Somewhere in the Skies - The Five Eyes UAP Working Group and UFOs of Australia with Grant Lavac

Episode Date: August 4, 2024

On episode 367 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, we are joined by Australian UFO researcher and host of The Unexplained Rundown, Grant Lavac. Lavac discusses his recent discovery of a Five Eyes UAP working group, what Australia knows about the UFO shoot downs in the United States, and where the UFO topic is in 2024 and where it may be heading. We'l also be taking your listener questions! Follow Grant Lavac on Twitter: https://x.com/GrantLavac Watch UAP Caucus Working Group video: CLICK HERE Watch "Close Encounters Down Under" at: https://7plus.com.au/close-encounters-down-under Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies PayPal: [e-mail] Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Store: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12U YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/somewhereskies/videos Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Read Ryan’s Articles by CLICKING HERE Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Produced by LIONSGATE Copyright © 2024. Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. 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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with Ryan Sprague. Welcome, everyone, to another live podcast recording of somewhere in the skies. I am your host, Ryan Sprague, and a very good morning to everyone in the UK all across Europe. And a very, very early good morning to our moderator today, Suzanne, who's joining us. I don't even know what time it is there. 5 a.m. Yep, 5 a.m. So a very special thank you to her for moderating today. We have a talked to our guest today in, gosh, almost a year at this point. And so much has happened, not only in the United States, but over in Australia as well. So you know what that means. We're going to be talking to the one and only Grant Lavak. I do want to let you guys know that we are constantly updating the speaker list for Anomicon, the free virtual conference that I have founded. And we put on the last one last year. And it just was a huge success. So we've got another one coming to you September 1st and September 2nd. You can learn all about that at Anamacan.com.

There should be links in the show notes for you as well. If not, I'm sure Suzanne will be right on top of that. But without further ado, let's bring him in. We have so much to talk about a really interesting revelation that Grant himself was able to uncover when it comes to UAP in Australia. Grant Lavak, welcome back, brother. Thanks, Ryan. It's good to be with you again, my friend. Thanks for having me on. It's probably been close to a year since we last spoke. So, yeah, good to see you again, man. You too, you too. I know it's getting late in the evening over the, it's crazy. Isn't this crazy how we can do this stuff now in all different times?

Everything's a speed. And we've got, you know, you're in Scotland. We've got, you know, I'm in Australia. You've got, you know, everyone else is all over the place, all over the world. Suzanne's in the States. So it's great. You can, everyone can connect. but no way they are around the world. Exactly. And we all connect that in one thing, right? And that's UFOs, UAP. And we got so much to talk about in terms of what's going on now in that world, man.

But I'd like to catch our audience up for maybe some of them who aren't familiar with your work and all of that. Give us the origin story. How did you first get involved in the UAP topic? And what inspired you to join our crazy little community? So actually, before I forget, too, I wanted to congratulate you on the success with somewhere in the ring so far. Oh, thank you.

Good work, man, with that. And I was actually just thinking the other day, you know, with the recent Republican National Convention when Hulk Hogan was out there doing his thing, I was thinking a mania, baby. Exactly. I was thinking how epic, imagine how epic it would have been. If, you know, after Hogan's done his speech, everyone was chanting USA, USA, the arena lights just cut to black and under.

taker's music just comes on it. That would just be, I reckon that would have been even better. But anyway, there's still time at the Democratic National. That's true. Right. Something could happen. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I appreciate. But no, to your question, so I mean, I've, I'm a child at the 80s. So I'm, you know, I'm 45 years of age. Look a little, a little few years beyond that. But in the, in the mid 80s, my, I'm originally from Sydney, Sydney, Australia. And in the mid-80s, my father took me to a UFO photo exhibition that was being,

it was on display at Australia's highest or tallest building skyscraver called Sydney Center Point Tower back in the day. And I think it's now, it's called something similar. It's kind of like the Seattle Space and it looks kind of like the same. And so they had this UFO photo exhibition at the top of Sydney Center Point Tower, and they had all these famous black and white photos of UFOs from the 50s and, you know, the decades after that. And one of the photos was the famous McMinville photo. And I'd never seen, that was kind of my first, you know, induction or initiation into what UFOs were.

And I just completely lost myself in this blow up of the McMinville photo and lost myself just staring at that photo for a good 10, 50 minutes. And then, so that kind of got me curious at a young age. And then growing up as a teenager in the 90s, and I'm sure my fellow Aussies that are in the chat, I probably bored of me saying, telling the story. But, you know, when we're teenagers in the 90s in Australia, come Wednesday night every 9 p.m. You'd watch the X-Files without fail.

And then you'd talk about it the next day with your mates at school. And so then, you know, in my adult years in the 2000s and beyond, my kind of interest ebbed and flowed. But it wasn't until, like for so many other people, people, the New York Times bombshell articles in December 2017, well, that really got my eyebrows up. And then throughout COVID, we all had so much time at home that I kind of, you know, threw myself into the topic again out of sheer curiosity with everything that had been happening since 2017 in the US and just tried to learn as much as I could from as many people as I could

on the topic. And, you know, and I credit Luis Jimenez to getting, me off my backside and engaging my elected representatives on the topic because he was the founder of the Big Phone Home Initiative, if your audience is not aware of it, kind of like a live stream activism event. And so that really got me off my backside and asking the question, well, what is Australia doing about the UAP topic? Because the US has been taking it seriously for quite a number of years. And that sent me on a path of trying to engage my elected representatives on the topic and advocate for them to take the topic seriously and also exercise my right to information through the Freedom of Information Act and try and find out what the Australian government

and Department of Defense knows and doesn't know on the UAP topic in Australian context. So that's kind of a really super quick summary as to where I've come from when I am sort of today. I love it. Well, I have, and maybe I'm just very ignorant when it comes to the FOIA, John Greenwald's going to be very disappointed in me. But I've always wanted to know, Grant, like, as a citizen of Australia, can you file FOI requests in the U.S.? How does that work? Can anyone in the world do that in a country that they don't, aren't a citizen of? I've never really even

asked that question of anybody. It's actually a great question, and it's one that I didn't know the answer to for a long time. But yes, if you're not a U.S. citizen, you're not prohibited from submitting a U.S. FOIA request. So other countries, so I'm an Australian citizen, I can actually submit U.S. Freedom of Information Act request. There's no restrictions on, you know, non-U.S. citizens submitting requests. Now, that's different of different countries. Like in Australia, in New Zealand they call it the,

I think it's the Office of the Official Information Act, I think it is, where you have to be a citizen of New Zealand to submit a request. request. I think in Australia, it's the same. You have to be an Australian citizen or resident to be able to submit an Australian freedom. And Canada, you have to be a Canadian citizen. So each country may be slightly different. But to submit a US Freedom of Information Act request, you don't have to be a US citizen. And that's what I think a lot of people don't realize, you know, if they've got topics that are of interest to them and they want to find out more, they can submit a FOIA request to whatever agency they believe holds the information they're looking for.

There you go. See, lesson learned, man. That's actually really exciting because I never knew, you know, what the restrictions or I guess the liberations were when it came to something like that. In terms of those requests, you know, you've been filing a lot in your own country to try to get information. And I know early on when you started doing this, there was a lot of frustration. You were coming up against a lot of brick walls. And that is slowly, and I use that term slowly with a capital S changing over there in Australia. And we'll get to the UAP working group. But before we do that, what were some of your earlier, I guess, successes or failures even when it came to submitting these requests and any information that you were or weren't getting back.

Are there any really memorable stuff early on in your research? Yes, I mean, I've always kind of positioned myself as a student of FOIA. I learn something new every single day. And I'm really grateful that I've been able to learn from, you know, the likes of John Greenwald, Jr. directly. And he's actually been a great help in some FOIA request that I've submitted, you know, in Australia. And, you know, because early on,

I didn't know the machinations of the FOIA process. I had a lot of your refusals early on. Sometimes if you, and John Greenwald has said this a number of times. With FOIA, it's kind of like all about finding the Goldilocks zone. You can't be too general and you can't be overly specific. Or often you'll get a no records response. Or sometimes if your request is way too broad, they'll just knock you back with an automatic refusal on the grounds that the potential administrative burden to the FOIA office is so extensive.

You know, it's just too big of a request for them to dedicate the administrative resources too. But in terms of what's comparable between Australian FOIA and US FOIA, they're actually really similar. A lot of the same sort of similar exemptions in the interest of national security, privacy, information, international relations with other countries. One of the exceptions is that in Australia, and this is one of the frustrations I've got with the Australian FOIA, is a lot of the intelligence services in Australia. We're talking about the Defense Intelligence Organization, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, the our geospatial organization, the Office of National Intelligence, and there

are a number of others. They're all exempt from FOIA. So I can't go after any information within that. their holdings through FOIA, whereas in the United States, that's not necessarily the case. You can submit FOIA to a number of the intelligence services. Unfortunately, for US FOIA, the turnaround times are ridiculous. I mean, John Greenwald Jr. just put out, I think, a post on X today saying that he's broken his record for the longest response time of like 15 years or something ridiculous

on his, you know, he lodged the request 15 years ago. whereas in Australia, I thankfully today haven't had to wait that long. The longest response time I've had is probably upwards of six months, but in most cases, it's usually between 30 to 90 days that you get a response. There's a statutory deadline for response of 30 days in Australia, meaning they have to provide you with some form of response in 30 days. But often, more often not, they'll request an extension on the deadline. So they'll reach out to you and say, look, we can't meet the statutory

deadline of 30 days for response, are you willing to accept an additional 30-day extension? And so they'll negotiate with the submitter to try and come to an agreement on an extended timeline. So that's the advantage for me in Australian fora. It's much faster turnaround times. And in the US, it's just much slower. And the document which we can talk about this evening, I only received the FOIA response and documents today.

And I submitted that request in June of last. year. So it's been more than a year since that has taken for that request to come back. But some of the successes that I've had, I mean, the one that's probably for me most memorable is for the frame of reference of your audience that maybe don't know what's happening or hasn't been happening in Australia in October of 2021. And Australian Senator by the name of Peter Wish Wilson, who all of my Aussie friends on the stream will know, he, Following the release of OD&I's preliminary assessment on UAP back on the 25th of June 2021, Senator Wish-Wilson asked the then-Chief of Air Force about, well, what does Australia do about UAPs?

