The Why Files: Operation Podcast - 106: America's Secret Space Program and the Alien Connection: SOLAR WARDEN

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Gary McKinnon was obsessed with UFOs; and believed governments were covering up evidence that UFOs exist. In the year 2000, he decided to do a little digging. Gary was a computer expert so what better place to dig than on US government computers? What he found was so shocking that it sent the entire United States government into a full-blown panic. In fact, the US spent 10 years trying to prosecute Gary. He was looking at 70 years in federal prison. But what information did Gary find that could cause the US government to become so aggressive? Aliens. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thewhyfiles/support

You searched for your informant, who disappeared without a trace. You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed. You swept the city, driving closer to the truth. While curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible. Gary McKinnon was obsessed with UFOs and believed governments were covering up evidence that UFOs exist. In the year 2000, he decided to do a little digging. Gary was a

computer expert, so what better place to dig than on U.S. government computers? What he found was so shocking that it sent the entire United States government into a full-blown panic. In fact, the U.S. spent 10 years trying to prosecute Gary. He was looking at 70 years in federal prison. But what information did Gary find that could cause the U.S. government to become so aggressive? Please say aliens. Please say aliens. Aliens. Yabba-dabba-doo!

Gary McKinnon's stepfather was into science fiction and space travel, and this rubbed off on Gary. When he was only 12 years old, he joined Bufora, the British UFO Research Association. But it all came together when Gary was 13 and had his own UFO sighting. He saw a bright red light in the sky that went from horizon to horizon in about five seconds. At first he thought it was a meteor, but it was moving too slowly and erratically. He said it moved through the sky in a waving motion like a dolphin bouncing in and out of the water.

Oh, you know what? Space dolphins move that way on purpose. Really? I only said that because I wanted to see him make a face like he smelled a fart. As time went on, Gary became convinced that governments around the world, especially the United States government, had evidence that UFOs and aliens were real.

But this evidence was being withheld from the population. Of course they withhold it. And thank God they do. We'd be out of a job. Amen to that. Well, Gary McKinnon was an expert in computers and networking and worked as a systems administrator. Even though he was good at his job, he was bored with it. His real passion was UFOs, a passion that was becoming an obsession.

And if the government was hiding information about UFOs, he was going to do something about it. Idle fins are the devil's playground. That's something I teach you all my guppies. Gary knew that both NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense use Windows, which he described as a sh** operating system. Using skills he learned as assistant admin, he wrote a program to do one simple thing. Check the passwords of all computers on a network. He wanted to know if they used the word password as a password or if they used no password at all. His program ran for a year and found hundreds of wide-open government computers. To this day, he insists he wasn't hacking

or attacking the computer systems. He said it was more like going fishing for information. Fishing, eh? That phrase is a microaggression. Save it for Twitter. Eventually, Gary found computers inside the U.S. Navy, U.S. Space Command, and NASA. But he didn't find anything interesting until he stumbled across... Aliens? Not exactly. What did he find? He found a spreadsheet. Sometimes you are so disappointing.

Gary McKinnon had accessed some of the most highly classified files in the U.S. government. Most of what he found was pretty boring. Lots of staff reports, department memos, mostly just bureaucratic paperwork. But Gary found a spreadsheet on a U.S. Navy server that caught his eye. It was called Non-Terrestrial Officers and contained a list of names. He was looking at a list of people stationed somewhere other than planet Earth. Non-Terrestrial Officers could be humans serving on another planet or non-humans serving on this planet.

