The US Government’s Cash-Landrum UFO Investigations, Part Two

In part one, we saw how the Cash-Landrum case had been investigated by the US government in 1981 by officials from Bergstrom Air Force Base in Texas, in 1982 by the Department of the Army Inspector General, and in 1983 by the nation’s defense team responding to the UFO-related lawsuit. In the conclusion, we’ll look at the subsequent secret investigation and how it relates to other agencies that may be covertly studying UFOs today.

ATP, The Advanced Theoretical Physics Working Group

John B. Alexander has had a long involvement in the UFO and paranormal, and participated in the DAIG investigation mentioned earlier. Dr. Alexander’s publisher notes his lengthy interest and research into exotic studies: “life after death, mind over matter, UFOs, remote viewing, telepathic communications with animals, and more…” Chiefly known for his work in non-lethal weapons research, Alexander retired from the US Army in 1988 as a colonel, and along the way earned his Ph.D. in Thanatology at Walden University in 1980.

Dr. Alexander developed a network of friends and associates with similar interests, many of whom were also in the military, doing contract work for the government, the Intelligence Community, or professionals in private industry. One of those friends was Dr. Paul E. Tyler (1930 - 2013), a Captain in the US Navy, and medical consultant on the government’s remote viewing program. This circle of associates was valuable when Alexander put together the Advanced Theoretical Physics Working Group. The primary purpose of the group was to determine if there was a hidden UFO government agency, but their findings were negative. The team also studied a few UFOs cases, and the Cash Landrum incident was one of particular interest. 

Dr. Harold E. Puthoff was a key member of ATP, and he kept his colleague Jacques Vallee informed of the group’s activities. Vallee’s journals record several entries on ATP, which he called "the Secret Onion." From Forbidden Science - Volume III (2016), by Jacques Vallee:

Hyde Street. Wednesday 24 July 1985. (page 199)

"Hal (Puthoff) and I had a lot to talk about… There was a meeting on frontier subjects in Washington recently. When Hal arrived he discovered the topic was UFOs, and the overall project was structured in multiple layers, like an onion. The meeting was classified above top secret, under a codeword. Fifteen attendees reviewed cases like Kirtland AFB, Cash-Landrum and Tehran. They included Howell McConnell and John Tyler. Kit (Green) had been invited but couldn't attend.
Two aspects of the meeting were ironic, Hal said. First, attendees were there because they ran programs that were impacted by unidentified signals but they were not necessarily interested in the UFO phenomenon itself.
Second irony: they came to the conclusion there must be a secret UFO project, somewhere else!"

ATP members included Ed Dames, Jack Houck, Bob Wood, Hal Puthoff and John Alexander.

Vallee provided a more detailed description of Alexander’s ATP in the endnotes:

"Notes and References" section for Part Eleven: Dark Science (pages 480-481)

"It has become known that the key meetings took place under DoE supervision on May 20-25, 1985 in the secure facility of the BDM Corporation in McLean, Virginia. The group called itself the 'Advanced Theoretical Physics Conference' or ATP. Alleged participants were Samuel Finch, Oke Shannon and John Kink of Los Alamos National Laboratory; Bill Wilkinson from CIA; Howell McConnell from NSA (whom I had met in October 1972); Hal Puthoff and Jack Houck; Ed Speakman of INSCOM (Army Intelligence); Bill Souder and Bob Wood of McDonnell Douglas; Jake Stewart of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering; Bert Stubblebine of BDM; Ron Blackburn, Milt Janzen and Don Keuble of Lockheed; Ralph Freeman, Gary Bright, radiologist Paul Tyler, Ed Dames and Lt. Col. Mike Neery. Ron Pandolfi of CIA also claims to have been involved."

In Jacques Vallee’s entries on the ATP over the years, it is clear that the project never received funding or became an official government program. Dr. Kit Green “refused to take part in the meetings as long as no budget had been allocated to give it an official status.” (Forbidden Science Volume III, 18 May 1986. P. 243)

John Alexander described ATP in June 2018, EdgeScience #34, "The Department of Defense and UFOs Redux," comparing his 1980s group with the AATIP effort from 2007:

"(AATIP) was just another in a series… of inadequate efforts to investigate one of the most perplexing issues to ever confront humanity… from 1984 through 1988, long before Senator Harry Reid was able to earmark funding for the DIA project, I ran a similar, albeit unfunded, effort... the name we employed for this project was Advanced Theoretical Physics (ATP)."

Dr. Alexander briefly discussed the group’s interest in the C-L incident:

"One disturbing case ATP looked into became known as Cash-Landrum, named for the victims, two women and a boy, who were inexplicably exposed to high levels of radiation. The source was an unidentified craft that appeared to be in trouble above a desolate country road just north of Houston. We explored the Cash-Landrum case in depth because of lawsuits initiated against the U.S. Government under the assumption that the incident was caused by an experimental craft of ours that had caused the serious injuries. The case was later dismissed."

We have no record of the extent of the ATP’s study of the Cash-Landrum case, but we can get a hint of it by reading the comments on it by Dr. Alexander and his colleague, Dr. Paul Tyler. 

In a 1993 lecture at MUFON’s Albuquerque, New Mexico, group, Dr. Tyler discussed his work with the ATP. The NM MUFON News # 12 (Jan. 1994) featured an article summarizing his talk: 

Dr. Tyler was a consultant for the CIA and other agencies. “There were always people who were unofficially interested in UFOs... Was someone really looking at this? No one knew.”Dr. Tyler has a degree in radiology and was head of Aerospace Medicine for the Bureau of Medicine Surgery. He ran the program on electromagnetic radiation. He personally investigated the Cash-Landrum case in which UFO witnesses were burned by some kind of radiation. He studied the hospital records and concluded that it wasn't microwaves but had to be some sort of ionizing radiation. What was it? “Nothing that we have or had at the time.” Also, the reported helicopters didn't “fit into the military pattern.” There were not enough helicopters in Houston at the time nor people there to pilot them (it was Christmas week) -­ it wasn't a military operation. How does Dr. Tyler explain this case? “UFOs can do things we can't. Maybe they use holograms. If they want to confuse us they could put holograms into systems that we have.”