You know, has the Royal Australian Air Force who's always traditionally taken the lead on the UAP topic in Australia? Because we've investigated UAP in Australia almost as long as the U.S. has, you know, 1950s through to the mid-1990s. And so Senator Wish Wilson was asking the then-chief of Air Force, well, you know, has, Australia got a position on UAP. Do we have any reporting protocols in place? And turned out his questions, the answers he got were very much non-answers. It was just move along. There's nothing to see here.

And so that really got me going on a bit of a FOIA rampage in Australia. And I wanted to get an understanding as to what the Royal Australian Air Force knew about UAP following the release of OD&I's preliminary assessment. and when it knew it and what it didn't know. And so I was able to secure for release a significant document in, it was in May of 2022. It was because the Chief of Air Force at that Senate Estimates hearing, which is kind of like a budget estimates or budget oversight hearing,

that Senator Wisch Wilson was asking the Chief of Air Force on, the Chief of Air Force was completely caught off guard with the Senators questioning. So the Royal Australian Air Force internally thought, we better prepare ourselves so that when the next Senate estimates comes round, which would be around about six months' time later, the Chief of Air Force is well prepared to answer any questions that may be that same senator or other senators might ask on UAP. So there was a briefing document that was prepared for the Chief of Air Force on UAP.

And it's the most significant document at that time in May 2022 that had come out of the Australian Department of Defense on UAP, because in 1996, the Australian Department of Defense and Royal Australian Air Force basically said, move along folks, there's nothing to see here, and the Royal Australian Air Force formally ceased its investigation into the UAP topic. It said, you know, we can't find any scientific or other compelling reason

to continue to divert resources to the ongoing investigation of UAP. So we're just, we're not going to do anything about it anymore. This is, you know, after them having for decades investigated the UAP topic. So this document, you know, was significant. And it kind of, it laid out the history of a UAP to a degree from what had come out of the ODI&I's preliminary assessment. And it really included some talking points for the chief of Air Force to follow like a script if he was going to be asked questions at the Senate estimates. And it also had a section in that document about strategic narrative, which is basically the story. that the Royal Australian Air Force wants to sell to the Australian public, the Australian

taxpaying public. And that strategic narrative was that UAP is likely to be one of three things. It's either natural or other benign phenomena, it's sensor errors, or it's human-made technology, either foreign adversarial systems or potentially our own technology. There was never any allowance by the Australian Department of Defense and Royal Australian, Air Force for that catch-all other bin that the OD&I included in its preliminary assessment on UAP. So the question that I always asked once I received that document and read that strategic narrative is, well, at that time, how is the Royal Australian Air Force able to make a determination

as to what UAP are likely to be or not likely to be when it hasn't investigated the topic since 1996, number one? At that point in time, it hadn't received any briefings from the U.S., the Department of in the States on UAP. It hadn't even seen any of the classified information that was included in ODILI's preliminary assessment. And in that same document, the Chief of Air Force brief on UAP, it said categorically that Australia has no desire

to collaborate with allies on the topic of UAP. So it had absolutely no interest, and it hadn't touched the subject since 1996, yet it was able to make this amazing determination that move along folks, there's nothing to see here. And we live in a very different world. in 2024 than what we did at 19906. And even two years ago, the Australian Department of Defense

has changed its position quite significantly on UAP. And we can get into that, obviously, with the UAP caucus working group. But that's a huge, long-winded answer for you. But that's probably the document that I'm most proud of and being able to secure for my fellow Aussies that are interested in this topic and want to get a better understanding

as to what the Australian Department of Defense's position, current position is on the UAP topic. That's amazing, man. Because, yeah, I mean, and you look at, take the United States, for example. I mean, they said that Project Blue Book was their final look into the topic, their final conclusions, and that they were no longer officially investigating. And then what happens? You know, we learn about atyip. So it's not until they're backed into a corner that they will finally,

admit something. So they were probably hoping that people like you would go away and stop inquiring. And, you know, that will bring us. I don't think they encounter, I don't think the Australian Department of Defense and Royal Australian Air Force envisioned there to be a growing chorus of, of Aussies like me and others that are even in the chat, that take this topic seriously from an Australian perspective. And we want to know why our government is. is so reluctant and reticent to formally acknowledge that the phenomenon exists and why it doesn't want to investigate the topic and reach a conclusion as to what it may be, because the United States Department of Defense and U.S. Congress has said time and time again

over the last several years that UAP is not isolated to the United States. It's a global phenomenon, and it represents a clear and present national security threat and safety of flight risk. And for the Australian Department of Defense and, I might say, the UK and New Zealand to be completely ignoring this topic publicly. Behind closed doors, I suspect it's a very different conversation, but publicly, they're still continuing towing the same old line that move along folks. There's nothing to see here.

We know what's in our airspace. There's nothing to worry about, which I believe couldn't be further from the truth. Right. Okay. So closed doors. That's where I want to go next. I want to talk a little about UFOs in Australia a little bit. case history and whatnot grant but let's just while we're at it let's move to this current

document that you received and this group that you were able to find out about that nobody knew about um closed doors the five eyes um maybe set that up a little for us if you don't mind of what the five eyes is what it represents what they might be withholding or holding and then um yeah then we can dive into what you were able to uncover about Australia's involvement in all of this. So yeah, could you maybe set that up a little for us? So for the benefit of your audience that don't know, so the Five Eyes is a longstanding intelligence alliance between the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand and historically have shared signals intelligence to better understand the threats that each

of the Five Eyes member countries are potentially exposed to, how they can mitigate those threats, exploit their strengths, and so on. So it was all about sharing signals intelligence. It's kind of broadened since Five Eyes was kind of implemented as an intelligence alliance. So rewind the clock to the 31st of May of last year, where at NASA's public hearing on UAP, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick presented, he spoke to the independent study team, and he was asked a question by, I believe, was the chair of the NASA Independent Study Team panel about, well, what is R.O., the all-domain anomaly resolution office, which we know Dr. Sean Copacrick was the director of at the time, the chair of this NASA panel asked, well, what is RO currently doing with our allies to better

understand the phenomenon. And it was in that moment that Dr. Sean Cote Patrick revealed to the world that he had just held his inaugural Five Eyes Forum, a meeting or briefing, on UAP. And when I first heard that, I was like, holy crap, because Australia has not taken any interest in this topic. And now the U.S. is in potentially holding a meeting, a briefing for all of the Five Eyes partners. So, and to RO's credit, it was actually doing exactly what it was congressionally mandated to do. You know, the legislation that was that was passed some years ago, one of the duties of the office that is implemented to investigate UAP, which is currently RO, one of their duties is to coordinate with allies and international partners of the

United States to better understand the nature and extent of UAP. So RO was doing exactly what it was mandated to do. And it got me thinking, well, if a Australia hasn't had really any interest in this topic since 1996, has no current desire to collaborate with allies to better understand the issue. And now it's getting invited by its Five Eyes, your ally, Orca's partner, the US ally, for this Five Eyes forum on UAP, that got me very interested. So I submitted a number of both Australian and US Freedom of Information Act requests. And one of them was, I submitted a a FOIA request to NASA because at that briefing, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, he stated that,

you know, Dan Evans, who is one of the NASA independent study team members, was in attendance at this Five Eyes Forum on UAP. And NASA is subject to FOIA. So I submitted a U.S. Freedom of Information Act request going after emails for Dan Evans pertaining to the Five Eyes Forum and UAP. And a couple of months later, I get a FOIA response with some documents that show that Dan Evans did attend the Five Eyes Forum on UAP, as did Mark McEnnerney, who we know is now the NASA's director of UAP research. And there were a number of redactions that were made in the emails that I got back through FOIA for Dan Evans. And those redactions were referred to the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense.

INS, OUSD, INS, for RO to review and for the initial denial authority to decide if the redactions could be cleared or if they had to stay redacted, if they were revealing sensitive information. So that kind of was the first request, and then it, from that, stemmed these other documents that I got, which was in June of this year, so only what's that last month, it was this meeting agenda for the Five Eyes Forum on UAP, which was officially labeled or identified as not the Five Eyes Forum on UAP, but it was officially named the Five Eyes inaugural UAP Caucus working group. And so its name was officially out there. And in this meeting agenda, which will review in just a moment, this is actually, so this,

meeting agenda came out last month in June. Now only today, this is kind of an exclusive for your viewers. Only today, I got response to another Freedom of Information Act request that I submitted in June of last year for emails for Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick pertaining specifically to this Five Eyes Forum on UAP, which we now know is the Five Eyes inaugural UAP Caucus Working group. So that's the document that, you know, we can walk through now. And if you want to start from the very last document, that's probably a good starting point. So whenever you want to scroll down to the very bottom. The very bottom. Okay. That would be this one here. Yeah. So I think that's the, so that's the last one. Now my eyes, I'm blind as a badger. So I'm going to. Let me see if I can make it

bigger for you. This is all new to me. If you hit, if you hit, at the top of the center top of the page, you got the plus icon. If you hit the plus, you should be able to... Yep, yep, yep. There we go. So, and what's interesting, just for the, you know,

before we review this document, what's interesting for your non-Australian audience is that Senator Wish Wilson, who I have a relationship with, and I've apprised him of updates on UAP, and basically based on what I've found through FOIA in both the US and Australia. And so Senator W.

