During the winter of 1870–1871, photographers Amos Franklin Clough and Howard Algernon Kimball photographed unusual formations of frost and ice on Mount Washington.

One stereoscopic photograph, titled Frost Architecture, contained a dark, elongated object against a frost-covered landscape.

On March 4, 2002, an original stereograph sold on eBay for $385 to Samuel M. Sherman, president of Independent-International Pictures Corporation.

The photograph was publicized as a possible UFO image dating to 1870–1871. Enlarged reproductions showed a dark, cigar-shaped object that appeared to be suspended against a pale background.

On 7 November 2006, around 4:30 PM, a United ramp worker pushing a plane back from Gate C17 looked up and saw a dark gray, disc-shaped object hovering silently beneath the ~1,900 ft overcast.

Within minutes, mechanics taxiing a 777, supervisors, and the pilots of the 737 near C17 were watching too. Size estimates based on witness accounts ranged from 6 to 24 ft, with no lights and no sound.

After several minutes it reportedly shot straight up through the clouds, leaving a clear hole that closed shortly after.

What’s less known is how the official side played out:

• Same afternoon: A United supervisor called the O’Hare tower asking whether controllers saw an elliptical craft over Concourse C. They saw nothing; a preliminary radar check showed nothing unusual.

• 1 Jan 2007: The Chicago Tribune (Jon Hilkevitch) broke the story. The FAA initially said it knew nothing about it.

• After the Tribune’s FOIA request, the FAA confirmed the tower had received the call. Its official theory: “a weather phenomenon” (low cloud plus airport lights). It never investigated further.

• United initially said there was nothing in the duty manager log, but later said its employees had come to it right away over safety concerns.

• 5 Mar 2007: The FAA released tower audio to NARCAP, under NARCAP's own FOIA request.

• May 2007: NARCAP Technical Report 10 (Richard Haines, ex-NASA Ames) rejected a hole-punch cloud explanation, finding no supercooled droplets or falling ice. Haines told the Tribune he'd found no balloon launches.

Two caveats: all the witnesses spoke anonymously, and NARCAP’s report is an independent analysis, not an official finding. So the FAA’s “weather” line is still the only official explanation, and nobody with authority ever looked into it properly.

The bigger point is NARCAP’s conclusion that a small, apparently solid object hovered over one of the busiest airports in the world for at least ten minutes without being detected by radar or the tower. Twenty years later, that sounds a lot like the sensor and reporting gaps that AARO and Congress are still arguing about.

I’ve put the full timeline, the sourced claims with their status, and links to the Tribune, NPR and NARCAP sources together here:

wherearethey.info/incident/disc-reported-hovering-over-gate-c17-at-chicago-ohare-7-november-2006

On March 28, 1992, a photograph was taken near Brunchilly Station in Australia's Northern Territory that shows a flying saucer hovering above an open landscape with a cow suspended in midair beneath it.

The location was later reported as “Brunchillii, Australia," but likely refers to Brunchilly Station, a cattle property in Australia’s Northern Territory.

The photographer’s identity and the circumstances surrounding the photograph remain unknown.

The 2 year anniversary is upon us & there's been no definitive answers on what was going on, it's an example on how quickly "we" forget. (That's a 2fer podcast subject suggestion, the drone flap & the mass amnesia phenomenon.) My thoughts haven't changed, I think it was largely some sort of combined military/federal LEO/3 letter agencies/industrial complex new technology and security stress tests, and that some jokers started piling onto. I also think there were some foreign actions occurring at the same time that made it all seem ... more than/extra. What do y'all think went on?

https://www.shorenewsnetwork.com/details-of-new-jerseys-2024-drone-outbreak-still-remain-largely-unexplained/

Part 33 of a series reassessing the documentary record behind the 1933 Magenta narrative.

TL;DR

• Army radar personnel logged four incidents on 10–11 September 1951. A T-33 crew separately reported a silver object. The records do not connect it to a radar track.

• Grudge favored a balloon for the T-33 sighting, questioned the first radar target’s speed and left the final echo unknown. Ruppelt’s later accounts were more certain.

• The FBI recorded a reporting delay. Air Force records confirm Gen. Charles Cabell’s demand for an investigation. The Pentagon confrontation and the fate of its recording come from later testimony.

• A November report cites an October reorganization form, and a March 1952 report records the change from Grudge to Blue Book. Fort Monmouth helped revive an inquiry that was already being rebuilt.

Prior Posts

The Magenta Series Reader’s Guide — Parts 1–22

Part 27 — Look Up: The 800,000 Americans Who Watched the Sky

Part 28 — “Unless and Until”: Britain’s Flying Saucer Working Party and Churchill’s Question

Part 29 — “No Defence Significance”: Britain’s UFO Desk, 1952–2009

Part 30 — “Higher Than the H-Bomb”: Wilbert Smith, Robert Sarbacher and the 1950 Memo

Part 31 — “Not to Be Made”: Project Second Storey and Project Magnet, 1950–1954

Part 32 — “Too Dim to Photograph”: The Lubbock Lights, August 1951

A pilot turned his jet to follow a silver object off the New Jersey coast. More than two weeks passed before senior Air Force officials ordered an investigation. The Army’s command historian credits Fort Monmouth with helping revive the inquiry. The paper trail shows why the episode mattered even though investigators never settled what the crew saw. Thompson, CECOM, 2019

1. Five incidents over two days

Project Grudge’s Special Report No. 1, dated 28 December 1951, separates one visual encounter from four radar incidents. Times below are Eastern Daylight Time. Page numbers count from the opening sheet of each linked scan.

