John Greenewald of The Black Vault posted a cache of documents recently released through FOIA, and in the collection of emails and memoranda we learned the podcasted Lex Fridman secretly tried to involve himself in developing a UFO office for the Pentagon all while covering UFOs on his podcast.
5 Comments
Deadline reports that Apple Productions has acquired a UFO disclosure thriller movie from producers Joseph Kosinski and Jerry Bruckheimer, on which so-called UFO whistleblower David Grusch will serve as an associate producer and consultant. Grusch is also now an employee of Republican congressman Eric Burlinson of Indiana, who hired Grusch to advise him on UFOs after the House Oversight Committee rejected an effort to have Grusch hired as a staffer.
Only days after The Age of Disclosure UFO documentary premiered to mediocre reviews (most critics found it unconvincing and boring), the Sol Foundation launched its own effort to capitalize on the ongoing UFO publicity campaign swirling around Congress. The foundation, which is run by many of the talking heads from Age of Disclosure, including Garry Nolan, debuted four tiers of paid membership, ranging from $350 per year to an eye-watering $25,000 per year. At the highest level, the massive cost gives members a private dinner and an annual symposium with "key UAP figures." And to think, you usually have to pay $65 for a ticket to their convention panels to see them in person. According to Sol, your deep pockets go to support "deep thinkers," who, after all, need to be paid well to afford to sit around doing nothing all day. After its first year and a half of operations, Sol has done little more of note than to hold a conference where the same set of talking heads gave the same stories to a paying audience.
Age of Disclosure, a UFO documentary by filmmaker Dan Farah, will have its premiere at SXSW this weekend, and in advance of the film's debut, Farah sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to tease the movie's supposedly mind-blowing revelations. The film features appearances by UFO luminaries like Luis Elizondo and Jay Stratton, both of whom scored book deals through Farah's intervention with publishers, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The promotional efforts to gin up interest in Age of Disclosure from a distributor are, frankly, frustrating. Farah teases revelations that apparently are both world-changing and also not important enough to reveal before the weekend, for maximum publicity and the best chance at a distribution deal--you know, as you do with proof positive of space aliens.
The torrent of horrifying news coming out of Washington every few hours has left precious little room in the media to talk about anything else, so it’s no surprise that there hasn’t been much news about UFOs, Atlantis, space ghosts, and other indulgences that dominate only in boring, normal times. Bloomberg has a feature about the bizarre life of Joseph Firmage, a onetime tech leader who descended into UFO and antigravity scams. Politico ran an odd story this week that crossed between the paranormal and the Trump carnival. According to the report, an “informal working group” of FBI agents investigating UFOs are concerned that the Trump purge of thousands of agents who worked on January 6 investigations will cost them their jobs. The media spun this as an admission of an FBI UFO task force, but it turned out that the entire story was based off a claim made by Ryan Graves, the UFO witness turned UFO think tank founder who stands to gain from continued government UFO investigations. Politico claimed three other unnamed people confirmed the existence of the group, but they provided no information about who those people are or whether they have business ties to Graves or other UFO organizations. They said only that they were “familiar,” which could mean anything from FBI agents to filmmakers to SOL Foundation staffers. The bureau denied that anyone at the FBI had confirmed the existence of any such thing. And so it goes.
Another "drone" mystery died today when the White House admitted (or, rather, repeated from the previous administration's analysis) that many drones were FAA-authorized research flights. Anyway, I haven't posted much this past week, and I'm not really feeling too inspired right now. It's hard when I can't know how badly Donald Trump's horrifying actions are going to disrupt, or even devastate, our jobs, which include work funded by organizations that receive federal assistance. So, I guess now is as good a time as any to put into the record the cease-and-desist letter that Lue Elizondo's attorney, Todd McMurty, sent to Arthur Preston this weekend regarding an X thread Preston had made of Elizondo's alleged deceptions. It's an outrageous threat--cartoonishly promising financial ruin from legal bills if Preston doesn't comply--but I want to focus on a particular line: "Ostensibly, the goal of your thread is to disqualify Mr. Elizondo from government service by suggesting that he is opposed to Pres. Trump and a friend of the Democrat party." McMurty then states that Preston's thread might prevent Trump from "appointing" Elizondo, though he does not say to what position. That rather gives the game away, doesn't it? Elizondo, a conservative, is looking to rejoin the government, this time in a position of greater power, by toadying up to Trump.
Last night, second-tier cable news channel NewsNation gave credulous UFO journalist Ross Coulthart a primetime slot to reveal the latest supposed UFO whistleblower's claims. It was another fiasco from the gang that couldn't shoot straight. Jacob Barber claims that he participated in the retrieval on a small egg-shaped craft on behalf of a secret UFO crash retrieval program, one so secret he didn't know he was part of it. He provided footage of the retrieval to the Pentagon's UFO office and to NewsNation. “Just visually looking at the object on the ground, you could tell that it was extraordinary and anomalous,” Barber said before gushing about the paranormal, spiritual connection he felt to its non-human intelligence. “It was not human.” Social media lit up with instant analysis, much of it revolving around the accompanying video, which many said appears to show an aerostat blimp or other type of balloon, not an alien spaceship. In the video, the object sways and rolls while tethered to a helicopter. The Pentagon gave a statement to Steven Greenstreet of the New York Post confirming that AARO is aware of the video and did not assess anything non-human about it. Barber, however, rests his claims on the UAP Task Force that preceded AARO, a task force staffed with UFO believers like Travis Taylor and Jay Stratton. Members of that task force allegedly told Barber the egg-shaped seeming balloon was a vehicle piloted by non-human intelligence. Greenstreet also reported that Barber launched his own UFO organization, Skywatcher, in November, and its website is owned by Alex Klokus, the co-founder of the SALT conference, where UFO figures frequently speak to tech and financial elites.
|
AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
Enter your email below to subscribe to my newsletter for updates on my latest projects, blog posts, and activities, and subscribe to Culture & Curiosities, my Substack newsletter.
Categories
All
Terms & ConditionsPlease read all applicable terms and conditions before posting a comment on this blog. Posting a comment constitutes your agreement to abide by the terms and conditions linked herein.
Archives
July 2025
|