#1645 - Christopher Mellon

[0] Joe Rogan podcast, checking out.

[1] The Joe Rogan Experience.

[2] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[3] All right.

[4] Well, thanks for being here, man. Appreciate it.

[5] Pleasure.

[6] Absolutely pleasure.

[7] Tell everybody who you are and what your background is.

[8] Okay.

[9] My name is Chris Mellon, and I spent about 20 years working for Uncle Sam, worked in the Senate for the Intelligence Committee, and for Senator Cohen also did some Armed Services Committee work.

[10] when he was asked to become Secretary of Defense, he asked me if I would like to go with him to the Pentagon, be part of his team, and I was honored and gladly accepted.

[11] So I then served for four years in the Defense Department with Senator Cohen, Secretary Cohen at that point, in various positions, all intelligence related and insecurity related.

[12] And then I was asked to stay on after Clinton departed.

[13] And so I worked for, sent for Secretary of Grumsfeld.

[14] And then went back to the Senate Intelligence Committee as the minority staff director shortly before the Second Iraq War.

[15] So when did you get interested in the subject of UFOs?

[16] That happened at a surprisingly early age.

[17] I was seven years old at a boarding school.

[18] the principal of the school, a friend of his had photographed video, an old real to real Kodak movie camera, taken a home movie of a video of a UFO flying in beautiful blue skies, cumulus clouds, huge golden disc that comes into the picture and banks, goes into a cloud, and it disappears into this sort of wispy cloud in a way that would be very, very hard, I think, to to fake somehow, particularly in those days with no computer generated imagery.

[19] And it comes out the other side and then sort of goes off over the horizon.

[20] And I was stunned and flabbergasted, myself and all the other kids ran outside that night and we're looking at the stars.

[21] And it just sparked my curiosity, a lifelong curiosity.

[22] So once you got into government and once you were, I mean, you were there, you're basically there.

[23] You had to start asking questions.

[24] Like, did you wait a while?

[25] Like, how long did you ask for you?

[26] Yeah.

[27] What do you guys know?

[28] Yeah.

[29] Well, for a long time, I waited.

[30] Very rarely, I looked for openings.

[31] I looked for opportunities.

[32] So, for example, you know, the stigma is so great that you're reluctant, obviously, to raise that issue.

[33] A couple times there were some natural opportunities.

[34] So one of my colleagues on the Intelligence Committee was going to Hawaii for some oversight trips, meetings, and he went to the Maui Space Optical Tracking Facility.

[35] And I said to him, why are you there?

[36] Why don't you just check and see?

[37] Do they ever see anything weird?

[38] They can't explain and so forth.

[39] So he did.

[40] And Pete called me up and said, hey, you wouldn't believe this.

[41] I've got this videotape here.

[42] And it shows these weird things.

[43] And so, I talked to the Air Force people.

[44] They sent the tape to us.

[45] Turns out it was totally unclassified.

[46] I showed it to Senator Cohen and some others.

[47] And it ended up on national TV, actually, but it didn't generate any further response.

[48] Everybody just kind of threw their hands up in the air and said, well, you know, that's interesting, but we don't know what to do with it.

[49] It was a Ted Cople's Nightline show that this tape was played on.

[50] sort of five objects moving parallel to the ground, possibly in formation, they're in the atmosphere because they're burning, they're interacting with something.

[51] You know, there's plasma coming off of them, which wouldn't presumably be happening in space.

[52] But they seem to be too slow to be meteorites.

[53] So it was mystifying, and difficult to explain, never did get an answer.

[54] Occasionally something like that would happen.

[55] By and large, the issue almost never arose.

[56] The issue is a weird issue because if you bring it up in the wrong company or at the wrong time, you could be dismissed as a loon.

[57] Did you feel that when you were there?

[58] As a person who had a budding interest in unidentified flying objects and what have you, did you feel like this is a politically risky thing to discuss, especially to discuss in serious terms, like, do you believe in these things?

[59] Like, what are they?

[60] What do we know?

[61] Was that an issue?

[62] Absolutely.

[63] I concealed my interest in the topic for years and very carefully and confided to a few trustworthy friends, had a few heart -to -heart talks with a couple individuals when I found a fellow traveler who was interested in this topic.

[64] But by and large, absolutely wanted to conceal that and not reveal that.

[65] Did you know Clinton?

[66] No. No. He would be the guy that I would go to.

[67] I feel like he would probably tell you.

[68] There's a request that came to me once that I think was from President Clinton, and it was one of the astronauts claimed to have seen a UFO out at Edwards Air Force Base, and it was videotaped, he said, and he described this in his memoir and wanted the president to get hold of the tape of the video.

[69] And Secretary Cohen came back to the Pentagon from a meeting, and a message came down to me to go to try to find this tape.

[70] And unfortunately, I got nowhere with that.

[71] The Air Force was adamant that there was no such tape.

[72] There was no such information.

[73] Anything they had on UFOs have been destroyed.

[74] So I had one of these situations that's very common in this area, which is you have just two apparently credible sources, but utterly conflicting, irreconcilable information, which seems to happen often in this field.

[75] Now, being as you were in government and very close to literally the machine that runs the world, what's the general perception when people are discussing these things in Washington?

[76] What's the general perception of what's going on with these things?

[77] I'm happy to say that it's changed.

[78] That perception has changed considerably in the last few years.

[79] People feel like they have permission to talk about it.

[80] When did you think this happened?

[81] This happened after the New York Times article and subsequent press beginning in 2017, December 2017.

[82] And that sort of gave people permission to talk about this.

[83] And I've actually had Pentagon friends who said, you know, this is kind of cool.

[84] We don't have to go in the closet to talk about this anymore.

[85] What do you think kept it in the closet before?

[86] Like, when did the stigma start?

[87] And do you think this was like intentionally sort of set up this way?

[88] It was.

[89] It was the Robertson panel commission, 1953.

[90] And they concluded during those Cold War days that this was a potential threat to national security because UFO reports might overwhelm our air defense and communication system.

[91] And that the Soviets might spook the public and somehow manipulate this issue.

[92] So they actually advocated in writing that this issue would be debunked and discredited, and the government went ahead and did so, extremely successfully, unfortunately.

[93] And this all started with the Project Blue Book, correct?

[94] Correct.

[95] It was during that era.

[96] So what was the gentleman's name that was running a Project Blue Book again?

[97] Well, there were different people.

[98] The guy who went on.

[99] The astronomer, Ellen Heineck?

[100] Heineck.

[101] And Heinek went on to become a believer.

[102] So he started debunking and was told essentially the way he reported it was that he was told to kind of debunk every single case.

[103] Everything he could find, whether it was swamp gas or, you know, ball lightning, find some way to explain this away.

[104] But then once he left Project Blue Book, he started openly discussing these cases and he started discussing his own belief.

[105] That's correct.

[106] And he felt badly burned as well because he was trying to carry out his, mandate that the Air Force had given him.

[107] As you may recall, in one instance, he went to Michigan and famously declared that the people of Michigan were Michigan's touring swamp gas for flying objects.

[108] Yeah.

[109] And so Gerald Ford, who was represented that district, got incensed, as did the local population.

[110] And Congress took a fleeting interest in the topic.

[111] And Dr. Heineck was very embarrassed, and understandably so.

[112] It was really quite insulting to these people who had had very clear sightings of these objects.

[113] So he did eventually change his view publicly and was very critical of Project Blue Book.

[114] Was all this stuff like being inside the government and knowing how prevalent these sightings are and how credible some of them are?

[115] Was it frustrating to you to be a part of this and to know that this information is kind of being squashed and distorted?

[116] and it's interesting that what happened actually is that i wasn't seeing information squashed or distorted in the pentagon or the intelligence community i saw one instance of a very technical very classified report that explained away some sightings that nobody even knew were being reported otherwise it was kind of odd to see this explanation from about an incident that had not been otherwise reported.

[117] But generally, what was this sense in that?

[118] This was some military pilots doing reconnaissance missions who were seeing some very unusual lights.

[119] And the Directorate of Science of Technology at CIA did an extensive analysis and found a plausible explanation for what they had seen that was not extraterrestrial.

[120] And so they published an article on that.

[121] It was a good article, a good piece of research.

[122] But the only time, that was about the only time I ever saw anything that in writing about this subject, which the government said it wasn't following, it wasn't interested in.

[123] And you almost, I had friends who would call me up.

[124] I had a Navy friend who was a pilot.

[125] And he said, you wouldn't believe what happened at our base today.

[126] There was a plane up and there was a UFO flying around it and it landed.

[127] And he was, you know, he knew I was interested in this from college days.

[128] And he called me up with his hair on fire to tell me about this incident.

[129] But that kind of thing was not going up through channels.

[130] So people in the Pentagon, to the best of my knowledge, all the way up to the SEC DEF, were not hearing or seeing any of these reports.

[131] It wasn't until I met Lou Elizondo and his group and some of the Navy guys and talked to the pilots about what was happening on the East Coast from 2015 onward and the Nimitz incident that I found out that this activity had been going on and just wasn't being reported.

[132] So was it that no one in the Pentagon was seeking this?

[133] out there wasn't a mandate to go look for it there wasn't a department that was designed to seek these things out I mean what was the reason why it wasn't getting all the way to the Pentagon well specifically in the case of the Navy in 2016 just today I believe or yesterday DOD announced the that they're going to do an IG investigation of this incident of this phenomenon what's IG issue the Inspector General okay sorry so there's going to be an internal investigation at DOD of how they handled this UFO issue.

[134] And I believe it's not clear yet.

[135] They just made this announcement and their motives and what sparked this are still a little bit uncertain.

[136] But it appears they're going to focus on this issue of how did this fall through the cracks for years?

[137] How is it that these guys are flying around seeing this stuff?

[138] It's on the radar and nobody up the chain of command is being notified.

[139] Policymakers, the Secretary of Defense himself, Congress, et cetera, it was just going into the ether.

[140] I mean, there was no effort made to get support to any of those guys.

[141] And that's when I kind of threw the bullshit flag and said, this is unacceptable.

[142] And so that's when I started jumping into this.

[143] Do you think it was because of the stigma that's attached to the subject, that they just didn't bother bringing it to their superiors?

[144] Absolutely.

[145] Yeah.

[146] People were afraid to report it.

[147] And as we saw in the Nimitz case, some years earlier in 2004.

[148] Let's explain what we're talking about.

[149] We're talking about Commander David Fravor in his sightings off the coast of San Diego, the tick -tac -shaped UFO that moved at extraordinary speed with no known propulsion system.

[150] They tracked it on radar.

[151] It was actively jamming their radar.

[152] It went to their predetermined point where they were supposed to scrim.