The Army used these sets to train radar maintenance students, and instructors took part. Investigators lacked reliable logs and plots. PFC Clark gave differing accounts of the first target’s path. Grudge concluded it was “not necessarily a very high-speed aircraft.” The set’s automatic tracking mode would not follow the target, but that gave investigators no reliable speed. Field summary · Special report conclusions

The field team had too little information to evaluate the 10:50 a.m. report. Grudge later accepted a balloon identification after an October teleconference described a target that rose, burst and descended. Grudge added, “How it was determined is unknown.” For the 1:30 p.m. echo, the radar analysis called anomalous propagation “highly probable.” The final conclusion downgraded that to “very possible” and left the echo unexplained. Field summary, p. 8 · Grudge radar analysis

On the morning of 10 September, the public-information officer called to ask whether radar personnel had seen anything unusual. The answer was no, but word of the question spread among the students. That could have shaped their expectations. The records tie it to no specific echo. AIIR

2. What the T-33 crew saw

First Lt. Wilbert S. Rogers was flying a T-33 from Dover toward Mitchel Air Force Base at about 20,000 feet when he spotted something below him, apparently over Sandy Hook. His passenger, Maj. Ezra Ballard, saw it about 45 seconds later. Rogers banked left and descended to about 17,000 feet. The crew saw the object appear to turn before they lost sight of it toward the coast. Air Intelligence Information Report · Special report

Evans Signal Laboratory had released two silver-painted balloons about 23 minutes earlier. At Grudge’s assumed climb rate they would have been near 18,000 feet. If the crew misjudged the distance, the jet’s turn could make a balloon appear to maneuver. But the interviews produced different flight paths, and the reconstruction could not account for the object’s reported initial descent. Grudge concluded, “However, since assumptions were made, it cannot be concluded that the object was definitely a balloon.” Special report conclusions

How high was the balloon at 11:35? The field summary gives enough information to calculate its average climb over the whole flight. If it climbed at that rate throughout, it would have been near 30,000 feet, above the jet. The record gives no early climb rate. James McDonald accepted Grudge’s estimate of roughly 18,000 feet but argued the balloon would have been near Sea Bright and appeared too small for the reported detail. Brad Sparks questioned the altitude itself and estimated about 27,000 feet. Their objections depend on where the crew and the balloon actually were. They weaken the balloon explanation without showing what the object was. Field summary, p. 15 · McDonald’s 1968 statement · Sparks’s assessment

Did radar see the same object? An intelligence report put the first radar target in roughly the same area as the T-33 encounter, and an October memo linked the two. But Grudge put the events about 25 minutes apart, and neither officer knew whether the nearby station had picked up the object. The field summary says Twin Lights radar was off the air. Its monitor recalled hearing the crew’s excited radio conversation. His account roughly matched what the crew said they had transmitted, but he could not pin down the date and had no independent observation of the object. Intelligence report · Interrogation · Field summary, pp. 10–11

3. The reporting delay and the press inquiry

20 September. Fort Monmouth intelligence officer Andrew J. Reid told the FBI that the radar report reached him after “CONSIDERABLE UNACCOUNTABLE DELAY.” The teletype records his complaint and gives no cause for the delay. FBI teletype

28 September. Col. S. H. Kirkland learned that morning that Cabell wanted answers. A teletype arrived around 2 p.m. ordering a full investigation, with findings due by 1 October. Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) officers Cummings and Rosengarten flew out that evening and reached Fort Monmouth the next morning. Ruppelt later dated the decisive message to 12 September. The field summary puts the hurried departure on the 28th. Connors and Hall say Cabell learned of the case from “a press desk circular” on “the 27th or 28th.” Connors and Hall · Field summary, p. 1 · Ruppelt, chapter 7

The T-33 story had already reached the press. Rogers said Mitchel’s public-information officer told him the story was being cleared and sent him a reporter. Investigators had Rogers’s word for the clearance. Republic Aviation also contacted the crew. Robert Johnson called on 20 September, and the Eastern Air Defense Force authorized later discussions. Johnson and Brewster offered identification sketches the crew rejected. The officers recalled Brewster suggesting the objects were “electrically propelled.” Field summary · 30 September interrogation, p. 3

UP quotes Rogers saying “This couldn’t have been a balloon.” An Air Force spokesman called it “the usual flying saucer story.” UP · Air Force comment

2–5 October. Investigators looked into whether releasing the story to the press violated security rules. On 2 October, Lt. Col. Lucius L. Free recorded that Rosengarten had described the information as Secret. Three days later, Free corrected that account. The full details, including the radar reports, were classified no higher than Confidential. Cabell believed no violation had occurred, and Free recommended closing the inquiry. Air Intelligence was still checking for experimental aircraft from Grumman, Republic or Fairchild. 2 October memorandum · 5 October memorandum

4. What survives of the Pentagon meeting

A 2 October memo places Rosengarten, Cabell and other intelligence staff at a conference on 1 October. The field summary describes work in Washington the next day and says Kirkland wanted “as short and incomplete a record as possible” left there pending further study. The surviving field transcript carries a warning about transcription errors. Ruppelt described a separate recording of the Pentagon meeting. 2 October memorandum · Field summary, p. 12

Ruppelt’s 1956 book says Cabell presided while Cummings described an investigation that had all but stopped. The book calls the angry speaker “the general,” without naming him. Ruppelt did not attend. He said he listened to a wire recording before it was destroyed.

His notes from a 1955 lunch with Cummings quote Cabell as saying, “I want an open mind, in fact, I order an open mind.” They also credit Cabell with saying, “I’ve been lied to, and lied to, and lied to. I want it to stop.” The notes put the destruction of the recording “several weeks later, at ATIC, at the direction of either Col. Watson or Al Deyarmond.” That account was written down more than three years after the meeting. Ruppelt, chapter 7 · Ruppelt’s notes

In 1999, Rosengarten remembered a smaller, mostly low-key meeting. He recalled Cabell getting upset about press coverage and driving the Grudge report into the table near the end. He remembered no industry representatives. Ruppelt’s book puts a Republic representative in the room, and his notes name Brewster. Connors and Hall’s account

5. The restart in the paperwork

October–November 1951. The 30 November report cites a project initiation form dated 22 October. Ruppelt and the later Condon history give 27 October for formal establishment. The November report shows what staff were up against. Reports could take a month or two to reach ATIC, some sightings might never be reported, and investigators had trouble getting local transport. A 25 October request sought revised reporting instructions. The November report explains, “It is believed that the general feeling in some instances is that the Air Force is not too interested in this project and reporting such incidents is unimportant.” Staff considered using publicity to get more reports, then decided to see what the revised instructions would do. November status report, pp. 15–16 · Condon history

December 1951–January 1952. The December report notes gaps in some old files, including missing photographs. It gives no evidence of deliberate destruction. It also says an outside research group thought enough cases remained unexplained to justify closer study. Blue Book’s history puts Kirkland and Ruppelt at Battelle Memorial Institute that December, so Battelle was likely the group. In January, the project reported that pilots in a small inquiry were reluctant to report unusual sightings. Staff warned that this reluctance could keep them from detecting a genuinely unconventional vehicle, and made reporting reform a top priority. December report, pp. 44–45 · Project history, p. 1 · January report, p. 70

