Somewhere in the Skies - Richard Dolan: Media Bias in UFO Coverage

Episode Date: April 17, 2017

On the premiere episode of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, host, Ryan Sprague, introduces the listeners to the show and then speaks with historian and author, Richard Dolan, about the media and UFOs. They also discuss the possibility and forms of disclosure that may occur in a new American political era, and then they wrap things up by confronting the future of UFO studies. Richard Dolan is the author of two volumes of history, UFOs and the National Security State, both ground-breaking works which together provide the most factually complete and accessible narrative of the UFO subject available anywhere. He also co-authored a speculative book about the future, A.D. After Disclosure, the first-ever analysis not only of how UFO secrecy might end, but of the all-important question: what happens next Richard’s latest work, UFOs for the 21st Century Mind, provides a fresh treatment of the entire subject. In it, he discusses the important sightings, the encounters, the politics, the cover-up, ancient aliens, the bizarre science, disclosure, and offers advice on being both critical and open-minded in today’s world. Like his previous three books, it asks fresh questions and offers new insights to further our understanding of the UFO mystery. Richard hosts a weekly radio show, The Richard Dolan Show on KGRA Radio, is a frequent guest on Coast-to-Coast AM. He is currently featured on several television series and documentaries, including Ancient Aliens, Hangar One: The UFO Files, Close Encounters, and UFOs: The Lost Evidence. Prior to his interest in UFOs, Richard completed his graduate work at the University of Rochester, where he studied U.S. Cold War strategy, European history, and international diplomacy. Before that, he had studied at Alfred University and Oxford University, and had been a finalist for a Rhodes scholarship. In addition to his research, Richard’s company, Richard Dolan Press, actively publishes innovative books by authors from around the world. His website is www.richarddolanpress.com Official Show Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com 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

I'm Ryan Sprague, and this is Somewhere in the Skies. Welcome to the premiere episode of Somewhere in the Skies, and thank you so much for joining me. For those of you who may have no clue who the hell I am, let me bring you up to speed. I had a UFO sighting over the St. Lawrence River in upstate New York when I was 12 years old. It was what we would classify as a triangular UFO. It hovered silently over my head and then headed north to the Canadian border. This sighting terrified me, and that terror led to an obsession, and I've been searching for answers ever since. I spent half my life researching the UFO phenomenon, and this culminated into my book, somewhere in the skies, a human approach to an alien phenomenon.

I'm hoping this podcast will pick up where the book left off, and I'm hoping you'll continue to join me, as I discuss UFO cases old and new, discuss current UFO events, events from around the world and hear from guests in various fields of study, bringing us one step closer to asking new questions, and possibly even getting some answers. I have to thank a few people who really help me get this off the ground. To Micah Hanks, Andrew Sanford, Nick Westemeyer, Jason McClellan, Maureen, Maureen Ellsbury, Shannon Legreau, and Sam Sheeran. You all guided me on this journey, and I'm honored to continue working with all of you. My sincere thanks also goes out to author and illustrator, Mike Cleland,

for creating the logo image you see for the show and the Facebook banner. Thank you so much, Mike. You're truly a talented individual. And I have to thank you, the listener. I want to hear your thoughts on what you think of the show. If you have any guest or topic suggestions or a personal story of your own you'd like to share, you can reach me directly by emailing Sprague at somewhere in the same. Or visit the website somewhere in the skies.com.

Before we get started, I want to share this audio clip with you from a favorite film of mine. Take a listen. We sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad, worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house and slowly the world.

we're living in is getting smaller and all we say is please at least leave us alone in our living rooms let me have my toaster and my tv and my steel-belted radios and i won't say anything just leave us alone well i'm not going to leave you alone i want you to get mad you've got to get mad you've got to say i'm a human being god damn it my life has value that was the voice of peter finch from the 1976 film network, where his character, news anchor Howard Beale, proclaims the control and the decay of the mainstream news. Meant to be satire, the film rings eerily true now more than ever. As 24-hour news cycles bombard our eyes and ears with biased ideologies and corporate

corruption, there seems to be no end in sight. But how does this deeply troubling issue connect with the UFO topic? How has the perception of this elusive mystery changed and ultimately influenced our opinions and beliefs on it? And where may we be heading as a society, as the media bias and power structures wage a war for our hearts, minds, and our money? My guest today is noted author and historian Richard Dolan. Dolan is best known for his two volumes of history, UFO.

and the national security state, both groundbreaking works, which together provide the most factually complete and accessible narrative on the UFO subject. He also co-authored a speculative book about the future, AD, after disclosure, the first-ever analysis not only of how UFO secrecy might end, but of the all-important question, what happens next?

His most recent book, UFOs for the 21st century mind, provides a fresh treatment of the entire subject. It asks fresh questions and offers new insights to further our understanding of the UFO mystery. So, without further ado, let's get to our interview with Richard Dolan. Guys, I'm super excited and honored to have as my first guest on the podcast, author and historian Richard Dolan. I thought it appropriate. He published my book to have him on the actual podcast based around that. So, Rich, thank you so much for joining me today, man.

Hi, Ryan. Oh, it's so, I'm so happy to be your guest. And I didn't realize I was going to be your first guest. So that's even, that's even nicer for me. But it's an honor and I'm happy to be here with you. Well, thanks, man. So, well, the real reason I wanted to have you on as the first guest to talk to you today was because recently I attended a presentation you gave. And I don't really want to discuss the UFO reality or question. I think we're past that at this point in some ways, but to really kind of get a sense of the perception of the topic from the mainstream media. And you recently had a talk called Media Bias in U.S.

coverage, culture, policy, or something else. Can you sort of run us through that talk and what it entailed? Absolutely. You know, I was inspired to do this. First of all, I've always been interested in the relationship of media, mainstream media to the UFO subject. I'm interested in mainstream media in general. Years ago, when I broke into this field, my first book was published at around the same time as another book by a man who became a very good friend of Terry Hansen, who has since deceased.

Terry wrote a very excellent book, a classic, I would say, called The Missing Times, subtitled media complicity in the UFO cover-up. Our books were sort of like bookends with each other. I wrote UFOs in the national security state. He wrote that. I was dealing with the political aspects of the cover-up, and he was dealing with the media aspects of the cover-up. We had a very similar approach, and we became friends.

And Terry didn't write any other books in... in this field, but he did some lectures and presentations, and we always stayed in touch until he died. And I miss him. He's an old friend of mine, and I realized, you know, his work and my work are so compatible, and there really was no one, to my knowledge, doing detailed media analysis of the UFO subject.

I thought I would like to do one for the Phoenix Conference, the International UFO Congress that we did. And so that's why I did it. When you look at media, and I really wanted to bring that whole approach up to date, incidentally, and that's what I tried to do with this. A couple of things that you notice about mainstream media, before we even get into UFOs, it's interesting because we went through the whole election in 2016 and now in 2017, and media itself is a story.

We hear everyone talking about so-called fake news. And, you know, there's lots of ways to look at this fake news phenomenon. My perspective on it is that the corporate mainstream media itself is the primary conveyor and purveyor of fake news. And I say this not siding with any one particular political party here. But I have been looking at CNN and MSNBC and Fox and PBS and really all of these large corporate-dominated. intelligence community dominated sources of news as purveyors of fake news. And I don't think that I'm simply speaking hyperbole. I think that there's a lot of facts to back this up.

And I tried to present some of those during my talk. One of the things that was important for me is just to mention to people that not only is a mainstream media, not your friend or my friend. I mean, it lies, it spins, it censors. It's owned by just a few very powerful corporations. It is merged with the popular culture entertainment industry. It co-operates with the intelligence community. All of this is known.

People often don't recognize this. They don't pay attention. They don't know their history. But the mainstream media has cooperated with U.S. intelligence for decades and generations. Still does. But it also makes us sick. And I mean physically it makes us sick. And intellectually, emotionally it makes us sick.

And this is not just me saying it. I mean, there are mainstream articles themselves. saying that the selection is making us sick, literally making us sick. I have a BuzzFeed article. I remembered reading and articles in The Guardian and elsewhere that talk about how news is bad for you. Like truly news is bad for you. And I thought to myself, why would it be that being an informed person is bad for you? And of course, it's not bad for you or for me or for listeners to be informed.

