“There’s one now,” I heard the words come out my mouth as our group of friends made their way to their cars.
We had just wrapped up a fun night of Christmas caroling to some neighbors and before that at a senior living facility in the suburbs of the New York Tri-state area.
A month ago I had seen one lone report on local news coverage where people who live in the area of the Trump-owned Bedminster golf course saw a flying craft thought to be the size of a small SUV flying and hovering in the region. A day later another first hand report with personally captured footage not far from the locale of the first one.
A few nights later my social media feed was becoming populated with more personal footage from a half dozen people adding theirs to the mix. I didn’t really know any of them personally but now this story felt like it was metastasizing. Speaking of which I then see on Fox News footage from Dr. Nicole Saphier. Wait a minute. I know her. She’s a decorated radiologist and weekend host on Fox News Channel. She’s not some nutty conspiracy—war of the worlds—kook.
A day or so later Congressman Jeff Van Drew is speaking out. Two days after that friends from our church who live twenty minutes away. The next day reports in Philadelphia. The evening after that someone spotted one in Connecticut. That same evening a candidate for Congress in this past election who had just barely lost texts my bride with footage she had just taken from above her own home. This last Friday evening John Calvelli of the Bronx Zoo, and former Bloomberg administrator, and head of the Arthur Avenue Business District Peter Madonia bring them up on my radio show with Cristyne Nicholas. Later that night I get word that good friends of ours in Park Ridge, New Jersey grabbed footage of one. And Saturday evening as our small group of friends gather to go caroling one of the wives relays she and her husband’s personal account from the night before of seeing a drone about the size of a car hover over their back yard, then zig zag off into the woods behind their property. We go caroling and upon return the husband of yet a different couple hands his phone to me and says, “look, this is someone crossing the George Washington bridge just now!” I take the phone and see one of these—what appears to be a drone—keeping pace with the vehicle of the photographer as it crosses the nearly 2 mile span.
And that catches me up to the one I spotted above my home personally (with the other couples witnessing it) as we walked them to their cars.
So in one quick flash I went from discounting some nutty report on the local news, to having a series of people that got deeper and deeper into my own personal circle of credible friends, to seeing one with my naked eye, in roughly a month.
And I’m not even that socially fluid.
I started to imagine people with far bigger circles of friends and how utterly common my experience has to be.
I also realize how utterly incomprehensible our administration’s response has been. Local law enforcement don’t have the tools or technology to chase these things down. Especially in smaller suburbs and rural and sparse areas. Congressman Jeff Van Drew publicly raised the possibility of Iran, but he was more asking than asserting. Biden’s national advisor and spokesperson on national security John Kirby first claimed that (like the Chinese spy balloon) there was nothing to really see, then when pressed by Martha MacCallum (who is no sufferer of fools) the following day tried to weasel his way free of what he had already intimated.
I understand the difficulty this puts the authorities in. If they don’t know anything—they look like they are asleep at the helm. If it is a foreign entity and they haven’t figured it out yet, revealing so might jeopardize their ability to find out who. And if they are doing it to us directly the hell-to-pay would dwarf the anger in the election.
Bottom line however (and there definitely is one) is quite simply—this is too big of an issue to gaslight us. You owe us an explanation of what you know. And we have the right to ring your bell and give you migraines until you start talking.
To that end I had Paul Benne, a security expert who plans and runs security of large scale events, and who personally possesses not one but two mobile command units that have drone detection technology, on my show last night—from his mobile command—while he has been continuing his look into the phenomenon.
From Benne’s perspective we know these drones are not emitting normal RF transmissions. This means from a consumer level drone’s perspective they’re not communicating data back to a mothership. That is unless they are doing so at a military/National Security level where they are using undetectable satellite encryption. After watching numbers of these over a few nights Benne also came to the conclusion that they are also possibly autonomously programmed pre-take-off to run a defined mission and return without the need for RF transmission.
“This is pretty nefarious,” were Benne’s words to me when we were off the air. (And this from a man who I would say rebuffs the definition of sensationalism or conspiracy.)
And that’s my real problem.
Too many people I know personally, none of whom would I say frequent the waters of conspiratorial nonsense, have now taken footage for themselves for me to ignore it anymore.
I also happen to frequently have decorated national security experts, retired military heads on my show discussing many of the technological dangers of the day. I’ve had too many of these conversations to know that many theories of what these are would not be far-fetched if true. I have sources inside our current military who are familiar with our tech-based weapons systems to know that we probably know way more than what John Q. Public is being told.
In the two separate attacks in Israel, our situation room was able to identify drones as they left Tehran and headed for Tel Aviv. We helped shoot some of them down as they headed to the air space of our ally Israel. We and Israel were able to track where they originated. And Israel went and eliminated that site.
So for Kirby to attempt cutesy comedic responses with MacCallum this week and convince us all that “they just don’t know” is unacceptable.
We know it.
And it’s about a month late, but it’s time for answers!
(To demand answers from your Congressional and U.S. Senate officials: 202.224.3121.)