Body and Soul

Something strange is happening concerning UFOs (unidentified flying object).

Niall McCarthy reports for Statista, May 20, 2021, that according to the National UFO Reporting Center in the United States, which documents sightings of UFOs all over the world, sightings have become more numerous.

While there was a dip in reported sightings in 2018, there were more than 6,000 in 2019 and over 7,000 in 2020. So far in 2021, there have been close to a thousand up to the middle of May. While such numbers might have previously been ignored, encounters with UFOs involving radar tracking and advanced sensor imagery from experienced and trustworthy pilots are lending them more credibility.

Footage captured by the U.S. Navy in 2019 of an UFO is an example.

Mindy Weisberger reports for Live Science that on May 14, 2021, Jeremy Corbell, a filmmaker who produces documentaries about UFOs, posted the footage on his website, Instagram and YouTube, of a spherical object hovering in midair, moving side to side, then diving into the ocean.

In the clip, which appears to have been shot off a monitor and has several edits, a dark, round blob sits above the horizon. Male voices are audible in the footage; one says “took off, bookin’ it,” as the object moves horizontally in the screen’s crosshairs. When the UFO appears to dive into the water, one of the off-screen voices says, “Whoa, it splashed!” as the UFO disappears.

According to Corbell, “the US Navy photographed and filmed ‘spherical’ shaped UFOs and advanced transmedium vehicles” — craft that can travel through air and water.

The footage of the spherical UFO was filmed on July 15, 2019, at approximately 11 p.m. PDT, from within the USS Omaha’s Combat Information Center, near the coast of San Diego, CA. Radar images of the UFO show a solid ball, measuring about 6 feet (2 meters) in diameter, flying at speeds of 46 to 158 mph (74 to 254 km/h) for over an hour, culminating with the sphere vanishing beneath the waves. No wreckage was found at the location where the object went down.

Corbell wrote: “A submarine was used in the search and recovered nothing. We do not know what, if anything, the Navy or Pentagon might be willing to say about the USS Omaha incident, but we are confident the incident is a legitimate mystery and look forward to whatever information might be forthcoming.”

The Debrief reported on May 14 that Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough confirmed that U.S. Navy personnel did capture the footage that Corbell posted, but would not disclose where and when it was filmed. She said the footage was included in “ongoing examinations” by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), a U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence program that investigates reports of unexplained aerial vehicles.

Corbell wrote that the footage is not classified, and stills of the spherical UFO were previously included in a UAPTF intelligence briefing from May 1.

The release of U.S. Navy footage of the spherical UFO is just the beginning of what appears to be the long-awaited “disclosure” of UFOs by the U.S. government.

On The Black Vault website, John Greenwald Jr. has archived more than 2,700 pages of the CIA’s once-secret UFO records since the 1980s, now declassified and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Sometime this month U.S. intelligence services are set to deliver a groundbreaking report on “unidentified aerial phenomena” to Congress, at a time when close encounters between UFOs and U.S. Navy fighter jets are sending chills through America. Compiled by the secretary of defense and the director of national intelligence, the report is set to declassify Pentagon knowledge about unexplained aerial objects.

Nick Pope, a former UFO investigator for the UK’s Ministry of Defense, told The Sun Online the world may never know why the Pentagon has done a U-turn after decades of denial on unidentified phenomena.

The Sun reports:

US intelligence services officially closed the book on the controversial issue in 1969 at the conclusion Project Blue Book – which stated there was nothing to see regarding UFOs.

However, in the last three years there has been an abrupt turnaround as the Pentagon took the unprecedented steps of releasing three stunning UFO videos filmed by the US Navy.

And it also confirmed the existence of its secretive UFO investigation unit, before the Senate then commissioned a report on the issue from US intelligence which is due for release [in June]….

British defence officials continue to deny everything about any existence of investigations into the UFO issue or that they are sitting on any unreleased files.

So why are the Americans suddenly opening up this highly controversial and historically stigmatising topic?

Pope told The Sun Online he believes hidden forces are at work behind closed doors: “That is the $64,000 question – for years the US government had been like the UK is now on this issue, very defensive with a policy usually of denial, debunking and commenting as little as possible. And now in the last three and a half years, that policy has been flipped 180 degrees…. Something is playing out right now, powerful forces are at work behind the scenes, pulling the strings on this.”

Prominent Democrat politicians like former President Barack Obama, former Nevada Senator Harry Reid, have publicly spoken on UFOs, and director of Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign John Podesta is a  believer:

• Last month, Obama told The Late Late Show with James Corden that “there is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are”.
• In a New York Times op/ed, Reid (Daily Caller) wrote that “there is information uncovered by the government’s covert investigations into unidentified aerial phenomena that can be disclosed to the public without harming our national security.”
• Hacked emails of John Podesta show his avid interest in UFOs. In a June 25, 2014 email disclosed by WikiLeaks, the late NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell requested “a conversation” with Podesta and President Obama “regarding the next steps in extraterrestrial disclosure for the benefit of our country and our planet.” Podesta proposed a date for an in-person meeting, but Mitchell could not make it.

Harry Reid’s mysterious “sports” injuries

UPDATE (June 4, 2021):

The Telegraph (UK) reports that senior White House officials have been briefed on the findings of the Pentagon UFO report that is due to be released to Congress later this month. According to these officials, the report will say that:

1. US intelligence officials have found no evidence that a series of unidentified aerial phenomena observed by navy aviators in recent years were alien spacecraft.
2. The vast majority of 120 incidents documented over the past two decades did not originate from any U.S. military or other advanced U.S. government technology, i.e., they are not part of a secret government program.
3. Some of the “aerial phenomena” could have been experimental technology from a rival power, such as Russia or China. Especially worrisome is experimental hypersonic technology.
4. The report rules out some of the phenomena being explained as weather balloons.
5. The UFO sightings remain unexplained, including the UFOs’ movement and acceleration.
6. “The final report will also include a classified section that officials insist does not prove the phenomena are alien spaceships, but will nonetheless fuel speculation about how much the American public is being told about the sightings.”

~E