WAS THE US GOVERNMENT SCAMMED FOR $1 MILLION
BY A COMPANY CLAIMING TO HAVE UFO DEBRIS?
AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2022
A deep investigation has been conducted into a bizarre agreement between the US Army and a self-professed UFO “think tank” claiming to possess UFO debris. And this inquiry has uncovered a disturbing trail of possible swindle and deception as well as alarming incompetence.
In the contract agreement (linked below), the US Army authorized $750,000 (and up to $1 million over time if needed) to be spent for testing and evaluation of supposedly novel “metamaterials” that were provided to them by a very controversial company. The Army hopes that the materials may have application in some very exotic areas. These include such things as creating “Active Camouflage” (achieving invisibility from visual detection by seamlessly blending into the surroundings) and in “Beamed Energy Propulsion” of Army ground vehicles. That is, the US Army believes that the contractor has anomalous material that could be applied to the development of tanks and specialized vehicles that cannot be seen by the human eye and that can move without fuel. If this could be successfully developed, it would of course give the Army an enormous tactical advantage over any enemy force.
As extraordinary as all of this is, it appears that the US Army did not conduct its due diligence before it entered the contract. And given what has now been learned about the contractor, its founder, and its history, it is highly unlikely that the company has ever possessed engineered material in the form of UFO debris. Their claims that it has material that could assist the Army in the creation of “invisible vehicles” with “beamed energy propulsion” are either knowingly deceptive or show gross ineptitude. Of even more concern is the US Army’s gullibility and naiveté in apparently not conducting even basic background investigation of a new contractor that has made such incredible claims.
The troubling facts are these:
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The company is known to be in possession of demonstrably faked UFO debris that it continues to maintain is anomalous in nature. The truth is that the material is totally terrestrial in nature.
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The company, To The Stars, was founded by a UFO-obsessed former rock star and dropout, Tom DeLonge, who admits to long-time drug and alcohol abuse.
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It has no state-of-the-art R&D facilities to determine the nature of the alleged novel metals they claim to hold, and employs no metallurgists or materials engineers. Rather, the company says that they subcontract any needed analysis of this type to outside, but unnamed labs.
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Many of those involved in the organization have a checkered business past. Others are academicians who know how to (and who to) approach to obtain government grant money in exchange for “weird science” technical reports on theoretical exotic technologies and paranormal phenomena.
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The company’s founder has previously endorsed false UFO pictures, claimed to have met with former President Clinton on the ET matter, and made other outrageous claims.
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The company has, since the contract was let, rebranded itself from an “academy” to an “entertainment and media” organization.
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Finally, the way in which this contract could have ever been approved is revealed. A well-known former Department of Defense employee who helped to lead AATIP, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (a covert investigatory effort by the DoD to study UFOs/UAPs) is implicated in orchestrating this peculiar contract.
THE CONTRACT
On October 17, 2019 the company announced it entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the United States Army Combat Capabilities Development Command. The five-year contract focuses on areas such as active camouflage, inertial mass reduction, mechanical/structural meta materials, electromagnetic meta material wave guides, quantum physics, quantum communications, and beamed energy propulsion. According to the U.S. Army, at least $750,000 and up to $1 million will be provided in support and resources for developing and testing To the Stars technologies. The contract states that To the Stars will provide samples in its possession of “metamaterials”, any data or “obtained vehicles"
that use “beamed energy propulsion,” and any information or technology related to testing and analysis and potential application for Army ground vehicles development. The controversial contract can be viewed in its entirety here:
https://www.nextgov.com/media/gbc/docs/pdfs_edit/ng_ttsa_crada.pdf
THE CONTRACTOR
To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science (TTSA) has recently changed their corporate name to simply “To The Stars". It is a San Diego-based company established by Tom DeLonge, former guitarist of the rock group Blink-182. The company was founded in 2017 as a public benefit corporation with a mission to explore the "outer edges of science", such as investigating unidentified flying objects. Company officer Harold E. Puthoff described their goals as "imagine having 25th-century science this century." Their "Virtual Analytics UAP Learning Tool" (VAULT) is a public-facing database of UFO sightings. The team supposedly collects, analyses and provides their authentication of UFO sightings, though few in the world of UFO study ever consult it. They also operate ADAM (Acquisition & Data Analysis of Materials ), a research project promoting what they believe to be “extraterrestrial" metals for commercial and military applications.
In September 2017, the company began offering $50 million worth of public stock through a Regulation A+ equity crowdfunding campaign. According to SEC filings, as of October 2018 only $1 million of those shares had been sold and the company had a $37.4 million deficit, largely from a stock incentive plan for its employees, of which it is believed there are less than a dozen, including DeLonge and his sister Kari, whose name appears as the signatory in the agreement with the US Army.
