Department of Defense assign to information about UAP?" In a post on his blog, dated 13 March 2021 , French researcher Marc Cecotti, revealed details of internal U.S. Department of Defense emails, arising from his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request re UAP; which partially answered my question.

In one email, dated 10 July 2020, from Joseph Gradisher, N2N6 Strategic Engagements U.S. Navy, to Jeffrey Jones COMNAVSAFECEN, Deputy Director for Safety Priorities, part of the email read:

"Additionally, there is now a Security Classification Guidance document (at the SECRET) level that addresses the UAP issue and what may/may not be discussed publicly."

What is a Security Classification Guide?

On the Internet I located a PDF document titled "Security Classification Guidance, Student Guide" a course designed for those who need to write/know about these guides.  

Part of this document reads:

"When an Original Classification Authority or OCA, determines that information must be classified, he or she must also develop security classification guidance to communicate that determination to others."

FOIA request

On 21 March 2021 I submitted an FOIA request to the U.S. Department of Defense requesting a copy of the SCG that addresses the UAP issue. Today, I received a "Final Disposition" letter relating to my FOIA request DON-NAVY-2021-004751. Part of the response read:

"...we contacted the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare (N2N6) to conduct a search for responsive records regarding the subject of your request. The N2N6 office conducted a search of their electronic and hard file folders and they advised this office that they had located responsive records to your request.

Due to the public interest in these records, our office will review and post releasable records publicly as they become available on our FOIA Reading Room....Please note, those records will not be sent to individual requesters..."

I immediately went to their reading room, but there are no responsible records posted there at the moment.  It seems, it is now a matter of simply waiting for such records to be placed in the reading room.

I am aware that U.S. researcher John Greenewald submitted an FOIA back in January 2021 for the same SCG. I am not aware of any response that he may have received. There may have been a number of other researchers who also have sought the same document, thus resulting in the way in which the U.S. Navy have decided to respond to my FOIA. 

Update: 24 December 2021

Yesterday, John Greenewald advised he had received a copy of the SCG under the FOIA. Click here for details.

Garry P. Nolan - three interviews

U. S.  Professor Garry P. Nolan has had an interest in the topic of UAPs ever since he:

"...was approached by some people representing the government and an aerospace corporation to help them understand the medical harm that had come to some individuals, related to supposed interactions with an anomalous craft. I had no expectation of this, but they came primarily because they were interested in the kinds of blood analysis that my lab can do."

I thought it would be useful to bring together some details from three interviews given by Garry Nolan, in an attempt to understand his work on UAPs; his views, and his methodology.  

2016

The first interview, conducted in 2016, appeared in Annie Jacobsen's 2017 book, "Phenomena" (Back Bay Books, New York.) After her interview with  Christopher (Kit) Canfield Green, she went on to write:

"To advance his hypothesis, based on the demographics and high-functioning of his patients, Dr. Green teamed up with the Nolan Lab at Stamford University, run by Garry Nolan, one of the world's leading research scientists specializing in genetics, immunology and bioinformatics. Nolan trained under the Nobel Prize-winning biologist David Baltimore, has published over 200 research papers, and holds twenty biotechnology patents. Age fifty-five, he has been honored as one of the top twenty inventors at Stanford University. His research is funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Cancer Institute and others. In 2012, Nolan was awarded the Teal Innovator Award from the Defense department, a $3.3 million grant for advanced cancer studies. The Nolan Lab is perhaps best known for pioneering advances in large-scale mapping of cellular features and human cells at an unprecedented level of detail. "We are building on technologies that are just coming into existence," Nolan told me in 2016. Dr. Kit Green and his colleagues sought out Garry Nolan for help.

"I have met and worked with many of Kit's patients," Nolan confirms, "and I have looked deeply at the relevant medical data. These people were injured. I have seen the physiological consequences of the harm they've endured. He agrees with Kit Green that in many cases it looks as if it is an electromagnetic field of some sort." It has led to inflammation and other biomarkers in their bodies that can be seen on MRIs, tisue, blood. We are now working on both the genetics and epigenetic components," Nolan says. "I am relatively certain we are the only individuals in the field doing this." Using mapping technology the Nolan Lab is renowned for, technicians are mapping Green's patients' DNA and their immune systems. They are looking for patterns among the patients, using biological data to create an integrated theory.

