Tuesday, September 10, 2024

Former President Donald Trump is a "Manchurian candidate" for Russia.

FBI pondered whether Trump was ‘a Manchurian candidate elected,’ former agent alleges in new book

Then-FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok testifies before Congress in 2018.

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok alleges in a new book that investigators came to believe it was “conceivable, if unlikely” that Russia was secretly controlling President Trump after he took office — a full-fledged “Manchurian candidate” installed as America’s commander in chief.

Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.

In the book, “Compromised,” Strzok describes how the FBI had to consider “whether the man about to be inaugurated was willing to place his or Russia’s interests above those of American citizens,” and if and how agents could investigate that. Strzok opened the FBI’s 2016 investigation into whether Trump’s campaign had coordinated with the Kremlin to help his election and later was involved in investigating Trump personally. He was ultimately removed from the case over private text messages disparaging of the president.

“We certainly had evidence that this was the case: that Trump, while gleefully wreaking havoc on America’s political institutions and norms, was pulling his punches when it came to our historic adversary, Russia,” Strzok writes. “Given what we knew or had cause to suspect about Trump’s compromising behavior in the weeks, months, and years leading up to the election, moreover, it also seemed conceivable, if unlikely, that Moscow had indeed pulled off the most stunning intelligence achievement in human history: secretly controlling the president of the United States — a Manchurian candidate elected.”

‘You stepped in it here’: How anti-Trump texts ruined the career of the FBI’s go-to agent.

“I don’t think that Trump, when he meets with Putin, receives a task list for the next quarter,” Strzok said, referencing the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. “But I do think the president is compromised, that he is unable to put the interests of our nation first, that he acts from hidden motives, because there is leverage over him, held specifically by the Russians but potentially others as well.”

Strzok’s book is the latest by former FBI officials — including former director James B. Comey and former deputy director Andrew McCabe — to disclose new insights into the bureau’s investigation of Trump, while lambasting the president for his conduct.

The FBI’s investigation was taken over by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who could not substantiate a criminal conspiracy with Russia. Mueller did, however, conclude that the Trump campaign was willing to accept Russian assistance to help win the election, and that Russia was willing to give it; his report outlined ways Trump might have obstructed the special counsel’s inquiry.

Mueller’s final report, released last year, reached no determination on whether that conduct was criminal, and Attorney General William P. Barr reviewed the matter and determined it was not.

Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence investigator, tries to bring his experience in that area to the discussion of Trump, alleging repeatedly that the president seemed to be compromising himself as he lied publicly about his business dealings in Russia, or his interactions with that country’s officials. That, Strzok writes, essentially gave Russia leverage over the president.

“Trump’s apparent lies — public, sustained, refutable, and damaging if exposed — are an intelligence officer’s dream,” Strzok writes. “For that very reason, they are also a counterintelligence officer’s nightmare.”

Strzok was also a key figure in the investigation into whether Hillary Clinton had mishandled classified information by using a private email server while she was secretary of state during the Obama administration. His book seeks to pull back the curtain on that case as well, contrasting it with the investigation into Trump.

FBI’s Peter Strzok told Congress election tampering was a ‘far graver threat’ than Clinton email scandal, new transcript says

Strzok writes that he now believes it was the wrong decision for Comey to announce publicly in July 2016, just months ahead of the election, that he was recommending Clinton not be charged while criticizing her conduct. He talks, too, of institutional bias against the former Democratic presidential candidate, claiming a retired executive — whom he did not name in the book — said at lunch one day, “Pete, you’ve got to get that b----.”

Strzok’s view, though, is that the investigation into Clinton was a far less serious matter than the inquiry into Trump.

Even as he says Clinton’s use of a private server is what fueled investigators’ interest, Strzok allows that had her email been housed on the State Department system, “it would have been less secure and probably much more vulnerable to hacking.” He also concedes that Comey’s decision in October 2016 to reveal to Congress that the investigation had resumed — less than two weeks before voters were to go to the polls — probably altered the results of the election in Trump’s favor.

