By Paul and Phillip Collins

The first installment of this series took up an examination of David Grusch, an Afghanistan veteran with an extensive background in military and intelligence work who has joined the long list of curious characters claiming to know the “truth” about the UFO phenomenon. The examination led to the doorstep of Compass Rose Legal Firm, a collection of attorneys who appear to be working in service to deep state elements.

Ufologist and suspected disinformation amplifier Jeremy Corbell was also looked at because of the role he played in thrusting Grusch into the public eye. Lawyers and unwitting UFO disinformation agents, however, are not the only ones providing Grusch with institutional cover. Media elements with suspicious backgrounds have also done their part to elevate Grusch to celebrity status.

It appears that Grusch was first catapulted into the spotlight by a June 5, 2023 Debrief article entitled, “Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin” (Kean and Blumenthal). At least one of the authors of the Debrief piece provides grounds for suspicion: Leslie Kean. A well-known journalist and New York Times bestselling author, Kean is no stranger to bizarre topics. An April 30, 2021 article in the New Yorker magazine states that Kean “feels most at home in the borderlands between the paranormal and the scientific” (Lewis-Kraus).

That borderland, of course, claims UFOs among its residents. It is, therefore, no surprise to find out that Kean is considered a “novice UFO researcher” with a bestselling UFO book (ibid). The article also describes Kean as “a self-possessed woman with a sensible demeanor and a nimbus of curly graying hair” (ibid). The New Yorker’s Gideon Lewis-Kraus paints Kean up as a “stubborn but unassuming” lady who “tends to speak of the impact of ‘the [New York] Times story,’ and the new cycle of U.F.O. attention it has inaugurated, as if she had not been its principal instigator” (ibid).

After reading such a modest and benign description, one is almost tempted to breeze over the most important part of Kean’s biography. Kean, according to Lewis Kraus, is “a descendant of one of the nation’s oldest political dynasties” (ibid). That political dynasty includes Leslie’s uncle, “Thomas Kean, who served two terms as New Jersey’s governor and went on to chair the 9/11 Commission” (ibid).

As the 9/11 Commission chairman, Thomas Kean oversaw a political farce, a fact that he and fellow commission participant Lee Hamilton have since admitted. In 2006, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton claimed that the 9/11 Commission was “set up to fail,” a statement that acted as the title of the first chapter in their book over the commission (Rosenwald). The George W. Bush White House, according to Kean and Hamilton, was the “chief obstacle” to the commission performing its job (ibid).

Thomas Kean himself, however, may have acted as an obstacle.

After conceding that “Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al Qaeda funding,” the 9/11 Commission claimed it “found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization” (“The 9/11 Commission Report,” 171). With that, the commission exonerated foreign players who have long enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with America’s oligarchy. Thomas Kean is among those who have benefited from that symbiotic relationship. Known by very few at the time of the 9/11 Commission was that Thomas Kean is a director of Amerada Hess, described as a “petroleum giant” by journalist Nicholas Stein (Stein).

In 1998, Amerada Hess began Delta Hess, a joint venture “with Delta Oil, a Saudi Arabian company to develop oil fields in Azerbaijan” (ibid). Investors in Delta Oil included Khalid bin Mahfouz, a now-deceased Saudi Arabian billionaire, banker, and businessman (ibid). According to Stein, Mahfouz was “a shadowy Saudi patriarch married to one of Osama bin Laden’s sisters” (ibid). Stein also notes that Mahfouz was “suspected of funding charities linked to al Qaeda” and he was “even named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by families of Sept. 11 victims” (ibid). Needless to say, this meant Thomas Kean had a serious conflict of interest, which is probably why “Three weeks before Kean’s appointment, Hess severed its ties with Delta” (ibid).

Such a move, of course, might have been intended to make Thomas Kean look like an individual who could approach the topic of the September 11 attacks with an impartial and objective eye. How unbiased, however, could the commissioner be when the topic of alleged Saudi involvement, whether individual or institutional, was broached? Closer examination of Thomas Kean reveals that the practices of cover—up and pushing false narratives have found a loving home within the Kean political dynasty. Has Leslie Kean followed in the footsteps of her uncle?

Prior to launching Grusch’s career as a UFO “whistleblower,” Kean was instrumental in generating a media buzz around another problematic individual allegedly engaged in informing the public about the reality of UFOs: Luis Elizondo IV.

Kean was joined in the effort to make Elizondo a patron saint of the UFO community by her frequent co-author Ralph Blumenthal and New York Times Pentagon correspondent Helene Cooper. Their collaboration produced a sensational and much publicized piece published by the New York Times on December 16, 2017. The article, entitled, “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program,” presented Elizondo as “military intelligence officer” who ran the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) “on the fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring, deep within the building’s maze” (Cooper, Blumenthal, and Kean).

AATIP, according to the article, “began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomenon” (ibid). The program allegedly “produced documents that describe sighting of aircraft that seemed to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of lift” (ibid). The New York Times article continued:

Officials with the program have also studied videos of encounters between unknown objects and American military aircraft – including one released in August of a whitish oval object, about the size of a commercial plane, chased by two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Nimitz off the coast of San Diego in 2004. (ibid)

Elizondo claimed he investigated the Nimitz case during his time with AATIP and leaked a video of the incident to the New York Times in 2017 when he was allegedly an intelligence officer with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) (Holmes). The Nimitz footage was one of multiple ‘UFO videos’” that Elizondo leaked (ibid). The videos are not much different than the scores of problematic and inconclusive films that frustrated UFO researchers have been dealing with for years. Will Holmes elaborates: “The videos, recorded from U.S. Navy aircraft, are themselves unremarkable, each showing a small grey dot against a grainy background” (ibid).

  The New York Times article asserts that AATIP’s government funding “dried up in 2012” (Cooper, Blumenthal, and Kean). Elizondo alleges that he worked with the CIA and Navy officials subsequent to the loss of federal money (ibid).

In October of 2017, Elizondo claims that “he resigned to protest what he characterized as excessive secrecy and internal opposition” (ibid). If Elizondo was so disgusted with “excessive secrecy and internal opposition,” why did he continue working for the Pentagon for five years after the government money went away? If Elizondo was, in fact, the director of a special access program of paramount importance, why were the videos he leaked not more compelling and persuasive?

The Intercept called significant portions of Elizondo’s story into question. The online newspaper made the following assertion: “There is no discernible evidence that [Elizondo] ever worked for a government UFO program, much less led one” (Kloor, “The Media Love This UFO Expert Who Says He Worked for an Obscure Pentagon Program. Did He?”). This contention, according to the Intercept, is supported by statements made by a representative of the Pentagon. Keith Kloor writes:

“Yes, AATIP existed, and it did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena,” Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood told me. However, he added: “Mr. Elizondo had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program while he worked in OUSDI [the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence], up until the time he resigned effective 10/4/2017.” (ibid)

 Kloor attempted to give Elizondo an opportunity to respond to Sherwood’s claims. His attempts, however, failed. Kloor elaborates:

I tried contacting Elizondo multiple times via email and his cellphone. He has not responded. It’s not as if he is on retreat somewhere; I noticed that in the run-up to his star turn on the new History Channel show [2019’s “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation”], he has been speaking to everyone from the New York Times to UFO media personalities and military bloggers. (ibid)

While Elizondo’s background is questionable, many powerful people and institutions have employed perception management to convince the public that he is an expert on UFOs who needs to be taken seriously. The New York Times is certainly part of that psychological operation. The Times, which is one of the most respected and longest running newspapers in America’s history, has been pushing the topic of UFOs hard even though there is very little interest expressed by the general public.

Journalist Keith Kloor is among those who have noted the Times’ determination to keep the UFO topic alive in spite of the fact that the subject is largely met with an indifference. In a May 17, 2020 Wired article appropriately titled, “Will The New York Times Ever Stop Reporting on UFOs,” Kloor makes the following observation: “Over the last few years, the paper has published more than a dozen UFO-related stories” (Kloor, “Will The New York Times Ever Stop Reporting on UFOs?”). These articles, according to Kloor, have failed to ignite the public’s curiosity.

In support of this contention, Kloor focuses in on the December 16, 2017 New York Times article authored by Cooper, Blumenthal, and Kean. For Kloor, the reception to the article was quite flat. The journalist writes: “Many news consumers did lap up the story like a new X-Files episode but nobody ran for the hills, and nobody in Congress called for hearings about the ‘revelation’ and its seemingly huge implications for civilization” (ibid). Kloor concludes that “the world didn’t believe there was much to the story—or, at least, the world didn’t believe what the newspaper was hinting at” (ibid). What seems to mystify Kloor is the frequency with which stories possessing the Elizondo/UFO thematic thread appear in the New York Times. He states: “It’s certainly odd that a story so few take seriously keeps landing in the headlines, especially at this juncture” (ibid).

