Project Preserve Destiny: NSA secret program to communicate with aliens
Above Black is an interesting book written by former Air Force Sgt Dan Sherman. He claims that his job working as an Electronic Intelligence Specialist for NSA black projects, he was secretly part of Project Preserve Destiny, a long-term project involving alien abductions and genetic manipulation to create humans capable of communicating with the aliens after an expected future disaster that will wipe out all electromagnetic communications.
- Sherman: “This is an authentic first level account of the existence of aliens. It is a story of my personal experiences as an intuitive communicator with the United States Air Force (USAF), while working for the National Security Agency (NSA)”
- Sherman: “My regular Air Force job was as an Electronic Intelligence Specialist… People in this career field are called “ELINT” specialists, or “ELINT’ers.” Some of what I did as an ELINT’er isn’t any more classified than the secret level, or below. However, some of the things I worked on would be considered in the “above top secret” realm. It is in this realm that I start treading on thin ice.”
- Sherman: “As far as I’m concerned, the information I know relating to Project Preserve Destiny (PPD) specifically, has absolutely no impact on national security. Perhaps if they had been more forthcoming with the truth and made me aware of a greater goal that did impact national security, I wouldn’t be coming forward today. But they didn’t, so here we are.”
Project Preserve Destiny
- Captain White: “As you know, you’ve been sent here to go through [an ELINT] course… but you will also be going through another school while you’re here… I’ve been in the position of telling people this a few times now, and there’s never been a way to put it lightly… Sergeant Sherman, in the summer of 1960 your mother was visited by what the world commonly refers to as aliens… Random tests were being conducted on the general populace at the time to determine compatibility… In a nutshell, you’ve been given an interesting ability through what we call genetic management.”
- White: “In 1947, the US government made contact with an alien species. Today, we commonly refer to them as ‘greys’. Because of this contact, we have learned many things. Some of the things we learned were good, and some not-so-good. And it’s one of those not-so-good things that has ultimately brought you here, Sergeant Sherman… All that I’ve been told is that your abilities will be needed in the future when all electromagnetic communications will be rendered useless.”
- White: “Project Preserve Destiny started in 1960… It was a genetic management project with the sole purpose of cultivating human offspring so that they would have the ability to communicate with the greys.”
- White: “I don’t know the answer. I can only venture to guess that we only have the ability to communicate with them now through traditional electromagnetic means. I’m not sure.”
- White: “Your mother was initially abducted in 1960 for tests, then again in 1963 for the actual genetic procedure while you were in the womb… Everyone I’ve had to tell this to has had the same concern at some point in the conversation. Rest assured, you are 100% human. Your conception was as normal as any other person’s.”
- White: “Because intcomm abilities really cannot be fully utilized, biologically, until the subject is approximately 25 years old or older, we have just recently begun the recruiting and training phase of PPD. Because the selection process in 1960 was based on carefully calculated statistical demographics, they were able to accurately predict that a certain percentage of those offspring would choose the military as a career.”
The Security Onion
- White: “You are already aware of the alien project. There are other programs that you’ll become involved with that serve as ‘cover’ or ‘black’ missions. The cover missions are designed to do just that: cover the existence of the alien program.”
- Sherman: “Why hide the alien program from the public to begin with?”
- White: “My guess is that… it’s not so much the specific knowledge that aliens exist that is the problem, it’s more like the information that we have gained from communicating with them that would create havoc if released.”
- White: “PPD had its beginnings in 1960. The personnel in charge of the project, at the time, tried to figure out a better way to keep the program from the eyes of the increasingly aware public. Brute force and manipulation was intimidating but not an effective long term solution. In order to protect any future information leaks they instituted what they called the ‘onion’ effect…”
- White: “On the outside of the military onion, the side everyone can see, is the ‘unclassified’ layer… [The next layer is] ‘For Official Use Only…’ If several FOUO bits of information were to be pieced together… that could be as damaging as the release of a higher level of classified information. The next layer… is ‘Secret…’ The unauthorized release of Secret information and above has the potential of causing serious damage to national security. The next layer is ‘Top Secret…’ Within the TS category there are code words that compartmentalize the release of information even further. These code words are used to protect many missions, including the ones referred to as black missions. [The next layer] Black missions… are what the alien projects are effectively hidden behind. The existence of black missions is only known by a handful of Congressmen and the President. These black missions are the last line of defense for the alien projects.”
- White: “The center of the onion always contains the alien project, which we call Level 1 or “grey” missions… Not even the commander of a site is normally aware of the alien project residing beneath his nose… Wherever an alien project is located there must be a black mission to cover its existence from prying eyes… If a nosy Congressman starts looking where he has no need-to-know, he can be briefed on the black mission, be made to feel important and thereby squelching any further digging. It’s an extremely effective method of hiding alien missions and is the reason they have been hidden so effectively for so long.”