It's not bad at all. Just because there's an article that says news is making you sick. So what I realize is that it's how our mainstream corporate media delivers news, how it packages news, how it gives the news to us. That is actually unhealthy for us. And of course it is because all any intelligent person has to do when looking at the news is realize how trivial it is, how sensational it is. how it focuses on one bad thing after another bad thing without context without understanding there have been study after study that have shown that the more television news a person watches the less likely they are to be informed about key issues in the world the less is it an inverse

relationship so that's right this the first time I learned this was over a quarter of a century ago during the first the Persian Gulf War and there was a study study I believe it was done out of the University of Colorado, pretty sure, that came to that conclusion. It said the more CNN you watched, and it was explicitly CNN, the less likely you were to know where, for example, Syria was on a map, like basic things about the Middle East. So there's that. And back then they said, this is a great failure of our journalistic profession. I'm thinking, no, actually, it's a great success.

The whole point, see, of TV news and of television in general is to sell you, the viewer, to the advertiser. and that is the sole point. Anything else is just gravy. So they'll lure you in by letting you think you are being informed because people do want to think they're being informed. They lure you in by entertainment, which of course they do much more than information.

And toward that end, they sell you to the advertisers. Once we realize that's the point of TV, I think it's a little easier to understand. So I would start by saying the mainstream makes us sick, but I think mainstream media also makes society sick. I think it destabilizes entire societies. If we really look at the one of the things that I'm very interested in these days is the phenomenon of color revolution. That is constructed revolution by intelligence communities in conjunction with with corporate media to destabilize entire societies.

We've seen this going on currently in Venezuela. We've seen it a year or two ago in Brazil, where we had what was called a soft coup against a perfectly elected government. And they brought in Goldman Sachs and the IMF, and they're running the place. There's one going on currently in Macedonia. And I personally believe that one has been going on in the United States in opposition to the election of Trump. And again, I say this not as a supporter of Trump. He's said a lot of things, particularly in the last month that I'm very strongly opposed to. But the point is that mainstream corporate media has helped to organize in conjunction with the U.S. intelligence a social movement.

And what it has done is it has destabilized a society. What we've really seen, in other words, is an effort by what people are now calling the deep state, what I've often called the national security state as a way to corral a politician that they don't think is kind of in their pen. But anyway, that's an overview of mainstream. Now, this is a mainstream media that has also dealt with the UFO subject. And when we look at that, what I try doing is to see through the beginning from the 1940s onward, mainstream media has consistently been incredibly hostile to the UFO subject. What you find is that smaller media, local media, then and now,

Today, the equivalent would be alternative media. But back in the 1940s and 50s and 60s, we're talking newspapers and radio, primarily some TV. The local media would always be more inquisitive and more honest in covering stories about UFOs and flying saucers. Anyone who goes through newspaper clippings of the UFO phenomenon over the 40s and 50s will find that 90% of the best stories are local newspapers, local sources. But mainstream New York Times, Washington Post, no, almost never. And that has never changed. So you have an established media and established culture that for whatever reason we can get into this has decided UFOs are not going to exist on their pages. And they have effectively then right up to the present day kept UFOs off to the fringe.

So it's an interesting thing. So yeah, and I think what we're looking at my basic analysis, my conclusion is that, It's very obvious to see that the UFO phenomenon has been an important part of national security, an important concern. And in that lecture, in my career, I've often like to quote a few particular documents. One of my favorite ones is a CIA document from 1952 in which the director of scientific intelligence writes to the director of the CIA that these sightings must have immediate attention. that there are sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds near major U.S. defense installations, he said that are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles.

So you have a one of a number of statements during the Cold War that are very highly classified in which this phenomenon clearly is being taken seriously, and yet our media, which is supposed to be the watchdog, the guardian, of the Republic, really. Completely dropping the ball. So then the question arises, are they doing this because of their own journalistic biases and they're just biases as human beings,

or is there something else going on? And what I would say is that there's something more going on. The media has explicitly been working in conjunction with the intelligence community. We know this in the UFO field through something known as the Robertson Panel, where in early 1953, the last weekend of the Truman White House, the CIA did its own study and debunking of the UFO phenomenon. It was already a rigged game even then.

Right. And they made it as one of their conclusions to work with major media to debunk the phenomenon to the public. And we also know outside of the UFO subject of something known as Operation Mockingbird, which I believe I talked about that a little bit in the lecture, and Mockingbird was a CIA coordinated media control program. It went all through the Cold War, 1940s, 50, 60s, 70s, where the CIA would have journalists on its payroll, who would report the news in a way that the CIA liked,

who would sometimes make up fake stories. The CIA would do this. They normally would make up fake stories internationally and let them come to the U.S. that was their way of doing it safely, but they controlled spin, they controlled editorial policy. We're talking New York Times, Washington Post, particularly, and they're always, they're the leaders. But also television, CBS did a UFO special in the 60s featuring Walter Cronkite, the Great American Anchorman. It was a UFO debunking piece.

That was part of the Robertson panel. I would say part of the whole Operation Mockingbird. I think I look at it all as one thing, one piece. So, in other words, what I'm saying to you and to listeners is that mainstream media, has never been an honest player relating to the UFO phenomenon, and it's not an honest player relating really to anything political in our society. And I think no matter what one thinks that their political orientation is, I think if you do an objective study of the media, you see they're working for an agenda. It's an elite agenda.

It's an intelligence community-dominated agenda. It's a financial community agenda as well. And that these all really work together as a control system. Back in the six, I've just wrapped this part up here, back in the 60s and 70s and 80s, Noam Chomsky, who's still around, he's getting up there, but Chomsky really pioneered this idea of Western media and Western propaganda having to be superior to Soviet propaganda. Back then, it was the Cold War, and the Russians, the communists had this very prominent propaganda system. But Chomsky said, look, you know, there's may be a little more obvious, but ours is better. He said, Western propaganda really is better because it has to be better.

You know, the elites in the Soviet Union, if you were to challenge that system back in the olden days, fine. You just get a 3 a.m. knock on the door, and they'd take you off to one of the prisons, and you wouldn't be seen for a while. In the U.S., we didn't have, they didn't have that luxury. And so persuasion had to be much more insidious, much better. And indeed, as Chomsky argued for years, it was and is. And part of that included this illusion of a free press, this illusion of freedom, which in fact is much more of a control system than anything else. And that does include UFOs. Right.

And what's interesting about that, too, Rich, is that, you know, I recently spoke to another journalist who covered the, you know, the psychokinetic and ESP aspect of what the CIA was doing back during the Cold War. And this too was an illusion as well. While these phenomena and abilities may be real, it wasn't even that that they were studying. It was the impact it had on the enemy. And their perception of, oh, the U.S. is this far ahead in this quote-unquote psychic warfare. We have to up the ante as well. Meanwhile, they're still trying to even figure out if this stuff is real while pushing another agenda. of, oh, we're already bend in spoons.

We're able to shut off, you know, missiles if we so choose to through someone's mind. It's fascinated. And this could, you know, correlate to the UFO phenomenon as well. Absolutely. And the technology that each country or nation has. Well, I would add a couple of things to that. So I've been interested, very interested from the beginning of my study of UFOs in the remote viewing phenomenon. The reason I became interested way back even in the 90s was,

because I learned that there was this thing called remote viewing, the CIA and U.S. intelligence was doing it, and that these remote viewers seem to be, in addition to other things, seeing UFOs all the time. And I noticed this, this was a regular thing. So I thought, well, what's going on here? So I took some time to really study remote viewing, and I got to know some of the leading remote viewers of that program. I knew Ingo Swan.

I know Joe McMonigle and Lynn Beul. Buchanan and some of these other famous remote viewers, and I'm not a remote viewer myself, but I have studied this. I can say, I would say confidently, that there's a lot of things going on in that remote viewing program. Part of it was definitely propagandizing against the Russians, the Soviets, thinking, wanting them to know that what are the American capabilities. But part of it really was to develop genuine espionage capabilities with remote viewing.

and some of these guys were off the charts amazing. So they were doing things that there was and is something genuine and powerful about capabilities relating to remote viewing. This is a real thing. And it's not always 100% accurate. And the real problem with the remote viewing isn't even getting the signal. Often it's interpreting it. So like you'll get a vision of something that turns out to be quite accurate. but if you don't really have a context for what you're looking at,

you will interpret it often in the wrong way. So from an intelligence point of view, it's not always useful information, and it's a hit or missing. Scientifically, it's fascinating. But certainly within the intelligence community, these people were doing unbelievable work all through the 70s and 80s and into the 90s.

