Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Immaculate Constellation and the Cost of Blowing the Whistle | Matthew Brown | Ep. 474

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

Matt Brown spent his career inside the national security world without ever wearing a uniform. He came up through grad school and think tank work in DC, earned a TS/SCI clearance, and landed in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy working the counter-WMD mission. From there he moved to the State Department. In August 2023 he walked into a Senate committee, signed his real name, and became a whistleblower on UAP. His report on a program called Immaculate Constellation was later entered into the congressional record. Today he co-runs Vanguard Enterprise, a nonprofit built to support the people who came forward after him. This conversation covers what pushed him over the edge. He says he saw transcripts showing the director of the Pentagon's UAP office was not telling senators the truth. He explains how the counter-WMD mission gave him a legitimate reason to see collection on objects around nuclear assets, and what he saw on those systems, from small orbs going in and out of water to a large triangle and a boomerang that disappeared behind its own light.  We cover the reality of blowing the whistle inside the IC, the retaliation he describes, and the questions he thinks Congress should be asking now.  Today's Sponsors:  Toehold: https://www.shoptoehold.com Use code "Andy" for 15% off at checkout   Ethos:  Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://www.ethos.com/clearedhot. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Trustpilot rating as of 6/1/2025.

Okay, got the red smoke. So the smoke, I'm looking at danger close now. Sir, where do we begin? Oh, yeah, good idea. How do we plan this out? What does it mean to be a contractor at the Pentagon? It's one place I have never been. Okay.

And you hear these mythical stories of the different rings. And honestly, I swear I've heard stories about cafeterias there. Or maybe that was the agency. I don't know. It's just, I don't even know if I ever got the chance or was ever offered to go there. but I feel like most of the brass, the leadership in the military is there, so therefore I inherently wanted to avoid it. Probably wise.

I mean, it's its own little world. It's its own environment for sure. To be a contractor there could be many things, everything from, you know, taking out the trash to doing some pretty high-level work, whether academic kind of work or, you know, just being a somebody's like special assistant, basically, helping leadership run the boat. How'd you end up with a job there? How'd you find your way there? Yeah.

So I was cleared by a military agency as going into their directorate of analysis. And there's like a waiting period while you kind of wait for your posting. And so while waiting, I was also getting married. So needed to earn money. And apparently, once you're cleared, you can just kind of go out there and work. You mean with a clearance? Yeah, exactly. So you got your clearance, which does make you pretty infinitely employable inside of the federal system.

What were you doing before that, a college before this? Yeah, so I was in D.C. for grad school. And then I was working in the think tank land kind of during that time there too. So worked at a small think tank that did a bunch of European kind of defense analysis. And from there, you know, that's kind of where I got exposure to, I guess, two fields that really shaped like what my career was until becoming a whistleblower, which was a strategy and net assessment and then WMD. What are those first two? Well, strategy. I think I understand applied to, you know, I don't necessarily know what you were applying it to. What's the net assessment? So net assessment kind of a specialized field and is basically taking all information streams. You can kind of think of it as like all source analysis, but it's more than that in this sense that you're not just trying to create like an estimate, right? You're trying to create something that will, you know, drive strategy itself that will that'll point towards like here are some certain directions.

you should take specifically to achieve XYZ objectives. There's even a whole office of that, an office of net assessment in the Pentagon. Used to be ran by, for many decades, I think, by a, they called him the Yoda, Andrew Marshall. And I actually got to do some contract work for them as well in that world. Fascinating stuff. You can bring in everything from like, you know,

reproductive statistics of humans and human beings. migration patterns to non-strategic nuclear weapons. And hey, look at that. That's kind of how I started getting into that world. Very bizarre. A swath of topics to cover. All right. What's that like working there?

Depending on, I personally, you know, as a nerd, I loved it. It was just like, it's a hub of so much information and activity. And, you know, I never served in the military. But being at that sort of nexus point between, you know, people that either have experience, out in the field or are coming in to deliver briefings or receive, receive them. And then the policymaking and the sort of upper echelons, having them all come together is just a really energizing place on the good days. There's certainly a lot of friction, though, too, when you have pretty different cultures

meeting. Is that basically, I mean, the building itself obviously is a Pentagon. So we're talking a five-sided building. Is that just the nucleus of where the vast majority of policy decisions and leadership aligns for the DOD or DOW at this point? DoD, DOW. I mean, I like DOD still. That's what I knew it as.

So we'll just stick with that term. Easier for me to stay, like, not hesitating. I mean, yeah, it really is. That's headquarters. That's the National Military Command Center. Like, that's the place. I mean, of course, you have your combatant commands where, you know, a lot of really big decisions are made too, right?

And arguably more important. once because they result in some pretty immediate outcomes. But it's the brain, it's the hub. It generally moves pretty slow compared to other places. But when it moves, when it commits to something, you're bringing like the full weight of the American military and military intelligence enterprise with you. Are you guys business casual in there, suit and tie? Depends on the office. But mostly suit and tie for sure. You know, some places you can get away with business casual. I've even seen, you know, places that people wear it, Brock and genes in there. But yeah, it's pretty much suit and tie. I'm out already. Can't do it.

Disqualifying factor. Is that a world that you wanted to get into when you were younger? I mean, what kind of stuff interested you when you were growing up? Obviously, UFOs, but yeah. Let me get to that. Sure, sure, sure. So I came from like a pretty patriotic family, I guess. Our patriarch was my grandfather. He was a World War II vet and then did some undefined stuff afterwards that we're hoping to pin down. Seems like he was, you know, stationed at some NSA places early in the days. And so we're figuring, you know,

he got into some spooky stuff, especially related to, I think they called them ferret flights or something like that, where they would fly planes at the Soviet border to try to piss him off, basically elicit a reaction, then turn around and rotate up.

Just purely for antagonism? Yeah. So, I mean, he wasn't on those planes, but he was part of the system that would be like, you know, picking up all those signals, right, and then interpreting them is, I think, an Indian head in Maryland when he was working that. But anyways, where I'm going with that is, you know, great love of country, great love of service to the country and history in general. It was really instilled

in me from a young age. So did I want to go into the Pentagon or military or an intelligence? Not necessarily. I frankly didn't really know what I wanted to be growing up. But But in community college, I guess, is where I kind of took the turn like, okay, intelligence is where I'm going to go. Yeah. Were there courses that you were taking that were helping you guide that decision or is just something you landed on as the world unfolded in front of you? Both landed on and then I kind of had a mentor, a specific professor there who kind of pointed me in that direction. and sort of landed on was really interested in the world around me and where our country was going even from a young age.

So things like the Iraq War, September 11th, and the Great War on Terror was like, you know, I was following that, you know, just as a young guy and trying to figure out, you know, what are we doing? What is this country all about right now? How old were you in 9-11? Oh, gosh. I would have been maybe 12 or 11 pretty young.

It's pretty formidable years. How was it growing up at that age with the nation at war? I mean, the war never, not never, but it always seemed very distant. You know, I grew up in Southern California, a beach town. You know, the closest it got was, you know, had, had, like, peers, like, one family, they lost a son in the war, and that was, like, really big deal. but otherwise unless you were following the news or sort of rabbit holes on the internet, it all felt very distant. Interesting. Yeah, I can't fathom growing up where, especially at those

ages, I mean, you have memory from before that, but I mean, there's a whole generation of people that were born into the 20 years of the global war on terror. And their entire young adulthood was shaped during that time. That's got to be a fascinating optic. Yeah, I think, you know, I'm the oldest of four. So my youngest brother, definitely, he was, He was born in 2000, so he's known nothing but essentially. Do you happen to know his current thoughts on military service? And I only ask because, you know, post-9-11, you might be old enough to remember this, there was images and videos of lines outside of recruiting stations, this massive outpouring of patriotism, I suppose, would be your desire to serve.

And I was living in San Diego at the time, so just down the road. That was the most cohesive that I've ever felt. our country for about a week. I mean, just people were a little bit kinder. It seemed like we were all in it together, and I guess we were to a degree. And, you know, service was resoundingly viewed as something that was incredibly positive. I'm just at his generation now at his age,

what is, do you have any sense of what his social circle or his peer group thinks of service? Because it's certainly the optic on it has, it's not that it's moved to a place of being horrible, but that optic has shifted over time. I'm just curious where that generation's sitting. Yeah, that's a good question. Today's episode is brought to you by Toe Hold. Now, most of you are probably thinking,

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If I had to say, like, put it into two big buckets. It's either, you know, the military is where you go to kind of do cool shit, you know, go blow up stuff, kick down doors. Which, by the way, that is a part of it. Yeah. I mean, there's no denying it. But, you know, the sort of high testosterone environment and also, yeah, the feeling of service is there. But I think it's more of the, you know, I just want to go have an adventure type.

And then the other side is pretty cynical where it's, you know, this is, you know, we're fighting in countries that there's no real direct threat or perceived direct threat to us. It's the narrative of, you know, this is for corporate profits or international interests separate from our own is pretty prevalent. So what's tough is that aspects of both of those things are true. Yeah. And the discussion is where, you know, how much of those, the legitimacy of certain of those rabbit holes and tenants, it's, I can't argue completely against either. So I get it. I can understand how that optic has shifted. We'll see.

We're in an interesting time. I'll be curious to see how it is going forward, how that optic continues to shift. I'd heard recently that the Army hit one of their highest recruiting numbers in modern history. So I think at least that desire to return to service or go to service from a younger generation is maybe returning a little bit. We shall see, though. Only time we'll tell. Yeah. I mean, supporter of the military, you know, it's, I still think you can support the people and not necessarily always support how they are used.

And I have to remind people of this all the time. It's completely possible to support those who are serving and not agree with the dipsets that are making the decision in which ways they are being utilized. Completely agree. Yeah. Okay. So you decide you want to be Jason Bored, obviously.

I feel like you say it was a college professor. I think it might have been a movie. If only Jason Borden truly existed. It's like the amalgamation of 60 people and probably 50 years of experience. obviously I'm joking but you decided you wanted to go down that path and I don't actually know much about think tanks it's a weird word to me honestly I feel like it's a bunch of people sitting in a room thinking I don't know what they do with those thoughts afterwards I think they write policy papers and they go and they brief people correct me if I'm wrong you got it which is weird do they get paid to do that oh yeah and it's it's pretty opaque payment structure from the outside but once you're inside you're inside you're inside you're inside you're inside you're inside you're inside you're you see, oh, it's Smith Richardson Foundation or Davos Foundation or Lockheed Martin or Bowling or Sikorsky. Usually they try to get as many of those donors together. Did they tell you what to think about those donors or perhaps try to shape the direction of your thoughts?

I think it's, from my experience, it's less that they, you know, come down on the scale and say, you know, reach this conclusion. And it's more look at these problems. and then from there you can kind of just implicitly know that if, well, if I look at this problem and I come up with a position that runs counter to what I believe my donor's interests are, that's probably not going to get me a grant next year. Unfortunately, I think that's why what most people, not to use the word think overly, I think that's what most people believe think tanks are and how they operate. And that speaks to, I think, a lot of the general distrust in that, again, like you said,

opaque ecosystem of Washington, D.C. and decision makers. Is it really people sitting there thinking freely about best policies in Team America first? Or is there really this dark undercurrent of incredibly powerful and wealthy people that, like you said, they don't have the finger on the scale, but maybe look over here. Yeah, they set the agenda for sure. It's also sort of the realm of policy competition, right? So yes, it's elites and their networks at play, but they are not aligned. They want their own sort of influence and interests in D.C.