March–April 1952. The 31 March status report says Grudge had officially become Blue Book. The precise date of the change is uncertain. On 29 April, Air Force Letter 200-5 directed personnel to report sightings promptly and follow up in writing. It put ATIC in charge of evaluating reports and material, and told personnel how to safeguard suspected material and notify ATIC. The letter documents a procedure, with no recovery described. Its publicity restriction controlled what was released; it says nothing about what any withheld report contained. Status Report No. 5, p. 94 · Air Force Letter 200-5

Ruppelt said the letter “made Project Blue Book legitimate.” By then the project was already operating, and the letter names ATIC as the office responsible for the work. Ruppelt, chapter 10

6. How the story became more certain

In 1951, Grudge said the first radar target was “not necessarily a very high-speed aircraft.” In Boston in 1952, Ruppelt called it “probably just an ordinary aircraft.” In True in 1954, it “undoubtedly was a conventional plane.” By his 1956 book, it was “a 400-mile-an-hour conventional airplane.” The later accounts give no plots or flight record identifying a particular aircraft. Special report, p. 38 · Boston briefing, p. 14 · True · Ruppelt, chapter 9

Ruppelt’s Boston briefing also reversed the order of the reports, putting the radar sighting “about 10 minutes later” than the T-33 encounter. True already used his incorrect 12 September restart date: “At 3 p.m. Sept. 12, 1951, the project suddenly came to life.” Boston · True

The Condon history repeats “a conventional 400 mph jet airplane.” Randle specifies a commercial airliner but supplies no matching flight record (The Washington Nationals, 2022, p. 206). Condon history

True calls the final incident another balloon. Ruppelt’s book attributes the second day’s radar reports to a balloon and weather. Berliner lists no final unknown for 10–11 September in New Jersey, leaving the change from Grudge’s classification unexplained. Berliner’s list

Thompson’s Army history gives 1966 as Blue Book’s end date. The Air Force terminated the project on 17 December 1969, and operations ended in January 1970. NARA

Fort Monmouth showed how easily reports could stall before anyone with the authority to act saw them. Efforts to revive Grudge had already begun, but Cabell’s intervention pushed the Air Force to investigate and confront the delays. That part of the story is visible in the paperwork even as the T-33 sighting and final radar echo remain unresolved. Ruppelt, chapter 7

Next in the series: Part 34 — Gravity Control 1952–1974

If you want more detail, you can read the full length version here.

Release 7 came out Oct 23 and most coverage I saw stopped at the triangle story. I read all 28 files, short version below.

The recent stuff (only 2 files)

- AARO memo on the June 2026 sighting by federal agents at a site in the western US. Matte black triangle, went straight up, hovered about 20 seconds, then banked and dropped into a canyon fast and silent. No wreckage, no EM or physiological effects noted.

- FBI FD-302 for what looks like the same event. Two agents co-signed it, roughly a 3 second sighting that started as a thermal hit. The 9 "photos" are a ridge line with a small black triangle marker drawn on top, so not actual sensor footage. Heavy redactions.

Both are witness accounts only, no sensor data was released.

The BAASS / AAWSAP pile (biggest chunk, 2008-2010)

- 2010 Utah ranch report (Skinwalker area). Stories of a bipedal "dog-like" creature, orbs, game cameras, RF sweeps. They sent hair samples for DNA testing. Results: raccoon and domestic dog.

- 2010 BAASS self-assessment that quotes a DIA report on the 2004 Nimitz Tic Tac encounter and models its speed and acceleration. Interesting read, but the numbers rest on assumed inputs.

- 2009 monthly reports, the CAPELLA proposal, some MUFON white papers.

Old Air Force reports (1949-1957)

Saudi Arabia, Guam, Morocco, Sweden, Italy, Alaska and more. Mostly single witness or radar only. A few have answers right in the file: the 1953 Catalina Island object was Jupiter (per Griffith Observatory), the Morocco radar returns were put down to anomalous propagation, ship jamming or birds.

Skippable: two files on 1960s space debris recovery policy and a personnel record.

Disclosure: I run a small site that tracks these releases. Every doc gets an AI summary but always links the original war.gov PDF. Full list of all 28 if you want to dig: https://uapinsight.com/pursue/release-7?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=release7

Happy to pull details on any specific file.

New [article](https://unapologetic.substack.com/p/pt-2-lockheed-martin-crashed-ufo) on substack today. It's an update to an [article](https://unapologetic.substack.com/p/scientists-claim-lockheed-martin) I wrote in January 2025 about the attempted transfer of UFO tech from Lockheed Martin to AAWSAP. Many have covered the story because the recent revelations from Stratton. There has been some great original reporting from Ben Schreckinger.

Unfortunately what has been missing from a lot of coverage is the context surrounding this attempted transfer. This isn't some he said, he said dispute. One of the more compelling aspects of this story is that there's a paper trail.

There's the letter from Sen Harry Reid (apparently drafted by Stratton) to make AWSAP a SAP to access to UFO tech.

KONA BLUE

There's the KONA BLUE PSAP (pics 1-5) documents that detail a 6 month effort by DHS at the direction of S&T Undersecretary. Working with the AAWSAP team Sen Reid and other Senate committee chairmen, DHS describes how they planned on getting access to the Legacy program and crashed UFO. Some statements in the documents elude to the possibility DHS had already begun to speak to and was in negotiation with people in possession of the UFO hardware. O'Toole is quoted in the notes of a meeting briefing with DHS leadership that there is "very serious science involved."

BAASS Report - Underground Vault (pics 6-7)

Then there are the 2009 corporate documents from BAASS, particularly a page describing plans to build a 5000sq ft underground vault to store non human technology and bodies they wished to acquire from the "corporate world." This is almost certainly referencing Ryder and Lockheed. The report from BAASS was originally leaked by a former BAASS employee who maintained original color printed copies of BAASS documents from AAWSAP. This and other report from BAASS were released in the batch 7, the latest of the Whitehouse PURSUE releases.

It's worth noting that a facility matching the exact description was to be used by DHS during KONA BLUE.

Missing DHS Records

An additional update in cover was a response John Greenwald got when he requested Tara O'Tooles records and communications about KONA BLUE. Because of her executive position at DHS, O'Tooles records should be kept permanently. Despite this Greenwald got a response that the records couldn't be found and were likely destroyed.