And then, of course, the whole reason we know about it, I can tell you, frankly, that the journalist Jim Mars was writing an expose on it in the mid-90s. Jim Mars was going to be the first author to break the story about remote viewing. And I've spoken to him about this at length, and his book got stymied by his publisher for several years. It was just stuck. And in the meantime, and they said, well, we just – I can't remember the excuses they gave him,

but they effectively put the book on hold. And in the meantime, a guy who, many of us, I think, has CIA connections, trying to remember his name now, golly, it'll come to me. He wrote the book, he wrote the first remote viewing book. And it was in the mid-90s. It'll come to me before the end of this. And in that book, what he did was he said he really played the party line very well. He later did a book that debunk crops.

circles too, round and round in circles. But anyway, what he said was, yeah, you know, they did a little bit of this. They didn't really know what they were getting. They got a couple of hits. Seems interesting, but they didn't really have much success with it. And that was the CIA's official story when they came out in the mid-90s. Basically, they declassified it because Jim Mars was, I mean, other researchers were about to blow the lid on it.

It's the only reason I think we really know about remote viewing officially. and they decided to get out ahead of the story and control the spin. And in that case, I mean, we're talking about media here, actually. The, I think it was nightline with Ted Koppel. They did a thing on remote viewing, and it was completely in line with the CIA's party line. And that's what the mainstream media does. They work hand-in glove with the U.S. intelligence community. And now, I mean, my goodness, something like the Washington Post,

owned by Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon. We know Amazon does all cloud computing and storage for the CIA. They've got a multi, multi, multi, multi billion dollar contract. And it's not just CIA anymore. Bezos does the work for the entire U.S. intelligence community, my understanding is. So the Washington Post is owned by a guy who is deeply in bed with the U.S. intelligence community. There's just one connection. So anything, I didn't mean to turn this around from the remote viewing.

but to get back to the media, people need to understand anything that comes through U.S. dominated establishment media has to be suspect, every single thing. And people will often ask me, well, Justice Great Dolan, so you don't want people to listen to CNN or read in New York Times or Time magazine or what the heck are we supposed to read? How are we supposed to get our information? Right. The first thing that I would say is that we are in a difficult position, every one of us, who is a thinking person with some intellectual interest in this world, and we all have to realize there's no way around this,

that we are surrounded by a very powerful media mind control system. End of story, it is. and this is not an easy task for us to be educated, aware citizens of the world. But one thing that I would encourage people to do is to go to some truly independent alternative media sources. The kind of thing that you're doing is one good source. You know, anything that takes us out of the corporate establishment mainstream is a good thing. Now, there's alternative media that's actually not that. alternative media.

Like BuzzFeed is certainly not alternative media. They'll pander to, you know, generation, the millennials, but that doesn't make them alternative. Sorry, they're actually totally part of the establishment. But there are alternative. They're smaller media. And we need to find them. I go outside the U.S.

And I have to go to the media that are demonized as so-called fake media. news because the fact is that these are the only places that I find are generally providing information that are useful. I do read my New York Times headlines on my iPhone. All the headlines that everyone else gets, I get CNN headlines every day, and I do read CNN stories. I know, I feel as part of my job to know what they're saying. I read the Washington Post every day, or at least I read some of it every day. So I'm very aware of what mainstream is saying, but I will also read RT, that is formerly Russia today, discussed by the current CIA director as a tool of Putin's propaganda.

Nonsense, I don't believe that in the least. I don't say that they're right about everything, of course, but for news around the world, I will always want to know what they have to say, always, every time. And I simply go by the quality of analysis. It's always superior. I also go to a Canadian website. That's my favorite website for history and politics, and that's called global research.ca.

And that's run by a man named Michelle Shosadovsky, who is doing what I think Noam Chomsky should be doing, but isn't doing, so Shostovsky is doing it. He's kind of like the, I think the modern day, the true successor to the Chomsky tradition of media analysis and political analysis. And so the website he runs, globalresurch. It's right out of Montreal is a he has superb commentators in my opinion. You know like any of these alternative sites, I don't, I don't agree with everything that I see on global research. ca and I don't agree with everything I read or see or the take of things in RT, but what I find is that they are a different perspective and usually a much more correct perspective and a more honest one typically. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, do your research people. I mean, it sort of brings me back to another journalist friend of mine who introduced me to the lyrics of a Dead Kennedy song. And it's, quote, don't hate the media, become the media. So things like- I love the Ted Kennedys. Isn't that awesome? And how long ago was that, you know? 1980, so 1989, long time ago.

So this idea of, you know, not only disinformation, but media bias and everything that follows has been going on for a while. guys. Absolutely. The other thing that I do, and this is just a lifelong advantage I've given myself, is that I've just studied history nonstop. I still study history nonstop. I'm my Kindle reader in my downtime. I'm reading some old history book from 100 years ago.

So, I mean, for me, in other words, I have developed a good perspective on history and politics. And so, I mean, I just know that there are certain patterns that have existed in our world and I've developed a good historical foundation. I don't know how to tell someone. There's no way to get these things quickly. Right. And if someone's living the CNN reality, if they have that on their TV, the first

thing I would tell people is just turn that stuff off. It's like someone who's drinking cans of Coke every day or Pepsi and they want to be healthy. I'd say the first thing you have to do is stop drinking that stuff because you're toxifying your body, your system, all that sugar. It will literally kill you. I know a man who actually. I'm convinced died of this.

I think it gave him MS. He drank 10 plus cans of Coke a day. I mean, it was just absurd. And it's the same with news. You know, we talk about we have fake, we have more than fake news in our world. We have fake food. Fake, fake politics.

We have, everything that we, honestly, I think when we look around, we have almost a fake environment in many ways. But we definitely have fake food and fake news. And so the first. first thing you have to do is you have to stop bringing the poison in. That's the rule number ones. You have to stop with CNN. You have to stop with New York Times. I mean, truly stop. And I'll just, I'll just do this as an aside. I don't we get into a whole Hillary Trump thing.

I mean, we're getting kind of past that anyway. But I will say this. I was a fan of neither of those candidates. I was one of the people had a Bernie sign in front of my house. Me too. We might lose or gain some listeners, but that's okay. I would say to people, I was not a fan of either of the candidates. I used to joke and say, I felt like I'm in the Wild West with two gunslingers shooting at me, wherever I go, they're shooting. But what I noticed objectively is simply that the establishment media was very, very clear as to who they wanted in. It was obvious. It was 95% plus, literally 95% plus of media establishments wanted Hillary Clinton in the White House.

And the reason was obvious to me. It was obvious because she was basically a continuation of the neo-con, the neo-conservative, neoliberal doctrine where Trump, who is now fulfilling all of those things that Hillary talked about, by the way, he's completely switched over. But as a candidate, Trump was not on board with that and Hillary was. So she was the establishment candidate and it was obvious. You know, she's the one who went to the Bilderberg meeting in 2008. That was her.

She's the one who's worked with the system her whole career. And she was a team player. And so all corporate media wanted her on board. And knowing that was the biggest mark against her in my book personally, that there was this lying mainstream. I mean, it astonished me. Or all of my friends, I'm someone who I guess would identify as having been on the left my whole life until this last year. I don't know what to think of the left anymore. But my friends on the left, none of them trust the CIA.