Source:http://web.stanford.edu/group/nolan/ 

"All kinds of trauma can be picked up by the immune system," Nolan says. "Every event that happens to you is recorded by your immune system," which in turn creates a biological data-base of the self. "Every surgery or bee sting," he says, every incident of HIN1 flu, head cold, allergy or chicken pox "is all sensed and recorded by the immune system." With the technology that is emerging from the Nolan lab, doctors will likely soon be able to take a snapshot of a person's blood and read the historical record of a person's physiological life. Access to this kind of high technology non-subjective biological data would have been impossible to imagine in any other age.

But what, I ask Garry Nolan, does this have to do with anomalous mental phenomena research? With ESP and PK? With Uri Geller and hallucinations experienced by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Laboratory? "We are also mapping [DNA and immune systems] people and their families who claims to be remote viewers  or have anomalous perception," Nolan confirms. For example, Joe McMoneagle is part of their research program; he provided them with a sample of his DNA, and the team is considering how to access the DNA of his sister, who was also allegedly a remote viewer, says Nolan. "Whether real, perceived or illusion, there appears to be a genetic determinant." And while Dr Green maintains that his patients' injuries may have come from high energy devices or their components, both Green and Nolan think there is more to it than that. "Some people [seem to] repeatedly attract the phenomena or the experiences," Nolan says. "They act like an antenna or are like lighthouses in the dark."

For some it might be a blessing, Nolan speculates. They are comfortable with these experiences and make it work in their lives (think Uri Geller, Joe McMoneagle, Angela Dellafiora, and Paul Smith). For others its a curse (for example, Green's injured patients and the Livermore nuclear scientists who quit their jobs). Nolan makes clear that his ideas are only hypotheses, but he explains that the raw data from which his hypotheses have been drawn are clear. "It's important to remember that DNA doe not invent stories," he says. Gene mapping and advanced single-cell analysis techniques reveal biological truths. "Imagine if you could understand how all this connects to mentation [ie mental activity], "Nolan says. Nolan says of claimed UAP encounters and ESP or PK abilities, "You could make a drug to block [the genetic aspect] for those who don't want it - or even enhance it for others.""

2019

Nolan was interviewed by U. S. author and researcher, M. J. Banias on 29 April 2019. Their conversation mainly involved the areas of Dr. Nolan's work with Dr. Kit Green and their cohort of patients who had apparently sustained injuries arising from their encounters with the phenomenon; and the work Dr. Nolan was undertaking with Jacques Vallee on materials analysis.

Regarding their materials analysis work, I directed the following question to Dr. Nolan, through Banias: "Is there a peer reviewed paper anywhere in the near future that the community can expect?"

Dr. Nolan gave an extended response, to the question, which I listened to on YouTube. Later, in communicating directly with Dr. Nolan, he offered to clarify some of the points he had mentioned in the Banias interview. So, the following is a combination of his conversational response to Banias, and some additional material from my own direct communication.

"Yes...some initial studies showed unusual isotopic ratios and Jacques has talked about them publicly so I'm comfortable talking about that. So what we are doing right now, is I'm doing this work personally. The recent work that Jacques showed, I did the experiments myself, but not the historical stuff Peter Sturrock for instance, here at Stanford did collaborating with Jacques in the past. Others had done some isotopic analysis work as well, and we have confirmed some of those efforts.

My point is at this stage, as much as some of the (non-mainstream) journals that have published this stuff are credible, they are unfortunately not the journals that anybody in the mainstream is paying attention to. The journals people are paying attention to are like, Nature Materials, Nature Photonics, and Aeronautical journals. So, we've convinced a couple of those major journals that if we put together a credible paper that looks like there are credible conclusions, then they will send the paper out for peer review. That doesn't mean they will publish the work, but they will send it out for peer review, to make sure and double check our results. I expect we will probably get push back like I got push back with the Atacama results at the beginning. But the feedback made it a better paper. So, that's what we will do. So yes, we plan open publication.