Dr. Tyler’s conclusions on the Cash-Landrum incident were in sync with what Alexander presented in UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities, where he said it was “a very solid case, in which the observations and facts just don't make sense or support any prosaic hypothesis.” Alexander also speculated the helicopters were not physical, in a discussion of his precognitive sentient phenomena hypothesis, or PSP:

“One possibility would be that the UFO could employ holographic technology to create the UFOs. Another alternative is that the UFO was able to project that imagery directly into the brains of the observers, thus actually manipulating their perception of reality. It is interesting to note that the phenomenon would allow substantial physical injuries to the observers. Based on this case, and a number of others in which physical injuries have occurred, the PSP must not be mistaken as benign.”

Dr. Alexander’s ATP dissolved in 1988 after finding that no agency wanted to fund the project as an official government project. However, that didn’t exactly mean the end, as Alexander and many of the members remained interested in the UFO topic and moved on to other things.  

Dr. Alexander and Dr. Hal Puthoff went to become a player in Robert Bigelow’s National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS). In 2004, NIDS was closed, but later replaced by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), with Puthoff and some of the team remaining. In 2007, AATIP contracted BAASS, with Puthoff directing the scientific studies. In 2018 Puthoff and Colm Kelleher of BAASS went on to join Tom DeLonge’s To The Stars Academy (TTSA). 

The CIA? Remote Viewing, 1988

Before ATP, Dr. Hal Puthoff was one of the original SRI (Stanford Research Institute) team members and creators of the Remote Viewing program, which takes us to a final bit of trivia. The Cash-Landrum case was the subject of a remote viewing exercise documented in CIA files. In his article, Remote Viewing & UFOs at ATS, researcher Isaac Koi noted:  

As some of you know, the CIA released over 92,000 pages of material relating to "Star Gate" (and various other official remote viewing projects in the USA, such as "Gondola wish", "Grill flame", "Center Lane" and "Sun Streak") in around 2004… it should of course be recognised that most of the documents in the Stargate archive do not relate to UFOs.  

However, a few did, and one of the remote viewing documents recorded a session on 26 January 1988 looking into the “Cash-Landrum Object," where the remote viewer was “GP,” Gabrielle Pettingell, and the interviewer was “ED,” Ed Dames, who was part of Alexander’s ATP.

Link to Isaac Koi’s description of the Cash-Landrum Object session:
Remote Viewing & UFOs: Section F2: Cash-Landrum sighting

Link to complete 16-page session file:

Stage IV-V Training, Cash-Landrum Object, Viewer 95 26/01/88

Peeling the Onion

The “Secret Onion” nickname used by Jacques Vallee for ATP referred to the metaphor “peeling the onion,” which means getting a deeper understanding of something by examining it layer by layer. The irony is that the only thing behind the layers is more onion. John Alexander’s ATP group found no evidence that there was still a secret UFO investigation. His colleague Dr. Paul Tyler revealed in his 1993 Albuquerque, NM, lecture that the ATP searched, but, "In every agency, I ran into people interested in UFOs. But it wasn't their job and there was no money to look into it, so tidbits got filed into personal file cabinets!"

The government was not interested in fielding reports from civilians, just in sightings that could be military or national security matters. They shut down Blue Book, and what seems to have happened since is that any UFO incidents have been handled by the agency involved, from NORAD to the CIA. Whatever the US government may be doing in regards to UFOs, they are not interested in duplicating the public relations disaster problem of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book. 

The Cash-Landrum UFO case is unique in that it has involved the US government at several levels, from Congressmen to the Federal Court, and official investigations by two military branches, as well as an informal study involving the Intelligence Community. Unfortunately, the investigations shed no light on UFOs, but there’s much that can be learned about the Government’s response to the case. It harkens back to the early days of confusion about flying saucer sightings. The military branches assumed the UFOs were something real, and were asking each other, "It wasn’t us, but is this something you guys are up to?”

. . .

For further reading on the ATP UFO study, see the collection of information at Unidentified Aerial Phenomena - scientific research by Keith Basterfield, where he's interlaced data from sources such as John Alexander’s UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities and Jacques Vallee’s Forbidden Science Volume III, Jacques Vallee and the 'Secret Onion'.

The US Government’s Cash-Landrum UFO Investigations

The 2017 disclosure of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)  renewed interest in the US government’s post-Project Blue Book investigations of UFOs. The Cash-Landrum incident of December 29, 1980, occurred about ten years after the Air Force study of UFOs came to an official close. Documents prove that there was an official interest in the Cash-Landrum case, so it provides a perfect subject to use in a search for evidence of further UFO investigations by government agencies. 

There were several known official inquiries into the Cash-Landrum case, from the local level to the federal government. Some are well-known, while there are others that are virtually unheard of. We’ll look at them all, and provide sources for further information.

Local Police… NASA?

The Cash-Landrum case was not reported promptly, but when Vickie Landrum did notify the local law a month later, but they did not investigate; Chief Waring referred her to NUFORC, the National UFO Reporting Center. After Vickie called NUFORC, the case was passed on to UFO groups, which eventually led to its investigation almost three months after the incident. For those needing a recap of the Cash-Landrum encounter, see Vickie Landrum's Phone Call to Report a UFO Encounter: The Call that Started it All. 

