Inquiry with Kelly Chase - [The UFO Rabbit Hole] Ep 6: Mr. Delonge Goes To Washington [Pt 1]: The Craziest Story You've Never Heard

Episode Date: January 25, 2022

Hidden in plain sight, right smack dab in the middle of the growing UFO disclosure movement of the past 5 years, is a story so strange, so entirely unexpected that you wouldn’t be blamed for mistaking it for fiction—but it’s true.Within the events and cast of characters around the infamous New York Times article and the leaked U.S. Navy videos that confirmed the reality of the UFO phenomenon one unlikely figure stands out among the crowd of former CIA agents, aerospace executives, and other high-ranking officials—pop punk icon, Tom Delonge. But the notorious UFO enthusiast and former Blink 182 frontman doesn’t just make a cameo in this story—without him, there would likely have been no story to tell.In part one of this story, we’ll explore how Tom Delonge’s early life and road to stardom set him on a collision course with this important moment in history, the shocking story of how he assembled his team for the To The Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the pivotal role that he played in the events that led to the Pentagon’s stunning admission that UFOs are, in fact, real.Hear the full interview of Ross Coulthart on Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal.NEW Class from Dr. James MaddenUnidentified Flying Hyperobject: UFOs, Philosophy, and the End of the WorldFour-week online class via ZoomWednesdays, March 27 – April 24 (skips April 10), 20247 – 9 pm ETLearn More About the ClassSign Up NowGET THE EPISODE BRIEFBECOME A PATRONGET THE BOOKGet a SIGNED COPYGet it on AmazonFOLLOWWebsiteTwitterFacebookMUSICTheme: Cabinet of Curiosities by Shaun FrearsonMusic by Rival TidesMusic Break: Vultures! [Instrumental]Outro Music: All My Friends Are Stoned [InstrumentalBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-ufo-rabbit-hole-podcast--5746035/support. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. It's peak pollination season, and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing, I need a phone plan with top priority data speed. That's why I chose GoogleFi wireless. My connections stay strong even when the hive is buzzing.

Plus, unlimited plans started $35. month. Now that's a deal that doesn't stay. Explore GoogleFi Wireless plans today. Plus taxes and government fees, GoogleFi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. Welcome back to the UFO Rabbit Hole podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Chase. We've spent the past five episodes talking through the possible answers to the most obvious questions raised by the Pentagon's stunning admission that UFOs are real, which are who's making them? Where are, Where are they from? If these craft are intelligently designed and controlled, what is the source of the intelligence

behind them? And as we've seen, there are no easy answers. The UFO phenomenon is hard to grasp with our current understanding. The tighter we try to hold onto it, try to make it conform to our preconceived notions and expectations, the more easily it slips through our fingers. And as it smashes on the floor, glittering shards of possibility skittering in all directions, we begin to see that this phenomenon has much more profound implications than just the potential of visitors from another world.

And to be honest, there has been no aspect of my trip down the UFO rabbit hole that has surprised, confounded, terrified, but also frankly delighted me, quite like the story that we're about to cover today. This story has everything. Twist and turns, rock stars, clandestine meetings, government secrets, good guys and bad guys. angels and demons, UFOs, of course, and an unlikely hero who through sheer grit and determination accomplishes the impossible. And much like the UFO phenomenon, this story has been hidden in plain sight, which doesn't mean that it was necessarily easy to find. As we dive into this story,

you might find yourself wondering, how the heck have I never heard of all this? And you're not alone. While the mainstream media has taken sporadic and frustratingly shallow interest in this story, it's been largely overlooked. But behind the scenes, at the highest levels of our government, the events that we're going to discuss have forced a seismic change in how the UFO phenomenon is being addressed both internally and to the public at large. And right at the center of this story is pop punk icon and our unlikely hero, Tom DeLong. Yes, that Tom DeLong from Blink 182. And we'll get into that whole story in just a minute. But I think it's important to get a sense of who Tom DeLong is. And not just because I will forever go to the mat for early

2000s pop punk is not just an art form but a lifestyle, but because of the way that his life and career brought him to a surprising turning point, making him one of the most, if not the most important figures in the history of the UFO Disclosure Movement. So let's do this. Thomas Matthew DeLong was born on December 13, 1975, in Poway, California, a small city of about 50,000 people just north of San Diego. The son of an oil company executive and a mortgage broker, DeLong knew that he didn't want to, in his words, grow up and get a job that he hates. School wasn't of much interest to him, so unsurprisingly, he wasn't a great student. However, he had an endless enthusiasm for his passions outside the classroom, saying, I knew exactly how hard I had to work in school.