PPD School
- White: “You will be going through a highly specialized school while you are here. This school is designed to teach you how to recognize and uncover your IC abilities. You will see another student during your classroom time as there are two of you here at present. Neither of you may speak to one another. Your transportation to and from the school will be provided. You’ll meet a van outside your hotel after your ELINT classes break for the day. You will be expected to be down at the van exactly 45 minutes from the time you arrive back to your room from your ELINT class.”
- White: “When you get down here, come straight to the table and take two of these pills using this water… They are to facilitate your abilities, they’re quite harmless… then sit down at your workstation, put on these headphones and await further instructions from your instructor…”
- Sherman: “Sometimes I would forget to take it… So it wasn’t like it was take pill, could do it, didn’t take pill, couldn’t do it.”
- Sherman: “School for PPD… consisted of listening to one tone and watching a box on my screen that had a perfect sinewave running through it… There were ten boxes like this one. I was told to listen to the tone and try to repeat it by mentally humming it—not verbally, only mentally. At the same time, I was to watch my first box to look for movement of the sinewave. The goal was to see the sinewave flatten completely… Other than the headphones… I had no connection to the computer on which I was working. I had a hard time believing I was going to be able to manipulate the sinewave with only my mind.”
- Sherman: The process was slow, arduous and extremely boring. It wasn’t until my third day that I saw progress. Imagine, mentally humming a note for three to four hours straight, for three days! It was borderline torture. When I finally saw progress I nearly shot out of my seat and danced around the room. I was sitting there looking at my screen as usual, feeling defeat as I had been for the past two days when something “clicked” in my mind… Just at that moment my sinewave flickered.
- Sherman: My instructor started my next lesson off by playing another tone for me to mentally hum. It was a different tone. I could tell because I had become so familiar with the first tone that I started to dream about it… After I had flattened my second line, the third one came much more easily. [Soon,] I had flattened all ten lines… with the help of 10 different tones.
- Sherman: The next big challenge; flattening two lines at one time… This exercise proved extremely difficult. It took me a full week… By the time I was able to do this, my will to continue with PPD school had almost been broken once again… [but,] by the end of my third week I had flattened all ten lines simultaneously
- Sherman: The goal during my fourth week was to practice and master flattening lines in different combinations at once. By this time I could “feel” movement in the boxes… The audio tones, so crucial in the early stages of my development, had ceased. The tones were only used so that my human mind could relate to something tangible to lead me to uncover what my mind could do naturally once I had discovered and practiced it.
- Sherman: I began to assign meaning to the flattening of lines during my fifth week. In my interface box a string of numbers would scroll through and I would see, as well as sense, my sinewave boxes light up corresponding to each number…”
- Sherman: “During the… sixth week we moved on to concepts… I was shown some pictures and sinewave boxes would simply begin lighting up in quick sequences with each at a different degree of flattening… That flattening sequence represented the picture shown at the time. In one day, we went from still pictures to video with my mind grasping the line flattening combinations as quickly as they came.
- Sherman: The videos I was watching had no audio. They were random recordings of people walking down the street, nature, people working, military aircraft flying (helicopters and fixed wing). There was an overwhelming amount of military images which I took as a sign I would be reporting primarily military oriented comms.
- Sherman: “I think it was their way of testing my ability to convey different types of messages… It could have been… they were testing my ability to describe what was going on in a military type of functioning, or the mechanical… Did I describe, was it white, or would I describe the length of it, or what would I actually describe when given that message? …I'm sure everybody else who was… an IC… was getting the same types of things, so that we can see who is better at what.”
- Sherman: The last thing I learned was how to open a window to document the results of my future communications (referred to as “comms”). In order to document the comm I would be receiving from my alien contact I had to open an interface window in the background of my computer screen. The day I was to learn this I came to school to find a mouse set up near my computer terminal. In order to open the window, I had to click the far right button of my mouse and press the F10 key while the arrow was resting on the background screen of the computer. A dialogue box would appear with several choices. My instructor went on to say that at each place I would be stationed I would have the same PPD code name designated in the computer system. My code name would be “Staunch-118.” After bringing up the dialogue box, I would highlight Staunch-118 in the menu and type in my password. My password would be given to me at each base I reported to separately. A separate window appeared, with a blank screen. I was told that I would never see anything contained within this screen, not even what I was typing. This was for security purposes, in case someone were to see what I was typing by accident.