The UFO investigation was led by John F. Schuessler, an employee of McDonnell Douglas, a contractor working on the Space Shuttle project at the NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Schuessler was deputy director of the Mutual UFO Network, and also ran Project VISIT, his own elite organization of UFO hobbyists. Some of the people they interviewed for the C-L case were under the impression that NASA was investigating the sighting, due to the way the group introduced themselves. Project VISIT’s UFO Hotline cards stated they were “composed of NASA Aerospace Engineers.” Many people heard “NASA,” but ignored the part about them being a civilian and unofficial organization.

See Project VISIT takes a case for further details on Schuessler’s organization. 

Bergstrom AFB Inquiry, Aug. 1981

Betty Cash wrote to Texas senators, Lloyd Bentsen and John Tower describing her sighting and asking for help. The replies she received suggested that she go to the nearest Air Force base to file a damage claims form for her complaint of injuries related to the UFO incident. As a result, on August 17, 1981, Betty Cash, Vickie and Colby Landrum traveled to Bergstrom Air Force Base near Austin, Texas. They were interviewed by Captain John Camp, Acting Staff Judge Advocate, Captain Terry Davis, Claims Officer, and Miss Pat Wolfe, Assistant Claims Officer. The interview provides the best publicly available testimony directly from the witnesses, the closest we have to them being interrogated as if in a courtroom. The meeting was taped, and later transcribed. For more details on Bergstrom interview, see From their own lips: Betty, Colby & Vickie tell their story 

Captain John Camp told them that since Project Blue Book was defunct, there wasn’t much they could do for them. He said:

"My intentions are to hear what you had to say this morning and to try to get it into an agency of the Air Force or portion of the Air Force that could help you. I must be frank with you and tell you that I know of no such part of the Air Force that today investigates these complaints, but on your behalf, I will forward it on... we're an agency that has not investigated UFO sightings in almost eleven years. And then we were, in effect, told by the Congress and the President that we would not be doing that anymore."

Capt. Camp gave the witnesses their damage claim forms and suggested they get legal counsel. There was a brief Air Force investigation, but it was conducted by Camp and Captain Davison themselves following up on the interview. Their associate, Captain James H. Marburger wrote a report dated Aug. 20, 1981, with negative findings: 

"The sighting occurred approximately 13 miles from (Houston Intercontinental) airport… surveillance radar from the airport  would most likely have ‘seen’ the helicopters operating in the UFO sighting  area… the area would be easily observed by pilots arriving or departing... pilots would have seen and reported the incident since it lasted 15 to 20 minutes, and since the 9PM time of the UFO sighting is a fairly heavy commercial airline traffic period."

There were no such reports; nothing on radar, no sighting from pilots, from personnel in the air traffic control tower, or anyone else. The investigation found nothing to confirm the UFO report by Cash and the Landrums, but gathered and filed the information for Air Force files, and later shared with the Army.

Journalist Billy Cox submitted a FOIA on the resulting Cash-Landrum records, and on Aug. 22, 1983 it produced a lengthy file on documents relating both to the Bergstrom AFB visit and investigation (and the Army’s DAIG report which will be discussed below). The contents of that file show a different picture of the military’s involvement with the case than is typically portrayed in UFO literature. Instead of a cover-up, there were numerous instances of government officials expressing interest in the case, and of military personnel cooperating and sharing information. The case documents are found in pages 46 - 81 in the linked PDF below:  

Bergstrom AFB/DAIG FOIA Cash-Landrum file, 22 Aug. 1983

The Texas Department of Health, Sept. 1981

During the trip to Bergstrom AFB, Cash and the Landrums made another stop that led to a government investigation at the state level. The Texas Department of Health assigned their Radiation Control Board after Vickie Landrum visited the office of Representative Larry Browder. Browder ordered an investigation of the event and incident location, and Charles Russ Meyer headed the investigation. On Sept. 16, 1981 Meyer examined the roadway, took soil samples, and the subsequent laboratory analysis showed no residual traces of radiation. They did, however, extend an offer to have TDH doctors examine the witnesses and their medical records, an offer that was not accepted. The TDH files record no further contact, but they did continue to collect some subsequent news clippings about the case.

For further details and the The Texas Department of Health documents, see:

The Cash-Landrum Incident: The Suppressed Case Files

DAIG Investigation, March - May 1982

The Army’s inquiry has been previously discussed on BBL in John B. Alexander on the DAIG Investigation of the Cash-Landrum UFO Incident, but we’ll provide a brief recap.

As a result of the media attention given the case (the TV episode of That’s Incredible! in particular), Representative Ron Wyden from Oregon asked for an investigation into the US government’s alleged role in the C-L incident. Virginia Lampley was given the task at the Air Force, but after determining the helicopters in question were used primarily by another branch of military service, the job was passed on to the Department of the Army Inspector General (DAIG). Lt. Col. George Sarran was given the job, and his specific mission was to determine whether Army helicopters were involved in the incident, not investigate the UFO report. However, to prepare for his investigation, Sarran contacted several ufologists, John F. Schuessler, the primary investigator, his former colleague Capt. Richard C. Niemtzow, M.D., USAF, and Dr. Peter Rank, Radiologist.

John B. Alexander was not named in any of Sarran’s documents, but in his 2011 book, UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities, Alexander described how he and his friend Dr. Paul Tyler were part of the investigation:

"George visited all the units that had similar helicopters... even checked with the U.S. Marine Corps... Being thorough, George made connections with the helicopter fleets of the oil companies that fly crews to the offshore rigs. The bottom line is that no helicopters could be located that could have been involved that evening.

George carried the investigation a step further asking for consultation from me, and two military medical doctors, U.S. Navy Captain Paul Tyler and Air Force Major Richard Niemtzow, both of whom specialized in radiation. Paul and I had worked together for several years in my interagency projects at INSCOM while Richard had prior experience with French UFO cases. Based on the physical evidence available, our conclusion was that the victims were telling the truth and had been exposed to high levels of radiation. However, this case simply defied any conventional explanation."

