The highest levels of the intelligence community are entangled in a snare of lies surrounding the "core story": A tale of contact with an intelligence not of this world. Starstream Research investigates.

(STARpod.org) -- Numerous violations of trust paved the trail that brought us to the heart of this tale, a sordid affair of betrayal, disinformation, and sheer confusion.

Caught up by the spinning web of a viral, self-organizing and self-reproducing mind-game born within the dark confines of the intelligence community, a handful of well placed intelligence advisers are discretely moving towards public disclosure. Each man presents a personal clouded vision of the shattered pieces of a dark puzzle, begging for life in an assembled nightmare of the future.

The enigma at the heart of the 'core story' is embedded within a belief system fostered by very intelligent, well educated professionals -- men tasked with the security and safety of a nation -- men who cannot come forward directly, but by necessity reside under the cover offered to deep background sources.

In the midst of the roiling turmoil we have been handed a shocking revelation:

There has been talk at the highest levels of the U.S. Government about an otherworldly intelligence, and contact was with physical, materially real entities. We have been informed that this comes from the direct testimony of senior government officers.

One name that was passed was the late Richard Helms, former Director of Central Intelligence. Helms allegedly confirmed to an unwitting source at the National Research Council the same core story of physical contact with another world.

Apparently rumor respects no rank in the intelligence community. Perhaps the real shock is that the nation's former top intelligence executive, a man once charged with oversight of the entire intelligence community, could so readily accept such a tall tale as fact.

However, there is far more to this tale than the core story.

The story is broad and infects all aspects of the intelligence and security of the nations of this world. It even plays a role in the current crisis with Iran over nuclear technology, albeit indirectly.

Regardless of the truth of the rumor wrapped inside the core story, there is a race between the nations to discover the next level of the intelligence game.

The next level is firmly supported by the core story, because it involves tampering with the human mind and forcing a confrontation with an alien environment. This is the landscape where the intelligence game becomes the key objective and  counterintelligence operations play out as the nemesis of morality.

Confirmation of high-level government belief in physical contact with 'higher intelligence' remains a signature event, nonetheless. Starstream Research intends to maintain an on-going investigation and relationship with sources to further explore the origin of the core story, and the intersection of the key players with earthly intelligence operations.

The earthly intersection leads directly to Dr. Ronald S. (Ron) Pandolfi, a former CIA analyst brought into the public limelight many years ago in a story by Jeff Gerth published by the New York Times. Pandolfi is no stranger to controversy, having produced a 1996 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that warned of the transfer of sensitive missile information from Hughes Electronic Corporation to China. Pandolfi's NIE was ultimately rejected, but questions over the politics that killed the report resulted in Pandolfi's testimony at a closed session of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Dr. Pandolfi's interests continue to focus on the dangers of advanced technology. Based upon his semi-public presence as communicated over the Internet, Pandolfi appears to have been caught with his fingers in the alternative science and technology cookie-jar. Whether or not Dr. Pandolfi's interests are merely an overt expression of his personal interest in science-fiction technology, or originate from a deeper covert monitoring of the
scientific underground, remains to be determined.

In the past Dr. Pandolfi requested that we withhold information about his current activities within the intelligence community.

Pandolfi even expressed some concern about email messages that mentioned his name. In October of 2004 he wrote to us, "I am an open employee meaning there is no secret concerning my employment with CIA. That does not mean I endorse Dan [Dan T. Smith, an associate of Pandolfi in the private sector] or others spreading my name over e-mail distributions. Please assist by keeping my name out of your e-mails. Thanks."

We found this curious on several fronts.

Dr. Pandolfi's activities are easily accessible to anyone with an Internet connection and the Google search engine. For example, following the Hughes report, Dr. Pandolfi organized an allegedly 'private' group called TACP, the Technology Assisted Counter-Poaching initiative, based in Arlington, Virginia.

The TACP 'network' involved the use of advanced surveillance systems, ostensibly to help protect an endangered species against poaching by organized crime. Pandolfi assembled an impressive staff that included experts in physics based simulation, communication systems engineering, and a senior systems analyst and specialist in Russian sensor technologies.

Whether or not 'wild tiger' survival was truly the goal of the short lived appearance of the TACP network on the world wide web, it soon became apparent that Pandolfi was often associated with the big cats. TIGER -- Technology Insight-Gauge, Evaluate and Review -- an official USAF DIA collaboration, includes several former and present associates of Pandolfi from his days at CIA.

Pandolfi was also cited on line in a MITRE document, as the CIA liason to the National Intelligence Council. The subject of MITRE document involved passive radar, an indirect means of detecting and identifying flying objects.

The largest volume of information on Dr. Pandolfi's more exotic interests can be found in countless emails, often copied and forwarded over Internet distribution lists. On occasion Dr. Pandolfi makes a brief personal appearance to comment about the characters behind the varied discussions on the theoretical and philosophical aspects of potential exotic technologies.

Unlike Valerie Plame's cover as a covert agent of the CIA, Pandolfi apparently prefers to play his role in the spy games by remaining hidden in plain sight.

Citizen Dan Smith remains Dr. Pandolfi's most visible outlet to express his penchant for the strange and unusual. Mr. Smith tells us his father was Dan Throop Smith, a Harvard economist, and one time tax adviser to the Treasury Department under the Eisenhower Administration. Smith often muses over a Washington Post story about his brother-in-law, Charles Leighton, and a fiasco involving cuff-links from President George Herbert Walker Bush, the one time Director of Central Intelligence. In his pre-presidential days as the DCI, Bush had been briefed about the early efforts of STAR GATE, a generic program name for psychic research and operations involving the intelligence community.

Mr. Smith also questioned Pandolfi's interests. In the early days of his association with the good doctor from CIA, Smith says he consulted with Chris Straub, then ranking member for the Senate Intelligence Committee. The appearance of Pandolfi at one 1995 meeting likely set the stage for the actions of the Senate Intelligence Committee a few years later, when CIA killed Pandolfi's National Intelligence Estimate warning of the danger of information transfer between Hughes and China.

Smith confirmed to Starstream Research that he had reported his relationship with Pandolfi to the FBI on two occasions. The second time around, he met with a female agent outside of the offices of the Baltimore FBI, to report that Pandolfi had prior knowledge of the events of September 11th, 2001.

Smith also claims to have been indirectly responsible for a previous investigation of Pandolfi, in which Pandolfi was cleared of any wrong doing. According to Smith, the investigation lasted six months at a cost to taxpayers of a hundred-thousand dollars.

Starstream Research had also been in contact with the Minneapolis office of the FBI about our contacts with parties active in the intelligence community. A Special Agent from the Joint Counterterrorism Task Force responded, "Please call me if with your concerns on this issue. You are correct in that there are some guidelines that must be followed for contact but, I am not comfortable detailing those here. "

One particular breach of confidentiality stands out because the original source is claimed to have been Pandolfi himself. This involves information 'requested in an official capacity' that appears to have been deliberately leaked to Dan Smith, and passed to  other associates.

All of this merely sets the stage for a new act, one that intersects the world of strange and unusual, and the mundane problems faced by doing business in the spy trade.

"I will cut and run the first instant I get a whiff that some list ... or whomever gets interested in me."

Part Two: Spies Like Us?