“Reflecting back on 2016 reveals another hard truth: small margins matter in an election in which the total number of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan voters needed to swing the Electoral College would fit in one football stadium,” Strzok writes. “Pundits who argue that it’s hard to substantively change public opinion miss the point: when you’re dealing with razor-thin margins, it doesn’t take much to move the needle. And as much as it pains me to admit it, the Russians weren’t the only ones who pushed the needle toward Trump. The Bureau did too.”

But Strzok also jabs at Clinton advisers for, at times, not being fully cooperative, and says some of Clinton’s answers in her interview with the FBI were “aggravating” for how carefully she chose her words. He cryptically hints that Russians did not release more material they had procured about her, possibly saving it for if she had been elected.

“We also knew through classified channels that the Russians had material with the potential to be greatly disruptive, yet they had chosen not to release it,” Strzok writes. “Were they waiting for Election Day? Were they holding it in reserve to discredit Clinton?” He writes that the substance of the material is still classified.

As McCabe and Comey did, Strzok discusses at some length the behind-the-scenes talks about investigating Trump, including in the early days of Mueller’s investigation. Strzok, who was briefly the lead FBI agent on Mueller’s team, writes that he and Mueller composed a team “representing a cross-section of criminal and counterintelligence expertise,” because he was concerned with some of the noncriminal aspects of Trump’s behavior.

“The broader counterintelligence concerns about the president — which included the ways in which his suspected obstruction of the Russia probe might have been coerced by or intended to aid Russia — were investigated by multiple teams,” Strzok writes.

Strzok was removed from the Mueller team in August 2017, after the Justice Department inspector general found he had exchanged anti-Trump texts with FBI lawyer Lisa Page. He was ultimately fired from the bureau over the missives. In his book, Strzok defends the messages as private expressions of his political views, and writes that he vehemently disputes the inspector general’s insinuation in a report that they indicated a willingness to use his position to hurt Trump.

Strzok rebukes current FBI and Justice Department leaders for succumbing to Trump’s repeated attacks on law enforcement. He alleges that they helped foster a culture where those involved in the Clinton and Trump investigations were “shunned and disavowed,” and that Trump had effectively turned the investigation of his own conduct into a “third rail.”

FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich ordered Strzok’s firing, overriding the decision of a lower level official who proposed lesser discipline. Strzok is also critical of FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, in particular, for his concession at a congressional hearing that he had not read all of Mueller’s report.

“However indefensible, the short-term message was clear: DOJ and the FBI’s new leaders were disclaiming responsibility for any investigation relating to Midyear or Crossfire,” Strzok writes, using the code names for the Clinton and Trump investigations. “The long-term message was far worse: it was just too perilous to investigate matters relating to Trump.”"If Trump wins, he will enter the White House on Jan. 20, 2025, as a much more dangerous president than he was in 2017,". "He will be bitter and seek to take his revenge on the so-called deep state that he claims stole the election from him in 2020."

Trump is compared to a character from the 1959 novel The Manchurian Candidate.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and former U.S. President Donald Trump are pictured together during a G20 summit in Osaka, Japan on June 28, 2019.

A hypothetical scenario if Trump if elected in November and starts his second term by granting a series of favors to this "friend" Putin, including ending American military aid to Ukraine, before announcing the formation of U.S.-Russia strategic pack.

Trump would "appear on television screens throughout the world to inform us that he is heading to Moscow on the invitation of "his friend Vladimir" days after beginning his term, with Trump insisting to concerned countries that "you're going to love it."

Trump and Putin would sign an agreement that stipulates NATO is "no longer up to the task of maintaining security and stability in Europe" and ordains U.S. and Russian control over the continent, while forcing Ukraine to cede much of its territory to Moscow in exchange for "peace."

"Candidate Trump promises almost every day that he will stop the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of assuming the presidency, which is code for putting an end to US arms shipments," Piontkovsky wrote.

Trump has "the same list of enemies" as his "long-time partner Vladimir Putin"—

“Donald Trump: A Modern Manchurian Candidate?”