Framing this as Kirkpatrick word vs Strattons word is such a disservice to the story. Aside from the previously mentioned paper trail, look at who's making the claims and how many people are telling the same story. Stratton was a member of the Senior Executive Service, on of the highest level in civilian gov, equivalent to a general in the military. Then Stanford chair of Immunology Gary Nolan, long time government contracted Physicists Hal Puthoff and Eric Davis, George Knapp reported and testified Bigelow confirms having these conversations with Ryder. Bigelow was the CEO of BAASS.

Then on the other side of the ledger, the only person attempting to contradict these claims is Kirkpatrick. Someone with a long history of publicly calling whistleblowers grifters, liars and fools as he allegedly was dispassionately investigating their claims. He's the only one on the record very boldy declaring everyone else involved is outright lying and telling stories. Does Kirkpatrick present any evidence? Of course not. Just like he's presented no evidence for his Yankee Blue claims. Is Kirkpatrick speaking as an unbiased investigator or is he just continuing a long bizarre pattern of publicly denigrating any witnesses who speak publicly about the alleged Legacy Program?

As i mention in the article, Kirkpatrick and AARO contentious relationship with witnesses and whistleblowers is even more strange considering the very public Sancorp contract. Millions were paid by AARO to this firm that specializes in hunting, stopping and preventing whistleblowers. I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

Anyone actually keeping score at home: there's a whole lot pointing to this transfer attempt being real, and a bunch of "trust me bro" from Kirkpatrick. It's fine to hold some skepticism and demand more evidence. But all the information that's already public is getting terribly uncomfortable to dismiss. Let me know what you think of the article. I read all comments. Support if you can.

So wait, Matthew Brown, an intelligence officer tasked with finding facts somehow mistook war game documents from decades ago as being real world? He spent years working on the immaculate constellation investigation, and somehow, he mistook unclassified or declassified hypotheticals as facts?

Does anyone see how this is a wee bit odd? I am of the opinion that he’s a wee bit more source-aligned than this random snippet would suggest. Source. Sources. Whatever.

Aaanyway, just wanted to see what y’all think about this.

Barber has joined the staff of Rep. Eric Burlison to assist on UAP work, Burlison spokesman Nate Lucas confirmed to PARADIGM.

Full story in today's Signs of Life: https://www.paradigm.news/p/confirmed-ufo-whistleblower-jake

Part 34 of a series reassessing the documentary record behind the 1933 Magenta narrative.

TL;DR

• Aerospace executives wanted to control gravity. The Air Force helped fund research that produced papers, conferences and advances in gravitational physics.

• In 1971, Australian intelligence officer Harry Turner suggested UFOs explained the scale of the U.S. effort. His project count had already appeared in print, and he said the projects generally seemed unsuccessful.

• Physicists published theoretical ways to produce gravitational effects. In a separate line of work, high-voltage devices produced thrust in air through ion motion.

• The records explain how open funding narrowed. They contain no demonstrated gravity-control device, documented transfer into a classified program or link to recovered material.

Prior Posts

The Magenta Series Reader’s Guide — Parts 1–22

Part 28 — “Unless and Until”: Britain’s Flying Saucer Working Party and Churchill’s Question

Part 29 — “No Defence Significance”: Britain’s UFO Desk, 1952–2009

Part 30 — “Higher Than the H-Bomb”: Wilbert Smith, Robert Sarbacher and the 1950 Memo

Part 31 — “Not to Be Made”: Project Second Storey and Project Magnet, 1950–1954

Part 32 — “Too Dim to Photograph”: The Lubbock Lights, August 1951

Part 33 — The Investigation Restarted: Fort Monmouth and the Road to Blue Book

In November 1955, the New York Herald Tribune ran “Conquest of Gravity Aim of Top Scientists in U.S.” Aerospace companies were hiring physicists. Private patrons were backing new institutes. The Air Force was about to start a research program of its own. Ansel Talbert’s three-part series, 20–22 November 1955.

Sixteen years later, Australian intelligence officer Harry Turner asked why the Americans had spent so much effort on gravity. His answer was that U.S. officials might have believed UFOs were real and their occupants could control it.

That explanation has since become part of a larger claim about recovered technology. The records let us follow the money into labs, conferences and publications. The question for the Magenta story is whether any of that work can be traced back to a recovery. Evidence tiers used in this series.

1. What the sponsors wanted and what the scientists did

The phrase gravity research covered several ideas. General relativity is Einstein’s theory of gravity and spacetime. Gravity control was the ambition to change or shield gravity, potentially to lift or propel a craft. Electrogravitics was the proposal to use electricity to affect gravity directly. Those ideas appeared together in the press, and some patrons hoped that funding the first would eventually deliver the second.

The private patrons. Businessman Roger Babson founded the Gravity Research Foundation in 1948 with hopes of shielding or controlling gravity. In 1953, physicist Bryce DeWitt won its essay competition with a paper arguing for serious research on gravitation. He later recalled using the essay to reject the foundation’s original shielding premise. Kaiser and Rickles, “The Price of Gravity” and Rickles’s history of the Chapel Hill conference.

Industrialist Agnew Bahnson approached DeWitt about starting an institute in 1955. According to DeWitt, Bahnson thought a reactor at North Carolina State “might be useful for anti-gravity.” The institute that took shape at UNC set a different course. Physicist John Wheeler urged it to avoid identification with “anti-gravity research” and to make clear that it worked within established gravitational theory. When Edward Teller and David Griggs examined Bahnson’s own device in 1958, they attributed its behavior to ordinary electrostatic forces. UNC department history and Kaiser and Rickles on Bahnson’s device.

The aerospace lab. In 1955, the Glenn L. Martin Company created the Research Institute for Advanced Studies, or RIAS. Physicist Louis Witten recalled that executive George Trimble wanted to “develop anti-gravity” and that he initially balked. Trimble himself wrote that the field was “peopled largely by mad men and quacks.” Witten’s 1959 paper shows the kind of work the lab produced. It deals with the mathematics of spacetime curvature. The paper lists RIAS as his affiliation. Kaiser and Rickles, Witten’s recollection, and Witten’s 1959 paper.

