"CARET" Drone Incident

On May 10th, 2007, a user by the name of "Chad" sent a series of photos to the Coast to Coast AM website, claiming that he had seen the aircraft in the photos hovering in the area where he and his wife had gone for a walk. At the time, "Chad" declined to state his location but asked listeners of the show to help him "understand" what the craft was. After the website posted the photos, Chad wrote the website again, claiming that he had now seen the craft at least a half dozen times since his initial contact with C2C, that the craft was "easy to photograph" and that his neighbors had all seen it as well. He said that it "moved like an insect" and wouldn't make much noise except a slight "crackling" sound as it flew, comparing it to electrical wiring near a substation. He also claimed that the craft seemed to give him headaches and that his wife was feeling more fatigued than normal (though he admitted she was pregnant and that her fatigue was normal, according to her doctor). The craft in the photos is shown to have a circular, ringed center with three spiked "arms" protruding from it. Also seen on the bottom of the craft is unidentified lettering and seemingly alien "glyphs".^[4][1]

Two days later, on May 12th, 2007, MUFON posted a report from "Deborah McKinley" who claimed to be from San Jose, California. McKinley claimed that she and her husband were on a weekend vacation in Lake Tahoe, Nevada when she saw the craft floating outside while she was getting her sweater from their car. McKinley described the movements of the craft as "exact" and said it made no noise except for a small "vibrating" noise. They managed to take a couple photos of it, and then said they never saw it again after it left the area.^[1]

Eight days later, on May 20th, 2007, a Craigslist user named "Rajinder Satyanarayana" (AKA "Rajman1977") posted a series of six pictures showing a similar craft above what he claimed to be Capitola, California. He claimed to be visiting his fiancé's parents at the time the photos were taken and was sitting on their back porch. He claimed the craft traveled back over to the front of the house and that he ran out to the front and grabbed some pictures of it.

The post was deleted afterward, so "Raj" put the photos on Flickr, where they stayed for a time before they were also deleted. Unlike the Tahoe sightings, Rajman's craft were much the same as Chad's and had the same look and lettering on them.^[1]

On June 6th, 2007, a woman identified as "Jenna L." posted three photos of a similar craft at the UFO Casebook website on behalf of a man named "Stephen" who claimed to have seen the craft in the air while working in Big Basin in California.

Unlike the previous three sightings, the craft "Stephen" photographed was more intricate, with metal "hair" protruding from both the top and bottom of the craft as well as multiple rings on its arms, which there were a lot more of.^[1]

Five days later, on June 11th, 2007, a person named "Ty" claimed to have been bicycling in the same area Stephen was the day before his sighting and also saw the same craft Stephen did. He sent 12 photos to UFOlogist, Linda Moulton Howe, who posted the photos on her Earthfiles website. The craft was similar to Stephen's craft.^[1]

On June 26th, 2007, a website run by a person calling himself "Isaac" published an open letter, claiming to "explain" the recent sightings. He claimed to have worked in a secret facility in Palo Alto, California (dubbed "Palo Alto CARET Laboratory" or "PACL" for short) which he said created the craft seen in the recent photos.

"CARET" was an acronym which supposedly stood for "Commercial Application Research for Extraterrestrial Technology", and was (or still is), according to Isaac, a secret reverse engineering project of alien technology.

Aside from this, "Isaac" made other claims in the letter, saying that the craft were "suddenly visible" due to their "cloaking" abilities going haywire. He also included several "documents" he claimed to have scanned while he worked for the project and had smuggled out of the lab.

The documents in question contained several photographs of alleged top secret alien hardware he had worked with during his time at CARET. The documents also contained a "language primer" for the unidentified lettering seen on the arms of the craft in the Rajman and Chad photos.^[1]

Four days after the Tahoe photos were released, Steve Reichmuth from the Northern California branch of MUFON was dispatched to look into the Tahoe and "Chad" photographs after a member from the MUFON Los Angeles mailing list sent out the story to the organization.