These bold words were printed on page A31 on the New York Times atop a column questioning the president-elect’s affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the column, Max Boot wrote, “At the same time that Mr. Trump continues to exhibit paranoia about American intelligence agencies, he displays a trust verging on gullibility in the mendacious and murderous government of Mr. Putin.”

It’s not the first time Trump has been called a “Manchurian candidate.”

The comparison has been brought up from outlets as wide-ranging as the Huffington Post, Vanity Fair, the Hill, Daily Kos, Salon and the New York Daily News.

Most of these columns, including Thursday’s NYT opinion piece, don’t mention what that means. Like many phrases introduced by pop culture (think: Catch-22, gaslighting), it’s become shorthand for something — namely, a president controlled by a foreign (these days, most likely Russian) power — even though at this point wide swaths of the American public likely haven’t consumed the media that bore it.

The phrase first came into existence thanks to Richard Condon, who in 1959 wrote a novel by that title — “The Manchurian Candidate” — in which a platoon of decorated soldiers return from the Korean War, after being brainwashed to believe in communism. One of them has unwittingly become a sleeper agent, controlled by the communist Chinese and Soviet governments to perform a particular assassination, which will allow them to install a communist puppet dictator as U.S. president. (The comparison to Trump is derived from the thought that he might be a puppet of the Russian government.)

(Though it was published in 1959, some of it might have been written a bit earlier. Allegations have been levied against Condon, who died in 1996, claiming the author plagiarized passages from the 1934 novel “I, Claudius,” a book set during the Roman Empire. His agent denied these accusations.)

At the time of its release, the book — written by a man who chose his profession because “the only thing I knew how to do was spell” — received decidedly mixed reviews, notably appearing on Time’s 10 best bad novels list while being dubbed “a wild and exhilarating satire” by the New Yorker.

Regardless the novel was a hit, likely because it made campy pulp out of the era’s political climate. As Louis Menand — who called the book “a man in a tartan tuxedo, chicken à la king with shaved truffles, a signed LeRoy Neiman . . . Mickey Spillane with an M.F.A.” — wrote in the New Yorker:

Fear of Communist brainwashing seems an example of Cold War hysteria, but in the nineteen-fifties the fear was not without basis. United Nations ground forces began military action in Korea on July 5, 1950. On July 9th, an American soldier who had been captured just two days earlier delivered a radio speech consisting of North Korean propaganda. Similar broadcasts by captured soldiers continued throughout the war. At the end of the war, the Army estimated that one out of every seven American prisoners of war had collaborated with the enemy. (The final, generally accepted estimate is one out of ten.) Twenty-one Americans refused to return to the United States; forty announced that they had become Communists; and fourteen were court-martialed, and eleven of those were convicted.

Added Menand, “Condon’s book played on the fear that brainwashing could be permanent, that minds could be altered forever.”

If that sounds a bit cinematic for a novel plot, that’s because it was. Fittingly, while film historian David Thomson called it “a book written so that an idiot could film it,” director John Frankenheimer referred to it as “one of the best books I’ve ever read.”

Frankenheimer directed the 1962 film adaptation of the book, bearing the same name and starring Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey. Film historian Howard Hampton wrote that one “could hardly have devised a more perfect union of formalistic effects, ideological paradox, and existential instability.”

Even so the movie was a complete flop. Perhaps it struck the wrong chord in the midst of the Cold War. Perhaps it was just too hard to follow.

Regardless of its success in the United States, it certainly created waves worldwide. As Rob Nixon wrote for TMC:

“The Manchurian Candidate”‘s story was considered so politically controversial it was either censored or prohibited from theatrical release in many Eastern European countries then under Communist governments and even in neutral countries such as Finland and Sweden. The theatrical premiere for most of those countries was held after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1993.

Most concerning for Americans at the time, the film included an assassination scene, which reportedly caused United Artists fear that it might prompt someone to perform such an action off-screen. A year after its release, of course, Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President Kennedy. This story is even more startling considering that Kennedy allegedly “interceded with United Artists to get the film greenlighted,” according to Hampton.