[153] Cap point.

[154] Yeah.

[155] So somehow or another, it had information as to where they were.

[156] were traveling to.

[157] Extraordinary capability went from 80 ,000 feet above sea level to one in less than a second.

[158] They have no idea what it is, what it does.

[159] And then the people on the Nimitz were saying they had been seeing these things.

[160] Correct.

[161] And on the Princeton.

[162] And when Dave and the other F -18 landed, there was no interest on the part of the intelligence officers of doing anything really other than, but ridiculing them.

[163] So they came out, you know, with tin hats on and foil hats and they were playing Men in Black song or something.

[164] But that case was phenomenal because there were so many witnesses and so many different sensor systems that were verifying independently the visual reporting.

[165] So there were multiple radars.

[166] There were infrared systems, perfect viewing conditions, broad daylight, middle of the afternoon, multiple aircraft, and all of the data agrees that these craft are doing things that we thought were impossible.

[167] And then there was also the thing that led them to see it in the first place, was that he thought there was something under the surface of the ocean.

[168] What happened was he was vectored, he and his wingman were vector to intercept that Tick -Tac at that point.

[169] When they arrived and looked down, they saw it moving around and they saw the water roiled.

[170] In fact, I think first they saw the water before they saw the Tick -Tac.

[171] They saw something unusual.

[172] It looked like white water breaking on a reef kind of thing.

[173] Right.

[174] And then they saw the Tick -Tac, and then Dave dove down to get close to it, and it reacted to his presence, turned around, viewed him, and then started taking countermeasures.

[175] And it was clear to the pilots in both aircraft that this thing maintained a dominant position throughout their engagement with it, that it could easily have done what it wanted to them.

[176] They had no chance really of getting behind it or getting the upper hand in that engagement.

[177] Then when he went and reported this, that's when things get weird, right?

[178] Because people have to dissect this information and look at this guy, Commander Fravor, a very respected guy, not the type of person who makes up wacky stories.

[179] Then when it's supported by all this data, I think that's probably one of the biggest ones that led to being included in the New York Times, right?

[180] Correct.

[181] Absolutely.

[182] Because it was so credible.

[183] And then there was the Go Fast video and the FLIR video and all these other videos that show these things moving in extraordinary ways.

[184] Correct.

[185] And they're authentic.

[186] The Defense Department acknowledged those videos.

[187] Why do you think they did that?

[188] They didn't do it initially, but ultimately they didn't have much choice.

[189] And I think the reason that they that they finally did is because we had taken this issue to Congress.

[190] I had taken, I contacted.

[191] to some former colleagues on the committee and said, you guys really ought to look at this.

[192] I mean, it sounds crazy, but, you know, give me a chance here.

[193] And so a couple of them started taking interest, some of the staffers, started meeting with some of the pilots.

[194] When they started requesting briefings, that, you know, coming from the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, that went up the flagpole to the top.

[195] And the Navy brass and the senior Pentagon civilians in the Office of the Secretary of Defense became aware that these committees are taking an official interest now.

[196] and you know we can't fool around with this and we have to really be straight and and put it out there so at that point they couldn't tell them in private yeah this is real and then publicly deny it wasn't yeah so they came clean so this is the great shift right the great shift in our time of from UFOs being ridiculed being these silly things that tinfoil hat conspiracy theory people believe in to the Defense Department agreeing that this is an issue.

[197] That's correct.

[198] Very interesting to me. I saw your interview with Elon Musk, and he seemed unaware as...

[199] He's an alien, bro.

[200] Listen, he's covering up.

[201] Maybe he's part of the cover out.

[202] Because he seemed unaware that his own government has to take in the position that UFOs are real.

[203] I got Elon in trouble because we smoked pot on the show.

[204] I heard about that.

[205] And when he got in trouble, his top secret clearance was in trouble.

[206] and there was a lot going on.

[207] And I think he's trying to play it straight and narrow when he's around me now.

[208] Like aliens, outrageous.

[209] I always advised that getting high in the program would not be a good thing to do.

[210] Yeah, it's not a good move.

[211] Don't do it.

[212] If you want to drink, that's probably a better move.

[213] I'll stick to the coffee.

[214] Okay, stick to the coffee.

[215] That's a good move.

[216] We want to be clear here, right?

[217] We want to be clear -headed when we discuss this because it's such an easily ridiculed thing.

[218] You know, it's one of those things like psychics and Bigfoot, You bring it up and people just automatically start rolling their eyes.

[219] But statistically, if you just look at the size of the universe and you look at the fact that there's so many Goldilocks zone planets that they've already discovered, and then also the wide variety of life that exists in various conditions on Earth, who knows, right?

[220] And who knows whether or not these things are living in the ocean?

[221] And this is what's bizarre to me, is there's a lot of these sightings, the one in Hawaii recently, and there's another one that Jeremy Corbell leaked, this photograph that shows something disappearing into the ocean.

[222] They seem to, there seems to be multiple sightings and multiple witnesses that discuss things going into the ocean.

[223] Yeah, that is absolutely true.

[224] in terms of backing up on your question there a little bit you know people ask me do you think do you believe in aliens and that's really not the question or the issue for most people there are probably in an infinite universe an infinite number of alien civilizations right the question is you know could we ever communicate with them or have contact right so what's interesting about that to me in part is that we have NSA NASA spending billions to try to find alien life, even if it's microbial.

[225] We have Yuri Milner spending hundreds of millions and supporting the SETI program.

[226] And meanwhile, we have these things flying around our atmosphere that we're seeing on the radar that kind of look and act like what you might expect if somebody sent a probe.

[227] If somebody followed the trajectory, we're on ourselves today.

[228] And they're doing incredible things that we don't understand.

[229] And yet the scientific community and the government have not wanted to dare to ask the question in this context that they ask every day in this other context with NASA and spend billions of dollars on.

[230] And there's no cross -talk.

[231] You know, scientifically, we would expect actually, you know, they're listening for these signals from outer space, but it's more efficient to send probes and it's safer.

[232] And that's what we are doing ourselves.

[233] Right.

[234] And so that's what would probably be more likely.

[235] A probe would give more information.

[236] It wouldn't reveal the location or the source of the civilization that was sending it.

[237] You know, it's more dynamic and versatile.

[238] It could get closer to the target, et cetera.

[239] There's all kinds of advantages, including energy.

[240] And it would be easy for a civilization more advanced than ours.

[241] We're getting on the cusp of this ourselves to create using artificial intelligence probes that were self -sufficient, launch them out in whatever numbers.

[242] Let them go see what they find and report back.

[243] And that's entirely plausible.

[244] There's no scientific reason for thinking that that couldn't happen.

[245] Moreover, if even one spacefaring society started to expand outward as we are in our galaxy, in the Milky Way, within a tiny fraction of the lifetime of the Milky Way, they could explore and colonize the entire galaxy.

[246] So even if, you know, they haven't achieved superluminal travel, they can't violate.

[247] the speed of light and go faster than that, if they went, say, 20 % the speed of light and just continue to steadily expand their domain and explore outward in the space of two or three million years, they could have gone from one end of the galaxy to the other.

[248] So, you know, it's not an unreasonable proposition.

[249] It's a question of getting the facts.

[250] And it's about time some of us think that we take it seriously and start looking at it.

[251] Do most people who look at this believe that this is some sort of a probe?

[252] Like when you look at the Tick -Tac video.

[253] Well, Dave himself says it's not from around here.

[254] It wasn't made here, not made by us.

[255] And he doesn't propose to say where it's from.

[256] Some people suspect, as you suggest, that it could be ultra -terrestrial.

[257] It could be something inherently from our planet under the ocean that's been here for a long, long time.

[258] perhaps a way station that some AI established that just is a waypoint here and it's monitors what's going on on this planet and stays under the ocean, comes out, looks around, reports back and just has been doing that for thousands of years, but not aliens coming and going.

[259] There's all manner of theories.

[260] That's one of them.

[261] But I would say that on the inside, the people that are really close to this in the Pentagon, they face the dilemma we all faces, which is what hypothesis can explain what we're seeing that is prosaic, that doesn't involve either extraterrestrials or ultra -terrestials or something like that.

[262] It's very hard for us to believe that the Chinese or the Russians are that far ahead of us in.

[263] in such basic technology, such fundamental technologies.

[264] Perhaps it's true, and that's got its own set of problems.

[265] But either way, we need to get to the bottom of it.

[266] That's my position, at least.

[267] Yeah, there's some of these things that it's not outside the realm of possibility that's a drone.

[268] Like the most recent video, the pyramid -shaped objects that are flying around.

[269] Like, you've seen that, right?

[270] Absolutely, yeah.

[271] What would you take on those things?

[272] You know, I want to see the rest of the data.

[273] They've got radar data on that.

[274] And from the radar data, they should be able to gain some real insights as to where these things are coming from and going to trajectories, speeds, all that kind of thing.

[275] That hasn't been released, right?

[276] That has not been released.

[277] They're still analyzing that.

[278] I don't think that they will comment publicly on that, unfortunately.

[279] But they do have that information and other information.

[280] So we should be able to gain some insights.

[281] It's entirely possible if they are drones.

[282] Tyler Rogaway is a brilliant analyst of aviation issues.

[283] It works for the war zone.

[284] It's written a very lengthy piece making that assertion.

[285] Could be right.

[286] I'm a little skeptical.

[287] But we'll see.

[288] How so?

[289] That's why we need more data.

[290] Well, the duration of flight was far longer than drones routinely can perform hours.

[291] hours.

[292] So typically, if it's an electric drone, it has a very short flight time.

[293] These things, these ships were 100 miles off the coast in conditions of low visibility.

[294] And so whoever was operating these things was traversing a long distance probably.

[295] There were only a few other ships in the area.

[296] And they know what those ships were and they deny that they were operating these craft.

[297] So they were in the air a long time.

[298] They were very rigorous in the manner in which they operated as a unit.

[299] They clearly intended to get our attention.

[300] They were operating in a manner that suggests they were trying to provoke our air defense systems, see how we would react, you know, maybe see what frequencies we start communicating on, what we, what actions we take and so forth.

[301] It's the kind of thing.

[302] We sometimes do ourselves to the potential adversaries to help game the situation out.

[303] So, you know, I have a completely open mind on it.

[304] I just want to see the evidence, but there's some features of this that if they are drones, they're probably more advanced than anything we have.

[305] Now, one of them was flashing, right?

[306] Jamie, see if you could find that video.

[307] Is that your breathing?

[308] It is.

[309] I was trying to figure out what that noise was.

[310] See if you could find that video.

[311] I've had my COVID test.

[312] No, I don't think there's anything wrong with you.

