By Gary S. Bekkum — January 18, 2010 (STARpod.org) -- Call it the "Weird Science of National Insecurity." According to official records released by the CIA, it's been going on since 1953. According to the legend, it all started in the summer of 1947, near Roswell, New Mexico. Whispered alongside concerns about new Chinese offensive capabilities against the US Pacific Fleet -- missile "bomblets" for which the US Navy has no existing deterrent -- is the "phenomenology problem." And if some of my sources, both inside and outside of government, are to be believed, it always comes back to the UFO issue. The question remains: are the UFOs from "out there" or is there a more earthly explanation involving the intelligence community and deep black covert military cover stories? One man, and one man alone appears to occupy the best possible position to probe into the facts, fantasies, and fallacies behind the real-life "X-files" of UFOs, alien visitors, spies, lies, and polygraph tape. And it is this same man, CIA's Ronald (Ron) S. Pandolfi, who, in the latter half of 2006, forwarded a series of emails discussing a possible violation of national security involving Internet tales of extraterrestrial visitations. The messages provided by Pandolfi tied together several threads aimed at government disclosure of an alleged "phenomenology problem" -- and raised disturbing new questions about methods, motivations, and sources behind government-related persons and their involvement with forbidden topics. Pandolfi first hit mainstream news pages in the late 1990s, following an investigation of unauthorized technology transfers from American defense contractors to the People's Republic of China. Ken Timmerman, writing for the American Spectator, claimed that "Ronald Pandolfi was the CIA's highest ranking scientist when he visited the headquarters of Hughes Space and Communications in El Segundo, California in 1996." Congressional Research Service Reports state that: "A CIA analyst, Ronald Pandolfi, briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee on what he had found in 1995 about Hughes' review of the explosion of a Long March rocket in January 1995. The CIA then allegedly alerted Hughes about Pandolfi's briefing, reportedly according to an internal CIA cable dated September 23, 1998. The committee then asked Attorney General Janet Reno for a criminal investigation into whether the CIA improperly obstructed a Senate investigation." According to Timmerman, "After Pandolfi testified in closed session before Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), he was removed from the China division and put to work on developing alternative energy sources." Some believe the "alternative energy sources" include exotic spacecraft propulsion systems with capabilities associated with intelligently controlled extraterrestrial flying objects. By 1999, Pandolfi, already known for his involvement with controversial official investigations of the CIA, was receiving attention for his interest in alternative topics, like UFOs. According to UFO investigator Grant Cameron, Pandolfi had been busy working behind the scenes, several years before the Hughes affair, to arrange the creation of a UFO briefing document for President Clinton's Science Advisor Jack Gibbons. A few years before being called to testify in the closed Senate intelligence hearings, Pandolfi received a call from a foreign national using the alias "Dr. Armen Victorian." During a lengthy phone conversation "Dr. Victorian" grilled Pandolfi on his involvement with the official weirdness that had transpired at the DIA in the mid-1980s. The DIA had been connecting their ultra-secret psychic spy research, which included plans to track Soviet submarines using "anomalous mental phenomena," to reports of unidentified flying objects. At one point in the conversation Pandolfi mentions former New York Times journalist Howard Blum and his book Out There. Blum's narrative was built around his exposure of a secret government "UFO Working Group." In the recorded conversation obtained by STARstream Research, Pandolfi nonchalantly tells "Dr. Victorian" that "I was a member of that working group." Pandolfi goes on to discuss numerous points of interest to UFO researchers, noting that his own interest in the UFO subject should not be interpreted as representing official CIA involvement. About this same time, Pandolfi struck up a friendship with Dan Smith, who had been busy investigating crop circles with paranormal expert Rosemary Ellen Guiley. Dan Smith's claim to fame includes his father, Dan Throop Smith, "a renowned Harvard economist who had served as the Treasury Department's top tax adviser during the Eisenhower administration" according to the Washington Post, and his older sister, Deborah, a friend of President George H. W. Bush (according to the White House, as reported in another Washington Post story). My first direct contact from Ron Pandolfi arrived unsolicited by email on September 30th, 2000. Dan Smith had been involved in a hot discussion with a private email discussion group. Smith was trying to convince the group that his interactions with Pandolfi were evidence of CIA's interest in all things paranormal. Smith's contribution to conspiracy paranoia was summed up in a not-too-well-disguised reference to the alleged MAJESTIC MJ-12 government UFO cabal: "Also it appears that Ron wants me to be a