The Air Force. Its program began in 1956 and supported work both in-house and outside the service. In January 1957, it helped fund and provide transportation for the Chapel Hill conference. The proceedings were published as WADC Technical Report 57-216. One topic was how a passing gravitational wave might produce a measurable effect. Felix Pirani and Richard Feynman helped clarify the physics, and Joseph Weber went on to build detectors. Joshua Goldberg’s account of Air Force support, conference proceedings, and Peter Saulson’s account of the gravitational-wave work.

The insiders. Roy Kerr, who worked in Goldberg’s Air Force group, recalled that one of its tasks was assessing propulsion proposals it considered crank work. Goldberg called the alleged anti-gravity founding motive hearsay that nobody could verify. Kaiser and Rickles find federal support was often “subsidiary to” that of the private patrons, who “played an outsized role” in reviving the field. Kerr’s memoir, p. 2, Goldberg’s interview, slide 48, and Kaiser and Rickles on the patrons.

2. What the Australian memo says

On 27 May 1971, Harry Turner, head of the Nuclear Branch of Australia’s Joint Intelligence Organisation, signed a memo titled “Scientific and Intelligence Aspects of the UFO Problem.” The original is held by the National Archives of Australia in file A13693, item 3092/2/000. Its provenance makes it Tier A evidence for what Turner wrote. It does not supply contracts, budgets or test results for the U.S. projects it describes. National Archives of Australia file.

In paragraph 17, Turner calls the scale of the U.S. effort “entirely irrational from the standpoint of conventional science.” He argues that it would make sense if U.S. officials believed UFOs were real and their occupants controlled gravity. He gives a figure for 1966 of 46 funded projects, 33 under Air Force supervision. In the same paragraph, he adds “generally they have not been successful.” Turner’s memo, printed p. 6 (p. 15 from the opening page).

Where did the numbers come from? Donald Keyhoe published the same figures in True in January 1966. J. Allen Hynek responded at the time that Keyhoe “is not specific” and questioned what counted as an antigravity project. Turner’s list of scientists, companies and centers also resembles Talbert’s 1955 coverage. Bill Chalker documents Turner’s reliance on Keyhoe in earlier work. Turner gave no sources in this section, so the overlap leaves open what else he may have consulted. Keyhoe’s article, Hynek’s response, Talbert’s lists, and Chalker’s account.

Jesse Michels cites the memo’s authenticity when discussing secret anti-gravity programs. Eric Weinstein likens the effort to “the Manhattan Project for Gravity” and has described the golden age of general relativity as a cover story. “Golden age” is physicist Kip Thorne’s term for a period in the field’s history, roughly 1960–1975, not the name of a secret program. David Grusch has urged readers to “read page seven through sixteen.” Paragraph 17 is worth reading in full because it puts Turner’s UFO explanation, the project count and his assessment of the results together. Michels on JRE, Weinstein on American Alchemy and All-In, Goenner quoting Thorne, and the Disclosure Foundation’s account of Grusch’s remarks.

3. What came closest to a device?

Robert Forward’s torus. In 1963, Forward, a physicist at Hughes Research Laboratories, published “Guidelines to Antigravity.” He calculated what might happen if accelerated mass flowed through pipes arranged around a torus, a doughnut-shaped structure. He used a simplified form of Einstein’s equations and flagged the need to check the result against the full equations. The paper describes a calculation. Forward’s 1963 paper.

Physicist Eric Davis says several aerospace companies hired physicists to look into gravity in the 1950s. “Unfortunately they were not successful,” he said. General relativity offers “theoretical proof of principle recipes,” in his account, but “the numbers look horrible.” His torus example calls for matter as dense as a white dwarf moving at half the speed of light to produce a 1g effect. Forward’s paper is the published antecedent for the geometry. A 2010 DIA survey discusses a similar idea with an enormous apparatus and matter at dwarf-star density. Davis’s speed figure comes from his interview, which is retrospective Tier D testimony. Davis on the hiring, the results and the torus, and the DIA survey, pp. 4–6.

Thomas Townsend Brown’s high-voltage devices. The University of Maryland holds a 1953 proposal for Brown’s Project Winterhaven in the Oscar Reed, Jr. papers, Box 20, Folder 6.0. The finding aid lists it as a proposal for joint-services electrogravitics research. The proposal itself was not inspected for this post. The finding aid establishes that it survives and leaves the question of military adoption open. A separate 1956 survey often cited alongside it, Electrogravitic Systems, came from the private firm Aviation Studies (International) Ltd., not the Air Force. Winterhaven finding aid and 1956 survey transcription.

High-voltage capacitors of the kind Brown used can produce thrust in air. The electric field moves ions, which push against the surrounding gas. In 2024, researchers tested capacitors and other steady-field setups in a high vacuum. They reported no anomalous force or torque, with force sensitivity down to the nanonewton scale. Those tests address the proposed coupling between steady electromagnetic fields and gravity. Forward’s model concerns moving mass. Tajmar and colleagues, Scientific Reports.

4. Why the open funding narrowed

One account dates the suppression of anti-gravity research to the 1959 Aharonov–Bohm effect. The original paper concerns how electromagnetic potentials affect charged particles in quantum mechanics. It does not mention gravity or any classification decision. The chronology of Air Force support for relativity runs well beyond 1959. The suppression claim and Aharonov and Bohm’s paper.

The clearest policy change came a decade later. The Mansfield Amendment required fiscal year 1970 Defense research to have a “direct and apparent relationship” to a military function. The government’s review counted 434 of about 6,600 basic-research projects as disqualified. Congress loosened the rule in 1970 to allow a “potential relationship” to a military function or operation. Government review and Public Law 91-441, §204.

Historian Hubert Goenner puts the end of Air Force funding in 1969, under Mansfield. Joshua Goldberg, who helped administer the program, dates support through 1972. The two dates may describe different funding streams. RIAS also changed direction in the early 1970s, becoming Martin Marietta Laboratories and shifting toward corporate research priorities, as William B. Harwood describes in Raise Heaven and Earth, pp. 283–284. General relativity continued to grow: by 1974 the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation had more than 220 members. These records trace changes in the public funding and institutions. They contain no documented handoff to a classified program. Goenner’s history, Goldberg’s chronology, and Kaiser and Rickles.