As long as I got that C, I wouldn't try one minute extra to get a B. I just cared about skateboarding and music. Tom first picked up a skateboard in third grade, and it quickly became an obsession. He describes this time of his life saying, I lived, ate, and breathed skateboarding. All I did all day long was skateboard. It was all I cared about. After receiving a beat-up guitar as a gift from two friends for Christmas in the sixth grade, Tom had dual obsessions to occupy his.

his time. But planted along these seeds of the cultural icon that he would become was another life-defining passion, one that would eventually grow to eclipse them all. In junior high, while being forced to spend quiet time in the library, he searched the stacks for something to read that didn't fall into the category of what he called boring shit. It was there that he found a book with pictures of the Loch Ness monster and a UFO on the front. Tom devoured the book, utterly enthralled by the strange ideas inside, sparking in him a lifelong obsession with the topic of UFOs and the paranormal. In 1992, after being kicked out of Poway High School halfway through his junior year for showing up drunk to a basketball game, Tom found himself as the new kid at Rancho Bernardo

High School. He signed up to play in the Battle of the Bands, organized by the school, where he played an original song, poignantly titled, Who's Gonna Shave Your Back Tonight, to a packed auditorium? It was there that he began to make the connections that would lead to the formation of Blink 182, alongside bassist and co-vocalist Mark Hoppice and drummer Scott Rayner. The three quickly became inseparable, spending hours in Rainer's bedroom, writing and playing music, pausing only for punk concerts, skateboarding, and practical jokes. A teenage boy's dream, right? But Tom wanted more. They released their first album, Fly Swatter, a combination of original punk songs and covers. And soon after, DeLong began calling around to venues,

all around San Diego, trying to get stage time for the fledgling band wherever he could. Showing an early tenacity that would drive him throughout his career, he even called local high schools, telling them that Blink 182 was a motivational band with a strong anti-drug message in order to book assemblies and school events. Their persistence paid off, and by 1995, the band was touring constantly throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia. There was no Wi-Fi back then, if you can imagine such a thing. And so Tom passed the endless hours on the tour bus traveling between shows, devouring stacks of books on UFOs and the paranormal.

It was during this time that he first read the works of some of Uphology's greatest founding fathers, including Jacques Valet, Stanton Friedman, and John Keel. By 1996, the band had gained enough buzz to spark a bidding war between Interscope, MCA, and Epitaph. The band ultimately signed a record deal with MCA, who offered them the most. artistic freedom. However, disagreements over this deal, along with Rainer's substance abuse issues, led to the band parting ways with the drummer in 1998. He was quickly replaced with Travis Barker, the drummer of another band they were touring with, The Aquabats, after he filled in for Rainer, famously learning the band's entire set in the 20 minutes before the show. In 1999, Blink 182 released their seminal album, Enema of the State, which immediately rocketed them to crossover stardom,

dominating not just the rock charts, but the Billboard Hot 100 as well. The sound that the band had developed, while heavily influenced by their punk rock idols like No FX, the descendants, and bad religion, was infused with the sunny optimism of Southern California and radio-friendly hooks. And unlike punk rockers of the past, Blink 182 never shied away from their commercial appeal. They even had a contract with Billabong, as literally any picture of the band from about 1998 to 2002 can attest, making them the first band ever to be sponsored by a clothing brand. Even as the stadiums began to fill, and Blink 182 began its meteoric rise to fame, leading the charge in a new wave of pop-punk bands. DeLong's interest in, in fixation on, the topic of UFOs,