[313] I was just, I was trying to figure out with that one like the flashing light.

[314] Yes.

[315] That one, okay.

[316] Yeah.

[317] Have you seen, you know.

[318] I've seen that, and it looks like it's flashing sort of the way an airplane would.

[319] Right.

[320] That's why.

[321] And that's, but what's odd about that is you're in a restricted military airspace.

[322] Commercial aircraft have transponders.

[323] You would know if they were commercial aircraft.

[324] They're on, they've got, they're looking at the radar picture, so they would know from that if it's a commercial aircraft.

[325] It's hard to understand if it was a commercial aircraft of some kind or even a private plane why they wouldn't be able to identify it.

[326] Yeah, well, the flashing, I mean, yeah, see, you can see it here.

[327] So this is the leaked footage, courtesy of Jeremy Corbell.

[328] So, like you see it, now either it's reflecting something that's flashing off the ship or it's flashing itself and there was three of them that they tracked, right?

[329] I think that's the right number, yeah.

[330] The thing about these things is, yeah, it's extraordinary, it's crazy looking, it's weird to see these pyramids floating through the sky, but they're not moving like the tick -tac.

[331] It's not doing something that we can't do.

[332] It's just, you see them move around.

[333] It's really weird, but it's...

[334] It's not definitive evidence of anything at this point.

[335] It's strange.

[336] It's peculiar that it's happening around a worship and that our guys don't know what it is.

[337] And it looks like some of these things are entering and leaving the water, which is really peculiar.

[338] So it's an example of the kind of thing that we just haven't been looking at that's going on.

[339] We've been blowing off.

[340] Right.

[341] And now we're finally getting some traction and getting the government to say, you know, yeah, we probably really ought to pay attention to this.

[342] Do you think that there's more frequent sightings, or do you think they're being reported more now?

[343] There are certainly more reports coming in, civilian and military.

[344] The technology that we have today is leaps and bounds over what we had even a few years ago in terms of resolution, distance, range, all those kinds of things.

[345] The latest generation of radars that are being deployed are a huge step forward from what was in the fleet just a few years ago.

[346] So that is probably leading to some reporting that we didn't have before, things that were out there, but the radar cross -section was so low.

[347] They weren't appearing on people's scopes.

[348] So I think it's probably a mixture of things, but what is concerning in part is that some of this activity is more in your face kind of stuff.

[349] It's more like not elusive, you know, on the edge, you see it and it flies away.

[350] It's coming to a nuclear power station and buzzing around it and staying there.

[351] It's coming around these warships and making a point of being seen.

[352] It's coming to a Air Force base in Guam and doing the same thing.

[353] Yeah.

[354] So that's new and that's a little concerning.

[355] And haven't there been reports of them showing up around missiles and doing something with the launch codes or stopping the power from working in these places or something along those lines?

[356] Some sort of manipulation of the power systems, almost delay.

[357] you know?

[358] Yeah.

[359] This is one of the most provocative and fascinating and important stories in this whole area of UFOs in national security.

[360] And we have retired Air Force officers who've testified to this and there are FOIA documents that support these claims.

[361] But the Air Force has never been asked by Congress or anyone to address this.

[362] They've never acknowledged it.

[363] There's an opportunity to do that now and I think it's long overdue.

[364] This is stunning.

[365] if it's true.

[366] I mean, this is the backbone of our nuclear deterrence strategy.

[367] It's really the crown jewels of our freedom and independence and ability to deter nuclear powers like Russia and China.

[368] You know, this is kind of the ultimate insurance policy militarily that we have.

[369] And if someone can come in there and turn these things off, it's just shocking, absolutely shocking.

[370] So it's because of the stigma, Congress has been unwilling even to ask the question, even in private, even though this is very well documented, and these people have come out in their retired uniforms and things and with their documentation showing where they were assigned.

[371] And in one of these cases, out at Malmstrom Air Force Base, I believe it was, there's a good book because the local sheriff was responding to so many calls from civilians in the area to UFOs that were being seen and encountered, he co -authored a book on what was happening.

[372] So there's a lot of data about this, but yet there's no official confirmation that that occurred.

[373] Yeah, the sheer volume, I would like to know whether or not they are increasing in volume or whether or not it is just an increase in our ability to detect them.

[374] And we don't really know, right?

[375] It's because it's been 2017, so it's not that long ago, four years when it really started being something that people were willing to take seriously or willing to because the New York Times article and because, you know, there's just a few videos that are pretty extraordinary.

[376] The go fast video when you hear the pilots going, what the fuck?

[377] And you're watching that thing buzz across the water with no heat signature.

[378] In terms of reporting, there has definitely been an increase of surge the last 12 or so months.

[379] And you see this on the public side with organizations that track these things, the mutual UFO network and so forth.

[380] They've had a surge of maybe 20%.

[381] Some people think, well, maybe it's COVID.

[382] More people are outside looking at the night sky.

[383] That could be some of it.

[384] There are more reports that are coming with video and photographs these days.

[385] If you look at these websites, New Fork and Mufon from, say, 10 years ago, not so many people had cell phones in their pockets.

[386] Routinely now, you'll see very strange photographs and videos.

[387] Frequently, most of the time, there's a prosaic explanation, but not always.

[388] And so my sense is that there's probably a little bit of both going on, more activities, some of it's a little bolder than we've seen in the past, but also better instrumentation to record this.

[389] Another thing that's happening, certainly on the government side, this is the big thing, is that people are less afraid to report it.

[390] So there was a lot of stuff going on.

[391] We don't know how much because nobody was reporting it.

[392] And I've been in meetings with people at the Pentagon with guys who were commander for an AWACs aircraft, for example.

[393] And they'd say, yeah, you know, we saw some really weird stuff, but we weren't telling anybody about it.

[394] You know, we tore up the files.

[395] Guys at the National Security Agency or other places who said, I kept a book of you know, anomalies, weird things.

[396] And then I didn't turn it over to my replacement.

[397] I just tore it up.

[398] So we have blinded ourselves, we've done this to ourselves, and we're playing catch -up now.

[399] Well, unfortunately, some people are full of shit, and that muddied the water, right?

[400] Some people do make things up.

[401] Absolutely, absolutely.

[402] That didn't help, for sure.

[403] Yeah.

[404] What do you think about mass sightings?

[405] Like, what was your take on, like, say, the Phoenix Lights?

[406] Yeah, that's fascinating.

[407] And there are a number of these mass -siding cases and not just in the U .S. There was a soccer match in Italy, reportedly, with 10 ,000.

[408] fans at a stadium.

[409] The game came to a screeching halt.

[410] People watched this thing overhead.

[411] There had some mass sightings in Brazil and other places.

[412] The Phoenix case, what I find most intriguing about that, one of the things, is that Fife Simington, the governor of Arizona, who's a former Air Force officer, himself said after the fact he saw this thing, and it was not a plane, it was not flares, as some of the Air Force contended.

[413] And that was the triangle -shaped object.

[414] That was enormous.

[415] He said it was at least a football field long, maybe several football fields.

[416] Correct.

[417] Yeah.

[418] And hundreds, if not thousands of people saw this.

[419] They had a very similar sightings.

[420] Yeah.

[421] Yeah, very similar.

[422] And it was coming down from, there was quite a path of sightings.

[423] So before Phoenix.

[424] Is there a video?

[425] I'm sorry to interrupt you.

[426] Is there a video of the triangle?

[427] Not that I know of.

[428] I've not seen it if there is.

[429] The videos were all just the lights that are in the sky, right?

[430] Yeah.

[431] Yeah.

[432] And they said that they were flair.

[433] but they're hovering.

[434] Right.

[435] Because it takes a long time for, I mean.

[436] There were flares out that night, and so that muddies the waters, right?

[437] I think they determined there were actually some aircraft doing an exercise and dropped some flares, but this seems to be something apart from that, at least, what Fife -Siamington and many others reported, hard to reconcile with the flare exercise.

[438] Well, the problem with the flare analogy is unless the flares were just, suspended with balloons where they were slowly lowering from the sky, it doesn't make any sense.

[439] Because they're hovering.

[440] Yeah.

[441] Like, I mean, they might have been flares suspended by balloons and slowly making their way down.

[442] But, you know, like, see if you can find the Phoenix Lights video.

[443] It's weird because if they would just drop flares, they would drop.

[444] They would drop speed of gravity.

[445] It would be normal.

[446] I mean, well, in some cases, people also saw these lights moving in formation.

[447] Yeah.

[448] So, you know, as far as I know, flares don't do that.

[449] I've seen flares, and that's not what I observed.

[450] And this was what?

[451] The 90s?

[452] Was this the 90s?

[453] This was 80, late 80s, I believe.

[454] Wasn't it?

[455] And, you know, drone technology back then was pretty unsophisticated, right?

[456] Correct.

[457] The kind of drones we have now, so here it is.

[458] Like, get the fuck out of here.

[459] That's not flares.

[460] Like, those things are not dropping.

[461] They're just hovering there.

[462] Yeah.

[463] It's very strange.

[464] I mean.

[465] It doesn't look like flare to me also the way flares, illuminate the way they radiate light.

[466] It could be some different kind of flare.

[467] Possibly.

[468] I mean, it could be instead of a flare, it could be some sort of massive LED light.

[469] Because the sheer size, too, when you look at them hovering over the city, you have to take into account that, if you look at that image right there, you have to take into account, everything you're looking down there is buildings and windows and streetlights and all that jazz.

[470] Those things have to be massive to make that much illumination while they're in the sky.

[471] If you just had a flashlight and you were hanging a flashlight in the sky, like, what is that, a thousand feet in the air or so?

[472] Who knows?

[473] Whatever it is.

[474] Probably a thousand feet.

[475] A couple thousand feet.

[476] A couple thousand feet up in the air and you had a flashlight, you can barely see that thing.

[477] Absolutely right.

[478] No way.

[479] You wouldn't see it like that.

[480] Whatever that is hovering over that city, that's bizarre.

[481] And whatever that is, it was seen by people hundreds of miles in both directions so it wasn't just Phoenix it was reported and the sequencing all fits there was something that appeared to be flying down from Nevada entered northwestern Arizona continued over Phoenix and then down south and people along that pathway were reporting this hundreds of people yeah and this we were watching the video it just stays there like it's not dropping yeah and this one's not moving which is curious too Yeah, if it was going to drop, it would, I mean, if it was just dropped out of a plane as a flare, I mean, for sure, it would be way lower by now.

[482] Like, those things are flying, whatever that is.

[483] Look at her.

[484] The flare as I have seen in military exercises dropped pretty steady rate.

[485] Yeah, yeah, it's pretty clear that's, you know, it looks like something dropping.