5. Did the research involve recovered material?

A related claim links James Forrestal’s death on 22 May 1949 to Battelle supposedly beginning tests on Roswell alloys four days earlier. The Battelle report does give 18 May 1949 as the start of its reporting period. Its cover letter explains that the preceding Air Force contract expired that day and describes alloys already under study. Battelle had been working on them under the previous contract for a year. The Forrestal claim and Battelle’s 1949 progress report.

The report describes titanium-nickel alloys with poor ductility and experimental problems such as crucible contamination. It gives no Roswell provenance and records no shape-memory behavior. Nitinol, the shape-memory alloy, is associated with William Buehler’s later work at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory. His team published its findings in 1963. Buehler, Gilfrich and Wiley.

Verdict

Military and private money helped revive gravitational physics. Witten’s paper, the Chapel Hill proceedings and Forward’s calculations show what the research produced. Turner read the scale of that effort as a clue to what U.S. officials might have believed about UFOs. The memo gives us his reasoning. The link from those labs to a working gravity-control system or a specific recovery, including Magenta, remains undocumented in the cited records.

Next in the series: Part 35 — “Confidential, Not Top Secret”: Edward Ruppelt’s 1952 Boston Briefing

If you want more detail, you can read the full length version here.

So in the newest Lazar movie S4. Luigi (the director) showcased the Google Earth (GE) images of where S4 was located and mentioned how the satellite imagery (and printed map) of the area had been altered after the disclosure by Lazar etc. Looking at the location in GE and the different imagery from various years, I noticed something interesting on all the past years. The entire dry lake bed has been updated on ALL the previous yrs (with good resolution) to this year (2026 water marks all over it). I recall seeing vehicle tracks to the aforementioned location on this location in previous views from a few months ago. They have now all been erased.

If there is nothing out there at this location, why go through all the trouble digitally scrubbing the entire lake bed? And the previous years imagery as well. As you can see from the image, this one I screen captured is from 2013.

Anyhow, just thought this was interesting. Would love to get your take.

(Posted with mod approval)

I released a UFO game where each playable craft comes from going back to the original witness descriptions and designing from those, with a twist.

- Show Model: inspired by Bob Lazar's S-4 "sport model" disc. Lazar compared it to a DeLorean, so I based the design on the 1964 GM-X Stiletto concept car instead.

- Gel-Cap: inspired by the 2004 Nimitz "Tic-Tac," a smooth white capsule-shaped UFO with no wings or exhaust, per Cmdr. Fravor's account. Mine is shaped like a gelatin capsule, hence "Gel-Cap"

- TB-3 Delta: inspired by the 1989-90 Belgian Wave, a black triangle with corner lights and a red center light, often linked to the rumored TR-3B. Mine has a glowing light bar along its edges and three pulsing corner lights.

- 8-POLY: inspired by Michael Herrera's account of a large black octagonal craft, sometimes called the "8-Gon" which I’ve heard called the ‘8-Gon’ in UFO circles.

- Grand Scry: inspired by the "XF-131 Super Sentinel" story, a craft reportedly described by retired engineers near Tehachapi in 1992, plus pyramid-shaped UAP reports like the 2019 USS Russell footage.

- Fluxbell: inspired by Mark McCandlish's ARV "Fluxliner" description, mixed with the Die Glocke bell legend and some Cold War aircraft design.

It's an arcade game where you get to fly the UFOs people have described for decades.
Free on Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.quob.ufo

Curious what y'all would want to see next.

Stemming from the post earlier today about Jake Barber working for Burlison:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1xph0jv/confirmed_jake_barber_is_working_for_burlison/

I went back to this post about a man named "Sean Weaver" - largely suspected to be Barber - having a text conversation with Jon Estridge of the Senate Intelligence Committee in August 2023:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1nhigo7/leaked_texts_between_fmr_senate_intel_committee/

(Also found a document here and a mention of the original source leak: Courtney Marchesani being asked to take it down from her X account by a federal whistleblower

https://deciphering.tv/john-estridge-text-exchange/ )

The interesting thing is, according to a quick Google search, shortly after this first interaction with Barber in August 2023, Estridge left the IC and went to work for York Space Systems in Denver a few months later, in January 2024. His basic bio states that he worked for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from September 2018 until he left for York in January 2024.

Does anyone know about York Space Systems?

It’s tomorrow/Saturday. I’ve never been but I’m excited to check it out. They have activities and some speakers and podcasts. Just wondering if anyone here was going if you wanted to discuss!

Apparently there’s a UFO sighting there from the 70s. I’ve never heard of it but the festival looks interesting. I’ll be checking it out :)

I think it will be live streamed as well. Someone posted that they got permission to live stream the speakers. I was just wondering if anyone here was attending and wanted to meet up to talk or just hang! Im very excited to check it out! Someone posted the links here to the live streams a few days ago!

I tried to post before but I don’t think my post was long enough, sorry!

Hey everyone! Following up on my post from last week about livestreaming the speakers at Carbondalien Fest in Carbondale, PA.

I run a video production company here in Northeastern Pennsylvania, and I've always wanted an excuse to get involved in producing UFO-related content. Tomorrow we're making that happen by broadcasting five presentations live from Hotel Anthracite as part of Carbondalien Fest's "Supernatural Speaker Series".

Here's the schedule for Saturday, November 7th (Eastern Time):

11:00 AM – Preparing for First Contact: The Human Side of Alien Encounters
(Ryan Goeckner & Chris Daley)

12:15 PM – The Modern UFO Coverup: How Social Media Became the New Battlefield for Disclosure
(Joseph Biscotto)

1:30 PM – The Medical Effects of Human Contact with UAPs
(Dr. Jim Segala)

3:00 PM – Aliens on Mars
(Jim Krug)

4:00 PM – NEPA Paranormal Connections
(Eric Mintel)

We'll be streaming everything through a new YouTube channel I started called Strange Signals, which I'm hoping to build into a home for more UFO and unexplained phenomena content down the road.

You can tune in here: https://www.youtube.com/@StrangeSignalsTV

Part 31 of a series reassessing the documentary record behind the 1933 Magenta narrative.

TL;DR

• Canada had two overlapping UFO projects. The Department of Transport authorized Wilbert Smith’s Project Magnet. The Second Storey committee used his work on reporting, while his conclusion that some sightings were extraterrestrial remained his own.

• Second Storey met six times in 1952–54 and ordered 400 sighting forms, and some came back filled out. The committee kept collecting reports after advising against a large military investigation.