If the New York Times was merely trying to boost sales and subscriptions, then the paper would have jettisoned UFO-related content some time ago. Obviously, the Times’ has another agenda: social engineering. Elizondo plays a central role in the Time’s social engineering efforts. From the pen of Kloor:

“To understand the Times’ sustained interest in UFOs requires an appreciation of Elizondo’s central role in its coverage. His willingness to resign from the Pentagon in 2017 and then reveal the existence and details of the UFO program he’d purportedly run, supplied the gravitas at the center of the initial Times account. Without him, it’s likely the story would not have gotten so much traction. (ibid)

 The NY Times, the CIA and Social Engineering

To some, the assertion that the Times’ Elizondo/UFO stories serve a covert agenda characterized by social engineering may seem far-fetched. The incredulity, however, stems from a complete ignorance of the New York Times’ background. The New York Times has significant ties to at least two institutions inhabiting America’s covert political ecosystem: the elitist Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The New York Times’ founders, the Sulzberger family, is well represented in the CFR (Shoup and Minter 66). James Reston, Max Frankel, and Harrison Salisbury were all CFR members and journalists associated with the New York Times (66). One of the CFR’s original directors, John H. Finley, was an associate editor of the New York Times (66). Hanson W. Baldwin, a long-time military correspondent for the New York Times, according to authors Laurance Shoup and William Minter, “was one of the leaders of the Council’s War and Peace Studies, as well as several subsequent studies focused on military affairs” (66-67).

While the CFR placed one of the NYT’s feet in the world of America’s oligarchy, the CIA placed the newspaper’s other foot in the shadowy world of intelligence.

In 1977, CIA officials revealed that the New York Times was among the Agency’s “most valuable” associations with the American media (Bernstein). New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger was one of several media “executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency” (ibid).

Sulzberger’s relationship with the CIA even included a signed secret agreement (ibid). Sulzberger also established a policy stipulating that the NYT “provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible” (ibid). One reason that the NYT’s publisher may have been willing to accommodate the CIA was his cozy relationship with CIA director Allen Dulles. Bernstein writes:

Sulzberger was especially close to Allen Dulles. “At that level of contact it was the mighty talking to the mighty,” said a high‑level CIA official who was present at some of the discussions. “There was an agreement in principle that, yes indeed, we would help each other. The question of cover came up on several occasions.  It was agreed that the actual arrangements would be handled by subordinates…. The mighty didn’t want to know the specifics; they wanted plausible deniability. (ibid)

The alliance that Sulzberger developed between the NYT and the CIA was one that seemed to subordinate traditional journalism to espionage and the kinds of games that are familiar to those who work in the covert realm. An Agency insider described by famed journalist Carl Bernstein as a “high-level CIA official with a prodigious memory” asserted “that the New York Times provided cover for about ten CIA operatives between 1950 and 1966” (ibid). Regarding CIA personnel working under a NYT cover, Bernstein writes:

“The CIA employees who received Times credentials posed as stringers for the paper abroad and worked as members of clerical staffs in the Times’ foreign bureaus. Most were American; two or three were foreigners” (ibid; italics in original).

Actual NYT staff writers also did work for the Agency. NYT journalist C.L. Sulzberger, Arthur Hays Sulzberger’s nephew, was one of “perhaps a dozen well known columnists and broadcast commentators whose relationships with the CIA go far beyond those normally maintained between reporters and their sources” (ibid). C.L. Sulzberger, according to Bernstein, was a “known asset” that “can be counted on to perform a variety of undercover tasks; they are considered receptive to the Agency’s point of view on various subjects” (ibid).

A Deep History of UFO Deceptions

 The bridge between the CIA and the New York Times also includes a participant in UFO deception: Joseph Bryan III.

Bryan became an infamous character in the UFO community on December 3, 1969, when he participated in the successful effort to remove Donald Keyhoe from his position as director of one of America’s most well-known UFO investigatory bodies: the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) (Fawcett and Greenwood 207). Bryan was chairman of the NICAP board at the time and is credited by researchers Lawrence Fawcett and Barry J. Greenwood with having led the elements within NICAP seeking to oust Keyhoe (207). Keyhoe’s removal is seen by many as a CIA coup within NICAP, and with good reason. Bryan was a former Chief of the CIA’s Psychological Warfare Staff (207). The actions taken by the Bryan-led anti-Keyhoe faction within NICAP resulted in CIA domination of the once-reputable UFO research group. Fawcett and Greenwood elaborate:

And who replaced Keyhoe? John Acuff, who was head of the Society of Photographic Scientists and Engineers (SPSE), a frequent target of Russian spying attempts and a group that had many members involved in Defense Department intelligence units, including the CIA. His management of NICAP was financially “tight” (in the cheap sense) and totally inept in a research sense. Criticism of government UFO policy was gone, and NICAP merely served as a sighting collection center. Acuff’s management drove loyal NICAP members away and ultimately led to Acuff’s downfall in 1978.

Who replaced Acuff? None other than Alan Hall, a retired CIA employee, who accepted the position after a number of other CIA employees were offered the job. Support for Hall from the NICAP Board came from Charles Lombard, an aide to Senator [Barry] Goldwater and a former CIA covert employee. (207)

In 1951, Bryan had two meetings with New York Times staff that have been described as “mysterious” (Brewer, “FBI Report: NICAP Organizer ‘Good Propagandist.’”). Concerning these meetings, UFO researcher Jack Brewer writes: “The first took place between Bryan and the Times European bureau chief, and the second was a meeting between Bryan and the Times publisher. The publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzburger, was the uncle of the European bureau chief, Cyrus Sulzburger” (ibid). What was discussed in these meetings? Brewer points out that Bryan was involved in the infamous Office for Policy Coordination (OPC), which “operated and distributed funds on a ‘massive’ scale throughout Europe” (ibid). Brewer states: “It would be reasonable to surmise his relationship with the Times European bureau chief was at the least indirectly related to his overseeing of these European activities” (ibid). Did Bryan’s relationship with the Times set the stage for the newspaper and the CIA to collaborate on deceiving the public about UFOs? The possibility must be entertained.

Researchers on both the left and right side of the political spectrum have been critical of the CFR and CIA, asserting that their activities have had a deleterious effect on American democracy. The two also appear to be inextricably linked to one another. The CFR played a role in the creation of the CIA. According to investigative journalist Joseph Trento, Allen Dulles, the corporate lawyer who would become the first civilian director of the CIA, possessed an “antique-paneled” and “soundproof” room at the CFR’s building (Trento 44). Referred to as the “Dulles room,” Dulles used this space to formulate “a scheme to operate an intelligence service outside the government” (44). This scheme would exploit the Soviet menace in order to build an intelligence empire. Trento elaborates:

“Uncle Allen,” as his staff called him, was already fighting his own private war against the Soviets. Using the Council on Foreign Relations as his base, he organized a three-pronged attack. First, he formed a privately run and privately controlled shadow intelligence service. Second, he placed those loyal to him in government positions to work with the front groups he controlled. Third, he used the media to mold public opinion in his favor.

Among other things, Dulles used his connections in the press to help create domestic fears that the Soviet Union was on the march in Europe and China. Dulles’s plan worked. Truman was already seeing reports that the military, the State Department, and other government agencies had a small number of Communists in sensitive positions. He had no choice but to take action. The combination of bad publicity and the real threat forced Truman to accept Dulles’s quasi-privatized operation. (44)

 What Truman was forced to accept was an organization that would represent America’s semi-submerged oligarchy more than the nation’s average citizens. The CIA became beholden to an elitist base found within the CFR’s orbit. Former executive assistant to the deputy director of the CIA Victor Marchetti and former State Department analyst John Marks explain:

…. the influential but private Council, composed of several hundred of the country’s top political, military, business, and academic leaders, has long been the CIA’s principal “constituency” in the American public. When the agency needed prominent citizens to front its proprietary companies or for other special assistance it has often turned to Council member. (Marchetti and Marks 237)

 The New York Times’ promotion of Elizondo could be part of an effort by deep state players within the CFR/CIA axis to elevate a UFO disinformation agent to the status of an expert. If that is the case, the public is being fooled into accepting wholesale the claims of a charlatan.

While Elizondo is, in all likelihood, a charlatan, he is a very well-connected one with a family history that has the fingerprints of deep state players and intelligence circles all over it.

Elizondo’s Deep State Family Tree and E. Howard Hunt

The alleged UFO whistleblower is not the first Luis hanging on the Elizondo tree. His father is Luis Elizondo III, a food a beverage manager with an interesting backstory (Cox). According to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Elizondo the elder “helped open the Hyatt hotel in Sarasota” (ibid). The father of the alleged UFO whistleblower “would later work with the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort before branching out into the restaurant business. Among his startups, now defunct, was Michalangelo’s in St. Armands Circle” (ibid). Luis the elder’s exploits in the hospitality and restaurant industry, however, were preceded by his involvement in a less benign field: CIA operations. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s Billy Cox writes:

“[Luis Elizondo III] also spent two years in one of the Fidel Castro’s prisons. A Cuban, the elder Elizondo volunteered for Assault Brigade 2506, whose ill-fated mission to overthrow the communist dictatorship with CIA support ended with the Bay of Pigs debacle in 1961” (ibid).