PPD Base 1: Spock
- Captain Stanley: “As you probably know by now… you are here to do more than one job… You are the first IC that I have ever worked with… You and the other IC capable personnel represent the culmination of 30 some years of ‘wait-and-see…’ You are part of the first wave of what will be a small but steady stream of IC capable and trained personnel. For most of us this is all new territory we’re charting so if it seems like something isn’t as organized as you would expect it’s because we’re flying blind sometimes.”
- Sherman: “I had just …started to power up my equipment when I intuitively received the message, ‘prepare for information string…’ I audibly said ‘wait,’ and also [instinctively] sent back a comm saying ‘wait.’ They seemed to have listened since I didn’t receive anything until my computer was up. Waiting for my computer to boot was the absolute longest 3 minutes of my entire life.”
- Sherman: “My comms were very uneventful and mundane. I had no idea the meaning of what I was typing… A comm would begin with… the same sequence of numbers that differentiated very little… There would be timed pauses between each phrase or expression… Another string of numbers would usually follow… There was no rhyme or reason to the comms most of the time. It became a very boring task to receive these comms and type them in this blank window. It certainly wasn’t very challenging and I lost all interest in it simply because it was only a one way communication for all intents and purposes.”
- Sherman: “I took the liberty of naming the grey contact I communicated with “Spock… because I perceived a great deal of logical structure in his communications. It felt a bit sad to come up with such a deliciously ironic name as Spock and have no opportunity to share the humor of it with anyone.”
- Sherman: “About three months before I was to leave [this base]… I suddenly ‘tripped’ and stepped up in my comm ‘level…’ Spock immediately picked up on my accidental mental leap and ‘met me’ on this other level. I was startled because I didn’t even know this other level existed prior. Spock immediately asked if I had intentionally changed planes. I answered ‘no’ and told him that I didn’t even know this ‘plane’ existed… Spock immediately signed off and I was left wondering what had just happened. I knew from Spock’s response that this event was totally unexpected.
- Sherman: “I have no choice but to write the contents of the comms with my alien contacts in a conversational format, like two humans talking. The actual comms were much more rich in texture and informational in content but in ways I am unable to convey to the reader on paper… I use the word “plane” in this explanation because I can’t think of another alternative to how Spock referred to it. If Spock and I had been communicating vocally, I would have asked what was meant by that “word.” When you intuitively communicate, though, the rules are not the same. You understand things that otherwise make no sense in linguistic terms.”
- Sherman: “Although I had been attempting to [break through again] at the close of every comm with Spock, I was finally successful [two months later]. Spock immediately picked up on what I had just done. Again, he asked if this was something I had done intentionally. This time I answered ‘Yes.’ Spock replied that it was an interesting turn of events… ‘‘There is no harm in communicating on this plane,’ he said nonchalantly… ‘How come you are comm’ing so candidly on this plane and you don’t during our normal comms?’ I asked. ‘You have never given me reason,’ he replied.”
- Sherman: My impression of Spock was one of being official, with no room for emotion. Even as we now communicated on this other plane, I still felt a sense of rigidity… “Do you have feelings like humans?” I asked bluntly. “We are quite alike in our emotional makeup… We react to our surroundings, just as you do, but are much less impacted by what we sense. In the absence of markedly increased stimuli, emotion is not readily useful.”
- Sherman: “[I asked] ‘Why did you think it was unintentional when I first comm’ed with you on this plane?’ [He replied] ‘Until now, we thought it impossible for a water-human to sustain communication on this plane. But we are continually being surprised by other IC’s abilities as well.’”
- Sherman: “Water-human” is the closest I can come to an accurate translation of how Spock referred to humans. Other alternatives would be perhaps “water-vessel” or “water-entity.”
- Sherman: “Am I supposed to report our comms while on this other plane?” I asked. To my surprise Spock said, “No, that is not necessary. Our communications are only being monitored through your reports so as to calculate an accuracy factor. Your communicating on this plane was never anticipated and therefore will never be known unless you discuss it with your chain of command.”
- Sherman: “I was thinking… I sensed an underlying current of scientific interest… when Spock broke through my thoughts and said ‘comms will cease’ and signed off. I never communicated with Spock again, but my communications took on a whole new life at PPD Base #2.”
PPD Base 2: Bones
- Sherman: “The first comm I received at PPD Base #2… I realized that I was not comm’ing with the same grey contact as I was before. It seemed Spock had been replaced… [by a new] grey contact I called ‘Bones.’ I could sense the change from the texture of the message… Spock was definitely more rigid, with his comms being more punctuated and tighter around the edges. Bones appeared to be more ‘human’ than Spock, in that his emotions were more readily apparent.”