Reichmuth concluded that the photos were computer-generated hoaxes based upon analysis by VFX artists Steve Neil (who had done work for The History Channel) and Marc D'Antonio (who owns a Connecticut VFX business). The latter said that the photos "were not even GOOD fakes", and that the "hoaxer" in question used radiosity in the creation of the photos, and that rendering artifacts were left behind due to the perceived lack of use of settings prior to rendering. D'Antonio criticized Coast to Coast AM for "falling for it" and called "Chad" a "fabricator". It was also determined that the "Chad" photos had the name "McKinley" in the image text, which was the same name used by the Tahoe eyewitness.^[5]

UFOlogist and journalist Linda Moulton Howe, who had been posting updates about the photos (mostly without commentary or editorializing) on her "Earthfiles" website, claimed to "be in contact" with the original eyewitnesses and also claimed to know their real names, but never divulged them.^[1]

She also claimed that a report came in from Birmingham, Alabama from an "Alabama park ranger" who had witnessed a similar craft and shared the ranger's photo exclusively on her website.

She also claimed to have gotten in contact with "Isaac", following the release of his documents to clarify parts of his story as it was heavily scrutinized by the UFO community online.^[6][7][8]

Despite her diligence, Howe was criticized for being careless in her handling of the "evidence" she was given. British visual effects artist Kris Avery recreated the "Stephen" drone using LightWave and posted it on YouTube to show that the drones could be CG composites. Howe, believing the video Avery created was authentic (even though Avery had said in the description that it was a CG creation), posted the video and proclaimed that it was real to all of her readers.

When Avery told Howe that it was a CG proof-of-concept, Howe never retracted her story. When word got out that the craft in the video wasn't genuine, Avery ended up getting threatened by her readers who accused him of being "a CIA-trained disinformation agent".^[8]

Dr. Aaron Sakulich of The Iron Skeptic dismissed the object in the "Chad" photos as a "CGI object" and said that the objects were "too sharp" in relation to their backgrounds which were slightly blurred.

He also notes that it's suspicious that nearly every main witness sent their photos or documents to questionable or sensationalist outlets like UFO Casebook or Coast to Coast AM, instead of going to MUFON or getting them analyzed by experts. Furthermore, Sakulich takes issue with the name of Isaac's secret project:^[9]

"CARET stands for Commercial Applications Research for Extraterrestrial Technology. The government has a top secret program involving the greatest secret of all human history, and they use the word 'Extraterrestrial' in the name of it?

Baloney. The government gives only ridiculous names to things to ensure no one can guess what they’re about. Project Blue Book wasn’t called Project Maybe We Saw Some UFOs, and the Manhattan Project wasn’t called the We’re Going to Blast You to Smithereens with Atom Power! Project.

Give me a break.

Commercial Applications Research for Extraterrestrial Technology is the sort of name you'd see in science fiction. Particularly bad science fiction."

In April of 2008, MUFON's International Director John Carrion wrote a retrospective on the incident and sightings, and called the drone photos "the clearest and most detailed UFO photographs since Gulf Breeze".

Despite the praise, he also pointed out that "non-repudiation has not been established" for any of the witnesses involved, expressing dismay that all five of the photo witnesses chose to remain almost completely anonymous except to those on UFO message boards and forums and people like Linda Moulton Howe.

He added that "You can argue the authenticity of a photograph or the science of a technology (human or not) until you are blue in the face, but with a virtual witness as the source, you may as well just debate science fiction."^[1]

Almost a year after the first photos were submitted by "Chad", a private investigator by the name of Tommy "T.K." Davis was hired by a group of people at the internet's Open Minds Forum to find "Rajman1977", telling him "Find the power pole in the photo... and you’ll find the house. And Raji."^[10][11]

Soon after, the group who hired Davis set up their own independent website called "Drone Research Team" (or "DRT" for short).

On December 9th, 2008, users on the DRT forums managed to locate the power pole in the "Rajman1977" photos,^[12] leading to an official announcement from the website in January of the following year.^[13] It was noted that the pole's location was not in Capitola as "Rajinder" had claimed and, instead, was located 30 miles north in the city of Campbell, California.

From there, the DRT surmised that Rajinder might live in the nearby apartment complex adjacent to the pole. This hypothesis was based solely upon the sequence of pictures he took and the route it followed. From there, the DRT proceeded to canvas the surrounding area with flyers to get more tips.

The forums on the website also managed to find the locations of the "Chad" and "Stephen" photos. The "Chad" location was not in "Bakersfield" as "Chad" claimed but rather the parking lot for The Summit House, a roadside restaurant off Highway 17 between Capitola and Campbell.

The "Stephen" photos were found to be taken in the Saratoga mountainside off Highway 9, also known as "Big Basin Way", and not the actual "Big Basin" as "Stephen" had claimed.^[12]