UFOs, Drones, Glitter, and Radar Chaff

What Leon Davidson and the Solution to the Glitter Mystery Can Tell Us About the Current Unidentified Flying Drone Flap

Dr. Leon Davidson was a UFO researcher after my own heart: Seeing the intelligence community everywhere he looked. Sure, this could sometimes reach extreme degrees. Many would balk at the idea that George Adamski was being led around by CIA agents pretending to be Venusians, but his article “Why I Believe Adamski” prods at numerous elements of the Californian contactee’s experiences that are woefully underexamined. There was also the pamphlet where Davidson transmogrified the strange symbol seen on the craft witnessed by Socorro policeman Lonnie Zamora into the letters “C-I-A”—a postulation that even strains my paranoid credulity a bit, especially when he adds that the “C-I-A” characters can also be turned into “A-D” (Allen Dulles, of course).¹ Overall, however, Davidson was often a lone representative of parapolitical ufology while others in his era were inordinately more focused on nuts-and-bolts craft from outer space. While the ecosystem has changed, today’s ufology is not all that dissimilar when it comes to the broad strokes, and the possible intelligence shenanigans happening in the background are still often unexplored.

Davidson, Leon. “The CIA and the Saucer” pamphlet cover image. White Plains: Blue-Book Publishers, 1977 (from the Gray Barker UFO Collection, Clarksburg Public Library).

Look no further than the UAP craze of the past few weeks to see how the culture has remained consistent. Or should I say the IAP craze? Identified aerial phenomena, that is. Because drones are the topic of discussion, the unmanned flying vehicles that have been a mainstay in technologically advanced militaries in some format since before the two World Wars. Of course, they look somewhat different now, less like balloons and more like planes or helicopters, thus explaining why so much of the evidence put forth looks to be pixelated planes or helicopters. It is for this reason that I am somewhat astounded that this discussion is even happening in the UFO sphere: These aren’t structurally interesting craft like amorphous orbs or the classic flying saucer! The topic has nevertheless crossed over from ufology into the mainstream, nearly every news site covering them despite little credible information available. As The New York Times—these days not really known for level-headed UFO coverage—reported:

Federal authorities investigating the sightings have provided few answers about what the objects are or their origin, leaving residents unsettled and local leaders frustrated.

U.S. officials on Thursday said that they had been unable to corroborate the reported drone sightings, and suggested that many of the objects might in fact be manned aircraft, such as airplanes or helicopters.²

But the craze carries on, propelled forward by a considerable lead-up to this current trend. More minor drone swarms where reported over Langley, VA and RAF Lakenheath over in the past two months—of course promoted heavily by UFO paycheck cashers like Nick Pope and Ross Coulthart. As is usually the case with UFO sightings in America, the only culprits explored are foreign parties, whether from another country, another dimension, or outer space. On the more skeptical side, there are individuals acknowledging that most of the sightings are standard passenger planes but always keeping the threat of foreign drones close to the conversation. This fear-inducing possibility is stitched onto otherwise dismissive positions even though there is no evidence of foreign tech posing a threat. They got the right ta-ta but the wrong ho-ho, so to speak.

And those fears are shared on both sides of the political aisle, one Republican congressman claiming he received intel that “the drones were coming from an Iranian ‘mothership’ in the Atlantic.”³ Jeff Van Drew of the supposedly drone-coated New Jersey reported this unsubstantiated (and frankly batshit) rumor on Fox News, one of many news organizations that covered the “drone sightings” nearly nonstop over the course of several days. Cable news is a fear-based medium, so covering this drone scare is no surprise. But the fact that the topic has gone full bore despite categorical denials from the Pentagon is at least semi-unnerving. Not lost to me is the fact the much of the attention given to these alleged drone sightings has been driven by the UFO-oriented crowd, specifically the individuals who see these sightings as evidence of a more cosmically significant phenomena. Occult writer Mitch Horowitz gave his opinion to the publication Decrypt:

I think we're using the term drones because it's reassuring to employ a familiar term; it stands to reason that if we put a familiar name on bizarre phenomena, it's reassuring in a certain way. I haven't met anybody of any quality of intellect who professes any degree of confidence in what is going on.⁴

Implicit in this claim is the alarming possibility that Horowitz is not engaging with any “quality of intellect” in his everyday life—but putting that aside, he is expressing a sentiment common amongst some UFOers on social media. Despite most of the photos and videos of the aerial phenomenon clearly depicting passenger aircraft, there’s still the lurk that these objects are something paranormal. Against all odds and common sense, these drones (resisting scare quotes) are on televisions across the nation, all while having no compelling video or physical evidence. The lack of truly incisive response from government officials has left the topic open to speculation. Possible intentions or threats remain obscured, leaving open a canvas for the public to paint their projections upon. People are reporting sightings of any light they see in the eastern U.S. skies, but at this rate, one must ask how many of these folks would be looking in the sky at all if not for the excessive media coverage. Even if initial sightings of drones were accurate—and I tend to think this is a real possibility—why would any reports from the now panic-stricken populace hold water? Why would they not be earthly or even domestic? I am a man marked by considerable biases, but at the same time, I must go back to the constant refrain: What if the call is coming from inside the house?