And think tanks are a big way to achieve that. It's also to a certain extent, you know, a collaboration with the formal government bodies to kind of put out their own messaging and their own preferred policies and then reach, you know, elected leaders or even like, you know, generals or other people. People have influence and power to kind of push them one way or another. Yeah. All right. Walk me through your Pentagon career and up to the events that eventually led us to be sitting here today.

Yeah. So let's see. I was contracting at headquarters. Hated it. It ended up being HR. And that's not what I set out to do. And I got an email out of the blue. It sounds fantastic.

but it's true. And it's like, hey, do you want a job in the Pentagon, basically? And I was like, yes, get me out of here. Took it. And, you know, about two weeks later, yeah, it was really fast because I was already cleared. I rolled in there for the first day off the metro. And it was just like, you know, I'm finally starting to make it. You know, come up the steps, start getting badged in. You know, there's guys with guns. And you see the flags and you walk the halls. And there's a bunch of, I guess like sort of museum displays in the halls for all sorts of different wars or offices or commands. And then there's, of course, the 9-11 memorial itself there with the chapel. So, I mean, as a student of history, it's just a, wow, what a honor to be here.

What a cool place to be here. So that's sort of, you know, the way I started. And frankly, the way I left, too, you know, I can't really, no, I'm not disgruntled employee. I had a very informative time there, and I'm still proud of the work I did there. So what was that work? So, I mean, I don't really want to identify specific offices on camera, but happy to tell you offline. But I worked broadly, I worked in the Office of the Secretary Defense for Policy, and I worked the countering WMD mission. Started just basically as, you know, the generic title is policy advisor and built from there to more and more irresponsibility

just through proving myself. It was kind of shocking because it was a place where meritocracy was still kind of real in there. It was more of what can you do? And if you do it well, well then here's more duties, more responsibilities, not more pay. But I was just beyond thrilled to be to be working on the mission. What pay scale were you guys as a contractor so you were not on the GS pay scale or were you? Yeah, so I was on the contractors like pay. Oh, God. Some version of a GS scale, but for contractors? It's their own internal pay. So like what the best way to compare it though is what billet was I in, right? I was filling a 12-13 billet, um, being paid significantly less than that. Okay. And what clearance did you have to have to work there?

TSCI. How long did that take for years to go through? Uh, well, I had, like I said, I had already been cleared for that by a military agency. So it was basically I came in and I signed the paperwork and came online. But did you, what is the paperwork, the SF 86, all that stuff? I mean, I had to update that. I'd already done a bunch of that before and I've been pollied and all that before. So it was more of update the SF86. Well, I went to Mexico. So there's my update. I think mine took two years to come back. I say, yeah, mine, so before going to the Pentagon in that hiring process about 18, 19 months. And it was, it was grueling high because especially, like, you know, I had no military

background, like, either I get this clearance and I enter the IC World War, I don't. And then I'm like, well, I don't know what I do now. Yeah. It's a lot of paperwork, too. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. What led you to becoming a whistleblower?

Yeah. So not any one moment, I guess it was a sort of a series of revelations, both, exposure to information and exposure to people. But really, it came down to at the time, this would have been 22, 23. You know, Congress was claiming, especially in sort of back channels that they don't have any insight or oversight into the UAP problem set.

And they needed people to come forward from the inside to basically tell them what they should already know and help them to restore, you know, proper overside, proper governance to this. And, you know, I didn't, I had heard that for, for months and thought that the information I held wasn't significant enough to merit going to the Senate. You had heard that from Congress or internally at the Pentagon, people talking about it? Internally.

At that point, I was in some networks that were not briefed into legacy, but were definitely on the hunt on the inside. We're looking at this really from a sort of warfighter safety perspective. and, you know, frankly, a lot of curiosity as well. For a window of time there, the sort of aperture was opened, and you could talk about the subject openly versus what I understood before was like, you even say the word UFO. It's like someone's going to tell you to shut up.

Well, there's a lot of documented history of our own government wanting to make it look like that, so they could do things like B2 flights or advanced stealth technology and work on those. They wanted to make the term conspiracy theorist or UFO believer. pejorative so you could, if people thought they saw something and said that, you could discount them immediately. Yeah. It's not as if our government has clean hands exactly on the way things have progressed. And from the inside, that's a legitimate sort of approach, you know, by any means necessary, kind of protect your programs, protect your capabilities and, you know, using the stigma of UFO, hey, why not? Was there, this is a broad question.

I know you can't answer for everybody. but in your sense of it while you were there on the topic of UAPs, which again, for people listening, is essentially the updated term for UFO. I don't know why they updated that, but it is what it is. So we can use them interchangeably if we want to.

Was there a sense of curiosity from people at the Pentagon? Was there a sense of, yeah, like it's okay to talk about this, but don't you guys have better things to do? You know what I mean? Was it taken seriously? I'm sure it was probably a mix,

depending on who you were talking to. Well, in my little bubble or my little world of counter WMD or WMD in general. It was taken very seriously. These things were seen not just around our assets, but our allies and our adversaries as well. And, you know, WMD is kind of a no-fail mission. It's very high stakes.

People still have that association with the kind of a rock war justification and, you know, things like the crude atom bomb dropped over Nagasaki or chemical rounds. it's much broader than that, especially these days. So yes, it was taken very seriously, but there was a lot of just, yeah, a lot of curiosity and a lot of, I guess, almost like, school yard kind of playfulness about it. It's like, oh, we can finally talk about this. The culture's changed. It felt like, you know, this was kind of a step towards internal disclosure or internal, you know, broader access to this and, hey, who wouldn't want to know more. But to return to your question, was there any one moment to become a whistleblower? The closest thing that I have to that, or I guess there's two moments.

One was coming across information that Aero's director at the time was lying to Congress. This was seen in the transcripts from his meetings with Congress. So pretty direct information without being in the room. Lying about what? Well, lying saying, like, we don't know what these are. we have no capability to, you know, kind of counter these or predict these, and there's been no sort of reverse engineering or exploitation of these things. He was saying those things to, at the very least, Senators Warner, Gillibrand, and Rubio. So that was kind of shocking to see, especially because even without being read into what they call the legacy program, like, well, those answers simply are not true.

I'm looking right here at some active collection missions on these things and some analysis pointing like, oh, we do have an idea at least what some of these are. The second would be personality driven. That was meeting someone who was in connection with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and then personally is sort of delivering the message both that Congress, yeah, the rumors are true. They really don't have oversight on this. They need anything, no matter how small. If it's genuine, they need it. And that people's lives were in danger. Specifically, people in the legacy program, their lives were in danger because of how that program was being managed from a security angle and apparently from sort of the threats involved in that mission

space. Do you think we know what UAPs are? And it's interesting the preponderance of UAP settings near WMD facilities, which if I was an alien race, I probably would want to keep track of the more dangerous things that the monkeys with less hair now have access to and probably no ability to control if they go off the chain. Do you think that as a nation or somebody in the government actually has a definitive answer as to what they are? Are we still at, you think, the hypothesis conjecture phase? I think yes. I would just step back and say that, you know, this is a broad bucket, right? We probably have pretty good ideas on what some of these things are, right? And including not just what they are as a platform

or capability and how it's done, but also, you know, who ultimately are the users of these things. I think some of that is, unfortunately, adversary nations that have had success in sort of either reverse engineering themselves or from learning sort of the fundamental science applying that to capabilities. And then also towards the more exotic thing, which everyone is of course interested in, the non-human sort of intelligences themselves, how detailed and what the confidence level is

of those sort of analytic conclusions, I don't personally know, but I don't think 80 years of national capability being applied to a problem is going to generate no answers, especially when you have hands-on evidence. That's the one thing that's missing from all of this. is the hands-on evidence.

So for clarity, I would love it if we were to find out definitively we weren't alone in the universe. I'm not a mathematician. I think I understand how unknown the size of our known universe is. I feel like it is almost statistically improbable that we are the only, and I'm not saying it's gray men. It could be whatever, a biologic, whatever it may be. I personally think, and it's my guess, that it would help the world. maybe stop fighting much like 9-11, where as a nation we came together

and was like, you know what, we're going to put our differences aside for a little bit. Maybe if there was not necessarily a threat, but something that we realized that trumped us in knowledge, power, ability in the globe, we could get a little bit of that. I think it would be a net positive if there was a disclosure.

I want to believe. I don't think it would destroy society. I don't think it would destroy humanity. It could. I mean, I don't have the answers, but I think it would actually help round the edges. Then I watch some of this stuff. I don't watch it incredibly closely.

But what sucks is you see people, they'll talk about a program or they'll talk about somebody that they knew who was involved in the program. But the one thing that nobody has been able to show at this point is evidence. And it's, again, this is from a perspective of somebody who wants to believe.

But I'm going to have to see some at some point for me to make that leap, even though I want it to be true. because I'm trying to remain at least objective and critical in my thinking. Yeah, totally reasonable. In one way, it's sort of easy to explain. This is essentially like the core secret of the United States of America. It's most valuable.

Wouldn't it be of the world, though, unless the U.S. is the only place that UAPs crash, which I don't think it is. No. So everybody, well, not everybody, but many nations in the world would then have to be dealing with this. So it's not only the core secret for the U.S., this is, I mean, do you think that this is a quiet race between governments? Are governments, do they communicate on this issue because it is existential to everybody on the planet, not just nations? So, I mean, straight in the deep end. I think, yes, there is both, you know, foreign, whether allied or adversary or in between programs on this. I think there is also, you know, basically secret agreements, secret treaties between nations about how to, at least among their allies, how to govern this topic, how to govern the research, what can or cannot make it out to the public as derivative technology.

And then between pure adversaries, I think we get to the kind of more troubling place, which is that either they, or sorry, we are all deciding to stay quiet about this. because we don't want our populations to know for X, Y, Z reasons, whether that's religious upset, political upset, wanting to sort of avoid the question of, well, how long have you known this? I don't actually think any of those are the answer. I am coming to the kind of reluctant conclusion that there is some sort of compelance by at least some of these beings.

What to keep, well, yes, essentially to, you know, keep the secret. It's a disturbing line of thought, but at the point where you, where I am, which is that this is all real to a degree, at least the major powers have access to both retrievals or gifted technologies and they use them, why, why have we not seen, you know, some sort of disclosure or revelation to the public? It's a mystery. It is, and my thing is it's real tough to keep secrets.

I have heard about these government retrieval programs. And when I think about stuff like that, I just think back to my own military career. And you're like, okay, we're flying around on government aircraft. The senior officers in there, maybe they could be, you know, they could be trusted to keep their mouths shut. But that E4 working the ramp on the back, shit-faced at the bar, I'm not so sure he's not going to let it slide. I mean, do we really have a global response recovery mechanism that is operating under the radar that nobody knows about? I'm not saying it's impossible, but man, that's a tough, that's a tough leap in logic. Yeah, so I think no system is perfect.

I think once you reach the point where this is real and then you start looking back over sort of decades of information and reporting, you can see that it has leaked. And the response to the link leaks is multifaceted. It's to pile on disinformation, especially like in close proximity to a public leak. So you sort of muddy the waters. And then it's to discredit the people or the information itself and kind of foster a culture of undue skepticism towards, you know, human observers and the topic writ large. And if you do this, you know, consistent enough and with the power of the state behind you, which is especially, the information environment, incredible. You create a culture that eventually just refuses to look at the evidence in front of their own eyes

or believe their family members. What would be the best argument about not disclosing this to the American people or the world? Well, what is this? I mean, just the existence of like non-human intelligence? Just consistently holding the party line, if you will, of we don't know what this is. We don't know if this is what people think it is. when let's well we can hypothesize that perhaps the opposite of that is true what's the argument it would scare people we would have to admit that yes as the government perhaps we have parceled out some of this technology which was an unfair advantage to some manufacturers and suppliers so therefore we would have to explain right and you know when we talk about in the u.s how it's a level playing field and the markets are going to correct themselves but then you have the government perhaps providing it technology that will help you to elevate your product over another one, which then you can get it.

