State of the U(fo)nion

The Sol Conference, Military and Intelligence Religions, and Further UFO Ponderings

This past weekend, documented largely through Twitter and Reddit posts of UAP enthusiasts, the Sol Foundation gathered together a broad array of semi-respected personalities within the worlds of science, technology, religion, and politics to discuss the current UFO (UAP, whatever) situation. The material I’ve seen from this conference stirred something within me, and like the Manifest(uf)o from a few months back, I felt the urge to type out some thoughts on the current condition of ufology or whatever the study would be called at this point. I am not a ufologist, UAP understander, or anything like that really. I would consider myself a freelance cultural historian with some training in the field who focuses on fringe topics through paranoid reading or a parapolitical lens. As such, I really have no interest in the reality or absence of the UFO phenomenon, I am focused on the cultures that surround these topics, the belief systems that form around them, and how that belief has been manipulated in the past. The Sol Foundation is a who’s who of this niche, made up of several personalities who have been pushing for government disclosure of UAP information both to the public and to congress directly. For instance, Gary Nolan, a Stanford pathologist interested in examination of UFO-related materials, serves as the Executive Director. Recent whistleblower and former intelligence officer David Grusch (expounded upon in the aforementioned Manifest(uf)o) labeled himself as COO of the organization in his CV. Former intelligence official Christopher K. Mellon is listed as a further primary contact in the group’s business filings.

A Reddit post with pictures later tweeted by Area503 presented the entire roster of presentations. A majority of the lectures are by scientists and academics, but my beef lies with the bundle of military and intelligence officials also woven into the conference. Stanford Research Institute throwbacks Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ made their requisite appearances, with Puthoff on the sidelines giving tacit confirmation to the claims of CIA starseed John Ramirez. Former To the Stars Academy figurehead and current disclosure movement loudspeaker Lue Elizondo was scheduled to appear but did not make it. Luckily, the conference was not lacking in former military intelligence personalities in his stead. The aforementioned Chris Mellon and former IG of the Intelligence Community Charles McCullough (prominent backer of David Grusch) both represent high levels of the world of U.S. military intelligence.

Among the familiar faces of the UFO sphere are a couple of religious scholars, Jeffrey Kripal and Diana Heath (Pasulka). I have held the work of both in high regard, but their recent turns to providing religious validation of sorts to the in-vogue disclosure crowd (that is made up of countless military and intelligence personnel) gives me pause. On a recent podcast appearance, Heath spoke of one of her subjects, entrepreneur and NASA contractor Tim Taylor. Within, she related one of the more disturbing concepts to grace my ears in recent months: Taylor considers humanity the lower tier of a hierarchy of beings. God on top, angels below god, “off-planet beings” below angels, “factions in the intelligence community” below the NHI, and then “normal humans.”¹ The interviewer does not question this development and Heath only notes that it’s “weird.” The “hierarchy of beings” has since been reinforced in Heath’s other interviews and was even brought up by former intelligence official and military contractor Karl Nell in his talk. I can think of no greater distillation of the current push for slavish devotion and submission to the intelligence community on the UFO topic, but the inherent dangers of this go unspoken. Heath’s speech at Sol was titled “Transcending Timelines: Uniting Science, the Humanities, and Intelligence in UAP Scholarship,” perhaps indicating that she is willing to go along with the IC’s guidance in the topic to a certain degree.

Kripal too, who I recommend wholeheartedly in a prior reading list post, has enormous blind spots when it comes to military factions promoting, manipulating, or creating these belief systems. Writing in 2018’s Prisoner of Infinity: UFOs, Social Engineering and the Psychology of Fragmentation, Jasun Horsley (who has his own flaws) questioned Kripal and Whitley Strieber about their lack of engagement with the military operation explanation of the latter’s paranormal experiences:

There is one viable interpretation of all the unexplained events of his life which Strieber never posits, namely, that his experiences were induced in him (and thousands, maybe millions, of others) as part of a large-scale, MKULTRA-linked, military intelligence operation that spanned decades and several continents and involved drugs, hypnosis, special effects, and officially undisclosed forms of technology. Unlike most or all of Strieber’s explanations, this interpretation could conceivably account for all of the variables and inconsistencies in his accounts. (…) Kripal does refer to military operations in the last chapter, as an apparent afterthought, but only in regard to UFO disinformation. (…) He assures us he does not “do conspiracy,” that he doesn’t trust “the wild conspiracies that are constantly spun out of this material.”²

Strieber’s experiences, while baffling, could certainly be at least partially explained by a Controllers-esque thesis of mind control or psychological experimentation. While this explanation is certainly not without its inherent flaws, it does have a real historical basis and Strieber himself recalls a suspicious background in a “secret school” run by the military and later personal “publicly acknowledged (…) close ties to the CIA.”³ Strieber himself was also an audience member at this Sol event. Again, I think both Heath and Kripal are exceptional religious scholars diving into the topics I have known and loved since I was quite young, but they both seem to either avoid talking about or encourage the military presence in these spheres. Speaking at these conferences only gives an aura of spiritual validation to exactly what I have been concerned about since the beginning of Getting Spooked: the intelligence community in the paranormal field. With these conspicuous absences in explanatory paths, it is no longer “science the great immune” as Charles Fort decried it, we’re closer to military the great immune.⁴