So, right now what we are doing are confirmations of our initial results. We are taking it round to those who are specialists in mass spectrometry and metallurgy, to ask "Ok, where could I have made a mistake? What could be the contaminating artifacts in the information here that are leading to me to make the wrong conclusion  - and hopefully prevent me from potentially making a fool of myself?

That's why you go to the experts - which we have done in some of these cases. Sometimes you tell them what it is, and the provenance. Sometimes, you say, hey I've got this stuff, I'm trying to find out what it is. Does this make sense - is this possible? Given we know what this is made of, ( i.e. the elements and the isotopes) could I get apparently altered ratios by some strange surface chemistry that leads me to misinterpret the results? So, let's talk about some of the isotopes. I think there's magnesium in a couple of the samples of Jacques that have strange ratios. So, are the unexpected magnesium ratios because Mg26 is more likely to bond  to something in the material or less able to be ionized, and therefore make it look like it has got a different isotope ratio than it actually has?  And maybe that's the case because that magnesium 26 is in the context of something  else in the sample. Total speculation, but I've learned to be careful. So, apparent isotope ration difference might have nothing to do with aliens, or other worldly anything, and it is only to do with the physical structure of the material that makes what we think we're seeing to be somewhat off natural, when it is in fact truly "normal."

Here the message is to other people that I know , who are out there, who are doing this kind of analytical work on these materials; be very careful. A couple of things that we thought were off, have very conventional explanations, and you have to go to the expert, or you will make a fool of yourself. And you will discredit anything that you're trying to do. And the people who are listening, who know what I am doing with these materials- who know I know who they are, and that I have told this to them privately, but now I'm telling them publicly.

That's why I am interested in the material work that Jacques brought to the table. It's because, of, all the many things things that can be done, the materials are "reproducible." We can cut those samples into many pieces as Jacques would tolerate. Send it to people in laboratories - to confirm it. We've done that in some cases. So, we're getting these validations and we're checking with the necessary experts. Then, we'll write up a simple paper that will make no claim to anything, other than the fact that here's the composition of the stuff and here's the story of how it was found. End of story.

The hanging question there, should the materials be truly anomalous, is how did they get made? People (humans) don't play with isotopic ratios easily. Ask yourself what do people do with isotopic ratios now (with current technology)? What do we modify isotopes for, or what have we been doing with isotopes for the last 60 years? Blow stuff up...uranium and plutonium...imaging or killing ...cancer cells...nothing very subtle.

Chemistry and physics have not caught up with why you might use titanium 46 versus titanium 47 (plus one neutron)...what is different about the magnesium ratios in the sample that I know Hal has, and I have a sample that was given to me by Leslie. So, why would somebody alter those ratios? The cost to change isotopic ratios is considerable, especially given the provenance: that is, some of these materials date back decades, when the ability to make those changes was so costly that why would you make a big chunk of it and throw it out in the desert?...why would you bother?...I can tell you right now there is simply no industrial/material reason to alter the ratios.

(Talking of the use of the word "alloys by TTSA.) "So, I wrote an internal memo to TTSA at the time I was involved with them and said these aren't alloys. These materials, do not think of them as alloys. We need to change the conversation. You need to call them metamaterials - so I'd like to lay claim to the use of that term (this was a memo in response to the Scientific American article about the Tic Tacs saying that humans basically know all there is to know about alloys.) These are more complex, and if anything, you need to call them ultramaterials because metamaterials are pretty well understood....basically that's a repeated atomic architecture that performs a single purpose.

So, I took some of the material from Jacques to some people at Stanford, and I said - this is interesting, and you tell them a little bit about it. They will sometimes reply, if you can interest them that " Well I have this or that instrument, and I'll get back to you, and tell you something about this, that, the other of it..." They can inform us whether you've seen this in any aeronautical industry materials before. And if they come back and tell me, yes this is something from Pratt and Whitley circa 1955, I'm like, thank you, now I can go do something else..."

2021

In an interview published on 14 June 2021, by author Jon Brooks:

"So how did you get involved working on UFOs?

Garry Nolan: I was approached by some people representing the government and an aerospace corporation to help them understand the medical harm that had come to some individuals, related to supposed interactions with an anomalous craft. I had no expectation of this, but they came primarily because they were interested in the kinds of blood analysis that my lab can do.