When I asked Dr. Alexander about the case in a 2013 email, he explained the problems with ionizing radiation from earthly technology as the cause of Betty Cash’s reported injuries, saying that such an exposure would have been lethal:   

“As far as I know, we had nothing that would produce the kind of radiation illness that followed.  My view was that given speed of onset and severity of symptoms, they should have been at LD 100 (at least the two women) from any radiation source that we had.”

Lt. Col. George Sarran’s mission was to investigate the helicopters, not the UFO, but he had taken an interest in it. He found no answers, but of the witnesses, Sarran’s report stated:

 “Ms. Landrum and Ms. Cash were credible. The DAIG investigator felt...,” but the following three and a half lines of his statement were redacted in the copy released by FOIA. A year later, Sarran was interviewed by Billy Cox for the Florida newspaper, Today December 6, 1983, and gave a statement that was probably very close to those redacted lines:

“I have no reason to believe that Vickie or the young man (Colby) or the policeman or John Schuessler or anybody else was lying to me. I didn’t get that impression from anybody or that they were crazy or mentally off balance or something.” 

Lt. Col. Sarran conducted a thorough investigation, and his DAIG report concluded that there was no involvement in the incident by any helicopters; not from any US military branch, government agency, or anyone else.

The Lawsuit Investigations, 1983 - 1984

The original legal move in the Cash-Landrum case was for a damage complaint filed in Dec. 1982 against the Air Force. They were seeking $10,000,000 for Betty Cash, $5,000,000 each for Colby and Vickie Landrum. As a result, there was some kind of investigation by the US government by the Air Force in its defense, but we don’t have the records to indicate the scope of their inquiry. 

The case was rejected, but the attorney Peter Gersten file an appeal. The response come on September 2, 1983, from Charles M. Stewart, Colonel, USAF, Director of Civil Law, Office of the Advocate General in Washington D.C.  The claim for damages was again rejected, and 

Col. Stewart stated, "Our investigation has revealed no evidence of involvement by any military personnel, equipment or aircraft in this alleged incident."

When a civil suit was attempted instead, there was apparently another the inquiry or investigation by the government. All we know is that in 1984 it produced statements from the Air Force, Army, Navy, and also the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The legal documents contain signed statements from each of these officials:

• Colonel William E. Krebbs, USAF, Chief, Tactical Aeronautical Systems Division, DSC Systems, Air Force Systems Command.

• Richard L. Ballard, Acting Chief, Aviation Systems Division, ODCSRDA (Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Research, Development and Acquisition), United States Army.

• Vice Admiral Robert F. Schoultz, United States Navy.

• Robert W. Sommer, Deputy Director Aircraft Management Office, NASA.

The statements indicated that each agency had no aircraft that resembled the description of the UFO. Maybe there’s some undiscovered documentation on the investigation. Each of these agencies may have some scrap of paper in relation to the C-L case, probably a request for the statements, but little else. The legal battle ended when the court case was dismissed for the final time in 1986.

We now know that members of some of the agencies denying knowledge of the Cash-Landrum event had members in a secret organization that was unofficially studying it and other UFO cases.

In part two, we conclude with the Cash-Landrum investigations by the Advanced Theoretical Physics Working Group, and how it relates to other UFO organizations and to the Pentagon’s AATIP.

Continue reading at:

The US Government’s Cash-Landrum UFO Investigations, Part Two

UFOs Hoaxed by Military Pilots

The study of UFOs has always been complicated by hoaxes, either from false reports or by events staged to fool witnesses. 

The Air Force’s “Status Report: Project Blue Book - Report No. 10” from 27 February 1953 reviewed the record-setting year of 1952, and of the 1000 cases analyzed, less than two percent of them were found to be deliberate fakes, “Hoaxes 1.67%”

The problem is that within the remaining cases, we cannot know what fragment of hoaxes were successful and remained undetected, possibly remaining on record classified under “insufficient information” or as an “unknown.”

One particularly interesting species of hoax is when an actual aircraft is involved, but the pilot operates it in a manner to deceive witnesses. This results in sincere testimony by the witnesses, but of a false UFO. The pilots perpetrating the hoaxes are unlikely to confess since it could result in anything from the loss of their pilot’s license to criminal prosecution. Or in the case of military pilots, the loss of their flying career.

Documentation

Few of these hoaxes by pilots have been documented, but a good example was included as part of the Condon Report: the University of Colorado’s Scientific Study Of Unidentified Flying Objects led by University of Colorado Dr. Edward U. Condon, completed in 1968. In Chapter 1,  “Field Studies” by Roy Craig, he summarizes how in the spring of 1967, seven witnesses were interviewed about their UFO sighting.

Case 23 is an example of a simple prank by the young at heart. A pilot, about to take off from an Air Force base in (a twin-engine Navy) airplane equipped with a powerful, movable searchlight, suggested to his co-pilot, "Let's see if we cant spook some UFO reports." By judicious use of the searchlight from the air, particularly when flashes of light from the ground were noticed, the pilots succeeded remarkably well. Members of the ground party, hunting raccoons at the time, did report an impressive UFO sighting. Our field team found, in this case, an interesting opportunity to study the reliability of testimony. 

That summary is from page 90 of the Condon Report.  
The incident itself is detailed on pages 494 - 497, “ Case 23, North Central, Spring 1967.” 

Anecdotes from Aviation Week

Philip J. Klass, was a senior avionics editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology, but in his spare time, he was studied, debunked, and wrote about UFOs. In his 1983 book, Klass discussed incidents engineered by military pilots.

Some UFO incidents are more accurately characterized as practical jokes. For example, a neighbor of mine confided to me that he had generated a few UFO incidents during the 1950s when he was a Navy fighter pilot based on the West Coast. He explained that Navy pilots would practice intercepting an enemy bomber in darkness by using an unsuspecting airliner as a mock target. The authorized procedure called for the Navy aircraft to come no closer than about ten miles before breaking off. However, this former Navy pilot (who requested anonymity) said that if he felt in a "playful mood" he would turn off his aircraft's external lights and approach quite close to the airliner.