Wish Wilson, once he caught wind of the fact that there was this Five Eyes Forum on UAP that happened in May of last year, he submitted written questions, questions on notice to the Australian Department of Offense saying, did Australia attend this Five Eyes Forum? Did Australia attend a United States briefing on UAPs? And in July of last year, the Australian Department of Defense responded to the Senator's question in writing saying, no, Australia did not attend. the United States briefing on UAP, which was extremely odd to me. Why would Australia not attend a briefing that its U.S. ally has invited it to attend to talk about the national security

safety of flight risk that UAP posed? So the senator wasn't satisfied with that response. So he submitted some months later a follow-up written question, question on a notice, which, and I actually authored this question for the senator to submit. I proposed questions that he submit. And the question that was asked of the Australian Department of Defense on the 2nd of November of last year was verbatim, did Australia receive an invitation to attend ARA's Five Eyes Forum on UAP in May 2023? If it did, if so, why did it not accept the invitation? On what grounds did it not accept the invitation? And at that point, a month later on the 15th of December, the Australian Department of Defense came back and did a 180-degree back-flip admission

and said, oh, yes, no, a defense representative at the Australian Embassy in Washington, D.C. did attend. So they couldn't organize a piss up in a brewer and figure out if they'd attended or not attended. There's just this complete lack of transparency and confusion. And so this document that came out last month, which is an extension, this is an extension of that document. it shows categorically that all of the Five Eyes members were invited to attend this Five Eyes UAP caucus working group meeting and share intelligence and information on UAP.

And that kind of can lead into, I guess, this document. Cool. Wow. Yeah, that's, it's studying, man. Yeah, it's like, oh, oh, yeah, we just so happened to have a representative in the U.S. They were there on vacation, so they just snuck into the meeting. and, you know, that was a crazy. So, I mean, Ross Coulthart always says,

well, always assume a screw up before a conspiracy. So it could have just been that they are incompetent, and they didn't do their homework and due diligence and ask around. Or, and all, there was some level of deception played, you know, when they said, no, no, we didn't attend, not thinking that someone like me and Senator Wish Wilson would be doing our due diligence and following up on this. So they kind of got caught red-handed and red-faced,

having to make this admission that they did attend. So this document that I received today is part of, you know, it's an email chain, it's emails from and to Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick. And I think it's the first documents we've actually seen to date through FOIA that have actually been directly from or to Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick. So this last email, you can see this is on the 17th of May. This is a week before the Five Eyes inaugural UAB. working, caucus working group meeting.

So if you scroll to the very bottom, it's basically just saying, you know, please, I can, I'm blind as a badger, I have to put... No, I got you, brother. Please extend an invitation in supporting logistics

for our Five Eyes meeting next week to Redacted. They should already have their clearances per inserted here, but double check with Redacted. We are holding it here and not the Pentagon, correct. And that's,

from, and I just found it funny as to how he signs off, Dr. Kay. Dr. Kay. So that's from Kirkpatrick a week prior to this Five Eyes meeting. So if you now go up the page to the next document, it's basically revealing that, if you scroll down a bit further, might be at the top of the next, is it that one? Or maybe, sorry, go to... Go down, what's on the next page, the top of the next page? The top of the next page, sorry.

The last page. Yeah, is there anything at the top of that or have already, oh, yeah, sorry, yeah. So now scroll on up, scroll your way up. So keep going because that's the second page of that email chain. Keep going up. So this is now the document that is the interesting one. So this was, if you scroll up a little bit further,

you'll have the send date. So this was on, you know, less than a week after Kirkpatrick sent that email. This is on May 23rd, a day before this Five Eyes, UAP, inaugural UAP caucus working group, man. It says, Dr. Kay, below is the updated agenda for the Five Eyes meeting tomorrow. Attached is the list of attendees outside of our office. The briefing is essentially the same as the GISRC, which I believe is significant, and we'll touch on that in a moment. However, redacted, will be there to speak

specific concerning their areas. And then it kind of goes into below what the agenda is for this briefing. It's basically saying, who's going to be in attendance? So it's not just representatives from RO. It's also a representative for the ODNI, from the FAA, NASA, and all of the five-eyes partners. What's what the intention is behind the meeting, you know, basically where it's going to be held and so on. So you can see it's basically an all-day meeting that was scheduled to be had. And there's a significant number of people that are attending this meeting. One of the other documents that is with this release is a separate document that's completely

redacted. I'm not sure if you saw that in the email. Yeah. Let me pull that up. I mean, there's not much to show, but it goes to show like, you know, the old Staten Friedman thing. Like you get a document and the entire thing's blacked out. So the other document is just a one-pageer,

but it's completely redacted and it's the attendee list. So, you know, we don't know how exhaustive the attendee list is in terms of the name of the person, their title, their number, a bio on them. It could be an incredibly long list of attendees or it could be, you know, 10 to 12 people. But if you take into consideration on this agenda document, everyone that it's disclosed as will be represented at this meeting, there's potentially a significant number of people that are going to be in the room. And so it's got this agenda, you know, 745, check in at the Pentagon, you know, get your visitors

badge. This meeting was a top secret slash SCI meeting, so we can assume that it was going to be held in a skiff, which means you can't take in your mobile phone, you can't take any electronics with you. 830 to 845, administrative remarks and introductions. everyone, you know, kind of does around the table. 8.45 to 10 a.m. So for an hour and 15 minutes, you've got Dr. Kirkpatrick doing a welcoming address

and providing UAPF. So RRO's operations, its analysis to date, strategic comms, an update from the FAA, an update from NASA. NIM, which is the National Intelligence Manager for Aviation, who we all know put that UFO image on their logo. Remember that controversy? Oh, my gosh. I almost forgot about that.

Yeah, that's right. It was a weird day. NIMM, which is National Intelligence Manager for Maritime. So you've got this kind of all-day agenda. If you scroll on down to the next page, this is where it gets interesting for those of us outside of the U.S. We've got a break, morning tea break, then 1015 to 1130, so for an hour and 15 minutes,

FVEY, which is an acronym for Five Eyes, Five Eyes partner updates. Australia's first cab off the rank, Canada, the UK and New Zealand. So each Five Eyes partner was given a decent chunk of time to present to everyone in attendance at this working group meeting about what its country is doing currently on UAP, what intelligence it's collected, you know, intelligence sharing with the US. So it begs a question, well, what was Australia able to bring to the table and add to the discussion if it hasn't done anything since 1996 and it's got no current recording and reporting protocols in place for the Australian Defence Force on UAP.

But why I think Australia probably had something of significance to present is I can say with a high degree of confidence that the Australian representative that attended this Five Eyes Forum on UAP was more than likely a member, a representative of the Defence Intelligence Organization, which is exempt from FOIA. And so I suspect, as do a lot of my other colleagues, that the Australian intelligence services, namely the Defence Intelligence Organization, knows a hell of a lot more about UAP than the Australian Defence Force services do, like the Army, the Navy, the Defence Space Command and the Royal Australian Air Force. And I don't think they've been sharing intelligence all that well, keeping the Royal Australian Air Force apprised of what Australia has been doing

in terms of its engagement with the US on UAP. We know that Canada is taking UAP more seriously in Australia, the UK and New Zealand, not as seriously as the US, but it's got its own efforts, Sky Project Canada. And the UK has been very mum on the topic as well. It hasn't wanted to talk about it, as has New Zealand. So I'm really interested to learn, well, what did Australia, the UK and New Zealand

have to bring to the table at that Five Eyes Forum? And, you know, that went for an hour and 15 minutes. Then there's a lunch break where it wasn't hosted by R. Everyone had to head on down to the food court in the Pentagon to buy their own money. Before that, there was some discussions on Five Eyes UAP collaboration, a way ahead plan, so an action plan for what we should all do collectively as Five Eyes members going forward. And then they would have, you know, some more discussions in the afternoon about future way ahead plan. So, you know, without laboring the point, it really is an interesting document because it shows without any, it shows without any ambiguity whatsoever that each of the Five Eyes member countries did attend this UAP caucus working group meeting.

The first of, I suspect many, and we don't want, don't know what RO's schedule is on future engagements, but we now know that there is formal engagement and intelligence sharing across the five eyes to, help ARO achieve its mission of better understanding the nature and extent of UAP, and for the other countries, Australia, Canada, UK, New Zealand, to learn from ARO and maybe get off its ass and start taking the topic seriously as well in each of their home countries. So it's so telling. I mean, the fact that like Australia wasn't only present but did share information of some sort. I mean, how do we, how do we get that? I mean, what I'm sort of imagining is you look at something like how, you know, and politics aside, you look at what Burchett did at that hearing with the, I think it was like

the secretary of the Department of Energy or someone representing the Department of Energy. And I mean, honestly, he like burned her. Like you, we had to like subpoena you to come here. and talk anything about UAP, and you guys never share any of your information with Arrow because you're quote unquote exempt. And if we are to assume that whoever Australia's representative was who shared information is also exempt from things like FOIA and what you have in Australia, do you think we have any hope of ever getting the information that they shared, or how do we even begin to approach something like that?

It's a great question. So your average Joe like me and others in Australia that want to know what Australia contributed to this Five-Vo's forum, we've probably got none and Buckley's chance of ever finding that out. However, those that have a better chance of being privy to that information are our elected representatives, if they have the necessary clearances and need to know. So Senator Wish Wilson is much more better position to find out than I am what Australia contributed to that Five Eyes Forum because he's a participating member of the Senate estimates for the defense, foreign affairs and trade portfolio. And so he would be in a position to use some of his authority as a participating member

for that portfolio to find out what, to what extent I'm not sure, but he would be able to at least get some briefing or some information on Australia's engagement and potentially what information it's shared with RO at that forum. So unfortunately, that's the thing that's frustrating is because the intelligence services are all exempt from foreign Australia, your average Joe is never going to know what's going on behind closed doors. And look, I get it rightly so, you know, when there are things pertaining to national security interest and international relations, I get it. I understand why the intelligence

services have information that's classified and so on. But if there's nothing to the UAP, UFO topic, if it is all as RO positions it as at the moment, that it's all misidentification, it's all drone technology, it's all balloons, it's our own technology that's classified that people are misidentifying, misinterpreting as UAP. If there's nothing to it, why are the highest levels of classification and security being placed on the UAP topic. You're one of the, the couple of the acronyms that are in that, in that email,

there's a reference to T.S., which is top secret. There's a reference to SI, which is sensitive information. There's reference to TK, which is an acronym for what's called talent, talent keyhole. And anyone that's watched Ross Kooltart's most recent, need to know with Bryce Abel,

you know, he talked about, this document that I was able to secure it for release. And talent keyhole is one of, it's, it's all about, as it's relevant to the five eyes, it's all applicable to satellite imagery, satellite data and so on. So you have basically, you know, top secret, sensitive intelligence, talent keyhole, relevant of the five eyes, is about as, as high as it gets for intelligence, sharing across the five eyes. So why is UAP being given this such a high classification,