What were your findings on that?

It turned out there couldn't be any findings because some of the events had happened so long ago that the signal would be lost in the noise of time, and it just wasn't worth going into.

You're now looking into some alleged artifacts that came from UFOs, including a case from Jacques Vallee, perhaps the mast famous UFO researcher. How's that going?

You can think of it almost like investigating forensics. Somebody claims something happened or didn't happen. And so you use whatever psychological or scientific means to investigate and document the case. And in the case of some of these materials, they're almost all metals that are claimed to have either been dropped by these UAPs, or somehow left behind. In the case of Trinity, two boys got into what they claimed is a craft and took  a piece of it. And they've kept it since 1945. I come to it with no preconceptions. I come to it with, well, here's how you do the analysis. Am I the best person to do the analysis? No. Absent an actual metallurgist stepping in, I'm willing to do the groundwork, to get preliminary results that might interest a sufficiently expert metallurgist to go the next step.

What can you say about the results of your analysis? 

If people are expecting a spectacular smoking gun, this is not it. But the objective is to take even some of the most blasé cases and just create a pipeline of how this should be done, to demonstrate to people that you don't need to come up with a spectacular answer. I mean, we don't disprove anything with this case. It's just not a case of this being an obvious piece of technology.

The things that interest me the most are the case where there are claimed changes in the isotope ratios of given elements. The point I've always made is we don't know why you would do that in the first place, because it's expensive. And so if somebody is engineering isotope ratios for a prctical purpose, I'd like to understand why, because that would be evidence of an understanding of material science that we don't currently possess.

And so if you put together this idea of material science understanding that we don't possess with some of the claimed observations of craft that do things , that we don't know how to do, it's like catnip to somebody who likes to solve problems.

If you come to a conclusion that is not supported by the facts or anecdotal, and start pushing an agenda, you're only going to discredit yourself, because one of the things I've learned in looking at this area is that it's way too complex to come to some Hollywood conclusion about aliens. As many people have said, the majority of the so-called sightings are likely to be mistakes. And so let's get the mistakes off the table.

I've dealt with fake cases before. People brought me things that were clearly faked trying to make money. So it's a fraught field.

Howe have your colleagues reacted to your work in this area?

A little bit the usual giggles, and some have said, "Garry, you're going to ruin your reputation." And my response is: I'm not making a conclusion. I'm just saying that there is data here that is anomalous and that somebody needs to explain. I'm willing to take the time to explain it. What scientist takes something off the table? If the explanation is sitting there right in front of you and you decide to throw it away before you even come to a conclusion, you can't really claim to be a scientist - you're a cultist.

I think the crux of the whole issue here is: Why are we afraid of talking about it? It's interesting that suddenly in the last year this has come to national attention. We train these pilots for tens of millions of dollars, and we entrust them with multimillion pieces of equipment. Now people are coming to me who kind of giggled in the past, and they're saying, "Garry, it looks like you might have been right. I'm really interested in this, Can you tell me more? It's a little bit more open now, and that's a good thing. And if it is disproven, ultimately, I'm perfectly fine with that.

Are you aware of any other scientists who are working on UFO issues?

Dozens. And there are probably others who just don't want to step forward. I'm the only one perhaps foolish enough to be a bit more public about it. Part of the problem is that there is no funding, so people are doing it on a nickel and a dime, paying for it themselves in their spare time. And I think that when people say, well there's no real results, it's because nobody's funded the question properly to get the results. As many people know, science is on some level capitalist in nature in that it will follow the money. If there's money in research grants and things to be done, people will start investigating. 

It sounds like you think there is really something to this phenomenon

I think there is genuinely something interesting there. How to explain it, I don't know. As Jacques once said, the problem with coming to conclusions is if you can come up with one counter conclusion or one counter observation, your whole set of conclusions can fall apart. So maintain your distance until you have all of the data. All I'm saying is there is data that is interesting.

Is it fair to say that your open-mindedness about this issue is a minority position among the scientific community?