Share this articleShare

(It grows even creepier when one realizes, as Hampton wrote, that “in a stranger-than-fiction twist, Frankenheimer was with Robert F. Kennedy on the night of his murder.”)

A theory exists that Oswald was influenced by the film, which he likely saw, according to John Loken, who explored this very question in his book, “Oswald’s Trigger Films: The Manchurian Candidate, We Were Strangers, Suddenly?”

And, in fact, days after the assassination, a newspaper reporter asked Condon if he felt at all responsible for the president’s death. (He did not.)

The film was pulled after its original run (some claim at Sinatra’s insistence due to the death of his friend Kennedy but according to Menand this didn’t happen until later. He wrote, “In 1972, Sinatra bought the rights and, in 1975, removed it from circulation entirely.”).

The movie, though, lived on as a television staple some years later.

Sunday, September 8, 2024

Elon Musk Unveils UFO Fighter Jet That Defies Physics

Pentagon Confirms Military

UFO Aircraft That Defies Physics

The Pentagon confirmed that a mysterious “Pyramid” UFO video as well as photos of three other bizarre flying objects, dubbed “Sphere,” “Acorn,” and “Metallic Blimp," are authentic, were taken by members of the U.S. Navy, and have been included in an investigation conducted by the military’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force.
“I can confirm that the referenced photos and videos were taken by Navy personnel. The UAPTF has included these incidents in their ongoing examinations,” Sue Gough, a spokeswoman for the Defense Department, told the Washington Examiner. “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.”
The website Extraordinary Beliefs said it had gained insight into an alleged classified “intelligence briefing” held on May 1, 2020, related to the study of UFOs through the Office of Naval Intelligence, and contended that briefing contained an estimated 10 videos and roughly a dozen photos documenting a number of unnamed aerial phenomena. In particular, the website referred to an “event series” from July 2019 “involving Strike Group 9 within the warning areas off of San Diego” where the USS Russell, an Arleigh Burke-class naval destroyer, “observed and recorded multiple ‘pyramid’ shaped craft.” A video of the incident appears to show a triangular object floating in the sky, and photos of the event appear to show more than one such UFO.

The outlet described a separate “event series” involving an FA-18 pilot and a weapon systems officer in the “warning area off the coast of Oceana” on March 4, 2019. The officer reportedly took the photos in the cockpit using his personal mobile phone, and “the intelligence briefing clarifies that the WSO captured THREE different craft on the same sorti with the same cell phone.”
The Mystery Wire website said that the March 2019 photos taken while the officer was seated behind the pilot included three mysterious floating objects — Sphere, Acorn, and Metallic Blimp. One of the photos was first posted to Twitter last May and has circulated since then, while a version of another photo appeared online in December. The website said it “has learned of sensitive briefings prepared by the UAP Task Force and delivered to multiple military and intelligence audiences” and that “the objects were able to remain stationary in high winds, with no movement, beyond the capability of known balloons or drones.” The outlet said it learned of the photos two years ago during a “private briefing” hosted by Robert Bigelow and others. Bigelow is the owner of Budget Suites of America, the founder of Bigelow Aerospace, and a UFO enthusiast.
Gough, the Pentagon spokeswoman, added to the Washington Examiner, “Also, to clarify, I am only confirming that the photographs and videos — what the Mystery Wire article refers to as ‘Sphere,’ ‘Acorn,’ and ‘Metallic Blimp,’ and the videos in the Extraordinary Beliefs article — were taken by Navy personnel. I have nothing for you regarding any other images or depictions in those articles.”