You know what I mean? Like there's that gnarly system. Is that the argument to not disclose it? It would just, we would have chaos in the streets. I'm just not understanding the argument for not telling the truth. Yeah, there's several ways to go with that in my mind. I think one that's very immediate and relatable is what you said. There's sort of the question of the government, essentially creating state-sponsored monopolies by controlling the access to this technology and essentially the licensing to use derivatives of this technology. So that opens a whole can of worms in the market. That would be incredibly hard to sort through. But I would hope that that's not the only thing holding them back if this does exist, because that's a purely economic issue

that we can work our way through. Are some people going to get in trouble? Oh, yeah. Yeah. But that doesn't mean you should hide the truth from 360 million people. And that's the next step, which is the crimes that are committed outside of economic crimes. You know, whether it's, you know, people's career is being derailed to actual, you know, people being removed to just having their life so disrupted that they essentially become homeless or addicts or committed to an insane asylum. You know, that would theoretically go back decades as part of the strategy to keep this secret. So you have human rights violations on a, on a civilizational scale that our nation would have perpetrated against its own citizens. Hard to ask any elected leader to make that admission. Well, if it's ongoing, then yes, because they would be they would be wrapped up in that.

Again, that would be the assumption if this was from a time previously, that might be a little bit easier. but you'd have to assume that if these programs, legacy programs, were still ongoing, then, yeah, they would be probably implicitly wrapped up in that as well. Okay, yeah, that would be tough. I get it. And then you have a moral question outside of these practical ones, as serious as they are, wouldn't the moral need to answer that question for humanity? Are we alone? Trump all of those? And I think the answer is yes, so why isn't it happening?

And that comes back to, well, there must be. must be some sort of compelling factor that is restraining us, at least our leadership, for making that admission. I think looking outside, right, and looking at, well, why hasn't China announced this? Why isn't Japan or the UK or Russia? You know, especially as we are going through right now, sort of a rebalancing of the world order in a pretty heightened phase of strategic competition. Why hasn't anybody sort of seized this advantage and started to, to lead the way on disclosure of non-human intelligence

and interaction with humanity, well, it doesn't make sense. You would think that they would seek that advantage. They seek every other. There needs, in my mind, there needs to be some sort of outside factor that's restraining us. It could be.

And again, I'm, you're talking to somebody who wants this stuff to be true. I just haven't seen anything which has allowed me to walk across that bridge of wanting something to be true to believing that something is true. I mean, I would throw another option out there, but other than the one that you just provided

is that they don't know. As advanced as we are, I don't think we're as advanced as... I don't think we ever are as advanced as we think we are. I remember I've read about how smart humans thought when the printing press came out. This is the peak of technology. And it was at the time.

We've come a little bit. Yeah. So I don't know. but I also haven't seen the things that you have seen. I'm going to correct me if I'm wrong. It sounds as if you are, you have walked across the bridge between not necessarily believing and now believing and believing this to be true.

Is that a correct statement? Yeah. And I like to caveat this thing. I have not seen evidence to show it's extraterrestrial, right? Certainly anomalous, certainly outside of our context. Most likely, it's not human and post-biological, at least some of this is.

But that ET hypothesis, when everyone thinks of alien from a different star, even though there is evidence that they traverse our atmosphere in and out, that's still not all the way towards it being something from another solar system or even another planet in our solar system. I don't think that's impossible at all, but I just like to draw the line that I can't say that's true, but I can say that there's at least several things here that appear to be non-human with capabilities that exceed ours interacting with us here on Earth. What are some good examples of what you've seen? So all sorts of very anomalous craft, things from the small,

no bigger than this table or even smaller sort of orbs or ovals or sort of irregular or organic looking things flying around going in and out of the water doing pretty crazy maneuvers although some of them if you look at sort of where suppressed sciences might lead us might start to be within our reach to be able to reproduce towards larger things like you know pretty large discs the classic flying saucer to very very large triangles themselves one boomerang i don't know what that was uh but very bizarre uh looking basically yeah a flying boomerang that emitted a a light from the middle out that once the light sort of formed an orb around the craft it disappeared where did you see all this stuff on internal systems um what does that mean in the pentagonie

Yeah, yeah, at the Pentagon and a few other locations as well, both on, I just want to be careful, but internal systems that are in the classified environment. And so for people, my next question has a little bit to do with understanding how security clearances work, but there's there are clearances and then there's need to know. How are you able to look through systems for these things? Having a clearance is one thing. How were you able to do that without violating the principles of need to know? Well, for me, that was one of the first things to justify myself. And luckily, because I was in the counter-WMD mission, in these things of all sorts of shapes and sizes were interacting, not just with the facilities, but with platforms related to WMD

and units moving around the world related to WMD, the justification was easy to make. there's sort of the world of what is being collected raw, right? And then what is going either into compartmented programs or is sourced entirely from compartmented programs. So no system is perfect. And especially during that time, end of Trump's first term into Biden, coronavirus, I think part of what happened was there was so much disruption going on.

that essentially internal security kind of got lax. Do you think you unwittingly accessed information that you did not have a need to know, blended over the barriers that should have been in place? Maybe from the perspective of some unknown security classification guide that I wasn't briefed on, but from what I was able to access and from what my mission was, you know, it wasn't like I was able to go see Lockheed Martin's reverse engineering facility. I wasn't able to see blue force capabilities, things that I could not justify as within my remit. But what I did see was all tied to WMD or strategic delivery systems in one way or another.

And then in seeing that, the next step of coming forward, what was it that allowed you to make or internally you made the decision to, you've seen this information to disclosing the information under the Whistleblower Act? Well, sorry, so what allowed me to do that? No, I didn't mean. Not what allowed you internally when you're looking at these things, you're collecting, again, through that lens of the WNB and things that are adjacent to that. I'm understanding that. So not what allowed you to, but what was it internally when you saw this and decided to come forward under the whistleblower act and whistleblower protections? What was the gap between those two? Why did you make that choice?

Yeah, so I was aware of these things for years before becoming a whistleblower and felt no need to blow the whistle on anything. It was specifically realizing that segments of the intelligence community were lying to Congress and then having people on the inside that were interfacing with Congress confirm that, you know, not suspicion. It was pretty explicit, but giving me external additional validation like, yeah, it is a real problem. We really do need people to come forward. And then again, the claim at least, that people's lives were in danger because of the security measures involved and how the program was being run. So that step was in, it sort of developed from early 23 until I went forward in August. Eventually, you know, the doubt kind of was erased from my mind by outside events. David Grush came forward and testified publicly.

You know, I was already on my way towards meeting with Sissy at that time, but seeing him come out and say these things in public and also like realizing, oh, he's that person that people had been talking about on the inside that was never, named that's the guy kind of gave me that extra confidence to to to go through with it it's pretty terrifying experience you know there wasn't much guidance um there was there's no witness protection for someone like me that went to congress um i thought there would be there is there is not um so i kind of went off on a tangent there but what does the process look like i mean what exactly did you do pretty simple, but basically just got into direct contact with staff of these committees.

Got a date and location, show up there, show up. The first time I went, I signed in in the security book. It was sort of a, that was a point of no return. And I was told, you can either sign in with a pseudonym or you can sign a true name. the sort of implicit thing there was like, well, if you're signing your true name, you're real. If you're signing with a pseudonym, we'll judge you based on your information. So wisely or not, I signed my true name and kind of that was a point in no return. From there, it's been a very strange mix of either, you know, being told to go to official buildings or, you know, second locations.

And frankly, not comfortable to not a comfortable process. A lot of in my retrospective gaze here, sort of misplaced trust in some of these people's, whether concern for like the human factor or their own motivations, didn't really leave me feeling too confident about my safety. What did you say to them? So more basically at a higher level of detail, What I'm telling you here, I wrote a report eventually that kind of put down probably 60% of what I knew at the time in a written form and went through the list like, hey, I've exposed to this unacknowledged special access program and Mac Constellation. The community knows it now.

This is what I saw related to that program. I was never read into it. So, hey, I don't know everything about it, but here it is, basically establishing the fact of. the imagery I was exposed to, the human intelligence reporting, the signals intelligence reporting, the sort of internal bureaucratic records, and then sort of the human sources. So people that, you know, you ask the right questions, you start meeting people and you hear things. So that's seven categories of evidence I brought to them. And you would just sit down and is it essentially just an interview?

It's a Q&A. Do you just kind of dump on them the information? How does it work? Basically that. At least some of these people have had prior experience in the IC. So, you know, they know how to run a debriefing. Then they definitely had their agenda of questions that they were definitely focused on, like drill in on certain details about one program or one siding event,

but weren't super interested in others. Eventually started to learn like, oh, they already know about that, but they don't know as much about this. or they want me to tell the same story three different ways. They can see if I'm fabricating it. Yeah. What was the Immaculate Constellation Project? Yeah.

So my exposure to that was a briefing for senior leadership on what that mission was. It was a capabilities brief. So part of a war game series you present towards senior leadership like this is in your deck of tools. This is the mission you're responsible for. So in 12 slides or less, here's what it is, right? And Immaculate Constellation in that document at least was a basically a nexus point to collect tasked and untask imagery and mass scent collection on UAP and what was listed in there as ARV slash RV. It was global in scope.

It was, at least in that document, implied to be ran out of the DoD, out of the Pentagon. Later found out that, you know, that wasn't entirely accurate. It's really housed at the NSC, but functionally it's run by the military intelligence enterprise. And, you know, had some pretty fantastic stuff in there in terms of, you know, it had examples of, you know, here's vehicles we're collecting on. Here's foreign assets around these vehicles, different locations of the world, and kind of of how we're doing that. You said this is part of a war game scenario, though, or a war game briefing?

So the brief itself is not a war game, but it was associated based on the file name with the Shriver war games out of Colorado. Okay. So it was associated with those war games? Yes. And having some experience with those at that point, you know, like, you know, this is,

part of what a leader has in their read-ahead book and in their sort of prep for this. This will be part of their familiarization, especially for politically appointed leadership, of what they are supposed to be managing. And then when these war games are conducted, some of them are pretty broad, everything from actual operations in the field to rehearse things, toward all the way back to like, well, what does that look like managing that crisis in headquarters and all those steps in between? Yeah. So a lot of the, from my understanding of war games, too, a lot of the situations and programs they're talking about are hypothetical, though. How do you know what you were looking at that immaculate conception document was actually real versus a hypothetical situation? Yeah, fair. Because, I mean, it wasn't any specific situation, right? It was a capabilities brief. It described the mission. It described the capabilities used, and it gave examples of what those capabilities were collecting on. And part of it was that, well, there were certain sightings in there that were, I was familiar with outside of that briefing document before even. seeing it. You know, there's scenarios, right, that are entirely fictional and you'll have

like Bananistan as the country. But when you're talking about, at least my small experience with these things, a real war game that's rehearsed, you're not rehearsing theoretical capabilities. You're not contacting theoretical commands or units. It's all very real. It's all very classified. And when it's actually ran, you know, that it goes for as long as a week, two weeks. And, you know, it's kind of like those leaders are shut down and running a rehearsal of a crisis scenario with real world movements and real world communication. No, totally. The practice is real. The commands are real. But oftentimes the scenarios that they're working through are hypothetical or what is projected into the future as a possibility, meaning not necessarily maybe based off of things that they have knowledge of, but the scenario. itself might in and of itself be a hypothesis, whether that be an enemy activity, a world event, something like that. I'm just trying to dial down into the Immaculate Conception document

itself to determine the validity of it and where it existed in that war game, if this was in a real world or this isn't a sandbox world. Yeah, so I never actually saw that whole war game itself. I don't know what the scenario was that this capability brief was involved with. Believe me, I thought about quite a lot. Although I believe if you go back and look up the Shriver War Games of 2018, there is some open source documentation on it dealing with a near pure adversary, threat in space. And that's just listed in the public.

