to be non-intentional, such as the image of party balloon Mellon used as illustration of his Nimitz story. Or their, let's be honest here again, delusional plans of building spaceships based on the ideas of a fringe physicist.

As a sidenote, at one point, Mellon's website also leaked the personal details of all those pilots. Should we expect something more from a supposed national security expert, and from a company that presumably expects other possible witnesses and "investors" to trust them?

2017-12-16 -The NYT story

While the earlier events gained relatively little interest, all of that changed when the story hit the New York Times, and other outlets soon after. The story behind that began from Leslie Kean, who Joe Nickell described as a credulous _ying-saucer promoter. She originally wrote about the launch of TTSA and "sensitive aerospace threat identiScation program" in HuNngton Post, but it gained little attention before she pitched that story to her longtime friend and NYT contributor Ralph Blumenthal, which led to the original NYT story, and several follow-ups. Several other outlets published similar stories, but as I noted before, the tone of NYT articles was markedly different, and read more like

adverts for TTSA, and lately for another rehash of what little material they have in the form of a History Channel UFO entertainment series. That's not surprising given the apparent close relations between Kean and the TTSA members, especially Chris Mellon, as both are board members of the UFODATA project.

Such connections between a few key people have clearly made all the difference, at least as far as publicity goes. Another key player on the media front has been George Knapp, who has also published articles linking UFOs to various pseudo-scientiSc and nonsensical topics, such as remote viewing, psychics and Skinwalker ranch. I covered here earlier how TTSA member and pseudoscientist Hal Puthoff also brought such topics together in one pseudoscientiSc conference. If you are worried about the ridicule UFOs have been dealt with before, just think how ridiculous it would look like if they would turn out to be planes, birds and balloons, after they had already been linked to everything from demons to psychic powers. And that's basically what's already happening, but we'll get back to that soon.

The UFO (or not) program (or not) that Elizondo led (or didn't)

Regardless of the grand claims by the TTSA, a few low quality video clips haven't really brought us any closer of having an answer to the hugely signiScant question of whether we are alone or not. Since there has been little progress or new data in that front, much

Pentagon UFO program/AAWSAP/AATIP really was.

There are still a lot of open questions about it, but it clearly wasn't another Project Blue Book, not in scale, not in signiScance. It also seems evident that its origins, and especially the politics and Snancial side, were questionable, to say the least. The picture that has emerged is far from an oNcial serious scientiSc study, but rather of a network of UFO/paranormal enthusiasts and friends helping friends and arranging Snancing for their interests. Now that the Pentagon has repeatedly denied Elizondo ever led the program, if there even was a program at that stage, and we know he became associated with it only after the primary funding had been cut, it also seems clear he was nowhere as important player as he and the TTSA have led us to believe.

The man at the very center and origins of it, James T. Lacatski, appears to be impossible to reach, and according to Elizondo, his "predecessor's career was ruined" because "UAP has even been associated with demons", and their research was seen as a threat to religious beliefs. My understanding is that Lacatski played a signiScant role in such associations by originally making connections to the Skinwalker ranch. So sounds like some demons of his own making came back to haunt him.

In any case, if that was THE government UFO program, they apparently don't know much, or know how to properly analyze the little they had. Furthermore, according to Chris Mellon, who supposedly had "deep and wide-ranging access to compartmented programs", it's unlikely any government agency is concealing UFO information and he "never detected the faintest hint of government interest or involvement in UFOs" during the time he had such access. That's pretty bad news for those who have put their hopes in seeing some world-shattering disclosure, if there's little to disclose.

The story seems to be similar with the navy, who apparently didn't even try to keep a major UFO incident secret. The higher ups just weren't that interested. Since the evidence from that incident is lacking, it can be hard to accept that's all there is.

Predictably, we have already seen various stories featuring more secret programs, and better and longer footage, and additional UFOs and intercepts during the Nimitz encounter, and so on. That's the way these stories tend to develop. When the best is not enough, invent something better.

Three of the most unusual usual videos

Now we get to the stuff that actually matters, evidence of UFOs. When it comes to

Post called "three of the most unusual videos" that Elizondo arranged to be released. Problem is, the one that's connected to the most signiScant event is just a small boring blob without audio, so it's not too surprising media mixed those up and tended to show the Gimbal clip while talking about the Nimitz incident.

Each of those clips were supposed to show some features that would defy conventional explanations, but none of them have survived closer scrutiny. And that's the important part that applies to them all. None of them contain the supposed extreme features they were supposed to have. It doesn't really make a difference whether we can positively identify whether they are birds, balloons, bugs or planes, or what kind or species speciScally. The world is full of blurry videos that are unidentiSed in that sense. The only reason those were supposed to be evidence of something extraordinary is because they weren't supposed to be just unidentiSed, but unexplainable, and that's not what they are. The mystery and need for extraordinary explanations is gone, and hence they can't really function as evidence of anything like that.

Another highly signiScant aspect is to consider who they managed to fool. We have heard how these videos were supposedly taken with the best equipment by highly

trained observers and so on. Similarly we have been led to believe they have been analyzed by competent people at the Pentagon and elsewhere. At the same time, some of those same observers and experts have belittled the so called "Internet experts", who have come to different conclusions. Luckily, in most cases we don't need to settle for one word against the other, as simple math and the data itself proves quite conclusively who has been fooled and who's not. We'll start with the clip that fell apart conclusively and literally on the same day it was published, by several independent "Internet experts".

Go "Fast"

The "Go Fast" footage shows a tiny blob _ying more or less in straight line, and that's basically it. So why is that a UFO video in the Srst place? According to the TTSA, it shows:

"The high-speed _ight of an unidentiSed aircraft at low altitude"
"The unidentiSed vehicle appears as a white oval shape moving at high speed from top right to lower left of the screen _ying very low over the water."
"There are no obvious wings or tails on the object. Even IR imagery of a cruise missile, would have visible wings at this range"
"There is no exhaust plume from the object. An exhaust plume is clearly visible on conventional aircraft in the mid-wave infrared frequency used by the ATFLIR."