Brigade 2506 was very close to a CIA officer who was famous for his participation in several political scandals and deep historical events: Everette “Howard” Hunt Jr. Hunt was tasked with creating a post-Castro government that was supposed to take power in Cuba subsequent to the invasion conducted by Brigade 2506.

His first choice for the new government’s head was Manuel Artime, the political leader of Brigade 2506 (Hunt 117). “Of the possible contenders for a counter revolutionary president,” wrote Hunt, “my favorite was Manuel Artime” (177). Hunt also held meetings with members of Brigade 2506 in his safe house in Coconut Grove, Florida (118). Hunt was catapulted into the political spotlight by the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Watergate burglary, two events that helped generate much of the distrust that Americans feel for their own nation’s intelligence services. What he is less known for is his role in spreading UFO disinformation. Douglas Caddy, the lawyer who represented the Watergate burglars for a brief time, had a conversation with Hunt in which a UFO connection to the Kennedy assassination was suggested. According to Caddy, Hunt told him that Kennedy was assassinated because he was about to reveal “The Alien Presence” to the Soviets (Caddy 79-80).  

Hunt may have been using Caddy to spread disinformation meant, in part, to conceal his own role in the assassination. His association with Brigade 2506 brought the assassination investigation right to his doorstep. Brigade 2506 was the military wing of the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front (FRD), a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles (Shinley).

In December of 1960, the New Orleans chapter of the FRD moved into an office in the Balter Building at 403 Camp Street (ibid). Just a few months earlier, in July 1960, that same building had housed the office of former FBI agent Guy Banister (ibid). According to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Banister was a supporter of the FRD (ibid). Banister, of course, became a person of interest in New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation into the Kennedy assassination.

In December of 2003, Hunt’s son, Saint John Hunt, got some idea of how close his father was to plans to kill Kennedy.  Saint John was at his father’s bedside as the dying intelligence agent drew a crude graph depicting one of the alleged conspiratorial infrastructures behind the 1963 assassination of an American president (Hedegaard). Erik Hedegaard provides the details:

That time in Miami, with Saint by his bed and disease eating away at him and him thinking he’s six months away from death, E. Howard finally put pen to paper and started writing. Saint had been working toward this moment for a long while, and now it was going to happen. He got his father an A&W diet root beer, then sat down in the old man’s wheelchair and waited.

E. Howard scribbled the initials “LBJ,” standing for Kennedy’s ambitious vice president, Lyndon Johnson. Under “LBJ,” connected by a line, he wrote the name Cord Meyer. Meyer was a CIA agent whose wife had an affair with JFK; later she was murdered, a case that’s never been solved. Next his father connected to Meyer’s name the name Bill Harvey, another CIA agent; also connected to Meyer’s name was the name David Morales, yet another CIA man and a well-known, particularly vicious black-op specialist. And then his father connected to Morales’ name, with a line, the framed words “French Gunman Grassy Knoll.”

So there it was, according to E. Howard Hunt. LBJ had Kennedy killed. It had long been speculated upon. But now E. Howard was saying that’s the way it was. And that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t the only shooter in Dallas. There was also, on the grassy knoll, a French gunman, presumably the Corsican Mafia assassin Lucien Sarti, who has figured prominently in other assassination theories.

“By the time he handed me the paper, I was in a state of shock,” Saint says. “His whole life, to me and everybody else, he’d always professed to not know anything about any of it. But I knew this had to be the truth. If my dad was going to make anything up, he would have made something up about the Mafia, or Castro, or Khrushchev. He didn’t like Johnson. But you don’t falsely implicate your own country, for Christ’s sake. My father is old-school, a dyed-in-the-wool patriot, and that’s the last thing he would do.” (ibid)

In a subsequent meeting with Saint John, the elderly Hunt fleshed out his last testament in greater detail (ibid). Hunt provided his son with a two pieces of paper that contained a more substantial account (ibid). Again, the names of Johnson, Cord Meyer, David Atlee Phillips, David Morales, and others who were no strangers to the world of covert politics were written down (ibid). Hunt, however, supplied elaboration concerning the roles played by many of the individuals he implicated in the plot (ibid). The old spy also alleged that he had been asked to join in the assassination, an offer which he declined (ibid). Hedegaard writes:

Later that week, E. Howard also gave Saint two sheets of paper that contained a fuller narrative. It starts out with LBJ again, connecting him to Cord Meyer, then goes on: “Cord Meyer discusses a plot with [David Atlee] Phillips who brings in Wm. Harvey and Antonio Veciana. He meets with Oswald in Mexico City…. Then Veciana meets w/ Frank Sturgis in Miami and enlists David Morales in anticipation of killing JFK there. But LBJ changes itinerary to Dallas, citing personal reasons.”

David Atlee Phillips, the CIA’s Cuban operations chief in Miami at the time of JFK’s death, knew E. Howard from the Guatemala’ coup days. Veciana is a member of the Cuban exile community. Sturgis, like Saint’s father, is supposed to have been one of the three tramps photographed in Dealey Plaza. Sturgis was also one of the Watergate plotters, and he is a man whom E. Howard, under oath, has repeatedly sworn to have not met until Watergate, so to Saint the mention of his name was big news.

In the next few paragraphs, E. Howard goes on to describe the extent of his own involvement. It revolves around a meeting he claims he attended, in 1963, with Morales and Sturgis. It takes place in a Miami hotel room. Here’s what happens:

Morales leaves the room, at which point Sturgis makes reference to a “Big Event” and asks E. Howard, “Are you with us?”

E. Howard asks Sturgis what he’s talking about. Sturgis says, “Killing JFK.” E. Howard, “incredulous,” says to Sturgis, “You seem to have everything you need. Why do you need me?” In the handwritten narrative, Sturgis’ response is unclear, though what E. Howard says to Sturgis next isn’t: He says he won’t “get involved in anything involving Bill Harvey, who is an alcoholic psycho.”

After that, the meeting ends. E. Howard goes back to his “normal” life and “like the rest of the country… is stunned by JFK’s death and realizes how lucky he is not to have had a direct role.” (ibid)

A few weeks later, Saint John received a tape recording from his father in the mail (ibid). Regarding this recording, Hedegaard writes: “E. Howard’s voice on the cassette is weak and grasping, and he sometimes wanders down unrelated pathways. But he essentially remakes the same points he made in his handwritten narrative” (ibid). Perhaps by telling Caddy an incredible story about Kennedy being killed to hide the chilling revelation that aliens are among us, Hunt was hoping to send investigators and researchers down an investigatory cul-de-sac, far removed from solid leads that would place the infamous CIA officer in a line-up for the crime of the century.

UFO deception efforts are characterized by function stacking, so it is possible that the wild tale that Hunt told Caddy was supposed to do more than just pollute an investigation that could lead to Hunt’s prosecution. The vast majority of people inhabiting the UFO community are hopeless victims of confirmation bias, and Hunt’s far-fetched story of an alien secret worth killing the President of the United States for certainly helps keep that bias alive and well. Hunt has been dead since 2007, but his mythmaking has ensured that the UFO faithful will stay in a subculture where they are continuously deceived and manipulated by deep state actors. His contribution to the ever-growing UFO myth places Hunt in a rogue gallery of spooks and covert operators who bait their hooks with flying saucers. Does Elizondo have a place in that same gallery? The evidence certainly seems to be pointing in that direction.

Senator Harry Reid and Robert Bigelow

When Keith Kloor began casting doubt on Elizondo’s claims, it was Harry Reid, the former Senate Majority Leader who died in 2021, who came to the alleged UFO whistleblower’s rescue. Reid wrote a letter to NBC News attesting to the validity of Elizondo’s UFO revelations (Burton). In the letter, Reid stated,

“As one of the original sponsors of AATIP, I can state as a matter of record Lue Elizondo’s involvement and leadership role in this program” (ibid).

Before his death in 2021, Reid appears to have acted as something of a pawn for covert political circles involved in UFO deception. Reid’s involvement with such circles appears to have been facilitated by American businessman Robert Bigelow.

According to the highly dubious December 16, 2017 New York Times article that brought Elizondo much of his fame, Reid credited his fascination with UFOs to Bigelow (Cooper, Blumenthal, and Kean). Cooper, Blumenthal, and Kean write: “Mr. Reid said his interest in U.F.O.s came from Mr. Bigelow” (ibid). A May 28, 2021 Politico article provides a bit more details. According to the article, George Knapp, a famous television investigative journalist and a familiar face in Ufological circles, was responsible for bringing the two together. The article states:

Reid had been introduced to Bigelow by a well-known Nevada TV journalist named George Knapp, who had written extensively on the subject of UFOs over the years and had recently secured some Russian government documents purporting to shed light on the topic. Knapp knew from covering Reid’s career that the senator had a curiosity about the subject. (Bender)

Reid accepted an invitation from Bigelow to attend meetings held by a group that formed in 1995 and came to be known as the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) (ibid). NIDS, according to Politico’s Bryan Bender,

“was mainly interested in two topics: UFOs and consciousness after death” (ibid).