But again, that's the scenario. Never knew what the scenario was. Just what this particular suite of capabilities and its mission was. And, you know, did my homework, found out through other means that, yes, that's a real, well, probably a different name now, but it's a real program ran out of the NSC, DOD implements it. You didn't just see some imaginative scenario like, you know, a zombie outbreak and how do we run biocontainment for that or dispose of corpses from that. Yeah.

There is a, from everybody, it seems like it comes forward. I know that's a broad statement, so therefore slightly inaccurate. There is a willingness to go up to a certain degree when it comes to clarity of information, and then beyond that point, they will either talk around or through opakly.

And I think it is in those details where you come to that precipice or you start navigating your way through that minefield. And I don't know what the minds are because I don't come from that world. I don't know what the potential consequences may be. But it's somewhere in that opakness where I think the deeper answers are and that you would find a greater buy-in. And I don't know what it would take to get people to be willing to do that.

Are they afraid of the government coming after them? Is this a violation of NDAs that they have signed? Is this a violation of security clearance? What is it that's holding people back from being extremely clear as opposed to opaque on the things that they are seeing? Well, I think it really depends on your setting, right? You know, they're in the rooms with Congress. Myself and others were very transparent. Everyone held back something because it's D.C.

You don't know who to trust. Or especially if you're talking about stuff that might expose the person. Unless there's a really pressing need for that, you're not going to talk about it. But to get to the point, I mean, Congress. especially in that period of 23, 24, got all the detail it needs, at least, sorry, certain bodies in Congress, in the Senate side especially, and a little bit in the House, got very detailed information, both about our reverse engineering and craft retrieval program, the successes and failures involved, the locations, the derived technologies. What seems to be missing from that testimony was sort of the history, the, especially the diplomatic history, between our countries really sorry between world

countries on this topic and it seems to be with the NIH themselves or at least some of the NHI themselves so you know there doesn't seem to be in Congress at least detailed knowledge from what what has occurred there but now we're talking about

like well why aren't people saying more in public well it's a huge it's a huge risk I'm sticking legal risk personal risk, combination of the two, professional, like, where does the risk come from? All of the above. I mean, there's the legal risk, right? Well, if you spill classified, you're losing your clearance minimum, probably going to jail, especially with stuff of, like, Saps, CAPs, ACCMs. Yeah. You're also pissing off people who kill people and are associated with the

program security of this that is active. You know, most of the stuff is stateside. It works here. you know laws are just pieces of paper that's not going to stop someone from coming in your house or meeting you on the street are there examples of that well for me I mean pull that mic a little bit closer to oh yeah so you're getting noise just for me I mean

yeah I had my house broken into while I was there sleeping with my wife on a weekday you know kind of discovered over the course of the morning of that break in that you know It was only some personal effects laid out, specifically, like, photographs of my wife and her IDs on a couch and, like, well, why are these lined up in a row? And then finding out my grandfather's ashes were taken out of the house and, yeah, left in the alley next to the trash. And my civilian passport was missing.

And, oh, yeah, laptops, televisions, phones, wallet, spare, free cash, all that left alone. Nothing was taken from the house. Just things messed with and moved around. Yeah, pretty disturbing stuff. I get that. Do you have examples of people getting killed for disclosure? Me, I mean, I can recite other people's stories. But like, is there somebody we could look up that like, hey, this person was a whistleblower and they got killed for it?

Or I'm sure there's people that have whistleblown and died in bizarre ways. Sometimes people do die in bizarre ways. Yeah. But it's a, I'm just trying to get an understanding. Again, there's that precipice that people will come to. and they'll talk, I saw this, but they won't say what this was. I was right into this program, but they won't say what the program was. And I do understand the legalities when it comes to the NDAs and the security claims.

I do understand that. And maybe that is what the reason is. But that also, I believe, is the, that last little bit of straw that could probably force the disclosure. Because I don't know if the government willingly does much, actually, other than serve the current size of the government. You know what I mean? But if it gets to a pressure point where they have no escape and they're maneuvered into a corner, at least then I feel like sometimes they will disclose whether begrudgingly they want to or not. So I think the threats aside, the costs aside, it's also for someone to take that step,

they're still just telling a story. It's still just their word against the governments. Even if they, you know, spill the whole story, all of the compartments they were read into, all the locations they served at, the people that were there, what it was they worked on what they saw. It's still just going to be their word against the governments. I don't think that will move the needle, frankly. I think it'll be. Not as an individual. It would take more than one for sure.

Yeah. And then the other thing is these are all patriots. These are all people they live here in this country. I'm not running away to a different country to tell the story. I'm staying here. I think the people who are involved in this, they're trying to get the news out, recognize that.

They don't want to harm our country. They want to fix what's wrong. And revealing that kind of information publicly, especially for things that are operational, that are real, that are used in the field. And our adversaries definitely want to either collect on to learn something new or more likely you should just confirm what they already suspect or have some sources of information on.

I wouldn't want to be responsible for that. And then the last kind of unspoken question is like, well, why don't you just walk a piece of tech out of the lab? Yes. Thank you. Let's get to it. Here is a piece of the spaceship. Like, yes, I'm in.

Aliens are real. I mean, I've never been in a reverse engineering lab, but I've been in some very secure replaces related to the WMD world and I can tell you that that is highly unlikely to occur. You are even outside of exotic technologies, you are under constant surveillance, armed surveillance. You're signed in, you're signed out. The object itself is under constant surveillance. The information associated with that is going to be sign in, sign out, you know, two-person

rule. You might be able to get documents out. He might be able to get some digital information out, but that actual hardware, our security is really good. And I think that's only realistically going to happen if there's some sort of crisis that compromises the security at a facility, whether that's like an earthquake or something like that. Or somebody busts down the door and uses violence to get it out. And well, then you listen to Bob Lazar, though. I mean, he's had some fascinating conversations with Joe. And it would seem as if there's a security that he was operating in at Area 51.

And I'm everything I'm about to say, I'll operate under the assumption that what he was saying happened. So he worked there under these programs. It seemed like the security wasn't more lax, but he had more access and ability to physically manipulate with these type of objects under a situation where, he wanted to, you feel like you could have put a little something in his pocket. It doesn't seem like he was getting, you know what I mean? So I know what you're talking about. You're talking about skiffs and TPI and all this stuff where, yeah, you're under the microscope. But that isn't exactly the way it is in every single one of these facilities. So as you cascade out, the security becomes a more complicated issue. And again, I'm not advocating for people to break the law. But for me,

again, on my own journey, if I'm going to walk across that bridge of, you know, faith to belief in this particular topic, I'm going to have to see something. Yeah. I don't blame you. Yeah. Getting it out of a skiff, very hard. It's like, aircraft hangar guy, you know, come on, man. Well, again. Not getting anybody any ideas. I'm not saying violate your terms of your, you know, employment,

but it's a tough one. I mean, if it's a piece of recovered material, you know, that's slightly plausible. But again, all those security measures in play make it kind of improbable to me. to, well, if it's a craft, well, how are you going to move the fucking thing? Break off a piece. Yeah. And even if they were able to get a photo of that, I mean, that's not going to move the needle either, especially now. This day and age, yeah.

Exactly. Photo of what? I mean, my son just turned 21. We went out to dinner here locally. And over AI, he put us on the floor of the stock market in New York because we were all dressed up in suits. He wanted to have like a 1980s Gordon Gecko dinner. Yeah. And it looks pretty good.

So, yeah, the days of being able to look at a picture and say that's real, gone. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Agreed. And that's, I mean, part of why I have confidence is, well, I'm reviewing basically direct from the sensor information, right? It's in the military. This is life or death. I have high confidence that what I'm seeing is real.

But if I saw that same footage, either in a declassified venue, like, you know, what's coming out now or just from someone's cell phone, while my level of confidence in that being real ground truth goes down dramatically. And I don't blame people for that. It's an interesting point you bring up. Obviously, the military is operating in environments where civilians aren't necessarily going to be. They have sensors that are substantially better than our iPhone cameras. But you ever know anybody who believes in Bigfoot? You're aware that people do.

I think there's probably well over a million game cameras in the world at this point. you know how many pictures of Bigfoot have shown up on a game camera? Fucking zero. Point being, as technology pushes itself out, there are, it's tough to find somebody at this point in time that doesn't have a camera on them that could take high-res picture, high-res video, as we've already discussed, those can be compromised for sure. But we're also not seeing anything from those people. And again, the military, I haven't seen anything. Perhaps it's just me not seeing it, right? What we often see, though, is, and again, I understand that the military is operating in different areas with enhanced capabilities and all of those things.

So it would make sense. And perhaps they are tracking these areas where these events may occur. But you certainly don't see a lot of, I mean, you do see some cell phone footage of, oh, my God, it's UFO. And it's like that looks like a light coming across this guy. Who knows? That's your thumbprint over the top of your camera. And it's a Cessna 150 flying across the screen. I mean, it gets back towards, well, that's not persuasive enough for someone to say it's truly exotic.

Number one, our cell phones are actually pretty bad at taking pictures of things in the night, especially light sources. I think there is civilian footage out there. But again, it's images. And it's not going to move the needle anymore to just see lights in the sky or strange shapes or even something that look. vaguely like a craft. People want the Steven Spielberg experience. They want high quality footage of there's the flying saucer. There's the ramp coming down.

Please forward me that via email. But you get into the other side of this is like, well, they're clearly not coming and landing in our cities. How are you going to create an event that you can collect on where you get that level of fidelity? Where I saw most of these things are in pretty remote areas or in what we would call like, you know, less developed areas. They're not around, you know, they're not in downtown Manhattan. Yeah.

So I think there are some people that are trying to go out there and get, you know, ground truth in more remote places. I think the Tedesco brothers are some people that are getting some good footage off of Long Island. But it's persuasive from a scientific standpoint. But if you're looking at it visually, it's like, well, that's just lights going in and out of the water. You might have, you know, your thermal, your radar, and your optical IR on it. So you see it in all sorts of different ways. And you can establish that, like, yes,

that is a real, at least radar reflecting object, heat emitting object going in and out of the water. But it still just looks like an orb. It's 20 miles off the coast. Yeah. I think we're kind of in a, at an impasse here, frankly, in terms of convincing, not really the people, but our government to take the step to bring out the goods. That's where I say the pressure might be the only thing that gets them to do that. I agree. Which leads, though, to your experience in the whistleblower system. What did you think it was going to be versus what it was?