[486] That's something hovering.

[487] There was a few other ones that have taken place, the African school children, the children.

[488] Aerial?

[489] Yeah, that's a crazy one.

[490] It is crazy, and there are other cases like that.

[491] There's a case very similar in Australia.

[492] Supposedly thousands of people were witnesses to that event, and there were dozens, at least 50 school children who saw this thing in teachers.

[493] But yeah, that's really bizarre, and that's part of the challenge with this phenomenon is you get into these areas, very quickly, and it makes it even harder to have the discussion.

[494] Yeah.

[495] It makes it harder for government people, politicians, and others to engage.

[496] It reminds me a little bit of Galileo when he was before the Inquisition for claiming that, you know, it's a heliocentric solar system.

[497] We're going around the sun.

[498] And he said, you know, just look through the telescope, guys.

[499] Come on, look through the telescope.

[500] They wouldn't look through the telescope.

[501] When you bring this issue up, a lot of people just stop right there.

[502] They don't want to hear anything else.

[503] They don't want to talk anymore about it.

[504] They're done.

[505] Yeah.

[506] So it's a challenge.

[507] I do think there has been a shift.

[508] And I think I agree with you that the big one was the New York Times.

[509] But I also think the Bob Lazard documentary was a big one too.

[510] Because when you listen to Bob talk over long periods of time and you hear him describe what it is that he saw what he supposedly worked on in the late 80s.

[511] and the way he described the propulsion system, which is exactly the same way that Tick -Tac thing moves.

[512] That's what's bizarre.

[513] It's like in the other one, was it the Fleer video?

[514] Which video where it turned sideways before it takes off?

[515] That's Gimble.

[516] Gimble, I'm sorry.

[517] When you watch that video, you're like, what?

[518] The one where it's rotating?

[519] Yeah.

[520] That's Gimble, yeah.

[521] What's really also interesting about Gimble is that off the screen, there's a formation of UFOs, flying towards the gimbal and the Navy aircraft that are there.

[522] And when you hear the one guy remark, one of the pilots, he says, look, dude, there's a whole fleet of them out there.

[523] That's what he's referring to.

[524] There was a V -shaped formation of these objects approaching the gimbal, which then veered away and flew off.

[525] And they don't have any idea what those were.

[526] Yeah, the gimbal one is weird.

[527] And I've seen people try to debunk it, too.

[528] And it's so strange when people try to debunk things that you really can't explain.

[529] So here you see this thing move.

[530] It's moving.

[531] and then at one point it turns sideways.

[532] So they're switching between different ways of viewing it and they're trying to figure out what it is.

[533] But this is just, what is this?

[534] Infrared, is that what this is?

[535] Correct.

[536] Forward -looking infrared radar.

[537] And so they're tracking it trying to figure out what it does and then you see it rotate.

[538] And that's bizarre.

[539] Yeah, and there's a strong headwind, so it can't be a balloon.

[540] I mean, the headwind's like 120 knots or something.

[541] And then off cameras, I said, you've got this formation approaching, this V -shaped formation of craft, and they don't have transponders either.

[542] What the hell are they doing in there?

[543] And did they get footage of the formation?

[544] I don't believe so.

[545] Now, how does this footage get out?

[546] Did somebody leak it?

[547] Yeah.

[548] But leak sounds pejorative.

[549] Let me try to put a positive spin on this.

[550] Somebody released it.

[551] Yeah, they went through a proper process, and.

[552] it came with documentation that said approve for public release.

[553] It wasn't like it just went out the back door.

[554] The rub in part is that public affairs didn't know about it, so they got their nose out of joint, but it actually had gone through an official review and had documentation saying approve for public release.

[555] Wow, that's interesting.

[556] I wonder why they've decided to prove that for public release.

[557] Well, there were some people on the inside who were worried that this issue was, was not getting any attention and we're very concerned about what's happening, very concerned about the national security situation.

[558] I had actually introduced Lou Elizondo, who was leading a small effort in the Pentagon to try to track this activity to two people who were direct reports to General Mattis.

[559] And so when I first found out this was going on and it was falling through the cracks, I thought, well, maybe we can get this up to the front office and at least make them aware.

[560] And unfortunately, after several meetings and bringing pilots in, these individuals became aware that yes, indeed, something is happening, but they were concerned that General Mattis might be contaminated politically from even taking a briefing.

[561] They were very protective of his reputation and his stature, which is understandable.

[562] You mean contaminated if he took a briefing?

[563] If he took it, just from hearing the briefing.

[564] Okay, so just...

[565] People would question his sanity or something.

[566] Yeah.

[567] Got it.

[568] So they didn't want that to happen, and this was kind of happening out of normal channels, which are suffocating in the Defense Department.

[569] Normally, any memo to go to the SEC DEF has to get routed through like 14 or 17 different offices all have to approve.

[570] And if they have a question, it stops the process, and they have to be brief to convince the sign on.

[571] And then it goes into a line with thousands of other packages.

[572] So this is an attempt to sort of expedite this and get it to a senior level.

[573] Is that one of the more extraordinary things about the fact this stuff is being released, the fact that everything generally does have to go through so many levels, that they are kind of throwing their hands up in the air and going, we have to do something or say something?

[574] Well, there were a few, I won't call them whistleblowers, but there were a few people who were very concerned and willing to take this out of normal channels because it wasn't even that people were having trouble moving along.

[575] It wasn't going anywhere.

[576] Nobody, NORAD didn't even know.

[577] The North American Aerospace Defense Command was not even being notified that this was happening right off the coast.

[578] Now, when you look at the gimbal video, did they have some sort of a radar on this before they went and tried to meet up with it?

[579] Like, how did they find out where this thing was?

[580] I don't know in that case.

[581] I know for certain in the case of the Tick -Tac in 2004 with Commander Fravor that the Princeton was guiding them with its Aegis radar to the intercept point and tracking it afterward when it went to the cap point.

[582] In this case, I suspect it was a ship guiding them, but it may have been their onboard radars because they have very sophisticated radars.

[583] And the pilots that I've spoken with out there said we would see these things all the time.

[584] Yeah.

[585] We'd see them throwing up on the radar all the time.

[586] And a couple of times guys just went to investigate for themselves.

[587] They had enough fuel or coming back from an exercise and said, I'm going to go to check that thing out.

[588] And so I'm not sure in this particular case, which it was, but it could have been either.

[589] I think something to take any consideration is the vast spans of the ocean, too.

[590] I mean, if you were going to try to hide something, you know, as it were in plain sight, there's no better place to do it than the ocean.

[591] Right.

[592] I mean, there's nothing out there.

[593] Right.

[594] It's mostly a desert, a giant wet desert, right?

[595] Yeah, it's vast and largely unexplored and unknown and inaccessible.

[596] We do have the ability to, if we become interested in a particular area, to really do some serious reconnaissance underwater.

[597] We have resources, but again, somebody has to make a decision.

[598] How specific do we have to be in terms of, like, it's not like they can look at the entire Pacific Ocean, right?

[599] Certainly not, but, you know, with bottom scanning sonars and things like that, they can cover pretty large areas.

[600] So in the case of the Nimitz.

[601] And do they do this from a ship?

[602] They can do it from ships.

[603] They could do it from submarines.

[604] They can do it from various kinds of platforms.

[605] But would it be like being in California on a plane trying to look at the entire country?

[606] No. In the case of the Nimitz, for example, they had a lot long where they had.

[607] the intercept.

[608] So they had a very precise location.

[609] And looking under the ocean...

[610] Latitude and long being latitude and longitude where that incident occurred, where they vectored the jets to.

[611] So looking a few square miles around that area would have been very feasible.

[612] That would have been feasible, a few square miles.

[613] Yeah.

[614] But...

[615] It depends on how much resolution you want.

[616] So if you want really precise resolution, there's always a trade -off then in the time it takes to cover an area.

[617] Right.

[618] And so they could do a larger area more quickly at a level.

[619] lower resolution, but to really look closely and carefully, the son underwater sounds like a radar kind of, but when it's focused, it can give you a very strong picture of what you're looking at.

[620] And it can also, you know, detect metal little react, you know, bounce off more strongly, you get a stronger signal and things.

[621] So they can do a pretty efficient search if they want to.

[622] That's assuming that this thing is still going to be there.

[623] And also assuming.

[624] Or if there was still something down there.

[625] That it doesn't recognize that they're there like the Tick -Tac did and block their tracking, which it did, right?

[626] Correct.

[627] Yeah.

[628] There was interference.

[629] Not with Dave, I think, but at the cap point where yet another F -18 the same day went out Chad Underwood.

[630] That's when they got video of it, right?

[631] That's when they got the Fleer video.

[632] And he could not get a lock -on.

[633] And as I recall, he felt his system was being interfered with.

[634] Yeah.

[635] So what I was getting at, though, is it's not like we can drop something in the Pacific Ocean and get a detailed map of the entire ocean.

[636] No. Hell no. No. Yeah.

[637] Impossible.

[638] They kind of would be like looking at the entire country from California in a plane.

[639] Like there's, you're going to miss a lot.

[640] There's no way to see the whole thing.

[641] What's interesting, I mean, from overhead imagery now, even commercial imagery with artificial intelligence, you know, we're able to pretty much map the world.

[642] every day.

[643] And if you have a particular profile you're looking for with these computer algorithms, you can search all that imagery fairly quickly.

[644] So the reconnaissance capabilities are extensive and you can cover large areas, particularly if you're looking for a particular thing and you can describe it well so that if it sees a match, if the computer sees a match, it identifies it.

[645] There is a lot, there's just mountains of data coming in to.

[646] to this panoply of sensors that we have from thousands of miles out in space to closer in space to the air, ground, sea, undersea.

[647] There's a layer, a mesh network around the entire planet, essentially.

[648] Except in the ocean.

[649] Well, in the ocean, we have sensors, but it's not the same kind of coverage.

[650] We kind of have to get lucky.

[651] I mean, certain areas are very closely monitored.

[652] Choke points, for example, are going to be natural places.

[653] You're going to want to look carefully.

[654] And certain kinds of things are going to give a pretty strong signature.

[655] But that gets off pretty quickly into the area that is confidential.

[656] The government keeps confidential.

[657] I bet they do.

[658] But I would imagine, though, that if I was an alien, I would definitely hide the ocean.

[659] I would say that's the move.

[660] Just be a great place to do it.

[661] Yeah, you can fly around in there.

[662] There was a sub accompanying the Nimitz carrier battle group, and it didn't detect anything in the water.

[663] So there may be an ability to move underwater and remain undetected, much as there's an ability in the air to go at supersonic speeds without creating a shockwave.