None of them tell me they trust the media until this last year when they all trust the CIA. And I'm like, what happened to you people? What happened to my friends? They all believe that Trump was an agent of Putin and Saturday Night Live did the whole thing, the Trump Putin thing. Seriously. Anyway, I feel like the media does create sickness in our society. this actually might be a further study of mine. I learned from a close friend of mine who, when people go into therapy, the first thing,

one of the first things a good therapist will say to them if they're dealing with anxiety and stress and so on is, are you watching television news or are you reading news? And if you are, stop. Wow. Yeah. And again, this goes back to the idea that the media does kind of make us sick. But it's not all news. you know i i feel that uh being an informed person does not make us sick it hasn't made me sick i

feel i feel great last thing i want to say in the media and i know you probably want to switch gears is um for people who are not still believing this i would tell them to um get get knowledgeable of a couple of really prominent recent media whistleblowers there's a later than i'm a big fan of named amber lyon uh three-time emmy award winner journalist she was with cnn for years back in 2011 she reported on the Arab Spring and then she just got sick of it she said I can't do this anymore and she just says look governments are paid paying us to create fake news and she talked when she did the Arab Spring back in 2011 she just said CNN was routinely paid by the U.S. government and by foreign governments to selectively report on certain events and to make up fake news stories and anyone who's gone into this at all with fake CNN news I mean there's a wealth of information to look for

there's another man who I'm a big big fan of recently died his German German journalist named Dr. Udo Ulfkata and he's on YouTube you can find him he talks about how you know we all lie for the CIA he was doing stories back 2010 2011 he said the CIA would write this is he said all all European news is controlled by the CIA they would literally write stories that he would have to put his byline to on Libya, on Moa Mark Gaddafi, in that case. And he said, if I, if I didn't comply, I would have just lost my job. But they would write the stories.

My name would be on it. And it would be all these hit pieces, propaganda pieces that, that was European journalism. And then I'm a big fan of a lady named Cheryl Atkisson, former CBS News. And she's out there. She's given TED talks, I believe. even, she talks about, like, astroturfing, which is a very important phenomenon, basically faking your data to promote yourself. Astro-Turfing happens on Wikipedia.

She calls an astro-turfer's dream come true as Wikipedia. But how the news around us is very deliberately falsified. Right. So there's a lot of information on this out there. Too much, to be honest. but I'm so happy you're able to steer us towards some sources that we can actually take credence in. Nothing, thank you. Nothing is certain and no source.

I talked about RT and global research. Look, I like them very much. I find that they give me a leg up against people who follow the mainstream. That's for sure. But that nothing is certain. And I mean, what we all have to do is we have to use our brain. We have to think. And it's, you know, there's no magic formula.

I'm sorry to say this to people. There's no sure shot way to say, oh, for sure, read this site. Don't go there. What we have to do, though, is understand first and foremost that we are part of a control system. And I think once we get that, we can begin a process. And it can take years for some people, depending on how far into the. the system they are. You know, it's not as easy like in the matrix where you just take the red pill and all is revealed. I wish it were that easy. We are peeling the deception away by layer

after layer after layer and it does take time and it's emotionally difficult. You know, I'm doing research on false flags these days and what I've definitely learned is that one reason false flags are so successful is because they combine our emotion with our mind. So the trauma of a false flag, which is always horrible, you know, tears at us emotionally. And then what makes them effective is that the authorities will come in immediately with a narrative that appeals to our intellect. And so the intellect is kind of married to the emotion, the mind and the heart become one. And once we accept that explanation from the authorities, it becomes wedded to the trauma and it becomes very, very difficult, if not. impossible for most people to question that intellectual explanation.

So I think false flags work on this. It's a very devious way that they use this manipulation. It's very effective. And it doesn't work simply with false flags. It works with all forms of propaganda. People buy into something. And the longer and longer you buy into something, the harder and harder it is to buy out. Absolutely.

I couldn't put it better myself. Well, in terms of love it or hate it, Rich, a lot of people are into this movement, and that's the idea of disclosure, getting back to the UFO topic. Oh, yes, you recently looked into, you came out with a small publication about UFOs and disclosure in the Trump era. Now, I just want to briefly touch on this, because we could talk about this forever. But this idea that, you know, we have a POTUS who is not afraid to tweet at 3 a.m. in the morning, something about anything. So in terms of the UFO question, some people think that this may be the time that we get a tweet in the morning about what happened in Roswell. I mean, that's going a little far. I was one of the first people, I think, to just put that little idea out there.

And I almost did it whimsically. I wrote a piece on Trump and disclosure the day after he got elected. I remember when the world, when most of the, I guess the liberal, the left world was going into some serious trauma over that election. And certainly in the UFO fields, there were a lot of folks, you know, our friend Stephen Bassett and Grant Cameron, for two of them really believed. that Hillary Clinton was the disclosure candidate. I mean, Bass Basset absolutely believed it. Actually, he believed furthermore that Obama would do it before the end of his term. For my part, I publicly stated many times that I did not believe that that would happen.

But we all thought Hillary Clinton would win. I certainly thought she was going to go. I thought it was a done deal. Frankly, the whole system was just rigged on her behalf. That was my opinion. Anyway, so when Trump got elected, I thought, well, let's just take a look at this situation. This was a guy who at least particularly at that time. There's been a struggle going on since then, and we didn't need to talk about this.

But Trump seems like a guy who he's not, he's a disruptor. He's a disruptor. And no matter how one looks at him, he's staring up the pot a bit. And he was saying things, this whole, as a candidate, you know, let's make friends with Russia. This is a big thing. and he got reamed for this by all sides of the political spectrum. It was astonishing to watch. And then his anti-globalist thing was very clearly against the main current.

So I thought this is a guy who's become an enemy of big parts of the national security apparatus. It's obvious. And, you know, I never thought Hillary Clinton would be a disclosure candidate because I saw her as the consummate insider. Trump is not the same type of insider. And I thought, I said you're still more likely to win getting a lottery ticket than waiting for a Trump disclosure. And I think even more strongly that now. But I thought actually this man's personality is such that he actually might do a 3 a.m. tweet. You could just imagine him saying something like everyone knows UFOs are real.

And the funny thing about Trump is like, could you imagine, unlike with Obama, like if Obama were to do a disclosure of UFOs. had he done so. I think there would have been a much higher, like, people would have been like, oh, my God, I can't believe it. Trump, who's going to believe him? Like, I really think there's a lot of folks who would just say this man is, you know, certifiably insane and people think that already. So if they were to do a disclosure of UFOs, seriously, this would be a real problem.

I don't, I think, I think it would be very difficult for him. and when I when I published this booklet it's about a hundred pages long it's just under you know it was already evident to me I wrote I published it in March about a month ago it was already clear that he was losing his if it was a battle with the deep state he was losing it even by mid-March like it was obvious to me that he was on the he had been out maneuvered completely out-maneuvered so that any reform of the intelligence community was not going to happen because they took out Michael Flynn like immediately he was the only person who could have done a reform of the intelligence community and he was the first one out in that kind of a specious

Russia thing there so all of all the loyal people around him he's basically surrounded by counsel on foreign relations people globalists that's they've taken over they've got him so by mid-march it was evident to me that it's unlikely but nonetheless uh We're in a situation where there's a kind of covert war going on, a war of leaks, for example. All of these leaks that we're seeing against Trump and against other people are signs that the intelligence community is fighting itself. So in that type of a situation, it just seemed to me there's enough instability that there could be some accidental. or who knows what someone might say, what the heck is just an intentional putting this information out there.

I don't think that that's likely, but I will say in my own observation over political history over the past 50 plus years, during times of great instability in many nations, it can happen that UFO data leaks out and comes out, particularly when there's regime change. when Mao died in China. This happened over there.

When the Soviet Union broke apart, it happened very much so there. After Watergate in our own society, we strengthened our Freedom of Information Act, which led to a great release of UFO information. In Spain, after the dictator Franco died in the 70s, it led to a release of UFO data there. So when there's instability in the system, things come out, and that includes UFO data. We are in a very unstable political situation here in the United States. And so for that reason, I could see something unexpected, something accidental happening. I don't say bet on it. I don't think there's ever a year where it's a good bet, but there are some years where it might be better than others.

Absolutely, yeah. The harder you shake, the more that's going to come out. But who knows? Who knows what's going to happen? The thing that I try to look at in this booklet of mine is the international situation. You know, people for years would ask me, well, sure, there's a UF cover up in the United States, but what about other countries? What about Britain?

What about Brazil? What about Russia? What about India? And it's true, you know, we're in a big world. So what is it about these other nations that allows for this phenomenon to be secret? And I really do try in this booklet to deal with that issue. And one of the things that I point out is, excuse me, me is that, you know, although the United States isn't the only nation in the world, it is still

the dominant nation in the world by far. And there are only a handful of nations that are outside of predominant, preeminent U.S. influence. All right, there's only a few. So the U.S. runs all of the NATO countries, which are very powerful. The U.S. has dominant influence over most of Central and South America. The U.S. has a very strong influence over most of the significant nations in the far east. We're talking Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia, obviously. There are only a few significant nations that are still outside U.S. control.

