{"id":8139,"date":"2019-09-17T15:17:58","date_gmt":"2019-09-17T15:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/?p=8139"},"modified":"2020-06-09T00:42:49","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T00:42:49","slug":"u-s-navy-investigated-circumstances-behind-leaked-ufo-footage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/u-s-navy-investigated-circumstances-behind-leaked-ufo-footage\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Navy Investigated Circumstances Behind Leaked UFO Footage"},"content":{"rendered":"

By John Greenewald, Jr. \u2013 The Black Vault \u2013 Originally Published September 17, 2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A screen grab from the FLIR1 UAP video, which shows the unknown object as captured on camera by the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group in 2004, off the coast of San Diego.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On December 16, 2017, the New York Times<\/a> and To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science<\/a> (TTSA) published two videos which both organizations claimed showed \u201cUnidentified Aerial Phenomena\u201d or UAPs. Although reported at the time as being recently \u201cdeclassified\u201d by the U.S. government (a claim currently disputed<\/a> by both the Pentagon and the U.S. Navy); revelations<\/a> in the weeks that followed proved that one of the two videos known as \u201cFLIR1<\/a>\u201d had already been leaked onto the internet in 2007, about a decade prior to the news.<\/p>\n

The \u201cFLIR1\u201d footage is of an unidentified flying object (UFO) seen in 2004 by pilots flying with the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group during training missions off the coast of San Diego. However, the video was never meant to be seen by the public, and that was a concern to the Navy.<\/p>\n

In recent statements given to The Black Vault, the Navy admits they were not only aware of the leak as early as 2009 but also investigated how the footage ended up on the internet. \u201cWith respect to the 2004 sighting by aircraft from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68); that video was widely shared throughout the ship at that time. In 2007, one of those crewmembers posted the video onto the public web,\u201d said Joseph Gradisher, official spokesperson for the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare. \u201cIn 2009, the online post of the video came to the attention of Navy officials,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

The first known appearance of the \u201cFLIR1\u201d video was posted on the popular \u201calternative topic\u201d message forum AboveTopSecret<\/a> on February 4, 2007. A file named \u2018f4.mpg\u2019 was linked within a larger post on the site, which then led to a German production company\u2019s website known as \u201cVision Unlimited<\/a>\u201d for the download. Although the digital video has long been removed from the active site online today, it can still be found on the \u201cWayback Machine<\/a>,\u201d a project by \u201cInternet Archive<\/a>\u201d which aims to archive snapshots of the internet at random intervals.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Present day website of “Vision Unlimited.” The file ‘f4.mpg’ has long been removed, and no one at “Vision Unlimited” knows how it originally got there.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is unclear exactly how \u201cVision Unlimited\u201d came to house the file, even to \u201cVision Unlimited\u201d itself. In a late December 2017 interview with Grenzwissenschaft-Aktuell.de<\/a> (GreWi), Mr. Philip Schneider, manager of \u201cVision Unlimited,\u201d stated, \u201cWe don\u2019t know where the file came from and can only say that it hasn\u2019t been on the server for a long time since,\u201d said Schneider. \u201cBecause the case is so strange, we also wanted to investigate. But quickly this showed to be fruitless because the file was on an old server and all data (LOGs etc.) are no longer available. I\u2019ve also talked to former employees who had access to the server, but no one could tell me anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although no further information is available on how the \u201cFLIR1\u201d video wound up on a German server under a different filename, the Navy was made aware of the situation. Gradisher told The Black Vault, \u201c\u2026in consultation with Navy law enforcement personnel, [the Navy]decided not to pursue the matter. Given the time since recording (approximately 5 years), the widespread distribution of the recording within the ship at the time of recording, and the size of the crew at the time (approximately 5,000), it was determined that there was no way to accurately determine who might have released the video.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Here is the official paperwork as filed by Mr. Luis Elizondo for a review of the three UAP videos. To date, both the Pentagon and the U.S. Navy maintain this does not authorize a public release of the videos.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Although no action was taken on the original 2007 leak, the Navy and the Pentagon have both issued statements<\/a> to The Black Vault asserting that not only the \u201cFLIR1,\u201d but also other UAP related videos known as the \u201cGimbal<\/a>\u201d and \u201cGoFast<\/a>\u201d were not cleared for public release. This means that all three videos, which the Navy does officially acknowledge<\/a> depict UAPs, are all considered \u201cleaks\u201d and not official releases.<\/p>\n

When asked specifically about the 2017 and 2018 leaks of the “Gimbal” and “GoFast” videos, Gradisher stated, “With respect to the other 2 videos cited, the Navy has no information on how they were released into general circulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, that information has seemingly been widely reported. TTSA has long made the claim through multiple interviews and written statements that TTSA board member Mr. Luis Elizondo spearheaded the movement to get the videos reviewed by the appropriate Department of Defense (DOD) components. In addition, releases directly to The Black Vault under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from the DOD further prove Elizondo filed the official paperwork<\/a>, and communicated directly with the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR), the agency that manages all DOD related security reviews of information.<\/p>\n

TTSA has never publicly disputed any of the hundreds of news stories which stated, or alluded to, Elizondo having brought forward the videos into general circulation.<\/p>\n

When this information was brought up to the Navy, and the question was posed again on whether they would investigate the \u201cGimbal\u201d and \u201cGoFast\u201d leaks; the Navy was clear that no more information would be released on the matter. Gradisher stated simply, \u201cThe Navy will not comment on claims\/comments from any outside parties with respect to the videos you’ve mentioned.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By John Greenewald, Jr. \u2013 The Black Vault \u2013 Originally Published September 17, 2019 On December 16, 2017, the New York Times and To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science (TTSA) published two videos which both organizations claimed showed \u201cUnidentified Aerial Phenomena\u201d or UAPs. Although reported at the time as being recently \u201cdeclassified\u201d by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11014,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","transcript_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,32],"tags":[1338,1336,56,1335,1333,1337,296,1339],"class_list":{"0":"post-8139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-fringe","8":"category-ufo-phenomena","9":"tag-flir1","10":"tag-luis-elizondo","11":"tag-navy","12":"tag-to-the-stars-academy","13":"tag-ttsa","14":"tag-uap","15":"tag-ufo","16":"tag-unidentified-aerial-phenomena"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/6-8-2020-5-42-08-PM.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}