In the prior article and several before it, I have expressed concern about the semi-corporate capture of the UFO community by forces in the military and intelligence, but this recent drone fiasco is exemplary of the dangers of having UFO groups subject to the whims and guidance of these military figures. An ostensibly military issue, latched onto and promoted by the UFO crowd, has entered the public consciousness as an outright panic which then promptly shifts into cold warrior declarations stoked by media companies that know fear is good for ratings. As in any subtopic within the UFO field, origins and legitimate documentation get buried in a mire of disinformation, obfuscation, and confusion. If covert drone tests were conducted by one of the many military bases or private defense contractors lining the east coast, the public would never know so long as the lid remains on the jar. All the better if the real story gets lost in the morass of UFO enthusiasts who are eager to see something more extraordinary in the ordinary. When the term “plausible deniability” is brought up in these spaces, it’s assumed to be denial of an alien presence on Earth, but most operational uses of “plausible deniability” are in the realm secret tech. Flying saucer well-poisoning of this sort happened on a smaller scale in the case of Paul Bennewitz, who was targeted for an extraterrestrial-based disinformation campaign after witnessing classified aircraft tests. It has long been my suspicion that something similar was happening in the Gulf Breeze area during its late 1980s UFO flap, with other military installations nearby that could have been testing classified tech. This heavily sensationalized drone issue, with the backing of a UAP community that is spiritually led by military figures, could be another case of concealing real and earthly (albeit militaristic and top secret) events.

Ken Layne of Desert Oracle noted as far back as mid-November that tests of this sort were likely taking place at New Jersey’s Picatinny Arsenal, also causing civilian sightings.⁵ Layne is no slouch, he kept tabs on prior drone scares taking place in Colorado and Wyoming in 2019 where he also saw evidence pointing to the U.S. military or its contractors—again met with denials from those agencies and affiliates. Most commentators taking on this current hot button issue have not even recalled this previous drone enigma, one that was largely inconsequential and remains unsolved.⁶ If the military were responsible, the historical record gives some indication that all they would need to do is offer obfuscations and denials and eventually the topic would fade from public interest. And that’s where we loop back around to Leon Davidson.

In the early days of the Cold War, a suspicious UFO craze took over the airwaves in a manner that is not far removed the drone swarms of today. It all began with a radar sighting in Washington D.C., June 1952: “Seven ‘pips’ or ‘blips’ clustered together in a corner of the radarscope” that were strangely “moving at 100 mph over an area” close to the capital while “not following established flight paths.”⁷ Their sudden appearance spooked radar operators at Washington National Airport. These initial radar sightings, much as in the case of early alleged drone sightings in New Jersey, quickly ballooned into something more extreme. The flying saucers were now invading the capital, practically sitting on the White House lawn, and military personnel and civilian locals were having impressive visual sightings. The story appeared all over the news and despite swift debunking by the Air Force, UFO researchers of the time did not buy the idea of “temperature inversions” being responsible or the radar picking up objects at ground level.⁸ Indeed, James E. McDonald, himself a meteorologist, “dismissed the official explanation as absurd, even physically impossible,” pointing to the fact that Harry G. Barnes—the radar operators’ supervisor at the airport—definitively thought they were looking at solid objects, not wispy blips of cold air.⁹ Leon Davidson also doubted this “temperature inversion” explanation, but he did not see science fictional forces at work.