Then, he said, he would reach for his emergency cockpit flashlight and flash it on and off until he could see passengers in the cabin reacting to it. Then he would maneuver to the other side of the airliner and give a repeat performance. Finally, he told me, he would drop below the airliner and turn on his jet-engine's afterburner, creating greatly increased thrust and a long rocketlike plume, and would zoom out in front of the relatively slow-moving airliner. Then he would return to base. "The next day I would scan the newspapers and sure enough there would be a story about an airline flight crew who reported seeing a rocketlike UFO, with confirming reports from a number of passengers who described seeing a bright flashing light,” my neighbor told me.

During one of my UFO lectures, I recounted the story of how this former Navy pilot had generated UFO reports that would be extremely difficult to explain in prosaic terms had he not chosen to confide in me. After the lecture, a man came up to tell me that he was a former USAF interceptor pilot and that while based on the East Coast he also had generated a few such airliner UFO-encounter reports "for kicks." He added: "Here I was creating UFO incidents that another branch of the Air Force (Project Blue Book) was trying to solve, but I dared not reveal my role because it was a serious infraction of the rules."

From UFOs: The Public Deceived by Philip J. Klass, 1983 (pgs. 298-299)

Interesting examples, but Klass was unable to name his sources, so by his own debunking standards we would have to consider them hearsay. Other such rumors have surfaced over the years, but usually just as vague with anonymous pilots. Something more definite recently surfaced - and from an unlikely source - a prominent UFO witness.

The UFO Pilot

Navy Commander David Fravor became famous in late 2017 for speaking about the “Tic Tac” incident, his UFO encounter while flying an exercise from the USS Nimitz on November 14, 2004. Fravor is considered an ideal observer, credible due due to his qualifications, rank and aviation expertise. He’s like a modern Kenneth Arnold, the original all-American UFO witness.

In a recent audio interview about his sighting and its aftermath, David Fravor discussed the need for further investigation, and used his own pranks hoaxing UFO sightings in the 1990s as an example.

From “2004 Nimitz TIC TAC UFO / Cmdr. David Fravor / Part 2 / Presented by Jeremy Corbell” 

“I’ll tell you- so I flew night vision goggles, okay? You know when you’re a pilot, you gotta grow up, but you don’t have to grow up? Sometimes, we can be a little bit childish, ‘cause you’re 34 years old and you’re flying super-cool jets, and even if you are 25 when I started flying a real jet, it’s just fun, and it’s cool, and it’s a great job.

So, we would fly around - I had a NVG O qual. So we would fly around at 200 feet at night with no lights on. ‘Cause we’d be in the warning areas where we’re allowed to do that. So we can technically fly around with no lights on. So, we would. And then we’d see - you can see campfires ‘cause people are below us camping. You can see campfires  from way, way away. ‘Cause the goggles will pick up that light from way, way, far away.

So we would get going really fast, and then we’d pull the power back to idle, so we’d go zinging over the top of these campfires. And then you just light the afterburners and pull up. And you’d leave ‘em on for a minute, then turn ‘em off. So think about - You’re sitting on the ground, got a nice campfire, it’s a pretty starry night, and you don’t hear anything. The all of a sudden, there’s a loud roar, there’s fire above your eyes, you're like, ‘Oh, my God,’ and then the fire goes out, and there’s nothing there. ‘What is that?’

… So when you do that, we always think, God, they’re crazy. Well, maybe they are not crazy, and can you explain it? Now, if there was real investigation… they could track and say that there was an airplane in that area doing low training, and he was just messing with you, but if people never report it, then they’re going to think for the rest of their lives that they saw something you can’t explain.”

Commander David Fravor had a distinguished 18-year career as a U.S. Navy pilot, and retired from the Navy in 2006. Any UFO fireballs seen by campers after that are not his responsibility.

David Fravor is supporting UFO research and investigation, and by speaking publicly, encouraging other witnesses to come forward. If other retired military pilots would also come forward to disclose and document incidences of hoaxing UFOs, that would also be valuable. The more that is known about UFO incidents - false and genuine - the more we can hope to understand the phenomenon and the experience of the witnesses.

The AATIP, Targeting Pod Videos and the DOPSR Process

This guest article is written by Roger Glassel, a researcher and writer for the Swedish quarterly magazine UFO-Aktuellt. Roger was a member of the Roswell Slides Research Group (RSRG, who exposed the claim that two Kodachrome photographs showed a space alien from the alleged Roswell crash - proven instead to be of a child's remains on exhibition at Mesa Verde Museum). He was also a member of the Puerto Rico Research Group, focused on the Aguadilla infrared video case. Roger is from Sweden and works as an IT architect specializing in system integrations and communications.

It has now been some months since The New York Times (NYT) revealed that the US Department of Defense (DOD) had run a program called the Advanced Aerospace (sometimes; Aviation) Threat Identification Program (AATIP) - reportedly studying the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, also known as the "UFO phenomenon." Roger Glassel has started looking into the matter of the release of the targeting pod videos.

By Roger Glassel

Project Blue Book, the United States Air Force's study of Unidentified Flying Objects, was closed in 1969, and that was - the public was told - the end of the government’s interest in UFOs. As Dr. Edward U. Condon concluded at the time, further study of UFOs would have no scientific interest, and the phenomenon itself was no threat to national security. So imagine everyone's surprise when the NYT revealed such a government study was being conducted once again - a study that not only included scientific interest in the matter, but held it as national security concern. For some in the UFO community - who over the years have disagreed on these two points made by Dr. Condon - this was like winning the lottery. Almost too good to be true.

