Somewhere in the Skies - RENDLESHAM

Episode Date: December 16, 2019

On episode 139 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, we tackle one of the most well-known and well documented UFO events of all time; The Rendlesham Forest UFO incident. Often dubbed "Britain's Roswell", this event took place over three consecutive nights in a forest between two joint military bases in Suffolk, England in December of 1980.  Set amongst the backdrop of the Cold War, US Forces were stationed in England in case of a Soviet attack. Unbeknownst to British forces, the US were secretly housing nuclear weapons on the base as well, completely against nuclear treaty at the time. Early during the Christmas holiday, strange lights were witnessed on radar and in person over RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge. But not only lights... a solid craft was said to have landed in Rendlesham Forest which ran between the joint bases. Officers were sent out to investigate, and what they experienced would become one of the most incredible close encounter UFO stories ever recorded. Backed up by official military documents, audio recordings during the sightings and encounters in the forest, and a developing story up until today, this is the story of Rendlesham. This episode was directly inspired and co-written by an article at wwwtheunredacted.com Selected audio provided by Jeremy Peasley, the National Archives, The Disclosure Project, The Citizens Hearing, Exopolotics Germany, The BBC, and CNN Special Assignments. Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Watch Mysteries Decoded for free at www.CWseed.com Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is part of the eOne podcast network. To learn more, CLICK HERE SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is sponsored by HelloFresh. To receive 50% off your first order, use promo code: SOMEWHERE at checkout by visiting www.HelloFresh.ca Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms apply. RAF Woodbridge and RAF Bentwaters were known as the twin bases, separated by an area of woodland called Rendelsham Forest. The two installations in Suffolk, Southeast England, were perhaps the United States' most important military complexes during the Cold War, and they held a dark secret. Even today, it's not officially acknowledged that nuclear weapons were being stored at the bases. a complete violation of the U.S. and UK's treaty obligations. But another secret was being held in that forest. And almost 40 years later, it remains one of the most famous UFO cases of all time. This is the story of the incident in Rendezham Forest.

This is somewhere in the skies with Ryan's bread. Another quiet and cold night in 1980. It's probably not much fun to be on security duty on Christmas night, thousands of miles from home in a cold British military base in England. Twenty-year-old American patrol sergeant, John Burroughs, had the short straw that night, guarding R.A.F. Woodbridge's lonely East Gate, which edged into the dark woods of the neighboring Rendersham Forest. As the 25th turned into the 26th, Burroughs looked out into the darkness,

and saw something strange. Colored lights appeared to be hovering and dancing over the trees. Was this some sort of Christmas display? Burroughs had an uneasy feeling that it was something unusual and drove back to the gatehouse to inform this security controller. Security policeman Jim Peniston joined Burroughs at the gate to observe the lights. In his two years of working at the base, the 26-year-old Peniston had never.

seen lights in the Rendosham Woods before, but had witnessed several small aircraft crashes during his career and felt that this might explain what the men were seen. Relating this possibility to the security tower at around 3 a.m., Penniston, Burroughs, and fellow airman Ed Cabansac were given permission to venture out into the forest to investigate. I then ordered Airman Cabanzac, A1C Burroughs, to respond with me off-site. When we arrived to the suspected crash site, it quickly became apparent that we were not dealing with a plane crash. Or for that matter, anything else we've ever responded to. There was a bright light emulating from an object on the forest floor.

As we approached it on foot, a silhouette of triangular craft about nine feet long, six and a half feet high, came into view. The craft was fully intact and sitting in a small clearing just inside the woods. As the three of us got closer to the craft, we started experiencing radio difficulties. I then asked the Airman-Combinzac to relay the radio transmissions back to our control center. Burles and I proceeded towards the craft. The air around them, according to Penniston, seemed to be filled with electricity. It was surging through them as they approached the object. When we came up on the triangular-shaped craft, there were blue and yellow light swirling around.

the exterior as though they're a part of the surface. Nothing in my training prepared me for what I was witnessing. After 10 minutes without any apparent aggression, I determined the craft was non-hostile to my team and to the base. Following the security protocols, we completed a thorough on-site investigation. This included a full physical examination of the craft, which included photographs,

and my notebook entries that I had at the time and relays with the radio through Airman Cabanzac to our control center. On one side of the craft, there were symbols that measured three inches high and they're approximately about two and a half feet long. The feeling I had during the encounter was like no type of aircraft that I've ever seen before.