Even Reid acknowledged that the group was a collection of unusual characters living on the fringe. In an interview with Bender, Reid stated that Bigelow “had some people with some weird ideas. Not scientific. A few oddballs. I listened to some of the presentations. That’s how I got started” (ibid). NIDS, however, was much more than bedlamite convention. Many of its members came out of the military or the Intelligence Community. Its co-founder, John Alexander, was “a retired Army officer who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and had published books and articles on various aspects of ufology and the paranormal” (ibid).

Another NIDS alumnus, Hal Puthoff, is described by Bender as “an engineer and self-described parapsychologist who, while at the Stanford Research Institute in the 1970s and 1980s, had carried out top secret experiments for the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency on ‘remote viewing,’ or using the human mind to sense objects or events far away” (ibid). With the acceptance of Bigelow’s invitation, Reid found himself at one of the many nexus points where occultism and the paranormal intersect with spycraft and covert politics.

Before going defunct in 2004, NIDS conducted “research” projects that bore eerie resemblance to intelligence operations. The most famous was probably the group’s occupation of Skinwalker Ranch, a location in Utah where, according to George Knapp, “for 50 years or more, paranormal activity has been reported, including UFOs, Bigfoot, mutilated animals and poltergeists” (Knapp).  Elaborating, Knapp paints a portrait of the ranch that could have come out of a Hollywood horror flick of the first order:

The last family to live on this spread lasted only 20 months. From the first day back in 1994, they were terrorized by an unseen intelligence that played mind games with them, shadowy figures inside their house, objects that moved on their own, disembodied voices and bad things happening to their animals beginning with cattle and bulls that disappeared and others that were carved up with surgical precision in broad daylight. A gigantic wolf that attacked one of their calves was tracked through the mud, but the tracks simply stopped as if the animal had evaporated into thin air. Three dogs were vaporized while chasing blue orbs of light in a pasture. (ibid)

In the midst of this strange blending of the Amityville Horror and a very bad Western, Bigelow stepped in to rescue the distressed parties. Bigelow offered the owners of the property, a terrified family named the Shermans, a solution that would turn them a profit while allowing them to escape the mayhem. The solution, however, came with a very unusual condition, one that the Shermans would accept. Kathy Alexander explains:

The Shermans planned to sell the property; however, before they got the chance, Robert Bigelow, a millionaire businessman, a believer in ufology, and founder of the National Institute for Discovery Science, offered to buy the property after he read about the events in the newspaper.

Bigelow bought the ranch for $200,000 contingent on a non-disclosure agreement with the Shermans, who agreed not to talk further about the events on the ranch. He then began establishing a compound with high-tech sensing equipment, PhD-level field investigators, scientists, and a security detail that guarded the property 24 hours a day. The investigators collected evidence, interviewed witnesses, and searched for explanations.

Its purpose was the research and advanced the study of various fringe sciences and paranormal topics, including UFOs and cattle mutilation. (Alexander)

  In 2004, after having produced very little in the way of results, NIDS left Skinwalker and disbanded (ibid). Bigelow, however, was not yet done with the ranch. NIDS, according to Alexander, “was quickly replaced by the Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), which was more secretive and was working towards having a government sponsor”(ibid). In 2007, Elizondo’s alleged home within the government, the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP), became involved. Alexander writes: “In 2007, the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was a secret investigatory effort funded by the United States Defense Department to study unidentified flying objects, primarily on Skinwalker Ranch” (ibid). Finally, in 2016, Bigelow unloaded the ranch, selling it to Adamantium Holdings (ibid). It is alleged that Adamantium Holdings acquired the ranch for $.5 million (ibid).

 What did the thick veil of secrecy at Skinwalker Ranch conceal from the public? It could be that scientific research into UFO-related phenomena was merely a cover to carry out operations that are more familiar to those in the covert world of intelligence. Those skeptical of such a proposition would do well to consider the case of Tom Slick, a Texas oil millionaire who gained some notoriety as a yeti searcher (Coleman). According to researcher Loren Coleman, Slick was a CIA operative who used his search for the abominable snowman as a cover for covert operations (ibid).

  What kind of covert activity, if any, took place at Skinwalker Ranch? At least three people claim that Skinwalker skullduggery included human experimentation. The first two are former BAASS employees Chris J. Marx and Christopher Bartel. In an October 11, 2019 Twitter message, Marx claimed that he had acquired evidence of “the medical studies conducted without consent” at Skinwalker Ranch (Brewer, “Former Skinwalker Personnel Suspect They Were Unwitting Research Subjects”).

In another Twitter message authored on the same date, Bartel wrote: “I didn’t dedicate 6 years of my life to SWR [Skinwalker Ranch] only to find out that we were the test subjects. This changes my entire perspective and things actually make more sense now about my time there” (ibid).

The third individual claiming that human experimentation transpired at the ranch appeared on the September 2, 2012 episode of the Paracast radio show (Romero). The individual used the pseudonym “Chip” and alleged that he had provided security intermittently at the ranch from 2009 to 2010 (ibid). “Chip” alleged that whenever personnel at the ranch were exposed to any strange phenomena, they received a mandatory urine test (ibid). Those tests, according to “Chip,” were brought back to the Las Vegas BAASS headquarters when the work day was concluded (ibid). In addition, “Chip” claimed that “brain scans” were conducted on individuals, but the results were never disclosed to the recipients (ibid). While speaking with a roundtable on the Paracast program, “Chip” flatly stated, “They were testing us” (ibid).

While these claims may seem to fall into the category of science fiction, they are supported by a statement attributed to a BAASS Senior Manager. The statement reveals that BAASS used human bodies to collect information on the UFO phenomenon (“Statement from a Senior Manager of BAASS”). It reads:

One of the major successes of BAASS was in adopting the novel approach of utilizing the human body as a readout system for dissecting interactions with the UFO phenomenon. This novel approach aimed to circumvent the increasing evidence of deception and subterfuge by the UFO phenomenon in that multiple eyewitnesses co-located in the same vicinity frequently reported seeing widely different events. The evidence was multiplying that the UFO phenomenon was capable of manipulating and distorting human perception and therefore eyewitness testimony of UFO activity was becoming increasingly untrustworthy.

The BAASS approach was to view the human body as a readout system for UFO effects by utilizing forensic technology, the tools of immunology, cell biology, genomics and neuroanatomy for in depth study of the effects of UFOs on humans. This approach marked a dramatic shift away from the traditional norms of relying on eyewitness testimony as the central evidentiary arm in UFO investigations. The approach aimed to bypass UFO deception and manipulation of human perception by utilizing molecular forensics to decipher the biological consequences of the phenomenon. (ibid)

  What kind of information was obtained using human test subjects as readout systems? One curious paragraph in the Senior Manager’s statement may provide an answer:

The investigations by BAASS provided new lines of evidence showing that the UFO phenomenon was a lot more than nuts and bolts machines that interacted with military aircraft. The phenomenon also involved a whole panoply of diverse activity that included bizarre creatures, poltergeist activity, invisible entities, orbs of light, animal and human injuries and much more. The exclusive focus on nuts and bolts machines could be considered myopic and unproductive in solving the larger mystery of UFOs. (ibid)

Were human test subjects used to discover and harness the preternatural powers associated with the UFO phenomenon? The above statement certainly suggests that humans were exposed to the “panoply of diverse activity” associated with the UFO phenomenon to see what the outcome would be. One highly unusual incident at Skinwalker Ranch recounted by Marx supports the contention. Marx recalls a “BAASS approved experiment” that employed a Ouija board (Basterfield). Seven individuals, one of which was Marx, sat around the board, presumably preparing to contact some of the preternatural forces inhabiting the ranch (ibid). The Ouija board session was being videoed and sound recorded in order to capture the results (ibid). According to Marx, planchette levitated off the table, flew across the air, and struck Marx in the chest prior to any of the participants placing their hands on the instrument (ibid). Marx claims that the planchette repeated these actions even after he moved to another chair (ibid).

Scoffers might regard such dabbling to be little more that benign crackpottery carried out by pseudo-scientific charlatans. Many people believe that the Ouija board was a recent invention and a child’s toy. The board, however, appears to be modeled off of much earlier devices that were anything but toys. Edmund Gruss elaborates:

“Writers state that devices similar to the Ouija board were known to the Egyptians and other ancient peoples. Psychical researcher Nandor Fodor states that an instrument like the Ouija board “was in use in the days of Pythagoras, about 540 B.C.” The fourth-century Byzantine historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, gave a detailed account of divination that employed a pendulum and the letters of the alphabet engraved on the rim of a round metal dish. A less sophisticated method of divination used by the Romans made use of a ring suspended by hair or thread, in or within reach of a glass vessel. Answers to questions were obtained when the ring struck the glass in response to a predetermined code or when the correct letters of the alphabet were recited. Table tipping (in practice, more of a table rapping), while used in ancient times and during the Middle Ages, came into popular use during the nineteenth century. In addition to response through raps for yes and no, the letters of the alphabet were also recited and the table responded at the appropriate letters, and sentences could be spelled out.