We're talking Russia, first and foremost, China, those two big ones. Iran, North Korea, Syria, although Syria is, you know, the whole point is to make Syria a cave. But those are some of the key nations. And really, of those, the two big ones obviously are Russia and China. Because of the 200 or so sovereign nations that exist on this planet, only a handful, maybe 20 have a military intelligence community that's significant enough that would have. allow them to have a real capability in dealing with UFO data in a significant way. This is my opinion. I mean, most nations, you know, 90% of global military spending is wrapped up with the top 15, 20

nations. And so it's those nations that really we have to look at in terms of UFO secrecy. The other nations, I think, I don't really think they have enough knowledge or data or ability to have any, like they wouldn't be able to disclose the UFO reality. And of the top 20, the U.S. controls, you know, 17, 18 of them. Only Russia and China are not in there. So we really are looking at Russia and China for the international scene as far as the wildcards go. And I see them as very conservative, generally speaking.

They're conservative nations. They don't want, they're not interested in shaking things up in a dramatic way. And plus, they're both heavily dependent on. a hydrocarbons, gas, and oil. To me, I've looked at UFO disclosure always is something that has energy implications. I feel that it has to. Because once an acknowledgement of UFOs is made, how long will it take people to realize, oh, wow. So, wait a minute.

If they're real, I assume they're not using high-octane petroleum. Right. Whatever it is, it's better than what we're using. And so implicit in the UFO disclosure, I've always felt, is a post-petroleum society. And that's, I can't think of anything more revolutionary in our infrastructure than that. And I don't think Russia and China are any more interested in rocking that boat than the U.S. power structure, at least right now. So I see a great deal of stability coming from those countries. Although I would actually, if there was to be a disclosure, I would probably almost prefer that.

the Chinese or Russians do it ahead of the Americans. Right. And I, because I think the Americans are just, they've been lying for so long, and they've been running this for so long. I've got to get over the idea. I mean, I'm American. I love America. I study American history every day.

But America is not the good guy in this battle. Right. And, you know, capitalization is always an issue with this, even if, you know, the reality of UFOs were to be given to the public. and then that, you know, let's say free energy or whatever, whatever the hell these things uses propulsion. You know, how long will it take for the government, which is a very broad term, to control and contain that to capitalize off of it? You know what I mean? Switching from crude oil to free energy.

I'm sure there's some sort of plan or agenda in action to when, if and when, that day comes, say our oil resources completely deplete, how will they make the most money off of this new form of energy? Let's stay with this thought for a minute. It's really an interesting thought. So there's monetizing the technology, which I agree with you completely, has got to be key. And then the other concern, as far as monetizing, I wonder if it's possible that they haven't figured out an accurate good way to monetize this.

and that might be the real problem for example there are stories and rumors and I don't really know if this is the truth but you know back when Tesla was working on his his energy transmitter

at Wycliffe and Wardencliff hitting it right and J.P. Morgan was financing him and Tesla's lab was burned down and everyone suspected that J.P. Morgan had to

a hand in it. Probably did. Morgan was the devious master of the universe in his day. And the real creator, by the way, of the modern military industrial complex, incidentally, he did it during World War I and he ran the whole thing. But the point is Morgan could very well have destroyed Tesla's work because he couldn't see how to monetize it. I mean, you know, we're all working off of oil and gas back then, especially oil. So, and today, how would you monetize free energy if it's if it's literally or nearly literally free you know to give people a tremendous amount of energy you're not going to make as much money off of it you just won't and so that's a real problem and we are living in a world that is dominated by the extraction of hydrocarbons from the ground and

that's the physical control over the oil and natural gas is what dominates u.s policy that is what it is all about, that's 98, 99% of U.S. policy is control over oil and actual gas. And not just physical oil, but the sale of oil through petro dollars. The whole petro dollar system is the foundation of U.S. policy. That is forcing oil producing regions to sell their oil in U.S. dollars. The petro dollar system is starting to break down. Russia and China are breaking it down. Saddam broke out of it in 2000, and that's why the U.S. invaded Iraq back then.

But the system is inevitably breaking. But with free energy, you know, monetizing this oil and gas would be – excuse me, monetizing the new form of energy would be very problematic. And then the other aspect of free energy that might be possibly even more problematic is energy gives you and me and all the listeners a tremendous amount of power figuratively and literally. if we had a free energy device, right? It's only getting every customer's order right. It's only a point-of-sale system connected by Spectrum-fiber-powered business internet, helping you track hundreds of secure transactions. And it's all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based customer support and local technicians.

It's only everything. Get business internet advantage free forever when you get four mobile lines from Spectrum. Visit Spectrum.com slash free for life to find out how. Restrictions apply. service is not available in all areas. Not only could you be independent of your electrical, you know, you go off the grid essentially, you don't need your utility company and you're not dependent on that critically important thing for your survival. It would be possible if someone had an independent source of energy,

literally to go off the grid and to go out into the desert somewhere and you could create your own house and you could create your own energy system. You could, you could, you know, synthesize your own water through from the air. I mean, with energy, everything is solvable. Everything is fixable with sufficient energy. And so what that does is it gives people freedom, a lot of freedom from the system, from authority. And I've got to assume people at the top are not interested. The other problem with free energy is that there is a danger.

Human beings are dangerous. nice people, we're dangerous people. And if, I mean, individually, you and I on a good day were nice, but overall, if you give people infinite freedom, we often become very, very dangerous and very awful. And so what if with this free energy, not only could you heat your house forever for free, but you can make a really nifty bomb? What if we're using something like zero point energy, if that's a solution, you, I remember reading a statement by Dr. Hal Putoff, who I know Hal, physicist, who was very much in the forefront of zero point energy research. And he once speculated, you know, what if there's enough energy in this cup of coffee to blow up half the Pacific Ocean?

And he wasn't joking. He doesn't know that there is, but theoretically it could be the amount of energy in zero point could be insignificant or it could be unbelievably vast. and what if a free energy solution allows for tremendous extraction of energy or production of energy that would be very destructive. And so now we're letting loose this genie out of the bottle that could be a very dangerous one. And so this is one area where I might have sympathy, right? With the secret keepers, I mean, anyone thinking this through would think, oh, my God. The problem is, A, we don't know the energy implications.

B, I do know that secrecy has become a very destructive thing for our society that, for those idealists left who believe in freedom and liberty and freedom of inquiry. It's been very dangerous for that. It's been very destructive. And we've moved into a kind of neo-fascist oligarchy. I don't know how else to call it. So for those things, I'm not a fan of that, and I believe in the sunshine of truth. so for that reason I'll always believe in disclosure

I have to believe in the truth because if I can't believe in the truth and there's nothing else really for me to believe in and I think that it's still the most proper foundation for a stable society is truth not false it but if the truth is that we can't control this energy then

then our world will have to find out ways of creating the control and are we moving then toward a completely inclusive system where everyone is monitored, where everything is being checked by a centralized artificial intelligence, for example, to make sure that no one's building the world's biggest bomb. Right. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what the solution is. We're moving into a very – you know, the UFO subject is one of several key issues

that are going to drive our future. It's only one of them. It's a big one, but it's not the only one. And we're moving into a very, very different world in the next 20 years. I don't even know who could predict what our world is going to look like in 20 years. Right. It's never been more uncertain, I feel. And that's either going to be an extremely exciting time to live in or scary or exciting or all the above.

