White House ET Petition Letdown - Part 1

“If you are elected and you learned that the government knew aliens had visited earth and the public didn’t know, would you want the public- would you make sure that the public found out?” a TV reporter asked democratic contender for President Barack Obama.

“Well, it depends on what these aliens are like,” replied Obama, “and whether they were Democrats or Republicans.”

THE answer is back to the first two UFO/ET petitions posted at the White House We the People website and signed by 12,000+ and 5000+ people respectively. I think the White House reply to those petitions will turn out to be a key and revealing moment in UFO history.

The petitions may not have been as popular as other issues on the American mind such as the attempt by Detroit Lion football fans to stop the Canadian band Nickelback from playing the half time during the nationally telecast NFL 2011 Thanksgiving Day game between the Lions and the Green Bay Packers.

That petition generated the signatures of 55,616 supporters who wondered why the city of Motown would bring in such a terrible hard rock band for such an important occasion. The petition encouraged the football team to reconsider, and even suggested that the move to employ the band might have been “some sort of ploy to get people to leave their seats during halftime to spend money on alcoholic beverages and concessions.”

Like the UFO petition the appeal was ignored by Lion football team officials, and the band played on. That, unfortunately is usually the fate of the 99%.

Despite the lower numbers – still 12,000+ people did take time to make an appeal on UFO/ET to President Obama through the We the People petition site on the White House website. The petition site was designed according to the White House to “provides a new way to petition the Obama Administration to take action on a range of important issues facing our country.”

The White House played up the importance of the petition site saying, “We created We the People because we want to hear from you.” That was music to the ears of the UFO disclosure movement that felt their concerns were not being heard by the government.

The main ET petition to President Obama requested that the administration, “”formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race.” There were 5,000 signatures required for a reply, and this number was easily surpassed. This high response appeared to inspire the White House to change the rules for future petitions so that 25,000 people would have to sign before the elected government would be forced to answer its electorate.

OSTP as Point Agency

The reply to the petition came from the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) – often known as the Office of the Science Advisor to the President.

Although most petition signers would have preferred that Obama himself had answered the petition, the fact that the OSTP put out the official reply is a good second choice because it is still in the Executive Office of the President and the UFO/ET issue is something that is clearly the direct responsibility of the President. It is, after all, the President who heads up all agencies that have had rumored UFO involvement since the USAF Blue Book investigation on UFOs ended in 1969.

a) Intelligence agencies – Many claims have been made that the US intelligence agencies have been actively involved data collection and analysis of UFO data, and are responsible for monitoring UFO related research being done in foreign countries and by researchers in the United States. The intelligence collected by all US intelligence agencies is transferred up to one main customer – the President of the United States.

b) The government itself – Some maintain that the ET cover-up is controlled by government entities. If true whichever department it might be is headed up by the President who is the Chief Executive Officer for the government.

c) Military or military contractors – There have a great deal of evidence that shows that the US military has been involved in intelligence, military responses to UFO intrusions inside US airspace, and recoveries of UFO hardware and bodies. If any of these claims are true those actions would be overseen by the President who is the civilian head of all US military commands.

d) State – As ETs would represent a foreign entity any negotiations or treaties would be the responsibility of the President who is the Head of State.

History shows that the President may realize his constitutional responsibility for the UFO issue as this petition situation is not the first UFO rodeo the OSTP has been at. Other Presidents have used their science advisor’s office to handle UFO issues.

History shows that as early as 1977, OSTP Director Frank Press had handled the UFO issue for newly elected Jimmy Carter. Press, citing “an increasing number of inquiries concerning UFO’s” at the White House, recommended that a panel of inquiry be formed by NASA to see if there had been any new significant findings on UFOs since the US Air Force-sponsored investigation of UFOs. NASA, knowing a dirty bomb when they saw one, carefully drafted a letter back to Press saying they would not be interested in such an idea. The Carter OSTP office also handled some citizen inquiries on UFOs.