never wavered. In interviews, his bandmates recount endless hours of listening to Tom Ramble on about aliens and government conspiracies, things for which he had both, an encyclopedic knowledge and a seemingly inexhaustible enthusiasm. On breaks in between cities, he was known to organize trips to remote locations to look for UFOs, Bigfoot, and other manifestations of high strangeness. And through this time, DeLong remained remarkably grounded. He seemed well aware of the flash-in-the-pan nature of fame, and despite Blink's meteoric rise, he has had multiple successful business ventures on this side throughout his time in the spotlight. DeLong established a holding company, really likable people in 1998. Under this holding company, he developed multiple

clothing brands, a shoe brand, and even a technology and design firm that has handled the official websites and fan clubs for a range of popular artists, including the White Stripes, Pearl Jam, and Kanye West. However, fame was more than just a flash in the pan for Tom and his bandmates. With their 2001 release and first album to debut at number one, take off your pants and jacket, Blink 182, solidified themselves as both Billboard chart mainstays and cultural icons. DeLong at times seemed to resent being boxed in artistically by being part of one of the biggest and most commercially successful bands on the planet. Feeling an itch to do something where he didn't feel locked into what Blink was.

In 2002, he released a new album under a new name, Box Car Racer. Although he wrote the songs himself, for convenience, he asked Travis Barker to record the drum tracks for the album. This caused tension between Tom and Mark Hoppus, who was not included on the project, and marked the beginning of a rift between the two that only widened throughout the coming years. By 2004, tensions boiled over, and Blink 182 broke up. Reeling from this turn of events, DeLong looked to reinvent himself. He went on the road with John Kerry's presidential campaign and discovered a new side of himself, one that was driven by the desire to bring about positive change in the world. In the wake of this sweeping internal change, DeLong formed the band, Angels and Airwaves, a project that he saw as being much more than just a band, but an art project that approaches larger human themes and tackles them in different mediums.

He started talking about films and multimedia projects that he predicted would change and influence the youth culture, creating a revolution through art. So by the late 2000s, we see this new version of Tom DeLong begin to take form, one who is equal parts businessman and artist, and one who is passionate about finding ways to use his considerable talents and resources in both arenas as a catalyst for change. Blink 182 got back together in 2008 with more albums and tours to follow, but the tensions between the band quickly resurfaced despite their success, particularly between Hoppice and DeLong. The duo had a bit of a Lennon and McCartney vibe with Tom, despite his class clown public percent. often playing the mercurial and restless linen to Mark's sunshiny and commercial McCartney. But in the end, it was UFOs that would be their Yoko Ono.

In 2014, DeLong had an experience that would change the course of his life forever. Here's the story as he recounts it. DeLong had been in contact with a well-known euphologist who believed that UFOs communicated through consciousness and who claimed to be able to make UFOs appear through a set of meditation protocols. I find it interesting that he's never come right out and identified this individual, because to anyone who's even casually plugged into the UFO community, this can really only be one person, Dr. Stephen Greer. There are some theories as to why this might be, and we'll get into that part in part two of this episode. But for now, you just need to know that Dr. Greer has been a prominent, albeit controversial, member of the UFO community and vocal advocate for disclosure since the early 90s. He's most well known for having developed the CE5 protocols, which stands for Close Encounters of

the Fifth Kind, which is basically a series of meditations that you can do that he claims can be used to summon UFOs. So, in 2014, DeLong and this unknown uphologist go camping in Death Valley with a few other people. Their plan is to do these meditation protocols and try to make contact with a UFO. They do this for a couple of hours without success and eventually decide it was. was time to go to sleep. DeLong claims that he was later woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of hundreds of voices outside of his tent. He couldn't quite make out what they were saying, but he wasn't able to make himself move to see what was going on, and eventually he ended up

falling back asleep. When he woke up, he discovered that one of the other members of his group had had the exact same bizarre experience, leading DeLong to believe that his experience was real. This baffling encounter with a phenomenon shook him to his core. leading him to reevaluate his purpose and direction in life. In 2015, DeLong abruptly quit Blink 182, telling his bandmates through his manager that he wanted to focus on his non-musical endeavors. DeLong later claimed that he never actually left the band, saying that he never planned on quitting,

he just finds it hard as hell to commit. Whatever his intention, the indefinite nature of his hiatus and deteriorating relationships within the band, led Hoppus and Barker to replace DeLong with Alkaline Trio's Matt Skibba, with whom they continued to tour and record. Despite any hard feelings that DeLong may have had over this turn of events, it's clear that he had more than his hands full with his new endeavors. It was more clear to him than ever that the phenomenon was real, and he was determined to play a role in bringing this issue to the public awareness. And always a man of action, Tom DeLong, had a plan. In 2015, shortly after leaving Blink 182, Tom DeLong founded an entertainment company called To the Stars.

