by Anisah Muhammad | Contributing Writer | @MuhammadAnisah
U.S. intelligence official Ronald S. Moultrie grew up looking at space sagas and the Apollo program and has been a longtime follower of science fiction. As head of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, he oversees the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG).
He was one of two witnesses who testified during a May 17 hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), traditionally known by the public as “UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects).” The other witness was Scott Bray, deputy director of Navy Intelligence.
“We’re people just like you, just like the American people. We have our inquisitiveness; we have our questions. We want to know what’s out there as much as you want to know what’s out there. We get the questions not just from you, we get it from family members, and we get them night and day, not just in committee hearings,” Mr. Moultrie expressed to members of Congress.
“So finding what’s out there is important, but first and foremost, it’s important for us to do that so that we can ensure that our people, our personnel, our aviators, our bases and installations are safe. And then that curiosity factor is something else that we just want to know because that’s the human race. It’s just that insatiable desire to know,” he added.
Though known as “unidentified” objects or phenomena, the flying crafts U.S. military personnel and people all over the world have been seeing are not “science fiction.” They are fact, they are real and they were taught of by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam in 1932, ten years before they appeared in 1942 during an event known as the “Battle of Los Angeles.”
“Master Fard Muhammad came to us from the Holy City of Mecca in Arabia. He pointed out to me a dreadful looking Plane a half-a-mile by a half-a-mile. It was made after the universe, of spheres: ‘wheels within wheels,’” according to early writings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He referred to the crafts as “The Wheel,” or “The Mother Plane,” which contained 1,500 smaller “wheels,” or “Baby Planes.” This wheel-like object was also prophesized of in the Book of Ezekiel in the Bible.
“There is no known equal of the Mother Plane. The Mother Plane is made for the purpose of destroying the present world. She has no equal,” the Hon. Elijah Muhammad wrote in his book “The Fall of America” published in 1973.
“She is capable of staying away from you who plan the destruction of her,” he said of the Great Wheel. “She is capable of confusing you who would try to reach her with your means of destruction.”
Threats to national security
The hearing was held by the House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee. Chairman André Carson (D-Ind.) oversaw the hearing. The last public hearing on the subject was held over 50 years ago in the late 1960s.
“This hearing and oversight work has a simple idea at its core. Unidentified Aerial Phenomena are a potential national security threat, and they need to be treated that way. For too long the stigma associated with UAPs has gotten in the way of good intelligence analysis. Pilots avoided reporting or were laughed at when they did. It’s true. But they are real, they need to be investigated and many threats they pose need to be mitigated,” Mr. Carson said in his opening remarks.
Discussion swirled around the importance of destigmatizing UAP reports by military personnel and adopting a standardized data-collection process.
Conversation surrounding UAP within the government has increased in recent years. In August 2020, the UAP Task Force was established within the U.S. Navy due to “incursions” that represented “serious hazards to safety of flight.” After working to standardize reporting and engaging with Naval aviators, “Navy and Air Force crews now have step-by-step procedures for reporting on UAP on their kneeboard in the cockpit and in their post-flight debrief procedures,” Mr. Bray said.
“The message is now clear, if you see something, you need to report it. And the message has been received,” he stated.
The Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG) was created to replace the UAP Task Force due to an amendment made in the defense spending bill for 2022.
Political activist and disclosure advocate Stephen Bassett expressed to The Final Call that the hearing was “safe,” “normal” and went as expected.
“It’s what the government should have been doing in the public arena for decades, going back to the ‘60s and ‘50s, even, but they didn’t. They decided to embargo this issue from the American people,” he said.
He stated that what’s new is that the hearing was held and that it was conducted appropriately and professionally.
Nation of Islam Student Minister Ilia Rashad Muhammad wasn’t surprised at the “extremely limited” information shared with the public. He described to The Final Call that the hearing was a “limited hangout,” or an intelligence operation where the government acknowledges portions of the truth in public but withholds vital facts, in an attempt to “mislead the public into believing whatever they wanted them to believe.”
The hearing occurred almost exactly one year after CBS’ “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker interviewed current and former government and military personnel on their experiences.
“Imagine a technology that can fly at 13,000 miles per hour, that can evade radar, that can fly through air, water and possibly space, that has no sign of propulsion, no wings, no control surfaces and yet can still defy the natural effects of earth’s gravity,” former U.S. senior intelligence officer Luis Elizondo said at the time.
In June 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a nine-page preliminary assessment on UAP based on 144 U.S. government-reported incidents that occurred between 2004 and 2021. The report and explanations it provided were brought up during the hearing. Possible explanations include: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, classified programs by U.S. entities, technology from an adversary of the U.S. government and “other.”
“Since the release of that preliminary report, UAP Task Force database has now grown to contain approximately 400 reports,” Mr. Bray said.
The truth about ‘UAP’
Through the line of questioning and through witness testimonies, one thing was clear: no one in the room had an explanation for the phenomena. If they did, it was kept silent.
Mr. Moultrie expressed that they were “open to all hypotheses” and “to any conclusions that we may encounter.”
Mr. Bray showed footage of an aircraft operating in a U.S. Navy training range that had “observed (a) spherical object in that area.”
“It looks reflective in this video, somewhat reflective, and it quickly passes by the cockpit of the aircraft,” he described. But he admitted, “I do not have an explanation for what this specific object is.” He also admitted, “We’re not aware of any adversary that can move an object without discernible means of propulsion.” He could say, for certainty, that “a number of these are physical objects.”