bus driver. He wants me to obtain a bus and paint it to look like an 'official' MTA bus, and go around the city picking up passengers at the bus stops, but instead of delivering them to their usual destinations, I will take them on an eschatological tour. When I told Ron that might be construed as being illegal, he did not seem perturbed." And then, for those not paying close attention, Dan added: "Would I lie to you? Do you think for a minute that these were not my 'official' instructions from a person who seems no longer inclined to deny membership in 'MTA-12'?" The elusive Pandolfi responded to the entire list: "Is it a ferret or a weasel that Dan will be adopting for the avian birthday? They are closely related, but they have very different characteristics ... I am ready to purchase a bus ticket for Dan's eschatological tour, as long as I get to select at least one of the stops. Who else will join the adventure? Where will it end?" Eschatology is the study of the final events, destiny and fate of the human race. The "avian" birthday probably refers to a legendary group of past and present government intelligence persons who had been assigned bird names to conceal their identities as part of a 1980s UFO cover-up investigation. The recipients of Pandolfi's reply included former US Web CEO Joe Firmage, who was investigating reverse engineered alien technology at the International Space Sciences Organization, and psychic mentalist Uri Geller. Dan Smith's "tour bus" of the "world wide web," the same sticky net that had brought riches to Joe Firmage, was about to become a spidery snare for intelligence persons and paranormal researchers around the globe. It seemed that Dan Smith was at least half right about his concern that he had been engaged by Pandolfi to gather together "persons of interest." In the intelligence world it is known as "flypaper theory." Ultimately one learns that the paranormal "flypaper" is shared by government officials in numerous services and agencies. How they interact with each other over questions of national security (in the midst of tales of psychic spying and alien intervention) is harder to discern. In Jon Ronson's book The Men Who Stare at Goats, Uri Geller, whose psychic powers had been officially investigated by the CIA in the 1970s, claimed he had been recruited into George Bush's War on Terror. "The man who reactivated me is ..." Uri told Ronson, "called Ron." Smith claimed his friend at CIA had prior knowledge of the events of September 11th, 2001. "I understand that you have gone to the FBI with this information?" I asked. "Correct. On about 9/19/01 I met with a female agent right outside the Baltimore FBI office and gave her my and Ron's particulars and a synopsis of what had transpired between us in the previous two weeks. She took notes and said they would handle it. They would have already been aware of my being part of Ron's special domestic collection effort. On that same day I also contacted Chris Straub, former ranking member on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, with whom Ron and I had previously met." Smith told me about a previous trip to see the FBI. The first time around it was concerning Ron's interest in Dan and his "joint mission" with paranormal author Rosemary Ellen Guiley. According to Smith, "In the previous attempt at a joint mission (c. 1992) I was told, somewhat after the fact, that my prospective partner's agenda was simply unknown. Whatever it was, it quickly degenerated into her personal agenda. BTW, she was being vectored in my direction by ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence). And now she has been vectored back to Towson, as she announced last weekend." Smith wrote to me, "The first time was to get some feedback on CF [Smith's code for Pandolfi]. I was unable to get any until I had three meetings with Chris Straub, c.'95. He was then the ranking staff member for the Senate Intel. Comm. CF joined us for the final meeting that was in the cafeteria. Bottom line: Chris was knowledgeable concerning eschatology, and he told me, 'to rest assured that I was dealing with some very competent people' ... Recall that I was indirectly responsible for the Inspector General's investigation of CF in '92-93, ... CF reported that it was a six month, $100K investigation in which he was cleared of any wrong doing." Many have questioned the veracity of Mr. Smith regarding his reporting of the activities of his friend Ron Pandolfi, which Smith loosely conceals using "code names" wrapped inside of his own philosophical meanderings. Pandolfi confirmed to another researcher interested in UFO tales that were spreading on the Internet: "Although sometimes acting in the capacity of the insane, Mr. Smith is very clever, capable, and well informed." In 2004, I asked the FBI about Pandolfi and possible CIA and DIA interactions with U.S. citizens over the Internet. The email response to my inquiry arrived from the local FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force: "Please call me with your concerns on this issue. You are correct in that there are some guidelines that must be followed for contact but, I am not comfortable detailing those here." Apparently, whatever Pandolfi was involved in was too sensitive to discuss by email. On January 18, 2006, Dr. Jack Sarfatti, a physicist based in San Francisco, forwarded an email to my attention. Sarfatti