Well, that's true, but in this case, Gary was pretty sure that these were humans because the list showed officer transfers from one ship to another. So Gary looked for the ships in the U.S. Naval Registry. Let me guess, the ships weren't on the list. They were not. They appeared to belong to a secret fleet, a fleet operating in space. But that wasn't even the most interesting thing that he found. A spreadsheet is just words, but you know what's worth a thousand of those? A picture? A picture. Gary McKinnon had heard the testimony of a woman named Donna Hare. She was a former NASA

employee who worked at the agency for years. She said she saw quite a few UFOs in NASA satellite photos, but the photos, both physical and digital, were always altered to remove the UFOs from the images. Oh, you don't say. In the 1980s, Donna was working for NASA at Johnson Space Center. Specifically, she worked in the highly secure area known as Building Number 8. One day, Donna stopped by a co-worker's office about something completely different. When she walked in, this co-worker had a satellite image on his computer screen. He showed her a white cigar-shaped object. He asked her what she thought it could be. She said it might be a blob on the emulsion

or a scanning defect. But then he pointed to something that made Donna have to catch her breath. The object was casting a shadow on the ground. So whatever it was, it was real. Gary was intrigued by the story and thought Donna Hare was telling the truth. Since he already had access to NASA's computers,

he wrote a program to search for the image. Since he already had access to NASA's computers, he wrote a program to search for the image. He narrowed his list of hundreds of computers down to just a few, inside building number eight. Naturally, they had blank passwords, so he logged into them one by one. Most of these machines had empty desktops, but one computer had folders named raw, filtered, processed, and unprocessed. This was exactly how Donna described the computer

in building number eight. So this was the one. The folder labeled unprocessed contained an image, but the file was huge so Gary couldn't download it. So he tried to view it on the remote desktop. So Gary McKinnon clicked the file and watched as the image appeared pixel by pixel, line by line.

At first, he saw nothing but blank space, but then the hemisphere of the planet began to form, and then he saw clouds, and then, about two-thirds of the way down, he saw what he was looking for. A spaceship. Gary saw a large silver cylinder, completely smooth, no rivets or seams

of any kind. But a few seconds after opening the file, Gary noticed the mouse on the remote computer moved, but he wasn't moving it. Uh-oh, the jig is up. Whoever was sitting at the computer in building number 8 turned off their network connection, and Gary was disconnected. Oh no, did he get a screenshot? Nope, no time. So the good news for Gary McKinnon was his suspicions were proved correct. The bad news? The U.S. government was on to him.

Is this a UFO? And he's smiling at me and he says, I can't tell you that. What I knew he meant was, it was, but he couldn't tell me. So I said, what are you going to do with this information? And he said, well, we always have to airbrush them out before we sell them to the public. And I was just amazed that they had a protocol in place for getting rid of UFO pictures. You searched for your informant, who disappeared without a trace. You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed.

You swept the city, driving closer to the truth. While curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible. You sailed beyond the horizon in search of an island scrubbed from every map. You battled krakens and navigated through storms. Your spade struck the lid of a long-lost treasure chest

while you cooked a lasagna. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover best-selling adventure stories on Audible. Gary McKinnon stumbled onto more evidence of what he saw in the file of non-terrestrial officers, evidence of a secret space program within the U.S. military. And this secret space program isn't new. There are clues about it going back over 50 years. In the 1960s, the U.S. Air Force had a program that ran in parallel with NASA's Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. It was called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, or MOL. The MOL program had its own facilities and its own staff.

They had uniforms and spacesuits, but they were completely different from NASA's, so there'd be no confusion that the MOL employees worked for a completely different program. The operation was so secret that not even the wives knew what their husbands were working on. And the wives don't need to know nothing. What happens in orbit stays in orbit. You've been divorced how many times? Three. Uh-huh. Cheap shot. The MOL program was created to develop a spy stays in orbit. You've been divorced how many times? Three. Uh-huh.

Cheap shot. The MOL program was created to develop a spy station in space, but it was canceled by President Richard Nixon in 1969. Or was it? Right. But what Gary McKinnon stumbled onto was something far bigger than some Cold War spy program. After Gary found the cigar-shaped UFO on the NASA computer and got caught, U.S. officials began to pressure the U.K. to help track him down.