It was in the Jane's book of known aircraft or anything I've seen since. Penniston scribbled furiously in his notebook, drawing as best he could the shape of the object, but found it increasingly difficult to write as if some strange force was weighing him down. The light from the craft began to intensify. Burles and I then took a defensive position away from the craft as it lifted off the ground without any noise or air disturbance. It maneuvered through the trees and shot off at an unbelievable rate of speed. It was gone in a blink of an eye.

In my law book, I wrote, Speed Impossible. That night, over 80 Air Force personnel, all trained observers assigned to the 84th Security Police Squadron and witnessed the take off. What on earth had the men witnessed? Whatever it was, all three were reluctant to go back to their commanding officers

and say that they'd seen a UFO. Rumors had long circulated around the twin bases of lights in the sky, but most airmen preferred to keep such reports to themselves for fear of ridicule. On returning to the base, the men relayed what Penniston described as a sanitized account of the encounter to their commanding officer, Lieutenant Fred Bearing, and were informed that the nearby radar base had also reported an unusual blip on the radar earlier the previous night. Was this the object the men had seen? Like so much of the Rendezham incident, we have official documents that confirmed that this incident did indeed occur.

Beeren's typewritten report dated January 2, 1981, confirms Burroughs and Penniston's sighting. Fred Bearin affirms that the men are reliable and mature individuals and appear convinced that Peniston had indeed experienced something out of the realm of explanation. for him at the time. By now, the strange lights over Rendelsham had also been reported to the local police. Returning the next morning with two officers from the Suffolk Constabulary,

Burroughs and Penniston tried to find the location of their mysterious nocturnal encounter. Happening upon what they believed was the same clearing, the men saw three indentations in the ground. Often seized by skeptics, the subsequent police report states that these indentations were actually nothing more than rabbit burrows.

Peniston, however, is adamant that they were not, stating that the ground was frozen and it was impossible for that to have happened. Peniston believes the officers were reluctant to state what the marks really were, as, like him, they were worried that they'd be ridiculed. Supportive of Peniston's integration was the fact that the three indentations formed an exact equal lateral triangle when measured out. Burroughs and Penniston's encounter in the woods might well have been dismissed as a mistake, or even just Christmas hijinks, if it wasn't for the events of the following two nights. Although the Rendezs from Forest incident is usually reported as two nights of UFO activity, the 25th through 26th, and the 27th through 28th, there was actually a lesser reported citing the following

night. 20 hours after the boroughs and penist inciting, 18-year-old basic airman, Lori Rifelt, recalls her own series of events that night. So I was on patrol at the time, and I had a colleague with me, Airman, his Airman, Duffield. We were both Airman First Class, which was the E3 at the time. And we had just checked the lock on the gate, and we were just filling out our check sheet and making sure everything. And then we're just sitting there. And it was about two three o'clock in morning and it was just really it was a it was a clear night it wasn't rainy out and we were just kind of you know bored figuring out we got about four or five more hours left and you know so we're just sitting there talking and all of a sudden we see this light approaching that was coming

from the area of the north sea so it's coming west to east and at first it looked like it looked like we thought it was just regular aircraft coming in and and and and and and and and and it's just a little aircraft coming in and and And we looked over at the runway waiting for the lights to go on, figuring, you know, all the aircraft's coming in. And then as it got closer and closer, and now is about maybe 200, it wasn't really that far. It was just this, it was a big light, and it just stopped. And this guy and I were looking, we noticed that the runway lights aren't on. We see this light.