[664] Whatever this technology is, it has some very unusual properties.

[665] Yeah, that's the bizarre thing, right?

[666] The supersonic speeds.

[667] And then that brings us to Lazar's depiction of how these things worked, that they somehow, another bend gravity, these things that he worked on, which is the model that's on the desk there.

[668] That's supposedly a detailed model of what that thing looked like that he worked on.

[669] The sport model, I think they called it.

[670] That's what he called it.

[671] Yeah.

[672] When you watch him talk and you hear him give his description of his time working there and what he saw and what he thinks those things are, what was your take on that?

[673] I thought it was curious and interesting.

[674] I mean, I've been to Area 51.

[675] I didn't see any flying saucers or anything like that.

[676] What did you see?

[677] I saw Defense Department experiments being performed and training activities and that sort of thing.

[678] Nothing that the taxpayer would object to.

[679] Of course not.

[680] But it's a big range.

[681] There's a lot of stuff going on out there.

[682] And there's a lot of adjacent ranges.

[683] If you look at the map, actually.

[684] That's what he said.

[685] Yeah.

[686] That's what he said.

[687] I found his explanations curious.

[688] Yeah.

[689] How so?

[690] The complexity of it and the fact that he talked about Laurentium, for example, and then decades later, it turns out that apparently there is a more stable form of that.

[691] That's element 115?

[692] Sounds right.

[693] I couldn't tell you for sure.

[694] But it's called Laurentium?

[695] Laurentium.

[696] That sounds like something from Battlestar Galactica.

[697] You know, we need the Laurentium.

[698] All this stuff takes you into that, right?

[699] Right.

[700] So now I'm a little skeptical about his claims, I have to say.

[701] A friend of mine claims to know the gal who is his supervisor when he worked out there and knows what he was actually doing and where he was located and claims that he was a guy who checked radiation on badges.

[702] That's it.

[703] Yeah.

[704] And so all the rest is fiction.

[705] according to that story and this is a person that you know yeah maybe that person's full of shit maybe I don't have the ground truth on this but it's interesting he did falsify his educational records and he's been involved in some other things and it just doesn't do you talking about the MIT records yeah yeah he explained that to me he said that he was working on something for the government at and they sent him to MIT to learn something and he i can't say too much i'll tell you off air because he told me not to talk about it but it makes more sense when you hear his description of it that essentially it wasn't documented that he was studying there because what he was doing was really a terrible thing a terrible experiment they were working on when i explained to you maybe it'll make more sense okay maybe not though maybe he's full of shit maybe he lied about that What's interesting, though, is he's told the same exact story since the late 80s.

[706] And he doesn't seem full shit.

[707] Now, some people are really good at lying.

[708] And, you know, I've been tricked before, and I'm sure you have, too.

[709] There's some people that are just sociopaths.

[710] They're really good at...

[711] Yeah, they don't even, like, know they're lying.

[712] They're, like, convincing their own head while they're spinning it.

[713] He's obviously, though, he's obviously very intelligent, and he obviously knows a lot about science.

[714] He knows a lot about propulsion systems.

[715] And he really did work at Los Alamos, which is interesting because he's actually on the employee roster.

[716] And they tried to say that he didn't.

[717] He knew people that were there.

[718] He knew the layout of the building.

[719] When he went there with George Knapp, they went through the building.

[720] He knew exactly where everything was.

[721] And he knew the people that worked there.

[722] So he really did work there, apparently, allegedly.

[723] His story, what's interesting to me is that, again, it's the same story over and over and over again.

[724] and then what's also interesting to me is that he knew and took friends to a place where they were testing these things out and he knew where it was and he knew when they were doing it and he brought his friends out there and that's when they got arrested yeah it's a very uh i think there's some consistency there um that is hard to explain how would he know where to go and right what was going on um there are some possible answers to that i've poked into this a bit um suppose There was a bar off base where the scientists and a lot of the aviators and people go and hang out.

[725] He was a frequent, frequented that place and picked up information.

[726] So, you know, I hear stories on both sides of this.

[727] I don't know what the ground truth is.

[728] And I remain skeptical, but, you know, hey, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on.

[729] I enjoyed his company.

[730] I went to dinner with him and Jeremy, and I talked to him for some.

[731] several hours on the podcast and off the podcast.

[732] I don't know.

[733] You know, I don't, but it's a weird one because he never made any money doing that.

[734] He never made any money telling that story.

[735] I'll tell you another story offline.

[736] We can exchange stories offline.

[737] I'm excited.

[738] I can't wait for this to be over now.

[739] What other stories are compelling?

[740] We talked about Travis Walton, who is, I got a Travis Walton bobblehead, ladies and gentlemen, from Travis himself.

[741] And Travis is the man whom the movie, fire in the same.

[742] guy was created about his event that happened in Arizona, correct?

[743] Correct.

[744] When he was working for a logging company and encountered an object and went missing for several days and came back with this fantastic story of being abducted by aliens.

[745] Yeah, I had the pleasure of meeting him once with two of my boys and listened to his story and read the book and so forth.

[746] and it seems credible.

[747] You know, as incredible as it is, he was missing for those five days.

[748] No one's ever found any explanation of where he was.

[749] There was a full manhunt going on.

[750] There were like six or seven other guys who saw the UFOs, saw this beam strike him.

[751] He's told the same story for years.

[752] It's, you know, I asked him a couple of questions, and he gave quick, rapid answers.

[753] Of course, he's been telling this story for a long time, but he didn't sound like someone who had to pause and, you know, try to, what am I going to say with this, you know?

[754] He seemed very natural talking about it.

[755] According to that story, as you know, he woke up on an examination table, lashed out.

[756] These beings were examining him.

[757] He runs into the hallway, runs into another room, and these very Nordic -looking individuals come in and settle him down and escort him out.

[758] out and so forth.

[759] And days later, he wakes up next to a road, hundreds of miles from where he was last seen.

[760] You know, what do you do with a story like that?

[761] It's just so hard to independently confirm anything.

[762] There's nothing that contradicts his story that we have.

[763] But it's not possible to confirm it.

[764] So it goes into a category of which there are a great many wild, incredible stories like that that really make you scratch your head.

[765] There are some where there's a little more evidence.

[766] There's the Cash Lundrum case here in Texas, for example, where a family was severely irradiated.

[767] They saw a UFO blocking the road, stopped, got out of the car.

[768] It fried some of the paint.

[769] They ended up in the hospital.

[770] You know, serious radiation poisoning.

[771] Sue the Defense Department thinking it must be some DOD project.

[772] DoD swarping down It wasn't theirs and lost the They lost the case What year was this?

[773] 70s or 80s I'm not sure It's cash lundrum You know you can find it on Wiki it's it's public knowledge But there are any images of their car Excuse me Was there images of their car I believe so I believe so I don't look at that I'm not aware of that one I hadn't heard that one before Yeah that's you know there There are a number of cases actually like that where people are visibly affected and physically ill and have, you know, red marks on their skin and very ill. And they're not well known those cases.

[774] I see this, not a car.

[775] This is the burn on their hands?

[776] Hmm.

[777] Yeah, when I say fried, I mean, I heard the paint was damaged.

[778] I don't know if there's...

[779] And this was where in Texas?

[780] This was Dayton, Texas, near Dayton, Texas, which is a couple or three hours west of here.

[781] Huh.

[782] Three live in pain and tear after attack by a blazing UFO.

[783] Is that from the Inquirer?

[784] Well, they lost their hair.

[785] Damn.

[786] Yeah, typical radiation effect.

[787] Very strange.

[788] Very strange.

[789] And very well documented.

[790] The doctors, the medical reports are all there.

[791] nobody has a good explanation for it and you know there are other cases like that there are quite a few strange stuff a lot of them are when people are driving right there are a lot there are many cases of driving and often the cars cut out yeah engine stops um yeah one of my favorite ones is betty and barney hill and uh there's a woman named angela hill who's a top ufc fighter and her grandfather is barney hill and i didn't even know until after i was done talking to her then she explained it to me I was like what so I'm like all right next time we do a podcast you got to tell me about your grandpa I saw Mrs. Hill one time on an old TV show called truth or lies or something like that and they would put people on a polygraph test on the show they'd bring them out interview them tell your story then they did a polygraph right there and gave the result to the audience and Mrs. Hill came out and passed it with flying colors she stuck to her story about the whole deduction, passed the lie detector test, and I think she'd taken them before.

[792] The other problem I have with that is hypnotic regression.

[793] Hypnotic regression is very odd, right?

[794] Because you can sort of suggest memories to people.

[795] I don't know what the hypnotic regression was like, you know?

[796] There's a problem with suggesting things to people in various states of vulnerability, that those things become false memories.

[797] It's really common.

[798] Like, you know as well as I do, like the human memory is this incredibly flawed thing.

[799] And so if you're in a state like hypnosis and someone starts suggesting to you that perhaps you were involved in some incredible experience and so was your husband and this is what he saw and this is did you see something similar and that I don't know.

[800] I'm just guessing.

[801] I just have a problem with hypnotic regression, you know.

[802] You're right to have those concerns.

[803] I think most cases of alleged abductions that rely on that, you can't really assign any credibility to it.

[804] What was interesting about the Hill case was that they had an individual who was trained and did not believe in this phenomenon, was not trying to lead them to that outcome.

[805] He was a military guy, and it was before this was a thing.

[806] Yes, that's what's interesting about it.

[807] It's the first one of those.

[808] Yeah, so that had more credibility.

[809] Since that time, I think there have been a real problem, serious problems, with a lot of the hypnotic regression cases.

[810] What's your take on John Mack?

[811] Well, that, you know, is a case in point.

[812] I mean, I've heard that questions about that.

[813] Interestingly, he...

[814] We should explain who John Mack was.

[815] Sure.

[816] Dr. Mack was a Harvard psychiatrist and faculty member, and he began studying people who thought they had been abducted and became persuaded, eventually.

[817] that this was really happening to them in some cases, not all cases, but in some cases, he believed they really were having these experiences, or at least they sincerely thought they were.

[818] I'm not sure he necessarily went to the point publicly of saying, yeah, I think aliens are coming down and scarfing them up, but I think these people are telling the truth as they understand it.

[819] And you mentioned the case, the aerial case, in the former Rhodesian Zimbabwe.

[820] He traveled there, interviewed the kids.

[821] You can see this in the documentary, The Phenomenon.

[822] There's good coverage of that.

[823] You can see Dr. Mack in the movie and get a sense of him as a person.

[824] He seems gentle and kind and thoughtful.

[825] But I have heard a lot of questions have been raised about his hypnotic regression technique, which is what he mostly relied on.

[826] Yeah.