top secret, special compartment information and so on, if there's nothing to the topic? Now, it could be that it's all of the sensor equipment that RO is working on, with it's currently working on a Gremlin asset system to help sensor system to identify, better identify, UAP, and all of the other current classified sensors that maybe the other services are using, maybe that's why it's all classified because of the actual sensor technology. But it still begs the question, you know, if you've got, you know, the UAP UFO topic is,

is there's really nothing to it, then, you know, why have you got all these levels of classification? And to this date, you know, we're really yet to see very. very little photographic and visual evidence from RO as to any of these cases that they've resolved. I mean, look, in February of 2003, when the Chinese spy balloon was shot down and those three still unidentified aerial objects were shot down by the US Air Force, the Pentagon is quick to release a photo from the U2 dragon lady, the U2 spy plane from the cockpit of the Chinese spy balloon, And it's quick to release, you know, Reaper MQ9 footage of the Russian fighter jets

dousing fuel on the Reaper drones. But it hasn't released any footage pertaining to those still three unidentified aerial objects that are shot down. So if we can't get any information, visual, photographic video evidence on those three things that were potentially prosaic, what chance have we got on getting anything that we can sink our teeth in, photographic? or video on UAP that RO is looking at. Only the breadcrumbs that they throw our way

when they consider a case closed and they've, you know, kind of sanitized it, scrapped of any classified information. That's what's incredibly frustrating. So I unfortunately don't think that we, the general public, are ever going to be privy to, you know, we'll get maybe scraps from R.O.

and through foyer as to what's going on behind the scenes, we'll never get a full picture of the puzzle. We're just given puzzle pieces, and that's what's frustrating. It is, it is. And, you know, to this day, it frustrates me that we still are no closer in the public of knowing what those shootdowns were.

I do want to touch on that briefly, Grant, because you also did a video, and we will link your videos in the show notes. I do have the UAP caucus working group video in the show notes, guys, so be sure to go watch that. Grant goes much more in depth on all of that. But when it comes to those shootdowns, Grant, like we talked about when information is shared and what isn't.

Do you think any of the Five Eyes know what those shootdowns were or weren't? I'm pretty confident that the U.S. knows what they were. Actually, I got to be careful how I've word that. I think they know what it was and what. what it wasn't. I guess it would be a better way of putting that. But do you think Australia has any idea what those shootdowns were or weren't? So we have to kind of speculate if it were, if those three unidentified aerial objects were prosaic, then yes, I would say without doubt that Australia, Canada, the UK and New Zealand know exactly what those three unidentified aerial objects

were. And I was able, and I covered this, as you mentioned, you know, in the live stream that I did back in, when was it in, was it last month? Yeah, last month was on the shootdown, what Australia knows about the shootdown of the Chinese Bible and three unidentified aerial objects. And I was able to secure for release through the Australian Freedom Information Act, a document that an email chain, and this was in the days, the days, the days of the, the days immediately after those three unidentified aerial objects were shot down. And the Royal Australia Air Force, the Chief of Air Force, had requested a formal briefing from the U.S. Department of Defense

via the Australian Air attache in Washington, D.C., requested information and a briefing on the shootdown. So it could understand for the benefit of Australia's defense the identity of those objects. So that's a giveaway right there. the source of the objects, another giveaway, and what Australia could learn gain from the learnings, you know, the gain,

understand anything from the US's response to those incidents. So what could Australia learn from how the US responded, basically? And so I was able to secure for release through Australia for an email chain, which clearly has, you know, correspondence going back and forth between those in senior positions of leadership in the Royal Australian Air Force and other agencies. And in this email chain, it's heavily redacted due to exemption S7, which is information within the holdings of an intelligence agency, like, for example, defense intelligence organization. And it also had significant redactions under exemption

S33A 2 and 3, which is national security as well as potential harm to international relations with an ally like the United States if that information was disclosed. So I 100% believe that Australia knows exactly what those objects were if they were all prosaic in nature. If they weren't all prosaic in nature, as there has been murmurs that the object, the object that was shot at over Dead Horse Alaska may not have been prosaic. To what extent the Five Eyes know everything about that encounter? I don't know, but it makes sense that if RO is trying to get to the bottom of the UAP issue

that, and it wants to learn from its allies and it wants its allies to learn from the United States in an effort to broaden the security of the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance, overall, then it would make sense that if RO is privy to information about the shootdown of those three unidentified aerial objects, which we know from Kirk Patrick's testimony in Congress in April of last year when he testified before Gillibrand, that his office RO had some level of involvement or participation in the shootdown event. So I suspect if RO is privy to that information, then it's more than likely been shared at the Five Eyes level,

if it is UAP, if it's unidentified that they're dealing with. But if it's simply prosaic, yeah, you can bet your bottom dollar that the Five Eyes, all of them know about it, and they know what it is. But for us, average Joe in the public, I don't think we're ever going to know unless the White House decides to be transparent as it promised it would. and reveal what those objects are.

I don't think it ever will because I think that was such a massive embarrassment for the Biden administration that they don't want to talk about it. They just don't want to touch it. Absolutely. You know, and, God, that Dead Horse Alaska one, man, it just keeps gripping my curiosity. I did, I should mention, I did speak to a resident that lives very close to Dead Horse who claimed that he did see the recovery. efforts of material

shot down. Now, we were told that they never recovered anything, that the climate was just too rough and they weren't able to get to any of it, but that they did shoot something down. This witness told me, I saw it.

I saw them put stuff on flatbeds and in, you know, one of those big aircraft that flies other aircraft that they put it into there and they carted it away. Again, this is one man's word. You know, I was supposed to be going to Dead Horse to actually investigate this.

Those plans, unfortunately, have fallen apart for the time being. But stay tuned. You never know what can happen. But yeah, I was happy to get your thoughts on all of that. Because I think the UAP shootdown thing just came and went and everyone just kind of gave up on it. But it's clear that there's still things to be gleaned from that. Absolutely. And, you know, there's still so much more that we only get breadcrumbs on a lot of these things.

And we want to know so, so much more. And, you know, to go back to that document that you showed on screen, just very briefly to kind of hit home the point, in that email chain, I don't know if you're able to bring that back up just so I could, let me. Yeah, give me one sec. Mention it. Get that for you here. You know, for those that haven't seen this document, they'll find it. interesting. But for me, that's, you know, saw the meeting agenda and schedule of Avaro's meeting last month and now to see this extended commentary. This is what I find interesting. So if you just

zoom in on the first paragraph that's in bold, so if you zoom on in, so you can see there, it says the second sentence, this briefing is essentially the same as the GISRC. Now, I had no idea when I received this FOIA document earlier today what the GISRC is. So I reached out to a few trusted sources, and they were able to offer some suggestions. And it quite possibly could stand for an acronym for global intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability. Now, that is, you know, with the United States Navy in the early 2000s. And essentially, one of my trusted sources, why they think this is significant is because it seems,

to fit perfectly with the context of UAP and obviously the Five Eyes. Now, it's an old acronym. The term global intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance capability is from the 2000s, and the US DOD changed their acronyms all the time. So it's interesting that there's an old acronym that's been referenced in this email. But what my trusted source found interesting is that if this is what that that acronym GISRC represents this global intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance capability. It's interesting because it seems to indicate that the GISRC tasking is responsible for

UAP detection and reporting. So in which case if this is the same as the 20-year-old reference to GISRC, then the GISRC has potentially been tasked with UAP detection for at least, if not all, all of those 20 years. So that's a breadcrumb. That's a huge breadcrumb for potentially the likes of someone like John Greenwald Jr. Who can now go after documents pertaining to RO's briefing with or at this relevant to the GISRC and see what other information that reveals. And that's why FOIA is of significant value. It won't ever give you all pieces of the puzzle,

but it will give you breadcrumbs to other pieces of other puzzles. And that's why I really advocate for what John does and has been doing for several decades, because without something like FOIA and folks like John Greenwald Jr. going after it, we wouldn't know nearly as much as we currently do on the UAP topic. You know, we would rely purely on anecdotal. evidence from what we hear from, you know, subject matter experts, if there are any in the

space, that come on podcasts and so on. So, you know, FOIA is the official government record that you can take to the bank and say, well, this is an official document of the US government. Now, is it, is the contents of the document accurate and truthful? That's always, that's sometimes always debatable, but it's an official record of the United States government. And that's why I think it's important because we can take that as the official position of the United States government and use it to reveal breadcrumbs to other pieces of the puzzle. Absolutely. Does breadcrumbs lead to something? They always do. Hopefully. Hopefully. I mean, and unfortunately, I don't think, you know, we're never going to be in a position where we'll get, I don't think, some paradigm

shifting document or disclosure through FOIA. It's only ever going to, you know, reveal bits and pieces of information of a much broader picture. And that's why I think it's important that folks that take this topic seriously do engage their elected representatives so that they can help inform the thinking of the likes of Luna, Burchett, Moscovich and others, Gillibrand, who want to advocate for their constituents and what's important to them. So, I mean, you've now got a chorus of US congressmen and Congresswomen that are taking the topic more seriously today than they ever have and a lot more

people talking about it. Now, you know, one could argue, well, have they been successful in being able to bring more information to the table? Well, I would say they have because David Grush and his explosive testimony before the House Oversight Committee in July of last year, alongside David Fraver and Ryan Graves. Now, we, the general public, can't verify any of the information that David Grush testified to, but you would want to hope that there are folks within Congress that have the necessary clearances and need to know that they can hopefully, at some point, start digging in and getting to the bottom of it.

And we know that the intelligence community inspector general has. taken David Grush's reprisal complaint. And we know from Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick's own mouth with his recent interview, great interview that Marrick von Rennon-Rencamp did, that R.O. was privy to the information in David Grush's ICIG complaint that did not pertain to reprisals. So all of the claims that David Grush has made against him interviewing 40 witnesses, some of them, primary witnesses about this crash retrieval

and your legacy crash retrieval reverse engineering program. Well, Kurt Patrick is saying RO is privy to all of that information. Now, he's saying that, no, it didn't reveal anything new. Well, that's RO's position. It would be interesting to learn what the official findings are of the ICIG and what other men and women within Congress can get to the bottom of in due course. Because unfortunately, the House Oversight Committee has still not heard David Grush's classified testimony.

