Why is a video of President Barack Obama’s speech at the 2012 American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference being aired now, a year later? Well, someone has actually scoured the Internet and found footage claiming it to be evidence that a member of his Secret Service detail is an alien shape-shifter.

No, we’re not making this up.

Several blogs have been reporting about the video over the last few days. It appears that the hoopla over it might have started because of a segment from Obama’s speech was re-aired in February by Jewish News One. It was in this footage that the agent in question appears to have been spotted.

Videos Claim to Show Obama Secret Service Agent as a Shape Shifting Reptile Alien

(Image: YouTube screenshot)

Here’s the footage (Note: the agent appears in the crowd at 0:37):

Here’s footage from the speech showing the Secret Service agent from another angle:

Since discussion about these videos began percolating this year, compilation videos of the speech have been cropping up on YouTube as well.

Videos Claim to Show Obama Secret Service Agent as a Shape Shifting Reptile Alien

(Image: YouTube screenshot)

Videos Claim to Show Obama Secret Service Agent as a Shape Shifting Reptile Alien

(Image: YouTube screenshot)

Videos Claim to Show Obama Secret Service Agent as a Shape Shifting Reptile Alien

(Image: YouTube screenshot)

Check out this video complete with a voice-over that speculates perhaps his “shape-shifting device failed during Obama’s speech” or that he could be an Illuminati member or a reptilian humanoid:

One blogger, who noted that they first found out about this information from this extraterrestrials forum, pointed out that not all “reptoids” should be considered evil. The blogger continued that because Obama is the “one chosen to lead us through the dark and into the Light of Ascension” and due to the death threats made against him and his family, “it’s probable that he has a bodyguard who is not human.”

How serious are these claims? Those making them seem to be completely serious, but as you can see in the comments sections, most take it all in jest. As Boing Boing sarcastically said of the above video:

And once you have been convinced, you may want to visit the video’s YouTube page for valuable information about Jesus, Satan, cures for Cancer, and that “smoking is of the devil.”

One comment on the last video has a reasonable explanation: that person says the look of the agent might be due to discrete cosine transform artifacts. NASA explained in this paper that when an image is compressed “based on quantizing [...] in the discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain” it can create “blocky artifacts in the output image.”

Another commenter felt it might be the result of artifacts as well. Here’s the  explanation from the user spektre1:

Most modern video systems have automatic smoothing filters built into them. It’s to remove noise from the digital image and noise produced by video compression.This can cause high contrast areas to get a bit “blobby” where it transitions between dark/light. Including exactly what’s seen in this video. Inconclusive at best, and from someone who works in digital video, 90% chance this is just artifacting.

Of course, that’s not as fun as believing the leader of the free world is being protected by an agent from another.