[827] Yeah.

[828] Yeah, that's why I've heard the same.

[829] The problem is when someone becomes a believer, right?

[830] and then confirmation bias they're looking for so easy to do yeah so easy to do and it's one of those subjects it's so for whatever reason it just hits that part of the brain that wants to believe i don't think there's another subject on earth other than maybe possibly religion that hits that that part of the brain like the alien abduction or UFO phenomenon does well i think it is like religion i think it is a desire to connect to something greater yeah bigger to the beyond and infinitude, immortality.

[831] I think it relates to all those things.

[832] And there's an innate desire people have, and that is going to influence a lot of the reporting.

[833] Yeah, I think you're 100 % right.

[834] And it's unfortunate that we don't have like a lock -down, rock -solid lie detector test.

[835] Or you could give it to someone and go, how much do you really remember?

[836] Like, tell me what you remember.

[837] Let me see inside your brain.

[838] Yeah, I think we're pretty close to that, actually.

[839] Do you?

[840] Yeah.

[841] Would you think?

[842] I think there are some tests now that they're not being used for that purpose, but the government's done a lot of research.

[843] And I think there are things right now where they can see, kind of understand what you're thinking is you're thinking it and observe how the brain acts when people are lying versus when they're not lying.

[844] I've seen some write -ups on some of this.

[845] Right.

[846] You're hiding stuff, bro.

[847] You know things.

[848] Can you tell Jamie?

[849] There's some pretty sophisticated stuff out there.

[850] You start laughing too.

[851] Come on.

[852] You're deep in the government.

[853] You know.

[854] I hope so.

[855] I hope they do have something like that.

[856] But how would that do with false memories, though?

[857] Because they can plant memories into people's heads.

[858] That's right.

[859] So they might see the brain reacting as though it were either lying or telling the truth, but you'd have to probably be further down the path than we are today to know whether that could be a recalled memory.

[860] Right.

[861] You know, whether that's all you're observing, maybe an implanted memory.

[862] Yeah.

[863] Memory's just so shaky.

[864] And when it comes to something that's so extraordinary, like seeing a UFO, I mean, I've never seen a flying saucer or an alien, but I could imagine if I did, I would probably be so overcome with fear and excitement and emotions and all.

[865] Your brain is short -circuited.

[866] I can only imagine trying to decipher that.

[867] And then if I had to sit here and explain it to you and be completely honest about my experience, boy, I don't.

[868] know if I could.

[869] You know, I don't know what I would get out of that.

[870] How much juice I would squeeze out of that?

[871] I've never seen a UFO myself.

[872] The closest thing I've had to something that might be that shocking and terrifying was being charged by a grizzly bear.

[873] Oh, shit.

[874] And I went into it, you know, it's sort of a dissociated state, I think.

[875] You know, everything kind of slows down and you're sort of thinking in the back, is this really happening or am I in a dream?

[876] And You know, your mind goes to a different place when that happens, right?

[877] And all the adrenaline turns on, and, you know, your body automatically does a whole bunch of things to protect you.

[878] And I would imagine that happens to these people when they see something.

[879] What happened to you?

[880] We were hiking in Wyoming, my wife and I, and she was ahead of me on the trail.

[881] And all of a sudden, and I was trying to make noise once in a while, and I was hiking with the bear spray in my hand, because I was taking.

[882] that threat very seriously and all of a sudden there was just spine tingling roar i mean i'm coming to kill you right now you are so fucking dead oh it was it was i've never heard anything like it i wish i wish we had it on a recording somewhere because it's not like what i've ever seen in a video or heard anywhere else it was the the epitome of ferocity you know and so this thing starts charging up at us we're up on a on a trail on a hiking trail and I just slip off the safety and start getting as much spray out there as I can.

[883] And it comes up on the trail and stops and looks at us.

[884] And he puts his head down and like he's gauging us.

[885] And I'm just standing there, putting the spray out with the sensitivity they have.

[886] I'm sure he was, you know, getting that.

[887] Although he was about 30 feet away kind of at that point about the limit.

[888] Yeah, yeah, he was right there.

[889] Oh, my God.

[890] I think if it had been a female bear with Cubs, I'm not sure that would have worked.

[891] But in this case, after seeing that we weren't attacking him, I guess, when you surprise at Grizzly, they have this adrenaline gate that opens, and they're full on.

[892] They just go nuclear immediately, not like a black bear.

[893] Right.

[894] And that's what happened here.

[895] But after there was enough time laps, I think, between the startle, and when he got up on the trail and was getting the pepper spray and saw us that he then walked, turned around, and went up the trail the other way.

[896] but yeah your mind your mind does unusual things when you get in circumstances like that what did your mind do well like i said it was kind of a dissociated state i think i i felt almost like i was in a dream state and part of me was questioning is this a dream because this was kind of a nightmare situation it's like the ultimate worst thing i never want to have happen my wife and i get chewed up by a grizzly bear And so I was thinking, you know, is this like almost pinching myself literally, you know, because I was questioning, could this really be happening?

[897] And yet you're on autopilot and you're just kind of doing what you need to do.

[898] So in this case, it was getting the pepper spray up, taking the safety off, and just putting as much of that between us and the bear as I could, and not running.

[899] I think years later I was talking to a game guy in Africa and he said, I told him my story.

[900] He had a lot of better stories than mine.

[901] But he said, well, you know, mate, why you lived?

[902] And I said, no, why?

[903] And he said, because you didn't run.

[904] And for whatever reason, we followed the training and just held our ground.

[905] Who, calm under pressure, sir.

[906] Good job.

[907] Like I said, it was dissociated state.

[908] I don't know if it was so much calmed as scared into, you know, doing the right thing.

[909] Well, the fact that you were able to get the safety off and then pump the spray out there.

[910] That's calm.

[911] A lot of people just freeze up in those encounters, don't they?

[912] Probably.

[913] I don't know that much about it.

[914] I think the mistakes some people make is they have it in their backpack.

[915] It was like, well, all their gear.

[916] And they're going, oh, where did I put that thing?

[917] You know, and it's a little bit too late to be rummaging around through your backpack at that point.

[918] I have some friends that were in Alaska, and they got charged by a bear.

[919] They had killed an elk, and they were packing the elk out, and then they went back to get the rest of it in the morning because it's a long hike to their camp, and a bear had claimed it.

[920] and they didn't realize that the bear had claimed it until it was too late and then it came charging out an enormous black bear you know the black bears in Alaska or excuse me not brown bear brown bear in Alaska they're so big because they get so much protein they get so much fish and so it's kind of 11 foot bear just charging them and knocked them over one of the guys one of their friends actually wound up on top of the bear's back as it was running down the hill for a brief amount of time so for a second or so it was actually literally riding this bear's back and these guys all got out of it okay they all got out of it alive the thing ran off and it didn't i don't think it understood how many people were there it was a large crew filming a television show and so as it ran off uh it went into the woods for a second then it was barking out there from the woods they all had guns but they didn't have the guns ready uh they were eating lunch at the time i'm surprised they didn't have their guns ready because i've been hunting up there uh for cariboo and mountain gut and other things and when you do have one of those kills when you go back to it everybody knows that bears like to move in on those and and you know they'll just sleep next to it just keep wake out roll over and start munching again they even found bear shit as they were walking back they found a pile of bear shit near the carcass yeah some people hunt bears by doing that they'll go to a carcass or shoot something leave it out there and they just keep visiting the carcass yeah so i'm surprised they they were caught off guard that way but thank goodness everybody came out a famous wildlife photographer He was actually killed very recently in Montana.

[921] See if you can find this, Jamie.

[922] Because this guy has an amazing Instagram page.

[923] And on his last post, which was just a few days before he was killed, he had a really cool photo of a grizzly bear.

[924] And he said he managed to get, because he had apparently been fly fishing.

[925] And he managed to get that close to the bear because he had smelled like he'd been catching trout all day.

[926] So the bear actually got close to him And apparently what had happened was He inadvertently stumbled upon a bear That had killed a moose And the bear was protecting the moose And I guess he was just trying to get a photograph of it Or something The bear mauled him and just tore him apart And I think he died on the way of the hospital I think he had a stroke It's uh it's these these grizzly bears Are terrifying Totally unlike our black bears in the east Yeah Our black bears are slow to anger slow to move they're relatively gentle and out west the grizzly bears eat the black bears yeah they're tree a black bear and and take him down yeah they are absolutely terrifying if you're in that kind of situation I mean they're so powerful so fast faster than a horse and a sprint as you probably know was just bananas yeah yeah this is why I had the pepper spray in my hand yeah as I you know was so concerned about that possibility As unlikely as it seed, I was terrified of that.

[927] It's almost like worth carrying a large rifle.

[928] Yeah.

[929] Even if you're hunting.

[930] If I ever went back to grizzly country, it wouldn't be with just pepper spray.

[931] Yeah, like a semi -auto 300 windbag or something, something heavy.

[932] What if the wind had been blown the wrong way?

[933] Right, exactly.

[934] Well, my friend John, John Rivett, he actually runs a hunting camp in Alberta.

[935] And he's blown pepper spray from a tree stand at a grizzly bear.

[936] the bear just walked right through like it was nothing because he was angry you know this is funny because some of the pepper spray a little bit of it got on me and more got on my wife because she was just in front of me between me and the bear and it took like 60 seconds before you started to feel there was a lag after you got the pepper spray on you between when it started to burn and then it would get more intense oh that's not good yeah that's not what you want so i think if that's doing that to me and I don't have fur and I'm not a grizzly.

[937] You know, what's it doing to him?

[938] But yeah, that's a little concerning too.

[939] Did you find the wildlife photographer, Montana?

[940] I found the story.

[941] I cannot find his Instagram page.

[942] What's his name?

[943] Carl Mock.

[944] And you can't find Carl Mock wildlife photographer Instagram?

[945] Nope.

[946] Well, there's that horrifying story of the bear whisperer guy who got killed eat with his girlfriend and he had his audio running, his tape recorder running, while the bear killed him and ate him.

[947] Yeah.

[948] And then killed his girlfriend.

[949] Yeah, I mean.

[950] That's a Werner Herzog's documentary, grizzly man. Have you watched the documentary?

[951] I haven't watched it.

[952] You should.

[953] You'll have a different opinion.

[954] Once you watch a documentary, you're like, huh.

[955] Like, it kind of seems like suicide by bear.

[956] Yeah.

[957] But he was doing crazy stuff.

[958] It wasn't just crazy.

[959] He was doing what you're never supposed to do.

[960] He was also there past the time when the bears were supposed to be hibernating.

[961] So the only bears that are outside of hibernation are really desperate for protein, desperate for fat.