Though the Pentagon has not characterized the nature of the AATIP as a UFO study, they have confirmed the existence of the program - a program they refer to as the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program. The videos released - that are said to be connected with the program - also conform with the AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR targeting system used in the US military’s F/A-18 dual purpose fighter craft. So the videos do appear to be genuine. 

What is also interesting with this story is that a former DOD employee named Luis Elizondo, who resigned his position and joined the staff of Tom DeLonge's company To The Stars Academy of Art and Science (TTSA), has openly stated that he was the head for the AATIP. The program was reportedly contracted to the company Bigelow Aerospace, the Las Vegas company created by Robert Bigelow - a billionaire with a long-time interest in UFOs and the paranormal. Others, such as Dr. Eric Davis and Dr. Hal Puthoff, have also stated that they have worked for the program.

Although Mr. Elizondo is a new player in the game, both Dr. Davis and Dr. Puthoff are well known and have done theoretical studies for the US Government in the past - discussing subjects such as advanced propulsion (laser propulsion), wormholes, and teleportation. Also, the AATIP has been connected with the infamous Skinwalker Ranch (formerly owned by Bigelow) and studies of exotic materials, but these various associated curiosities are beyond the scope of this article.  The focus here is the military targeting pod videos now made public. More specifically, examining questions about the release of the videos.

The New York Times story and all the subsequent media attention for the AATIP has been driven by the videos, which so far are the only evidence provided that the program was studying UFOs. Videos from a ATFLIR system would of course have originated from the US military, but that does not equate with them being connected to a DOD program allegedly investigating the UFO phenomenon. Also, one of the targeting pod videos referred to as FLIR1, or Tic Tac, that TTSA is connecting with the AATIP, was leaked by a Navy technician and have been available on the Internet since 2007. There could be a possibility that the other videos have been available on the Internet as well (military forums, veteran groups, interest groups, promotional videos, etcetera) and that TTSA is depicting them for something they are not. Remember that TTSA is not AATIP. Therefore, as evidence, the authenticity of the videos - both the provenance and the events they depict - need to be carefully verified. Looking into how the videos were released would be a first natural step in such verification.

Conflicting claims

A while after the first NYT story came out, another article drew my attention. It was an article written on February 17, 2018 by science writer Sarah Scoles for the online magazine Wired. In that article it is stated by Major Audricia Harris, who is a spokesperson for the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs (OSD PA), that the targeting pod videos were not approved for released by the Pentagon. She stood firm that the DOD did not release those videos.

A bit after that, on February 25, 2018, Luis Elizondo himself explained in the second hour of a radio interview on Coast to Coast AM that the targeting pod videos were prepared for release by the DOD in accordance to DoDD 5230.09 and DoDI 5230.29 by sending in the videos along with DD Form 1910 to Defense Office for Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR), and that the videos were cleared for unrestricted release to the public. Mr. Elizondo also mentioned there were emails sent back and forth, so he seemed to have been involved in the process.

So now we have a firm standpoint from the Pentagon that the videos were not released by them, and detailed information from Mr. Elizondo on how the videos were released. I thought the best way to sort this out would be to contact Maj. Harris.

After reaching out by email to Maj. Harris she explained in a response to me that the DOPSR process will only render in a recommendation for releasability, and that this recommendation does not equate to approved for public release. She also told me that OSD PA is the sole release authority for DOD information, however, they have no record of a request for clearance of these videos.

Maj. Harris’ firm standpoint became even firmer. But had these videos gone through the DOPSR process as claimed? What better way to find out than to contact the Defense Office for Prepublication and Security Review - so I did.

Questions leads to a request

I directly contacted the DOPSR by the only email address I could find - their public inbox for sending in unclassified information for review. This was, as I was quickly told, not the right way to contact them. This did however take an unexpected and fortunate turn, as I was given a personal Point of Contact (POC) at the Office of the Secretary of Defense Joint Staff Freedom of Information Act Office (OSD JS FOIA) by the Security and Review Specialist who answered my email. With this lead, I sent my questions on.

My POC was able to provide clarifying details and valuable advice. First, he explained to me that while Maj. Harris was correct about that the DOPSR process will only render in a recommendation for releasability, she was not correct in stating that the OSD PA is the sole release authority for DOD information. The 34 FOIA offices releases large amount of information that does not get reviewed by the PA office. 

He continued to explain that almost every information request related to Mr. Elizondo has been transferred to the DIA FOIA office for their processing and direct response to the requester. But for requests regarding the DOPSR review process, that I was asking for, he said would fall under their (OSD JS FOIA office) purview. As my letter to him was worded as questions, he asked me to resubmit it, structured as a proper request for information under the Freedom of Information Act - which I did.

Besides the background story pointing out which videos I was referring to, my request was worded as following.

"Under the Freedom of Information Act, I am seeking all documents related to DOPSR's review of these videos, to include who submitted the request and the results of such review."

Review and Release

In going through this search, I found out about the different channels that information goes through when subjected for release. As I have learned, there is a review process and a release process. 

The release process is divided between different release authorities. To find out from which authority information was released, you must file an FOIA request to every authority. In this instance, I am not actually interested in which authority that released them, or who initiated them for release, as I am just seeking verification that the videos came from DOD.

The review process, on the other hand, is handled by a single office, the DOPSR, and it is mandatory that information is reviewed and cleared by this office before going through the release process. So for me to understand if the videos came from DOD, I only had to file a single request to the FOIA office that the DOPSR falls under to find out who submitted them and what the result was. Or if they even went through this process.

After about a week I received the interim response with the name of the action officer assigned to my case and my case number: 18-F-0724. My request was registered March 26, 2018. Finally, the search for the provenance of the UFO videos was properly submitted and officially underway.

Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications

Going back a bit to March 21, 2018, I woke up and saw a message from my friend and fellow researcher Curt Collins, urging me to take a screenshot of a Twitter posting by Tom DeLonge. As Mr. DeLonge is a well known serial deleter of tweets, I took the screenshot and did not think much about it. After my request was registered, I thought I should have a look what the tweet was all about. In the tweet, DeLonge stated that TTSA was negotiating a deal with EarthTech to get the rights to Dr. Puthoff's laser beam energy propulsion (which I though was invented by Leik Myrabo in the 1980s, but never mind). DeLonge also seemed to insinuate that Puthoff's work on this matter was done as part of the AATIP. This drew my attention to the EarthTech website.

What was most interesting on the EarthTech website was not the things about Dr. Puthoff, but about Dr. Eric Davis, also connected with the AATIP. The site listed various publications written by him. Under "U.S. Government Program Contract Reports" he has listed six theoretical studies that he conducted for the Defense Intelligence Agency Defense Warning Office (DIA DWO) between the year 2010 and 2011, within the same time frame the AATIP was contracting studies.

Conducting a web search, combining "DWO" and the titles of the reports, I found that two of them - "Traversable Wormholes, Stargates and Negative Energy" and "Warp Drive, Dark Energy and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions" - were available for download on the Internet.

In these two reports it is stated that, "the report is a product of a series of advanced technology reports produced under the DIA DWO Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications program (AAWSA)". The content of the two reports also correlates with the content of the study topics that Dr. Davis has openly stated he wrote for the AATIP. Basically, the same content that Dr. Davis wrote for the Air Force Research Laboratory (back in 2004) that is now available for download through the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC).

By searching on the AAWSA name I also found a LinkedIn profile of a person in the Nevada area that had worked for Bigelow Aerospace between 2009 and 2010. More specifically, he was employed "in a interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers studying advanced aerospace weapon system applications including lift, propulsion, control, power generation, signature reductions, materials and armament".

AAWSA, if not the same, would seem to be closely related to AATIP, so close I thought it would be worth adding it to my FOIA request about the videos. It was important to have this information added because if, and I say if, the AAWSA program turns out to be the true name of the AATIP, without it, my request might be returned with a "no records found".

I forwarded the information to my POC at the OSD JS FOIA office to be added to my request. At first, he thought I was seeking information about the DIA program itself and directed me to their FOIA office. After explaining that I only wanted to use that name as a search phrase to be added to my request, the answer from him was that the videos themselves are very specific, and the DOPSR office does not review many videos, so it will be very easy for them to identify them, with or without the added information. However, he said he would pass on the information to the action officer for her action to pass onto DOPSR.

Now starts the waiting game, and it could be a long wait. In the interim response from my action officer, it was explained that due to unusual circumstances and an extensive backlog of 2600 open cases, my request was placed in a complex processing queue. I heard that others have got the same same kind of reply when filing their requests. The majority of the other requests are however general inquiries rather than targeted inquiries, so I have some hope about this one. Realistically, I am not expecting a response any time soon. But when I receive it, I will let you all know the outcome.

Share 'em if you got 'em

It should be noted that none of the research I have done would have been necessary if both TTSA and NYT would share the release documents they say they have. 

I have reached out to Leslie Kean - who was the co-author for the original NYT article about the AATIP - asking her to make the release documents public. Her answer to me was that the NYT has the documents that say that the videos was cleared for public release, but that background documents provided to the NYT by their sources are confidential until their sources say otherwise. Of course journalists have the right to protect their sources, but I told her that I did not fully understand how documents from an official release authority or review office could be considered as a source that need to be protected. Her answer was however the same.

I have also tried to reach out to TTSA asking them for the release documents. I first contacted Mr. Elizondo directly by email using an address that he left on a discussion forum, but with no success. I then contacted Dr. Garry Nolan - who I find to be both honest and sincere. He answered the he rarely interacts with TTSA and is not a representative for the company, but simply acts as an advisor. Dr. Nolan said that he have been instructed not to give out email addresses, and to direct anyone with questions to use the contact form on the TTSA website. However, he did say that he forwarded my email to relevant persons, giving them the opportunity to contact me with their reply. I did not hear from them, so I contacted TTSA through their contact form and got the response that I must contact the New York and Beverly Hills based PR company B|W|R with my questions. I sent my questions - directed to Mr. Elizondo - to the two persons provided to me, but up to this day I have not received a response of any kind from neither them nor Mr. Elizondo. 

A short encore

To those of you who have followed the story up to this point - listening to me go on about these utterly boring bureaucratic procedures and wonder why it is important, I will say; Processes are to be followed. You can work pragmatically within a process, but you can not work outside of the process. These DOD processes are made for the protection of information. So if they did review these videos before their release, there are records of it. If there are no records, the DOD did not release them. If the videos was not released as claimed, that would raise serious questions about the story being told about the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.

Could Maj. Audricia Harris be right after all? Time will tell...

Link section

Warp Drive, Dark Energy and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions, Dr. Eric Davis, DIA DWO, 2010

https://spherebeingalliance.com/files/get/1601/warp-drive-dark-energy-the-manipulation-of-extra-dimensions

Traversable Wormholes, Stargates and Negative Energy, Dr. Eric Davis, DIA DWO, 2010

https://spherebeingalliance.com/files/get/1600/traversable-wormholes-stargates-negative-energy

What's up with those Pentagon UFO videos? Sarah Scoles, Wired, 2018

https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-up-with-those-pentagon-ufo-videos/amp

Questions on the Cash-Landrum UFO Investigation

I recently was invited to appear on an episode of the Paracast, “a special shop talk/listener roundtable episode...” Somehow, much of the discussion centered on the cover-up of alien bases on the dark side of the Moon, so I didn’t have much to add to the conversation. However, there were some listener’s questions that were very good, but there wasn’t time to present them all. A few very good ones came from “cosmonaut,” who'd asked about the Cash Landrum UFO case.

If it was a human military experiment why test the craft in a public area? How do you explain that?