Who knows the only time we'll do? I agree. One of the things that I did that I've been thinking through in this whole disclosure scenario is different scenarios of disclosure. Right. When I wrote after disclosure six years ago, seven, wow, we really had one fundamental disclosure scenario and it's what I would now call premature disclosure. So in other words, something accidental happens, a sighting, a leak, something unexpected

because we're in a very tumultuous era where things are unexpected. And I've often said disclosure is impossible but inevitable, like that paradox. And that is indeed a real possible way that the disclosure will happen. It won't be a plan, but it will happen as a result of some accident, you know, WikiLeaks or sighting or something like that. But there are other scenarios of disclosure. And actually, it occurred to me after we wrote after disclosure that maybe the leading candidate isn't that one, but rather a kind of fascist form of disclosure. In other words, we're moving toward,

we're moving into towards some version of a neo-fascism. I say neo-fascism because fascism in 2017 is not going to look like 1937 with Hitler's brown shirts. I mean, nothing's ever the same in history. We're in a different era, but a new iteration of version. And it seems to me that once complete control over the spin, over the propaganda system, total control is assured, then maybe we might be moving into a system where there'll be a disclosure of some sort. But I don't think that that era has arisen yet

where there's total control over the spin. There's still enough independence out there. So if there's a disclosure, it's not clear to me that the government or the intelligence community would be able to maintain full control over the spin. They control spin from so much and they might for this, but this is a big topic. This is a tough one. So I think once they get to a point where they're convinced that,

yes, we control the news, we're surveilling people 24-7, we've got everyone chip, we got everyone drugged, we've got everyone basically zoned out when watching, dancing with the stars. Now we can roll this out because no one knows anything anymore.

I mean, we've erased, and really all you have to do is look around you. And it's distressing to me. I see so few people with even the most bare bones understanding of history and politics. It's, I don't know if it was any better when I was a younger guy, but I think it was better. I don't know.

There are, there's a few people nowadays who are kind of awake, but there's an enormous mass of people who I just think are as asleep at the switch as ever. Maybe, maybe I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. But anyway, I think we're moving toward a fascist kind of disclosure. I think that's the preferred method of disclosure. other ways. There's other ways. You know, an accident can happen, a leak can happen, or the best case scenario, the people themselves, we can drive this process. And I think that's the healthiest way,

because it helps us to reclaim our power, help reclaim the helplessness to get rid of that, which has been encroaching on our lives of the last generation or more. Right. Well, you know, I do have to bring this up, the black sheep in uphology at this moment. In terms of disclosure, And that's Tom DeLong. Oh, indeed. What do you make of this entire thing going on? Is this guy for real? Is he actually being fed disinformation, information, probably a mixture of both, or is this all complete bullshit?

Like, what do you make of this? Yeah, that's a very good question. I met Tom DeLange once back in 2014. He was, I liked him. You know, he's, for anyone who's living in a cave, he's the head lead singer, blink, went My daughter, who's now 18, you know, when she was a few years ago, she loved Blink 182. And so he's into UFOs. I met him in 2014.

He was really into it then. This was before he wrote his book, Secret Machines. And I'm very cautious. I'm very, actually, I don't take what he's saying at face value. I haven't from the beginning. and I will not. It seems to me it's way too convenient. The leakers coming to him have convinced him that they're the white hats,

that the secrecy exists for a good reason, and he has said this, and that they're protecting us. They're working on our behalf. And I just think that that's a very self-serving way to promote the information. When I look at the history of secrecy, I do not see that. I see secrecy as a very self-serving prophet. driven control driven type of situation where there may very well be people on the inside who believe that they'll rationalize anything you know we're doing this for the people but in reality i don't

i don't believe that that is the case i think there's way too much profit and power involved in the UFO secret having said that are these people for real are they giving him genuine information Bottom line is this, none of this is really going to make much headway until genuine, confirmable data is released. Otherwise, it's just people talking. And even if they're head of Lockheed Skunkworks, even if they run the lab at Wright-Patterson, where we believe alien tech was being studied, I mean, and those are two of his leakers, two of his people, doesn't matter. it these people none of them have made a public statement that can be directly attributable to them that they will publicly support all right so when the head of Boeing skunk works oh excuse me Lockheat skunk works comes out and says yes I've been meeting with Tom DeLange we talked about

this this is real if the head of Wright-Patt's laboratory comes out McCaslin I think his name is comes out and says this, then yes, if the major general over at Cheyenne Mountain comes out and states, we're doing this. Right now these people are hiding way in the background, and Tom DeLange is their frontman. And he's putting himself out there, but the problem with that strategy is that Tom DeLange is a rock star. And I believe he's a good guy, but that's not enough to give credibility. to this phenomenon. While these guys are hanging out in the background, no public statements, and absolutely no data, no confirmable information is coming out. So all this is this is talk, talk,

talk. It's talk. And to add, I mean, their names were never supposed to be given until the Podesta emails were leaked. So I mean, right there, they're even further back in the corner, not willing to come forward or make a public statement. I agree. I agree. with you and I think the Podesta angle has been really overplayed and played up. Again, this is where I have to strongly disagree with my friend, colleague, Stephen Bassett. I think he got this whole thing wrong. And Grant, Cameron, and I respect them both tremendously, but I've never agreed with him on this, where they think Podesta is genuinely pushing for disclosure.

I've never seen this. It's one thing to have an interest in UFOs, which, okay, he does. And yes, yes, Podesta. made a couple of statements about UFOs in his career. He did this. He did the press conference back in 2002, and he made the tweets, the one tweet, hashtag disclosure. However, John Podesta is one of the most savvy political operators in the world. Right.

All right. And I firmly believe that he has made a recognition that the UFO subject in 2014, 2015, 2016 and today this is not where it was at in the 1990s. In the 1990s, you talk about UFOs, it's a career ender, you're done. Hell, even in 2008, it torpedoed the career of Dennis Kucinich for his presidential candidate candidacy when they just tore him to pieces over the fact that he'd been a UFO witness. He didn't even talk about it. And by the way, he was corroborated by two other people who said, oh yes, absolutely, it was

a triangle, it was unbelievable, we were on the property of Shirley McLean when it happened. I mean, it was a really good sighting back in the 80s, and Kucinich got reamed in 2008 for that. But even since 2008, we've gone through a dramatic transformation of the culture with YouTube and Facebook, social media. And I think Podesta is a savvy political operator, has recognized that there are votes to be one, that UFOs are kind of cool. They actually are kind of cool. People are into it. There's a tremendous market. those in other words are a brand.

Yes. They're a brand. And Podesta realizes that this brand can be tapped. As long as you're careful, and he's been very careful. He's very smart about this, and Hillary was very smart about this. She let Podesta do the talking for the most part a little bit. Then she did her thing on Jimmy Kimmel. But she never overplayed the UFO part.

They did it just enough to get people into UFOs to think, oh, wow, wow. Oh, they're into UFOs. I'm going to vote for her. And I believe that's exactly and 100% of what it was all about, simply to get the vote. And I would, I mean, we'll never know because she didn't win the election. But had she won, I would absolutely never have expected her to do anything like a disclosure. Never.

Yeah. Well, in terms of civilian research into the UFO topic, Rich, I want to touch on, you know, The big one, let's say, Mufon. This is a listener question from, I believe, a field investigator. What are your thoughts on the functionality and the behavior of research organizations looking into the UFO topic? That's a great question. I'm a strong supporter in the idea of Mufon. I think we need organizations like Mufon.

I get a little frustrated when people say, oh, we're done with UFO reports. Now let's talk about the implications. Well, yes and no, we're not really done with UFO reports. And the reason we're not done with them is because what we absolutely need are well-researched, solid investigated cases. This strengthens the cause for all of us. And Mufon above any other organization that I can think of is really best suited to do this. In other words, a very strong Mufon investigation that goes to the process properly that interviews witness. It gets any kind of evidence that it can put forth and a proper analysis to show that such and such a UFO incident is genuine and doesn't seem to be explainable conventionally.

We need this. We need this in 2017 as much as ever. There's a lot of times people think about UFOs and they think, oh, well, that's back. You know, there were UFO settings in the 50s. So we need this today. And we need Mufon to be at the top of its game to do this. Now, the problem has always been that Mufon, look, there's never been money in Mufon. The investigators who are involved in this do this on their own dime, their own energy, their own time commitment.

And some of them do a fantastic job with all of those obstacles, and they still do a great job. But it's very difficult. It's very difficult. For years, I was a little bit of a gadfly, I think I'd like to say, with Mufon. And one of the things that I've always said is that Mufon needed to put together an annual report, if nothing else, Mufon. And I said, stop sucking in the information and not giving anything back. We need to have data. What are you investigating?

What are the results of your investigation? And Jan Harzan, and I say this to his credit, has been attempting to do these annual reports. I have one of them. I think he's been doing them every year to put out, you know, bear bones. Like these are the number of cases we have. These are what we've investigated. These are our unknowns. And these are our top unknowns of the year.

