This rock, allegedly made of material used in a super-advanced aircraft, sat for months in a safe controlled by the Senate intelligence committee, according to three people familiar with the matter. (photo obtained by PARADIGM)
SIGNS OF LIFE
Welcome aboard the maiden voyage of Signs of Life, a weekly briefing from PARADIGM tracking all things UAP and NHI (UFOs and aliens).
For those just getting back from holidays, today’s edition will catch you up on developments from late summer on.
But first…
EXCLUSIVE
TALES FROM THE SCIF
A few months after several members of the Senate intelligence committee proposed the UAP Disclosure Act in 2023, the committee came into possession of a dark, dense, porous rock, according to three people familiar with the episode, who said the committee stored the object in a safe inside the Hart Senate Office Building.
If the owner of the rock, a man known in UFO circles by the pseudonym “Whistling Mike,” is to be believed, the object has the potential to help explain a large number of UFO sightings and to rewrite the history of aviation. Now Mike is revealing his identity exclusively to PARADIGM as Wichita-area businessman Michael Spicer and laying out his plans to present his findings next month in Colorado.
According to Spicer, he encountered a quiet, dark, roughly triangular, fighter jet-sized craft hovering low to the ground over public land in Kansas one night in the early 2000s. Spicer says he retrieved a piece that came off the craft and spent the intervening decades reverse engineering the craft’s technology and creating a system to detect it.
He tells PARADIGM that he has concluded the craft is U.S.-made and relies on a revolutionary method of propulsion. He declined to detail his conclusions about that method, but he described it as roughly analogous to magnetism. He said the material in the rock was integral not only to the craft’s stealth capabilities but to its power source and means of steering.
Asked about the rock, Spicer said it was a piece of raw material he mined after determining it was one of the inputs of the advanced craft he encountered. He declined to name the material but confirmed that he presented it to committee members and staff during a 2023 meeting in which he briefed them on his findings inside the committee’s secure facility in Hart.
Spicer confirmed that he asked for the rock back in early 2025. A former Marco Rubio aide on the committee, Jon Estridge, who had by then left the Senate, retrieved the rock. He then passed it on to Dillon Guthrie, a former Senate aide to John Kerry, who then returned it to Spicer.
Guthrie, a co-founder of the Disclosure Foundation, did not respond to a request for comment. Estridge confirmed basic facts about the rock and its chain of custody, but declined to comment on Spicer’s claims about an advanced craft.
Hannah McCarthy, a spokeswoman for committee chairman Tom Cotton of Arkansas, did not respond to questions about the episode. Susan Gough, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which investigates UFO reports, acknowledged receipt of questions but did not provide answers.
Asked about “Whistling Mike” during an appearance on the Total Disclosure podcast last November, Tim Phillips, the former acting director of AARO, said a committee chairman referred Spicer to AARO and that the office met with him inside a security facility. But Phillips, without naming Spicer directly, cast doubt on his claims. He suggested that an alleged image of the craft Spicer gave to Congress could have been photoshopped from an aircraft manufacturer’s promotional video. Phillips also suggested that Spicer might have extorted the government with the threat of selling a piece of the craft to a foreign buyer, and said he referred the matter to the FBI.
Spicer, who is seeking a contract from the U.S. government for his UAP detection system, says he takes exception to Phillips’ comments. He said he has faced threats and inducements from Russia and China over his findings. Spicer also said he has been working cooperatively with the FBI, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Spicer also tells PARADIGM that he plans to present some of his findings in a series of presentations for law enforcement officials, investors and policymakers on October 10 in Brush, Colorado.
Spicer, who has been publicly associated with a civilian UAP group in Kansas, is collaborating on the event with security consultant Gene Sticco.
Sticco told PARADIGM he believes that Spicer’s UAP detection system can be sold to private operators of critical infrastructure, such as nuclear power plants and electrical substations, who are concerned about airspace incursions.
The title of the presentation is “Uncontrolled Skies: The Unattributed, Under-Reported, Unresolved Gap Over American Airspace.” Spicer said he will present findings about a series of UAP episodes, including swarms of craft sighted over Colorado and Nebraska in 2019 and 2020, sightings over Langley Air Force Base in December 2023, and the late 2024 incursions over New Jersey. Spicer said he will also present materials from his reverse-engineering efforts.