In 1853 a French spiritualist invented the planchette, a small, heart-shaped table with three legs, one of which was a lead pencil. The operator’s fingers were placed lightly on top of it, and when the instrument worked, it moved over the top of a piece of paper and wrote out messages. A cognate method of communication is automatic writing, where the subject sits with a pencil in hand and after a time writes automatically.

The Ouija board was born when the pencil of the planchette was replaced by two legs (modern Ouijas have three legs) and an alphabet board replaced the paper. If a patent establishes priority, the invention of the Ouija board should be credited to Elijah Bond, who filed for the patent on May 28, 1890. It was granted on February 10, 1891. It is unclear who its actual inventor was, but William Fuld of Baltimore and his son have been historically connected with the board and its manufacture. (173)

Gruss points out that the manufacturer of the Ouija board at the time of his writing, Parker Brothers, “offers no solution to what makes it work, stating that “how or why it works is a mystery” (174)? There is no indication that a satisfactory reason or some kind of clarification were provided after Hasbro inherited Parker Brothers. One would think that the BAASS at Skinwalker Ranch would have tried to learn something regarding the mechanics of the board before employing it. There should, after all, be reluctance to using such a strange device when no one seems to know what exactly animates it.

Unfortunately, many of the deep state actors who are also occult practitioners seem to be governed by a metaphysical pragmatism. They seem to care little for what makes the instrument work. They only concern themselves with the fact that it does work, and seek to weaponize it. These deep state actors appreciate the utility of the device, while turning a blind eye to unknown factors that could indicate danger.

Researchers in the mental health field who hold that consultation with a Ouija board is fraught with serious risks. German psychiatrist Hans Bender, for instance, discovered that illness arose in patients who had performed a variety of different automatisms, the Ouija board being one of them (Klimo 277). Bender’s work with these led him to believe that many of them were suffering with what he termed “mediumistic psychosis” (277).

According to Jon Klimo, the patient unfortunate enough to be diagnosed with this form of psychosis “had practiced some form of automatism that opened what Bender called communication with their Other” (277, italics in original). Whatever this Other was, it was anything but benevolent. Klimo writes: “Some of the cases [Bender] reported would seem to us to be genuine channeling. Some of the incidents involving malignant-type entities led to (unsuccessful) suicide and murder attempts (277). Religious demonologists, especially those found in the apostolically-based Christian communions, are well-acquainted with cases of unseen intruders who compel their prey to inflict self-harm. It seems that scriptural prohibition on divination, such as the one found in Deuteronomy 18:10-12, are not expressions of religious bigotry after all. They are sound warnings that should be heeded.

Did any of the BAASS staff at Skinwalker Ranch become afflicted with mediumistic psychosis or another mental or spiritual malady? How is anyone to know, given the Bigelow’s affinity for obscurantism? Until more is known about NIDS and BAASS and their time at Skinwalker Ranch, the question of occult-induced pathologies will have to wait for another day. There is one question that can be broached based on what is already known: does any of this sound remotely moral or ethical?

At least one NIDS member has no discernible aversion to human experimentation: John Alexander.

In a January 14, 2007 Washington Post article entitled, “Mind Games,” reporter Sharon Weinberger spoke to Alexander about the topic. Alexander lamented that revelations of abuse related to MK-ULTRA, a U.S. government covert research operation that explored mind control, had led to reluctance in Congress to fund anything concerned with behavioral modification (Weinberger). For Alexander, there are untapped benefits in the realm of mind control. Weinberger writes: “Alexander acknowledged that ‘there were some abuses that took place,’ but added that, on the whole, ‘I would argue we threw the baby out with the bath water'” (ibid).

Alexander, however, sees a reemerging interest in mind control among the political class. The Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), asserts Alexander, is acting as the catalyst for the newfound interest in behavior modification. While summarizing Alexander’s position on mind control, Weinberger writes that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001:

… changed the mood in Washington, and some in the national security community are again expressing interest in mind control, particularly a younger generation of officials who weren’t around for MK-ULTRA. “It’s interesting, that it’s coming back,” Alexander observed. (ibid)

Alexander went on to share specific mind control techniques that will supposedly give the government a winning edge in its war on terrorism. These techniques include electronic interference. In Alexander’s view, victory in the GWOT outweighs any moral or ethical questions concerning manipulation of the human mind. Weinberger elaborates:

Alexander also is intrigued by the possibility of using electronic means to modify behavior. The dilemma of the war on terrorism, he notes, is that it never ends. So what do you do with enemies, such as those at Guantanamo: keep them there forever? That’s impractical. Behavior modification could be an alternative, he says.

“Maybe I can fix you, or electronically neuter you, so it’s safe to release you into society, so you won’t come back and kill me,” Alexander says. It’s only a matter of time before technology allows that scenario to come true, he continues. “We’re now getting to where we can do that.” He pauses for a moment to take a bite of his sandwich. “Where does that fall in the ethics spectrum? That’s a really tough question.”

When Alexander encounters a query he doesn’t want to answer, such as one about the ethics of mind control, he smiles and raises his hands level to his chest, as if balancing two imaginary weights. In one hand is mind control and the sanctity of free thought — and in the other hand, a tad higher — is the war on terrorism. (ibid)

In addition to allegedly reducing humans to guinea pigs, the Bigelow constellation appears to have engaged in highly questionable intelligence gathering.

Early in the year 2000, the public started learning about what has become known as the Carpenter Affair (Brewer, “The Carpenter Affair: For the Record”). Name of the affair originated with John Carpenter, a director of abduction research with the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) and a licensed clinical social worker for the state of Missouri during the nineties (ibid). Carpenter was alleged to have sold copies of the 140 case files to Bigelow and NIDS (ibid). The case files were of individuals who, believing themselves to be abductees, had sought out Carpenter for help (ibid). In an email correspondence with researcher Jack Brewer, Carpenter emphatically denied the accusations, stating, “Despite rumors on the Internet, I NEVER SOLD my cases!! That rumor supposedly had credibility because it was started by my ex-wife who wanted to stir up controversy and headaches for me! Doesn’t anybody understand this dynamic with an ex-wife”? (Brewer, “The Leah Haley Case: John Carpenter,” emphasis in the original). In the same email conversations, however, Carpenter admitted to “data sharing” with Bigelow “over 3 years around 1995 and the reimbursements trickled in over that period, so I don’t know the actual total” (ibid). Carpenter added, “Other researchers were approached with the same proposal, and some of them may have shared data, too” (ibid).

Gary Hart, a reporter who began digging into the Carpenter Affair in 1999, produced evidence to Brewer that seems to pull Carpenter’s denial and alibi apart. That evidence included a letter from Carpenter to Bigelow dated June 29, 1996 (Brewer, “The Carpenter Affair: For the Record”). The letter, which Hart submitted to both MUFON and the Missouri state government, included this seemingly damning excerpt:

“Personally, I want to thank you, Bob, for your assistance regarding the 140 cases I mailed to you,” Carpenter wrote Bigelow in 1996. “That helped pay some bills. The remainder has been what we have been living on since last December at the rate of $600-$800 per month… What has really hurt this year – after I began copying and sending files – was the elimination of my bonus/incentive pay program at work.” (ibid, emphasis in the original)

In all likelihood, Carpenter and other researchers who had worked with suspected abductees did, in fact, sell files to Bigelow and NIDS. What did Bigelow and NIDS do with the intelligence they gleaned from the files they purchased? One speculative thread holds that they were tracking mind control subjects who had been deceived into believing themselves to be victims of the alien abduction phenomenon. Another possibility is the acquisition of blackmail material. Both possibilities and many others could be true. One thing, however, is certain: Bigelow and his NIDS outfit operated more like an intelligence service than benign, inquisitive scientists.

The Galileo Project’s Gnostic Revival

On October 30, 2021, Elizondo became a research affiliate with Harvard University’s Galileo Project, a research team that seeks to, in its own words, “bring the search for extraterrestrial technological signatures or artifacts of Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations (ETCs) from accidental or anecdotal observations and legends into the mainstream of transparent, validated and systematic scientific research” (“The Galileo Project Welcomes Christopher Mellon and Luis Elizondo as Research Affiliates”). The Galileo Project claims as one of its participants Avi Loeb, a scientist who has reached celebrity status within the UFO community, thanks in large part to his association with Elizondo.

Loeb is a theoretical physicist and the founder of the Galileo Project for the Systematic Scientific Search for Evidence of Extraterrestrial Technological Artifacts. As this rather verbose designation suggests, the project’s objective is to search for physical items related to alien technology. According to the Official Galileo Project website, the proposition animating this ambitious undertaking is that:

…humans can no longer ignore the possible existence of Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations (ETCs), and that science should not dogmatically reject potential extraterrestrial explanations because of social stigma or cultural preferences, factors which are not conducive to the scientific method of unbiased, empirical inquiry. (“The Galileo Project: Daring to Look Through New Telescopes.”)