The Biden administration may miss the deadline to release a report on what it knows about UFOs, according to Sen. Marco Rubio, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee when it wrote up a 180-day directive for such a disclosure included in the $2.3 trillion bill that former President Donald Trump signed in December.
The deadline is in June, and a spokesperson for Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the Washington Examiner that the intelligence community is "aware of the requirement and will respond accordingly.”The Senate Intelligence Committee directed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the Pentagon and other agencies, to submit to Congress a report “on unidentified aerial phenomena (also known as ‘anomalous aerial vehicles’), including observed airborne objects that have not been identified.”
John Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence under Trump, told Fox News that reports of "unidentified aerial phenomena" already in the public eye are only part of the bigger picture.
"When we talk about sightings, the other thing I will tell you is, it's not just a pilot or just a satellite, or some intelligence collection," Ratcliffe said. "Usually, we have multiple sensors that are picking up these things, and ... some of these are unexplained phenomenon, and there is actually quite a few more than have been made public."
FORMER INTELLIGENCE CHIEF: 'QUITE A FEW MORE' UFOS DETECTED THAN PUBLIC KNOWS
Ratcliffe added: “We are talking about objects that have been seen by Navy or Air Force pilots, or have been picked up by satellite imagery that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain. Movements that are hard to replicate that we don’t have the technology for, or traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom.”
The Defense Department announced the establishment of a UFO task force in August, saying the group would be led by the Navy under the cognizance of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security.

Last year, videos from the Navy were released through the Freedom of Information Act that showed UFOs moving at incredible speeds and performing seemingly impossible aerial maneuvers. One of the videos was shot in November 2004; the other two were shot in January 2015. The three videos were code-named “FLIR1,” “Gimbal,” and “GoFast.” In the 2015 videos, Navy pilots can be heard expressing disbelief.
Earlier this month, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday was asked about reports about unidentified “drones” approaching U.S. naval vessels off the coast of California.
“I am aware of those sightings, and as it’s been reported there have been other sightings by aviators in the air and by other ships not only of the United States but other nations — and of course other elements within the U.S. joint force,” Gilday said, adding, “Those findings have been collected, and they still are being analyzed.”

The Defense Department has confirmed that leaked photos and video of “unidentified aerial phenomena” taken in 2019 are indeed legitimate images of unexplained objects.
Photos and videos of triangle-shaped objects blinking and moving through the clouds were taken by Navy personnel, Pentagon spokeswoman Sue Gough said in a statement to CNN. She also confirmed that photos of three unidentified flying objects – one “sphere” shaped, another “acorn” shaped and one characterized as a “metallic blimp” – were also taken by Navy personnel.
“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,” Gough said.
She also said that the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, created in August to investigate UFO sightings observed by the military, has “included these incidents in their ongoing examinations.”
The Navy photos and videos were published by Mystery Wire and on Extraordinary Beliefs’ website last week but had been circulating online since last year.
There have been “a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years” the Navy said in 2019. Last year, the Pentagon released three videos showing “unidentified aerial phenomena” – clips that the US Navy had previously confirmed were real.

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF THE NGAD PROGRAM: Secret Aurora spy plane real - Here's the evidence

Was America's Top Secret Aurora spy plane real - Here's the evidence

Aurora is a rumored mid-1980s American reconnaissance aircraft. There is no substantial evidence that it was ever built or flown and it has been termed a myth.

The U.S. government has consistently denied such an aircraft was ever built. Aviation and space reference site Aerospaceweb.org concluded, "The evidence supporting the Aurora is circumstantial or pure conjecture, there is little reason to contradict the government's position."

Former Skunk Works director Ben Rich confirmed that "Aurora" was simply a myth in Skunk Works (1994), a book detailing his days as the director. Rich wrote that a colonel working in the Pentagon arbitrarily assigned the name "Aurora" to the funding for the B-2 bomber design competition and somehow the name was leaked to the media.

In 2006, veteran black project watcher and aviation writer Bill Sweetman said, "Does Aurora exist? Years of pursuit have led me to believe that, yes, Aurora is most likely in active development, spurred on by recent advances that have allowed technology to catch up with the ambition that launched the program a generation ago."

The Aurora legend started in 1985, when the Los Angeles Times [5] and later Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine broke the news that the term "Aurora" had been inadvertently included in the 1985 U.S. budget, as an allocation of $455 million for "black aircraft production" in FY 1987.[6] According to Aviation Week, Project Aurora referred to a group of exotic aircraft, and not to one particular airframe. Funding of the project allegedly reached $2.3 billion in fiscal 1987, according to a 1986 procurement document obtained by Aviation Week. In the 1994 book Skunk Works, Ben Rich, the former head of Lockheed's Skunk Works division, wrote that the Aurora was the budgetary code name for the stealth bomber fly-off that resulted in the B-2 Spirit.