And then, and then all of a sudden it just stops in mid-air, and then all of a sudden it just moves up, down, left, right, and, and, And then it breaks into like three pieces and speeds across the runway. And now we're stunned. We're like, what the, you know, what was that? So we immediately got on, I got on a radio because we, you know, we were thinking, what is that? And we get on the radio.

And, I mean, we were kind of excited about, you know, police control. This is police for, be advised. But we couldn't see the aircraft itself, the rate of speed that it was moving when it, when it went across. I mean, it was moving in like a regular aircraft, then when it stopped, and then when it did its movement, and then when it split into three, and when it went sped across the runway, it was going west, it was just going at a phenomenal speed. And the only other thing that really caught our attention was that it didn't make any noise.

There was no sound to it at all. And we were like, you know, this, you know, we just, you know, we just didn't know what it was. And as for the size, you know, from the distance we were, I guess I'd say it was probably about the size of a car or a small truck or something. It was probably about maybe two football field lengths away. News of the UFO sightings had by now reached the base as deputy commander, Colonel Charles Holt. While attending a Christmas awards party at the base on the night of the 27th, Lieutenant Bruce England rushed into the room and told Colonel Charles Halt, we've got to take to take.

Talk. It's back. Halt, then a 41-year-old veteran of Vietnam and Korea, had no patience for tales of UFOs, and was irritated that his men were getting distracted from their duties with such nonsense. Determined to find the source of the lights once and for all, Halt led a search party into Rendell Shum Forest to look for answers. I took two senior patrolmen with me, a disaster preparedness expert, and the reporting on duty police. officer. At the site we find three one and a half inch indentations triangular pattern. We discovered mild radiation and evidence of broken branches on the trees. We suddenly observed a very bright red orange object. It was oval and with a black center. It reminded me of an eye and it appeared to be winking or blinking. It maneuvered horizontally through the trees with an occasional

vertical movement. When approached, it receded. and silently broke into five white objects. We moved out of the forest and onto a pasture and observed several objects in the sky, multiple objects to the north. They changed shape from elliptical to round. Several other objects were seen to the south. One approached at a very high speed

and sent down a strange beam right at our feet. It was different than an ordinary light and it didn't radiate. It was more like a laser beam. And other objects sent down beams of light into the weapon storage area. The whole time we had difficulty communicating with the base, as all three radio frequencies that we were using kept breaking up.

This activity continued for about an hour. During this entire event, I was fortunate to have with me at my small pocket recorder. It's a little linear recorder that I carried around the base usually to take notes because I didn't like to write much. So I recorded all the significant events that happened that night. Unfortunately, the tape recorder is no longer functional, but I do have a tape and a good copy of it. I have no idea what we saw that night, but I do know with great service.

It was under intelligent control. More on the Halt audio tape in just a little bit. From this point on, many of those present during this search believe a vast cover-up had begun, even under the nose of a senior officer like Colonel Charles Halt. While Halt himself tried to find out from his men what had happened, other agencies swooped in to interrogate the men about the events of the previous three nights.

Jim Penniston recalls being repeatedly great, about the incidents by the Air Force's Office of Intelligence, even being administered truth drug sodium pentanol on one occasion. Sergeant Adrian Bistinza claims he was interrogated for hours in an underground part of the base by unnamed agents, possibly from the CIA. Ed Cabansac, who had accompanied Burroughs Ann Peniston on the first night of activity, says he was ordered to sign a false statement that concealed what he really saw.