They don't have the necessary clearances to hear his classified testimony in a skiff. Then that's the problem with the House Oversight Committee trying to push for answers from David Grush. They just are not going to, at the moment, get him in a skiff. And I know there have been conversations for a while now that, well, maybe what the House Oversight Committee has to do is form this Senate Select Committee on U.S.

where it can get the necessary read-ins, one-time read-ins or clearances, and get subpoena authority to actually compel witnesses to come before Congress and testify about what they knew about these claims, these explosive claims of legacy crash retrieval and reverse engineering programs. So, you know, it's an ongoing marathon that we're kind of all, you know, plotting our way through to try and see if we can get closer to the finish line. and get some answers. So it's an ongoing effort. Yeah. You know, and so is the investigation, you know, by the Attorney General. So we have to keep that in mind, too, as we move forward. Like,

this isn't done. It feels like kind of a low right now with the whole David Grush thing. Everyone's like, I want to hear from the witnesses. I want to hear more. Where's this expose this dude was supposed to write? There is an ongoing investigation. So I can imagine it's tough right now. I do take some comfort in knowing that Arrow did speak with the 40 witnesses, or at least some of them, that Grush claims do have spoken with as well. But like you said, they kind of came back and said, yeah, we spoke to them, nothing new. That's Arrow's word. So I'm glad you brought that up.

So who knows, man, who knows. Well, you don't know who to believe, too, because the whole intention behind making a protected disclosure that they, David Grush made and presumably the 40 witnesses that he interviewed, you know, those of them that made also a protected disclosure to the ICIG. Well, that's a, you know, under the Whistleblower Protection Act or the, you know, protected disclosure for whistleblowers, the identity of the individual is not to be disclosed to anyone other than the ICIG. So I don't believe Arro would actually know the identity of those. 40 witnesses that David Grush interviewed that then went to the ICIG to provide their, you know,

firsthand evidence. So and, and, you know, David Grush, I believe in, it was through Merrick von Renencamp, I believe, made a statement that he is of the understanding that only, I believe, three of the 40 witnesses that he interviewed went to, went to ARO. So, what about all of the other 37 witnesses that he interviewed? Has ARO not even been privy to any of their testimony? If not, how can Arro have this position that, well, yeah, we talk to everyone. We're able to cross-reference it with other known saps and all of the information that we're able to get our hands on because we don't have any, we've got all the necessary authorities that we need to get information

from the IC, the intelligence community and so on. But you haven't spoken to all of the witnesses that David Grush interviewed. And if some of those remaining 37 witnesses have firsthand knowledge, as David Grush testified to in July of last year, then that still leaves a big question mark, I believe, on the whole thing. Absolutely. A question mark. my friend. Grant, look, I want to take a quick break if that's okay with you. And what I want to talk about on the other side here with you is a couple Australian UFO cases, one of which I know you're very familiar with, one of which I find of great interest. And then I also want to break down a little bit the documentary series that you were a part of over there in Australia as well. So guys, stick with us. We're going to take a quick Patreon message break and we will be right back on the other side. with our favorite Australian UFO researcher, Grant Love Vok.

Stay tuned, guys. We'll see you on the other side. The Summer in the Sky's podcast is free to listen to every week. But if you would like to help support the show, we have a very active Patreon page where you give what you think the show is worth. In return, you'll get early access to the main show, bonus episodes, and priority to ask our guests your listener questions. Your support truly makes the show continue and grow.

So to learn more and to join, visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. All right. And welcome back, guys, to Somewhere in the Skies. If you're just joining us, we are with Grant LeVoc and we just covered a lot. So be sure to check it out. If you're just joining us, it will be in the archives in perpetuity. And this episode will also be available on the. main podcast feed for next week's

Summer in the Sky's podcast. So Grant, moving, I guess, shifting gears a little bit, as they say. I want to talk UFOs in Australia, some of the case history that we do have out of your neck of the woods. And probably the most visible one out there right now is

the Westall incident. I know you've spoken at length on other shows about this, but you had a very unique opportunity, unlike many others who just know about the case, to actually meet with some of the witnesses of this event. So would you mind telling us a little about what the event was in Westall back in 1966, was it? Yeah, six of April, six of April 1966. And every country, maybe not every country, but many countries have there, for lack of a better word, Roswell. And this is really Australia's most significant, still unresolved cold case, that continues to linger

to this day. So on the 6th of April, 1996 at a school called Westall High School, which is about 45 minutes kind of south-easterly from Melbourne Airport, which is where I'm kind of located. So about 45 minutes from me, at recess, so approximately 10, 20 in the morning on the 6th of April, 1966, this is, I believe, the second last day of term before school breaks up for the Easter break. At, you know, a few minutes before the recess bill rings at 10, 20, a school girl, a student runs, bursts into a classroom, a science class, and yells out to the teacher. Mr. Greenwood, Mr. Greenwood, there is flying saucer,

there's flying saucers outside of something to that effect. And there was this, you know, when the recess bell goes, a few minutes later, there's this massive commotion, and there's this huge exodus of children running out into the sports oval, where, you know, and it's reported that, you know, several hundred children witnessed something anomalous flying in the sky, or hovering and flying the sky above their school. Many of the children recall it resembled an object that was flying saucer in shape.

It's not entirely clear as to how many objects were seen. There were reports there was one. There were other reports that it was upwards of three. But many, many hundreds of children saw something that they could not readily identify in the skies above their school. on the 6th of April, 1966. And after some time, it was reported that this object that resembled a flying saucer, you know, moved position and made its way to the south end of the school and continued for about a mile south of the school to a densely wooded area that was called the Grange,

where a lot of the high school students would actually frequent for their cross-country runs. So many of the school students knew this Grange area. And a number of the students ran to this Grange area followed what was observed as resembling a flying saucer to this area. And it's hard to corroborate a lot of the testimony from the witnesses that reported that they saw this flying saucer in the Grange's. area, either it was reported to have landed or come into close contact with the ground in the Grange area. And, you know, this is 58 years ago. And 58 years later, it still remains as much of an unresolved mystery as it did on that

day. And you have reports of the military rocking up at the school later in the day with, you trucks and jeeps in military attire uniforms that, you know, there were people seen, military seen to have cordoned off an area near the Grange and reportedly had devices in their possession that resembled Geiger counters and metal detectors and these sorts of things. And they were allegedly reported to be soil samples that were taken off site by the military and who knows what was done with them. And the children were told to shut up about the event. There was this special assembly that was convened by the headmaster later that day,

where the school children were told you are not to talk about what you've seen today, you're to shut up about it. It's not something that needs to be ever discussed again. And it's not just the children that observed this anomalous object or objects resembling a flying saucer in the sky above their school. There was also potentially two teachers. One of them was a gentleman by Andrew Greenwood, who was 20 years of age on the day of the incident. And he was the science teacher who this schoolgirl burst in his room and said, Mr.

Greenwood, Mr. Green, there's a flying saucer. And so he went out into the sports ground and he observed something anomalous in the sky above the school. Now, he doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't, he never. testified or his recollection was that it didn't resemble a flying saucer to him. But, you know, different times that the things, the thing were, uh, or seen different locations, um, different people seeing, you know, everyone is different. How we see and process things might be different as well. But there's also another teacher who was reported to have seen, uh, objects in the sky

above the school. And she had a camera. And it was reported. It was alleged that she took a camera and photographed what was in the sky above Westall High School. And like with any great UFO story or account, when the military and allegedly government officials rocked up on site, that camera was confiscated. It was taken and it never saw the light of day. And you even had the local news team, Channel 9 news team, come to the school in the afternoon before the day. out and interview a number of these children that were primary witnesses, saw something, you know, earlier that day. And it was on the, I think, the 6 o'clock or 7 o'clock, the evening news that day, there was a report on Channel 9, which is one of our leading stations in Australia, about this

incident. And as it would be, with any good UFO case, that report has also mysteriously vanished and never seen the light. Now, it could have been that that footage, the real from that report was just destroyed. There were poor retention, fire retention policies, that sort of thing. But, you know, it's just, and what's unfortunate about the Westall Flying Source incident is that 58 years later, there is not yet been any official documentation that's seen the light of day through FOIA, through the National Archives of Australia. there's never been any official explanation given by the Australian government,

the Australian Department of Defence about what it was that was responsible for what was seen above the Westall High School that day and was reported to have landed or come into close proximity with the ground at the Grange. And this is despite the fact that it's long been suggested that the now defunct Department of supply, apparently compiled a comprehensive report, investigated the Westall Flying Sorsa incident and compiled a comprehensive report. And wouldn't you know it, 58 years later, that report has never seen the light of date. So either it's been destroyed or it's been buried somewhere and it just has never come to

light through the National Archives of Australia. And folks like me and others that have done far greater work researching the Westall Flying Sorsa incident, like... Keith, Keith Basterfield, Bill Chalker, Ross Coulthard, and even Shane Ryan, who's, I would say, has probably been one of the lead researchers on the Westall incident. He put out, he was involved in a great documentary, some, a number of years ago now, called Westall 66, a suburban UFO mystery, which your viewers can find on YouTube if they're interested to watch it.