In early 2002, Gary was arrested and charged with 97 counts of causing damage to U.S. intelligence assets, and he was accused of doing $800,000 worth of damage. The U.S. government claimed he hacked into dozens of military computers and 16 NASA computers. They claimed he altered and deleted files and that his activities were, in the U.S. government's words, intentional and calculated to influence and affect the U.S. government by intimidation and coercion. These charges were very aggressive. Clearly, the U.S. government was concerned about what Gary found, so they wanted to make an example of him and make sure no one else would ever try to access a single document mentioning UFOs. Gary McKinnon spent 10 years defending himself against these charges and trying to stay in the UK. If he were charged in

the United States, he'd be facing up to 70 years in federal prison. The media picked up the story, but downplayed the UFO connection. McKinnon was described as a hacker trying to harm the Pentagon. The only major publication to mention the UFO side of the story was the UK Daily Mail. Gary said this publicity is one of the things that saved him. Eventually, his case landed on the desk of UK Home Secretary Theresa May, who would eventually go on to be Prime Minister. She ruled that McKinnon could not be taken back to the US because he suffered from Asperger's. Now, Gary McKinnon did break the law. There's no disputing that. But he also did the U.S. a favor. Using the hacker named Solo, he sent messages to U.S. agencies telling them

their security was weak. He felt he was morally justified. I thought if this technology really does exist, it should be used for the good of all of us you know free energy or at least very cheap if this is being kept secret why because obviously that would be used against people if it's being kept secret rather than furthering humanity but at the time there was a very popular phrase banded about called heating or eating old age pensioners had to choose whether to pay for their heating or pay to have food and then sit on their chair with a blanket and eat their food. Gary McKinnon's case finally ended in 2012, and he became a celebrity in the UFO community. He'd exposed or at least said he'd

exposed government knowledge of an alien presence, but his case proved there was something much more sinister going on. This wasn't something as simple as the U.S. government covering up UFOs. This was proof that there was a highly organized secret space program in place. This program has a staff of thousands. It has a fleet of spaceships. It has weapons more advanced than anything currently in use. And this program has a name, Solar Warden. Another incident, I knew someone in quarantine with the Apollo astronauts.

He told me that the Apollo astronauts saw crap on the moon when we landed. The astronauts are told to keep this quiet. They're not allowed to talk about it. At the same time Gary McKinnon was snooping NASA's servers, rumors were going around about a secret space program named Solar Warden. Solar Warden came out of the program called the Strategic Defense Initiative. This was a Reagan-era defense program nicknamed Star Wars by the media. Now, this program has multiple space platforms similar to aircraft carriers. Its mission is to scan the solar system

for unauthorized alien intrusions and report those intrusions to the U.S. Space Force. According to the rumors, the U.S. and other nations have treaties that say only a small number of alien visitors are allowed on Earth at a time. But the aliens had been breaking the treaties for decades.

Arcturians. Everybody knows those damn Arcturians can't be trusted. That sounds kind of racist. the treaties for decades. Ah, Torrance. Everybody knows those damn Arturans can't be trusted. That sounds kind of racist. Save it for Twitter. Touché. As the story goes, Reagan was briefed on the aliens by military and civilian leaders. He immediately became determined to protect the Earth from the alien presence.

Now, how do we know this? Reagan said so himself. In 2007, HarperCollins published The Reagan Diaries. This book is an insight into the president's daily life in the White House. His entries aren't written like a memoir. They're just thoughts that Reagan jotted down throughout the day. And on page 334, dated June 11th, 1985, the president made the following entry. Lunch with five top space scientists.

It was fascinating. Space truly is the last frontier. And some of the developments therein are like science fiction, except they are real. I learned that our shuttle capacity is such that we could orbit 300 people. Whoa, did Gipa let a big one slip, eh? He sure did. Now, if you know the space program, this entry makes no sense. The maximum capacity of a NASA space shuttle is eight people.