Wing commander Charles Gabriel, in charge of all USAF forces in Europe, made an unprecedented impromptu visit to the bases, seizing much of Halt's evidence. Unbelievably, Halt was then told the United States had no official interest in this incident. Unsure of just exactly what to do, and with jurisdiction over the matter officially shared between the U.S. and U.K., Halt was told to hand the matter to hand the matter. over to the British Ministry of Defense. Halt's January 13th, 1981 memo, entitled Unexplated Lights, summarizing the events of the weekend,

was sent to the British government, but received a similar lack of interest. For all those involved, this seemed to mark the end of the matter, and life on the base seemingly went back to normal. Outside of a bit of gossip among sephologists, events of that amazing weekend would probably have faded, into obscurity. That was until a sensational tablight scoop, nearly three years later, blew the whole thing wide open. UFO lands in Suffolk, and that's official. This was the headline in the UK's

news of the world. The paper had managed to obtain Halt's top secret memo. Soon, news outlets begin to pick up on the story. CNN being one of the first networks to report. CNN began asking the Air Force for information about the Bentwater's UFO incident six months ago. Throughout, the Air Force has been slow to respond. And when it did reply, the answer was usually, quote, unknown, end quote, or in some cases apparently misleading. For example, when CNN asked, are there any photographs, tape recordings, videotapes, drawings, or descriptions of any kind in Air Force files, the official U.S. Air Force reply was, quote, there was no audiovisual documentation done, end quote. If it is a cover-up, then the American

public may never know what those airmen saw at Bent Waters in 1980. If they were merely keystone cops who were hallucinating, as one critic suggests, then what are the national security implications of those same airmen guarding a strategically important airbase where nuclear weapons are reportedly stored? If they weren't hallucinating, then what are the implications of what they actually did see? When CNN recently asked the Air Force about the possible existence of movie film of the Bentwater's UFO, the official Air Force response was, the United States Air Force stopped investigating UFOs in 1969. Inconsistencies with witnesses is something that needs to be addressed.

Larry Warren, a former American security officer, was the first person to come forward about what happened in the forest. Warren had originally been anonymously leaking stories about Rendell Shum to the UFO community for years, and his remarkable account of what he saw would prove to be very divisive amongst the other witnesses. According to the then-19-year-old Warren, it wasn't just lights or a craft that was seen, but actual beings as well. Warren would also make some startling claims about how men-in-black-style agents had interrogated him and messed with his mind, possibly planting false or distorted memories.

Rendezum Forest was starting to move from a well-documented encounter with a mysterious light to a full-on craft and now full-scale. science fiction. The integrity of Larry Warren's testimony is still up for debate until today. But it does need to be addressed in the overall picture of the Rendlesham Forest incident. Despite inconsistencies and controversy, this UFO incident had something most cases did not. The words of a senior American Air Force colonel in an official memo. The credibility of the document even led to questions being asked. of the then conservative government in the UK Parliament. Over the next few decades, competing claims would emerge about what happened over Christmas

1980 at the twin basis. More witnesses would emerge often with incredible claims. Skeptics would pounce on inconsistencies and try to find rational explanations for what happened. Some have even suggested the whole thing was a hoax, or that the air, the airs. It had a bit too much Christmas cheer. Or perhaps it was simply a mistake. The nearby Orfordness Lighthouse bouncing its powerful illumination amongst the trees. Regardless of the attempts to debunk Rendezham, the original witnesses, the documents, and the physical evidence, all attest to something very genuine occurring.

The most cited piece of evidence in the Rendezham Forest case, the Halt Memo, provides a rare, direct piece of contemporary documentary UFO evidence, signed by a senior member of the U.S. military. Some critics have questioned the dating of this memo, January 13th, supposedly more than a week and a half after the incident occurred. But this appears to be explained by the general confusion over the jurisdiction of the incident. As such, Colonel Halt was told by his own commanders to hand the matter over to the British. With the base's British liaison, Donald Morland, on leave,

Halt elected to wait to act until he had discussed it with Morland. When no further activity and no evidence of any threat, Halt no longer regarded the incident as especially urgent. The Halt memo was released to the public in 1983 after the American Citizens Against UFO Secrecy Organization successfully launched a Freedom of Information Act request to release the document. Both the USAF and the Ministry of Defense have consistently stated the activity detailed in the Halt Memo is of no defense interest.