He said in later interviews that a major inspiration for this endeavor was the movie 13 Days, a 2000 film dramatizing the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis. DeLong recounts that after seeing the film, he found himself suddenly intensely interested in the topic in a way that he had never been in school, wanting to read everything he could get his hands on. Seeing the potential that entertainment had to help people engage with and understand complex topics that they might otherwise ignore, DeLong formed to the stars to do just that. In his opinion, UFOs had never been portrayed correctly in the media, and with TTS, he saw the opportunity to slowly disclose the nature of the phenomenon to the public through entertainment and media, to include films, documentaries, TV shows, books, and more. However, DeLong also recognized that if he was going to be truly successful in helping people come to grips with the true nature of the phenomenon, that he would need some help in understanding it himself. He'd read about every book on the subject that existed and certainly had his own opinions. But without some kind of privileged insider knowledge, he had no way of knowing for sure exactly what was true and what wasn't. If he was going to do this right, Tom DeLong needed advisors.

And according to DeLong, a stunning and wildly unlikely series of events unfolded over the course of the next two years that would bring him those advisors from the very highest levels of our government, military, and intelligence agencies. And this is where the story really starts to get strange. Because over those next two years, in 2016 and 2017, DeLong proceeded to give a series of increasingly bizarre interviews in which he made shocking claims pointing to a not. anonymous, mysterious sources within the government whom he could not identify. These interviews can be as frustrating to listen to as they are fascinating. They're frustrating because although it's clear that DeLong wants to share every detail of what he's been experiencing, he's trying to do so while not revealing any potentially identifying information about his sources.

This leads to a lot of incomprehensible stories about going to a certain city and being taken to a certain location to speak with certain individuals. it's not easy to parse, and basically all of it, at least at the time, was impossible to verify. However, these interviews are also fascinating, because in them you find a frenetic and entirely unvarnished version of DeLong. He talks too fast, he says too much, and you can almost hear his frustration at our inability to keep up. And while he speaks cryptically about the sources of his information. He speaks specifically and with the conviction of a man whose deepest beliefs have been proven to him beyond a shadow of a doubt about things that sound shocking, bizarre,

and to be honest, downright insane. His claims fall into two main categories that we will address one at a time. The first is how he assembled his group of high-level advisors. And the second, which will address in-depth in part two, is what those advisors have told him about the of the phenomenon. What follows is an inevitably imperfect accounting of what Tom has said about how he assembled his advisors, pieced together from dozens of hours of interviews from Tom to Long himself, many of which occurred in 2016 and 2017 as these events were still unfolding. So, going back to 2015, Tom recognizes that for TTS to be successful in its mission, he's going to need advisors with insider knowledge of the nature of the phenomenon. And almost as if by magic,

a surprising opportunity presents itself out of the blue, leading to one of the most insane and unlikely series of events, honestly, maybe ever. As he tells it, DeLong was asked to introduce the lead aerospace executive at an open house for families of a top defense aerospace contracting company. Fortuitously, this was the first time that this organization had ever even had an open house of this kind, where families and other members of the public were invited to attend. There's no way to know for sure, but many suspect that DeLong is referring to Lockheed Martin, and more specifically to their notorious and secretive special projects division, Skunk Works. As you may recall from episode two, the Skunk Works Division of Lockheed Martin was

