Jake Barber: New Whistleblower Worked for UFO Retrieval Program

This week Ross Coulthart introduced his new whistleblower, Jake Barber, an Air Force veteran who has come out as a whistleblower claiming to have worked in the secret UFO crash retrieval program. He shared stories of recovering exotic craft from a testing range in the desert, where he and his team were made ill by their exposure to the things they recovered. Barber says he recovered at least two non-human craft. One was egg-shaped, and there’s video of the recovery. The other made a profound psychic connection with him. He also claims the military has “psionics teams” who request UFOs to land and be recovered. And finally, he says that while tasked to recover illegal evidence of UFO recoveries, he and his team were set up, and he’s gone public to protect himself. It’s a wild story, so buckle up!

Introducing Jake Barber:

Journalist Ross Coulthart introduced Jake Barber, an Air Force veteran who has come out as a whistleblower claiming to have worked in the UFO crash retrieval program. Ross says that he began meeting with Congress, including Sen Marco Rubio, in October 2024.
Coulthart: “I can tell you Mr Barber has overwhelming evidence. That evidence was originally provided to Dr Sean Kirkpatrick by a member of his team, including imagery, and for some reason, that imagery and other data disappeared when the new AARO director, the new Pentagon UFO boss, tried to investigate this material, he couldn’t find it anywhere in the Pentagon’s UFO office. It would appear that someone had lost it.”
Ross Coulthart: “[We] checked Barber’s records and confirmed he was an airman in the U.S. Air Force who worked as an aerospace mechanic in the late 1990s. He was also recruited into Air Force Special Operations, known as ‘combat control.’ In addition to reviewing his official documentation, NewsNation spoke with three former special operations soldiers who corroborated Barber’s credentials. He would eventually go on to work in a nonofficial capacity for the Defense Department and the intelligence community.”
Barber: “I left the Air Force and was sent out to California [around 2001] to begin establishing my cover basis as an independent contractor so that I can serve. What was coming down the line next for me was the path which led to the UAP subject.”
Leslie Kean, journalist: “I did check with some sources… who have verified [his] credibility… These are people I really trust and are in a position to know, because they know him. This is a major breakthrough. A firsthand witness with videos and images and sensor data… that he has already provided to AARO… under Sean Kirkpatrick… Then he went again and provided the same information to the new director, Jon Kosloski… He’s done the work that he needs to… He’s on the right path, by going to AARO and also going to Congress, just like David Grusch did.”
Lue Elizondo, former director of AATIP: “This is a tier 1 operator, think of the best of the best, people who’ve been psychologically evaluated on a regular basis, they have top secret security clearances, they take drug tests, polygraph examinations. They are really America’s best of the best. They’re our finest operators in special operations.”
Garry Nolan, Stanford Immunologist: “I spent a lot of time with Jake and members of his team… and they are both professional and extremely well-versed in the subject matter… and believe, as did Lue Elizondo and David Grusch, that whatever it is that’s being observed needs to be talked about openly, and that they’re going to talk about some of the things they’ve been involved with that are part of the stories you’ve heard over the past 40 or 50 years.”

Crash Retrievals on The Range

Barber says he contracted as a helicopter pilot for a team sent to retrieve crashed aircraft at a testing facility in the desert.
Barber: “A lot of the work we did was on what I call ‘the range,’ where the U.S. government and its private partners used to test all kinds of things — weapon systems and resilience to weapon systems of certain craft — and so you see a lot of exciting things… It’s always interesting out there.”
Some of what he retrieved was standard military craft being tested. Some was classified tech.
Barber: “We did recover things that were exotic in nature. We know they were classified craft. We recovered them and took them back to where they go… The majority of what we see and do is explainable and is ordinary and is know by many people and is not classified. But, there is a certain percentage which is extremely sensitive. And that extremely sensitive bit does include what we know is our own manmade advanced technology.”
And he believes some were nonhuman craft.
Barber: “My work has included the recovery of downed UAP of non-human origin… On the rare occasion [that] something of a non-human origin were to interface with the ground, [they] would deploy [our] team.”
Asked if he saw objects that exhibited the five observables:
Barber: “Things come in and out of sight. Things disappear for a moment and reappear. Things seem to move very quickly. Things change color. They change shape… One of those that would raise your eyebrow was more of the transmedium characteristics. Because things would come from the ground, like from the earth, from a ridge, from a mountain, or could pass through.”