BIG, IF TRUE
Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri posted additional details on X about an alleged government “luring operation” to attract unidentified aerial phenomena that he previously said he’s been briefed on:
“Our own agencies went back through every past sighting, asked what draws these things in, then recreated those conditions on purpose at a site with prior activity.
ODNI, CIA, FBI and military intelligence were all on site.
Something showed up.”
The FBI declined to comment. The other agencies named did not respond to requests for comment. PARADIGM has additional queries out about these allegations. Stay tuned.
DISCLOSURE WATCH
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence informed members of the White House UAP Science Advisory Council on August 31 that the government has a plan in place should the existence of alien intelligence be confirmed, according to a post by psychologist and advisory council member Jennice Vilhauer.
ICYMI
PARADIGM’s launch piece, “Reality Shock,” a deep dive on the available evidence on UAPs and the issue’s high stakes, published last month to rave reviews.
Author Rod Dreher called it “one of the best things I’ve ever read.” Nick Cook, former aerospace editor for Jane’s Defence Weekly, devoted much of his new essay, “The Age of Anomalies,” to grappling with it.
CLAPPER UNEASY: “Reality Shock” included an exchange with an attorney for ex-director of national intelligence James Clapper seeking clarification of Clapper’s past public comments on Air Force efforts to track UAP. Two weeks after publication, the UAP-focused Liberation Times, citing an unnamed source, reported that Clapper “has grown uncomfortable with the recent surge of attention” around his UAP comments.
PENTAGON PONIES UP FOR UFO RECORDS: After “Reality Shock” broke the news that the Pentagon has consulted David Marler, an expert on triangular UFOs, about unresolved sightings, DefenseScoop reported that AARO has moved to grant Marler’s National Unidentified Flying Object Historic Records Center a contract for a subscription to the center’s archives of UFO sightings.
HUMAN RESOURCES
Andrew Bates, a former White House deputy press secretary and campaign spokesman for Joe Biden, has been dispensing pro bono PR advice behind the scenes to the Sol Foundation, which describes its mission as “preparing humanity” to cope with UAP and “the nonhuman intelligences that likely make and operate them.”
Bates was introduced to the foundation by Democratic Party elder John Podesta, a longtime disclosure advocate. Bates’ involvement is the latest signpost of the Disclosure movement’s growing mainstream cachet.
[Cc: Hunter, Jen Psaki]
AROUND THE WORLD
Following a UAP incident over a nuclear power plant, Japanese lawmakers presented Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara this spring with a request for the establishment of a UFO “command center function” within the Cabinet Secretariat (Source: translation of Japan’s Kyodo News).
Euronews reviewed a document from the European Commission’s defense department stating that the EU’s ability to track UAP is improving.
[Cc: Tim Mak, Tim Röhn]
REALITY SHOCK WATCH
During an appearance on the Dr. Phil Podcast, former Pentagon intelligence official David Grusch again escalated his UFO claims. Grusch said he personally saw video and photos of recovered craft and alien bodies and has been told of aliens communicating telepathically with humans. He also suggested the late Dick Cheney worked on the issue.
The interview was part of a broader effort by Dr. Phil to mentally prepare the nation for the “ontological shock” of alien-related disclosures (Read “Reality Shock” for background on this phenomenon).
[Cc: Oprah, Gayle]
OF NOTE
ODNI issued a memo providing guidance on waiving nondisclosure agreements for government employees and contractors bringing UAP information to AARO or the White House’s PURSUE initiative.
The Department of War released its fifth tranche of UFO files on August 7.
A Gallup poll found that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe the government is withholding information about UFOs, but only a minority believe that some of them are alien spacecraft.
The Sol Foundation said it is launching a study to assist the White House and Congress on safely disclosing UAP secrets.
The Disclosure Foundation released a national preparedness framework for disclosure.
Farmingdale State College on Long Island announced a fall 2026 course on UAP.
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Song of the week
I'm curious if he dove head first into his project after being shot in the forehead while flying a plane...