At the time, the entire fleet was only four shuttles. Even if all the shuttles were used at the same time, which they never were, that's only 32 people. So what's Reagan talking about? Later, people suggested Reagan might not have been talking about space shuttles at all. Maybe he was referencing a program that was supposedly canceled in 1979. A program to develop a space plane called Star Raker. Ooh, like the James Bond movie. No, that was Moon Raker. Oh, right. Hey, you know that girl at the end of the movie had braces? Yep, I thought so too, but she didn't. That's a Mandela effect. I can't get my brain to accept it. I can't either. Anyway,

the Star Raker, unlike the shuttle, could carry a lot of people. It was bigger than a 747. It could carry a payload of 200,000 pounds, more than enough to put 300 people on a space platform. So it's possible that Reagan was right and Solar Warden is real, at least technically. The first reference to a secret space program with the name Solar Warden is from early 2006. An anonymous post appeared on a bulletin board called the name Solar Warden is from early 2006. An anonymous post appeared on a bulletin board called the Open Minds Forum. We have a space fleet, which is codenamed Solar

Warden. There were, as of 2005, eight ships, equivalent to aircraft carriers, and 43 protectors, which are space planes. One was lost recently to an accident in Mars orbit while it was attempting to resupply the multinational colony within Mars. This base was established in 1964 by American and Soviet teamwork. Not everything is as it seems. We have visited all the planets in our solar system, at a distance of course, except Mercury. We have landed on Pluto and a few moons. These ships contain personnel from many countries and have sworn an oath to the world government. The technology came from back-engineering alien disk wreckage and at times with alien assistance.

For a few years, Solar Warden flew mostly under the radar in UFO circles. But in 2012, Solar Warden was back. In November of that year, a Huffington Post article by reporter Darren Perks was the first major news article about Solar Warden. It was also the first to tie in the story of Gary McKinnon. The article claimed that the program began in 1980 and operates under the U.S. Naval Network and Space Operations Command, the NNSOC. The space fleet has eight massive carriers, each over 600 feet long. Each carrier is staffed by 300 people and protected by about 40 scout ships.

And these ships are used to intercept alien intruders. According to the report, there are permanent multinational bases on the moon and Mars that are supplied by the carriers. So that's why we never went back to the moon. Right. At least not publicly. Darren Perks personally investigated the Solar Warden story. And in 2010, he was contacted by a whistleblower in the U.S. Department of Defense. This contact confirmed that Solar Warden is real. While conducting a FOIA, Freedom of Information request with the DOD, Department of Defense, in 2010, I had a much

unexpected response by email from them which read, about an hour ago I spoke to a NASA rep who confirmed this was their program and it was terminated by then President Obama. He also informed me that it was not a joint program with the DoD. The NASA rep informed me that you should be directed to the Johnson Space Center FOIA manager. So assuming Perks wasn't lying, the email response clearly indicated Solar Warden existed, or something like it did, but was canceled by President Obama in the early 2000s. Perks never followed up on his original article, and as you might expect, neither NASA nor the DOD has ever mentioned it. So if all we have are reports from anonymous people,

that's not much proof of Solar Warden. But in 2007, we'd get more evidence. And this time, they're pictures. You sailed beyond the horizon in search of an island scrubbed from every map. You battled krakens and navigated through storms. Your spade struck the lid of a long-lost treasure chest. While you cooked a lasagna.

There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover best-selling adventure stories on Audible. In 2007, a British amateur astronomer named John Leonard Walson started using a new technique to film the night sky. By attaching special equipment to his telescope, he records objects in visible, infrared, and ultraviolet spectrums. He then takes the clearest frame from each band and combines them. This process is called luminous layering.

Walson first used the technique to view the space shuttle and the International Space Station, and experts confirmed that his technique works. But things got really weird when he started recording videos of stars in the sky. Walson discovered that many of the stars are not stars at all. They're in fact massive, highly reflective space platforms, exactly the type that Solar Warden uses. Some platforms have solar panels. Other have what looks like weapons attached to the structures. He said some of the objects look like spaceships from Star Trek that might be used by the Federation or Klingons. Oh, oh, what a toilet paper and Captain Kirk have in common.

