Despite the progress in the AATIP program, let’s face it, the topic is inherently anomalous, right? Therefore, despite the reality of the observations and all the people that we interact with in the intelligence community and the Pentagon agree – the data is there, it is real. Nonetheless the topic doesn’t fit smoothly into known profiles of the government programs for sure. And by virtue of national security implications it’s a high compartmentalizational topic, therefore a slow pace of cumulative progress and integration. We call ’em “stovepipes.” You have a lot of people with lots of detailed information about some particular aspect, but they don’t talk each other even if it is sitting at the next desk.
And let’s face it, advocacy of this issue in government circles is not viewed as career enhancing in part because, despite the weirdness of the subject, if you don’t make a lot of progress, you know, it doesn’t look good on your resume that you’re moving up the line.
So, because of that, there’s a forward story.
Many of us involved in the program decided that there should be an outreach program in the public sector. So this is the forward story. The goal was to establish a broad-based, high-quality scientific community-of-interest in the public sector concerning these Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and other related leading-edge topics. And so we got together and formed a company called, To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science. It was cofounded by entrepreneur Tom DeLonge – I’ll talk about him in a minute – senior intelligence officers from the Department of Defense and CIA and distinguished research scientists. We all banded together to form this academy. It was set up as a public benefit corporation so the public can invest and therefore it’s owned by the public. So this is something new. Whatever comes out of any of the research or any of the releases of information is actually going to be owned by the public. It is not going to disappear into a black hole. A very transparent structure, if you go to the website you can see everything from the financial structure to the activities, and we do have a web-based community-of-interest where things get posted.
For example, the F-18 FLIR tape I showed, we now have three of them up there and probably more to come.
Alright, who are the principals of this organization? Tom DeLonge, Blink 182 rock star. Frankly, I’d never heard of Blink 182, but my son told me, “Oh yeah, we know about Blink 182.” But anyway, in addition to being the rock star that he is, he’s also a director and producer, puts out books and music and film and so on, and he’s had a lifelong interest in the UFO area. So, he started talking with various people and he was kind of the I guess you could say the action-oriented person, who said “Why don’t you set up something. Why don’t we make this more available to the public?” and he got to a number of us, and so we all began to band together. ...
So, the goals for the To the Stars Academy are to,
- Promote the concept that such forefront topics as UFOs, SETI, consciousness studies, even telepathy and psychokinesis should not be considered taboo for serious scientific consideration. So, it’s a perfect match to the SSE because that’s our goal in the SSE as well.
- And of course, big ideas that generate funding to underwrite significant research in these areas
- Develop user friendly data bases so information that is generated can be accessed by anyone
- Provide positive support for collaborative government, aerospace industry, and academic efforts to accomplish all of the above.
So, we want to act as the glue in the public sector and create entertainment properties, books and documentaries and so on so whatever is learned can be delivered out to the public.
The structure of the organization has a science structure, an aerospace structure, and an entertainment division. What are the activities of this organization to date?
Actually we were responsible for legitimizing the topic in the mainstream press. That story that came out in The New York Times and so on, which then got picked up by the Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, was based on agreed-upon interviews with those of us I’ve just gone through a list of. And given the quality of sources coming out from the shadows, for example Ex-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, top F-18 pilots, significant Department of Defense and intelligence community officials, the bar has been raised on the legitimization of this topic in the public arena. We think that’s an accomplished goal to date.