And what got me interested in the Westall incident is someone had suggested it to me, I had moved to Melbourne. I now live in Melbourne. And so I reached out to Shane Ryan and just asked him some preliminary questions about Westall. And he said to me that, you know, maybe you should think about getting down to the Grange because once a year, a number of the small number of the primary witnesses who are all in their 60s and 70s now, they get together once a year for a witness reunion event. And obviously they stopped doing that over COVID because we weren't allowed to go anywhere. But last year, April of 2023 was the first time that they had done it after a number of years. And so I thought, I'm going to get along to it. I'll

take my iPhone with me in case maybe a few folks are happy for me to ask some questions and get them on camera. And to my surprise and delight, you know, there were about five primary witnesses there on the day. And all of them were very willing and generous and giving in their time and open to me asking questions and to go on camera. And I ended up collecting a couple of hours of footage just on my iPhone that I thought, you know, I've got some really great long-form responses from some of these primary witnesses on what they recall and recollect from the day. It would be wonderful to put this in some form of documentary, if I can,

and showcase their testimony, you know, based on questions I was asking and just what they are a member of the day. And that kind of was what, you know, spawned this documentary, almost 90-minute documentary that I was able to put together, you know, really profiling the testimony of five of these primary witnesses and walking the viewer through an overview of the Westerle incident and some of the prosaic explanations that have been put forward to date as hypotheses. But, you know, 58 years later, the Westall incident, we're no closer to getting to the truth as to what it was that was observed in the skies above Westall High School that day and at the densely wooded area of the Grange. So it's just a truly fascinating case. I wasn't able

to attend the Westall Witness reunion event earlier this year in April, and it had a much bigger turnout than the year prior. So hopefully I'll get a chance to go next year. and just get along and it's an opportunity to meet some new folks on the day as well. But yeah, truly, truly fascinating case that James Fox even documented in the phenomenon that he put out in 2020. So anyone that has seen the phenomenon may recall that. If you haven't seen it, definitely recommend you give it a good watch. So it's, yeah, truly fascinating, unresolved cold case to this day.

Yeah, I love that case, man. And guys, go watch Grant's video because you also get to see him sink a 40-foot put on the ninth hole, on the back nine. No, I'm just kidding, man. It was so cool to see you in your golf gear and everything in that video too, buddy. It cost me a bomb to play on that course, too, because there's a golf course that's adjacent to where it's a lead to the flying source of landed. So I wanted to get out there and not only have around, but see what it could potentially have looked like through the vantage. point of golfers on the day because it's long been talked about that there were golfers on the eighth hole of the Spring Valley Golf Course that saw something descend from the skies

above the Grange and come down. So, you know, and that's what's fascinating about West Os, not just the schoolchildren that witnessed something. It's also a number of teachers, at least one for sure with Andrew Greenwood. You have a market gardener who's name is Paul Smith, who I interviewed in the documentary. He was 16 years of age on the day that happened, and he wasn't a student. He was working in the market gardens adjacent to this densely wooded area of the Grange. You have another school student by the name of D. Satterke, who was a student of another school several miles away. And on her morning tea break, she saw something in the distance that Banked and resembled a flying saucer.

and you have members of the general public, including potentially golfers, that saw something as well. So, you know, you have a myriad of different witnesses from all walks of life and all backgrounds that saw something that they couldn't necessarily explain on the day. And what frustrates so many of the primary witnesses, certainly ones that I spoke to and interviewed in April of last year, is to this day, what frustrates. them the most is they were told to shut up about it. They were told not to talk about it. And if it was something that was so prosaic,

you would think that 58 years later, there would be some documentation or some official explanation as to what it was. But to this day, there's nothing. And they were, their myth that they were told not to talk about it. And that's not just the students as well. Andrew Greenwood, the teacher, he had members of, you know, military men in military attire rock up at his home, his private residence unannounced and unwelcome,

knocking on his door, and, you know, basically laying a veiled threat on him and saying, you're not to talk about what you saw, you know, on that day at Westall High School, because if you do, it will be very easy for people to make an assumption that you were drunk on the day that it happened, and you might lose your job. So he was given a veiled threat. So why if it was something prosaic of people being told to shut up about it? And I don't know what it was that was seen above the in the skies above Westall. I would love to know.

And more importantly, I would love to know why they were told to shut up about it. Yeah. Why did they go to such great lengths? I agree with you. Well, Grant, you know, there have been many cases in U.S. There have been many cases about UFOs in Australia that a lot of people don't know about. You know, I covered, you know, the Knoll family incident that occurred, you know, where the family was lifted in their car by a UFO, drop back down. There was physical trace evidence left behind on the car of what had happened.

Crazy case. In my most current book, I have a case by Daly, one of our regulars here at somewhere in the skies, who, while working in the military, and the Outback had a crazy close encounter incident happen to them as well. But I'd like to know from you, do you have a favorite Australian UFO case that besides Westall, obviously being one of the most out in the forefront? Yeah, do you have a favorite case? So definitely Westall is by far the one I'm most intrigued by and interested, because I've done so much research and homework on it and only dive down a couple of rabbit holes. I mean, there are so many other layers to the Westall incident, which I won't get into,

but I mean, I only touched on such a small part of it based on the testimony of a small number of primary witnesses. And there are a number of other fascinating cases throughout Australia's history. I mean, one that is another famous case in Victoria, Australia, where I currently live, is another one that I've kind of dived into, not nearly as extensively as the Westall incident, but there was a young pilot by the name of Frederick Valentich, who in 1978 was flying a light aircraft, a Cessna, around or above Cape Otway, which is kind of south of Melbourne.

And he reported to Melbourne air traffic control that he was observing some very strange lights, around, moving around and hovering around his aircraft. And unfortunately, Frederick Valentich lost his life. His plane vanished. It either crashed and was never recovered. And his body was never recovered. And his light aircraft was never recovered in its entirety.

There were some debris of a light aircraft that was found several years. later that some have suggested may have been a part of the Cessna that Frederick Valentich flew, but it's never been verified. And what is so incredibly chilling about the Frederick Valentich case is this extensive, this comprehensive back-and-forth radio transmission between Frederick Valentich, this young pilot and this gentleman at Air Traffic Control, Melbourne. And to this day, this happened in 1970. a year before I was born, or actually some months, it was in October, what was it, October, 1978, I was born on 1st of January 79,

so a couple months before I was born. And the radio transmission between Valentich and the air traffic controller is truly chilling. Now, there are a number of recreations that have been put out on YouTube and social media because the real recording has never seen the light of day. Now, it's out there. I know it's out there because I've actually heard it. I've listened to it. I know a number of your researchers and I have a network of folks that have been privy to that recording

and they were kind enough to play it for me. And it's actually 19 minutes long. The recreations that are out there in the public domain are only a couple of, you know, a couple of minutes long these recreations. This is Delta Sierra Juliet. Is there any known traffic below 5,000 feet? No, no, on traffic? It seems to be a large aircraft below 5,000 feet.

What type of aircraft is it? I cannot confirm. It's four bright. It seems to me like landing lights. The aircraft has just passed over me at least a thousand feet above. Is there any Air Force aircraft in the vicinity? No known aircraft in the vicinity. Seems to be playing some sort of game. He's flying over me.

The Alder Sierra Juliet, it's not an aircraft at... Can you describe the aircraft? As it's flying past it's a long shape. Can I identify it? It has such speed. It's before me right now, Melbourne. How large would the object be? Seems like it's stationary. What it's doing right now is orbiting.

The thing is just orbiting on top of me. It's also got a green light and a sort of metallic, like... It's shiny on the outside. It's just managed. That's strange aircraft's hozzling on top of me again. It's hovering and it's not an aircraft. What isn't out in the public domain at the moment? I believe the actual Frederick Valentich radio transmissions are out there in YouTube,

but what is not out there is the real transmission from the air traffic controller. And that's what makes it even more chilling. And you actually listen to not just what Frederick Valentich is saying with his transmissions, but what you're also hearing from this male air traffic controller. And one of the reasons that's been put forward that the recording has never seen the light of day is that because someone lost their life for a recording to be, for there to be an unauthorized release or disclosure, of a recording that has someone that lost their life.

There are some legalities around that, which could be problematic for the individual that was to disclose it or release it unauthorized. So that's what I've been made to understand is one of the reasons why it's never been released. But there are copies that are circulating around a number of researchers. And when I heard what was reported to me

as this is the real recording, and I had no reason to doubt that it wasn't the real recording, when you listen to Valentich's transmission coupled with the commentary and the transmission from the air traffic controller, it's just truly chilling. And what is really chilling the most, for anyone that's listened to the recording, they will know. But for those that haven't, the very last words that Frederick Valentich says in his radio transmission is it's not an aircraft. So what he's looking at is he's not identifying it as an aircraft. And then immediately after he says those words, there are these funny metallic sounds that come through the transmission to the air traffic controllers.

And some have suggested that is that engagement with whatever it is he was observing or is it some form of engine failure? There have been some explanations put forward as to what may have happened. to Frederick Valentich, but some of them are laughable. One of them was that he was, Valentic was disorientated. He was actually flying inverted, upside down, and he didn't know it. But I don't think that's a valid argument, because when you're upside down and you're trying to talk,

you don't sound the same. And Valentic was coming across as very calm, collected. He didn't sound, he didn't sound impeded in his ability to talk. There are other explanations saying he was drunk, that he just, you know, he got lost, disorientated with, you know, the atmospheric conditions, but it was apparently great flying conditions. There was no impediments to visibility or anything like that. So it's just a truly fascinating case that, again, is an unresolved cold case.

And, you know, just listening, when I listened to the recording, when it was played for me, I closed my eyes and I just listened to what I was hearing. And it's just truly chilling, you know, to, to immerse yourself in what Valentiich. He's very calm throughout it. He doesn't lose his cool. He's obviously very, you know, very professional in his capacity as a pilot of a light aircraft. He knows exactly what to say and how to say it when he's reporting what he's seeing to air traffic

control. But if you're just putting yourself in, you know, in the moment and what he might be experiencing and seeing and listening to the words that he's saying, which unfortunately, see there's a lot of noise in his transmission. It needs to be cleaned up. Hopefully someone will do a clean audio edition at some point. But yeah, it's just truly a chilling audio recording. I've never heard anything like it. And when I heard it and went home, I kept playing it in my head over and over and again. And I know, you know, some people have asked me about it over time.

And they could probably find the Valentich version of the transmission on YouTube, as I believed, you know, a researcher in the US released it some years ago, but did not release the air traffic controllers portion because, again, the legalities potentially associated with that. But yeah, just such a tragic case, but also such a fascinating one, because you've got that layer of evidence and data that comes with it, being the transmission, the radio transmission.