By the late 1980s, many aerospace industry observers believed that the U.S. had the technological capability to build a Mach 5 (hypersonic speed) replacement for the aging Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Detailed examinations of the U.S. defense budget claimed to have found money missing or channeled into black projects.[8] By the mid-1990s, reports surfaced of sightings of unidentified aircraft flying over California and the United Kingdom involving odd-shaped contrails, sonic booms, and related phenomena that suggested the US had developed such an aircraft. Nothing ever linked any of these observations to any program or aircraft type, but the name Aurora was often tagged on these as a way of explaining the observations.
British sighting claims

In late August 1989, while working as an engineer on the jack-up barge GSF Galveston Key in the North Sea, Chris Gibson saw an unfamiliar isosceles triangle-shaped delta aircraft, apparently refueling from a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker and accompanied by a pair of F-111 fighter-bombers. Gibson watched the aircraft for several minutes, until they went out of sight. He subsequently drew a sketch of the formation.

Artist's rendering of the Aurora from various angles

When the sighting was made public in 1992, the British Defence Secretary Tom King was told, "There is no knowledge in the MoD of a 'black' programme of this nature, although it would not surprise the relevant desk officers in the Air Staff and Defence Intelligence Staff if it did exist."[9]

A crash at RAF Boscombe Down in Wiltshire on 26 September 1994 appeared closely linked to "black" missions, according to a report in AirForces Monthly. Further investigation was hampered by USAF aircraft flooding into the base. Special Air Service personnel arrived in plainclothes in an Agusta 109. The crash site was protected from view by fire engines and tarpaulins and the base was closed to all flights soon afterwards.[10] More recent analysis, however, indicates that the Boscombe Down crash was a towed missile decoy.[11]

An unsubstantiated claim on the Horsted Keynes Village Web Site purports to show photos of the trail left after an unusual sonic boom was heard over the village in July 2002. In 2005 the information was used in a BBC report about the Aurora project.

U.S. sighting claims

A series of unusual sonic booms was detected in Southern California beginning in mid-to-late 1991 and recorded by United States Geological Survey sensors across Southern California used to pinpoint earthquake epicenters.[13] The sonic booms were characteristic of a smaller vehicle, rather than of the 37-meter long Space Shuttle orbiter. Furthermore, neither the Shuttle nor NASA's single SR-71B was operating on the days the booms had been registered.[14] In the article, "In Plane Sight?" which appeared in the Washington City Paper on 3 July 1992 (pp. 12–13), one of the seismologists, Jim Mori, noted: "We can't tell anything about the vehicle. They seem stronger than other sonic booms that we record once in a while. They've all come on Thursday mornings about the same time, between 4 and 7."[6] Former NASA sonic boom expert Dom Maglieri studied the 15-year-old sonic boom data from the California Institute of Technology and has deemed that the data showed "something at 90,000 ft (c. 27 km), Mach 4 to Mach 5.2". He also said the booms did not look like those from aircraft that had traveled through the atmosphere many miles away at Los Angeles International Airport; rather, they appeared to be booms from a high-altitude aircraft directly above the ground, moving at high speeds.[15] The boom signatures of the two different aircraft patterns are wildly different.[4] There was nothing particular to tie these events to any aircraft, but they served to increase the number of stories about the Aurora.