speculated that Ron Pandolfi had sent the names of the DIA TIGER committee members interested in UFO technology in an email "intercepted by NSA." In typical spy-elicitation style, the message Sarfatti forwarded to me read: "Jack, Ron P. told me today that you very likely know the names of all the members of the National Academy of Sciences 'UFO' tiger team. If this is true, could you please tell me who they are. I have come up with something he wants briefed to them. Mark." Somewhere, hidden between real technology transfers and alternative scientists interested in "reverse engineering UFO technologies," was a hot potato national security issue. Jeff Gerth, writing for the New York Times, tied the previous Pandolfi affair to the White House: "The concern of Congress involves broad issues of national security. It was the Senate panel on proliferation that asked the Pentagon to assess the national security implications of the 1995 accident review. And the Senate Intelligence Committee, officials said, is looking at whether what happened to Pandolfi is part of a larger question: Has the Clinton administration's strategic partnership with Beijing affected the way the intelligence community sees China?" In the 1990s Pandolfi had been called before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to testify about the transfer of technology expertise to the Chinese by American defense contractors. Ten years later, China would be at the center of another technology concern brought to Pandolfi's attention: the conversion of electromagnetic microwaves to high frequency gravity waves. In a video made by Jack Sarfatti with new-age physics author Fred Alan Wolf, Dan Smith claimed Pandolfi was now running MASINT, a highly technical form of intelligence on the front stage of the war on terror. During the interview, filled with tall tales of an extraterrestrial visitation "core story," Smith explained that Pandolfi had left CIA and was working for the new Office of the Director of National Intelligence under the command of John Negroponte. Other items, forwarded to me, reinforced Smith's claims, including messages bearing Pandolfi's Defense Intelligence Agency email address. As with most of the rumors passed about the UFO community, and in spite of the numerous sources who had taken one small footstep into the light, actual confirmation seemed to remain firmly within Pandolfi's grasp. In 2006, an acting source to STARstream Research (STARpod.org) from the United Kingdom visited with Dan Smith, Ron Pandolfi and Pandolfi's wife Susan. Pandolfi later reported to us that our source, the foreign national, had asked "inappropriate questions" about his "real work." Both our source and Mr. Dan Smith deny this. One possibly sensitive topic of conversation may have been the CIA's 1970s Glomar recovery operation. Detailed information concerning the Glomar "Project Jennifer" recovery remains a closely held secret. According to Mr. Smith, as a young college student, Pandolfi was visited by "a couple of suits" when he questioned the true nature of the Glomar operation, based upon lab analysis of alleged Glomar samples provided by Pandolfi's uncle. In June 2006, Mr. Smith described a conversation with Pandolfi involving the UFO core story and a previous revelation of government complicity of the extraterrestrial kind. In the 1980s, UFO revelations were largely driven by a series of "leaked" but unconfirmed documents about a government group known as MAJESTIC, presumably managed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as MAJIC (JIC being the ubiquitous acronym for Joint Intelligence Committee) and under command of MJ-12. Over the years, an ever growing number of MJ related documents have been debunked by skeptics for various perceived flaws and their idiosyncratic design. Dan Smith reported, "Ron [Pandolfi] is now stating that some of the faked MJ-12 documents contained actually declassified information unrelated to UFO's ... Ron wondered out loud if persons involved in the MJ-12 document affair would respond to an FBI warrant concerning the transfer of classified material to the KGB." The related 1988 national broadcast of UFO Cover-Up Live, which brought together American intelligence sources identified only by bird names (the so-called AVIARY) with Soviet researchers, revealed SECRET government information hidden within the broadcast. One man whose name is often identified with investigation of the AVIAN/MJ-12 Affair is USAF Colonel Barry Hennessey. It was Pandolfi who had initially blessed Smith's efforts to mention Barry Hennessey in a public forum, as early as June 2006. According to Smith, Pandolfi had been searching for traces of the USAF BLUE BOOK during a visit to Wright Patterson Air Force Base. BLUE BOOK was an acknowledged Air Force investigation into the UFO phenomena which had been closed down at the end of the 1960s. According to Smith, Pandolfi was working with someone who had been involved. I wrote an article about Pandolfi's involvement with the USAF UFO affair, and sent him a draft copy for comments. When Pandolfi asked that certain information be redacted from the article, he cited protection of "sources and methods." The mainstream media overlooked the fact that this highly placed senior intelligence official was openly conducting intelligence-related activities on the Internet. Confirmation of Pandolfi's new role arrived