u/benschreckinger

I emailed John Podesta to get his response to David Grusch's new claim on Joe Rogan that Neil McCasland, Rob Weiss and others only advised Tom DeLonge about UFOs and aliens because John Podesta "greenlit" an effort to acclimatize society to the truth about UFOs ahead of the 2016 election.

Podesta wrote back:

"That is probably not how I would characterize our interaction. As you know, I discussed launching a UAP declassification initiative with Secretary Clinton if she won the election. In several interviews in 2016, she acknowledged that and committed to launching such an initiative if she had been successful. My recollection is that Tom arranged a conference call with the individuals you mentioned and we discussed amongst other things, declassifying DOD files and reducing the stigma of professionals taking UAP’s seriously. I have always maintained that the American people could handle the truth about UAP’s and didn’t really need to be 'acclimated.' Hope that’s helpful."

More details and context in this week's edition of Signs of Life from PARADIGM: https://www.paradigm.news/p/exclusive-podesta-responds-to-gruschs

When I was doing investigative reporting at POLITICO, I had a lot of dealings with Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign who went on to serve as a deputy White House press secretary.

So I was surprised when I recently started hearing Bates’ name while reporting on UFOs.

I learned that Bates has been working behind the scenes to help the Sol Foundation, a group founded to prepare humanity for what it describes as the "likely" reality that non-human intelligence is behind some UFOs.

There’s another wrinkle: I learned that John Podesta — one of the most senior figures in Democratic politics and a longtime disclosure advocate — connected Bates with the group.

To me, it’s another striking sign of how thoroughly the UFO/Disclosure issue has migrated from the fringes into the mainstream .

I reported the details in the first edition of Signs of Life, a new weekly briefing I’ve launched through Paradigm.

If you found this or my Whistling Mike reporting useful, Signs of Life is where I’ll be publishing more reporting like it each week.

https://www.paradigm.news/p/exclusive-new-ufo-whistleblower-unmasked

I’m Ben Schreckinger, a former POLITICO reporter who recently launched Paradigm.News to investigate UFOs

I know “Whistling Mike” has been discussed here before. I've published his true identity along with some new details about his saga and his plans.

Mike is Michael Spicer, a Wichita-area businessman. He says that more than 20 years ago he encountered a quiet, roughly triangular, fighter-jet-sized craft hovering low over public land in Kansas. He says he subsequently spent years trying to reverse-engineer aspects of its technology and developed a system intended to detect the craft.

Those are Spicer’s claims. I have not independently established that the craft exists or that his conclusions about its technology are correct.

What I was able to establish is that in 2023, Spicer briefed members and staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee about his findings. During that process, he left them with a dark, dense, porous rock — raw material that Spicer says he mined after determining that the same material is used in the craft.

Three people familiar with the episode told me the committee kept the object for months in a safe inside the Hart Senate Office Building.

I also obtained and published a photo of the material.

There’s more in the piece about Spicer’s interactions with AARO, former acting AARO director Tim Phillips’ very skeptical account of him, an FBI referral, and Spicer’s plans to publicly present some of his findings next month in Colorado.

Full story: “Whistling Mike” unmasked — Signs of Life #01

Signs of Life, by the way, is a new weekly newsletter I've launched where I'll continue to provide original UFO reporting. You can subscribe for free at the link above.

Happy to answer questions.

a 14,000-word reported guide to the history and current state of the UAP issue

I’m a former POLITICO journalist. I spent most of the past year digging into the the UFO question and the extraordinary things now happening around it.

There's some news in here about DoD's contacts with a triangular UFO expert on unresolved UAP cases; about a Senate aide going into a state of ontological shock after getting in-depth classified UAP briefings; and about Jim Clapper's comments last fall about efforts to monitor UAP when he rain Air Force intelligence

Mostly, it's the kind of thing that you can send to people you know who are open to learning about the UAP situation and want a credible, engrossing overview.

I'd be curious what the community here thinks about it

https://www.paradigm.news/p/reality-shock-a-beginners-guide-to