Artist's rendering of the Aurora from behind

On 23 March 1992, near Amarillo, Texas, Steven Douglass photographed the "donuts on a rope" contrail and linked this sighting to distinctive sounds. He described the engine noise as: "strange, loud pulsating roar... unique... a deep pulsating rumble that vibrated the house and made the windows shake... similar to rocket engine noise, but deeper, with evenly timed pulses." In addition to providing the first photographs of the distinctive contrail previously reported by many, the significance of this sighting was enhanced by Douglass' reports of intercepts of radio transmissions: "Air-to-air communications... were between an AWACS aircraft with the call sign "Dragnet 51" from Tinker AFB, Oklahoma, and two unknown aircraft using the call signs "Darkstar November" and "Darkstar Mike". Messages consisted of phonetically transmitted alphanumerics. It is not known whether this radio traffic had any association with the "pulser" that had just flown over Amarillo." ("Darkstar" is also a call sign of AWACS aircraft from a different squadron at Tinker AFB)[16] A month later, radio enthusiasts in California monitoring Edwards AFB Radar (callsign "Joshua Control") heard early morning radio transmissions between Joshua and a high flying aircraft using the callsign "Gaspipe". "You're at 67,000 feet, 81 miles out" was heard, followed by "70 miles out now, 36,000 ft, above glideslope." As in the past, nothing linked these observations to any particular aircraft or program, but the attribution to the Aurora helped expand the legend.

In February 1994, a former resident of Rachel, Nevada, and Area 51 enthusiast, Chuck Clark, claimed to have filmed the Aurora taking off from the Groom Lake facility. In the David Darlington book Area 51: The Dreamland Chronicles, he said:

I even saw the Aurora take off one night — or an aircraft that matched the Aurora's reputed configuration: a sharp delta with twin tails about a hundred and thirty feet long. It taxied out of a lighted hangar at 2:30 a.m. and used a lot of runway to take off. It had one red light on top, but the minute the wheels left the runway, the light went off and that was the last I saw of it. I didn't hear it because the wind was blowing from behind me toward the base." I asked when this had taken place. "February 1994. Obviously they didn't think anybody was out there. It was thirty below zero – probably ninety below with the wind chill factor. I had hiked into White Sides from a different, harder way than usual, and stayed there two or three days among the rocks, under a camouflage tarp with six layers of clothes on. I had an insulated face mask and two sleeping bags, so I didn't present a heat signature. I videotaped the aircraft through a telescope with a five-hundred-millimeter f4 lens coupled via a C-ring to a high-eight digital video camera with five hundred and twenty scan lines of resolution, which is better than TV." The author then asked, "Where's the tape?" "Locked away. That's a legitimate spyplane; my purpose is not to give away legitimate national defense. When they get ready to unveil it, I'll probably release the tape."[17]
Additional claims[edit]

By 1996, reports associated with the Aurora name dropped off in frequency, suggesting to people who believed that the aircraft existed that it had only ever been a prototype or that it had had a short service life.[1]

In 2000, Aberdeen Press and Journal writer Nic Outterside wrote a piece on US stealth technology in Scotland. Citing confidential "sources", he alleged RAF/USAF Machrihanish in Kintyre, Argyll to be a base for Aurora aircraft. Machrihanish's almost 2-mile-long (3.2 km) long runway makes it suitable for high-altitude and experimental aircraft with the fenced-off coastal approach making it ideal for takeoffs and landings to be made well away from eyes or cameras of press and public. "Oceanic Air Traffic Control at Prestwick," Outterside says, "also tracked fast-moving radar blips. It was claimed by staff that a 'hypersonic jet was the only rational conclusion' for the readings."[18]

In 2006, aviation writer Bill Sweetman put together 20 years of examining budget "holes", unexplained sonic booms, as well as the Gibson sighting and concluded:

This evidence helps establish the program's initial existence. My investigations continue to turn up evidence that suggests current activity. For example, having spent years sifting through military budgets, tracking untraceable dollars and code names, I learned how to sort out where money was going. This year, when I looked at the Air Force operations budget in detail, I found a $9-billion black hole that seems a perfect fit for a project like Aurora.

In June 2017, Aviation Week reported that Rob Weiss, the General Manager of the Skunk Works, provided some confirmation of a research project and stated that hypersonic flight technology was now mature, and efforts were underway to fly an aircraft with it.

A British Ministry of Defence report released in May 2006 refers to USAF priority plans to produce a Mach 4-6 highly supersonic vehicle, but no conclusive evidence had emerged to confirm the existence of such a project. It was believed by some that the Aurora project was canceled due to a shift from spy-planes to high-tech unmanned aerial vehicles and reconnaissance satellites which can do the same job as a spyplane, but with less risk of casualties.