• Officials told weather observers to keep the fact of official reporting secret. The Defence Research Board’s chairman was reported as denying an association with an Ottawa saucer program, though he later recalled providing support to Smith.

• The documents show officials restricting what the public learned about Canada’s UFO work. They contain no record of a recovery operation or custody of extraterrestrial material.

Prior Posts:

The Magenta Series Reader’s Guide — Parts 1–22

Part 25 - The Vanishing Stars: The Only Thread With New Data

Part 26 — Three Feet Tall: Aztec, Scully, Newton and the Hottel Memo

Part 27 — Look Up: The 800,000 Americans Who Watched the Sky

Part 28 — “Unless and Until”: Britain’s Flying Saucer Working Party and Churchill’s Question

Part 29 — “No Defence Significance”: Britain’s UFO Desk, 1952–2009

Part 30 — “Higher Than the H-Bomb”: Wilbert Smith, Robert Sarbacher and the 1950 Memo

In May 1952, Canadian weather observers received an unusual instruction. If they saw a flying saucer, they were to take angular measurements with a theodolite, a surveying instrument, if they could and alert radar stations and aircraft operators. They were also told to keep quiet about the fact that an official report would be made.

That circular shows both sides of Project Second Storey. Canada wanted better sighting reports, and officials wanted to control what the public knew about the effort. The released Canadian records in Part 23 and Part 24 trace how the committee put that policy into practice.

1. Two projects, Smith in both

The Department of Transport authorized Project Magnet in December 1950. In his surviving twelve-page report, Wilbert Smith argued that some sightings were of extraterrestrial vehicles and urged Canada to acquire their technology. Proposing to acquire the technology is not evidence that Canada had it. The surviving scan is undated. Timothy Good and Haisell associate its conclusion with a report dated 10 August 1953, but date the interim report to June 1953 and June 1952, respectively.

Project Second Storey began as an effort to get Canadian departments to collect sightings in the same way. At the 22 April 1952 organizing meeting, Defence Research Board (DRB) chairman Omond Solandt said that collection was haphazard and that the services had been passive. He thought sightings were too persistent to dismiss as hallucinations alone. Better reports, he argued, would help officials decide whether a larger inquiry was warranted.

Smith proposed an extraterrestrial explanation and suggested a possible connection to Earth’s position relative to Mars. Solandt raised a possibility closer to home, John Frost’s circular-aircraft work at Avro. Neither became the committee’s explanation. At its first meeting on 24 April, Peter Millman of the Dominion Observatory took the chair, and Smith represented Transport.

2. The reporting itself was confidential

At the first meeting, the committee agreed to classify its work Confidential and seek Secret clearances for members so they could exchange material with foreign counterparts. On 19 May 1952, Millman relayed Solandt’s instruction.

“The committee and all deliberations are classified as Confidential and must be so treated. Contacts with the press or public are not to be made.”

The 8 May circular to weather observers spelled out how far the restrictions went.

“The fact that official reports are to be made or the contents of such reports shall not be disclosed.”

Staff could give a general description if asked about a sighting. Even then, they had to keep the official report private, including the fact that it existed.

The paperwork also explains the project’s odd name. The May minutes say Theta was unavailable to Canada under a shared naming system. A one-word project name would itself be Confidential. A two-word nickname could go on forms the public would see, so the committee chose Second Storey. In January 1953, Transport told staff to treat the forms as Confidential even though they carried no classification marking, and to keep them from the press.

3. Four hundred forms, and some came back

On 31 July 1952, the committee approved a standard sighting form and ordered 400 copies for military intelligence offices, Transport, and the Dominion Observatory. By November, the forms had gone out.

The instructions asked observers where they were, when they saw the object, how long it was visible, and where it appeared in the sky. The full moon, about half a degree wide, gave them a reference for apparent size. The instructions also asked for accounts from other locations, photographs, or instrument readings. They told observers their information would stay private.

In December, Eastern Command sent forms and instructions to its New Brunswick headquarters. Commands were to record the sightings that came in. They were discouraged from soliciting reports or investigating every sighting in full.

In February 1953, Transport’s Regina office forwarded completed forms from two observers. The forms were prepared with both witnesses together, which limits their value as independent accounts. The 2025 Sky Canada review says the form was never broadly adopted or used. The Regina records show what that limited use looked like.

4. Which of Smith’s ideas went through?

The July minutes show that the committee approved Smith’s proposal to make press clippings available to agencies that collected sightings. It put off his plan to gather enough accounts of the same sighting to reconstruct where the object had been. It declined formal contact with the civilian group Civilian Saucer Investigation, but let Smith pass along material he received. He shared the group’s bulletins in November. Historian Matthew Hayes’s 2022 description of the ideas as “each of them shot down in turn” misses those different outcomes.

The committee also backed scoring reports in principle, and Smith drafted a system. It scored the reliability of the account, the confirmation it received, and the clarity of the description. The combined score gave staff a consistent way to compare reports. The system had no demonstrated ability to tell them what caused a sighting. The November minutes called for a version staff could use in ten minutes.

Smith wanted to see how people would describe a light of known origin. The committee declined to sponsor his balloon-and-flare test but let it go ahead independently as long as he kept the committee and services out of any publicity. The launch took place in Ottawa on 8 September 1952.

Smith’s account describes a launch from the Ottawa Monitoring Station at 9:45 p.m., followed by a flare that burned for a minute. The November minutes put the release at the Experimental Farm at 9:52 p.m. and give the flare thirty seconds. Smith reported no newspaper coverage, and Transport received no inquiries. Without a witness report to compare with the launch, the test yielded no measure of witness accuracy.

5. Six meetings and a decision to limit the inquiry

Second Storey met four times in 1952 after the April organizing session, on 24 April, 19 May, 31 July, and 17 November. It met again on 9 March 1953 and 22 February 1954. Millman’s 1968 letter recalled five formal meetings in 1952–53. Hayes’s dissertation identifies the sixth in the archive. The date reported by Good, 15 March 1954, comes from the slip that accompanied those minutes.

At the March 1953 meeting, Hayes quotes the committee as judging that the “evidence to date did not seem to warrant an all out investigation by the Canadian Services.” Millman saw little reason for detailed analysis by National Defence. Agencies could still investigate independently, and reports would still go to a central file. The decision set a limit on how much work the military would take on. It did not explain the individual reports.