But former UK defense chief and chairman of the NATO military committee, Lord Hill Norton, thinks differently. There are only two conceivable explanations for what happened. Either a UFO landed there causing the damage and collateral business or the deputy commander of a U. United States nuclear-armed air base in Britain and several hundred of his men were hallucinating. Now, I put it to you, I put it to anybody with an atom of common sense. Either of those explanations,

and they are the only two possible explanations, must be of defense interest. In the early 1990s, while head of the MOD's UFO desk, researcher Nick Pope conducted a cold case review into the Rendezham incident. According to Pope, the reality was that the MOD were unable to find any credible explanation for the incident and classified it as unexplained.

Pope thinks the original investigation was hobbled by confusion over jurisdiction. The wrong date quoted in Haltz memo, delays, and some destruction of evidence. suspiciously Charles A. Gabriel, the commander-in-chief of the USAF in Europe, made an unscheduled trip to Bentwater shortly after the incident. Gabriel was briefed about the incident and removed a large amount of evidence, much of which was never seen again. Nick Pope reveals that Gabriel's intervention caused disconnection at the MOD. It directly contradicts the official USAF line that they had no interest in the incident. and that it should be handed over to the British. In fact, the MOD was never made aware of Gabriel's visit,

what evidence he took, and the results of any subsequent investigation. Skeptics have long struggled to dismiss the Halt memo. Colonel Holt's credibility is difficult question, as he had a distinguished 42-year military career and retired in 1991, With the highest peacetime award given by the Secretary of Defense, Halt never spoke publicly about the incident until he retired. He is therefore the most reputable senior military figure,

for which we have direct contemporary documentary evidence discussing an encounter in a UFO case. Halt's memo rules out the idea that the incident may have been some kind of joke, fueled by Yule-type spirit. A deputy commander of a nuclear facility, like Halt, would clearly never escalate such a hoax to the British government. While his memo cannot easily be dismissed, the deputy commander is also the source of arguably an even more convincing piece of evidence, in the form of an 18-minute audio tape of a real live UFO encounter.

Halt's 18-minute tape of the party's seven-hour expedition in the woods is unique amongst all UFO cases, and that it contains Halt and several other military personnel's live reactions to UFO phenomena occurring around them. The officers featured on the tape are Halt, Sergeant Monroe Nevels, Sergeant Robert Ball, Sergeant Adrian Bustinza, and Lieutenant Bruce England. The men can be heard inspecting the original landing site, Burroughs and Penniston, found two nights earlier. And as they survey the area, things start to get interesting. As mentioned before, one popular suggestion from skeptics to debunk what is captured on this tape is that the men were observing light from the nearby Orfordness Lighthouse. Vince Thurkettle, the local forester who is familiar with this site, explained his theories on both the light.

that the officers had witnessed and the physical trace marks believed to have been left behind from the craft. 20-odd years of playing in woods taught me what to see, and this site was ordinary. It was just ordinary and natural. Nothing strange or unusual had happened there.

Sure enough, the landing site had some sticks marking three of these, which were roughly in a triangle, but as a forester, to me, they were nothing more than rabbits' grass. they certainly weren't the feat marks of some craft having landed. Every single shred of physical evidence I'd seen could be explained away naturally. Just off to the side is where the alleged landing happened.

So the American patrol would have come through here somewhere and out to the edge of the forest, which is out on our right, from where you look out over the fields, over the few houses and out towards the lighthouse. I've been jogging down this track at night, and the first time I saw the lighthouse, I really thought it was poachers with a lamp in the forest. So I knew that to people who weren't ready for it, the lighthouse really appeared to be a pulsing light within the forest.