[962] They delete anything, and they just say, I think I didn't eat this dude.

[963] And, you know, and he was annoying.

[964] He would get, like, close to the bear.

[965] Hey, Mr. Chocolate?

[966] Like, the video is, the film, rather, is hilarious, unfortunately.

[967] It's one of the most unintentionally funny movies you'll ever see.

[968] Like, because the guy, first of all, um, the man really love bears.

[969] There's no doubt about that and had a deep respect for them and all, all those things are true.

[970] But also he's like a comical kind of a guy.

[971] Like, uh, like, he would like go up to their poop and go, this was just inside of her.

[972] Oh my goodness.

[973] It's still warm.

[974] This is amazing.

[975] I love you.

[976] I love you.

[977] And the bears, like, they're just trying to live.

[978] They don't give a fuck about you.

[979] Like, they don't love you back.

[980] Like, they have these.

[981] dead eyes these shark eyes you know and you've looked at just reacting to stuff yeah you know they they are predators and they're they're wild dangerous wild animals they are not your friend they're not your buddy i don't care who you are you know it's cool that they're around i mean it's an amazing thing grizzly bears any bear they're amazing but you know be careful absolutely right there's a lot of horrifying stories every year this happens to people it's not oh yeah occasional thing.

[982] It's, you know, 10 or 15 or 20 people every year.

[983] Yeah, a couple weeks ago, a guy got chewed up in Yellowstone.

[984] The guy got his head chewed up by a sow.

[985] I think that guy lived fortunately, but he got mangled.

[986] You know, it's just, they're so fast and so powerful.

[987] My friend John saw one kill a moose through a scope.

[988] He was looking through a, and he saw this bear, chase the moose and swat it on the back.

[989] And he said it literally broke the moose.

[990] moose is back.

[991] I can believe that.

[992] Just imagine that.

[993] I've seen video of a female grizzly whose cub got swept away in the current and washed down in front of a big male who was fishing for salmon.

[994] And the male swiped at the cub, and sometimes the males will kill the cubs and eat them.

[995] Yeah.

[996] And the mother went after him, and it was much like what we experienced when we were hiking.

[997] You know, it was just nuclear.

[998] She was all out.

[999] He was bigger than her.

[1000] She didn't care.

[1001] She attacked him with everything she had, drove him across the stream, chased them up the hill.

[1002] And, you know, it happened just like that.

[1003] God, life.

[1004] Yeah.

[1005] It's overpowering.

[1006] You know, there's, when you're in that circumstance, you know, you better have a way out or a gun or something.

[1007] It was just, I think human beings have such a distorted idea of our place in the food chain.

[1008] I really do, because we're so, you know, we live in houses and we drive in cars and we fly in planes and we have guns and, you know, and we can go to the zoo and see a bear.

[1009] But when you're out in the woods and there's no rules and they're acting on the laws of nature, I just don't think most people have any idea what that life is like.

[1010] Their life is just ruthless and short.

[1011] It lasts for like, you know, if they're lucky, they get 14, 15 years out of it And by the time they're dead, they're just, all their bones are fucked up and their face is torn apart by other bears and, you know, and they kill things with their face for a living.

[1012] That's what they do.

[1013] And that's one of the things that terrifies people about this UAP issue, that, right, we're top of the food chain, we're the alpha.

[1014] We don't have to worry about that.

[1015] We're in control of our fate.

[1016] And then, like, oh, my gosh, well, maybe we're not.

[1017] Why did they change it from UFO to unidentified aerial phenomena?

[1018] The stigma, trying to get away from that.

[1019] that loaded term.

[1020] Part of the term, the problem with that term is that people don't hear the unidentified part.

[1021] They think automatically you mean alien spaceship.

[1022] Right.

[1023] They say, do you believe in UFOs?

[1024] Well, yeah, I believe people see things that don't identify.

[1025] They can't identify.

[1026] But that's not what people are thinking.

[1027] You know, it's not what they think they're asking you.

[1028] So people wanted a term that was a little more neutral.

[1029] Is the worst case scenario that they are beings from another planet or another dimension?

[1030] Or is the worst case scenario that these These are things that China has developed or Russia has developed, and they're so far technically superior to us that we can't even imagine.

[1031] That's interesting because both situations in a worst case could lead to a similar outcome.

[1032] The Chinese are employing AI and information technology in a truly Orwellian fashion.

[1033] They are creating a state in which they can monitor what virtually every conference.

[1034] conversation, people's movement, people's employment, their location, they've got facial recognition detectors, they've got every cell phone.

[1035] It's got like a patriotic scorecard on it, which they can download it at a check point.

[1036] And as they continue to perfect that and implement that, you get a vision of, that seems very alien of where you extrapolate that out 20 years.

[1037] You've got absolute power and control at the top, like a dysfunctional.

[1038] Hollywood sci -fi movie.

[1039] So it's conceivably almost as bad as the worst -case scenario of aliens coming in.

[1040] I don't know what should be worse.

[1041] When you think about space and this infinite ocean and the shores it washes up on and the things that are in the shadows out there, you know, there's no end to where your imagination can go.

[1042] So it's hard to compare.

[1043] But I don't think either will is necessarily be a happy happy.

[1044] scenario?

[1045] Well, I would think that best case scenario would be aliens because we would hope that aliens would be more enlightened than us.

[1046] We know Chinese are not.

[1047] They're just humans.

[1048] You know, we know that Chinese people are no different than the Russians or then the Chechnyens or the United States people.

[1049] They're just human beings, right?

[1050] Human beings are incredibly flawed and we're territorial apes with thermonuclear weapons, right?

[1051] That's what we are.

[1052] We would hope that these things from another planet are far more advanced than us technologically and hopefully far more advanced than us spiritually, the way they community, maybe they're not warlike at all, which is why there's been no stories about them attacking and killing people or, you know, blowing up bases or doing anything crazy when they've been chased by jets.

[1053] They seem to be completely benign in that respect.

[1054] So I think the best case scenario would, at this stage, would be that they're aliens.

[1055] Does that make sense?

[1056] Yeah, it does make sense.

[1057] And I think that would be the hope.

[1058] And furthermore, that they would impart a lot of this information to us and technology in ways to...

[1059] Would they know?

[1060] I don't know.

[1061] I don't think they would.

[1062] Best case scenario would be that they are benign like that.

[1063] and they want to help us.

[1064] Yeah.

[1065] And so that's, you know, that's what we'd all like to believe.

[1066] The help us part maybe, but show us the technology, but we're still us.

[1067] The problem is we're still us.

[1068] We're still ridiculous.

[1069] The human animal, in just in general, amazing, beautiful, incredible creations, wonderful creativity, but also frightening in our anger and our ability to lash out and attack.

[1070] I would hope that these beings that can travel across the galaxy would be far, past all that stuff.

[1071] That's best case scenario.

[1072] Because if it is Russia or if it is China, you know, they're going to be like, look, I'm a proud American and I would like to think that the way we behave and the way we have governed in terms of the way we've used our superpower, although not perfect, has been better than if it was Communist China that was in the same, the CCP that was in the same position.

[1073] I would think.

[1074] that we've done a far better job.

[1075] I would think that we're certainly not as draconian in the way we treat our citizens.

[1076] We certainly don't do things to our citizens in this current age the way they did to the Uyghur Muslims.

[1077] There's a lot of things that I like about the United States.

[1078] But if the United States had the kind of power where they could just travel through the galaxy and they could just show up outside of nuclear bases in China and do whatever the fuck they wanted and just disappear into the ocean and we were the only ones that had it, that would disturb the shit out of the rest of the world, right?

[1079] Even though we are the preeminent superpower, even though we are, you know, we're the number one military power on earth right now currently for the time being, right?

[1080] I wouldn't want us to have that kind of advantage over the rest of the world.

[1081] But if anybody did, I'd want it to be us, but I definitely don't want it to be China, right?

[1082] Absolutely not.

[1083] And that would be the worst.

[1084] That would be worst I think the unclassified figure is about 70 billion per year on the intelligence program, intelligence community.

[1085] And it would be very surprising and it's stunning if they had independently developed technology that it was that far ahead of everything else and everyone else somehow secretly.

[1086] So it doesn't seem likely, and we don't think that's the case.

[1087] So more likely, ultra -terrestrial.

[1088] Or extraterrestrial.

[1089] This is the conundrum.

[1090] We don't see any evidence that it's the Russians or Chinese or anyone else.

[1091] And we don't have any reason to believe that they have technology that can perform in that manner.

[1092] So, you know, this is the problem.

[1093] Where does that drive you?

[1094] Right.

[1095] Where does that drive you?

[1096] What about the possibility of the things that Bob Lazar did talk about?

[1097] Whether you believe Bob Lazar or not, the thing Bob Lazar talked about that's fascinating was this possibility.

[1098] that we have obtained some extraterrestrial craft and that we are in the process of trying to back engineer it.

[1099] Yeah, that's a really ticklish question for me and awkward.

[1100] If I were to say, yep, it's true.

[1101] Nobody would believe me. If I really knew, I couldn't say yes.

[1102] And yet, so it's hard to give good answers to that question.

[1103] I think it's plausible.

[1104] I don't say that, think that people should roll that out.

[1105] It's a legitimate question to ask.

[1106] There's enough information to suggest something like that may have happened.

[1107] We may have recovered some debris.

[1108] What information?

[1109] Well, there's some books about Roswell.

[1110] There's some other cases like that where people have come forward and said I was in the military and I was at this, you know, retrieve where I was a kid and I saw this thing crash and I ran up to it.

[1111] it and I saw what was inside it and blah, blah, blah, and there are some, in fact, there's some investigation going on right now on a new case.

[1112] So it's not an off -the -wall question.

[1113] It's a legitimate question.

[1114] I think the way it would probably play out in our government is that it would be so deeply squirled away that you wouldn't be able to bring in the best scientists.

[1115] You wouldn't be able to bring in world -class scientists.

[1116] You would have a available maybe a few people inside some aerospace company and they'd probably be very hamstrung in their ability to test and examine the material and so forth and you know it'd just be locked away somewhere.

[1117] That's the argument for Bob Lazar because Bob Lazar at least on paper is not a top scientist.

[1118] He was a guy that had not the best credentials in terms of his education but was clearly a very intelligent guy who was fascinated with propulsion systems put a jet engine in the back of his car and it was kind of a wacky super genius dude it was just a little off and when you think about his description of how they ran the program it's even more in line with what you would do with something that was incredibly top secret whereas everything's compartmentalized the metallurgy people didn't talk to the propulsion people the propulsion people the propulsion people didn't talk to the whoever else was on the project I'm not saying that there's no reason to believe we might have some recovered debris.

