If you were to close your eyes and picture the face of the one person on Earth who holds the keys to all the secret information about aliens and their operations on this planet, you would of course picture the infuriatingly pierced face of Tom DeLonge.
It’s no surprise that the former Blink-182 crooner (there’s no word yet for someone who sings like a barely motivated Valley girl) takes his aliens very seriously, what with him releasing a book about the UFO phenomenon and assembling a crack team of scientists and engineers to design spaceships and beam weapons and explore the potential of human telepathy. What might be surprising is the calibre of people he has managed to rope in on his shenanigans.
You might recall that two days ago the NYT released a somewhat astonishing yarn detailing a UFO program that was being run out of the Pentagon from 2007 to 2012. The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program was allocated $22 million in funding to investigate unexplainable aerial phenomena and had “modified buildings” in Las Vegas (nice and close to Area 51) for the “storage of metal alloys and other materials that [reportedly] had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena“. The program was headed up by military intelligence official Luis Elizondo, who left the program due to what he considered “excessive secrecy and internal opposition” (he contends that parts of the program are still being undertaken).
So what do you do with your career as a former Defence Department UFO expert at a loose end? Obviously, you go work for Tom DeLonge. Without much fanfare, the NYT piece dropped this little nugget:
Mr. Elizondo has now joined Mr. Puthoff and another former Defense Department official, Christopher K. Mellon, who was a deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, in a new commercial venture called To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science. They are speaking publicly about their efforts as their venture aims to raise money for research into U.F.O.s.
Those of you playing at home will recognise that To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science is the UFO body of which DeLonge is co-founder, president and CEO. There are a number of reasons all these people could be flocking to DeLonge. Maybe he’s offering a lot of money and it’s enough for the experts to overlook that he’s insane. Maybe all the ‘experts’ were insane in the first place and it’s only a lateral move for them. Or maybe, just maybe, Tom DeLonge knows something we don’t.
In an article on the TTSA website, Elizondo is quoted saying he jumped ship because he believes whatever the hell DeLonge is doing will have more resources than the Defence Department (?):
I was honored to serve at the DOD and took my mission of exploring unexplained aerial phenomena quite seriously. In the end, however, I couldn’t carry out that mission, because the Department — which was understandably overstretched— couldn’t give it the resources that the mounting evidence deserved. So, under very good terms, I left to find an environment where investigating these phenomena is priority number one.
I’m thrilled to say I found that environment at the To The Stars Academy, an amazing team of top-flight scientists from the defense, industry and intelligence communities alongside passionate creatives to help tell the story. We look forward to working closely with the US government to produce the best possible results for America and the world.
What a fucking world.
