Sean Cahill is the charismatic key witness of the famed Nimitz encounter, as his story and continued exploration played out in History’s hit “Unidentified.” Cahill is currently a retired U.S. Navy Chief-Master-At Arms, and is spending his civilian life as an investigative film maker and meditation facilitator.
Cahill is one of many highly-trained former military that have been outspoken about what happened with the Tic-Tac UFO/ Nimitiz incident, as well overall “disclosure.” When it comes to the conversation of UFOs, what he witnessed and frustrations associated with the stigma that surrounds the phenomena, Cahill is raw, passionate, thoughtful, and determined to do his part to serve the greater good, which is what he signed on for as a member of the Navy.
In the following interview Cahill goes in-depth on his time in the Navy, what he witnessed, working with the To The Stars crew, and how he plans to use his interests in film and inner peace to help push the UFO topic. He pulls no punches, and also gives punkrockandUFOs.com a very humbling praise.
Q: Where you previously privy to and /or interested in UFOs before what you witnessed at Nimitz?
CAHILL: “I’m a big fan of answering upfront and digressing from there, so yes, I was big time actually. You could say that I was a UFO nerd my whole life up until that point. My experience in 2004 had an effect opposite to what many other people report. Rather than an awakening, I went back to sleep. I had already been a curious and spiritually skeptical person, but that went hand-in-hand with an open mind that saw an immense universe of possibility. I thought that the chain of command’s response, and seeming uncaring attitude spelled out that what we had seen was a known asset to the bigger machine. At the time I thought that meant our own technology. That frankly pissed me off. It was utter bullshit that not a single head turned above position (If I can't swear here you have to change the name to Light Rock and UFOs) I thought that it was because it was above my pay-grade. I think in the end the problem wasn't pay-grade; it was clearance. What I lacked was the clearance to know that this was a real and embarrassing problem that we did not want to be shouted from the rooftops, pardon the pun but it was still unidentified. I think I had it right and wrong at the same time, I think that duality is key to getting to the bottom of this.
Catching up with nine years of history was tough. Your blog was one of the first I relied on to get up to speed with recent UAP history. It’s a pleasure to finally talk to you ‘face-to-face.’ I will never forget waking up one-morning last winter, and seeing an e-mail from Lue Elizondo to Kevin Day on your blog. I remember Lue and I walking across the parking lot at the hotel in Ensenada after a long day of interviews. We called Kevin to fill him in, and let him know we were down south following up on his lead, but his inbox was full and we had to e-mail him!”
Q: What do you say to those who downplay the professional opinions of yourself, and other military personnel?
CAHILL: “I take a deep breath and then I don’t say anything. It’s tough man; I’m not The Buddha, try as I might I’m still affected by fear just like anyone, and I get mad sometimes at some of these folks... Folks who have never left their chair, their lab, their garage, and in some cases their own mind. They rely on research they did years ago in subjects that have evolved so much that they no longer resemble anything like the cutting edge that inspired them. I can dig what it feels like to think you know something you can't, that you think you should. The fact is these folks are fearful and wrong; fearful they will lose the esteem they enjoy, or fear the loss of their livelihood. Worse yet, their reputations are on the line. It’s unfortunate. There is room for everyone. The world will move on. I can’t remember any of the Wright Brother’s critics either so...
Q:What was the experience like on “Unidentified” and what would you like to see shows like it cover in the future?
CAHILL:” Surreal doesn't come close. From my point of view, the show is a painting, each of us in front of the camera makes up the paint with the storytellers as the brushes. I had to come to terms with the idea that there are possibly hundreds of hours of footage,and details that may never come to light, but the overarching message is far stronger than the details. When I asked Lue in July of 2018 to take me with him, to solve this... I didn't realize that the team would take a shared ‘Jungian Hero’s Journey,’ and distill it down to an hour arch in between commercials, but at the same time while they filmed these little vignettes around people like me, Kev, Gary and the fellas on the east coast, the world happened around Lue, Tom, Chris, Steve and TTSA as a whole. They made the U.S. Navy change course. I have a framed cover of the Navy Times that says so on the wall of my office. That's mic-drop territory right there.
I think the future is a shared conversation. If we the public give this subject back to the intelligence folks, and the military-industrial complex to manage on their own in the dark then it will be managed completely by fear. I think there is an unknown here that we must defend against until it shows its self to be a benefactor we can trust in a way we can verify. The people who came before did the best they could with what they had; our culture has a long history of shooting the messenger and shaming the pioneers as they sail away. That would be a mistake to continue. We need courageous acts in the neighborhood and at the dinner table. Ask Grandma what she has seen and listen with an open heart. If we give our elders a chance to speak in safety and love then we often find our own voice is stronger and the common ground that bridges the years. “
Q:Why do you believe areas with military bases (especially by the water) are hot spots for sightings?