The Egg

He discussed two specific craft that he helped recover.
Barber: “I was a helicopter pilot, and I operate with a 150-to-200-foot-long line. So, I got within 150 feet of this object… I was operating at night when I finally came in to pick it up. So, I’m working under night vision goggles at the time, and it was quite clear. I flipped them up, flipped them down and looked at it a couple of different ways… I saw an egg, a white egg… approximately 20 feet… about the size of a large SUV… No seams. It was metallic, pearly white… There was no engine. There was no thermal signature.”
NewsNation shared video of the egg-shaped craft being recovered. They said it was from an anonymous source (meaning not Barber) and it was a very straightforward video shot from the bottom of a helicopter of a large egg-shaped object in a sling dangling from a long line being set down on the ground. If you’re interested in details, ProPixel Video Analysis did a pretty good deep dive, debunking some of the common skeptic accusations, and discussing the most interesting points of the video.
Reddit ShagPileCarpet: “People seem to be missing an important point. Sling loading cargo in a helicopter is difficult, dangerous and expensive. Especially at night on NVG’s. ALSO, the fact it’s being slung means it’s going to get beat up a bit. So it’s both valuable and time critical to move NOW, but ok to potentially damage. There’s a saying in slinging; don’t carry what you can’t drop instantly. This instantly rules out a lot of potential explanations of what the cargo could be. It’s not a balloon (these deflate and fold for transport), propane tank, or other cheap liquid/gas storage vessels, or any inexpensive item, or deliberately built expensive item. Billion dollar satellites are transported securely on pallets on C-17, not dropped on the dirt by a harness.”
Matthew Pines: “Something about the video that I think people didn’t pick up on… It implies to the legacy program that they have somebody inside who has access to such video evidence who is now willing to share it with a journalist. That seems to be the real point of the video. It wasn’t to prove to the average watcher that it’s a true anomalous egg-shaped UAP. The true point of the video was to send a signal to the legacy program: ‘You guys have a problem. You have people on the inside that are willing to share videos like this with us…’ If it’s true, then this is a huge problem for the legacy program. Like an absolute F. They’ve never had anything like this come out, so this is a true five alarm fire from their perspective.”
Coulthart: “What do you think it was? Where would it go?”
- Barber: “I don’t know. I’m security and transportation. I moved it, loaded it on a truck, then it… would be taken to a security facility. But my role stops once I deliver it.”
Coulthart: “Tell me about the moment when you realized that you were involved in a retrieval of non-human technology, alien tech.”
- Barber: ““It became very clear the first time our communication process and procedure was modified. And then just visually, looking at the object on the ground, you could tell that it was extraordinary and anomalous. It was not human…”
Coulthart: “How did you know that egg-shaped object was non-human?”
- Barber: “After seeing all kinds of things in my past, it was clearly something that was ridiculous looking. It’s inconsistent with anything I’d ever seen before. I can also tell you that the reaction by my team, we all knew we were dealing with something extraordinary… I will tell you that during this process, over hte last couple of years, it’s been confirmed to me by ranking members of the UAP Task Force that what we were dealing with that night was, in fact, NHI, and it was not a unique experience.”

