“They’re Gaslighting Us”: New Jersey Official Responds to Drone Mystery

Yesterday, I had a call with an elected official from New Jersey. They requested to remain anonymous, so the information here will be kept that way.

What’s happening now is that, across all of New Jersey, people have been seeing unidentified flying objects for at least three weeks since mid-November — many of which appear to look like drones.

The presence of these drones is indisputable at this point. The official I spoke to has received countless inquiries from constituents about them. He even noted how, on many nights, he and other high-ranking state officials have observed swarms of these drones flying into New Jersey from the ocean.

Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris White House had a briefing with these officials two days ago, during which they claimed the drone story isn’t happening. The administration’s framing is that these drones are either hobbyists, planes, or stars.

Nobody buys it. Not the people of New Jersey, nor the state government. But the drones persist, continuing to fly over sensitive areas such as reservoirs, near Trump’s home in Bedminster, and even near military facilities, prompting the state to close certain areas.

New Jersey officials maintain that the federal government is gaslighting them. While there is no consensus on the origin of the drones, most believe they are unlikely to be from enemy nations, and more likely something the federal government knows about but is keeping highly confidential.

There is, of course, the possibility that the government simply doesn’t know much about the drones. Local police have tried to track them and get closer to them but have been unsuccessful. Some officials have claimed they are unable to track the drones in the same way they would with other radio-controlled aircraft.

There are also now reports of drone sightings in Europe — specifically above American military facilities in Germany. An Ohio Air Force base was shut down due to drone sightings.

What’s happening here in New Jersey — and the scale of it — is unprecedented, a word often misused in describing current political events.

There is one story from the seventies with similarities, however. The Washington Post reported in 1979, “During two weeks in 1975, a string of the nation's supersensitive nuclear missile launch sites and bomber bases were visited by unidentified, low-flying and elusive objects, according to Defense Department reports,” which “led to extensive but unsuccessful Air Force attempts to track and detain the objects.”

According to their reports, the objects appeared to be “helicopters” and were “brightly lit, fast-moving vehicles that hovered over nuclear weapons storage areas and evaded all pursuit efforts.”

What we know is that the sightings are real. The exact magnitude of the situation may be exaggerated, but it remains the most significant event of its kind. All else is still up for speculation.