Men's Lifestyle April 24, 2026 0 Comments

Inside the White House’s Shocking Embrace of a New Conspiracy—Could This One Actually Be True?

So here’s the kicker: conspiracy theories usually get a bad rap for being wild-eyed fantasies cooked up over late-night coffee chats. But what if I told you, beneath the usual parade of petty scandals and scrambled coups, there’s a shadow play unfolding — one involving missing and deceased scientists linked to critical U.S. nuclear and aerospace projects? It sounds like the start of an X-Files marathon, right? Except this isn’t fiction. It’s a courtroom drama and a thriller tangled up in national security concerns, with the FBI and Congress sharpening their pencils to get to the bottom of it. You might ask yourself, how do these bizarre disappearances and unexpected deaths fit into the grand chessboard? And is there more going on than the usual political circus? Buckle up, because this story doesn’t just challenge the status quo — it threatens to rewrite the rulebook on who and what really holds power behind the scenes.

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10 min read

Out on the Weekend

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to the Last Post of the Week from the Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

The problem with conspiracy theories involving this administration is that most of them are so banal. Money-making schemes. Obvious grifts. Clumsy nepotism. Even the attempts to overthrow the 2020 election were hilariously transparent and run by inmates of the banana farm. (Sidney Powell and her medium who contacted a headless spirit on the wind.) But there is a real mystery going on regarding dead and missing scientists, and it’s beginning to catch on as the work of an elaborate speculative cabal. From CNN:

These are among at least 10 individuals connected to sensitive U.S. nuclear and aerospace research who have died or disappeared in recent years, prompting concerns whether they are connected and fueling speculation online about the possibility of nefarious activity. The FBI now says it “is spearheading the effort to look for connections into the missing and deceased scientists,” adding that it “is working with the Department of Energy, Department of War, and with our state … and local law enforcement partners to find answers.” Separately, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee announced Monday it will investigate reports of the deaths and disappearances of the individuals, whom it said had access to sensitive scientific information.

And, oh, boy, Rep. James Comer is on the Case.

“It’s very unlikely that this is a coincidence,” House Oversight Chair James Comer, a Republican, told “Fox News Sunday.” “Congress is very concerned about this. Our committee is making this one of our priorities now because we view this as a national security threat.”

There’s sufficient raw material in the various cases to stitch together an entire X-Flies story arc.

The string of mysterious deaths and disappearances began in 2023, lawmakers say, with the death of Michael David Hicks, a scientist who worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for nearly 25 years.Hicks, 59, died July 30, 2023. During his career at JPL, he specialized in comets and asteroids, according to the American Astronomical Society. His cause of death was not disclosed.

In the years since, several others connected to JPL have also died or disappeared: Frank Maiwald, a specialist in space research, died in Los Angeles in 2024 at 61. Monica Reza, a 60-year-old aerospace engineer, disappeared while hiking in a Los Angeles forest in June 2025. She served as the director of the NASA Lab’s Materials Processing Group, the House Oversight Committee said. Also missing is William Neil McCasland, a retired Air Force major general, who hasn’t been seen since he walked out of his Albuquerque, New Mexico, home on February 27, leaving behind his phone, prescription glasses and wearable devices. The FBI is now involved in the search. McCasland was at the center of some of the Pentagon’s most advanced aerospace research and once commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Months after the 68-year-old went missing, officials still can’t say where he went, why he left or whether someone else was involved.Mmmmm, Wright-Patterson, you say?

His wife, Susan McCasland Wilkerson, disputed at the time speculation that his disappearance was tied to his work at the base—long rumored to house extraterrestrial debris linked to the alleged Roswell incident despite Air Force denials. “It is true that Neil had a brief association with the UFO community,” McCasland Wilkerson said in a Facebook post. “This connection is not a reason for someone to abduct Neil. Neil does not have any special knowledge about the ET bodies and debris from the Roswell crash stored at Wright-Patt. No sightings of a mothership hovering above the Sandia Mountains have been reported,” she added.

Two workers at the Los Alamos National Laboratories also have disappeared. There also were three recent murders, including that of Nuno Loureiro, the MIT scientist whose alleged killer, Claudio Valente, is also accused of killing two students at Brown University in Providence last December. And there were two other murders of men whose work concerned matters not of this world.