Please don't. They both fly past Uranus and wipe out the Klingons. Walson seemed to be confirming the presence of a vast fleet in the space above us, exactly as Solar Warden believers claimed. Oh, the government probably hates this guy, yeah? They sure do. Not long after releasing his images, the infamous black helicopters appeared, flying very close to his house. Walson said that he was even being intimidated by what he called a government goon. And they even got physical at one point. But there's more to Solar Warden than just questionable videos taken with a telescope.

In the mid-1980s, rumors emerged of a secret government project, codename Aurora. Aurora is a triangle-shaped space plane. The program was even covered in aviation magazines. Now, there weren't many UFO sightings described as triangles before the 80s, but now this is a common type of UFO. Also during this time, the British Ministry of Defense opened up a highly classified office dedicated to quietly investigating UFOs. One of its employees was Nick Pope. Nick said on the wall of the main office was a large photograph of an object known as the Calvin UFO, which was taken near calvin england on august 4th 1990 the original

photo has disappeared but it depicted an 80 foot long wedge or diamond shaped object in the sky being chased away by a harrier jet this happened in front of civilian witnesses who took the picture using the recollections of people who had seen the actual photos computer artists later recreated the image and that was the last anyone heard about the UFO photo. But in 2022, a former British intelligence officer named Craig Lindsay released a scan of what he claimed was the authentic, original Calvin UFO photo. It showed the diamond-shaped object, the Harrier jet, and the fence in the foreground almost exactly matching the artist's rendering of the scene. Lindsay's photo was confirmed by experts to be authentic.

So it was real? Well, no. Well, maybe. Probably not. The photo paper was authentic and typical for the 90s, but the originals are supposed to be color photos. Lindsay's is black and white. Also, the exact location of the original Calvin UFO photo was found,

and the background didn't match. There should be hills and fields and trees in photo was found and the background didn't match there should be hills and fields and trees in the background and there just aren't now supporters say you can't see the background in the photos because it's too foggy but weather reports say the day the photo was taken was perfectly clear so whatever lindsey's photo is it's probably not one of the originals but the original photograph was taken by two civilian hikers and for some strange reason their identities are classified until the year 2076. And the photos do match the craft developed by the Aurora Project.

And there are plenty of witnesses who say that's exactly what the Calvin UFO really is. So unless the original photos are found or we can speak to the hikers, we may never know what the object really was. Now, skeptics of Solar Warden say it's too difficult to keep such a large program secret, that people who were part of the program would talk. And they're right. People would talk. In fact, they did. The Air Force official response to any reports of that nature is that we have no such program.

But there's a growing body of evidence that seems to indicate otherwise. And according to Bill Sweetman, there's the Air Force's secret test base in southern Nevada called Groom Lake. There is something going on on a very large scale, and simply denying that anything like Aurora exists leaves wide open the question of what's going on there. Still, the Air Force says it knows nothing. Shortly after the Solar Warden story emerged, several witnesses came forward, each claiming to have been a part of the secret space program. One of these was Laura Eisenhower, great-granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower. She said that at an early age,

she'd been kidnapped and sent to other planets. She claimed she was involved in a war with an alien species called the Archons. Andrew Vasiago was another whistleblower. He said he was recognized at an early age as an ideal fit for a secret space program. He claimed that he used a teleporter, not a spaceship, to travel to Mars on many occasions. And while on Mars, he engaged in armed conflict with alien species.

And by 2015, other whistleblowers confirmed their involvement. Not just in a vague secret space program, but specifically in a program called Solar Warden. Corey Goods said he was removed from his old life in the 1980s, then reverse-aged 20 years and recruited into a secret military program. Ugh, I'd like to reverse-age 20 years. You and me both, pal. Now, Corey Good described a friendly race of blue avians that were part of a super federation of aliens.