Yeah, you know. And there's a great, There's a great, sorry to catch you off, there's a great, I mean, I've only kind of skimmed the surface on the Valentich case. There's a great researcher in Australia by name of George Simpson. He's put together, he's authored a book called Nothing on Radar. And there is alleged to be a photograph that was taken by someone else, you know, completely not associated with Valentich, but someone that lived in the vicinity of where Valentich encountered this object. Earlier in the day, this individual captured on their camera a very strange-looking,

kind of what would you call it, a shiny orb-like sort of image. And it's actually on the front cover. It's the front cover image of George Simpson's book called Nothing on Radar. So you can actually see it on the front cover of his book. So, you know, whether. that is directly linked to the Valentich disappearance, I don't know, but it's interesting that it was captured the same day that it was reported to have happened. There have been some other kind of fantastical claims that have been put out there over the years that potentially tied to the

Valentich case, but I don't think those have been entirely credible reports that are linked to the case. But that's just another piece of the puzzle, you know, altogether. So yeah, any one that's not familiar with the Valentich case, you know, I mean, there's a whole Wikipedia page devoted to it, and you can find some really good, you know, documentaries that have been done by, you know, interested researchers on YouTube out there as well. So, and like Jane Kyle, UFO Jane, who we haven't seen in a long time, she has, I know that for a fact that she has a fascination with the Valentich case. And early on, I was able to share with her some reports that the, um, the, uh, the ATS the Air Traffic Safety Bureau in Australia had had on Valentich and released a number of years ago.

So I know that she's one researcher that has an interest in it outside of the United States. Outside of Australia, I should say. Right, right. Well, and, you know, two things to kind of wrap up the Valentich case. There were a lot of UFOs reported in Australia in that region at the time, which I think we should keep in mind. And the second is our mutual colleague, Micah Hanks, actually has dug very deep into the case. He was even able to befriend the former girlfriend of Valentage at the time. You know, she's getting up there in age at this point.

However, there were claims that, you know, he was trying to fake his death or that this was sort of a suicide flight that he was going on. These very dark sort of avenues people were going down to try to explain what happened. But she was the first to tell Micah, no, like he was not suicidal. There was nothing like that. He wasn't faking his death. We had plans that night, actually, after the flight. And she said, no, he encountered something up there. I'm convinced of that.

And he knew what he was doing the entire time until, unfortunately, he lost his life. So there's a lot to back up this story for sure. It's definitely one of my favorites as well. And it's not really a link, but a common thread with Westall. So a couple of kilometers from the Westall High School is an airport called Marabin Airport, where a lot of light aircraft take off and land. And that's the airport that Valentich took off from when he flew down to, you know, Cape Otway. So, yeah, it's just not that it has any connection with Westall, but, you know,

there's a common link there in Morabin Airport, which is, you know, discussed frequently in the Westall incident for those that dive down other rabbit holes. But I wasn't aware of the fact that Micah had done a deep dive of that. So I'll have to, I'll have to suss out his research on it. I believe we talked about it in episode two or three. somewhere in the sky. So if you dig way back into our archives, we did speak about that. We may even have audio from his girlfriend. I know he did, um, did do an audio interview with her. So it is definitely worth seeking out if you guys can for sure. Um, guys, I'm going to say now, if you have any questions that you would like to ask Grant, put them in the chat with a, uh, in capital letters,

with a cue or, um, put them in the super chat and we will get to those as we begin to wrap things up here. But the last thing I personally wanted to talk to you about Grant is your involvement in this documentary series that premiered over in Australia. I was so happy to see, you know, more media coming out of your neck of the woods and taken very seriously. So could you tell us a little about your involvement with this project, what it was and what was covered in this documentary series? Totally. Yes. It was a really great. It was a six-part documentary series called Close Encounters Down Under that I was, had the good fortune of participating.

Keith Basterfield actually put me forward to the, the producers as someone that, you know, might be worthy for inclusion in the, in the series. And it's a great series in the sense that, you know, there are so many fascinating and interesting UFO cases in Australia that, you know, a lot of folks don't know about. I mean, Valentich and Westall are probably the two most, you know, famous ones known about, but there's so many others as well. And so it dives into, you know, you know, UAP, UFO cases down under in all of the different states within Australia, not just Victoria where I am now.

And so I was invited and the filming of this was actually. actually going back in, I believe, COVID. So it took a while for the production side and the filming of it to be done. It actually came out. It premiered last year. It's for anyone that hasn't seen, it's called Close Encounters Down Under. And if you're in the UK, I believe you can watch it on, was it Blaise TV. I think it's called.

That sounds right. Yeah. Yeah, Blaze TV. If you're in Australia, you can watch it on 7 Plus. If you go to the 7 Plus website and just type in Close Encounters down under, you'll find it. I've got links to it on my Twitter and X profile. So if you just search for Close Encounters Down Under on my X account, you'll find it. And it's free to watch.

And the episode that I was privileged to be invited participating was episode number four, which also happens to. to be a number of the Westall primary witnesses were interviewed for a segment on that episode. My involvement with the series, I'm only featured in very briefly in episode four. I was just providing some insights and perspectives on the Australian government's involvement, or rather lack thereof, and lack thereof engagement on the UAP topic at the time, and was really just, you know, hitting home that, you know, Australia and the United States are the closest of allies,

yet our positions on UAP couldn't be further apart. You know, the U.S. and our Five Eyes partner is taking this very seriously, but Australia is not, and why is Australia not? And it kind of, you know, talked about Senator Wish Wilson and the questions that he had been asking of the then-chief of Air Force Air Marshal Mel Huffield and, you know, of 2021. So that's what I was able to bring the conversation, just looking at through the lens of government and documents that I've been able to secure for release through FOIA.

So I didn't actually have any involvement from or was able to bring anything to the table from specific cases. I was just, my involvement was really limited to the Australian government's lack of engagement and my efforts to try and advocate for the topic by exercising my right to information through FOIA and so on. But it was a great series. You know, Bill Chalker, who's a veteran UAP UFO researcher, a gentleman that I've gotten to know fairly well and have been able to learn from both he and Keith Basterfield directly over the last few years. He's featuring it quite heavily throughout all of the episodes, as is Roger Stankovic, who is the, he's the Australian New Zealand director of Mufon, and he recently presented at the Mufon

symposium in the US on Havana syndrome. He's a really good bloke. So it's great to see a number of folks that I've gotten to know and learn from also be involved in this series. So it was, very well done. That's awesome, man. Yeah. And like I said, your involvement could inspire someone else to go seek that information too when it comes to FOIA and everything. So that's great. I can't wait to give it a watch. I haven't had a chance yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I do have Blaze here in the UK, so I'll definitely be giving it a watch. That's great. So I want to move to we have a super chat here, which is pretty interesting. And I believe this is a friend and colleague of yours and mine as well.

UAP, oh gosh, A.T. Roa. Yeah, yeah, I hope I'm saying that right. And his question pertains to kind of what we were talking about at the top of the show. Do you think that OIA in NZ and Australia on Five Eyes intelligence sharing is blocked due to Intel Services interaction? Grant is free to discuss my OIAs as privately shared for support CMA only. EK level classification. So there's a lot going on in that question, a lot of acronyms.

But yeah, if you want to maybe break that down and maybe crystallize any of that for us, Grant, what are your thoughts on that? Do you think that the intelligence is being shared with New Zealand? So firstly, shout out to Colin at UAP, Altaireo. He does some great work with other folks in New Zealand that are taking the topic seriously. I know there's an old gentleman by the name of Nick. they're all exercising their right to information and trying to get information on what the New Zealand Defence Force is doing or not doing about UAP and what its level of engagement

was at RO's Five Eyes, UAP caucus working group meeting. So the OIA is the equivalent of Australia's and the U.S.'s FOIA. So OIA, correct me if I'm wrong, is the official information. Act. So, you know, New Zealand citizens can request your documents from their government comparable with Australia and the US on FOIA. So I can say with a high degree of confidence through just the documents that I've been able to secure for release to date, and even documents that I haven't been able to secure for release because they've been refused due to FOIA exemptions, I can say with a high degree of confidence that the Australian

defense representative that attended ARA's Five Eyes UAP caucus working group meeting was a representative from the Defense Intelligence Organization. And so UAP, Altaireo and Nick and others in New Zealand are running into the same issues of trying to get information from the New Zealand Defense Force on who represented New Zealand at this RAS Five Eyes Forum. And I have a sneaking suspicion that potentially the reason why it's so difficult to, to get anything out of New Zealand as well, is that it quite possibly may be that the intelligence services, namely the New Zealand Defence Intelligence Service,

a representative of that intelligence agency, was one of the representatives at the Five Eyes Forum. And I don't know UAPOO, TARO might be able to confirm this, but I anticipate that, like with the Defense Intelligence Organization in Australia, that the New Zealand Defense Intelligence Service may also be exempt from OIA. so we're not going to get anything out of them. After I posted these documents, the meeting schedule for Ara's meeting, and it's a significant document.

It got retweeted by Christopher Mellon. Nick Pope commented on it, and Nick Pope, who a lot of people know, he's claimed to have been with the Ministry of Defense in the UFO office, and he is of the opinion that perhaps it was the Defense Intelligence Services in the UK that were represented at U.S. Hara's Five Eyes Forum as well. Now, whether they're exempt from the UK's version of FOIA, I don't know.