founded in 1943 during World War II when the U.S. government needed to quickly develop the country's first jet fighter to compete with the new German jets that were appearing in the skies over Europe. Since then, SkunkWorks has been a highly favored government contractor, taking on the development of some of our most highly classified experimental aircraft, which are tested and developed at Area 51 and at Groom Lake. DeLong, knowing exactly who this executive was in the nature. of his work seized the opportunity and said that he would agree to introduce this aerospace executive if he could get five minutes alone with him afterward. They agreed, and soon after introducing this executive at the open house, DeLong found himself alone in a room with him, not knowing how his

pitch would be received. Delong, nevertheless, dove right in, intentionally avoiding the word UFO for fear of getting immediately shut down. He instead presented his idea as a way for the youth to become less cynical about government secrecy and the military industrial complex. The meeting was brief, and the executive didn't say much. But he set up a meeting with DeLong to discuss the matter further. According to DeLong, this meeting took place at an undisclosed, highly secure location where he had to pass through four layers of security, past heavily armed guards, and through hallways flooded with white noise to prevent conversations from being overheard, and into a small, windowless room deep within the building.

In this room, he met with the first aerospace executive that he had spoken to, along with two other high-ranking aerospace engineers. DeLong began his pitch again, as before, carefully avoiding the UFO angle and focusing on the benefit to the government and its contractors. However, one of the executives had been Googling Tom and was well aware of his beliefs in UFOs and his penchant for conspiracy theories. This person asked him outright. So what do you plan to do with all this conspiracy stuff that you're into?

Delong did his best to dodge the question, but despite his attempts to gloss over it, the executive steered the conversation back to the subject of UFOs, finally saying, quote, we cannot be associated whatsoever with anything that has this topic associated with it, specifically because there has never been any evidence whatsoever that this even exists. At this point, DeLong thought that he had had. hit a brick wall. But he dug in his heels and responded, if Edgar Allan Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, is out telling every kid in the world that this topic is real, then we have a problem. This seemed to give them pause, and DeLong jumped on the opportunity and boldly asked to

speak to the lead aerospace executive alone. Sensing that this was his moment, he said to the executive, I want you to understand something. I understand the national security implications of what I'm about to say. I'm not naive to the topic. I think if you hear me out, you'll see that there's merit in what I'm about to propose. Over the past 30 years, there's been a program to indoctrinate people into the idea that this might be real. But the problem is that all the young adults of the world, they use the internet, they have iPhones, they talk to each other much quicker than people ever have. So this program that everyone's been following from the 50s is far outdated. It's antiquated. People have surpassed it, and now they don't trust you guys. Now they don't like you guys. Now they graduate from

MIT and they want to work for Elon Musk and they don't want to work here at all. Help me help you guys. The lead executive seemed swayed by this and after some more conversation, he eventually admitted that yes, UFOs are real and that he thought Tom's plan of slow disclosure could actually work in revealing the reality and nature of the phenomenon to the public. Following this conversation, the executive then connected Tom to someone whom he referred to as the general. After this introduction, DeLong begins to correspond with the general. And after a lot of back and forth over email, they eventually meet, secretly, in a random airport that they both flew into specifically for this meeting.

Tom sits down at the table with the guy. And without any prelude or small talk, the general says to him, it was the cold war and we found a life form. And every single day we lived under the threat of nuclear war. Every single day, we really believed that nuclear war could happen at any moment. And somewhere in those years, we found a life form. And everything that we did and every decision that we made with that life form was because of the consciousness at the time.

He went on to tell Delong that during the Cold War, UFOs would routinely interfere with U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons and what looked very much like, an attempt to instigate nuclear war, and that they were very nearly successful. He said emphatically that there were heroes in Russia who did not fire back when UFOs manipulated radar systems to appear as though Americans had launched a first strike. As they concluded the conversation, the general agreed that Tom's idea of slow disclosure could work and that it was a great time for this to happen. And by the way, there's a lot of speculation about what he may have meant by that.

This was right around the same time that U.S. Navy pilots began to report hundreds of UFO sightings off the East Coast. So that could be it. Others argue that the proliferation of private companies in space makes it inevitable that someone will find something that makes disclosure a foregone conclusion, and that there are those in the government who would like to get out in front of that narrative. Either way, the general agreed to help Tom find his advisors, connecting him with top-level officials and experts in the fields of space, intelligence, biological warfare, and even someone representing the president of the United States. During this time, Tom had also begun work on two book series, one fiction and one nonfiction.