Though the witnesses could not or did not explain certain things about the flying crafts, the U.S. government may not be as “unaware” of the crafts as it seems. In 1942 after the “Battle of Los Angeles,” the FBI arrested the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and questioned him on a drawing of The Wheel.
“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s home was also raided, and the Teachings that Master Fard Muhammad had left with him were taken from the home and the Temple. Later, he was questioned by the FBI on the drawing of The Wheel, and his writing about it, that they had taken from the Temple; and he explained to the government of the United States and to the FBI: one, its aim and purpose; two, who made it; and three, why it is now above America,” the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, top student of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, said in Part 52 of his 2013 lecture series “The Time and What Must be Done.”
Minister Farrakhan recalled that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad referred to The Wheel as a “masterpiece of mechanics and engineering” and “the greatest military weapon ever developed in the annals of the history of Allah (God) and man in this universe.”
“He said that the Vision of this Wheel was seen thousands of years before it came into being, or became a reality. He said that this weapon was made for the purpose of destroying this present world in The Final Battle with the forces of evil that had ruled our present world,” Minister Farrakhan stated.
He continued further: “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that this Great Wheel was made for military purposes, for it was to engage in The Great ‘Battle in the Sky’ that would end this world and usher in that world that the prophets exclaimed would come at the end of the 6,000-year rule of the enemy of Allah (God) and the enemy of the Aboriginal People of the Earth.”
In Muhammad Speaks newspaper, June 8, 1973, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote an article titled “Ezekiel’s Wheel: The Battle in the Sky,” which stated in part: “I am so happy that Allah (God) has prepared this unmatchable weapon to save us, the Black People [of America]!”
Min. Farrakhan himself has experienced the reality of The Wheel. Over the years, he has recounted his 1985 more-than-a-vision experience and has described his personal connection to The Wheel. “I represent the Most High God who sits in that Wheel that Ezekiel saw, a Wheel in the middle of a Wheel, and I visited that Wheel. He brought me to that Wheel like Allah brought Muhammad in a night vision to the inner sanctum of Himself,” Min. Farrakhan said.
After that experience, he went before the world in a press conference at the National Press Club to share his encounter.
In an October 2021 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Air Force veterans revealed their fears and anxieties about UAP. Dr. Robert Jacobs, former first lieutenant in the United States Air Force, detailed how on Sept. 14, 1964, he saw an object shaped like a flying saucer fire four beams of light at a test missile traveling at 8,000 mph. Former Air Force Capt. Robert Salas bore witness of events that happened March 1967 at an underground launch control facility at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.
The event was brought up in the hearing by Rep. Michael Gallagher (R-Wisc.). He questioned, “It’s also been reported that there have been UAP observed and interacting with and flying over sensitive military facilities, particularly, and not just ranges, but some facilities housing our strategic nuclear forces. One such incident allegedly occurred at Malmstrom Air Force Base in which 10 of our nuclear ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) were rendered inoperable. At the same time, a glowing red orb was observed overhead. I’m not commenting on the accuracy of this. I’m simply asking you whether you’re aware of it and whether you have any comment on the accuracy of that report.”
Mr. Bray and Mr. Moultrie responded that they did not see official data, that they did not look at the incident and that the incident was not brought to their attention officially.
Mr. Gallagher also asked the witnesses about “a document that appeared around 2019 sometimes called the Admiral Wilson Memo or EW Notes memo.” The unverified document, dated Oct. 16, 2002, details an alleged meeting between astrophysicist Dr. Eric Davis and then Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson, who was the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. It outlines “a labyrinth of secret government programs hidden from top officials and congressional oversight committees about crashed UFO materials and efforts to reengineer the technology,” according to Politico.
The witnesses were not aware of the document. The memo was entered into official record without objection.
Mr. Bassett described that line of questioning as significant and said it set the stage for future hearings. “The nuclear weapons tampering witnesses that were present when our missiles were shut off in the presence of these vehicles will be the centerpiece,” he said.
A closed, classified briefing was held after the open hearing. Based on questions and responses in the open hearing, topics in the closed session included allies and adversaries who have reported on the flying crafts, underwater sensors that detect submerged UAPs and if encounters with the crafts have altered the development of offensive, defensive or sensor capabilities.
Student Min. Ilia Muhammad, author of the book “UFOs And The Nation Of Islam: The Source, Proof, And Reality Of The Wheels,” expressed that if the government was truly concerned about getting answers, they would invite members of the Nation of Islam who have the answers.
“Minister Farrakhan has been challenging and threatening the government and Congress to bring him before Congress to have a showdown to see whether or not what Master Fard Muhammad revealed to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is right and exact,” he said. “And despite all of our efforts to be brought before Congress and these public forums, it’s very telling that we can’t even get Congress to subpoena us … to discuss matters that we are experts in.”
Towards the end of the open hearing, Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Il) questioned about “legal consequences” for people in groups involved in the UAP field, examples of people being held accountable for disinformation and the deterrent to keep people from engaging in the field. Mr. Moultrie hinted at future conversations with Congress “to say what should be the legal ramifications that we could use to potentially hold individuals accountable, whether it be citizens or information that might be injected into our media by other forces or other countries.”
Student Min. Ilia Muhammad said some may look at those words as an “opportunity to continue censoring the Nation of Islam … to keep the public from knowing what we have to say.”
“When White folks talk about consequences, when American powers talk about consequences for misleading, that’s never been based on truth. That’s always been an opportunity to try to censor and silence those who actually have truth,” he said. “The other thing related to that is that if there are to be consequences for those giving false or misleading hoaxes and information about UFOs, then the U.S. government would have to face these consequences first and foremost.”
Final Call staff contributed to this report.