As he was wont to do, Davidson saw the fingerprints of intelligence activity permeating this apparent flap. In his prescient article “ECM + CIA = UFO”, he put forth the idea that instead of a flying saucer invasion, the radar operators at the Washington National Airport were instead witnessing the implementation of some in-development electronic countermeasures (ECM) system. This tech, whatever it was, created phantom radar signatures that could not be tracked as a conventional aircraft. Davidson writes that previous “mechanical countermeasures” had been implemented in the past, such as “aluminum foil strips” or other radar chaff material that could be “dropped from planes, reflect radar waves and clutter up the enemy's radar screens.”¹⁰ More advanced, electronically-based countermeasures were likely in development or use by 1959, and could theoretically explain abberations in radar readings. Mark Pilkington notes in Mirage Men the potential similarities of what Davidson describes to the “ghost aircraft” of Palladium, a joint CIA/NSA project used for complex reconnaissance missions in the Cold War.¹¹ While Davidson zeroes in on the Central Intelligence Agency—his sometimes archenemy—the analysis could apply to many sectors of the intelligence community:

I contend that the CIA, since 1951, has caused or sponsored saucer sightings for its own purposes. By shrewd psychological manipulation, a series of “normal” events has been served up so as to appear as quite convincing evidence of extraterrestrial UFOs. Some of this “normal” activity includes military use of ECM on a classified basis, unknown to the radar observers who were involved.¹²

The initial witnesses not being privy to the tests going on in the background is key to this scenario, enabling the subsequent confusion and misunderstanding to spread to the broader public while gauging reactions from trained personnel—comparable to eventual targets elsewhere. While noting that not every “flying saucer” sighting on radar was due to electronic countermeasure testing, he nevertheless states that the Washington flap “had no connection with real objects capable of speeds of thousands of miles per hour.”¹³ His real suspicions came from the “misleading publicity” that the sightings were given, seeing how careful reframing “of normal military moves (…) through top level contacts” could provide counterintelligence cover “without any extensive staff of operations (…) to perform certain necessary feats.”¹⁴ Davidson reports that Edward J. Ruppelt, the Air Force officer assigned to Project Bluebook at the time, found that “visual confirmation” of the Washington flying saucers were dubious at best. Ruppelt himself was astounded by the pervasive newspaper and media coverage of the event given that “a more thorough investigation” would have “taken some of the intrigue out of the two reports.”¹⁵ Davidson was further perturbed by the fact that Ruppelt had the sightings “predicted in advance (…) by a CIA scientist, a few days before they took place.”¹⁶ In his conclusion, Davidson makes an important plea to readers: “Those who find it hard to believe that a government agency would participate in such trickery should read the article in Life Magazine, Jan. 5, 1950, pp. 20-31, ‘How Insiders Kept Their Great Secret.’”¹⁷ The year in this citation is incorrect, actually coming from the January 5^th, 1959 issue of Life. Regardless, the article covers the hijinks and clandestine activity deployed by the military during the development of the Atlas missile, a project that required fooling personnel or excluding others to maintain absolute secrecy.¹⁸ If Davidson is correct in his postulation, one can see obvious parallels between these hyped-up radar sightings and the sensationalized coverage of seemingly innocuous drones. And he was absolutely correct in part of his assessment regarding the levels of secrecy cloaking military equipment and testing.

Just in June of last year, a YouTube channel called CHUPPL claimed to have solved the “glitter conspiracy,” a mystery that has been causing people to scratch their heads since 2018. At that time, a New York Times article saw an employee at one of the nation’s largest glitter companies refusing to disclose who their largest buyer was. “You would never guess it. Let’s just leave it at that,” a manager at a Glitterex plant was quoted as saying.¹⁹ This level of secrecy befuddled casual observers. It was just glitter, what could all the confidentiality be about? To the internet’s collective disappointment, the podcast Endless Thread claimed that the solution to the glitter mystery was boat paint, that boat manufacturers bought loads of the stuff to give their products a distinctive sheen—but for some reason wanted no one to know about it.²⁰ Luckily for us paranoids, many armchair investigators (including Jack Joyce and Parjanya Christian Holtz, the hosts of the CHUPPL video) did not completely buy this explanation and went a different route entirely, suspecting that the military was actually the secret glitter buyer. The military, after all, is much more liable to keeping secrets this close to the chest.

Instead of focusing solely on Glitterex, CHUPPL looked at “the one company that is responsible for modern day glitter,” Meadowbrook Inventions Incorporated.²¹ The duo discovered that Meadowbrook readily admitted to doing work on government contracts, with the company’s machines being capable of making numerous products with military uses, one standing out specifically: Anti-radar chaff. Compared to the boat paint explanation—already generally understood and apparent to any observer—they received some confirmation that the military dealt often with the glitter trade, not because of glitter specifically, but because of the industry’s top notch precision cutting instruments.²² The founder of Meadowbrook, Henry F. Ruschmann, was also involved in other highly secretive government work, including the United States’ quest to build an atomic bomb with the Manhattan Project. Leon Davidson, though a civilian UFO researcher in his spare time, was also employed by the Manhattan Project as a chemical engineer, indicating he was possibly more in the know regarding radar chaff than his essay on the subject truly let on.²³ But CHUPPL ran into a brick wall in terms of substantive confirmation: They knew that Meadowbrook was at one time under government contracts and they knew that the machines that produce glitter have other, more militarily relevant, uses. However, the specific answer to the glitter mystery—who is the entity that buys the most glitter?—still remains shrouded in secrecy. But in this secrecy is a tacit admission of sorts.