He claimed that both of these book series were heavily informed and influenced by his mysterious high-ranking advisors, who had privileged knowledge of the UFO phenomenon, and who were giving him guidance and final approval as the books were being written. DeLong managed to attach big names to these projects. The first of the fictional series entitled Secret Machines Chasing Shadows was written by New York Times best-selling author and Robinson Distinguished Professor of Shakespeare at UNC Charlotte, A.J. Hartley. And the forward is written by former senior CIA officer, Jim Semen.

The first in the non-fictional series, God's Man in War, entitled God's, was written by author Peter Levenda, who was well known for his books on a cult history. And in a stunning coup, the foreword was written by the godfather of uphology himself, Jacques Follet. Shortly after the books were published in February and March of 2017, DeLong said that he was interrogated by the CIA. According to his accounts, the CIA caught wind of his books and that some of the things that he was describing, particularly with regard to secret government programs and technology

were so on the nose that it caught their attention. Concerned that he truly did have high-level advisors who could be leaking classified information to him, the CIA sent agents to San Diego to question DeLong. Tom claims that he was never officially detained, but that these weren't the type of people that you say no to when they asked to talk to you. Over three days in a hotel, DeLong claims that he was interrogated by CIA agents,

about where he got the information from his books, and in the end, determined that he was telling the truth, that his advisors had given him hints, but nothing classified, and that Tom had arrived at the conclusions that so nearly mirrored reality by putting the pieces together himself. So Tom is going around telling all of these stories about clandestine meetings with senior intelligence agents, high-ranking military brass, and the leaders of some of the most clandestine aerospace programs within the military-industrial complex. And these claims about who his advisors are and how he found them aren't even half as stunning and fantastical as what he says they've been telling him, which we will get to, I promise. As one would expect, the mainstream media mostly snickered if they paid attention at all. There were a few articles that came out in publications like Rolling Stone, but most seemed unwilling to print much more than the elevator pitch for To the Stars and preferred to dwell on the recent breakup of Blink 182 and the drama that ensued. So, most of these interviews were happening on far less mainstream outlets, including fade to black and coast to coast.

While both of these shows are institutions within the UFO and paranormal communities, they don't have much credibility outside of those spaces. So these interviews were happening mostly off the radar. However, even in front of what should have been a much more open-minded and sympathetic audience, the zealous and at times almost messianic tone of these interviews, coupled with his extreme, claims led most people to believe that Tom DeLong had lost his mind. But then something extraordinary happened. During the 2016 presidential campaign, WikiLeaks released over 20,000 emails from the DNC that had allegedly been obtained by Russian hackers. And among these emails was proof that Tom DeLong had, in fact been in touch with high-level members of the government, military, and intelligence agencies,

and was being briefed on aspects of the phenomenon by these individuals. The smoking gun can be found in the emails between DeLong and John Podesta. Podesta has been an integral part of multiple presidential campaigns and administrations, having served as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, senior counselor for the Obama administration, as well as Hillary Clinton's campaign manager in 2016. Basically, this is a man who has spent more time in the White House, than just about anyone, including presidents.

It would be hard to point to a person with more power, influence, and connections in D.C. than Podesta. But Podesta was also known on the Hill for having a longstanding interest in UFOs. Upon leaving the Obama administration to work on the Clinton campaign, he famously tweeted, finally, my biggest failure of 2014, once again not securing the disclosure of the UFO files. hashtag the truth is still out there. When John Podesta's emails were leaked, it was revealed that he was one of the high-level officials

who was regularly in contact with DeLong, confirming his claim that one of his advisors had a direct line to the president. And it was clear that Podesta had been briefed on DeLong's plan and was helping him to identify advisors and move his project forward. I'd encourage everyone to take the time to read through these emails. They'll be linked in the episode notes.

because they're honestly fascinating. And some of them can make you laugh out loud with the sheer absurdity of it all. On February 13, 2016, DeLong sent the following message to Podesta with a subject line, A Good Read. He writes, Here is the digital copy of the Secret Machines novel. I know you're so busy, so I apologize in advance. I ask that you consider reading my foreword. I wrote this as a personal letter to the youth so that they can walk with me through all of this.