In hopes of overcoming the supposed “social stigmas” and “cultural preferences” that have burdened “potential extraterrestrial explanations,” the Galileo Project examines the UFO phenomenon “using the standard scientific method based on a transparent analysis of open scientific data to be collected using optimized instruments.”

According to Loeb, this approach differentiates the Galileo Project from the investigative efforts of the fringe. Nevertheless, Loeb still promotes several of the beliefs held by the fringe. Chief among those is the alternate creatology dubbed directed panspermia, which contends that terrestrial life was deliberately seeded by alien civilizations. Loeb argues in support of this thesis in a research paper entitled “Possible Transfer of Life by Earth-Grazing Objects to Exoplanetary Systems” and an opinion piece entitled “Noah’s Spaceship.”

Of course, within the framework of such a creatology, aliens become the de facto “gods” of a self-sufficient immanent order. Yet, this intramundane divinity more closely resembles the God of Gnosticism than the God of Christianity. Like the absolutely transmundane Father of the Gnostics, alien deities never once sully themselves with the actual act of creation. Instead, they decide to create a new race of gods from pre-existing matter. While such a creatology raises more questions than it answers, Loeb believes that man’s contact with this ensemble of extraterrestrial divinities will result in a grand synthesis of science and religion. He states: 

How can we unify religion and science? By finding AI-astronauts from a scientific civilization that is far more advanced than we are. The Galileo Project aims to search for extraterrestrial equipment near Earth.

The question remains: Did God — in its religious or scientific interpretations — create humans in its image or did humans imagine the concept of God in their mind? The Galileo Project can address the scientific context of this question. (“Why science and religion come together when discussing extraterrestrial life”)

There are at least two problems with Loeb’s statements.

First of all, Loeb implies that there is some dialectical tension between science and religion. Yet, the two are not necessarily dichotomously related. At least that is the case for Christianity, which affirms several of the presuppositions upon which the natural sciences rely. Chief among these is the assumption that the universe is intelligible. Of course, intelligibility suggests the involvement of some rational agent in the creation of the universe. Unlike the universe, that agent would not exist contingently. If it did, then it would amount to little more than one connective sinew in an infinite regress of finite physical causes. An infinite regress progressively diminishes in explanatory power as the chain of contingencies extends into infinity. Instead, a First Cause would have to transcend the ontological confines of the universe and exist independently of any other causative forces. Christianity calls such an agent God. Not surprisingly, scientific research was actually promoted under the guidance of medieval scholastic theologians. Ultimately, there is no reconciliation required between science and the Christian faith.

Secondly, it is not quite clear why the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would result in the unification of otherwise disparate scientias (i.e., bodies of knowledge). It’s even less likely that aliens will somehow unite disparate religions with all of their differing theological, soteriological, and eschatological claims. As much as the religious universalist may object, all faiths hold certain non-negotiable tenets and are, at bottom, exclusivistic. Yet, it is Loeb’s conviction that aliens boast the requisite spiritual insights to conduct the ultimate project in syncretism.

Herein is a non sequitur endemic to space religions. This non sequitur is the proposition that aliens are spiritually enlightened by virtue of the fact that they occupy off-world habitations.

For no other reason than mere geographical karma, extraterrestrials are automatically regarded as the possessors of some sort of gnosis. In turn, possession of this gnosis has supposedly facilitated the apotheosis of its interplanetary practitioners. Just as some ancient pagan cultures ascribed deific qualities to rocks and trees, the modern pagans of space religion transpose the Divine into the expanse that separates celestial bodies. Because extraterrestrials supposedly traverse that expanse in technologically advanced craft, they are equally apotheosized. This apotheosis is exemplified by the pseudo-theological musings of Loeb, who argues that a scientifically advanced civilization could eventually mirror the Divine. He writes:

A sufficiently advanced scientific civilization might be able to create synthetic life in its laboratories — in fact, some of our terrestrial laboratories almost reached that threshold. And with a good understanding of how to unify quantum-mechanics and gravity, an advanced scientific civilization could potentially create a baby universe in its laboratories. Therefore, an advanced scientific civilization might be a good approximation to God. (Ibid)

Essentially, the alchemical amalgamation of gravity and quantum mechanics coupled with cloning constitutes a veritable gnosis. Attainment of that gnosis promises the transfiguration of mortal into Divine. Presumably, any alien race sophisticated enough to master space travel would have grasped this gnosis as well. If Loeb’s prerequisites for approximating God hold sway, then it stands to reason that an emergent order of extraterrestrial pneumatikoi would eventually assume deific qualities. Thus, humanity is confronted by a new Heaven and a new God. Alien visitation would constitute an immanent Paraousia. This is the sort of immanentist eschatology intimated by Loeb specifically and space religions in general. Within the framework of this immanetist eschatology, the Eschaton has been transposed into the expanse separating celestial bodies, namely space.

This transposition is intimated through the familiar phrase, “Space: The Final Frontier.” This culturally ubiquitous utterance was popularized by Star Trek, a TV and film franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. By characterizing space as the “final frontier,” Roddenberry implies that those mysteries best deferred until the Eschaton can and will be solved within the present immanent order. In fact, all of those eschatological hopes reserved for the Parousia become attainable realities as well. Such is the case with Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, which portrays the resurrection of Spock through an esoteric ritual conducted on the planet of Vulcan (Herrick, Scientific Mythologies: How Science and Science Fiction Forge New Religious Beliefs 76).

It is not clear why such an extraordinary proposition is somehow rendered tenable by otherwise unimpressive geographical considerations. Why is Vulcan the one place in the entire universe where the eschatological hope of resurrection is realized? Why does its inhabitants boast spiritual insights that earthlings have no hope of grasping? Why would a Vulcan ritual, among all other religious rituals, successfully raise the dead? The rejoinder is as unsatisfying as it is glib. Because Vulcan is situated within the numinous bosom of the “final frontier.” Nevertheless, this immanentist conception of the Eschaton is culturally pervasive, as is evidenced by almost innumerable cultural artifacts comprising sci-fi literature and film.

Space is now regarded as the suitable setting for the deliberation of matters pertaining to “heaven, hell, death, and even resurrection” (77) For instance, the closing scenes of the 1997 film Contact presents audiences with a “celestial paradise” where Jodi Foster is reunited with her deceased father.

This theme of a glorious reunion in space is reiterated in the 1972 movie Solaris, wherein the occupants of a scientific research station are visited by long departed loved ones (77). The original Solaris and its 2002 remake are both adaptations of a Stanislav Lern novel. Of course, Lern’s sci-fi ideas were formed and disseminated within the cultural milieu of Soviet Russia, the ethos of which was partially influenced by Cosmism.

Cosmism, which preceded the Bolshevik Revolution, advanced a syncretistic amalgam of various philosophical traditions and distorted elements derived from Russian Orthodox Christianity (Andersen, “The Holy Cosmos: The New Religion of Space Exploration”). During the twenties, Russian Cosmists spoke prolifically about reassembling the atoms of deceased people in space, thereby effecting their bodily resurrection so that they could experience the sublimity of the Bolsheviks’ “ideal society” (ibid). Thus, Cosmism tacitly embraced the elitist soteriological category of an Elect, which constituted the citizenry of a heavenly kingdom rendered absolutely immanent.

Cosmism’s immanetist eschatology would inspire the messianic prism through which space flight would come to be viewed. This new messianism is exemplified by the 2003 NASA Astrobiology Roadmap, which asked the distinctly eschatological question: “What is the future of life on Earth and beyond?” (Scientific Mythologies: How Science and Science Fiction Forge New Religious Beliefs 16).

The question presupposes the existence of a transcendent reality. However, within the context of this NASA document, transcendence is not understood in the traditional theological sense. Instead, it is redefined as a migration beyond the finitude of a self-sufficient immanent order. Salvation no longer requires repentance or cooperation with God. Transcendence no longer requires a supernatural reality or a spirit that cannot be reduced to matter alone. While NASA claims to be objectively seeking the answer to an honest question, the fact is that they actually seeking to affirm this neo-Gnostic religious vision. In short, space exploration is quite literally a religious crusade and its ultimate vector is a new heaven.

Nightmarishly contrasting the heavenly vision of space is the 1997 film Event Horizon, which presents audiences with an intergalactic hell.

Like its paradisiacal counterpart, hell is no longer understood in the traditional theological sense. Instead, Event Horizon presents it as an absolutely immanent experience aboard a spaceship returning from a black hole (Scientific Mythologies: How Science and Science Fiction Forge New Religious Beliefs 77).

Interestingly, a similar conception of hell was conveyed in the 1979 Disney film The Black Hole, which ends with a villainous scientist and his robot bodyguard fusing together. The resultant Maschinenmensch is subsequently seen standing above a hellscape that is presumably situated within the black hole. Meanwhile, the film’s heroes are guided by an angelic being through a white hole. On the other side of this ethereal vortex is a lovely planet adjacent to a bright star. This series of images intimates the immanetist conviction that heaven and hell comprise an Eschaton that is to be realized within the ontological confines of the physical universe.