[1119] I'm skeptical about some of his claims.

[1120] Yeah, in particular.

[1121] Multiple full crafts, right?

[1122] Yeah.

[1123] And you say there's like nine of them.

[1124] Yeah, and different models and things.

[1125] Some of the things you say don't sound like the government that I know.

[1126] Like what?

[1127] Like 21 levels of, you know, I had 21 levels of security clearance above top secret or something.

[1128] There's no security system like that that I've ever heard of.

[1129] So there are things like that that don't make sense from somebody who's been an insider.

[1130] But...

[1131] Is it possible that there might be something like that when it gets to a program that's as bizarre as back -engineering, extraterrestrial vehicles that they might put in place additional levels of top -secretionable?

[1132] Especially when you're talking about compartmentalizing all these different aspects of the project?

[1133] That's not really the way it works.

[1134] The way it works is that it, you know, they could make a special...

[1135] exception in this case.

[1136] And DOE has something sort of like this.

[1137] They have an alphabetical system with tiers of more classified stuff.

[1138] DOE is Department of Energy.

[1139] Okay.

[1140] So, you know, in the classified world, you've got the intelligence community and it has its own procedures and so forth.

[1141] Then you've got Defense Department of Black programs, which are a different world.

[1142] And there's a little bit of overlap in a Venn diagram sense.

[1143] And then you've got Department of Energy, which has billions of dollars in black programs, tens of billions, and very little oversight.

[1144] So they have a system and a different clearance, which is a result of the Atomic Energy Act, not an executive order, which establishes the classification for the rest of the government.

[1145] So something's like that's not impossible.

[1146] It could happen.

[1147] Now, the Roswell story is a fascinating one because there was an uptick in UFO sightings, or at least reported sightings that came after World War II.

[1148] And the idea is amongst, you know, the UFO cognoscenti, is that they were aware that we had detonated nuclear weapons and that we had blown up Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[1149] And they're like, okay, these crazy fucks are, they're taking this to a new place.

[1150] Let's zoom in and see what's going on down there.

[1151] And then they started visiting us.

[1152] Yeah, I mean, that's the story.

[1153] That's plausible to me. I mean, if there are aliens here, why are they here?

[1154] What are they doing, right?

[1155] And when you look at the behavior of the objects that we're seeing, it's consistent with the possibility that maybe somebody has an interest in something here they want to protect.

[1156] And if we were to have a nuclear war, it might compromise that interest.

[1157] So maybe they have a stake in some resource here or some capability or, you know, genetics or just whatever maybe it's an experiment and petri dish somebody started a long time ago they want their experiment to run to its conclusion i mean that's an interesting perspective there's so many possibilities when you start going down that path i i think um probes that are you know artificial intelligence probes that have the the capability perhaps to manufacture or print robots or beings or maybe even genetically create something when it arrives at a destination is conceivable.

[1158] Right?

[1159] They could travel through space for hundreds of years or thousands of years arrive to the destination, consuming very little energy in the hallway.

[1160] All of a sudden, boom.

[1161] And they create on board some beings that can operate things and perform tasks that are short live for that purpose.

[1162] Monitor, interact, collect, report.

[1163] There's all kinds of possibilities that are within the bounds of science.

[1164] Yeah, the imagination runs wild, right?

[1165] It does, yeah.

[1166] And when you think about what's happening currently with human civilization, if you take it from the advent of the nuclear bomb to where we are today with this weird situation with Russia and China and just even almost like a civil war, which is potentially possible in the United States as well, like we're in this weird volatile stage of our development as a civilization, maybe that's a feature of evolution.

[1167] Maybe when biological creatures go from being a thing that lives tooth and claw like a grizzly bear to eventually developing shelter and then eventually developing some semblance of civilization to eventually developing advanced civilization and space travel and all this other stuff, maybe along the way, there's this real possibility of fucking the whole project up and that it happens all throughout the universe and maybe they've observed this maybe this is a stage of development that we are being given training wheels and maybe a little bit of a helping hand by our extraterrestrial brethren who are okay they're there they're right there they're at that nuclear part let's uh let's keep an eye on these fuckers that would be a nice benign view i'd love that and it's possible that even by acknowledging this phenomenon if we got to the point it's some down the road where our government said wow this there really is something from off planet coming here it might uh help to resolve some of these differences and disputes between different countries uh might compel us to collaborate more to see ourselves more as is one species one people and not you know chinese versus russians versus americans it would certainly stimulate a lot of uh technology much as the um the space program did after they saw the Sputnik and people got afraid of the Russians in space and they're ahead of us.

[1168] And it actually led to cooperation.

[1169] It led to progress in technology, a lot of good things.

[1170] So I think there's a possibility that this could go in a very positive direction.

[1171] That's what I would like to think.

[1172] Now, Roswell as a case is really interesting, right?

[1173] Because there's a lot of witnesses.

[1174] There's a lot of people that claim to have seen things.

[1175] the stories all kind of mesh together from Jesse Marcel to all the different people that claim to have seen bodies and different people that saw caskets to the person who worked at the mortuary who was contacted the funeral home that was contacted by the military and told to make small caskets there was all this weird shit that goes together now whenever you have a story like that that becomes a legend for sure there's some fucker here involved, right?

[1176] There's got to be some shenanigans.

[1177] Well, we know the Air Force lied initially, and they've now admitted they lied.

[1178] So, you know, there was two cannery.

[1179] So Congressman Schiff of Arizona took up the case decades after the fact and asked the general accounting office to investigate.

[1180] And they confronted the Air Force and did a lot of research and the Air Force story that these were weather balloons crumbled.

[1181] And the Air Force at a deep inquiry of its own and produced a big book saying, I forget what the title was, but essentially they were saying it was actually a classified experiment that was designed to detect nuclear explosions in the Soviet Union.

[1182] So they admitted that their first story was a lie, and their news story was, well, it really was balloons, but they weren't weather balloons.

[1183] They were part of a top secret experiment.

[1184] Right.

[1185] So they've changed their story once.

[1186] And, you know, is that now the true story or is it actually, you know, something else?

[1187] Right.

[1188] And why would they change your story?

[1189] Like, what did they change it?

[1190] Why tell the public, like, what benefit could be gained from telling the public that the initial 1947 story was a lie?

[1191] Well, I think they were trying to explain some of the discrepancies and hopefully this would put it to bed.

[1192] Maybe it's just the truth.

[1193] You know, I don't know what the motive was behind it.

[1194] if you're skeptical you would say it's a cover story they're trying to cover their tracks that's where i'm at i'm skeptical yeah i don't blame you we know they lied about it the first time well the first the report i don't know where the report came from but it was reported in the roswell dilly record right that they had recovered a crashed flying saucer oh it's actually reported more widely than that i think it was like announced over the radio and across the country and then the next day they said it was a weather balloon and that's where it was it was that when jesse marcel says he was told to bring in this false debris and say that this aluminum foil and all this crap was from a weather balloon that's right and uh i mean i will tell you i've i've never said this before but i've been told by multiple people who have credentials and access that there is some truth to these stories so I don't discount this when people say this I've had people tell me you know people that have substantial you know scientific or military credentials that they believe it's true so I encourage people on the hill to pursue it you know they've got a they've got a task force going right now looking into this trying to understand what's happening these restricted military areas.

[1195] If you're opening that up, you know, ask all the tough questions.

[1196] Ask about the military bases and the nuclear weapons.

[1197] Ask whether there's any anything buried somewhere, whether there's those materials that we have.

[1198] It's been a long time.

[1199] I think the people can handle it, the public.

[1200] It's their government.

[1201] It's their money.

[1202] I say go for it.

[1203] You know, let's find out the truth.

[1204] Get to the bottom line.

[1205] Where do you think that stuff could be?

[1206] If they did really recover, Yeah, well, you know, we have a number of candidate places, so, you know, there's Area 51, there's right path, there's Edwards, there's a whole lot of places, depending on what you were doing with it.

[1207] If you wanted to just squirrel it away, there's facilities not too far from here in the southwest that are, you know, you dispose nuclear waste and other things.

[1208] So there's a lot of possibilities.

[1209] But wouldn't you, like, who's got the key and who, you know, and that person's dead?

[1210] right for so we're talking about several generations like how do you get the golden key here we got people from 1947 that were in the military and they're adults most likely dead now right yep yeah we're talking 70 years later not too many world war two vets around yeah so what how does that torch get passed like and do do they trot out new scientists occasionally when they've sufficiently compromised them on epstein's island We have an amazingly dense, complex security apparatus.

[1211] And it really, you know, some people say, oh, you can't keep stuff secret a long time.

[1212] That's not true at all.

[1213] We keep lots of stuff secret for decades.

[1214] And, you know, there are reporters in D .C. They think they've got the inside track and they know most of the secret stuff.

[1215] People who think that are clueless.

[1216] They really have no idea.

[1217] Yeah, I think it's pretty delusional to think the government can't keep secrets like a crashed UFO.

[1218] It's pretty delusional.

[1219] Well, the F -117 and the B -2 bomber, you know, when they rolled the F -1 -17 out, it was already operational up at Tonapaw.

[1220] And it was a mission -ready unit.

[1221] They were flying.

[1222] And people were shocked all around the world.

[1223] People had no idea.

[1224] So this thing had been built.

[1225] There were tens of thousands of people involved in the production, the design, the deployment.

[1226] And, you know, there are many smaller things that would be much easier to conceal for a long time.

[1227] What gets compromised and leaked is usually like foreign policy stuff, and a policymaker can see that he can use his advantage in a debate over, you know, should we bomb around or something, and they'll leak that.

[1228] But weapons program stuff almost never leaks.

[1229] Why do you think that is?

[1230] It doesn't have press value.

[1231] It's often very technical.

[1232] There's no advantage.

[1233] And also almost nobody knows about it.

[1234] The policymakers don't know about that stuff.

[1235] So they're recipients of intelligence products and reporting.

[1236] But even when I was in the government, people in the National Security Council and at that time, the director of central intelligence, they didn't have access to the black programs at DOD.

[1237] There was a case where I had a request from the National Security Council for access to some programs that I took it back to the building.

[1238] They said, no. That's the president's own staff.

[1239] If the president wants it, we'll tell him, or maybe the national security advisor or something, but...

[1240] Was this Bush or Obama?

[1241] This was Clinton, I believe.

[1242] Oh.

[1243] Because I think the staffer was a guy named Richard Clark, famous counter -terrorist advisor on the NSC staff, who was carried over.

[1244] So at that point, possibly it was Bush.

[1245] And Clinton was trying to find out some information about...

[1246] UFOs, correct?

[1247] Like, there was...

[1248] I've heard that...