Earlier this week, a couple of people who are familiar faces in the ufology community released some new data on military engagements with Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP or UFOs for you old-school folks). The first was Nevada journalist George Knapp, who, in addition to his regular reporting work, has been covering the entire UFO subject for decades and he’s a close confidant of Harry Reid. Writing at Mystery Wire, Knap released three previously undisclosed photos of anomalous objects purportedly filmed by Navy pilots in 2019. The day after that, filmmaker Jeremy Corbell released a brief (19 second) video on his website from a different encounter later that year, showing what were described as “pyramid-shaped” UFOs buzzing some of our naval forces. (I’ll embed the video at the end. To see the pictures you’ll need to click through to Mystery Wire’s site.)

Given my interest in the topic, I of course went to view the new material immediately. I found both the pictures and the video quite interesting but didn’t immediately move to write anything about them. Knapp has a long, solid reputation in journalism and a lot of contacts. Also the photos look extremely similar to one that was published earlier this year, purportedly from the same encounter, so it certainly seemed reasonable to believe they were legitimate. But at the same time, the photos were heavily watermarked (which you’re obviously entitled to do when you get your hands on exclusive material) and all of the metadata from the photos had been stripped out.

Similarly, the video published by Corbell was intriguing, though the indistinct nature of the images, apparently recorded at night with infrared or some other specialized cameras, wasn’t particularly clear. Both the pictures and the video were alleged to have been part of classified briefings that had previously been given and had been studied extensively by the UAP task force, though no sources were named. These factors led some of us to hope that further details about the provenance and chain of custody of these materials might later be released so they could be verified.

Well, while we don’t have all the details yet, a major boost to the credibility of this evidence showed up in short order. Last night, John Greenewald of The Black Vault published a response that he received from Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough. She was responding to a request from John as to the veracity of the claim that the UAP Task Force had been studying these pictures and video. To my great surprise, John got an answer from her and she confirmed that the material was the real McCoy. In the process, she also seemed to confess to something I’ve suspected for a while, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

This week, multiple photographs and a video, was “leaked” to the general public by George Knapp at MysteryWire.com and Jeremy Corbell from ExtraordinaryBeliefs.com. The Pentagon has now confirmed to The Black Vault via e-mail, that the photos and videos leaked this week, all were taken by Navy personnel.

“I can confirm that the referenced photos and videos were taken by Navy personnel. The UAPTF has included these incidents in their ongoing examinations,” said Susan Gough, Pentagon Spokesperson. “As we have said before, to maintain operations security and to avoid disclosing information that may be useful to potential adversaries, DOD does not discuss publicly the details of either the observations or the examinations of reported incursions into our training ranges or designated airspace, including those incursions initially designated as UAP.”

While we still don’t know anything about the pilots who collected the data or the military and intelligence agencies who have handled it, getting the Pentagon to speak to the authenticity of the material is a major boost to its credibility. View all of the material and judge for yourself. I have to give major credit to John Greenewald for prying this admission out of the Pentagon. It’s been ages since I’ve seen Susan Gough offer any more than her generic, boilerplate response to queries about UAP and how the DOD doesn’t comment on specifics regarding UAP encounters. You can read plenty more about the history of these photographs and what the government has had to say about these encounters at The Debrief.

But as I suggested above, I believe Ms. Gough has revealed something else, perhaps unintentionally. I’ve been closely following all of her interactions with journalists since she started in this position and I’ve engaged with her (with varying degrees of success) myself on several occasions. Prior to this week and ever since those three Navy videos of UAP encounters from the aircraft carriers Nimitz and Roosevelt emerged, Susan Gough has been adamant about one thing. She repeatedly told reporters that those three videos were the only ones that the Pentagon had in its possession. That claim was later walked back a bit when she admitted that there was one additional one from the same encounters but it was classified and could not be released. This claim was maintained despite the fact that Cmdr. David Fravor (the pilot who originally encountered the tic tac UAP) said there were a number of other videos, but they had gone missing.

George Knapp claims to have had this information since April of 2019 (one month after the photos were taken) and that he found out about them from Robert Bigelow, who we know has been working on government contracts related to this subject for some time. Throughout that period, Susan Gough has told us repeatedly that there were no other videos. Is it possible that nobody in Pentagon ever told her, despite the fact that she was the media contact point for everything to do with the UAP Task Force? I suppose it’s possible, but if that’s the case, how much confidence should we place in the information we’re receiving if they won’t even let their own spokesperson in on it? The other possibility is that they’ve simply been lying to the press. More than a year ago I published a rather lengthy screed on the somewhat dubious relationship that both the Pentagon and the rest of the US government have with the truth. So I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked by either possibility.

In any event, it does seem that we have a fresh batch of visual evidence of mysterious UAP that our military has been encountering and the Department of Defense has been investigating. Stay tuned. Things are getting stranger by the week. Perhaps more will show up if the Task Force releases the report requested by the Senate on June 24. And I’ll close with my period reminder to you to consider signing up for The Big Phone Home on April 24th. It’s one free and easy way we can try to apply additional pressure through our elected representatives to get the government to come clean on this subject and put an end to UAP secrecy.

Now here’s that video of the “pyramid-shaped” UFOs buzzing one of our warships I promised above.