With the appearance of Jacques Vallee amongst the panelists at Sol, I am left to wonder if he is reminded of his past work, specifically 1979’s Messengers of Deception. This book, more focused on the dynamics of UFO belief than the phenomena itself, sees Vallee reach uncomfortable conclusions about where the culture was being led when left to its own devices on the fringes. He writes:

I don't think we should expect salvation from the sky. I believe there is a very real UFO problem. I have also come to suspect that it is being manipulated for political ends. And the data suggest that the manipulators may be human beings with a plan for social control. Such plans have been made before, and have succeeded. History shows that having a cosmic mythology as part of such a plan is not always necessary. But it certainly helps.⁵

Vallee also is concerned about another development seen in the rise of UFO religions: “In the absence of serious, unbiased research on the subject, the belief in the imminence of UFO ‘contact’ undermines the image of Man as a master of his own destiny.”⁶ Is this concern not at risk of coming to pass—albeit through Western military structures as opposed to extraterrestrial or foreign means? Are large swaths of people not allowing themselves to be subjugated by the authority of imperial powers—entities that have rarely had the greater public interest in mind? With the collaboration between Department of Defense officials, varied military personnel, and religious scholars on the cutting edge heralding a distinct change in the UFO atmosphere, interest in how these beliefs might be sewn and manipulated seems to be low. What criticism does exist seems to be aimed at denying the existence of Fortean phenomena, which is really immaterial to the discussion. As I have said in the past, probably to an annoying degree, it is dangerous to take any arm of the U.S. government at its word when it comes to the UFO issue. Segments of the military have been especially untrustworthy, manipulating UFO believers since the inception of the phenomenon on a moderate scale—probably more broadly than credited. Giving these structures the divine mandate to understand and translate the topic to the public would constitute a grave mistake.

Tangentially related, also this past weekend, I had the opportunity to rewatch the much-maligned classic science fiction film Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Although I am loathe to partake in the overdone “this topic is just like science fiction made real” trope that many researchers seem prone to do, I could not help but be reminded of certain components of the current UFO zeitgeist. I had not seen it in years, but recommend it if only for its totally unique oddness. The film received a cold reception back in 1970—no doubt due to its dour ending and overall apocalyptic tone (even in comparison to the first film)—but serves as an excellent representation of the era’s surreal Cold War anxieties. In the movie, the distant future Earth has become dominated by other great apes after presumed nuclear annihilation. While the time-traveling astronaut protagonists assume that humanity has been resigned to a devolved, mute, nomadic existence, there were others: Intelligent telepathic mutants who live in the underground remnants of New York City. These beings have become deeply spiritual and seem a step above the unintelligent humans above ground. They are able to use their telepathic powers to perform psychological operations of sorts, making their targets believe they are being set ablaze or struck by lightning. They can manifest illusory symbolic omens in the minds of their opponents. Their psychic capacities are powerful enough that they no longer kill: “We’re a peaceful people. We don’t kill our enemies. We get our enemies to kill each other.”⁷ While these subterranean future humans think that they have reached a high level of spiritual attainment, the astronaut protagonists are horrified to see that their god is an advanced atom bomb, a total doomsday device and so-called weapon of peace. While perhaps a bit of a ham-fisted metaphor, I was nevertheless reminded of the world of UFO counterintelligence as it exists today. Both rely on constant smokescreens and the illusions of fantastic power, but their primary strength actually comes from mind games and a strong air of authority. At the core of the non-fictional UAP lobby is a similar near-religious devotion to military technology and intelligence capacities with the hopes that the rest of civilization will follow their lead. There are promises of eventual human evolution or salvation through the know-how and excellence of the defense apparatuses in the Western world. Hopefully they do not drop the bomb (metaphorically or literally) as a means to get the phenomenon out of its hiding place. I hear that does the trick.

Thank you for reading Getting Spooked. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read, consider recommending it to a friend. Become a paid subscriber to directly help the continuation of this publication and you will be granted access to over a dozen archived articles. Thanks to The Anomalist for continual coverage of Getting Spooked. It always makes my day to see my writing linked on the site I read with my morning coffee. Relatedly, I am currently reading founder Patrick Huyghe’s Swamp Gas Times: My Two Decades on the UFO Beat and highly recommend it. To American readers, have a happy Thanksgiving without UFO discussion at the dinner table. Until next time, stay spooked.

1. “Top Aerospace Scientists Suspect UFOs Are Biblical Time Machines | Diana Walsh Pasulka.” YouTube, uploaded by Danny Jones, 4 June 2023. (Timestamp 1:14:58)

2. Horsley, Jasun. Prisoner of Infinity: UFOs, Social Engineering and the Psychology of Fragmentation. London: Aeon Books, 2018. Page 252-253.

3. Ibid., page 252.

4. Steinmeyer, Jim. Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural. New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2008. Page 214.

5. Vallee, Jacques. Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults. Brisbane: Daily Grail Publishing, 1979. Page 178.

6. Ibid., page 264.

7. Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Directed by Ted Post, APJAC Productions, 1970. https://pota.goatley.com/scripts/pota_beneath_final.pdf.