I knew that from earlier. And I think the fact that the lighthouse can only be seen from very certain parts of the forest, and one of them is exactly where all the alleged landing happened. While Thurkettle's theory should obviously be considered, there are some serious issues with his theories. The most obvious is that the lighthouse predates the then 38-year-old military bases. Yet none of the thousands of men and women who had served at the base during the time

had ever mistaken the lighthouse for a UFO before. Indeed, since these were U.S. Air Force bases, with military aircraft coming in and out multiple times a day, it seems somewhat unlikely that trained airmen would make such an obvious mistake. Furthermore, the beam from the orphanedness is deliberately dimmed when shining in one by a blocking plate fitted around the lens. A lighthouse's beam also fails to match the actual nature of the observations made. Colonel Charles Halt himself also dismissed the lighthouse theory, stating that, quote, A lighthouse doesn't move through the forest. A lighthouse doesn't go up and down, it doesn't explode, doesn't change shape, size, doesn't send down beams of light from the sky, end quote.

Some of the military witnesses, such as Jim Pedestin and Fred Buren, had already stated they had heard over the radios that radar stations had tracked an uncorrelated target or a bogey on the radar. In her book, you can't tell the people, author Georgina Bruni, found former radar operators who claimed that a strange object had been tracked in Rendlesham on the night of the first sightings. More recently, two USAF air traffic controllers at Bentwaters have come forward with similar accounts. In an interview with author and UFO researcher Robert Hastings, James H. Carey and Ivan R. Barker gave their own testimony for the very first time. Having seen the objects on radar, and then with their own eyes.

I was just sitting there, and I happened to see a dot come on the scope, and it just went like one dot at beginning, then another dot, another dot, and it was gone. So the scope was 120 miles across. It was just phenomenal to me to see it go that fast. All of a sudden, hear it come back across again. It went one, two, and then it made the immediate right-hand turn and came right towards the base. You know, I just said that can't be one of ours.

No jet at that speed can make an immediate right-hand turn. Just absolutely phenomenal. It's not like any radar target I've ever seen. When the sweep would hit the target, you would have the entire back of it would be like a solid line. Traveling at an extremely high rate of speed, it passed over the control tower, and then it stopped. I've never seen anything in my life like the maneuverability that happened. with this object was an orangeish color. Sort of popped into my mind at the time

that somebody's flying a basketball out here. There were, like, lights around the center of it, but it wasn't like running lights or navigational lights. It was more like port holes, and then you were seeing the light from the inside coming out. It wasn't, you know, flashing lights or anything. But it covered momentarily, reversed its course, and went back out at a high rate of speed.

The MOD's released UFO files do demonstrate that they sought to corroborate the radar readings, but were hampered by the fact that records had been destroyed, and some of the cameras used to record the radar readings were conveniently not working during the days in question. While there are countless witnesses with highly credible backgrounds that witnessed the events in Rendellum Forest, there simply will always be those who want to attribute prosaic answers to what happened. And besides the lighthouse theories, there are a few other explanations that should at least be brought up. It's notable that the period of the 25th and 26th of December coincided with a confluence of unusual atmospheric phenomena.

Shortly before the first cluster of sightings at Rendelsham, a Russian Cosmos 749 satellite burnt up over Western Europe and was widely reported as a UFO by multiple civilians. Another rare event, the burning up of a meteor in the atmosphere, occurred in the early hours of the 26th of December. This meteor produced an unusually bright fireball and was visible throughout Southeast England. There are pros and cons to these alternative possibilities. It's certainly a striking coincidence that, The period of the observed UFO activity corresponded in time and location with at least three viable sources of false positives, meteor, satellites, and, of course, the White House.

These clearly cannot be overlooked and must surely account for at least some of the lights people claimed to have seen during that Christmas weekend. If these mistaken sightings could be eliminated from the list of observed UFOs at Rendosham, then the incident might start to look a little less than. impressive. However, the rocket and the meteor are both short-lived events, and don't adequately explain the nature of most of the observations, nor the fact that they were spread out over several hours, over three separate nights. Likewise, the lighthouse cannot account for the majority of the sightings, as it simply was not visible in the locations. So besides these alternative

explanations, I want to focus again on two of the primary witnesses mentioned earlier, who seemed to be keeping this case alive with developing stories. Those witnesses are Jim Peniston and John Burroughs. Jim Peniston now says he spent 45 minutes examining the craft he observed in the first night, noting symbols on the body of the craft. He also says he touched the skin of the and received a telepathic message in binary code. Oh, it absolutely was telepathic. It wasn't like I could see it in front of me, like visually. It was like it was a pictorial that was running a movie in my brain.