Health Impacts

He says he and his team had severe health impacts from this work.
Barber: “We transported [large, sealed containers], what we called mystery boxes all the time. We don’t know what was inside the boxes… We maintained the authority to use lethal force if anyone tried to seize those boxes.”
Barber: “After [one] particular mission, me and everyone on my team got extremely sick, like physically ill, in the hospital. Within weeks after this, I lost every hair on my body… I also lost the skin on my arms, like lopping off within a couple of days, like a severe sunburn. I ended up developing a severe heart murmur that I’d never had before.”
Ross Coulthart introduced Barber to Stanford Immunologist Garry Nolan, who has been studying anomalous health effects of UAP on military personnel for the CIA.
Nolan: “The acute injuries were obviously severe. I mean, the report reads like a bit of a horror show, to be quite honest. To me, the first thing that came to mind was (Barber) was exposed to some kind of radiation. And especially… a number of his coworkers… had similar problems… So you’re not dealing with a one-off who went home and somehow came in contact with something in the house, but you have four or five individuals all at once coming down with the same thing, within a week or so after deployment. That’s more than a coincidence.”
Barber: “If the Air Force… knew that what we were working with that night had any type of radiological signature, there’s a whole set of processes that we’re trained in on how to deal with that from a hazmat perspective and a containment perspective. The fact that none of that was apparent that night tells me they didn’t know what was in the box, and it got turned on or turned off. It leads me to believe… that it may have been something… exotic that activated or still had some fallout.”
Lue Elizondo testified that he’s “seen documentation by the US government for several of these individuals who have sustained injuries as a result of a UAP incident.” One of those was probably:
Airman John Burrows was granted a full medical disability for injuries from the famous 1980 Rendlesham Forest UFO encounter. But that only happened after Senator John McCain personally intervened to get his medical records declassified.
Nolan: “They were classified. They weren’t just withheld. They were classified. Why would you feel that the issue was so important as to not allow for that person’s medical records to be released. What are you hiding? What did happen, sounds either unethical or an administrative oversight, that needs investigation by Congress, because we shouldn’t be putting people like this under such circumstances.”

The “Eightgon”

Chuck: Okay, you said there were two craft. What was the other one?
Barber: “There was another object. One was the egg, the other is what we called an ‘eight-gon.’ The eight-gon was essentially a flying disc with what looked like eight delineated sections when looking down. And I can tell you what it looked like from looking down because that’s primarily how I saw it [as] a helicopter pilot. We did recoveries with the eightgons. There was more than one that made its way to the ground on this particular operation.”
Barber: “This is one of the most profound experiences I’ve ever had in my life… As I get closer to this pick site, I start feeling odd, I start feeling extremely emotional, and the closer I get, the more the emotion starts to overwhelm me. I feel this intense hybrid of sadness and happiness and beauty and song, and it was very disruptive to me because I had a very practical responsibility at the time to operate a helicopter in the mountains at night. And I began wondering what was wrong with me. It was late. Am I just stressed? Am I tired? I don’t know.”
Barber: “As I came over this object for the pick, it was this overwhelming sense of emotion… [I wasn’t having a mental breakdown.] I felt like something connected with me. I felt like something had tuned in to me and my soul and was providing me some sense of guidance on what to do and how profound what I was doing was. It was so overwhelming that I began to cry. And then I’m confused as to why I’m crying at the same time. And then I’m like, do I abort the mission?”
Barber: “So I just did my best to focus on my particular cues when doing this type of work. And I got the load hooked up and I began flying away, and once it was just me and that object, in between the pick and the drop site, was about 20 miles in between, I felt like something was inside of me. I felt like I was possessed by the most beautiful spirit… It was loving. But there was a sense of sadness at the same time… It was a very feminine energy… It felt like the spirit of God, but not in any masculine sense… It was like a frequency that I was connected with. And whatever that force was, since that night, it has stayed with me. And as crazy as this sounds, it’s what’s guiding me now, and it’s what’s providing protection for me… It’s changed my life.”
Barber: “[I’ve never had an experience like that before.] That object, or whatever was controlling that object, was connecting to me through my mind.”

Psionics

Coulthart: “How did the object come to land?”
Barber: “I think it was invited to land by the psionics team.”
Barber: “A psionic person is someone with the predisposition for extratemporal abilities and sensitivities.”
Barber: “In the program, there was certainly a desire to explore the idea that perhaps UAP could be summoned, could be communicated with, could be controlled and could be persuaded to land, all by deploying people with psionic abilities to interface and communicate with the UAP. [I saw that happen.] It looks something like mediation.”
Don Paul Bales, another special forces operator, backed up Barber’s claims: “I’ve had the pleasure of meeting multiple psionic assets. I’ve seen them function. I know that they’re capable of doing what they’re doing… I don’t know if it’s a byproduct, or something they were born with, but there are certain people who are quantifiably, verifiably, capable of this.”