Frankly, I thought there would be a lot more care and attention put to the people who came forward. it was you kind of insinuated or maybe I was allowed to believe that there was like some sort of witness protection for people which I was hoping that would pan out there is none of that it was just come in talk

by here back out in the wild so you come in you talk to them and then you just go back to your job yep I did my whistleblowing as a government employee which was especially nerve-wracking Are you required to notify your employer? In the IC, yes, you are. And this is, you know,

you have to go to your boss and say, hey, I'm about to go be a whistleblower. Then you go be a whistleblower and you come back. So hashtag awkward. Exactly. Probably why you don't see many people in the IC blowing the whistle that often. You are supposed to go through a process of, at the very least notifying whatever element you're part of that you're going to go speak to a congressperson if you're blowing the whistle to Congress.

If you don't, that's an unauthorized disclosure. It's an unauthorized contact with Congress. In the IC itself, you know, they can pull everything from you and institutionally, like, you know, discipline you. Regardless. Can you tell you no? They cannot stop you from going to a Congress member in terms of like, you know, putting you in handcuffs. they can align all the incentives against you that you'll never work here again. You might have spilled classified.

So, hey, maybe we will prosecute you for that. Maybe we won't. It's, uh, this is, this isn't even about UAP. This is just whistleblowing. Yeah, in general, yeah. Mm-hmm. So there's all sorts of laws on the books, but it will really come down to what is the practice, what is the reality?

And the reality is that, uh, unless you have ironclad proof of wrong doing and the sort of internal political support to expose that wrongdoing in the IC, whether it's to Congress or to something like the ICIG, you're not going forward. Yeah. So I'm assuming you did disclose. Is it to your direct supervisor? In your instance, who did you disclose to? So I, for a time, I disclosed to no one.

I was at the state department at the time, not formally in the IC, but in access to that community. I just went to Congress. Eventually, I did disclose to my immediate supervisors that, hey, I'm a whistleblower to Congress on UAP. I gave them a version of the report I'd given to Congress. It's in a safe somewhere at State Department. And I asked them officially, like, I've gotten nothing from Congress in terms of like official support, guidance, or protection.

Like, is there something at State Department that I can, you know, be a part of that I can enter into formally, like I can sign on dotted line. And they said, they'll, we'll take that back. What was their response when you told them that you were speaking with Congress as a whistleblower? It was a very strange meeting. There was three of them. They tried to have it in an environment that was at a lower classification that I requested and had to push to get it at the correct. one. One of them, I'm convinced now, already knew about this. The other to one very much a careerist,

looking to protect their office inequities is the sense that I got. The reaction was basically, okay, you're a whistleblower. You say these things are true. None of our business. We're going to talk to our boss. And then the news came back. You should just stay in the congressional process. We're not going to put you into any sort of whistleblowing program at stage or whatever you want to call it. Does they even have one? Yeah, I used to know the name of it. Yeah, they have an internal whistleblowing channel. But I was told no, stay with Congress and go back to your job and pretend it's all fine.

Although, you know, the word got out that, you know, don't put this guy on anything important. And you start to not get invited to meetings, not get responsibilities. It was clear that, you know, after that from that moment on, it was kind of on the way out. Yeah. Was it your choice to leave or there's? Technically, I was doged at the time. Thanks, Elon. Yeah, right?

I mean, in some ways, it was a clean exit because it wasn't targeted at me. It was targeted at our bureau. Contractors are the first to go. And they went through, well, whose contract is up first. we're going to just, hey, we can't fund you because your contract is up. So go through the line of contractors. I'm sure some ended up surviving because they were able to reclimate some money back. But yeah, it was a convenient obligation.

How quick was that notification when Elon, when he stood up Doge and he was in there? Did you just get an overnight? Hey, by the way, your services are no longer needed? Or did you get at least a little bit of an off ramp? A little bit of an off-ramp because, again, it was our bureau that got the cuts, and they had a, you know, they basically had the perfectly legitimate excuse of like, well, we can't fund our contracts once the year's funding is up. So whoever is up first, you know, you're out. And then they just went through the list. I wasn't the first to go. I was in the list. It's, you know, I can't really say that I was retaliated against by losing my job in any way. But had that not happened, what do you think your future would have been the Department of State? I mean, again, I was never a disgruntled employee. In fact, like, I've really valued my time in government. And that role was explicit. Yeah, basically it was a recruiting role for leadership at state. You know, you basically do a two-year contract. You do your job well. And you're a personal services contractor, right? So you're not part of any company. They're just hiring you, right? And then after your two years, you get hired as a GS-14, which is, hey, pretty nice. Yeah. And then you start, you know, working formally as a, like, you know, blue badge civilian.

So, you know, not a job you want to give up. GS-14 isn't bad as an entry level. No, no, it's not. Yeah. And at the time, like, you know, I was also re-going through the process again to formally join a different intelligence kind of component. So the state department was like, hey, great State Department works out. Great. Otherwise, you know, there's this other really cool place that I'm getting pretty far along in.

I'll take that one. You know, things are going good. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't sound like the people you talked to did anything with the information you gave them. Today's episode is brought to you by ethos. Man, life insurance, not a topic of conversation that comes up often. And for me in my own life, not something that I thought about very often.

Obviously, I had the military life insurance when I was in, but that was part of signing up. I didn't give it any additional thought. It wasn't something that I saw it out. It wasn't until I started having kids, got older in life and had more things, I suppose, that I wanted to protect a legacy and the ability to help those left behind, that I really started thinking about life insurance. If you've entered that phase of life where you've started thinking about things like this, enter ethos. Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy. You're going to do it 100% online.

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And I have very strong faith in that because they were retaliated against. What would that have looked like, the difference that they would have been able to make? Trying to get things like the UAP Disclosure Act or other sort of congressional legislative actions, you know, formalized on the books. and restoring sort of the balance of power between the executive branch and the legislative branch when it comes to UAP and all those associated issues. You know, I was never invited to comment on their policy or anything like that, but I got this from at least one person there. You know, they really tried to do the right thing.

And, you know, they were up against the machine. They were up against, you know, very powerful interests. Again, this is, in my opinion, the core secret of the United States. You can try to do the right thing, but at the end of day, you're just one individual. Others, you know, is a black hole. Information went in. Thanks for coming. We'll call you again if we need you.

And here we are. Do you have any idea the size and scale of how many people have come to bodies like that or done what you have done to some semblance or degree? Probably less than 100. Okay. That's actually not a small number of people, though. No, it's not. There was definitely sort of most of it happened in one wave as I came to learn.

When I was there, like, I thought I was like the only guy. And especially like at the beginning was like, okay, I know one person who went, they're my POC to get to Congress. I don't know anybody else. Then Dave Grush came forward. And like I said, that was a inspiration and extra confidence boost. And then later, you know, I found out, okay, there's a dozen here, five here, four. to hear and that all pretty much happened 23 to 24 and I think it's definitely tapered off since then what'd you do when you got laid off just kind of hung out man I mean I it was in some ways like it

wasn't it was there was no dramatic moment it was like okay I got to go home and figure out what to do with my life and my next career steps but at that point I mean uh pretty disillusioned with the government career just not from that from the whistleblowing process itself but from the information I had been exposed to and, you know, what I knew was happening behind the scenes in terms of retaliation against people and the underlying motivations of what all of this is. Also, you know, you mentioned an SF86. Well, I can't imagine the linking with SF86 again after going to Congress and having to disclose everything we talked about there.

Is there a line item for that on that thing? It's been a while since I filled one out. Yeah. It's been same here. You know, it's sort of, it was sort of a gray area and I think still is. And then also like, well, as I mentioned, like I was back in the pipeline for a different, different intelligence community role. Chances of that being, you know, coming to fruition after doing what I did, zero. Would you have wanted it anyway?

At that point, no. Yeah, no. like I said, pretty disillusioned. And I still, well, at the time, felt strongly like, you know, this needs to be made right and still do. But I have to do it outside of government. The founding fathers, I think, set up an amazing architecture for our government. It's a great thought experiment to leap them forward in a time machine just for a week. You know, leave cell phones and Wi-Fi aside.

We'll get to that later on your next trip. And just I would love to get their sense of. the size of the United States government. And not only government employees, but contractors as well are people in the GS system and who honestly have way more power than those who rotate out every two or four years. That are these nucleus of information and power control centers. In your assessment, in your experience, I oftentimes, one thing I'm constantly battling it against, even in my own mind, is you hear people say, our government is corrupt.

And I'm not going to sit here and argue that there are aspects of things that the government does, has done, will do, probably will continue, definitely will continue to do. I'm not even going to put a hypothesis on that one that is corrupt. But is that everybody who works for the government or is that certain people who are in power broker positions who can really throw the levers? In your experience, do you think it's the entire system or that there are entrenched people in place that wield far too much power? Good question. I think the primary issue is leadership, but I don't discount the system either. I think, you know, the sort of unintended consequences of specifically the National Security Act and the Atomic Energy Act have had all sorts of very deleterious effects over the years. Let's throw the Patriot Act on top. Well, yeah, too. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So the system. First off, great branding. Great branding. Yeah.

Whatever they call it, it's the opposite, right? Oh, boy, people have no idea the securities and just the ability to be an invisible human being, living your best life outside of government oversight and reach into your life. It's just shocking. Privacy loss at an unbelievable level. Yeah, there is no privacy anymore. Agreed. So that's a huge challenge, though.

It's precedent, even though I think it's unconstitutional precedent. More immediately, though, it's the people. It's the leadership. I worked with many fantastic people, fantastic leaders. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how committed you are to the mission and doing the right thing if the strategic direction is flawed or contrary to the national interest. I think it's important, not that it changes necessarily the outcome, but I think it's incredibly important for people to realize what you just said, that yes, the system is full of people that are there for the right reasons, trying to do the best job that they can. And when people say things, everything is corrupt. All of our government is broken. At every level, it's corrupt and it's unfixable. One, that's a horrible mind prison to put yourself into, because what do you do about that?

Like, okay, well, they're almost involved in every aspect of my life. how what am I supposed to do now, just throw my hands up or do we ignore this problem? I don't know how to fix it. I don't have a solution, but I also don't want people to lose hope, though either. And as long as there are people who are in there doing it for the right reasons, who are patriotic for whatever sense and definition that people want to put into that, I think that there is a chance. But that chance diminishes when people talk in total terms, which is why I asked you that question.

I just think it's important. And I never worked in that world, so I don't know. the military is full of examples of amazing things and I can give you some horrible examples as well too and so people could say oh the military is super fucked up and it's like in certain ways yes but it's also full of people doing the absolute best they can for the best of reasons and those can't be forgotten either you know communities are just full of individuals I agree um you know these are our brothers and sisters um even inside the legacy program right they're Americans um and the legacy program is not a monolith. What is the legacy program when you say that? It's the shorthand term for the

collection of programs that sort of run the UAP issue. Most people associate it with like sort of the reverse engineering, like the Lockheed Martin, Northam, Grumman kind of crowd. But it's more than that. It also extends towards the operational side of things like, well, Immacic Constellation is an operational arm of that to the, you know, what I imagine is going to be the, you know, what I imagine is going to be the diplomatic aspect of that. It's an umbrella term. It's a constellation of programs. Yeah.

Okay. And I think one thing I'd like to point out about legacy is the term isn't just about how old it is. It's the fact that to a large extent that it's become an intergenerational program. You're basically, a lot of these people are born into it at this point. It's, yeah, it's trusted families, right, that go back towards sort of, you can trace towards the Manhattan project for some of these families having their lineage involved in a secure environment. And from a security standpoint, it makes sense.

