San Francisco physicist Dr. Jack Sarfatti claims to have heard the rumor while visiting London in 2004, while in the company of Nick Cook, the well known aerospace journalist from the private intelligence publisher Janes Information Group.

"I was asked by the 'CIA' not to pursue the story in 2004, but now Bigelow has (allegedly, it seems) opened Pandora's Box on the story."

Sarfatti came forward with the rumor following a remark made by billionaire space maven Bob Bigelow to the New York Times about the dangers of UFOs:

"People have been killed. People have been hurt. It’s more than observational kind of data."

The New York Times had interviewed Bigelow about his recent efforts to build a private space station. In the article, Bigelow was quoted about the lethality of the UFO phenomena, but the basis for Bigelow's statement was not pursued.

According to Sarfatti, the rumor of a battle between Bob Bigelow's employees and otherworldly beings was provided by a mysterious French woman, who was accompanied by a body guard carrying a mystery briefcase allegedly containing "some kind of 'psychotronic' weapon based on alien ET technology."

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Sarfatti says the woman claimed to be part of a semi-secret Paris UFO group, and the woman attributed the story to Jacques Vallee, the internationally famous researcher who inspired the French UFO researcher Claude Lacombe in Steven Spielberg's classic UFO film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Sarfatti quickly added, "Allegedly Jacques Vallee denies the story, but now Bob Bigelow seems to have gone public with it -- albeit without the details."

Apparently Sarfatti, who in recent years has consulted to Dr. Ron Pandolfi (for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence) on speculative ideas related to reverse engineering hypothetical extraterrestrial technologies, also knows more of this rumor than he is willing to make public.

"I am not divulging details only the general nature of the remarks. In any case Nick Cook heard them also."

In the 1990s, Bob Bigelow funded UFO investigations under a group he founded called the National Institute of Discovery Sciences, also known as NIDS.

Among the many investigations conducted by NIDS was the mysterious case of the so-called Bigelow Skinwalker Ranch in a remote region of Utah, where a variety of paranormal  phenomena had been reported.

One experience made public by former NIDS personnel was the report of a nearly invisible being emerging from a tunnel that appeared to float in thin air, which led to speculation of an opening from another world -- a star gate -- built from a spacetime wormhole.

According to Sarfatti's account, the French woman "claimed an actual gun battle at Bigelow Ranch with Bob's paramilitary against aliens out of the wormhole with dead and wounded humans. She was very convincing and Nick Cook heard the strange tale at his private London Club with me and another witness. I debriefed Kit Green and Ron Pandolfi soon after and the story caused a big stir."

Pandolfi and Green are well known for their interest in unusual phenomena and their history of employment with the CIA.

Given the many reports of pilots who have lost their lives pursuing UFOs beyond the safe operating range of their aircraft, Bigelow's comments to the New York Times may have a more mundane explanation.