And I said, this is what you. you need to do, move on. And so I think they're still doing that. But there's so much more to go. And we're only talking to United States. The United States has 5%, 4% of the world's population. There's a whole big world out there. And as bad as it is in the U.S., it's vastly worse in every other country in terms of generating UFO data. I mean, it's frightening to say that the U.S. is the best at this, U.S. and Canada, but really U.S. Brazil, they have got good UFO researchers, but is there a national database of sightings? No, there isn't.

Not to my knowledge. It's all sporadic. We have the Mufon database and we have the National UFO Reporting Center here in North America. So if someone sees what they think is a UFO, at the very least they can report it. Elsewhere in the world, they got nothing. Europe, nothing, Britain? No, nothing, really. Germany, Russia, to my knowledge, China.

These countries all have good UFO researchers in them. But we need data. And beyond that, we need data that's been investigated and that approaches some level of scientific data. Because that's really the only way we're going to make a breakthrough. We need a good sledgehammer to break through this wall of secrecy and we can only do it with scientific data, well-investigated data, and that's what Mufon should be doing and can do. I'm speaking at this year's Mufon Symposium for the first time in years. I feel that I was unofficially banned for six years.

I mean, honestly, I think I was. That's fine. But I'm a little bit – this is all about they're doing a thing on the secret space program. and I'm going to say here and now, the individuals that I'm going to be on a panel with on this are individuals that I don't all consider reputable. And I will be making it very clear when I'm at this panel that I'm not starting a war with anyone, but I will be speaking very candidly about the failure of a number of these other individuals to provide any kind of confirmable or reasonable or even logical data behind them. And I'm going to call them out. But what I'm a little bit distressed by

is that this is the main feature of Mufon because it's popular. People love to talk about the Secret Space Program. If you go to the UFO subject, those types of books are the top-selling books these days. And so it's a matter of giving the people what they want. However, this is not going to be done in a scientific, detached way.

and my fear I participated in Mufon show Hanger 1 on TV but which was a good idea and which had his own problems to be perfectly candid and so my fear is that

Mufon Mufon's got to be very careful here about going into an area where they're just dealing more with public relations and less with scientific inquiry I mean they need PR. They need to get the word out there.

Absolutely. Mufant all through the 80s and 90s utterly failed at that. Mufon's website for most of its history has been absolute junk. They're only now just making it something nice. But they still have to remain

scientific and if they don't do that, that's their core. That is their strength. Their strength is not in pretending to have underground base files on Hanger 1 or presidential files of UFOs. and hang like they didn't hangar one that's not their strength their strength is in doing

field investigations and when they move away from that that is their core that's their core business as it were and if they move away from that they are going to endanger themselves and they'll just be just another PR company

selling their brand and if that happens then we're all we're all worse off so I'll say Yeah, it's a delicate balance too, Rich. I mean, in the last week I've spoken to several Mufon investigators

who off the top of their head could give me the amount of reports from this year on cigar-shaped craft or these orbs or these disks, what have you. So that core work, like you mentioned, is being done, but it is not at the forefront. And that is a delicate balance between wanting to get something like hang on one on a cable network to get this organization out to the public. But then, again, it's a risky game because the more sensational you become with these underground files, it's tricky. I get it. I totally do it.

They need to make their money. We can all appreciate that. You can't run a decent organization if you're not getting some cash flow. So they have to do that. The way that they've been doing it in the past, I think, was really, really questionable. And in fact, I think they still do. It's like the board members of Mufant are on the board because they pay a lot of money to move on. Right.

They basically buy their way in. I think that's not a good way to do it. I don't think I support this at all. But on the other hand, they need to find a way to make the money. And now they're doing it through TV and through getting their brand out there, which is a lot. not the worst way to do it, but they've just got to be very careful with how they do it. Exactly. And when you go into TV, you're making a deal with the devil.

Mufon did this back in the 70s with the National Enquirer, by the way. And talk about media, National Enquirer is and was, at least was a CIA outfit. I don't know if it still is. Back in the 70s, it was absolutely doing work for the CIA. It was run by a guy named Gene Pope, who was CIA, ex-Mafioso too, but definitely CIA. and Mufon was actually very close with the National Enquirer through the 70s. And a lot of people back then thought, why are we doing this? Because it's really hurting our reputation.

And Mufon leadership's answer, it was Walter Andres running Mufant at the time, said, look, any publicity is better than no publicity. I think that was essentially his answer. until eventually he got overruled and Mufon pulled its relationship away from the inquirer. But for the mid-70s, they were very much in bed with the National Enquirer. And now you've got the situation with Hangar 1. It's a similar kind of a thing where the problem with that show, and I'll just say this, because I was on it for both of the seasons, that was a very heavily scripted show.

Yes. To my knowledge, I might have been the only person in all of season two. to my knowledge, who refused to read from a script. They wanted me to, both seasons. And I said, are you kidding me? I said, look, I'll work with you. Just ask me your questions, and I'll do my best to answer them relevantly. Yes.

I mean, I just read any of the TV shows. But I'm not going to read your script. I mean, goodness gracious. But they had everyone else doing this. And they had actual voice actors pretending to be UFO researchers on there. And they had producers on there who were not researchers. And they really harmed them. And then the whole pretense, the false pretense that Mufon had these,

there are files in this place called Hanger 1. My mother. My mother, my mother, when she's always excited when I'm on television, and she got excited about Hanger 1. And at the beginning she said, so where is this Hanger 1? And I said, look, Mom, it's just a convenient fiction. And my mother got so angry being lied to, right? Yeah.

And I think our instincts are good. You know, you don't want to be lied to on TV. The idea was when Dave McDonald was running Mufon, he's an aviator, and he did store Mufon files in a hangar. And when they were doing the creating, when they were developing the show, that was where the Mufon files were stored in a hangar. And they said, let's call it Hanger 1. Of course, the images of the building were all fictional. I mean, right. In that part, I mean, all right, you want to like give a little.

them this enabling fiction fine but then what they would do is move on you know we've got our files on on this and on that and they they don't they don't have their files on those cases right but they have a tremendous number of case files yeah and um they don't have files dealing with underground bases right they don't have files dealing with the president that's grant cameron he's got those that's his research and a few of us other researchers uh you know so i mean they We're kind of making these. It was getting down this slippery road of, I think the producers really had a good intention. I honestly do believe it.

I met, I talked with the producers. And I think they overall wanted to do a good, reliable show that dealt with genuine issues. And some of the shows did deal very well with these issues. I want to give them some credit. But they hampered themselves. And Mufon hampered itself by going down this road. that is they're talking about things that are not accurate. And this is the danger with television.

Anytime you do TV work, and I don't know, I've done enough of it. And it's very hard these TV producers, they're not UFO people. They don't care. They want good ratings. Yes. And some of them might care a little bit about the subject. Some of them do get interested, but they don't have a lot of knowledge, generally speaking. And they're out there to get good ratings.

And that's their job. Their job is to get good ratings. Their job isn't to be truthful about UFOs. So I'm not faulting them. It's the nature of the beast. But Mufon has got to be careful. Yep. And they really, I would just say to Mufon, I would say to Jan, and I will say when I see him again,

don't lose sight of your core reason to be. Your core reason to be is to have and train and encourage and inspire good investigators to do good work in the field to produce good analyses of UFO cases. That's what you do. And don't lose sight of that Mufon. Stick to the mission, guys.

No, I have hope for the future of Mufon. I really do. Rich, in terms of... This may piss off some of our more skeptical listeners. But in closing, I've got one more listener question for you. And that's... What do you think is the best evidence we have

that UFOs have anything to do with an extraterrestrial intelligence. I know that's a very loaded question. I would answer it in two stages. So stage one is I look at confirmed government documents. I always start with that. Why? Because I know they're real. I know there's a paper trail.

And I know that the national security community has taken this subject very seriously. among documents in the paper trail are radar trackings and visuals of objects that are described as disc-shaped. This is back in the 1940s and 50s. Sometimes zigzagging, sometimes instant acceleration, always incredible maneuverability, silent. In other words, extraordinary. So we know that part's real. We know this. It leaves us a couple of options.

Extraterrestrial, right? Black budget classified U.S., black budget classified U.S., black budget class. classified Soviet, Russian, and the like. So on that level alone, we go through process of elimination. And we know, by the way, that within the U.S. intelligence community, that the glimpses that we have of their analyses that we are permitted to see, many of them have concluded extraterrestrial interplanetary was the most likely scenario because there was an evidence of a U.S.-based or Soviet-based technology program that could do it.