"To The Stars” prior claims - and issues with their personnel - do not instill confidence in the contract nor in their statements that they possess unearthly engineered material:
Lies About Meeting Bill Clinton
In July of 2016, DeLonge shared a photo on Instagram with his followers of his "secret meeting" with a two-term Commander-in-Chief of the United States. DeLonge says of the accompanying photo: "Believe it or not, this is what a Sekret [sic] Meeting looks like." He further captioned the photo, "They were waiting for my arrival. I seem to have been doing quite a lot of these lately. And yes, it is who you think it is..." The image is of the backside of an older man with white hair. Tom's implication is obvious: it is Bill Clinton. Of course the man looks only vaguely like Clinton. And if this was to be such a very high-level secret meeting, why is it that what we are seeing are men assembled in a public place? But when he realized what he had stupidly done, Tom took a run. He deleted the photo from Instagram. But here is the archived version:
Tom DeLonge, Head of “To the Stars”,
Pictured in Front of a Medical Marijuana Dispensary in a November 27, 2021 Tweet with the Caption: “Taking Classes on How to Smoke Pot with the Whole Family"
Misidentifying UFO Images
The examples of this sort of thing are numerous. DeLonge has a long history of posting (and then often deleting) photos and reports after he realizes that he may be wrong. Illustrative of this was when he posted, then later deleted a November 2012 Seattle, WA video clip he shared of a black, very long, disc-like object flying 200 feet above warehouse-like buildings (shown conclusively to be a CGI image by Ufologist Scott Brando).
DeLonge traveled to Italy to, among other things, view a 2006 photo by Antonino Spinnato of a helicopter accompanied by a black, splotchy UFO which DeLonge promoted online as genuine–which was later shown to probably be a bug (researcher Robert Sheaffer).
Claiming to Have Introduced Famous US Navy Videos
Tom did not introduce the famed "Tic-Tac"-shaped UFO video recorded by USS Nimitz personnel (acknowledged as genuine by the Pentagon) even though he wants to closely associate himself with it and act as if he was instrumental in putting this into the public record. In fact, many years before, the video had been posted to the UFO forum of the paranormal website Above Top Secret (ATS), where an anonymous individual named "The Final Theory" released some of the now-famous video in February of 2007, a decade before DeLonge's first mention of it.
A Substance Abuser
With a years-long addiction to pain killers and a penchant for pot, DeLonge's dealings with drugs is self-admitted. Of course, many people reading this know someone who has had similar problems. This information on DeLonge is not in any way given in a judgmental or disparaging way. But it is given to offer perspective: This addictive personality is combined with a lack of discernment, proneness to fantasy, a need for fame and money and a sense of self-importance to solve it all. He has no higher education, and he was removed from his High School in 11th grade for attending class inebriated.
Management Team Issues
In the transcript for the 2020 Annual Stockholders Meeting for TTSA (a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation), Tom DeLonge introduces TTSA's Board of Directors member Christopher Mizer. DeLonge indicates that Mizer leads "new business development" for TTSA. You can view the meeting transcript here.
DeLonge extolls Mizer's experience in private equity, finance and business development. Had DeLonge conducted even basic reference and background checking before hiring Chris Mizer, he would have found Mizer to have been accused by many for past financial schemes and involvement in very questionable companies. This man has been engaged in penny stocks and related investments for years. From the Yahoo Finance forum, we see sixty-five reactions to Mizer's penny stock, IFAN, which he calls a company "in the development stage" that is engaged "in design, development and distribution of software for mobile payment." Founded in 2010, the company still characterizes itself as a "development stage" company. This is a classic con maneuver. Extend expectations of success or results year after year stating that "We're almost there " and "We only need". One dissatisfied investor in Mizer writes of IFAN, "It appears to have flat-lined for the time-being, playing possum before a run?" Another adds, "IFAN becoming totally cash-less." And this damning comment: "IFAN is effectively a dead company for the last 2 years, all these daily trades are nothing but fake trades to mislead shareholders that IFAN is still alive. I am now sure both the IFAN thugs namely Steven Scholl and Christopher Mizer…leaving behind suckered shareholders!" But the most blunt poster wrote of Mizer, that he is "going to jail for a very long time for fraud and running this IFAN scam for so long!" He continues: "They lured investors first by mailing them the flashy multi color flyers (and) making all false claims that Google, Apple or Facebook was going to acquire them soon, and afterward supplying them with faulty misleading information to support their claims." Mizer is also on the "Advisory Board" of a Multi-Level Marketing company called "Therapeutic Solutions International Inc." which makes health claims for their products that are likely illegal. Their "Nutraceutical Division" certainly straddles the line relative to FDA regulations prohibiting making claims for such products being able to diagnose, treat or cure any disease. Unfortunately, one of Mizer's company products hints at efficacy for COVID, which is a downright dangerous claim.