Airport Ramada Inn, Indianapolis, Indiana

http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/RamadaInn_A-7D_1987.htm

The idea that a secret or experimental craft would be tested over a populated area seems incredible, as in the ridiculously implausible sense of the word. The article “Cracks in the Black Dike” by Jim Cunningham is an excellent examination of the attempt and failure to maintain secrecy about the F-117A stealth plane. In it, he mentions two crashes from the program that were near populated areas, the July 1986 crash of a training flight near Bakersfield, California, and also an A-7D Corsair (a daytime stand-in for used to keep F-117A pilots sharp) crashed into a hotel in Indianapolis, Indiana, killing 10 people.

Also, there have been a number of accidents in populated areas involving classified transportation of nuclear materials or weapons, as you'll see in this article on U.S. Nuclear Accidents. There must be many more projects that we’ll never know about, and it’s only because these incidents were disastrous and unsuccessful that become public knowledge. These examples can’t prove anything about the UFO in the Cash-Landrum story, but they show that the potentially dangerous military operations have often been conducted close to populated areas.

One further comment on the UFO as a secret military project. I think it is unlikely. These projects are built to solve a particular problem or serve a pressing need. US spy planes are a perfect example of that, and provide a good case to study in the developmental process. What we usually see is a five to ten year developmental period involving dozens or hundreds of people. Typically, secrecy of the project or its concept is not tightly maintained, about all that can be concealed is its purpose or function and some of the technical and operational details.  For example, the CIA’s U-2 spy plane was claimed to be a NASA project collecting weather data at high altitude. 

NASA's experimental weather plane, so the cover story said.

Eventually, most of these secret programs are eventually exposed during their operation and eventually publicly disclosed. But, if the Cash-Landrum UFO was a secret military project, it may have been scrapped and literally buried. That's just the fate of some other experimental aircraft, see Top Secret Tombs: The Classified Stealth Aircraft Burial Grounds of Area 51

What attempts have been made to get FOIA documents and the results?

The best Freedom of Information Act results on the case resulted from an inquiry from Fred Whiting of FUFOR (Fund for UFO Research) into the DAIG investigation, U.S. Army Inspector General's Office, Washington, D.C., which resulted in the release of the report by Lt. Col. George C. Sarran

https://app.box.com/s/w8uvmyulh1s4lbent7oh

Another FOIA request produced some interesting trivia, an attempt to learn more about the C-L case via a remote viewing session. I’d say they failed, but if you are interested, see:

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1074447/pg2#pid19545571

As far as I know, these are the only materials produced and have been released to multiple individuals over the years. so far, I’ve only attempted two FOIA requests, one directed at getting the records from Bergstrom AFB, and another directed at the DAIG. both were unsuccessful.

There must be other material, but locating it and getting it released may be difficult. There should be documents from the Air Force from Captain Virginia (Ginny) Lampley’s brief investigation, from the defense prepared by Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Conforti in the legal case, and from the various branches of the military and NASA when they prepared statements indicating that they neither owned or operated any device resembling the UFO. In addition to that, there may be court documents from the Southern District Federal Court in Houston. Probably no smoking guns in there, but material I’d like to obtain and have persevered for the study of the case. These are the known knowns and known unknowns, but there may be unknown unknowns as well.

Can you elaborate on the idea that the UFO was launched from an aircraft carrier? What is the source and evidence for that?

USS New Orleans

The aircraft carrier theory was proposed by John Schuessler, but as a source for the helicopters, not the UFO. He suggested it could have been the USS New Orleans.

Tim Printy looked into these claims, and found it unlikely, with the New Orleans in particular being ruled out. 

“There is no evidence a carrier was out on operations over the holiday period. Like the rest of the military, unless they are deployed, most ships are in a stand down period over the holidays. Sailors spend a lot of time away from home (I have personal experience with this) and to deploy at this time of the year would have caused quite an uproar with the families. I think Schuessler had proposed the theory that the USS New Orleans was in the area. I recall looking into this and the New Orleans was on the west coast getting ready for an overhaul. It also had completed a westpac/operations in the Indian Ocean in November 1980. It seems highly unlikely that they would leave their home port in California shortly after returning from a long cruise overseas (this act would alone would cause a riot among the navy wives) to go to the east coast, conduct this secret exercise, and then return to the west coast in time to go to Puget Sound.” http://badufos.blogspot.com/2013/11/between-beer-joint-and-some-kind-of.html

Additionally, such a carrier would provide only about half the number of helicopters described in the case, and we’d still have to find a source for the others. Schuessler has done just the type of thing that skeptics get hammered for, manufacturing a real-world solution that fits the story, but for which there is no evidence.

What is your plan to further investigate this spectacular case?

Three key areas:

1) Seek out unreleased civilian documents on the case. There seem to be some in the files of both MUFON and FUFOR. The key item here is the original report made by Project VISIT led by John F. Schuessler. Copies of this report were circulated to the prominent UFO organizations at the time, but for whatever reason are not available.

2) Launch targeted FOIA requests for the material described above.

3) There are surviving participants in the case, reporters, investigators, medical and perhaps military personnel. Some of these have not spoken publicly in the case since after the story initially broke. I’ve located some of these individuals and would like to travel to Texas to personally interview them.

There are some other items, probably held by the family of the witnesses. For example, Betty Cash had a big file of clippings correspondence and documents, and Vickie Landrum maintained a log of her and Colby’s health and experience after the event. These personal records are a sensitive issue, so that will depend on the cooperation of the families.

Cosmonaut, thank you for asking some very good questions about the case. The C-L story is fascinating and holds a unique place in UFO history. The response and interaction by the US government alone sets it apart from other cases and makes it worthy of study. While the case has become a legend,  underneath the layers of myth, there seems to some genuine event at the core. I also hope that by continuing to discuss the case that perhaps someone with information about it will be prompted to come forward to share it.