Top Secret Projects and 'Top Secret Writers'

The UFO community has collectively been aware for quite some time of Project PALLADIUM, a now declassified operation nonetheless deserving periodic mention. The project involved the development of technology that created false radar paints.

Gene Poteat, formerly of the CIA Directorate of Science and Technology, composed a 1998 report titled, Stealth, Countermeasures, and ELINT, 1960-1975. Poteat, who was directly involved in PALLADIUM, wrote about the project, “I came up with a scheme to electronically generate and inject carefully calibrated false targets into the Soviet radars, deceiving them into seeing and tracking a ghost aircraft... [W]e could now simulate an aircraft of any radar cross section from an invisible stealth airplane to one that made a large blip on Soviet radar screens – and anything in between, at any speed and altitude, and fly it along any path...

“Every PALLADIUM operation consisted of a CIA team with its ghost aircraft system, an NSA team with its special COMINT and decryption equipment, and a military operational support team.”

The report went on to state that such operations were conducted all over the world. Readers familiar with the work of Mark Pilkington will recall he addressed such circumstances in his book Mirage Men. Pilkington expressed suspicions such technology was involved in the Washington, DC flap of 1952. He also noted in his book that as late as 1986 US intelligence officials considered conducting a PALLADIUM-like operation in Libya, the purposes of which would have included creating confusion and paranoia within the Khadafi regime.

Such circumstances provide food for thought in the grand scheme of ufology. This might particularly be the case when considered in the context of such instances as the apparent CIA involvement in the contactee movement of the fifties, as well as a 1950 RAND report, The Exploitation of Superstitions for Purposes of Psychological Warfare, which described such strategies as an operation conducted in Italy that greatly resembled and predated the Flatwoods Monster incident of UFO lore. One way or another, it should be of interest to members of the UFO community that the US Defense Department was conclusively in the business of creating false UFO incidents.

Top Secret Writers

Stealth wear, according to
designer Adam Harvey

Ryan Dube maintains a site, Top Secret Writers, where a team reports on topics of interest to the more inquisitive and discriminating reader. Writer/researcher Gabrielle Pickard recently published an article, The Anti-Drone Hoodie – Has It Really Come to This?, exploring the latest counter-surveillance measure, a hoodie that makes its wearer undetectable to drones. Designed by Adam Harvey, the silver hooded top blocks thermal imaging used by drones to identify and track human targets.

Pickard concluded, “While anti-drone hoodies and invisibility cloaks will undoubtedly liven up the stands at tech exhibitions and make headline news, the plausibility of such items being able to effectively counteract the prying eyes of governmental drones seems unlikely. What is more certain, is the fact that the niche for such products shows just how painfully mistrustful society has become of the government.”