When you read it, you will get that same sense, a wide-eyed and respectful experience. Also, you make an invisible appearance within the text at the end, smiley face. My co-author is a distinguished professor at the Robertson School of Shakespeare and New York Times best-selling author. Basically, he's really fucking good. Elevated writing and award-worthy if he wasn't attached to my name too. Ha. You may actually love the book if you like great stuff and have amazing taste. But until then, check out that forward if you find it.

time and all the madness. To which Podesta replied a day later, in Vegas for Hillary, just did a taped interview with local CBS affiliate, got asked about the topic and gave an answer I think you would like, hope they use it. Wild, right? But there are more shocking revelations in these emails than just a casual email brodown between a man who has spent most of his adult career no more than a stones throw away from the leader of the free world and a rock star that most people who are still paying attention

thought had totally gone off the deep end, because it turns out that basically all of what Tom DeLong had been saying about meeting with high-level officials was actually true. For example, Podesta's emails reveal that a meeting took place between Tom, Podesta, and three other high-ranking individuals, and their identities give us some major clues to help fill in the blanks of his stories. The first was Robert F. Weiss, the executive VP and general manager of aeronautic advanced development programs for Lockheed Martin's skunk works. Sound familiar? There's no way to know for sure. But it seems likely that Weiss was the aerospace executive with whom he originally spoke and who introduced him to the general. And as for the general, we actually have multiple suspects, both of whom were at this clandestine meeting. The first is Major General Michael J. Carey, who is the general, who is the general, the special assistant to the commander of Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado.

Interestingly, Peterson Air Force Base is also home to NORAD, or the North American Aerospace Defense Command, as well as elements of the Space Forces Space and Missile System Center. And finally, Major General Neil McCasland was also in attendance. McCasland is the former head of the Foreign Technology Back Engineering Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. McHastland also manages the Air Force's 2.2 billion science and technology program. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base has a long history of being at the center of speculation about the government's involvement with the UFO phenomenon. Most notoriously, Wright-Patterson is where the Army initially claimed to have sent the wreckage

from the Roswell crash before changing their story and saying it was just a weather balloon. It was also the home of Project Blue Book. It seems likely that one of these two men is the General. from DeLong's story. And regardless, the fact that both of them agreed to meet secretly with DeLong gives clear and undeniable credibility to his claims of having high-level advisors within the government. And it's important to note that these weren't just any high-level advisors. In each of their official positions, they are uniquely poised to have an insider's perspective on secret government programs involving UFOs. Basically, if there's anyone on the

planet who might know the truth, it's the very people with whom Tom DeLong was meeting. And whatever reasonable doubt remained was obliterated by what happened next. On October 11, 2017, DeLong announced the launch of his new venture, the To The Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences. The mission of TTSA expanded upon the earlier mission of To The Stars, which sought to leverage media and entertainment to educate and prepare people for disclosure, to include ambitious research and innovation in the investigation of the phenomenon. The new TTSA had three divisions, a science division devoted to further understanding of the phenomenon, an aerospace division devoted to developing new technologies and propulsion,

and finally the entertainment division, which would house all of DeLong's media projects. Sitting behind DeLong at the launch press conference was the team that he had assembled and brought together to form TTSA. And the lineup was frankly astonishing. Among them were some of the top names in intelligence, defense, and aerospace engineering, many of whom were going public for the first time. So let's take a minute to meet some of the original members of the TTSA team who were on the stage that day. First we have Christopher Mellon, listed as the National Security Affairs Advisor. Chris Mellon served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence for both the Clinton and the Bush administrations. He also worked for many years on Capitol Hill as the Minority Staff Director for Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