Carl Grillmair was fatally shot at the age of 67 at his home outside Los Angeles in February. Authorities arrested a suspect who they don’t believe knew Grillmair, according to KABC. The astrophysicist worked at the California Institute of Technology, collaborated with NASA and was renowned for his studies on the search for water on planets outside our solar system. Former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer Matthew James Sullivan, 39, also died in 2024 before he could testify in a federal whistleblower case about UFOs, Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri said, urging the FBI to investigate. His public obituary did not state how he died. CNN has reached out to his family.

Uh, oh.

Sullivan’s unsolved murder reached the office of Rep. Eric Burlison, a Republican from Missouri.

Burlison, however, told Fox News that Sullivan died by suicide, calling it suspicious.“He was scheduled to come in for an interview. Within two weeks, he had suspiciously committed suicide,” Burlison, a Republican, told Fox News.

And the White House, ever anxious to find anything to talk about besides everything else, has jumped in.

The White House is “actively working with all relevant agencies and the FBI to holistically review all of the cases together and identify any potential commonalities that may exist,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement on X on Friday. The investigation is being carried out “in light of the recent and legitimate questions” regarding the recent cases and “no stone will be unturned,” she said.

The truth, apparently, is Out There.

Oh, come on. From the Times of London:

“I’m going to Africa. I’m going to change the name of Kilimanjaro to Mount Trump,” Paolo Zampolli declares in Washington on Friday afternoon. President Trump’s envoy for special partnerships is about to set off on his latest business trip and has the 19,341ft African mountain in his sights. “Actually I was talking to the minister of Tanzania,” Zampolli continues. “I said I’m coming but I’m changing the name.”

“Envoy for special partnerships” indeed. Zampolli is all over the Epstein files, reputedly tried to get ICE to deport his ex-girlfriend, and his relationship to the initial encounter between the president and his current wife remain shrouded in controversy. One thing he is very good at is shaking the money tree.

His role has also faced scrutiny when it comes to dealmaking. He has spoken of “$20bn in 20 minutes” when it comes to his approach to business for the president. “Everybody wants to work with the United States of America because we are the power of the world. Especially for business, for technology, for everything, and so my job is to push America First’s agenda.” His two main bosses are the president and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state—though they are “both very busy”.

Zampolli says: “When people meet me they want to have some kind of access to the president. The most powerful person in humanity. They all have very creative ideas. I tell them to buy some Boeings. The president will be happy. We know that he loves to sell Boeings.” Is that not cash for access, I ask. “First of all, I don’t get paid by Boeing and this gives Americans jobs.” Has he been made richer through his job? “Absolutely not. When you work for the government you have strict rules that you can’t use it to your advantage.”

Of course not.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Let’s Make A Better World” (James Booker): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

(Pro Tip: The mighty, mighty ‘OZ is going live from Jazz Fest for a portion of each broadcast day. Shebeen says tune in.)

Weekly Visit To The Pathé Archives: Here, from 1953, is where it all began. The British press is doing its duty for the Empire by explaining how Mohammad Mossadegh deposed the beloved Shah and threatened the oil depot at Abadan, which is what the overthrow of Mossadegh—via the CIA acting on behalf of British oil companies—was about in the first place. “Is it too much to hope that we shall see once more the tankers of Britain at Abadan?” says the narrator. “Maybe sanity will yet prevail.” History is so cool, but it has an inconveniently long memory.

The Art of the Deal! From The Bulwark:

The ultra-low-cost carrier is going bust. It’s been in trouble for a while: It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last summer, for the second time in less than a year, and is now facing the prospect of liquidation. That’s largely because it cannot survive the sky-high jet-fuel prices caused by Trump’s Iran war, which is expected to raise Spirit’s costs by an estimated $360 million this year. You can’t sell enough $40 fares to fill that hole in the balance sheet.

One solution Trump is considering? A bailout, on the taxpayer’s dime. The Trump administration is considering dumping $500 million in taxpayer money into the struggling airline. In exchange, the government would receive warrants allowing it to take up to a 90 percent stake in the company.