Then in 1986 the OSTP under President Reagan again took up the UFO issue when it became involved in an FAA meeting dealing with the sighting and radar tracking of a huge UFO which encountered a JAL 747 as it flew over Alaska. According to Frank Callahan, the FAA official handling the case the CIA and FBI were in the main meeting where he provided a briefing of the UFO incident.

At what appears to be a second meeting Dr. Ron Pandolfi, civilian researcher Bruce Maccabee, and two other men met with Callahan. This second involvement of the CIA in the case is important because Dr. Pandolfi is considered by many in the UFO community to be the ‘policy expert” inside the US government on the subject of UFOs.

At the time of the JAL incident Pandolfi was reportedly running the “weird desk” at the CIA which reportedly deals with UFO and other paranormal phenomena.

More importantly Pandolfi still is recognized in the UFO community as the government expert on UFOs. He is also rumored to be the Presidential advisor on the subject which gained him the name the White House Saucer Guy (WHSG) and Uncle Sam’s Saucer Guy. These are rumors that Pandolfi, for whatever reason, seems to encourage.

In a strange twist to this 1986 OSTP involvement is the fact that Dr. Pandolfi, despite the official position that the CIA was not involved in studying UFOs, recovered data from the UFO case and turned it over to civilian researcher Bruce Maccabee to do a report. Then in 2001, when researcher John Greenewald filed an FOIA for the material, he was told there were 107 pages but that they had just destroyed the files because Greenewald had not followed the instructions he had been given to receive them.

In 1993 the OSTP again took up the UFO issue when they ran interference for President Clinton after philanthropist Laurance Rockefeller made an attempt to talk to President Clinton about the US government declassifying UFO records being held in secret by the government. This led to three years of back and forth correspondence between Rockefeller, Hillary Clinton, and Clinton Science Advisor Dr. Jack Gibbons. (there are over 1,000 pages of documents that describe the interaction) Through Gibbon’s efforts the USAF was forced to reinvestigate the 1947 Roswell UFO crash in 1994, and then again in 1997 when Clinton hinted in a speech that he was not happy with the conclusion they had reached.

Dr. Ronald Pandolfi was also involved in the Clinton OSTP office’s handling of the UFO situation. When Dr. Jack Gibbons first became aware that he was facing the UFO question he called for a UFO briefing to bring him up to speed before Rockefeller arrived. He contacted the CIA who in turn tasked the briefing job to the same Dr. Ronald Pandolfi. Pandolfi reported to friends that he met with Gibbons and told him not to touch the UFO issue. Pandolfi also knew that the official CIA position on UFOs was that the CIA “was not involved in UFOs,” so he gave the job of writing the briefing to a civilian researcher Bruce Maccabee which meant Gibbons would get information and the government could still maintain it knew nothing on the UFO subject.

Even Obama’s OSTP got involved in the UFO issue. This is despite the claim now being made by Larson at OSTP that there is no involvement. In March 2011 John Greenewald received documents from within OSTP related to an article written by researcher Larry Lowe related to an article he had written about the alien implant researcher of researcher Dr. Roger Leir. In one of the e-mails found in the exchange James C. Kohlenberger, OSTP Chief of Staff at the time actually inquires, “”I’m trying to figure out who has point on this issue (UFOs/ETs).”

Now in 2011 the Obama administration the White House have accepted responsibility for the issue, and like Presidents of past administrations have tasked the OSTP with providing answers to the questions.

The difference in the way the Obama administration handled the UFO question is in who they assigned to answer the query and how little they appeared to do to provide a factual answer.

Larson as Policy Expert

The response to the UFO petition was signed by Phil Larson, identified as an assistant researcher inside the OSTP.

This clearly spelled out a different position on how to handle the UFO hot potato issue. Instead of the petition being addressed by “an appropriate policy expert” as promised the petition was despite the fact that the We The People petition officials had promised to “ensure (the petition) is sent to the appropriate policy experts.”