Stolen Hard Drives

Barber: “We were deployed… to recover what we call HVTs, or ‘high-value targets.’ Those high-value targets were Panasonic Toughbooks. The sensitive material that is on these Toughbooks has to do with sensor data, video that was illegally captured during some of these operations, some of which may be incriminating or classified now.”
NewsNation: “Those laptops allegedly contained sensor data that was illegally recorded during UAP recovery missions in violation of top-secret protocols. Barber said the aerospace company contracting him was determined to cover up the laptops’ existence.”
Barber: “We recovered our first two Toughbooks. They were in the high Sierras. We got back to our base location and then went through them and took photographs. Then we discovered that the hard drives were missing.”
Barber: “The next piece of intel that came through led us to a high-altitude lake. And we found the hard drives in a sealed steel container 25ft underwater. So someone’s going through a lot of effort in order to hide these things.”
Barber: “The very next time we went out, things got strange for me. My spidey senses, my intuition, was on high alert because our intel contact changed; the rhythm and style of our intel changed. As we got closer to the day in which we were going to deploy, intelligence kept changing. That raised my concern, but we ended up going anyway. When we got there, the HVTs were gone, and it was clear that shots had been fired… I was concerned that we were being set up… for the one thing that we’ve always offered employers… plausible deniability… that we were perhaps going to be the hidden hand that gets severed.”
Coulthart: “Do you think that the private aerospace company that retained you decided to kill you?”
Barber: “Somebody masquerading as a representative of that company may have had that intention. It was obvious to us at least who the employer was, but they were now in question in my mind as being part of the problem.”
Barber: “I reached out to the director of security for the particular organization… and set up a meeting with them because there were only two truths in my mind: Either they were complicit, or they were compromised. He was nervous. He said it’s in our best interest to move on. If he had any knowledge at all, it was clear he was trying to distance himself from it.”

Skywatcher

Barber: “Our organization is called Skywatcher. We have been recruiting [people] from within the program, and are forming a new team in coordination with government agencies… We are privately funded and are not seeking any form of revenue or funding from the public… The skies are not classified and our consciousness can’t be redacted… We’re not alone… I am absolutely confident that we are capable of generating the type of high quality sensor data and photography and film evidence that everyone is wanting…”
Coulthart: “According to the team, Barber says a UAP psychic dogfight erupted in the sky above them. He believes the craft summoned by the team was warring with a rogue UAP piloted by an unknown entity attempting to intercept Skywatcher’s operation.”
Barber: “We set out to do this operation. Right away the psionic asset went into meditation. He reported that he was engaged and, in fact, piloting a craft, and is bringing it in… Four or five minutes into the operation, he goes, ‘Something’s going on, something’s wrong. Get me out of here.’ And right about that time, our overwatch, Fred, looked up to the sky and saw a disc, a classic lenticular-shape disk.”
Fred Baker, another former special operations veteran who’s joined Skywatcher: “When we had to pull him out of this, that’s when the egg dropped.”
Nolan: “What I did see was an individual, who, in the midst of attempting to call such an object, it was clear that he was in distress at the moment of the supposed interaction. And at that moment, something is seen.”

References:

NewsNation video: Whistleblower reveals UAP retrieval program; object caught on video
NewsNation story: Whistleblower reveals UAP retrieval program; object caught on video
Reddit: Summary of Jake Barber’s UAP Testimony
Coulthart: AARO lost Barber’s UFO evidence
Elizondo: New UFO whistleblower comes forward
Kean: Comments on new UFO whistleblower
Nolan: “I’ve spent a lot of time with Jake and members of his team.”
Barber: “I was rerouted to my cover job as an airplane mechanic.”
Miller: “Barber’s mechanic job was a front for more clandestine work.”
ProPixel Video Analysis: Deeper Dive on the NHI UAP Egg video from News Nation
Reddit: Sling loading at night implies valuable cargo
Pines: “The video is a signal to the legacy program that they have a problem.”
UAP Juan: Egg-shaped UAP in the UFO lore are plenty
Lonnie Zamora incident
Coulthart: Egg shaped UFO at Area 51
Murgia: “It’s a big jump from extraordinary to not human.”

Episode 64, posted on January 23, 2025