The folks in the SNL writer’s room must be turning handsprings. A merger between two of Weekend Update’s favorite big fish in the same small barrel—Trump and Spirit Airlines. God is good and will provide.

Discovery Corner:Hey, look what we found. From WTVG:

Historian Ivan Malara at the University of Milan was busy in January poring over a 16th-century copy of a 2nd-century work—one that dictated our literal worldview for dozens of generations. The Almagest got quite a few things right — the Earth being a sphere, for one thing—but it also held the notion that the Earth was the center of the universe. That geocentric model went unchallenged for a good 1200 years, until Copernicus placed the Sun at the center of our system. Other scientists eventually came to the same conclusion, including Galileo Galilei. Malara knew young Galileo was heavily influenced by the Almagest, teaching its collective knowledge to others, so he set out to find copies.

“My research on Galileo and the Almagest began three, almost four years ago,” Malara recalls. “I started in Vienna, in Europe, and then I decided to check out copies of the Almagest, the earliest printed editions of the Almagest that were held in Florence.” It was here where Malara noticed extensive handwritten notes in one of the copies, first beginning with a psalm, then extending across multiple margins — and his excitement grew and grew with each turn of the page. The historian came to recognize the handwriting as that of Galileo Galilei himself, written in the very text he would later subvert: “Honestly, I didn’t expect to find Galileo’s copy of the Almagest… I almost had a heart attack!”

After consulting with colleagues who confirmed these notes were the real deal, it opened a new window into Galileo’s evolution from brilliant mathematician to scientific revolutionary. “It was not just an ideological choice or even a philosophical choice,” Malara offers. “It grew out of a deep and highly skilled understanding of the ancient astronomy, the ancient scientific tradition.”

This is not a license to deface library books, youngsters. Only if you plan to overturn a centuries-old scientific consensus. Then, it’s okay.

Hey, CBS News, is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

The top predator prowling the seas during the age of the dinosaurs 100 million years ago may have been the octopus. New analyses of fossilized jaws reveal that massive, kraken-like octopuses once hunted alongside other marine predators. They boasted eight arms and long bodies that extended more than 60 feet, rivaling other carnivorous marine reptiles. Dinosaur fans know that late Cretaceous-era waters were ruled by sharp-toothed sharks and sea reptiles known as mosasaurs and plesiosaurs.Why do octopuses get left out of the mix? Scientists have studied giant octopus relatives that roamed when dinosaurs were around, and researched some small octopuses that drilled into clams. But since their soft bodies don’t preserve well, it’s hard to figure out exactly how big the creatures got.

They compared the jaws to that of modern-day octopuses to estimate how large the creatures may have been, and determined that the ancient octopuses ranged from 23 to 62 feet in length. The largest jaw was substantially bigger than that of any modern octopus, said co-author and paleontologist Yasuhiro Iba with Hokkaido University in an email.

Okay, okay. I know they’re not really dinosaurs. But they ate dinosaurs, so that counts. And the discovery also validates a number of very cool 1950s sci-fi movies of the Giant Octopus genre—most notably the iconic It Came From Beneath The Sea—so it can be said that they, too, lived then to make us happy now.

I’ll be back on Monday for whatever fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and any New One. In your spare time, spare a thought for the Iranian people, and the Lebanese people and all the other people downrange in our newest war, and all the people in ICE detention, and the Epstein victims, whose trauma is back in the news again, and Eric Swalwell’s victims, and the victims and their families in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada, and for the shooting victims in Austin, and in Michigan, and in Virginia, and in Louisiana, and for the brilliant journalists of the Washington Post, and for the citizens of the occupied city of Minneapolis and South Burlington, Vermont,, and for all he people suffering from the severe cold brought by the polar vortex. and the people in the flooded areas of southern Africa, and in the flooded areas in Ireland, and in the flooded areas of Brazil, and for the storm-clobbered,flooded areas of the upper Midwest, including my alma mater, and for people suffering from the outbreaks of measles, a particularly brutal flu, and Legionnaire’s disease outbreak in Harlem, and for our LGBTQ+ citizens, who deserve so much more from this country than they’re getting.