You know, it was a mind's eye kind of thing. Yeah, I couldn't physically actually see something now. And it was flashings of zeros and ones. And later we find out some type of binary code, I, be honest with you, I have trouble with algebra, or I'm not a math person by no means, let alone computers. And in 1980, I don't think we even had computers that we used, so it was foreign. I did record the glyphs at the scene, but when I went home in the following day, I don't know,

I can't get these images. I mean, they're just like there. One is there, zero, zero, zero, they're all in my head. So I felt compelled to run. So I grabbed my notebook, flipped it open, and then I did the most crazy thing I thought in the world. I wrote these ones and serials all the way down. It was like 12, 14 pages of them. And anyway, at a certain point, when I got done, I had no more imaging.

Now, I'm not at the craft. I'm at home. I go back to Ipswich, and this is where this is happening. And then once I've done it, though, the imaging was gone. So I thought, great. Now, can I tell somebody that? that I went and was received imaging in my living room at home in Nipswitch. And I had to rhyme down and I'm okay now.

I did not tell anybody that happened. Since coming forward with these theories, Jim Peniston had this binary code deciphered, and it apparently picked up the message, quote, exploration of humanity continuous for planetary advancement, end quote. There are also some coordinate points in the binary code. to High Brazil, the location of a legendary, advanced and highly moral, ethical earth civilization,

now the location of a submerged island west of Ireland. This and several other coordinates were found as well. This will be explored in an upcoming book by Jim Peniston, called the Rendezum Enigma. Jim Penison's claims are intriguing, but many do question its veracity. In fact, there is no mention of this by an a code in his original witness statements, nor is there anything remotely resembling this version of events in his radio communications with his commanders at the base. John Burroughs also does not remember Penniston making any notes during the entire period they observed the object, but there are missing gaps in time between the two witnesses when the event occurred. So I guess, for now, we'll just have to take Jim's word for it.

The next string of events is much more grounded in official documentation and just pure fact. It involves John Burroughs, the officer who accompanied Penniston that night. But it also involves a legal battle, the help of a six-term American senator, and perhaps an entirely new outlook on the Rendezum Forrest's incident in what it may have been. But let's get back to John for just a moment. because he was one of the officers that got closest to the craft, and as the years went on, he became more and more sick from what he believed was due to the event that night in the forest. In 2011, John Burroughs began suffering periodic, life-threatening atrial fibrillation,

also known as a fib, a quivering or irregular heartbeat that can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure, and other heart-related complications. He filed for Veterans Administration medical benefits, but was denied when the VA staff said there was no record of his serving at RAF Bentwaters and Woodbridge. John sought legal help in Jackson, Mississippi, and hired attorney Pat Frescogne. John's VA case then went to the office of Arizona's U.S. Senator John McCain. Eventually, the VA admitted knowledge of John's service at R.A. R.A.F. Bentwaters, but found those medical records were classified. By 2013, needing open-heart surgery to repair seriously damaged, valves. John was angry and frustrated

at not being able to get VA medical disability coverage. It was at this point when he learned of a former top-secreted U.K. restricted project called Project Condine. It had been quietly declassified in 2006, and it contained information that directly linked exposure to radiation to possible unexplained lights in the sky. Here, former UFO desk official, Nick Pope, describes Project Condine for us and its relevancy to this case. Project Condine was an intelligence study into the UFO phenomenon, carried out by the defense intelligence staff in the Ministry of Defence. Project Condine was an attempt to do a proper intelligence assessment of the UFO phenomenon. The Condine report, the final report, is arguably