While the trade secrets of private companies are often deeply protected, there is no potential national security issue arising with the advent of generic brand Dr. Pepper. On the other hand, there are no military uses of Dr. Pepper—at least to my current knowledge. The obfuscation at work in the glitter mystery, on the other hand, is a quite incredible example of how military secrets can stay obscured, even when the public is relatively certain of the answer. The CHUPPL team is now bogged down in FOIA fight as they search for explicit confirmation of the military’s relationship to the glitter industry, but this seems to have not resulted in any concrete answers one way or the other. As in the case of the ongoing drone mystery, the lack of acknowledgement or explanation from the military really says very little. If they want to keep something secret, they don’t talk about it. Leon Davidson tried to point to the military as a potential explanation for several UFO flaps in the 1950s. But even today, some of the technology that could have been responsible for those flaps—such as highly advanced, precision-cut radar chaff—is still buried under layers of clandestine government contracts and nondisclosure agreements. Put simply, if one wants an answer to the current “UFO” flap, they may have to wait 75 years or more for a complete explanation of the technology at work. In the meantime, with no defensive action from the military taking place and with no earth-shattering documentation of these supposedly astonishing visual sightings popping up, one can rest easy in the fact that it’s likely covert testing and the government is lying by omission. Or one can have a fitful night of sleep for these same reasons, it’s really up to the individual.

The last thing I want to be is dismissive, but encouragement to shoot down passenger planes mistaken for foreign drones or NHI vehicles has worn me thin. While most of what I present here is conjecture, the poohpoohing of the U.S. military explanation for at least a portion of these sightings has further pushed me into mania—although the longer the drone fervor goes on the more that explanation is cropping up. As a rule of thumb, if something earthly and undisclosed is happening, it is usually the military. The ensuing hysteria that branches off into more wild speculation is a counterintelligence playground—a welcome gift that can further obscure anything secret or classified. The signal is lost in a preponderance of noise, even when more likely explanations have been put forth for some of the more inexplicable sightings. As I had pointed out early on the in the buzz, the drone flap was originally concentrated around McGuire AFB, which ufologist John Greenewald, Jr. acknowledged was announced “as a test corridor for advanced drones and air mobility technologies (…) in June 2023.”²⁴ Leon Davidson saw the potential utility of obfuscating the reality of military testing during the 1952 D.C. flap and ufology still hasn’t learned the necessary lessons from his work. I have been asked by many readers what the overall point to military intelligence infiltration and acquisition of the UFO community might be and while I could not give a total overarching goal, this drone fiasco has presented a moment where these intelligence moves make perfect sense. The original tests remain covert, and the IC gets a case study in how reliable the public is as observers of anomalous aircraft. Plus, a little Cold War paranoia never hurts to make the military-industrial complex further justify its own existence. Having a subset of the population that will eagerly listen to UFO figureheads who imply more alien activity at work has enabled the military to boost the white noise generator up to 11. All the while, the media can latch onto the sensationalized version of events given to them by the same UFO spokespeople they have been lending airtime to throughout the last ten years. We have entered into a strange and trying time, one in which ufology has become a mouthpiece for DoD fear mongering while increasingly uninterested in the truly anomalous or interesting.

Amidst all this fervor in New Jersey, one final, fitting detail might get lost in the absolute hurricane of discourse and unfiltered information: The biggest glitter manufacturers in the United States, one of them the same company that has been on government contract to produce material for the military, are based in New Jersey.²⁵ The local glitter industry workers or military scientists stationed in the area can evidently keep a secret should they need to.

The thumbnail for today’s article comes from the front page of the Washington Times-Herald, 30 July 1952.

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Thanks to The Daily Grail for linking to my previous article. I also recently appeared on the podcast QAnon Anonymous to discuss the Gulf Breeze Six, so check that out if you’re curious. Email me at gettingspooked@protonmail.com with any questions, comments, recommendations, leads, or paranormal stories. You can find me on Twitter at @TannerFBoyle1, on Bluesky at @tannerfboyle.bsky.social, or on Instagram at @gettingspooked. Until next time, stay spooked.