You control every aspect of this person's life and you recruit from that sort of that lineage that is raised from birth to believe in the mission, believe in the cause. And while there's advantages to that, you're kind of ending up with sort of a neo-feudal system where you're inheriting sort of your access and control to these programs just by just by virtue of of your lineage that sounds like the plot to a pretty good movie or tv show actually it'll come if disclosure comes you know that's actually one thing i i like to i'd like to say which is that you know the whistleblowing aspect is you're trying to expose the wrongdoing um everything from you know people being treated poorly toward which wasn't what i blew the whistle on but others

did towards the fact that, you know, there's the constitutional crisis angle, which is more of why I came forward. But there's a lot of heroism involved in this. There's a lot of very cool stories involved. There's a lot of American history here that is totally sequestered from us. And I think, you know, that might, that is one of the positive sides of disclosure is that, you know, Americans will finally be able to learn, like, kind of what their brothers and sisters have sacrificed their lives for and accomplished.

because we have had successes and we have overcome danger in the course of running this program. Do you think that that will actually happen, that that information will come out? I hope so. I really hope so. I think we're in a window of opportunity where this some degree of disclosure could happen. And I think it actually makes more sense to lead with the heroism than the wrongdoing. As much as the wrongdoing needs to be addressed. I don't think we're in a political environment to start there, at least in a major truth and reconciliation kind of way. So I think it's possible. I know people want to talk.

What do you think it would take? It takes the president opening the door. It takes... You're talking about like an executive order or... It's not just an executive order, but a sustained effort from the executive brand. to put people in power and to follow through. Because if you just put an executive order out and it's to the people who are keeping the secret,

and I mean it's happening now, they're going to find all sorts of ways to diminish it, delay it, subvert the intent. So it's not just saying do this. It's do this and here are the people who are going to go to war for it and do this the right way. Over a duration of years at this point,

make it a process that will survive past any one administration. Man, I don't know if we're in that political climate right now. We're much is going to survive as it ping pongs back and forth. It's a guess, but that seems to be where we're at currently. Yeah, I think I don't disagree. I think that's part of why you need to have the legislative and judicial branches involved in this as well. so that it can sort of sustain further. Although once you get the judiciary involved,

you're talking again more about the wrongdoing side of this, but you have to address it. This is, disclosure is not going to be a celebration. It's going to be very much a mixed bag and a reckoning in some ways. One of the things I've heard floated when it comes to disclosure writ large is the idea of essentially blanket pardons

to remove the judicial aspect of, let's just say, I think it's going to be some finger pointing going on. And I think that finger pointing, again, when you talk to competitive advantage or technological advantage, probably very fair. Not that that wouldn't happen, but if you could remove getting your ass drug into court and the financial and personal liabilities

that could come from that for these entities and organizations, maybe that would help move the needle. maybe that would relieve some of the pressure to keep it from exploding, if you will. Yeah. So I understand the logic, and I've written a bit on it. I think conditional amnesty for wrongdoing is going to be part of this. I think it's a spectrum. Things like financial crimes or being part of a state sponsor monopoly are relatively easy,

I think, for the public to digest if they get something out of it, right? But when you start getting in towards the more nasty aspects of this where, again, it's the, you know, implementing the security measures on this to two things that are very unpalatable like human experimentation. That's a much more difficult proposition, especially for the victims of those crimes. I don't have one answer. I just think that starting with blanket amnesty for any involvement in this, will cement the injustice and create, you know, more problems in the future. Other side, I think people, again, are often, they're inheriting this. They're born into this.

They have no way out of this, making it possible for them to come forward, not necessarily to the public, but to the executive branch itself or the judiciary branch, and know that they will not be thrown in jail and will be protected from the sort of extra legal retaliation, which I don't think there's any way to avoid happening at this point. I feel like just from a effectiveness, part of implementing a policy like this has to happen. I don't really accept the I was born into this,

and so therefore I don't have any choices or options. You know, there are people who are born into families of alcoholics in those who have just generational violence and trauma going downstream. A horrible analogy for sure. But that also doesn't mean that you have no choices and you have no agency in that, right? You're not responsible for what happens to you, but you are responsible for what you do with it. So, I mean, I can't speak from somebody who has born into that type of family, but I'm not going to remove all of the agency from that person and the choices that they could make.

It might be harder to see, especially through the blinders that have been painted on you or the glasses, the shade of lens that you were, you know, growing up with, but it shouldn't be impossible. Yeah, that's a fair rebuttal. I can't, I can't dispute it. We all, we all have to answer for what we do here. I mean, it's really hard, especially if you have a family and kids to kind of take that step of saying, I'm going to bite the bullet and pray to God that nobody comes after my family, but it is the right thing to do. I couldn't agree more. It's way easier to say than to do. Yeah. I'm not going to argue that. What are you spending your time doing now? I mean,

So, hello, he had doged. Yeah. What a term. When he got up on stage with a running chainsaw, I remember saying to myself, we have arrived at a new spot. I don't know what the spot is. I don't know where we are in our orbit. But this is wild.

Yeah. I think that's part of like why I think there's an opening. There's new blood. There's new attention being paid towards correcting the deep state if you want to call it that. Do you think Elon's read in on the UAP program? Yes. He'd have to be, right?

He's launching stuff up into space all the time. Yes. And people are not widely aware that SpaceX was started on military contracts for conventional prompt global political, conventional prompt global strike. That doesn't surprise me at all, actually. Yeah. So there's a military link there from the very beginning. And let's just say that it's not my place to give the details, but others have the proof he's read in. Yeah.

Public statement is notwithstanding. Fucking Elon. I bet you he's got some high-deaf cameras on his stuff. Let's see it. Right? Space is the best collection area for this, apparently. Have you ever looked at the image of all the trash that is orbiting our planet? It is amazing to me that we can huck something up there and not have it blown into bits by just trash flying by.

You mean like I've seen the radar image of all little dots of, Everything. Just, you know, there's old satellites, pieces of space, just everywhere. Somebody way better at math than me is calculating this stuff out. Yeah. Some buddies and some supercomputers. Totally. Yeah.

I mean, hey, look, we still do pretty amazing things. I think we just need to make it serve the interests of the people more and less the profit. You know, it's easy to vilify someone, especially when they have sort of outrageous public personas. But, you know, we're a country. There's lots of other people besides Elon involved. Oh, for sure. So what are you doing now? Yeah.

So, I mean, most recently, myself and Dylan Borland, who's another whistleblower to Congress, and now Jeffrey Neustelli, also a witness to Congress, started a nonprofit, Vanguard Enterprise. It's to provide support and empowerment. to the people who did go forward to Congress and discovered that there's nothing for you afterwards. So we're trying to build an organization to provide five categories of aid, legal first, financial career transition, second, medical and psychological, third and fourth, and then community support. We're in very early days of that, but we're highly motivated. You don't have much more skin in the game than people like us.

And, you know, we have a short list of people that we know. Almost all veterans or ICA contractors who would benefit from this. So that's my current focus. I also write on a blog, Invisible Frontiers, about this topic, but I also delve into sort of re-looking at our recent and ancient history in light of this knowledge and trying to point people towards, you know, where the human story is incomplete and where, you know, if we apply resources, We can find independent confirmation of these things outside of begging and pleading for the government to open the hangar doors.

Give me some examples. What do you mean? So I think are twofold. One is identifying areas on earth where you can point a camera or a suite of sensors, I should say, and attempt to get high fidelity imagery of technical objects. Won't go so far as to say beings themselves. They seem to be very squirrely like. that, but, you know, it's a start. And then also pointing the way towards archaeological sites and the cultures around those sites to, you know, find physical evidence or physical remnants of either, you know, ancient facilities or crashed or left behind sort of technologies. And then

the oral records of the people who existed there that then encountered these things without knowledge of what they were, what they were looking at. Interesting. How much did you talk to your wife about this before you went public? None. I kept this. How'd that work for you? Oh, not. Let me tell you.

I'm the least popular whistleblower at home. You did what today? Yeah. It was some time afterwards, too. I mean, before you answer about how it is now and how her response was, what do you think she would have said if you had voiced concerned her? Obviously, being aware of it. of the security classifications and things like that.

It broadly talked to her about it. What do you think she would have told you? What the hell do you think you're doing? No. It's going to go nowhere. And you're just going to ruin your life. And she would have been right. Well, I definitely am punching out of my league with my wife.

And yeah, she's able to give me advice like that as well, too. Because I have what I think are bangor ideas. Here's my most reason. I want to drive a Tesla from Montana to floor. Florida. She's just like, you're fucking idiot. Like, oh, you're probably right. My back would hurt. So, you know, sometimes you got to listen. Yeah. It was, it was a decision not made lightly, but definitely made secretly. Only two people knew I was doing it. And it was a virtue of that. Who were the two people? The contact to Congress and then the member. So how did you tell your wife? over the course of several days. The titration theory. What is that?

It's a little drop, drop, drop, drop. Yeah, you don't dump the bucket of water. It's like an IV drip. Like, listen, the whole bag of information is going to come down the IV line, but we're not going to crank it open bolus because nobody can take that. Right. And it's one thing to say you were whistleblower about wrongdoing in the intelligence community. It's another to also throw in like, oh, yeah, it's UFOs.

Those are real, honey. Yeah. Yeah. Does she believe? Ooh. Does she believe me? Yes. Does she believe I'm right?

Probably not so much. Really? You know, it's interesting dynamic. People need to see the evidence. I am in the same boat. Again, you're talking to somebody who wants this to be true. Yeah. I just need to see it.

And maybe that's a ridiculous requirement, but I'm just being honest about how I feel about it. I can't fault people. I didn't believe it before I was exposed to the caliber of evidence that I was over the course of years. You know, there's a lot of things that we believe in unquestioningly that we never really encounterproof for in our life. How many people know what plutonium looks like when it's machined and put inside a nuclear weapon? At least two. At least two. But the public's, what I'm getting at is the public accepts that's real, even though they've never seen.

The plutonium itself? Yes. Yes. And it's configuration they don't even need to know. But they just accept it's real because they've largely sort of inherited that belief and it's part of our culture. A lot of our life is like that. Exactly. The mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering required to produce an aircraft that people hop on without thinking twice or a vehicle that you drive in or a train or fill in the blank.

There's a lot of faith and belief on things that we truly don't understand. Yep. And I think, you know, for this subject, which is very complex and very immediate, it will happen. I think regardless of what the government says, people are just going to become more aware of it over the coming years as humanity develops means to just know its environment at the level of fidelity that, you know, our intelligence enterprise does. and maybe these things are becoming more active for whatever reason. So there'll be more exposures. You know, that's not something any one person can rush, though. And end of the day, you know, most people are more, rightfully so,

more concerned, how are they going to survive, what's going on with their family, what matters in their immediate environment. And I think eventually they'll learn that it does connect to their immediate environment, maybe in some surprising ways. But until then, you know, I'm here. I'm happy to tell the story. I believe it. I know it's true.

I want more details. And I want to be able to show you. What's the most compelling piece of information or evidence that you have seen so far? I mean, multiple videos are still images of these craft, especially when they're interacting. They're not interacting, but they're in the environment near our own platforms. and we are either unable to observe them, right? At least what's on the ground or in the water isn't able to observe them,

but what's collecting is. And so you see that disconnect between, you know, it's right freaking there, guys. The difference between visual or it's on an IR spectrum or whatever it is. Exactly. And then the size of things and the maneuvers. So, I mean, the triangle, pretty amazing.

There's a really bizarre one. So I guess it's not visual, but it's a real report and it's cleared by the State Department. so I can say it, a pretty large sun-like orb coming basically from what they thought was the stars right above a carrier that was underway and hovering, matching the speed of the character carrier over the flight deck for a period of time, but emitting no light. So it's really hard to visualize, but imagine something you're looking at it.

