LOOK TO THE STARS
Delonge launched To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017, and describes himself as the designated UFO messenger for the U.S. government. Opposite, from top: footage from the Tic Tac video, and Bigelow Aerospace.
clandestine meetings with an assortment of high-level national security and defense industry individuals. (Delonge declined to be interviewed for this story. He “is not doing any press right now,” said his spokesman.) According to the rocker, they disclosed various E.T. secrets to him, one being an alien body in government possession. Delonge, because of his celebrity platform and engagement with a younger demographic, was chosen to ease out the truth, gradually, and through fantasy/sci-fi stories.
“Why you?” interviewer Rogan asked. “Because,” Delonge replied, disclosure “has to be managed a certain way for people to understand.”
In addition to presenting himself as the designated UFO messenger for the U.S. government, Delonge discussed Atlantis (the lost continent), how “different alien races were coming here for resource extraction” and how these aliens have genetically engineered humans periodically to goose humanity’s evolution.
Delonge has a gift for bringing talented people together, says Elizondo. “He sees the puzzle and can put it together like few people can.” But there are those in the UFO community who are skeptical of the rock star’s motives. They believe he simply wants to profit off his fetish—he sells Ufo-related books, websites and merchandise—and that his antics are part of the business plan.
There’s certainly a large market for what Delonge’s peddling. Pseudo-documentary shows on cable TV, such as Ancient Aliens (now in its 13th season) and UFO Hunters, have passionate audiences. Later this fall, the History Channel will run a new UFO dramatization series based on Project Blue Book, an actual top-secret Pentagon program in the 1950s and ’60s that investigated UFO sightings and reports. The program’s leader was a scientist who was a UFO skeptic before being persuaded that the topic should be taken seriously. Since the program was shut down in 1968, the U.S. government has consistently denied searching for Ufos—until last year, when Elizondo came out of the shadows.
On the question of whether UFO encounters are genuine, Elizondo has asserted many times, including in his talk to the MUFON audience, that “ultimately the data will speak for itself.” Asked where the data are, Elizondo responds with a variation of the hidden-by-the-deep-state argument. The Pentagon program, he says, commissioned “large volumes” of academic studies and data but much of it is “Foia-exempt,” he says, meaning that Freedom of Information Act requests yield little information. (The day before the conference began, a Las Vegas TV show obtained a list of what it claimed were several dozen of the studies, including one on “invisibility cloaking” and another on “brain-machine interfaces.”)
This argument contradicts Reid’s assertion, in a March interview with New York magazine, that “we have hundreds and hundreds of papers, pages of paper, that have been available since it was completed. Most all of it, 80 percent at least, is
public.” It also contradicts what Mellon wrote last February in his Washington Post op-ed, which referred to a “growing body of empirical data.”
Mellon is referring specifically to data from military radar detection of unidentified aerial phenomena and the cockpit video and audio recordings from Naval fighter jet pilots who have supposedly encountered this phenomenon. The 2004 sighting wasn’t the only time military pilots saw the Tic Tac, says Mellon. Pilots spotted a similar UFO on at least one other occasion; they described it falling down into the water and moving around just under the surface. In addition, says Mellon, “there are dozens of cases in the last few years, not involving Tic Tacs per se but Navy personnel and warships. It is absolutely not a one-off event.”
Mellon finds the Tic Tac video compelling, but experts outside the believers’ circle do not. “All such unusual sights can be explained by either natural or human-made phenomena,” says Avi Loeb, chair of the Harvard Astronomy Department. In other words, the pilots could have been seeing optical illusions generated by their instruments, or the sun, or a bird or clouds. Or, as has happened before, experimental, classified aircraft being tested in the area.
Last year, CNN showed the Tic Tac video to Neil degrasse Tyson, the astronomer and author. “Call me when you have a dinner invite from an alien,” he quipped.
Skeptics also take aim at the conspiracy theory itself. If alien spaceships are so numerous, why don’t the thousands of observation satellites in orbit, most aimed at Earth, pick them up? “You can say, ‘The U.S. government is covering it up,’ but then every government is covering it up, not just ours,” says Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute. “I find that unbelievable.”
So if Elizondo wanted the Pentagon and others to take him seriously, why would he come to this fringe conference? And, for that matter, why would he, Mellon and their highly credentialed colleagues join forces with a rock star flake like Delonge?
Elizondo has heard the whispers and read the conspiracy theories on Reddit. “No, I am not running a government disinformation campaign,” he says in an exasperated tone. “I took a huge risk in leaving a safe job to do this. If this doesn’t pan out, I’ll be working at Walmart.”
‘Don’t Look Now but We Have Foreign Interest’
the next six months or so will be pivotal to the success of To the Stars, Elizondo says. That’s when he expects to be able to present more data on UFO sightings. As the Academy’s head of Global Security and Special Programs, he serves as a liaison to the government, including Congress, the Pentagon and the intelligence services.
But there are still more questions than answers. Is he working behind the scenes to get some of the information that he knows from his Pentagon days declassified? He wouldn’t say. When will the public have access to this information? “That is being addressed,” he replies. Over the summer, the Senate Armed Services Committee asked at least one of the Super Hornet pilots to brief staff members about the Tic Tac incident.
“In the end, I’m not worried about credibility,” Elizondo says. “I’m worried about facts.” Reminded that the only facts the public has are grainy videos, he insists, “There is data. It’s not out yet.”
Elizondo says UFO believers weren’t the only ones at the MUFON conference. “You ready for this? Ukrainians and the U.N. Why would people from the U.N. and the Ukrainians, which we know are probably tied to the Russians, be there?” They signed up, he says, “after they knew I was coming. Foreign intelligence. That means they’re taking this seriously. Either they have a program or want a program, or they want to know if this is bullshit. But either way, don’t look now but we have foreign interest.”
Elizondo understands why many remain dubious. “You can’t take things at face value. I get it. I’m a career spy,” he says. “But in the end, as crazy as it sounds, aliens exist.”
“There are dozens of [UFO sightings] in the last few years involving Navy personnel and warships.” —CHRIS MELLON