Tabloids, Abductions, and Porn: New Documents Unveil Pentagon UFO "Research"

​The Pentagon released a trove of documents related to the AAWSAP/AATIP program that famously hunted paranormal phenomena and UFOs at Skinwalker Ranch in the 2000s. Its official purpose was supposedly to investigate breakthrough aerospace technologies, though Bigelow Aerospace always intended the $22 million contracted for the initial research to probe the mysteries of interdimensional poltergeists and flying saucers to “reverse engineer” (though they used the term wrongly) new technologies from the seemingly magical properties they imagined for unseen sky specters. 

​The new documents contain some real doozies that only serve to emphasize how unserious, slipshod, and, frankly, stupid the Bigelow-helmed UFO research really was. This is important to highlight because the new Pentagon UFO office mandated by Congress appears purposely designed to restart the exact same research that AAWSAP failed at fifteen years ago and to box the Pentagon into rehiring the same unserious fantasists who wasted millions chasing shadows in the desert during the last go-round.
 
Tabloid headlines falsely claimed that the documents were proof the “Pentagon” had concluded that seeing a UFO can cause health effects including brain damage and nerve problems, but this was not an official military conclusion. It was, instead, the conclusion of the Bigelow team’s reports to the Pentagon, which were based on, well, garbage data.

DIRD excerpt citing National Enquirer

DIRD excerpt citing Penthouse

According to one of the Defense Intelligence Reference Documents, as the Pentagon labels such reports, the Bigelow team gathered their evidence from unreliable sources, including The National Enquirer and Penthouse magazine, along with back issues of UFO fan magazines. Collating tabloid, porn, and fanzine UFO coverage, the team concluded that UFOs were responsible for “human-related physiological effects,” including 129 alien abductions, 75 cases of paralysis, 75 cases of time loss, 4 sexual encounters with space aliens, 4 cases of baldness, and 2 cases of itchiness, among dozens of other effects. For some reason, the researchers also included automobile problems as “human-related physiological effects.”

Equally disconcerting is the analytical methodology, which betrays the fantastical nature of the Bigelow team’s research. According to the documents, the team investigated paranormal phenomena using a framework invented by Jacques Vallée using an anomaly rating scale, which included categories for “elves,” “yetis,” “poltergeists,” and even spontaneous human combustion. (This is no surprise, since Vallée worked with Bigelow for decades and was close colleagues with several Bigelow AAWSAP contractors.) If it was on In Search Of…, it was part of their research methodology.

The Bigelow team's anomalies research scale, after Vallée

This is disconcerting but not unexpected. The truth is that Jacques Vallée’s work, rooted as it is in misunderstood, misrepresented, and falsified research materials, has long been used by the federal government to investigate UFOs. The NSA relied on him as a research source, as did the Condon Report. Vallée himself reported in the 1970s his own pained reaction at learning that intelligence agencies were using his books: “Hal [Puthoff] said his high-level contacts walked around with UFO books in their briefcases, particularly mine. I found this depressing: Doesn’t that imply that they know less than I do?” And half a century later, despite decades of evidence that Vallée’s “research” is fruitless and the data behind his ideas dubious—his most recent book accepted as true geezers’ tall tales about seeing the military seize a crashed UFO when they were in elementary school—Vallée is currently angling for a government contract to analyze alleged UFO wreckage while his colleagues and cronies are about to be swept back into power, leading America’s UFO investigation straight back to the 1970s.

UPDATE: Tucker Carlson had Lue Elizondo on to discuss the reports and the two men misrepresented by implication, suggesting they were official Pentagon conclusions and not speculative contractor reports. Other media, including Salon and Newsweek followed suit.

According to the chyron, Carlson has seen many UFOs.