- Sherman: “I went to the other plane as soon as he was finished with the preamble… “I was able to find this plane while comm’ing with my previous PPD contact… but I was unable to fully explore communicating on this plane… because I moved shortly thereafter. There was so much I wanted to ask him. I thought I could ask you, now that you are my contact. Would that be okay?” I asked. “We have no preferences regarding communicating on this level… There is no harm in this communication,” he said, responding the same way Spock had months earlier.”
- Sherman: Over the course of 10 months at PPD Base #2, I received over 75 comms from Bones… I don’t profess to have learned a great deal of earth shattering revelations… I was able to glean some information… but I didn’t learn as much as I would have liked.
- Biology: “Do you eliminate waste like we do?” I could swear that if they were capable of laughter, I could “hear” it in the background. “Yes… we have that need as well, but not in the same manner.”
- Sex: I had asked at one time if they had two sexes like we do. The answer was yes. It seems they procreate as well, but not in the same manner. I didn’t go any further in my questioning, and he didn’t volunteer any more information.
- Lifespan: Their life span is similar to ours but I was not able to understand the time measurements he was using. I learned that time, as we know it, does not have the same meaning for them. They still age as we do, but they are not as bound by the physics of time as we currently are.
- Travel: When he answered this question, I didn’t understand half of what he was telling me and couldn’t translate it if I did. What little I got from the conversation was that they somehow use time and electromagnetic energy as a source of propulsion… Their means of travel across vast distances is heavily dependent on the manipulation of time but not as we perceive it.
- Time Travel: I asked if they can travel through time… He said you can't really go back and forward in time because time is a relative thing. So… if you're going back, then what are you coming back from? There's no solid moment in time that you can measure from to go back and forth from. But he said you can go around time. And I didn't really understand.”
- Other Species: According to Bones, there is a vast number of other “intelligences” in the Universe. I got the feeling when I asked this that he felt it was a dumb question.
- Souls: He said that any entity that realizes its own existence has intellect and therefore must have a soul. We have been created from the same oneness (my interpretation), and out of that creation came intellect and non-intellect.
- Past Contacts: He said they have been visiting us for a very long time. I really didn’t understand the terms he was using for time when describing to me how long they’ve been here, but I remember thinking it must have been a long time. He said they had visited cultures from time to time throughout our history… They revealed themselves on many occasions in the past and even contributed to certain societies and their technologies… None of the direct contacts they’ve initiated turned out well.
- Sun: He didn’t mention their energy source but did speak about our energy sources. He told me that our sun was very unique and that someday… we could utilize the same methods they use but on a smaller scale… They respected our sun more than you would think… more of a reverence feeling… talking about how we really don't understand the value of our sun and that we will at some point eventually understand.
Abductions and Getting Out
- Sherman: “Towards the end of my stay with this project, I started to receive stuff that indicated that it was abductions… These comms would begin like all other comms… but there would be other items in the comm including such things as ‘potentiality for recall’, ‘residual pain level’, ‘nerve response’, ‘body normalization’ and other more obscure things I can’t recall because they made no sense… The ‘subject’ field would always contain an 11 digit number and the field after that was obviously the date of the abduction… The date would vary between one to three days prior to the date of the report… The last field was obviously the latitude and longitude of the abduction.”
- Sherman: “I started to question why this was happening. I was tired of being supposedly so important because of my abilities, yet treated like an underling with no need-to-know. I think I would not have begun to feel this way if I had somehow been made a part of the whole process—if I would have been made aware of the reasons for everything. Why the abduction data? Why had everything been passed in code, mostly, until now? …And that's where I started to feel like an accessory to the crime, so to speak.”
- Sherman: “I sent an e-mail message to my PPD commander… asked if there was any way I could receive an early out discharge. Within the hour I had received an e-mail back, summarily denying my request… saying that since I had been officially indoctrinated into PPD, it would be impossible for me to get out, even when my current enlistment came to an end.”
- Sherman: “At the time, the don't ask, don't tell policy was in place and I was bisexual… I wrote a letter to… the commander that was not in charge of me from the PPD perspective… It was just my regular chain of command… The chain of command was crucial there, because if… PPD had their way, and they had final say on that, then I would not have gotten out. They would have just tossed the letter. But I purposely went through another chain of command who did not have the option of doing something like that.”
- Sherman: “Upon turning in the paperwork that eventually led to my discharge, I immediately stopped receiving comms and I was never contacted by anyone in the PPD chain of command again.”
- Michels: “Have you tried to develop your communications and speak to them after leaving?”
- Sherman: “Oh I’ve tried… Nothing… It’s like it was closed off…”
References
- Dan Sherman: Above Black
- Jesse Michels: “The NSA Hired Me To Speak To Aliens!” -Sergeant Dan Sherman
- L’Espresso: Not just tariffs for Trump: in Washington, the new mystery is called "Project Preserve Destiny."
Episode 78, posted on