This numinous interpretation of space and its extraterrestrial occupants represents the latest installment in a series of immanentist eschatologies. This series probably originated with Origenism, which closely parallels modern Gnostic space operas. These parallels are especially evident in the theodical narrative that arises out of the Origenist conception of God. If Origenism holds sway, then God created out of felt need, not out of love. Creation’s ultimate purpose would be to act as the medium for a massive soteriological project initiated by a cosmic solipsist. All of creation’s fallen minds, which are ontologically homogeneous with God, must be subjected to a purgatorial trial so that they may be restored to their original state. In turn, this restoration will supposedly allow God to restore his fractured plenitude. Herein are the conceptual seeds for several neo-Gnostic systems that transposed the Eschaton into the immanent sphere.

The first of these neo-Gnostic systems was schematized by 12^th-century Calabrian abbot and hermit Joachim of Fiore.

Joachim apocalypticized history by configuring it according to his Trinitarian eschatology. Within the framework of Joachim’s eschatology, each hypostasis in the Trinity represented a specific historical phase (Murray N. Rothbard, “Karl Marx: Communist as Religious Eschatologist”). The pre-Christian era was divided into the age of the Father, who represented the Old Testament, and the Son, who represented the New Testament (ibid). The third apocalyptic age, of which Joachim was the self-proclaimed prophet, was the age of the Holy Spirit (ibid). During this age, Sacred Scripture, the Church, and the State would give way to a free, communist world (ibid). Echoing ancient Gnosticism’s docetistic attitude toward physical embodiment, Joachim claimed that man would divest himself of flesh and enter into disembodied bliss (ibid).  

After Joachim came the 17^th-century German cobbler Jakob Boehme, who, inspired mystical English communist Gerrard Winstanley (ibid). Like the heresiarch Marcion, Boehme advanced a bifurcated conception of God to reflect what was perceived as two contrary natures.

In Boehme’s view, the God of the Old Testament embodied wrath while the God of the New Testament embodied love. These two contrary natures were but mirrors of human consciousness and history was the evolutionary, dialectical process whereby these binary essences were reconciled (Grimstad 41).

While Boehme’s ideas closely parallel Gnostic-emanationist speculation, there is a significant point of departure (43). Ancient Gnosticism expressed a docetistic cosmological attitude that viewed divinity’s descent into materiality as a horrific error. In contradistinction to this view, Boehme presented the descent as an essential phase in God’s self-revelation. By asserting that both light and darkness could be derived from the “ground of being,” Boehme departed radically from ancient Gnosticism (43). Instead of elevating the transcendent to the detriment of the immanent, Boehme’s new Gnosticism elevated the immanent to the detriment of the transcendent.

This modern Gnosticism softened the radical dualism and cosmological pessimism of its ancient progenitor, thereby adopting an Idealistic prism that supplanted the heresy’s explicitly nihilistic view with a more Utopian outlook. This Idealistic Gnosticism became the prism through which the modern revolutionary viewed the world. From the revolutionary vantage point, Utopia is actuated through the dialectical process of history. The revolutionary participates in the collision of binary oppositions that catalyzes the dialectic of history. Presumably, this process will redeem the world. Ironically, this immanentizing form of Gnosticism is equally docetistic, as is evidenced by its pathological obsession with change. This obsession bespeaks an implicit dissatisfaction with matter in its present state. This tacit derision invariably motivates destructive campaigns that will supposedly expunge all of the social ills allegedly preventing Utopia’s eventuation. Hegel, Marx, and other revolutionary theoreticians qualify as the prophets of this Eschaton within history.

The modern alien myth is but one more installment in this broader continuum of immanentist eschatologies and its theoretical progenitor was likely Jacob Ilive. Jacob Ilive was an Enlightenment-era pamphleteer and printer who promulgated an odd neo-Gnostic narrative between 1730 and 1750 (Herrick, “Blasphemy in the Eighteenth Century: Contours of a Rhetorical Crime” 112). This narrative can be found in works such as The Layman’s Vindication of the Christian Religion and The Oration Spoke at Joyner’s Hall, wherein Ilive transposes the Eschaton of Heaven and Hell into the vacuum separating celestial bodies, namely space (113).

Ilive echoes the cosmological pessimism of his ancient Gnostic antecedents, claiming that the Earth is “Hell, i.e. the Place inferior to Heaven.” Ilive expresses the distinctly dysteleological contention that Earth is bereft of any purpose and “no new Order of Beings was created to people it” (113). This demonic portrayal of the world was clearly derivative of ancient Gnostic cosmology, which resulted from the Gnostic’s assignment of a positive ontological status to evil. The Gnostics understood evil in terms of ontology instead of moral orientation. Evil was viewed not as a tendency of the will, but as an actual animated essence interwoven into creation. The curse and creation were ontologically inseparable. Ilive upheld this docetistic appraisal of the world. 

This cosmological pessimism logically segued into an anthropological pessimism. Ilive divested man of his unique position of imago Dei, a divine image bearer for whom God created the earth as a lovely cosmic bequest. Instead, Ilive declared that man was an apostate Angel imprisoned within the corporeal penitentiary of the physical body (113).

In order to escape his bodily confinement and transcend the penal colony of the world, man had to undergo some vaguely defined earthbound test (113). Upon completing this purgatorial trial, man would spiritually ascend to other planets, which Ilive claimed to be empyrean habitations.

In support of this claim, Ilive cited John 14:2, wherein Jesus states: “In my Father’s house are many mansions…” (113). Ilive redefined the “many mansions” comprising the “Father’s house” as off-world habitations that were possibly populated by “intelligent life” (113). This was precisely the same contention expressed by a Royal Society member, William Derham. It was Derham’s conviction that Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens had actually observed humanoid life-forms scurrying along the surface of the planets he viewed through his massive telescope (Scientific Mythologies: How Science and Science Fiction Forge New Religious Beliefs 197).

This Enlightenment-era cameo of extraterrestrials and its corresponding theological view established the overall hermeneutic according to which the modern UFO phenomenon was understood.

Suddenly, the Eschaton was transposed into the immanent sphere and was situated among the stars. Heaven, hell, angels, demons, and God were suddenly redefined as the extraterrestrial occupants of the physical universe. This neo-Gnostic portrayal of space pervades the views that typically circulate within the Ufology community, which is extremely susceptible to manipulation by deep state operatives and dark elements of the intelligence community.

According to James Herrick, Ilive was a possible influence on Church of Mormon founder Joseph Smith and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Ilive’s latter-day interplanetary Gnosticism also probably informs, to some extent, Loeb’s exotheology (“Blasphemy in the Eighteenth Century: Contours of a Rhetorical Crime” 113).

However, man’s role in Loeb’s immanent Parousia is minimized considerably. In an upcoming documentary entitled “God Vs. Aliens,” Loeb predicts that extraterrestrials will probably make contact with artificial intelligence before humans. He states: “If they [aliens] visit us, of course, we can use our AI systems to interpret their AI systems. And, you know, they might feel a kinship to them” (Colton, “If aliens contact Earth, it may not be humans who get the call: expert”)

Notions of an inexplicable kinship between aliens and AI are nothing new, as is evidenced by cultural artifacts like Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

In the inaugural entry in the Trek film franchise, Earth is visited by a massive alien craft called V’Ger. V’Ger is a sentient machine beset by questions of meaning and purpose. The only remedy for this existential crisis is the reestablishment of contact between V’Ger and its creator. V’Ger believes the creator is being held captive by the inhabitants of Earth. The crew of the Enterprise eventually learns that V’Ger is actually Voyager 6, a 20^th-century space probe that was believed to have disappeared in a black hole.

In actuality, the probe was discovered by an extraterrestrial race of living machines, who subsequently upgraded Voyager 6 and released it on a return voyage to its creator. Thus, humanity is the creator with whom V’Ger must reestablish contact. The film ends with a member of the Enterprise crew actually merging with V’Ger, thereby birthing a disincarnate life form. Arguably, Star Trek: The Motion Picture could be considered one of the most influential propagators of the alien-AI kinship meme, which was released into the cultural ether for the consumption of minds such as Loeb’s.

Loeb’s hasty investment of faith in AI underscores one of several intersections between the modern alien myth and Transhumanism. Transhumanism advocates the use of nanotechnology, biotechnology, cognitive science, and information technology to catapult humanity into a “posthuman” condition. Once he has arrived at this condition, man will cease to be man. He will become a machine, immune to death and all the other weaknesses that once afflicted his biology.

Ultimately, Transhumanism seeks to decommission nature, seize the reins of evolution, and guide an elite class of posthumans beyond this ontologically deficient world toward a computational pleroma. While Transhumanism is a relatively new outlook, it is actually derivative of an ancient heresy. The Transhumanist’s detestation of physical embodiment and docestistic cosmological attitude would have justifiably aroused the suspicions of the early Church Fathers.