1. While one might scoff at this, it is worth noting that Allen Dulles was closely tied with Richard Bissell, who he handpicked to run the U-2 spyplane program out of Area 51. If anyone were to benefit from the confusion caused by the UFO craze, it was Dulles and Bissell with their constant development and deployment of covert aircraft and reconnaissance equipment during the Cold War. Did they build the Socorro, New Mexico saucer? I’ll plead the fifth on that. (see: Patton, Phil. Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51. New York: Villard Books, 1998.)

2. McFadden, Alyce. “What We Know About Reports of Drone Sightings in New Jersey and New York.” The New York Times. 13 December 2024. http://web.archive.org/web/20241214003133/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/nyregion/drones-nj-ny-east-coast.html.

3. Debusmann Jr., Bernd. “Mystery New Jersey drones not from Iranian 'mothership' – Pentagon.” BBC. 13 December 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crrwz91wqd9o.

4. Nelson, Jason. “Pentagon Responds to Unidentified Drones Flying Over New Jersey.” Decrypt. 12 December 2024. https://decrypt.co/296317/pentagon-responds-unidentified-drones-new-jersey.

5. Layne, Ken [@KenLayne]. “The mystery-drone fleet over Morris County NJ has a Black Hawk escort, and it's happening over the 6,400-acre Picatinny Arsenal & national weapons lab. Either the Space Aliens are in Morris County or the massive US weapons-test range there is testing some drones.” Twitter, 18 November 2024, link.

6. Tabachnik, Sam. “’Weird and concerning’: Mystery drone sightings continue in Colorado, into Nebraska.” The Denver Post. 28 December 2019. https://www.denverpost.com/2019/12/27/mystery-drones-colorado-conspiracy-theories/.

7. Clark, Jerome. The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning. Detroit: Omnigraphics, 2018. Ebook. Page 2735.

8. Ibid., page 2744.

9. Ibid., page 2745.

10. Davidson, Leon. “ECM + CIA = UFO or: How to Cause a Radar Sighting.” Saucer News 6, no. 2. February-March 1959. Page 10. (Reprinted here: https://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/Davidson_01.pdf.)

11. Pilkington, Mark. Mirage Men: A Journey in Disinformation, Paranoia and UFOs. London: Constable, 2010. Page 90-91.

12. Davidson, Leon. “ECM + CIA = UFO or: How to Cause a Radar Sighting.” Saucer News 6, no. 2. February-March 1959. Page 11.

13. Ibid., page 13.

14. Ibid.

15. Ruppelt, Edward J. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. New York: Ace Books, 1956. Page 223. Available here.

16. Davidson, Leon. “ECM + CIA = UFO or: How to Cause a Radar Sighting.” Saucer News 6, no. 2. February-March 1959. Page 13.

17. Ibid.

18. Wainwright, Loudon. “How the Insiders Kept Their Great Secret.” Life 46, no. 1. 5 January 1959. Page 20-31. Available here. (Note for those who read citations: The author of this article [full name Loudon Wainwright Jr.] was the father of folk musician Loudon Wainwright III, songwriter of such classic hits as “Dead Skunk” and “The Swimming Song”.)

19. Weaver, Caity. “What Is Glitter?: A strange journey to the glitter factory.” The New York Times. 21 December 2018. http://web.archive.org/web/20240405043804/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/style/glitter-factory.html.

20. Crane, Josh and James Lindberg. “'Endless Thread' Drops a Glitter Bomb On The Great Glitter Mystery.” WBUR. 8 November 2019. https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2019/11/08/the-great-glitter-mystery.

21. “The End of the Glitter Conspiracy.” YouTube, uploaded by CHUPPL, 30 June 2023. Link.

22. Hurley, Molly. “All That Glitters Is Not Boat Paint: Without the Manhattan Project, glitter as we know it may be wholly different.” Inkstick. 28 September 2023. https://inkstickmedia.com/all-that-glitters-is-not-boat-paint/.

23. Pilkington, Mark. Mirage Men: A Journey in Disinformation, Paranoia and UFOs. London: Constable, 2010. Page 87.

24. Greenewald, Jr., John [@blackvaultcom]. “In June 2023, a test corridor for advanced drones and air mobility technologies was announced in New Jersey, stretching from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst to Dover AFB. Now, unexplained drones are swarming the area. Just a coincidence? h/t @UFOSpaceEchos for the lead.” Twitter, 14 December 2024, link.

25. Seeley, Robert and Henry W. Ruschmann. “The Discovery, Development of Glitter.” Paper, Film & Foil Converter. 13 December 2021. https://www.pffc-online.com/web-handling/167-roll-handling/16723-the-discovery-development-of-glitter.