The federation is trying to help the human race fight off alien invaders, including a reptilian race. Is it people from outer space? Yep. So most of these unwanted entrances into our solar system would be more small groups of ETs or single craft that are trying to be sneaky. Right. Just kind of slip in.

Marauder groups that would come in and do hit and runs to come in and take things and leave. Hey, lizard people are crafty. So very, very crafty. Good said some people part of the secret space program are trying to push full disclosure, trying to force the alien presence into the open by doing flybys of the International Space Station and popping up on photos and videos. But disclosure still hasn't happened, and Solar Warden is virtually unknown to most of the population. So either there's no such thing as Solar Warden or a secret space program,

or it is true, and our solar system is a far more dangerous place than any of us could have possibly imagined. You sailed beyond the horizon in search of an island scrubbed from every map. You battled krakens and navigated through storms. Your spade struck the lid of a long-lost treasure chest. While you cooked a lasagna. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover best-selling adventure stories on Audible. Solar Warden and the Secret Space Program is a major branch of ufology.

And because of social media, it's becoming more mainstream. Solar Warden is covered everywhere from YouTube to TikTok to the occasional mainstream news story. But is it true? No. Well, maybe. Some of it. Gary McKinnon is certainly a real person,

but he says he doesn't know anything about Solar Warden or how he got associated with it. He never saw that name on any document or image that he accessed. It seems that the article by Darren Perks in 2012 is what connected Gary to the Solar Warden mythology. And it's easy to understand the connection. The picture of the ship McKinnon saw sounds a lot like the carrier platforms in Solar Warden stories. But even if Gary McKinnon saw a picture of a UFO, and I believe he did, it's a leap to go from one photo to a huge secret space program conspiracy. Now, other aspects of the story, the carriers, the fighters, the large

crews, and the guarding of the solar system, these sound like the plots of well-known science fiction books and TV shows. For example, a spaceship, moon bases, and fighters that monitor the solar system come straight from a 1970 British TV show called UFO. Ooh, is that the groovy one with the moon girls in short skirts and silver catsuits and the purple wigs? That's the one. Did I mention the short skirts? You did.

It's a great show. It's really, uh, it's such a good, uh, always, uh, I always liked the, uh, the way he's a good, uh, kind of... Okay, snap out of it. Sorry. The show also featured Sid, the space intruder detector. Its job was to scan near-Earth space for alien intruders, just like Solar Warden. And some of the eyewitnesses, like Corey Goode, have been exposed as frauds.

He was forced to testify under oath that he made the whole thing up, especially the part about the blue avians helping to protect the Earth. Well, maybe he made that part up, but lizard people are definitely real. Eyewitnesses like Laura Eisenhower and Andrew Basiago may be telling the truth, but their stories are a hodgepodge of every science fiction trope you can think of. Time travel, teleportation, zero point energy, and the list goes on. Now, I'm not saying they're lying,

but I am saying they both tell very convoluted stories. The only aspect of Solar Warden that holds up to any scrutiny is Gary McKinnon's personal testimony. But unfortunately, that's all we have, his word. Now, think of the logistics involved in something like Solar Warden. In order for it to work,

every nation on earth would have to be involved. Russia, China, the U.S., and really every industrialized country on Earth is aware when any other country launches a rocket of any kind. You couldn't put a fleet's worth of equipment into space without somebody noticing. You'd also have to constantly be sending food and water and air into space to resupply the fleet. Or they raise their own livestock in space, and they grow vegetables with hydroponics. What do you know about hydroponics? Let's just say in college I was very industrious.

Ah. So if Solar Warden does exist, that would mean every nation on Earth has set aside their differences and come together for a common goal. That's actually a nice thought. Unfortunately, that common goal is protecting the human race from destruction by an alien invasion. Now that's terrifying. So I don't know if Solar Warden is real. But when I think about its purpose, I really hope it isn't.

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