And it looks like the surface of the sun, you know, roiling plasma. And it looks like a bright light. But it's not lighting up the environment around it. How is that possible? I don't know. But it happened. Stuff like that. That was released by the State Department?

They approved my report. I don't even know what to say about that. I still don't. It's a mystery. How does your wife think about that one? She's never read it. Damn, we should have invited her. Just.

What are your thoughts? Oh, man. You would have had a spicy, dramatic podcast. Do you have kids? No. Pros and cons to that. It was in the cards, but it's been put on hold. Yeah, I think they just exist to ruin your life anyway

and sharpen their teeth on your bones. So it's gnarly. It's so hard and so amazing at the same time. And I'm not advocating for people not to have kids. It's better than you ever think it could be and harder than you ever. I could think it would be, I was going to ask you what your kids think about this. I'm hoping to get to a point where we can have the family.

Yeah. And this isn't so crazy. And then, you know, that would be a story to tell. What's the craziest aspect about it? Is it that you are publicly recognized that somebody, as somebody who is backing that these programs exist, that this theory exists? Do you feel like that limits you from opportunities? What's the hardest part about it? So, I mean, there's the practical side.

Like, you know, I went to school. and had my work experience all to be in the intelligence community. That's just, that's gone. So I, even though you had all that, I'll ask you, I'm the UFO guy. But I'll ask you again, though, feeling the way that you do about the government now, would you actually want to continue working in the IC? No, unless it's some temporary role to like get this out to the public.

Yeah. Because, you know, you know the, you know who to talk to. So I get it. You were in your mind before you got into that world that put all this effort into doing it, you get there. It's not exactly what you thought it was going to be, which for just about anybody who wants to do anything, spoiler alert, that's kind of the way it's going to be. So you wouldn't want to do it anyway, right? So that's kind of off the table. I understand, you know, maybe the sunken cost or the way that you feel about the time and

effort that you put into that. Do you feel that that is limiting you, though, or is it this, there is some, you know, you're wearing a scarlet letter around your neck as the UFO guy, so then people won't take you seriously? What do you believe the core issue is? So for me, yeah, it's not so much being labeled the UFO guy. I think the culture is starting to change on that somewhat. And it's it's not so much the oh, I'll never work for the government again. I mean, sucks, but you know, got to get a job. For me, it's, I know there's a target on my back. I know there's some very dangerous groups of people who do not like what I've done. You know, I've, I've felt people reach out and touch me.

What do you mean? Well, I mean, the one that I'm public about is, you know, having the home break in. There's other things that have gone on. Similar to that, some more direct, some that I have reported to law or not law enforcement, people involved in this that are trying to protect us. Do you think that there are tentacles of the intelligence, community and that's where that's coming from? Or is that just an assumption on your part? I will never know. And I feel like some of it is from, you know, whether internal like security or

corporate security, some feels like that. Some feels like it's third party nations that, you know, I'm now on the radar and they want to, you know, collect on someone who's vulnerable. Are you vulnerable? Oh, yeah. I'm, you know, I'm not a trained warrior like yourself. I don't have a protective deal or detail. Do you practice karate? I do not. Well, why aren't you starting?

Do you own a gun? I don't. Okay, you might be helpless. Why don't you train? Why don't you have a firearm? It's, I mean, both valid questions, both things that I've thought about acquiring. Yeah. But it's what are my skills right now and how, how

I protect myself best in the shortest amount of time with basically zero money. It's using my intellect, using my knowledge and my network to evince this change and hope that, you know, I have allies on the inside who, actually I know I do. I have allies on the inside who want this out. And I feel like they have stopped some of the worst things from happening to me. But what I'm getting at is what's my biggest challenge in life? It's, well, it's, this is for me now a no-fail mission. Either disclosure happens in some capacity and this heat comes off and there's some sort of

protection extended to me and others like me. Or, you know, this fades in the background and, you know, a few years down the line when there's not the spotlight on us, you know, people just start having accidents. I don't feel like you disclosed anything that was beyond, I'll say some names that I think people would recognize Lou Elizondo. David Goresh. Do you feel like that they are under the same level of threat? Because let's assume, let's go with the assumption for a minute,

that everything that you disclosed was accurate and it was real. It's not even, I would say, the most controversial of things that I have heard that have been disclosed. So why do you think that they would, do you think those other people feel that same level of existential threat? I know others do. Yes. I don't want to speak for... Of course. I'm just curious if you feel like anybody who discloses...

Lou and Gresh are too very public example. Bobless R would be another one. I mean, I don't know again. And maybe he is from a... I don't mean different generation in a bad way, but an earlier generation, you were of a newer generation of people exposed to this type of information.

And I mean, he's talked about some pretty wild stuff from firsthand experience. But I've never heard him talk about people trying to harm him for that. Right. Well, the public knows what I disclosed to Congress solely in the form of that publicly released Immaculate Constellation Report.

That's not the full extent. Not permitted to share more. But hypothetically, like, you know, if you had names of people, locations and units, you know, that would, that piss some people off. And I've been involved in this for years now.

It's pretty ugly. And, you know, to a certain extent, I know where bodies are buried, euphemistically, related to the sort of disclosure process and what's gone on. You know, this is part of why I don't talk about my fears or sort of threats that I've experienced because people have an easier time for some reason believing in the UFO stuff than in people wanting to harm me. I don't know exactly why that is. Don't make that assumption for people.

I think that might be an internal thing. I can see both sides of that. I mean, again, if you assume or go with the assumption that what you were saying in disclosed was legitimate, And you had, again, you had names, locations, all of those things. And it puts what people would see is their career or their legacy or whatever it may, their check, their company, whatever it may be into a place where they feel threatened. Sure.

I could see that as a possibility for sure. I think people would be more open to that idea than you might think. You would think. But, I mean, as a concrete example, I, an official one, you know, I had, I was brought in, or I was invited to ODI and I

to participate in what I thought would be, or what I was told, would be an ODI and I sponsored whistleblower protection program for UAP whistleblowers. Cut to the Chase. It was an operation to figure out

what I and others knew about the subject. Had you already disclosed that? Again, the public knows about 11 pages of what I've talked about. But what I'm saying is OD&I should have access to what you disclosed as well, right? I mean, they should know what you already disclose. You would think.

Yeah. I would hope that government at least talks in our agency. No. Awesome. And to cut to the chase, I mean, they completely misrepresented my information. They tried to use their manufactured derogatory information to turn our network against each other. What do you mean manufactured derogatory information? Well, like the one that's in the news is, you know, they claimed that, A, I made up my encounter or my exposure to the PowerPoint and that I admitted.

Oh, the immaculate conception PowerPoint. Yeah. Yeah, they, that I had not just made it up, but told them, oh, I made that up, that I was an anti-Semite and that I was a counterintelligence threat. then not only did they report that information to journalists and other whistleblowers, again, to try to collapse our network and turn us against each other. They drafted a internal report coordinated with no one and then just emailed it out to different intelligence and law enforcement components. So now there's this DROG report floating around the community about me and others with falsified information about us. and they, not to me, but to journalists George Knapp and Jeremy Corbell said that we're going to bring charges of treason and espionage against Dylan Borland and Matthew Brown. So, I mean, I think that's a pretty direct threat to my personal security and liberty, but it's gotten remarkably little traction and people don't seem to take it that seriously. I certainly do. And to top it all off, the Dig, Director's Initiative group, the agent who led the UAP section of it, sorry, the agent who conducted the investigation part of that, all this information was exposed about him, including, you know, stuff behind the scenes that was proof of it.

And he got a promotion. He's now at the intelligence community inspector general overseeing the intake of whistleblowers, including UAP whistleblowers. including UAP whistleblowers. He has access to all that information of whistleblowers past, present, and anybody that comes in. So, you know, again, who's interests are served by that?

Certainly not whistleblowers, certainly not the people's. Who sponsored that? It was done under, while Tulsi Gabbard was director, and, you know, I had very high confidence information. That was not her intent.

this happened underneath her watch without her knowledge. But once she learned what was happening, it was too late. You know, this subject is very dangerous and it's active right now. There's factions inside our government fighting over, either trying to keep this totally secret or shape how it comes out right now. And that's another very good reason for me to feel very motivated to succeed. You had said earlier, I'll paraphrase, I'm not going to use the word that you used exactly, but there was some level of input or collaboration with the beings to keep this information.

What do you mean by that? So two things. When we're talking about that. Let's get wild. Let's get wild. Okay. All right. Do you have your tinfoil hat? We're going deep.

So one is my analysis of the sort of international dynamics and, you know, just applying my, training to the situation. Why hasn't someone disclosed other than the United States, given all the reasons we put out, especially over the many decades? And to the other side of that is, well, I have reason now to believe that at least it's true to some degree that it's the oral tradition inside the legacy program, that agreements were signed between the United States government and some non-human entity, whether that's an organization or specific being itself, I don't know. What the fuck are you talking about? How did they sign in English?

How do they even write a contract between an alien species? Presumably in English, at least for our coffee. It's convenient that they, well, they can travel through space and time. I feel like they have Siri that could translate, so maybe that's not that big of a leap. Well, and if they're here for the duration of this iteration of human civilization, they know language they watch develop. So you're saying orally passed down inside of that legacy

program they talk about a cornerstone document, an agreement between a agreements. A series of agreement. Of course, if there's one, let's have a series of them. Between the U.S. specifically, intelligence community, and an alien species

slash S associated with that. I think the U.S. executive made the agreement. So intelligence community is below that, supposedly. And that this, you know, happened somewhere between Truman and Eisenhower. And that this is at least for with one organization at the very least,

because, you know, there's many humans out there. Why I say it's all, it's a whole race of aliens when it, or sorry, not aliens, non-humans when it could just be one interest or faction of it. But yes, that there's this agreement or series of agreements was signed with them. And that that established sort of the rules of the road of our relationships with them and with their technology and what we are allowed to do with derive technology. What would they benefit from that? Good question. So moving aside from the information I know to speculation, what would they benefit?

that looking at with sort of fresh eyes at the history of what's out there, it seems to me that two things seem probable. One is to leave certain areas in the continental United States, basically make them off limits. You know, no human developments here. This is our territory. Two, and we're putting on our tinfoil hats, it's some sort of access or communication with human beings for their own purposes.

uninterrupt or unimpeded by by the United States government again this is not we're in tinfoil three piece suit territory it matters though because you get to the question right of they have these craft they have the energy to power these craft they can do all sorts of fantastical things and it seems like they've been here for a long time why bother interacting with humanity at all well why enter into an agreement because if they wanted to to do all those things. There's nothing that we can do to stop them anyway. Right. You might go towards, well, if this is a faction of these beings, there might be their own political systems involved. And for them to not be punished or being outside the scope of their political systems, they can

wave that document and say, look, the leadership of this country consented to these terms, you know, we are, you may not like what we, you may not like what we, doing with these or how we're interacting with humanity other other NHI but they sign the humans gave over themselves it's legal to them you can't stop us that is again speculative but we're there it comes back again why bother interacting with humanity at all there has to be something they gained from it or there's something that they want to control about us if they wanted to have an open relationship they could but they're not Well, we'd have to imagine that they are an advanced species, at least from a technology perspective.

I would assume behind that, I don't know, intellect, that would be a guess, but probably a civilization that has been around far longer than we have to get to the point where they have that technology, unless they evolve on a timeline that is much more rapid than our own. I mean, maybe if this is true, that species realizes that the human race were not at a point yet where we could. tolerate that level of knowledge, which doesn't require them to write an agreement, though. Yeah. I see no benefit to them writing an agreement with members of our own government. I could see a benefit to our government signing an agreement with an advanced power that had technology and innovational leaps that we could apply, but I'm not seeing anything in the other direction.