I think it's a minority position. But in my science, I always consider everything. I'm very much, "Keep it on the table." So it might be a low probability, a 0.1% chance. If I throw it away and consider it impossible, then I might be limiting myself. That's how I have succeeded, at least in my field. Not everybody works that way, and I don't think everybody needs to. We need the skeptics. They are, in a sense, peer review. As long as they are not pathologically skeptical. There has to come a point at which we agree there's a proof point We can still be proven wrong later."

Recent Pentagon press briefings mention UAP

Pentagon press briefings

Pentagon Press Secretary, John F. Kirby holds regular press briefings. In  the past few days, some of the questions directed to him, have referred to UAP. I thought it would be useful to document some of these exchanges for the record.

John F. Kirby, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs

1 June 2021

"Q: A quick question on the coming UAP reports. There's been some reporting that this could be coming as soon as this week or maybe even tomorrow, can you say anything about what timing we should actually expect?

Mr Kirby: The what report Matt?

Q: The UAP report? UFO report?

Mr Kirby: That is really for the DNI to speak to, Matt. As you know, this is a report - a Congressionally mandated report, the DNI is in the lead.  It will be DNI who will be making that report, obviously DoD has a role in helping flesh out the information that will be in that report, but as for specific timing I'd refer you to the DNI."

"Paul from U.S. News

Q: And then one last question on the Pentagon's contributions to the UFO report. I've been speaking with a series of experts abroad who have expressed some concern about similar investigations in other countries having too much of a military focus and not enough input from civilian scientists. I wonder if that's a concern that the pentagon has shared and whether that came up at all during this most recent process?

Mr Kirby: What we're participating in a DNI-led study, again, on-mandated by Congress. We're providing context and information that we have on these phenomena and our focus is on, again on supporting the DNI's efforts to produce this report. That's - that's where our focus is. And - and again, that's our - that's our lane. That's our place to be in is to provide the kind of context that we have and the information that we have to help the DNI produce this report for Congress."

Avril Haines - Current DNI

 4 June 2021

"Q: Hey, John, happy birthday. There's no way I can like sugarcoat this. I was talking to a gentleman about the UAP report, and he contends the Pentagon has alien bodies and crafts. So I just wanted to run this past you. Does the DoD have these things? And if so, where?

Mr Kirby: The UAP Task Force is really designed to take a look at these unexplained aerial phenomena, try to help us get a better understanding of them. Again, I'm not going to get ahead of the report that DNI will submit that we are helping obviously, and providing input to. And I'll just leave it at that, Jeff, Yeah."

"Luis?

Q: Thanks, John. Can you specifically address the reporting that's come out about this UAP report, the reporting that these UAPs - they don't appear to be alien spacecraft, that there's not enough information to actually address what exactly they are and that they're not a U.S. secret black program?

Mr Kirby: yeah, look, I've seen the press reporting on this, Luis, but I'm not going to comment one way or the other about the reporting or certainly about the work of the task force and the coming report by the Director of National Intelligence. I won't get ahead of that process.

Q: So can you rule out specifically that these are not alien spacecraft?

Mr Kirby: I think I've answered your question. I'm not going to get ahead of a report that hasn't been filed to Congress and I'm certainly not going to speak about intelligence issues here from the podium. I've, again seen the press reporting but I'm not going to be able to comment beyond that."

"Q: John, I'll start off with a UFO question, how about that?

Mr Kirby: Go for it.

Q: Has Secretary Austin been briefed on this report that's required by Congress and also just more broadly, does Secretary Austin see this - what apparently is an increasing number of reported incidents - a a safety report for the military in terms of pilot training and so forth as well as a national security threat?

Mr Kirby: He has received a briefing on the work that the tsk force has so far conducted. The report as you know is being crafted and will be delivered by the Director National Intelligence, but he has received a briefing on the work so far. And as we've said before, we take all incursions into our operating spaces seriously. So, I mean, like everybody else here at the Defense Department, certainly we are taking the entire matter seriously - regarding the potential for safety concerns.

Q: In other words, regardless of what the explanation may be or if there is none of what they, there are incidents in which pilots are seeing things that are close enough that could be a safety - well it is a safety problem?

Mr Kirby: It could potentially involve safety and/or national security concerns absolutely."