when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued the sanitized version of his High Frequency Gravity Wave Study. "JASON (a group of elite scientific experts providing consultation services to the government) was asked by staff at the National MASINT Committee of ODNI to evaluate the scientific, technological, and national security significance of high frequency gravitational waves (HFGW). The subject of High Frequency Gravitational Waves (HFGW) has attracted considerable interest in the US government over the last few years." "We are especially grateful to Ronald Pandolfi and Mark Pesses of ODNI for their continued help in arranging briefers and documentation." The release of the MITRE JASON study appears intended to be an officially sanctioned "outing" of Pandolfi. Names of active government officials are often redacted from official documents. The JASON study initiated by Pandolfi debunked a Chinese-American research collaboration into the theory and application of "high frequency gravity waves" (HFGW) for communication and surveillance. Some theories of HFGW are loosely related to the esoteric research of UFO propulsion systems, including the so-called Podkletnov effect, named after the Russian experimentalist who briefly dazzled the aerospace industry, including NASA, with claims of antigravity effects and gravity-like force beams. The UFO physics of high frequency gravity waves, the Chinese connection, and a possible case of international espionage concealed inside the UFO "core story" were the proverbial tips of the iceberg. My own "considerable interest," which had originated with Mr. Smith's observations, had been confirmed in an "official document," less the "classified portion" which I suspected would include information about the Chinese connection. I wondered how much more could be learned from Smith's cryptic references to his friend? When I was first made aware of Dr. Pandolfi's position at ODNI, Pandolfi requested that I remove his association with DIA and MASINT from one of my articles. In addition to the testimony provided by Smith, an email was forwarded to me from Pandolfi confirming that he was working out of an office operated by the DIA. Some email messages sent by Pandolfi appeared to have originated from DIA servers. Dan Smith cited several items which he believed signaled the possibility of a core revelation, including Pandolfi's "recent elevation at DNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence]," a book by former USAF Captain Robert Collins which claimed to reveal the details behind an outlandish government cover-up of the UFO core story, and a proposed meeting to approach Dr. Henry Kissinger, who was rumored to have held the highest level position within an alleged UFO committee at the National Security Council. "Mr. Smith is correct regarding my position with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence," Pandolfi would later write to one researcher, a fact now verified by the official release of Pandolfi's DIA/MASINT high frequency gravity wave study. "Currently my component is housed within a DIA facility and we use their servers for Internet access so my official e-mail ends with @dia.mil." Pandolfi had questioned whether the seduction of otherworldly sources within the core story had been used to penetrate the blackness of government secrecy. Whether or not there is any truth to the tales of extraterrestrial involvement, one thing is clearly reflected in this "wilderness of mirrors": the U.S. government is actively involved, for whatever reason, with the UFO community. Pandolfi has since moved on to another government office, based upon reports from both Dan Smith and Mark Pesses of the ODNI MASINT. His new assignment remains unknown. For more information, please visit STARpod.org. Copyright (c) 2010 by Gary S Bekkum / STARstream Research / STARpod.org -- All rights reserved. • Spy Game Disrupts UFO Disclosure • Ron Pandolfi speaks to "Armen Victorian" about the UFO Working Group • Is Ron Pandolfi the "White House Hamster Guy?" • Ron Pandolfi's Director of National Intelligence MITRE JASON Gravity Wave Study • STARstream Research Redacted Ron Pandolfi Files • Ron Pandolfi: Exempt from Legal Recourse • High Frequency Gravity Waves: The DARPA Connection • Knowing the Future: Ron and the Men Who Stare at Goats • CIA Director Woolsey, Terror, Psychic, and UFO Tales • Knowing the Future: A Proof, of Sorts • Knowing the Future: Spy Games Revealed • Caryn Anscomb reveals more about the spies, the lies, and the polygraph tape incident • Knowing the Future: SERPO-A: The John Gannon Affair • After Andrews first went public with his crop circle research and the release of his first book with Pat Delgado 'Circular Evidence' in 1989, one of the first unexpected visitors to his government office was Dr. Armen Victorian. Victorian made several visits to his office and home in 1989. Dr. Victorian is seen with Robert Dean and Colin Andrews at the Quest International conference in Leeds, England in 1992 where each were presenters. • Rosemary Ellen Guiley's second of a number of visits to meet Colin Andrews in England. She also visited his offices and new home in the USA later. • Rosemary Ellen Guiley in Colin Andrews UK office during a visit to inspect his database for reports of crop circles in the USA. • Dan Smith meets with Colin Andrews at the International UFO Congress in Laughlin, Nevada.