Another management team member of To the Stars is Hal Puthoff, PhD. An ex-Scientologist and early supporter of spoon-bender Uri Geller, Hal Puthoff has made money by generating impractical, pseudo-scientific reports for government agencies for decades. This includes Defense Department sponsored “remote viewing” research to see the unseeable using the mind (a project ultimately pulled due to lack of actionable and consistent results) to peddling a US patent controversially given in 1998 for a claim to be able to transmit information over a distance using a “modulated potential” with no electric or magnetic field components. The case is still used for educational purposes (known as “Puthoff’s Patent”) to illustrate that even a competent patent examiner may fail to distinguish between innovation and pseudoscience. He is also famous for his promotion of “Zero Point Energy” which has been criticized by well-known physicists for lack of transparency and scientific backing.
THE UFO DEBRIS THAT NEVER WAS
DeLonge and To the Stars have an unfavorable record with supposed UFO artifacts. He passes off known (or easily knowable) items as originating from “unknown” aerial vehicles when they do not.
Three striking examples of this UFO artifact forgery are detailed here:
Art’s Parts
In 1996, Art Bell, the late founder and original host of the paranormally oriented and nationally syndicated Coast-to-Coast Radio program, received an anonymously mailed package that included a letter and a trove of metal parts and layered material which later became known as “Art’s Parts.” The appearance of the items sent to Art is not all that impressive, but the story accompanying them was certainly something.
The anonymous writer’s letter was replete with grammatical errors and misspellings as well as unneeded word capitalization. The writer claimed that the items were from the Roswell, NM UFO crash of 1947. The sender maintained that they were retrieved by his Grandfather who was at the crash site. He states that there was a surviving alien who in English referred to the Earth as “Terra.” He further stated that the craft has a “dimensional power plant” onboard that has “self destructed” upon crashing. The man also informs that “the disc was a probeship dispatched from a launchship that was stationed at a dimensional gateway 32 light years away.” If this was not enough, he also claimed to have been friends with the first man on the moon, astronaut Neil Armstrong.
One type of these very-terrestrial-looking "pieces" have been shown to be comprised of 25 alternating layers of bismuth (a brittle crystalline white and pink-tinged metal) and alloyed magnesium / zinc. Technologist Nicholas Reiter, many years ago, found reference in the technical literature to the "Betterton-Kroll" process, an obscure process which uses layered bismuth and magnesium / zinc to extract impurities out of lead. The process results in a unique industrial "slag". Fortean Times magazine of the UK endorsed this prosaic conclusion in an authoritative piece published in 2016. Other of these pieces look like sheets of louvered fins very similar to air conditioning vents, but on a doll house scale.
In 2018 To The Stars paid $35,000 to UFO researcher Linda Moulton Howe to purchase from her Art’s Parts. She had somehow acquired the fragments from Bell. I had the opportunity to speak with Howe recently on another research matter and slipped in a question about Art's Parts. I asked her if Isotopic Ratio Analysis (the definitive test to determine if a material is of off-Earth origin) had been applied to the material. She was evasive in directly answering, and I wondered if she even knew what such testing was.
It is disturbing too that Howe knew that the pieces were not anomalous based on testing that had been conducted by Hal Puthoff, PhD. Even though To The Stars (of which Puthoff is an officer) had, in 2012, written to Howe that evaluation of the material completed by him had revealed nothing unusual about the supposed UFO items, the pieces were still bought from her by To The Stars and are still held out by the organization as being potentially unearthly. If Puthoff thought in 2012 that the material was conventional, why did his company still purchase it from her six years later? This stunning, damning letter can be seen here:
Gemstone as UFO Debris
On July 25th 2019, Tom DeLonge posted to his Instagram account a message to his followers: “TTSA has acquired multiple pieces of metamaterials that are reported to have come from an advanced aerospace vehicle of unknown origin. We’re enthusiastic about its potential use and how it can further our mission for discovery and innovation.” He included a picture of one of the pieces:
DeLonge’s Supposed UFO Debris
It appears, however, that DeLonge's Instagram image of “UFO debris” is actually a highly modified stock image directly taken from the online stock photo service, Shutterstock. The picture is of a natural mined substance called malachite! Malachite is a green copper mineral found in caves that is used as a semi-precious gemstone in jewelry and artwork and for the pigment that it produces. Though a good conductor of heat and electricity (silver is better), it holds no special properties for use in engineered systems.