Instead of the petition being sent to “the appropriate policy expert” who appeared to be Pandolfi, the petition was responded to by Phil Larson who is described by the White House as an “assistant researcher” who works on “space policy and communications.”

Something is missing. Why use Larson when Pandolfi spent a period of time at the White House during the Obama first term as a member of the National Office of Intelligence that provides briefing materials to the President and his Executive staff?

The bio listed for Larson looked impressive and official enough until one researcher questioned how Larson got into such a high position at the White House making official statements on behalf of the President with only a Bachelor’s of Science Degree.

The answer to that question came from a closer look at the OSTP website and at the man known as Phil Larson. That closer look at the website showed that “communications” was the key word that described what Larson actually did at OSTP. Not only had he answered the UFO petition he had written many press releases for news stories related to OSTP.

Larson was not an acting scientist, or an expert on UFOs, as had been implied. He was nothing more than a public relations office related to space policy. He was nothing more than a space policy spin man, and it was his job to write a reply to the UFO petition which nicely tells “the UFO people to go away.”

So where did Pandolfi go? According to his close friend Dan Smith in August 2009, Pandolfi had just become “Uncle Sam’s saucer guy” and hinted attribution of the hot tip to Bill LaParl who is another close friend of Pandolfi’s.

Smith added that Pandolfi was no longer just advising the White House on UFOs, he was actually working for the White House stationed across the street from the White House in the Executive Office Building which also houses the OSTP. According to Smith, Kit Green who held the UFO responsibility at the CIA before Pandolfi arrived, had confirmed that Pandolfi told him he was the saucer guy at the White House.

Later research indicated Pandolfi had become connected to the Office of the National Intelligence Office which provides the main briefing material to the President on a range of intelligence issues.

Pressed by Smith on what he was doing for the White House Pandolfi replied “Afgan hamster breeding.” The reply indicated that Pandolfi might be playing with him, and that nothing UFO related was going on, but he knew that was not possible.

Smith knew "nothing UFO" was not possible because he had in 1995 forced a meeting between himself and Chris Straub, former ranking member on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, to get independent confirmation on the bona-fides of Pandolfi, and that his interaction with Dan Smith was part of his official duties. The results of that meeting, if true, show conclusively that the 2011 ignorance claim by the Phil Larson is a fairy-tale. (There were actually three meetings, and Ron Pandolfi was present for the third.)

At first Straub did not reply to Smith, but after a second contact, Straub stated that he would talk to Smith, but that he required a briefing beforehand. Once the briefing took place Straub led Smith through a series of locked doors into a room. According to Smith, Straub stated that “he couldn’t speak ad hominem about the situation” but in general this does involve “unconventional collections” that the government has the “phenomenology problem firmly under the control” and “you are dealing with some very competent people.”

If Pandolfi is the WHSG, and therefore the “policy expert,” the question arises why he was not consulted in preparation for the answering of the petition? The answer is, that he may have been, and his information and advice has just been off the official expert.

The evidence that show that this is a possibility as this is exactly what happened in 1993 when he was called to brief Dr. Gibbons on UFOs. The official OSTP record shows no record of Pandolfi being tasked with the UFO briefing, nor the fact that he met with Gibbons to advise him not to touch the UFO subject. Further an FOIA I filed with the Clinton Library for all documents related to Pandolfi came up with “no records found.”

Despite the “no records found” Maccabee, who wrote the briefing for Pandolfi, confirms Pandolfi was contacted. Pandolfi’s friends Dan Smith and Bill LaParl confirm Pandolfi was contacted, and Rockefeller associate Dr. Scott Jones released a transcript of a phone conversation with himself and Pandolfi where they discussed exactly what had occurred between Pandolfi and the White House.

Written by Grant Cameron

Parts  2 and 3 to follow shortly.