As an aide to Senator William S. Cohen, he wrote the legislation that established the U.S. Special Operations Command. He is a decorated member of the intelligence community, prolific author of articles on topics of national defense and security, and a political commentator. He received his MA in International Affairs from Yale in 1984. Next, we have Steve Justice, listed as the Aerospace Division Director. For 31 years, Steve Justice served as the program director for advanced systems at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, where he worked on projects that, in his own words, defy the American. imagination. He left this position to join TTSA and pursue disclosure and to lead the development of emerging technologies associated with the phenomenon. Also on stage that day was Dr. Hal Putoff, who was listed as co-founder and vice president of science and technology. Dr. Howell Putoff is a physicist

and the director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin, where he does cutting-edge research on energy and propulsion systems. Since 1984, he has served as the president and CEO of Earth Tech International Inc. And perhaps most interestingly, he ran the CIA remote viewing program codenamed Project Stargate. This now-de-classified program ran for 20 years during the Cold War as the CIA allegedly used ESP as part of its intelligence gathering protocols. He is also a frequent advisor to NASA, the intelligence community, and corporations on leading-edge technology and emerging. emerging technology trends. He holds a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University. Next we have Jim Semovan, co-founder and VP of Operations. Jim Semavan is a retired CIA officer,

working as a spy for over 25 years in the CIA's clandestine service and a former member for the Senior Intelligence Service. Since retiring, Semavan has served as a consultant to the intelligence community on classified topics, including leadership training, tradecraft training, and programs for countering weapons of mass destruction. And finally, we have Luis Elizondo, Director of Global Security and Special Programs. Yes, that Lou Elizondo, the former director of the Pentagon's Secret UFO program ATIP, and who only days before the TTSA press conference had resigned from his position in protest of government secrecy regarding the UFO phenomenon. The exact timeline of events are unclear, but it seems likely that DeLong's project was a motivating

factor in Elizondo making the move to abandon his career and pension to pursue disclosure. Beyond his role at ATIP, Elizondo brings his expertise as a career intelligence officer who has worked with the Department of Defense, the Army, and the Director of National Intelligence. In his role as a secret agent, he conducted and supervised highly sensitive espionage and terrorized, and terrorism investigations. He also served as the director of the Pentagon's special programs management staff, overseeing some of their most sensitive portfolios. He also has a background in microbiology, immunology, and parasitology.

So let's pause for a moment to take a breath and just take this in, because this list of names is pretty staggering in terms of both their expertise and their proximity to privileged information about secret U.S. programs, particularly in the domains of aerospace and advanced technology, including the guy who ran the secret UFO program in the Pentagon for 10 years. From that point forward, I think it's impossible to argue with any kind of credibility that Tom DeLong was lying about the high-ranking government and intelligence officials who had become his advisors. Not only did those advisors clearly exist, but they believed in,

and DeLong in his mission enough to come out of the shadows, many of them putting themselves at great risk personally and professionally to do so. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. Legacy How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. Simply put, Tom DeLong was telling the truth. But DeLong still had one more ace up his sleeve, and he played it two months later. On December 16, 2017, the same day that the infamous New York Times article went live,

exposing the secret government UFO program in sharing some of the leaked U.S. Navy footage of alleged UFOs. TTSA went live with the full footage of Gimble and Fleur, the first two of the now-famous videos. It was these videos, along with the later released Go Fast footage, that began to wake the media up to the fact that this is a real issue, brought UFOs back into the public consciousness, and spurred legislation that forced the Pentagon to admit in 2020 that UFOs are, in fact, real, and we have no idea what they are. The story of how the New York Times article came to be,

and who exactly leaked those U.S. Navy videos, is a little cloudy. Most likely to protect the guilty, as leaking classified information to the press isn't exactly legal. But no matter the exact details or chain of events, it's hard to deny one thing. None of it would have happened without Tom DeLong. And so that's where we'll leave it with Part 1. In part two, we'll get into where TTSA is on all of this now. We'll look at why it is that Tom DeLong has become such a controversial figure within the UFO community.

And finally, we'll take a, frankly terrifying tour through what DeLong claims his advisors have told him about the phenomenon and how it shaped his understanding and beliefs about UFOs. But for now, let's just take a moment to enjoy and appreciate the absurd beauty of this story, and how one man, through sheer grit and an abundance of passion, managed to turn the tide on the secrecy surrounding the phenomenon, forcing the Pentagon itself to admit a secret that it has guarded more closely than any other for the past 75 years, that UFOs are real, And they're here. Until next time.