The Mineral Malachite Picture on Shutterstock Which DeLonge Used
"Floating" Material
In the past, To The Stars has alluded to some of the pieces being able to “float” when placed on a specialized frequency-generating platform. But such material “levitation” properties have been known for decades and can be achieved prosaically by electrifying or magnetizing a given area in a specific way, seemingly counteracting the effects of gravitational force. And many years ago, inventor Thomas Thompson Brown produced such “lift” with small lightweight metal forms (like some of To The Stars material) using the effects of “coronal” or ionic wind, a transfer of charged electrons through the air when certain fields and wavelengths are applied, producing a modest type of “suspension.” These effects are achieved using conventional earth materials and processes--no extraterrestrial engineering required.
THE ARMY:
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING AND HOW DID IT HAPPEN?
Jeffrey Langhout, Signatory for the US Army for TTSA Contract
Unanswered is this: What is it about the material that TTSA possesses that makes the Army believe it would contribute to the construction of invisible vehicles powered by beamed energy? The government is routinely bombarded by quacks and nutty professors with ideas and inventions that they believe could benefit the nation. Why and how did the US Army get involved with this specific company?
The signatory on the contract for the US Army is Jeffery Langhout. Langhout has had a long and illustrious career with the US Army. Based in the military nerve center of Huntsville, AL with a Masters degree in Engineering, Langhout should have known better than to have ever entered into such an agreement with such a company. This author reached out to Langhout several times for comment. No reply has been forthcoming. It is likely that Langhout is now supremely embarrassed for having ever gotten involved with (and spent taxpayer money on) such an endeavor. Had he performed an even cursory check on TTSA and the material it has alleged to hold, he would have known of the issues that this article has enumerated. This author also reached out to Kari DeLonge, the To The Stars signatory to the contract and Tom DeLonge’s sister. She too elected not to reply.
The common denominator between the US Department of Defense and TTSA is a man named Luis Elizondo. Listed in the contract with the Army as a To The Stars “collaborator”, Elizondo was the former Department of Defense employee who helped to lead the AATIP, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Elizondo likely used his credentials as a former DoD official investigating anomalous aerial phenomena to assist in securing this contract. Elizondo is listed as a To The Stars officer and certainly does not work for free or offer his contacts and connections to the company gratis.
Former DoD AATIP Official Luis Elizondo
FOLLOW THE MONEY FOR THE ANSWERS
To uncover dishonest schemes and arrive at truth, follow the money. And Tom DeLonge wants it. As musical tastes changed, so did the fortunes of the band DeLonge helped front, Blink 182. They were most popular in 1999, over twenty years ago, and their last album did not exactly do brisk sales. They are all now 45 years or older, they are Dads with families and with little appeal to late teens and 20 somethings. Former bandmates characterize DeLonge as entrepreneurial and resourceful. He likely quit the band several years ago because he knew about the difficulty of maintaining music relevancy in today's market and
continuing to be able to make the kind of money to which he is accustomed. So he opted to combine his passion for cash with his passion for UFOs. Former Blink 182 bandmate Travis Barker relates that DeLonge's behavior on tour, when DeLonge was coaxed to briefly re-unite with the band some years ago, turned from distant and "introverted" until the "money started coming in," after which "he'd get excited about Blink."
DeLonge traded on his fame, fronted a bit of his money to attempt make more money, and cobbled together (bought off?) what he thought would be a "dream team". He would pay them to study UFO sightings and films, as well as supposed UFO debris, and to develop revolutionary systems. And DeLonge--just as when he was a rock star on tour with a band and a website--even offers To the Stars promotional merchandise, like T-shirts and mugs. Some of the items even appropriate the NASA logo, which is placed side-by-side with the To The Stars logo.
Nearly three years into the contract with the US Army, To The Stars would certainly know by now if the materials they gave the government to test were really extraterrestrial. Such tests can be done relatively quickly. They never take this long. If the debris were real UFO material, DeLonge would not contain himself. He would shout it from the rooftops. He would sell it to the highest bidder. It would be the biggest story of all time. But it is instead a very troubling story.
The organization was originally called “To The Stars Academy.” One of its missions was to design "free-energy" systems that will power everything without cost or pollution and allow for interstellar flight. Formerly an “academy”, the company is now simply called “To The Stars Inc.” which is self-described as “an independent multi-media entertainment company founded by award-winning musician, author and director, Tom DeLonge."
An “entertainment company” indeed.