Hello friends,

A recent blog post caught my eye asking questions about the formation and origin of the Sol Foundation. I decided to dive deeper into the original directors and try to figure out where this organization started. Before this post, I thought that it was a brand new project started in 2023 by Grusch and others. But it turns out that’s not entirely true.

The TL;DR is that the origins of this entity seem to point to links to the Intelligence world.

The entities

The Sol Foundation was first formed in September 2022, incorporating in Alabama. The directors were Christopher Mellon, Garry Nolan, and Saul Mercado. The incorporating agent – usually this is whoever did the paperwork, often an attorney – is listed as Ignite Fueling Innovation, Inc.

There is a second entity based in California, which was formed in July 2023. The officers for this are Garry Nolan, Peter Skafish, and Jonathan Berte.

This post focuses on the older first entity. David Grusch’s resume lists him as having worked with Sol since May 2023, which predates the California entity. Of course that doesn’t mean he had anything to do with the Alabama one, but given the involvement of Nolan and Mellon, we can assume it’s part of the same ship.

The directors

We are familiar with Mellon and Nolan, so I won’t go into them much. Saul Mercado, though, is a name that’s pretty unfamiliar to UFOlogy. As far as I can tell, he is a US diplomat, a Foreign Service Officer. He joined the State Dept in 2011. His background is linguistic anthropology. He has had Spanish speaking countries as an area of focus, including looking at tensions in Catalonia. He was posted to the US Consulate General in Barcelona, and also Guatemala as part of his job (I found this on old LinkedIn posts). I am not linking to any of his personal profiles as I do not want to fall foul of the sub’s rules. He is currently working as part of the US mission to the UN, presumable in NYC. He has an expertise in linguistics and Semiotics – the way language and signs are used in culture (this was one of the courses he taught while a visiting prof at Vasser).

I was unable to find any public statements he’s made about UAP or similar. I spent a long time looking for links between him and the disclosure crew, but couldn’t figure it out. Then I realized something – both diplomats and anthropologists have a long history of working with Intelligence agencies. Especially with his expertise in linguistics, this made me wonder whether he is working on behalf of the IC to influence public opinion through the Sol Foundation.

Ignite Fueling Innovation

I then turned to look at the company listed as the incorporating agent. Ignite is a MIC contractor providing systems engineering, IT, and consultancy services to the likes of USAF, Space Force, NASA, US Army Space and Missile Command, and others.

So what is a military contractor doing helping set up a UAP foundation?

After some digging I found the answer. One of the SVPs there is a guy called Dr Joseph Dinoto. Dinoto is a cybersecurity expert with an impressive resume. He’s the sitting Chairman of the Insider Threat Council on the National Board of Directors of the FBI’s InfraGard.

His last government assignment was as the Chief Security Officer (GG-15), U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC). In this role, He strategically led the organization’s global security enterprise spanning 23 locations… This included 200 technology programs, 50 international programs, over 110 classified contracts, and 24 Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities… His previous Intelligence Community assignments included serving as the Director of Intelligence & Security for the U.S. Army’s Cruise Missile Defense Systems Project Office, Chief, International Security Branch for SMDC, and Chief, Foreign Disclosure & Technology Protection Branch for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command.

In this article from army.mil we learn that

As chief of foreign disclosure and technology protection for the Army’s Special Operations Command’s Special Operations Division, DiNoto worked with the Army Special Forces, 75th Ranger Regiment, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, 4th Psychological Operations Groups and the 95th Civil Affairs Brigade.

In other words, he literally worked in psyops, and has had responsibilities deciding what military capabilities to disclose to the world.

He was recently promoted at Ignite to Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer.

In the past two years, Dr. DiNoto has grown Ignite’s business portfolio to include breaking into the U.S. Space Force and several other Intelligence Community customers, to include the Defense Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

And his connection to UAPs? He moderated a panel at the Anomalous Aerospace Phenomena Conference in 2022 hosted by the SCU.

The panel was entitled “The National Security Implications of Scientifically Studying UAP” and you can watch the VOD on youtube.

Garry Nolan also spoke on this panel, which was in July 2022. Three months later, the Sol Foundation was formed, registered in Alabama, by the MIC contractor DiNoto works for.

Conclusions

Based on my research, I think we have to treat the Sol Foundation as something that’s very much a part of a disclosure effort from within the Intelligence community. That doesn’t mean UAPs aren’t real or we’re all being duped, but it’s clear that the whole thing is being orchestrated by figures that we’re not necessarily familiar with. Grusch and the other witnesses are the face of this operation, but there’s much more going on beneath the surface. I also doubt that anything coming out of the Sol Foundation will show us anything contrary to what these influences want to show us.

Thanks for your time and I hope others can follow up on this to find out more. Mods: if this breaks any rules please let me know and I will amend accordingly instead of deleting – I think this is important information for the community to know.