The Pentagon Admits to Investigating UFOs, Plus: Graham Hancock Cleared of Josh Reeves's Plagiarism Charge

​The usual characters from cable TV ufology are very excited this week because a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed that the military investigates when it receives reports of incursions into U.S. airspace by unidentified aerial vehicles. In response to a question from the New York Post that I would guess was connected to the upcoming History channel series following To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science and their efforts to explore military UFO research, the Pentagon conformed that it investigated “unidentified aerial phenomena,” a fact that should have surprised no one. 

​The Pentagon confirmed to the Post that the shuttered program known as AATIP investigated sightings of UAP, which we already knew from published accounts and documents. The statement read, in part: 

The Department of Defense is always concerned about maintaining positive identification of all aircraft in our operating environment, as well as identifying any foreign capability that may be a threat to the homeland. […] The department will continue to investigate, through normal procedures, reports of unidentified aircraft encountered by US military aviators in order to ensure defense of the homeland and protection against strategic surprise by our nation’s adversaries.

​Ancient Aliens star Nick Pope was one of those who claimed to be surprised, even though the Pentagon has repeatedly and frequently released material about UFOs for six or seven decades now. “Previous official statements were ambiguous and left the door open to the possibility that AATIP was simply concerned with next-generation aviation threats from aircraft, missiles and drones — as skeptics claimed. This new admission makes it clear that they really did study what the public would call ‘UFOs,’” he said. So what? The Pentagon has studied UFOs several times, most famously with Project Blue Book, and each time ended up with the same result: no evidence of aliens.

The Pentagon statement makes plain that the Department of Defense investigates when military pilots claim to see things in the sky. We already knew that they did that, both from material released in the past and the recent flap over the Navy creating a new bureaucratic process for reporting such sightings. There remains no indication that anything reported as a “UAP” is or was an alien spacecraft.

It’s nice, though, that the Pentagon is doing so much to help the History channel promote its To the Stars series airing next week.

I also want to share with you today a video Andy White made calling out YouTuber Josh Reeves for his false claim that Graham Hancock plagiarized from him. As you can see, Reeves mistakenly believed that because Hancock used a quotation from the same source that Reeves also quoted from that Hancock therefore “plagiarized” Reeves:

​You’ll remember Josh Reeves as the minor fringe figure who attacked Scott Wolter on vile personal terms after becoming upset at Wolter for not believing Rockwall, Texas to possess the remains of an antediluvian wall. Apparently the intervening years have not made him a better scholar or a less phlegmatic member of the historical fringe.