one of the most important UFO documents of all time, and it ran to over 468 pages, I think. at the time its classification was secret UK eyes only a proper intelligence assessment attempted to draw together all the data that we had and really answer the more important strategic question what is all this you know never mind the case by case analysis put it all together what have we got what are we dealing with bear in mind

this was a British intelligence study highly classified. At the time it was written, it was never conceived that it was going to be released. And essentially it says, yeah, the witnesses that encountered the UFO in Rendlsham Forest were probably irradiated by it. Once John and Jim's attorney put that document to the VA and said, hey, wait a minute, you've denied the US government has denied that this ever took place. You might want to read this British intelligence assessment. Finally, under pressure from Senator John McCain's office, the VA arranged John's urgent

open-heart surgery for mid-December 2013. He began to recover to more normal health, but without VA medical benefits or his RAF Bentwater's medical records, and he didn't believe that to be right, that officers were not being treated for what presumably happened during this and several other close encounters with UFOs and their physical effects on officers. Here, John Burroughs stayed such at the citizens' hearing on disclosure to former senators in 2013 at the National Press Club. The first night, there were three of us and one out there. The second night, you had the shift commander and the on-duty flight chief. On the third night, Colonel Hall took a team out there, and there was also other personnel in the

woods. And different people saw different things. So that's one of the reasons why I would come forward besides our health issues is I feel it's necessary to anyone that was even out in that area should have the opportunity to be checked out medically and be told what they were exposed to, especially something that's over 30 years old. What the heck was going on out there that would draw this much attention from the agencies involved to this day? What? What? What? And what would still be classified, and if it is, what did we have or what we were dealing with that would still remain silent today. Almost every weapon we've ever developed back in that time frame has been exposed that we're

aware of, and yet today this is still classified, and we can't even receive medical treatment for it. By January 23, 2014, John began filing freedom of information requests with the MOD, and by the spring and fall of 2014, the UK-M-AIDS. Ministry of Defense finally admitted it withheld at least 18 classified UFO files. Upon this happening, John Burroughs finally got the news he wanted all along. The United States government has for the first time ever acknowledged by de facto the long suspected reality of the UFO phenomenon. John Burroughs encountered a craft of unknown origin in England's Rimbledson Forest in December of 1980 and suffered injury therefrom, for which the Veterans Administration is now

recognized by Graham Kim, full medical disability. Since John Burroughs and Jim Penison have come forward, many other witnesses have followed suit. In 2016, Steve Longaro, who served as a police sergeant for the USAF, stated that he was guarding the weapon's storage area during the event. and the highly sophisticated alarm systems had been triggered by something over the base. He would describe very similar accounts as Charles Holt, presumably witnessing the same craft at the same time at completely different vantage points. It is no easy task to cover this entire event,

the detailed testimony of those involved and then trying to come out on the other side with answers. Despite controversy, debates, have truths, lies, and documented proof. The hard evidence from the time remains unimpeached. Whatever stories are told and whatever information continues to develop, something very real happened in the woods at Rendezham Forest, that, as the MOD files themselves now conclude, remains unexplained. This episode was co-written and directly inspired by the Unredacted.com. Audio clips were provided by countless YouTube channels under the Fair Use Agreement.

Selected audio provided by Jeremy Peasley, the National Archives, the Disclosure Project, The Citizens Hearing, Exopolitics, Germany, the BBC, and CNN Special Assignments. This episode was produced by me, Ryan Sprague, with special thanks to Peter Robbins, Nick Pope, Jim Peniston, John Burroughs, and the many men and women who served under the U.S. Air Force. Before, during, and after the Rendlesham incident, my extended thanks to all those servicemen and women throughout the world who defend our country and beyond. Thank you to the E1 Podcast Network, and especially to you for listening. Have a very happy holiday season, and I'll see you here next week for a very special episode. So, until then, remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching somewhere in the skies.

Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network. To learn more, visit Entertainment Onepodcast.com.