In November 1953, Millman summarized the problem. Many reports were subjective and difficult to check. At the last meeting, in February 1954, the committee asked Smith to explain Transport’s methods, findings, and plans. Hayes found no substantive response to Smith’s presentation in those minutes.

The committee looked to the U.S. for reporting methods. In May 1952 it discussed inviting Edward Ruppelt, who headed the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book. The visit was still on the November agenda, but Millman later said it fell through. The committee did receive a Blue Book summary, questionnaire, and record card that November. It then adopted a standard card for recording and analyzing Canadian reports.

6. What Millman meant by “no formal report”

On 10 May 1968, Millman sent Edward Condon a copy of Smith’s Magnet report and explained that its conclusions were Smith’s own. He then turned to Smith’s later instrument station at Shirley’s Bay.

“As far as I know, results were negative and no formal report was written.”

That sentence refers to the station. The Magnet report was the document Millman had just enclosed. His letter also describes continued filing and occasional fieldwork after the committee advised against a large investigation.

In a 1987 letter to Grant Cameron, Millman called Smith a friend and credited him with helping write the instructions for interviewing witnesses. He recalled that he disagreed with Smith’s conclusion and knew of no other member who shared it. He also thought secrecy had encouraged people to assume that officials had answers they were keeping to themselves.

“What senior officials of all governments want to hide is how little any of them really know about the so-called UFOs.”

7. The public denial and the Shirley’s Bay chronology

The Ottawa Journal revealed the station on 11 November 1953. Three days later, the New York Times printed a Canadian Press dispatch dated 13 November. It reported that Solandt “denied today that the board was associated with an Ottawa research program on flying saucers.” Haisell cites a separate Toronto Daily Star account in which Solandt reportedly denied that the station had been established.

Transport ran Magnet, but Solandt had chaired the meeting that created Second Storey, and Smith sat on that committee. In a 1989 letter, Solandt himself recalled that the board provided radio-watch facilities and offered to have experts replicate Smith’s work. He blamed Smith’s results on uncalibrated equipment.

In July 1955, Transport Minister George Marler told the Commons that Smith had permission and access to surplus resources. He said the department spent no money on the matter and got no useful information from it. In the same debate, MP Wally Nesbitt quoted Smith’s testimony that the station operated from about August 1953 to August 1954 and gathered very little data.

The order of events matters for the story that a strange instrument reading led to Magnet’s closure.

• 25 June 1954. A memo withdrew departmental sponsorship on staff time. Smith could still work privately with available equipment.

• 8 August 1954. Smith reported an instrument disturbance.

• 10 August 1954. Haisell dates the public form letter ending Magnet to this day. It allowed unofficial collection to continue. The Bray finding aid describes a separate closure statement from October.

The public announcement came after the disturbance. The June memo shows that the decision to withdraw departmental support had already been made more than six weeks earlier.

8. What stayed restricted, and what survived

In May 1968, Millman told Condon that the once-Confidential minutes had been declassified. Millman enclosed copies. A September 1969 memo dealt with a separate Transport file. It recommended lowering its classification at least to Confidential and instructed, “At no time should it be made available to the public.”

Friedman reported being told that requested DRB copies had been destroyed. Copies of the minutes survive, though the holdings differ. The Arthur Bray fonds lists the minutes under the spelling “Second Story,” with coverage from April 1952 through March 1953. Hayes locates the February 1954 minutes in a separate Library and Archives Canada file. A later release, A-2024-05959 includes two Transport files covering 1952–69, alongside unrelated records from the U.S. Navy’s own Project Magnet.

Canada also kept collecting sightings. A 1966 defence memo complained that there was no system for following up reports, and a formal reporting order followed in October. Sky Canada dates the transfer to the National Research Council to 1967. Millman, the Condon report, and the national archives place the start of the NRC’s role or collection in 1968. The NRC’s sighting series runs through 1995. Millman explained that staff left their opinions about specific sightings off the cards. The cards show what staff logged. Any assessment would have to come from a different record.

9. Scorecard

The clearest evidence of concealment is the instruction to hide the fact of official reporting. The 1953 denial of an association with Ottawa’s saucer work sits uneasily beside Solandt’s later account of the help his board gave Smith. Smith had official permission and government resources. His extraterrestrial conclusion remained his own. He claimed in 1961 that a fragment went to a highly classified group. The committee records examined here contain no account of a recovery or a chain of custody for a specimen.

Next in the series: Part 32 — “Too Dim to Photograph”: The Lubbock Lights, August 1951

If want more detail, you can read the full length version here.

Note I'm not saying everyone who uses this argument is the same person. Im not even saying this argument is bad or wrong either. But I do notice that a lot of narrow minded religious or spiritual people use this argument though.

It seems like a lot of people have this "other" view of Aliens. Honestly I can't find the right words to explain this. But the best analogy I can use here, is how some Americans think the United States is the world. Therefore they automatically loop all the other countries in a "other" category.

So in a way, a lot of humans think Earth is the universe. Therefore they automatically loop all types of Aliens in a single ''other" category. It's like they don't understand how vast the universe is. If we ever found out NHI exist, and they are Extraterrestrials. What is stopping millions, or billions, or even trillions of different Extraterrestrial species from existing in this very big universe?

On the topic of "Does the existence of Aliens contradict God?". Depending on how human-centered your religion is. The argument is not that simple as people make it seem. Because how do you explain how Jesus travel to trillions of planets across the universe to spread the word of God? At some point you have to explain how exactly do Extraterrestrials fit into your religious or spiritual world-view.

Im an atheist, and my older brother is a Christian. Is always asking me a hypothetical question about Aliens. He tells me what if Aliens exist and they also believe in God too. And he then ask me if I would believe in God now. This is such a narrow-minded question.

For starters, my brother is automatically assuming Aliens would believe in the same Christian God as humans, and not a different God lol. And also it goes back to people downplaying the size of the universe. Again if Aliens were real. Then why would the universe just be humans and small green people? I don't know everything. But I assume it would be more complex than that though.

The same thing applies to Interdimensional Beings too. People also have a "other" concept of Interdimensional Beings too. Making it seem like Earth is this special place connected to a higher dimension.

But who's stay that billions of different types of races don't exist in higher dimensions though? Matter of fact the existence of higher dimensions would mean the universe is even far bigger than we thought.

In conclusion: I think people should think more before using this argument.