And indeed, to this day, there isn't. On top of that, we have non-military evidence. So we have evidence of people who have had encounters. And here's the thing that a skeptic will argue against, which is that the evidence for these encounters is not of a high level of scientific credibility, in their opinion. I would be inclined to agree with that, except I would have one caveat. that, the amount of that evidence is so vast at this point. And to call it non-scientific is a little bit problematic anyway.

There have been some very detailed investigations of individual cases. From back to the Betty and Barney Hill abduction case, to even the V.L. Boas case in Brazil from 1957, to more recent cases in the 70s and then 80s and 90s that have gone through detailed analysis. The Betty Andreas and Luca case, investigated by Ray Fowler, is a very, very interesting case. Hard for me to dismiss this as anything other than dealing with extraterrestrial or non-human entities. The work of Bud Hopkins and John Mack and Dave Jacobs and nowadays people like Kathleen Martin and Yvonne Smith, you know, these people do regressive hypnosis, Barbara Lamb. This episode is brought to you by Netflix.

Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carano in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry. And the best heavyweight in the world, Frances Ngano versus Felipe Lins. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. I don't even agree with all of the conclusions that they have about the nature of the phenomenon itself, but all of these people are meeting with large numbers of individuals who've had what they believe are abduction experience or encounter experiences.

And the quantity of these individuals is so vast and these are not psychologically disturbed people. Now, is there an explanation that could account for the tremendous consistency of what most of these people are saying? They're having experiences with non-earned. human entities who are doing things to their body. Is there some kind of psychological manifestation of something that's causing this? Well, in theory, I suppose it's possible. We don't know what that is. No one's identified it.

On the other hand, knowing that there's a UFO phenomenon that is real, and we know it's real because we have the documentation to prove it's real. And we have the reasons to believe that it may indeed be not of our civilization. So when I combine that evidence with the very large amount of personal testimony that people have of encounters with non-human beings in connection with UFO subjects, sightings, excuse me, then I have to think that's the most, by far, really, it's the most logical conclusion. And it doesn't all come down to evidence from regressive hypnosis, by the way. All right, there's a lot of people who've had encounters with UFOs and beings and or occupants inside that have not revealed this information through hypnosis. I mean, there's an enormous number of accounts from around the world, not just America where this is the case. So I think that's the most likely scenario.

That's not the same as scientific laboratory proof, but it's a messy world out there. This is what I think we're looking at. I think it's the best hypothesis by far. Yes. And that's why I say I think that's why we are dealing with a presence of an other. Are they from another planet? Well, I would say probably, but they could be from some other portion of reality that I don't quite understand because I'm not smart enough because my brain doesn't work in the way that I wish it could. Yeah.

Well, and I mean, Rich, you and I both know as all the listeners that this topic in general UFOs is not so. black and white. So there is no one core answer to any of this. I had a conversation, I've been interrupted, you've been so nice to me this whole interview, Ryan. Oh, are you kidding? You know. Once with a researcher named Chris O'Brien. Yeah. I like Chris. He's done great work on cattle mutilations. And not just that, though. He's done work on really a lot of the high strangeness of this whole subject. And Chris, we were talking about this once. And he said to me, I said, I think, you know, no, there's no one theory that seems to explain all of UFOs. And he said, I would go further.

I'd say a lot of the theories fight against each other. In other words, the idea of extraterrestrial or time travelers or interdimensional entities or black budget. But they are. There's all of these competing theories when we ask ourselves, what is the core, what's causing? this phenomenon? Is it some psychosocial phenomenon? Is the earth itself, is reality itself, getting inside our heads to make us see these things in a way that comports with our own cultural and psychological expectations? I mean, if you go through UFO sightings over the centuries, people in medieval times, they had sightings of things. They didn't describe the most space men

in flying saucers because, well, they didn't have that concept. So they described things differently. So is there a phenomenon that's causing us to see things the way we expect to see them? And does that mean that they're physically real or not? That's a psychosocial type of explanation. And then there's the whole idea that are we living in a constructed matrix type of reality, a kind of, you know, simulation hypothesis. But then I think the extraterrestrial hypothesis is a, is still the probably the front runner, in my opinion. When I look at our own future tech, our own ability in the next generation or two to get some part of our civilization out to the stars, I mean, you and I may not make it, but next gen artificial intelligence, next generation 3D printing, next generation propulsion. Yeah, I could see it happening.

We could send something out there. And so has another civilization that already done that for us? Are they sending their own artificially created beings, their own avatars? Who knows? I think that's probably the most likely scenario, and I think that's what we're dealing with. I agree. It is an extremely enticing future to live in, and I look forward to seeing where that goes. Rich, what do you got coming up, my man? What can we expect from you in the near future? Well, I just shot a, I had a reshoot, but we did a full-season episode of False Flags on Gaia TV. So I've had a show on Guy. It's coming out. It'll be out this early summer, I think, on the history of false flag operations. This is not a UFO-oriented program at all. It's all politics. It's something very different for Gaia. This is not anything like what they do is they're taking a chance on me. So I'm hoping it doesn't fall flat. I think it's a good show. It deals with the phenomenon of false flags as it has occurred throughout human history, particularly in the last century. And focusing really on a lot of the,

U.S. false flags of the last 50 years. It's only scratching the surface. There's so much more to do, but I've written and hosted that. That'll be out soon. I'll keep people posted on that as we approach airing. And then in terms of my own writing and researching, I'm working on my own publishing projects right now. I've published a bunch of other people's books, including yours over the last year.

I've got some of my own things. I've done this little lecture series, these booklets that I'm putting out. But fundamentally, I want to finish my false flag books. I'll be doing a number of appearances. I'll be in Joshua Tree, California in late May with my fiancé, Tracy, who you met a few months ago in Phoenix. Yes, I did. Congratulations. Yeah, thank you. It's a very wonderful thing.

And I will be in Roswell, New Mexico. Oh, and before that, I'll be in Greece with our good buddy, Peter Robbins, to a group in Athens. That is, I encourage people. It's called Contact with Space. If you are in Europe, if you can get to Athens, we will be there in early June. Go to my website. I've got this link to Richard Olenpress.com. And I'll be in Roswell after that, and I'll be at Mufon in Las Vegas at the end of late July.

And I imagine that'll be an interesting panel. I can only imagine. Well, Rich, I couldn't have asked for a better first interview. We really ran the gamut. I hope people enjoyed it. and I can't thank you enough for coming on with me today for Somewhere in the Skies. Ryan, you were really nice to me. You just let me roll.

Hey, man, you do the work with this. That was the plan from the beginning. It was really nice being on your show, and I think it's going to be really successful. And I just want to say on your behalf, the book you wrote somewhere in the skies, I consider one of the best books of the decade in this field. What I like what you did is you, I think there was a real lack of books about experiencers, direct sightings and experiences of the UFO phenomenon. You know, the people who did abduction books had been doing this, but my sense is that there's a lack of these books out there.

And you don't have to do this through abduction research or hypnotic regression. You can do it as a journalist as you have done. And so you're getting people's stories. And this is really valuable because it's so important for us to understand the human aspects of this phenomenon, how it affects us the inexplicable nature of what people are dealing with. And I really like the way you did this book. It's a very well-written book. It's engaging and it's filled with interesting ideas, which is what makes any book interesting. If it doesn't have interesting ideas and why bother?

Yours is interesting in that way. And I really feel it's a great service. That's why I was proud to publish it. And I want everyone to know that this is an excellent book, and they should buy it and read it. Well, thank you. I was not expecting that, but I highly appreciate that coming from you.

And yeah, I hope everyone can someday realize that no matter what's at the core of these phenomena, it's the humans that matter most. So thank you. We're humans, and yeah, we should be interested. how does it affect us? And I like the way you go about it in your book. Thank you so much.

And again, thank you for joining us. My pleasure, Ryan. All right, guys, that is it for the first episode of Somewhere in the Skies. If you like today's show, please consider sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, and wherever you see fit,

please also consider subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show on iTunes. It really does help. So thank you once again for joining me. And I'll see you here next Monday. Remember, Keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching somewhere in the skies.