The main question here is, Does the US Air Force or America’s intelligence agencies have a secret hypersonic aircraft capable of a Mach 6 performance?. The continually growing evidence suggests that the answer to this question is YES. Perhaps the most well-known instance which provides evidence of such an aircraft’s existence is the sighting of a triangular plane over the North Sea in August 1989 by oil-exploration engineer Chris Gibson. As well as the famous “skyquakes” heard over Los Angeles since the early 1990s, found to be heading for the secret Groom Lake (Area 51) installation in the Nevada desert, numerous other facts provide an understanding of how the aircraft’s technology works. Rumored to exist but routinely denied by U.S. officials, the name of this aircraft is Aurora.

The outside world uses the name Aurora because a censor’s slip let it appear below the SR-71 Blackbird and U-2 in the 1985 Pentagon budget request. Even if this was the actual name of the project, it would have by now been changed after being compromised in such a manner.

The plane’s real name has been kept a secret along with its existence. This is not unfamiliar though, the F-117a stealth fighter was kept a secret for over ten years after its first pre-production test flight. The project is what is technically known as a Special Access Program (SAP). More often, such projects are referred to as “black programs.”

So what was the first sign of the existence of SR-91 Aurora ? On 6 March 1990, one of the United States Air Force’s Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird spyplanes shattered the official air speed record from Los Angeles to Washington’s Dulles Airport. There, a brief ceremony marked the end of the SR-71’s operational career. Officially, the SR-71 was being retired to save the $200-$300 million a year it cost to operate the fleet. Some reporters were told the plane had been made redundant by sophisticated spy satellites.

But there was one problem, the USAF made no opposition towards the plane’s retirement, and congressional attempts to revive the program were discouraged. Never in the history of the USAF had a program been closed without opposition. Aurora is the missing factor to the silent closure of the SR-71 program.

Testing such a new radical aircraft brings immense costs and inconvenience, not just in the design and development of a prototype aircraft, but also in providing a secret testing place for an aircraft that is obviously different from those the public are aware of.

The Groom Dry Lake, in the Nevada desert, is home to one of America’s elite secret proving grounds which was Aurora’s most likely test location. Comparing today’s Groom Lake with images of the base in the 1970s, it is apparent that many of the larger buildings and hangars were added during the following decade. Also, the Groom Lake test facility has a lake-bed runway that is six miles long, twice as long as the longest normal runways in the United States. The reason for such a long runway is simple, the length of a runway is determined either by the distance an aircraft requires to accelerate to a flying speed, or the distance that the aircraft needs to decelerate after landing. That distance is proportional to the speed at which lift-off takes place. Usually, very long runways are designed for aircraft with very high minimum flying speeds, and, as is the case at Edwards AFB, these are aircraft that are optimized for very high maximum speeds. Almost 19,000 feet of the runway at Groom Lake is paved for normal operations.

Lockheed’s Skunk Works, now the Lockheed Advanced Development Company, is the most likely prime contractor for the SR-91 Aurora aircraft. Throughout the 1980s, financial analysts concluded that Lockheed had been engaged in several large classified projects. However, they weren’t able to identify enough of them to account for the company’s income.

Technically, the Skunk Works has a unique record of managing large, high-risk programs under an incredible unparalleled secrecy. Even with high-risk projects that the company has undertaken, Lockheed has a record of providing what it promises to deliver.

In 2006, renowned aviation writer Bill Sweetman had stated and derived to a conclusion that, “This evidence of 20 years of examining budget “holes”, unexplained sonic booms, plus the Gibson sighting , helps establish the program’s initial existence. My investigations continue to turn up evidence that suggests current activity. For example, having spent years sifting through military budgets, tracking untraceable dollars and code names, I learned how to sort out where money was going. This year, when I looked at the Air Force operations budget in detail, I found a $9-billion black hole that seems a perfect fit for a project like Aurora.”