CAHILL: “I think a nuanced look at history shows that the remnants of humanity rallied around the new idea of agriculture after the last cataclysm, and that led to different population centers going forward, however, humanity has always settled around resource-rich areas of which the sea is a major source. It has served as a medium of rapid travel and trade among far-reaching cultures. Today, while it may only represent 16 percent of our global protein intake the sea still covers over three-quarters of the surface of the earth. The global economy would dissolve overnight without trade from the sea.
Further, when you overlay our shipping lanes, commercial and military flight patterns and training areas we only touch upon a small fraction of our planet with human senses. Those same human eyes have to pour all the recorded data from satellites and earth-based sensors through a sieve of computer algorithms and nearsighted analysts to find that one pixel moved. This is a water planet; we live in the tiniest membrane between uninhabitable zones. We do not control the hydrosphere or lithosphere or low earth atmosphere by any means. We inhabit a thin grey-area of around 24 kilometers up and only 10 down. We control even less. Here’s the short answer. We are impulsive jerks. We utilize nuclear reactors (mobile controlled meltdowns) for the power plants of our most destructive weapons systems. Some of those weapons systems can deploy multiple nuclear warheads to any spot on the globe in minutes. Whether we clandestinely and against deteriorating treaties keep a hot-load in the chamber, I don’t know. I think that we can all agree that anyone willing to spend their resources observing, and possibly interacting with us at this distance or willing to expend the energy to transcend time and dimensions would probably also be concerned with thousands of deteriorating high yield nuclear weapons controlled by impulsive monkeys who by the way, have no plan to dispose of any of these weapons or their waste products and have already used them twice in war. I think we can start with that, and build from there. “
Q: Besides being an active participant in the UFO conversation now, what else would you like to do to help move the needle?
CAHILL: “The hardest part of the last year has been my absolute failure at bringing my loved ones on board. Family, friends and long term colleagues brains seem to shut off, conversations change and knowledge hangs in the air without followup. No questions are asked. No information is sought out. If anything, the stigma doubled down for me. I was crazy before. It was charming. Now it’s more of confused isolation. I'm not crazy, perhaps it is scary? This led to a lot of personal soul searching for me. I realized people were scared and confused. Religion, government, and science told them everything was one way.It’s not; it’s a lot of different ways.
Pardon the dream sequence to follow, but I would love some hashtag type moment like #isawsomething. I would love every one of us to blast this into the zeitgeist. Make a joke. Make it funny. Drip it with sarcasm, I don’t care. But say it. Say ‘I’ve seen a UFO, a UAP, a ghost, the air moved super weird and I have never forgotten it, The moon was here and then it was gone, I don’t get it!’ Everyone is safe to share now. Everyone. We have to keep reminding people AATIP was real as well as all of its predecessors going back to at least 1947. Smart folks are fighting to make this a proper area of study. We need to get folks to come out and tell their everyday stories, that will embolden academia to take a chance and speak out with courage. Openness and inclusiveness is a win for everyone. “
Q: As a meditation specialist, do you see the connections to consciousness and the UFO question? Personally, a theory I have is we can only communicate through levels of our consciousness and not in our current state.
CAHILL: “My semi-informed opinion is that the field that we access via deep meditation (and some faster techniques) utilizes some of the same infrastructure (frequency, substrate) that ‘they’ do (mentally), and the craft does (by serendipitous manipulation the local field). But no matter how informed, it’s still just an opinion. Resonance, frequency, harmony and vibration, this is how our reality operates. Opinion or not, that is a fact. When I strip myself of belief and bias I feel like everyone everywhere is trying to interpret the same signal as experienced through the lens of their memory, culture, and fear. This means their location, family, language, religion or the science taught to them molds their world view as does yours and mine.
If by our current state you mean this teetering between hope and fear, I am with you. The way we think and feel about each other needs to change. It needs to open. Knowing when to take a punch to forward the conversation is far more courageous than throwing one first, we need more courageous people. Hearts and minds are not won with boots on necks.”
Q: As a filmmaker as well, do you plan on one day doing one on this subject?
CAHILL: “I do. I had the pleasure one morning after a tempestuous night of sleeping on the deck of MV Storm at the south tip of Guadalupe Island to have Lue wake me up with a cup of coffee. The trust solidified between the film crew, Lue and myself was palpable and openly discussed. I didn’t worry about anything anyone was going to ask me, I was an open book. The senior producer Jessica Phillips came up on deck, and we talked openly as trusted friends for at least half an hour about the past, the future, the phenomenon and it's meaning. What people got to see on the show was a much-needed exclamation point, but frankly what we talked about was service. I found everything I ever thought I wanted even before I got to adventure with Lue. I had found love and safety in my home and my own skin. Since then I have experienced a trust that transcends everything I knew before among people with a willingness to sacrifice to give that same feeling of peace, purpose, and understanding to everyone just by telling the truth.
When the mysteries start becoming known, and when our friends and families own this subject with the same passion and bravery there is one story that still needs to be told. I want to sit down with Lue and hear his story. I want him to be able to finally shine a light on the unfathomable sacrifices, risks, and adversity that he, his colleagues and his loved ones had to overcome just to utter a single word on this topic in the public eye. That's the story I want to tell. “
-By MIKE DAMANTE