If they can travel through space and time and come to our planet at any time that they want to, I don't think you need a permission slip to land out in Utah, which I think we're most of more. Hmm. Hmm. Oh, I'm showing some cards. All right. Um, you know, I think... There's just a lot of fucking crazy people in Utah, so... Okay, fair enough. I have no data to support that. It was just the first state that came to mine. Oh, well, then, interesting, that they came up. Okay. Perhaps I'm onto something. I think so. Um, there's clearly something missing in the story. Is Area 51 in Utah? No. Okay, damn it. See? It's in Nevada, isn't it? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, Utah is a complete wild-ass guess.

Beautiful state. Yes. This points towards, you know, what whistleblowers does Congress need at this point in the game? Senate got their answers, at least by the fact of the existence of legacy and its technological sort of successes and operations associated with acquiring that technology and yada yada. What whistleblowers are needed, I think, at this point. Not to get ahead of the executive branch, but let's just assume the executive branch still doesn't have full, hasn't regained full control over this. The diplomatic history of this, I think, is crucial. The history itself of what these interactions have been with, why they occurred, where they occurred, what were the outcomes.

We need those answers to get at exactly what we're talking about here. Why interact with humanity? Why reveal themselves in any capacity to us when they don't have to? We're in speculation area, but I don't think it's, I don't think it's speculation any longer. We need to start considering the firsthand accounts of people that call themselves experiencers or abductees or those who have encountered these being seriously. That seems to be the... Maybe not all of them.

Well, sure. But in aggregate, you know, there's enough. literature out there that you can start to detect trends, especially over the decades, and across national lines. This isn't just a United States phenomenon. I think, especially with tools like AI, you might be able to find some patterns really quickly, and that's not conclusive proof, but those would be organizing questions. So, you know, I think that is, I think we need to stop focusing on technology, especially if it's involved in our national defense, at least for the time, being and get towards what is the history of this interaction and what is the nature of these

beings the sort of you say biologics or if it's post biologic like what exactly are they what do they look like what is their sort of what do you call it energy system like you know what do they eat hopefully not humans I hope so too I don't that's not what I'm trying to apply but I'm just saying I'm getting at you know what are these things yeah and and what is their, what have we communicated with them? Does Congress or any of these committees, do they have the power to compel the intelligence community to read them in on things like the legacy programs?

What kind of power do they actually have? Or can the IC just say, nope, national security, and it shuts it down? So, I mean, there's the law. Yeah. And the law is that if, you know, certain committees in Congress have to be briefed on executive branch programs that Congress funds. Do they have to be briefed on what the program does or do they have to be briefed that the program exists? Because those are two very different things.

I think you're getting right into the tension. Frankly, it kind of, we get back to, well, what is the reality? The reality is that the IC keeps Congress away from everything as much as possible and tells them the bare minimum, just about conventional. things. So could Congress compel executive branch agencies or departments to brief them on XYZ? Probably not. They would have to compel the president to direct those agencies and departments to go

brief them. That's already tenuous in and of itself. And then if you dig you the briefed, how would you know that you were fully briefed on the program anyway? You wouldn't. We're in a low trust zone. I had John Kiriaku on the show who worked for the agency for a while, and I asked him. And again, this is one person's experience, and he worked at the agency for 20 plus years.

So, of course, people say he's still working for the agency, so you can't listen to what he said. I love talking to him. He's like the best storyteller of all time. Fantastic conversation with him. But I asked him, you know, is it even possible with the intelligence community that we have in the different eight, what is it, 11 or 13 agencies at this point that comprise the, I see the intelligence community? It might be. It seems it's not shrinking. That's a fair assessment to say it's growing, if anything. Is there even any way to have oversight or to prevent corruption or weaponization? And he, without hesitation, said, no, absolutely not. That there truly is no actual oversight. That's pretty scary. And again, that's the time machine fasting, fast forward with the founding fathers. Like, hey, guys, what do you think about this? As they keel over and pass out. Like, you guys, didn't really. read that one correctly. That's not what we meant.

I don't disagree with him. They're, you know, they're, they have license to kill, right? They kind of have a blank check both on paper and in practice. There's this attitude on Congress that we don't care how it's done, just that it's done, you know. That's a dangerous mandate. I don't disagree. But this is, this is where we find ourselves. to a certain extent, you almost have to hope that there is the shift in mindset in culture that encourages cooperation from these groups because end of the day, given their level of power and influence and secrecy now, how are you going to compel them to come forward realistically? Are you going to get the military to go raid their sites, bring out all their documents, and then

try to sort it out that way. Well, I mean, what are we talking about here? That's some civil war level shit. Well, first I don't even see a world where that order would be given. Right. And I'm just putting it out there as like, you know, how are you going to compel compliance here? It's a difficult puzzle. And I think one way or another, the realization that cooperation is better than secrecy and competition needs to be arrived at. they might see themselves separate from us at this point, but they're not.

This is their home. You say they are we talking about here? The intelligence community. Yeah, and it's implementers. How do we accomplish that shift in mindset? In some ways, I feel like it's going to take a crisis or a series of crisis. to shift the incentive structure so that open cooperation and willing cooperation with Congress and the American people

benefits them more than the status quo of what we're at now. But those are theoretically pretty dire situation, some sort of external, environmental, or other threat to us. Yeah, I don't think we will get reform on our current trajectory. Do you think that the supposed alien race would have signed agreements with other nations? I mean, if they would do it with one, why not more?

They're not solely confined to the United States, and there's more than one group, at least, if not more than one species here, and groups within species. Again, if they were here unilaterally, like you point out, agreements don't make sense. but if they are operating within some sort of their own international structure or whatever you want to call it, then hey, maybe it does. Maybe they view it more as business contracts than international treaties.

I would hazard to guess that at the very minimum, Russia and China have their own independent relationships, if what is true about the information I've learned is true. I would also revisit the idea that there is treaties between our countries governing the derived technology and how we use it and how we manage awareness of UAP and NHA. Again, that doesn't make so much sense if we are the only actors in town, but if we are, again, operating at a lower place on the hierarchy under rules imposed upon us. then that starts to become more plausible to me. But we're talking in speculation or critical thinking. Yeah, we're way out there. How old are you now?

35. What are you going to do with the rest of your life? What do you want to do? That's a better question. I don't know what I'm going to do. What I want to do is make a new, find a new way to provide for myself and start a family and live somewhere where, near the ocean.

Those are all good. Yeah. Love the ocean. I love it less after going through seal training. It's like being tortured with ice cream. And then somebody says on the weekend, hey, do you want to go to Baskin-Robbins? And he's like, I'm pretty good. I'm vanilla for right now.

Yeah, it's amazing that the military can take something incredibly joyful and really just abrade you with it to the point where you've had your fair share. Well, I'm sorry. which is a beautiful place. I mean, Montana's pretty dope, though, too. And I like all the activities up here. What turns your screws for you outside of the UAP stuff? I mean, do you have anything that you are passionate?

Obviously, I'm sure you're passionate about your wife, the desire to have a family. But have you found anything else, any other areas of interest that light a fire under you, like heading towards the IC community was? I don't know about employment, but, I mean, I have my interest. I love history. I love humanity. I love stories.

So, you know, doing the research and maybe writing just for fun, want to keep doing that. Lifestyle-wise, you know, want to get scuba certified. I want to get back to rock climbing. You want to go down where the aliens are. That would be tempting. I'm hearing a lot more about how there's a bunch of stuff underwater. Yeah, yeah.

Which is less explored than the surface of the earth. So maybe that's a pretty good place to hang out and hide. Channel Islands. I used to grow up going to Catalina. It would be cool to revisit Catalina with fresh eyes. Okay. I've been to Catalina a bunch. I didn't know there was an alien base there.

Oh, I don't know about that, but it seems like that's where there's some activity. Really? Yeah. I mean, I haven't seen it myself, but that's the word on the wash. Okay. I mean, I don't know. Maybe they like a cozy little beach down. It's hard to say.

You'll get through it. I mean, how far into this are you now? Just a couple years? Whistleblowing. Yeah, we're in year three. kind of deep involvement in this five years. I don't think it ever is going to leave at this point, but hopefully it gets better.

Hopefully this becomes, this is a transition point towards disclosure and a new sort of understanding of our environment and the pressure comes off for me and others like me. But I need to help make that happen to contribute to that. How are you making your money these days? I know you have your substack. Yeah.

What else do you have going on? Substack, we've started to raise a limited amount of funds through Vanguard, but things are meager. And, you know, unfortunately that burden has fallen to my wife for the past year. So majorly motivated to take that on my shoulders. It's a difficult circle to square. But we're getting there. It is, but seasons of life, man. I've been through those seasons of life.

And I've been to places where I couldn't figure my way out of it. I didn't know what my next step was going to be. And you do, as long as you don't give up. Don't confuse what you do with who you are as well. You as a person don't have to be a UAP guy or a UFO guy, right? It can be a part of what you did and what you do. But I mean, I try to view people as the totality of who they are, not what their occupations were, one defining aspect of their life. So I do think you'll get through the season of life for sure.

Doesn't mean it's going to be fun. Can't choose our struggles, have to do the best through them. So I agree. Thank you. Yeah. We'll get there. Where can people find you and support you? We've been at it for a couple hours.

I'll let you. Oh, sure. Yeah, enjoy your Montana Day. Main place to go look is a vanguard enterprise.org. That's our nonprofit. And define what Vanguard exists to do as well. Yeah, exist to support UAP whistleblowers from the National Security Enterprise.

It's mostly, well, except for me, it's two veterans, and the people we were going to help are either veterans themselves, active duty, or in the intelligence community and that kind of nebulous employment status. So, you know, good people, people who are heroes for their country. And right now at least are out there unsupported and unprotected.

So we want to provide legal support. That's our most pressing. We got several cases of people who need there, who are fighting, you know, negative, spurious actions against their clearances. Financial and career support or career transition, people like myself who have a lifetime or maybe less of skill. skills and experiences, though, that are difficult to transition to the private sector and help them make that transition medical support, whether that's, you know, just dealing with their normal wear and tear on their body or any sort of damages they've come across through the course of this. Psychological support, that's a big one, especially for families to work through this. You can tell you personally, it's pretty devastating on multiple levels to go through alone. And that's that last part is building a small, trusted community where people can, can talk and not be judged and also can provide proof of life, hey, I'm still here, guys.

So that's what Vanguard is here to do. We're entirely grassroots, so need the community to come behind us. And thankfully, some have started to do so. Are you active at all on social media where people can reach out to you and get in touch with you? Yeah, I'm mainly on X, son of Abramelon. What? What does that even mean? You need to be a UFO guy. UFO guy, right. I'm going to guess that that's taken, though. Yeah, there's a lot of UFO blank accounts. And then I'm also on Substack, Invisible Frontiers, and that's where I publish my writings. Okay.

All free. Are you hopeful about the future, country-wise, hesitant? What are your thoughts? Where do you currently land? I believe in humanity. I believe in our founding fathers, the Constitution, and the principles that inspired it. I know we have rough seas ahead for years, if not a decade at least. But just because there are challenges and bad things to overcome doesn't mean I don't have hope.

I'm just realistic in that hope, but I firmly believe that we will get through it, especially if we choose cooperation over competition with each other. That's a good ending right there. Lead people on a positive note. Thank you for making the trip out. Thank you, Andy. It was a pleasure. Yeah, indeed.