It is, essentially, a quasi-scientific reinterpretation of Gnosticism.

As such, Transhumanism does exhibit some points of departure from its ancient antecedent. In contradistinction to the ancient Gnostics, Transhumanists reject the notion of the soul and supplant it with an information pattern. This substitution is inspired by computational functionalism, which has dominated the cognitive sciences in recent years. 

Computational functionalism analogizes the brain to informational processing software. All mental states–desires, pains, beliefs, thoughts, etc.–are reduced to computational states in the brain. This analogy, like so many other analogies conjured up by theoreticians, is invoked as an explanatory model to help make sense of an otherwise complex object of study. The important thing to understand about explanatory models is that they are never fully descriptive or even entirely accurate. They are, at the end of the day, illustrative analogies, helpful metaphors, and figures of speech. 

Transhumanists have actually ontologized computational functionalism’s explanatory model, thereby transforming a socially constructed heuristic device into a full-blown ideology. The computer is not truly analogous to the human mind, let alone identical to it. Transhumanists actually assign anthropomorphic qualities to computer functions that, in reality, differ radically from human thought. They conflate computation with intentional consciousness. Supposedly, computers are becoming conscious because their computational systems mirror human thought processes. Yet, consciousness does not arise from computation.  Instead, computation arises from consciousness. Consciousness is the ontological foundation of computation.

Intentional consciousness will not find a mirror of itself in the digital symbols occupying the computer screen. Those symbols possess no semantic content that was not first assigned to them by the intentional consciousness. In light of these philosophical problems, it becomes clear that both Loeb and the Transhumanist have decided to repose their trust in a chimera. 

Despite these philosophical problems, this chimera has been countenanced by globalist enclaves such as the Bilderberg Group. The reason for this misguided assent becomes clear when one considers an overwhelming aversion that informs the globalist outlook. Globalists virulently deride the distinctions that separate and define individual beings. Chief among these distinctions is the “self” and the “other.”

Uniqueness and individuality owe their existence to this binary. Of course, a world of differentiated beings confounds globalist efforts to homogenize humanity. Transhumanism promises to abolish this pervasive heterogeneity by uploading all disparate consciousnesses into a computational pleroma.

Loeb’s prophesied alien Parousia, which entails the alleged interface of terrestrial and extraterrestrial AI systems, would constitute a cosmic affirmation of this techno-rapture. Yet, as is the case with the technological Singularity, the alien Parousia is probably another chimera. Nevertheless, both are being promoted because they bolster the eschatological project of the elite. The exact nature of this project comes into clearer view when one examines one of Loeb’s chief benefactors.

The identity of a Loeb’s financial sponsor is revealed in an August, 25, 2023 Scientific America article authored by Keith Kloor.

In the article, Kloor makes the following significant observation: “There is a long legacy of plutocrat-funded pseudoscience” (Kloor, “How Wealthy UFO Fans Helped Fuel Fringe Beliefs”). Kloor then names the plutocrat behind Loeb’s adventure into UFO hunting: American entrepreneur Charles Hoskinson (ibid).

In 2023, when Loeb headed up an expedition to find what he believed to be the remains of alien technology off the coast of Papua New Guinea, it was Hoskinson who funded the endeavor to the tune of $150,000 (ibid). According to journalist Brian Quarmby, Hoskinson provided Loeb’s Galileo Project which $1.5 million in March of 2023 (Quarmby). One cannot help but wonder if Loeb’s bizarre UFO beliefs would have gained so much traction without Hoskinson’s rather deep pockets.

In 2020, Hoskinson spoke at the World Economic Forum (WEF), an oligarchical institution in Davos, Switzerland that has played its own role in UFO deception (Szalay).

In 2013, the WEF’s Risk Response Network (RRN) explored what the organization referred as to “five ‘X Factor’ risks (“Could alien life go from science fiction to fact?”). A January 14, 2013 WEF article over its RRN states that “X Factor” risks “look beyond mainstream risks to five emerging potential game-changers” (ibid). In this particular instance, the “X Factor” risk focused on was the discovery of life “out there.” The RRN posed the following question:

Given the pace of space exploration, it is increasingly conceivable that we may discover the existence of alien life or other planets that could support human life. What would be the effects on science funding flows and humanity’s self-image? (ibid)

After exploring the question, the RRN determined the following:

Over the long term, the psychological and philosophical implications of the discovery could be profound. If life forms (even fossilized life forms) are found in our solar system, for example, the origin of life is “easy” – that any place in the universe life can emerge, it will emerge. It will suggest that life is as natural and as ubiquitous a part of the universe as the stars and galaxies. The discovery of even simple life would fuel speculation about the existence of other intelligent beings and challenge many assumptions that underpin human philosophy and religion.

The RRN’s interest in “potential game-changers,” which seems to be a euphemism for possible watershed moments in history that radically alter one or more aspects of life, suggests a social engineering agenda.

If “potential game-changers” can be identify, then cynical and opportunistic parties can also determine how to facilitate and exploit such events. The WEF, like so many other elite combines inhabiting the world of covert politics, blurs the line between forecasting and preplanned events. It appears that the purpose of the WEF’s RRN is to make subtle suggestions to elite circles on how to best effect significant societal changes. If this assertion is correct, then the RRN has floated the idea of using alien narratives to bring about earth-shattering philosophical and religious changes.

 According to journalist Eva Szalay, Hoskinson called attention to “blockchain’s potential to power social change” during his talk at the 2020 WEF conference (Szalay). The blockchain technology that Hoskinson is so enamored of creates databases of transaction records that are maintained across a network of computers without a central server. Such a system is, in many ways, a dream come true for control freaks. The ledger of transactions is immutable and the shared access to files leaves little room for financial privacy.

The Bitcoin blockchains, for instance, allows for all their data to be viewed by all participants. Terms associated with blockchain, such as “decentralization” and “financial freedom” conceal the potential to use such technology to track and monitor people through their financial transactions. The digitization of financial assets, however, does not appear to be the endgame. Hoskinson also told his audience at the WEF that he sees the potential for “blockchain to spread beyond finance and create real social change” (ibid).

The world may have gotten a glimpse of Hoskinson’s vision of blockchain-powered social change in 2021, when Cardano, the American entrepreneur’s public blockchain platform, became involved in an effort to create a digital identity for all of Ethiopia’s youth (“Ethiopia to register 5 million school children on the blockchain”).

According to Tech in Africa, Cardano was one of three companies contracted by the Ethiopian government “to create a national database for student and teacher IDs using digital decentralised identity” (ibid).

Tech in Africa elaborates: “The idea is to provide IDs for the country’s 5 million students spread out across its 3500 schools. The digitized identity will help students in primary, secondary, and university track their education careers and future progression” (ibid). Needless to say, such a plan is breathtaking. Tech in Africa notes the size and scope of this effort: “The deal made ripples in the crypto community as it stands out as the largest of its kind entered into by a government. It also showcased a unique opportunity for blockchain to be used to effect socio-economic change” (ibid). It appears that an infrastructure that can track and monitor people from a very young age has now been foisted on Ethiopia. The plan will not stop with the country’s educational system. Ultimately, the goal is to digitize all of Africa starting with Ethiopia. Pete Howson explains:

The initial plan is for a Cardano application to be used to digitally track students’ grades and academic performances across the country. The developers then hope to expand the system incorporating an Ethiopia-wide cryptocurrency payment system, before connecting the entire African continent together with Cardano infrastructure. (Howson).

The colonial powers could only dream of such control mechanisms when they attempted to tame the dark continent. While the colonial powers passed the mantle to elitist cliques that are, arguably, less competent, those successors are armed with a technology that can do great harm to human dignity and freedom. Behind Hoskinson’s blockchain system lies an agenda of radical homogenization of humanity. Avi Loeb, with his proposed AI-driven first contact with alien civilizations, appears to be serving the same agenda.

The evidence suggests that the current UFO disclosure trend is being advanced by a collection of charlatans and deep state actors that do not have humanity’s interest at heart. Their combined efforts seem to be universalizing systems of control that are antithetical to all ordered forms of government, traditional religion, and other institutions that have served as pillars of civilization. Only the most gullible and naïve fall headlong for the ploy. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of such people in the UFO community.

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AUTHOR BIOS

Phillip D. Collins acted as the editor for The Hidden Face of Terrorism and co-authored the books The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship and Invoking the Beyond: The Kantian Rift, Mythologized Menaces, and the Quest for the New Man. Both books are available at www.amazon.com. Phillip has also written articles for News With Views, Conspiracy Archive, and the Vexilla Regis Journal.

Paul David Collins is the author of The Hidden Face of Terrorism and the co-author of The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship and Invoking the Beyond: The Kantian Rift, Mythologized Menaces, and the Quest for the New Man

Paul has published several articles concerning the topics of deep politics and elite deviancy. Those articles have appeared in Terry Melanson’s online Conspiracy Archive, Paranoia magazine, Vexilla Regis Journal, and Nexus magazine.