So, but, you know, Colin at UAP, OTHERO, was able to provide me with correspondence that he had received from the Ombudsman in New Zealand, which basically, if I just, see if I can read it here. I'll have to throw my glasses on here. Basically, they, you know, UAPOOO was going after records and documentation pertaining to the New Zealand representative that we know attended the Five Eyes briefing. And basically, they came back to him saying that, you know, they were able to form the opinion

that the New Zealand Defence Force was entitled to refuse UIP Alteiroa's request under a certain section of the official information act on the basis that the information does not exist or cannot be located. So they're basically saying to him that you know we don't have any records pertaining to any New Zealand Defence Force representation at the Five Eyes meeting which is in direct contrast with what Brandy Vincent was able to report for Defense Scoop the month, you know, a couple of weeks after Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick said at NASA's public briefing that, you know, we had a Five Eyes

Forum. Brandy Vincent, to her credit, she, who does some wonderful reporting for Defense Scoop, you know, people should follow her work. She reached out to all of the Five Eyes. The only one that she wasn't able to get a comment from was the UK Ministry of Defense, but she got comment from the New Zealand Defence Force confirming that it had a representative from the New Zealand Defence Force attend this Five Eyes Forum on UAP by ARR. And there have been subsequent documents that folks like UAPRO and Nick and others in New Zealand

have been able to get from their elected representatives and at a ministerial level saying that, yes, we did have a New Zealand Defence Force representative attend. But now you're getting this pushback against these requests for information saying that, no, sorry, we can't provide you with any records pertaining to New Zealand Defence Forces' attendance at this briefing because we can't, it doesn't exist. And so it's, you know, it's just so frustrating that folks are having so much trouble, just trying to get basic information out of their government. I mean, look how tough it was for me.

to get an admission from, and the senator to get an admission from the Australian Department Affairs that we did in fact attend after they denied it initially. So it's just, it's so frustrating. And Colin, if there's anything you want to add to that in your comment, if you're still on the live stream, feel free. But, you know, kudos to folks like UAP, Alteiro and others that are trying to do their best, just like I am and Daniel Otis in Canada, who's doing some wonderful investigative journalism on trying to find out what our countries are lending to the conversation. Absolutely.

Goodos to anyone willing to put in the work time and effort. And a special thanks for the super chat question as well to UAP. That was, yeah, yeah, it's very well needed. And it is, it's so frustrating, Grant, to think, why can't you just admit that someone was there, that someone was present? Like, that's enough for people to be like, okay, at least we know the five eyes are involved in this. They probably are under the assumption that once you know someone was there, then the real true FOIA equivalent requests will start coming in. But yeah, just to say it doesn't exist.

It just seems so condescending to me. It's so frustrating too. I mean, I've reached out to obviously the Australian Minister for Defense, Richard Miles. the Australian Defence Media Team, as well as Susan Goff, who's the Pentagon spokesperson on basically UAP. And when I reached out to Susan Goff asking her to provide information about, well, Australia's saying it didn't attend the Five Eyes Forum on UAP, can you confirm this? Can you verify this?

And she said, you know, any information pertaining to the attendance by the Five Eyes countries is the responsibility is for comment only. by each five-eyers member country. But then you have inquiries being submitted to the New Zealand Defence Force. And this is in Brandy Vincent's reporting, I believe, they're saying, oh, no, you need to contact the US Department of Defense if you have any more queries about New Zealand's attendance at the final. So you get in the complete runaround.

The left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing. People are just getting the runaround. And that's, again, another part that's so frustrating is that, you know, what is it going to take just to get some truthful and accurate answers to questions that we ask? Because more often than not, you get redirected to someone else, or you just get a blatant non-answer to the query and the question that you've asked. And that's, unfortunately, I've come to accept that with Susan Goff. I'll ask a question and I'll get a completely different answer that even doesn't address the question that I asked. Again, I think it's all part of a strategic

narrative. The Australian and the United States Department of Defense, as well as the New Zealand Defense Force, wants to control the narrative. They want to control the conversation and not reveal any information that could be of potential embarrassment to the government. And that's true of the United States and I think the UK and Canada as well. So that's the world we live in. It's the world we're living in, UFOs 2024, my friend. To kind of put a cap on, on all of this, Grant. Thank you guys for your questions. If you have any more questions for Grant,

feel free to put them in the comments section of the YouTube version of this episode. And I'll be sure to get those over to Grant and maybe he can even answer them in the comments of the video in time. He's a busy man. He's a busy man. He's got a new kid as well.

And I've said before, you know, marriage and the UFO topic don't always go hand in hands. So sometimes my wife is like, come on, you've got a family. You know, get off, get off Twitter or X and stop reading that article. So I try and sneak in catching up on podcasts and live streams or reading articles when I'm out for a walk or, you know, when it's time where I've got to myself, which is not much these days.

Well, man, I, yeah, I appreciate you. given us almost two hours of your time. No problem. Keeping you away from Gray's Anatomy for just a little bit, just a little bit for tonight over there in Australia. But I do want to end Grant with any last words you want to give the audience on where we are at in 2024 with UFOs. It seems like not a lot has been happening, but I would argue there's a lot still happening

just below the surface. But yeah, any last words you want to give our audience? Well, look, I mean, it's, I've always said, you know, for those of this that are truly fascinated and curious with this topic and do take it seriously and want to learn as much as we can and just know what's going on, I mean, it does feel sometimes like it's a full-time job just to keep up to date with what's going on. And you do have these moments where, you know, it does ebb and flow in this topic. It might feel like it's in a bit of a lull at the moment where there's not a lot going on. But you listen, you read the great work that folks like Douglas Dean Johnson are doing, providing updates that maybe aren't making headlines or happening behind the scenes at the congressional level with the UAP Disclosure Act 2.0,

potentially being something that there is to look forward to later this year. if it does get some traction and get past. We know it was completely gutted last year, but we did get some provisions with your records being, have to be disclosed to the National Archives by, I think, October of this year, but there is potentially another effort for the UAP Disclosure Act to rear its head again this year for the National Defense Authorization Act. And, you know, we've just had the, the, the,

the revelation that Lou's book, Lou Elizondo's book imminent, is not far away. You know, that's scheduled for release, I think, next month in some countries in August. And there was a leak or an inadvertent premature release of the preview of his book, which was pretty significant. I think it was about a hundred and, you know, there's several number of chapters. How's weird. From his book. It was just so weird that it was put up there. like, you know, for anyone that doesn't know, Google books, if you sell, if an author or a publisher,

and you would certainly know this, Ryan, if you have your books available for sale with Google books, they often offer a preview, a limited preview of the book to encourage people to get, you know, have a sense as to what the contents of the book like, and it often can encourage, you know, pre-orders and book sales as well. But it was just so bizarre that it was, all of a sudden this limited preview is up online on Google Books. And then as quickly as it went up, only a day or two later, it was completely removed. And I didn't even get an opportunity to read it. I only got through Christopher Mellon's forward.

I didn't even get a chance to read it. So I'm not really apprised of what's even in the limited preview of Lou's book. But I preordered it when it was first announced that it was available for a for a ring. So I mean, I look forward to reading it. I don't know if we that take the topic seriously and maybe a well-versed in researching it will have any significant revelations. I'm sure there's going to be massive breadcrumbs that will have folks like John Greenwald submitting tons of FOIA requests following up on bits and pieces. But I suspect that the book from what I've heard from people that have read the limited preview,

that it might more so be catered to a broader mass audience, the broader public, much like the 60 Minutes piece was on UAP. It might be more aimed and intended for a much broader audience. So, you know, some people might be disappointed if they're not, you know, getting all of the fantastical revelations that they're expecting. I don't know.

I haven't read it yet, but I'm looking forward to having a read of it. and just seeing what's in there. And having folks like John Grimald-Juna follow up and be able to try and get more and more breadcrumbs that are dropped along the way on each page. That's right, my friend. It's, you know, Elizondo puts the ball in the air and John Greenwald spikes it.

That's the plan. That's the plan. I will tell you this. Did you have a chance to read it? I was just going to say. All right. I did. I read through the chapters.

It will get people talking for better or worse. It's definitely created some chatter online already, which, you know, if this was all a mistake, a leak, as it were, or just an accidental preview put up there, like we have to keep that in mind. Like the word leak, I think, is used very liberally lately in the UFO field. It could easily have just been a miscommunication where it was put up online a little too soon.

I wouldn't be surprised if that's the, that's all that happened. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, again, always assume a screw up before a conspiracy. And unfortunately, a lot of folks will jump to the conspiracy before the screw up. Always, always. But, you know, who knows? I mean, I don't think, I don't think there, I don't think there may have been anything nefarious. I think it may have just been an unintentional early release.

Right. If accidental or not, what a marketing ploy. Let me be completely honest. It got people talking. Any press is good press. It can't help with book sales and, you know. Exactly. Exactly.

I mean, I know a lot of people have talked about it. And then there's just this ridiculous thing on, I mean, I try and stay out of the drama. But, you know, now you have Jason Sands coming out and think of him what you will. And he's a controversial figure, but coming out in a space saying or not saying, and it was misinterpreted that that Jay, Jay Anderson from Project Unity, was the one that was responsible for there being a leak of the limited preview because he's based in the UK and as is the publisher. And I don't add any weight to that.

I don't think there is anything to that. But, you know, unfortunately, just so many people maybe get bored with the fact that there's nothing to talk about. So as soon as there's a breadcrumb of or a whiff of some drama were a conspiracy, that's the talking point of the day. And, you know, until there's something else controversial to talk about. So I don't give any, I mean, that's not important to me, you know, that kind of conspiratorial drama.

But it's just, it's what people do. They want to talk about the drama. So wait, you're telling me, Jay lives in the UK, and so does the publisher. And so do I. oh my God, Grant. Could I be the leaker? Come on, guys. You could do better than someone living in the same damn country to be the

own day. And I mean, I think there was just a complete misinterpretation. Like Jason Sands, his nickname, he goes by Jay. And basically, Jason, to summarize, I won't bore your audience, but Jason Sands in this space was saying that he knows Lou. I don't know if that's true. He had dinner with Lou a few nights ago. And Lou was saying to Jason Sands that about the leak or the fact that the limited preview of the book was out there.

And Jason Sands were that Lou said, Jay, you know, unity hates me. And a lot of people took that as they linked J with and unity as J from Project Unity. This is my interpretation of what Jason Sands is saying. I think Jason Sands is saying that Lou was saying to Jason, hey, Jay, Jay short for Jason, Unity hates me in the fact that this, the book got a limited preview of the book got released. I'm trying to unify the community to a degree by putting all the information out there and making people decide on their own. And there's now this big kerfuffle about this limited preview. That was my interpretation of what Jason Sanz said, but some people,

namely Skyfire News took it as the fact that Jason Sands was saying that Lou said that Jay from Project Unity was responsible for this leaking of his book imminent. So that kind of gives you a sense as to how ridiculous it all is. But again, I just caught wind of that very briefly. I could be completely wrong, but, you know, it's just that's how I read it as just a misunderstanding and misinterpretation. some folks. It is what it is. And that's as drama filled as we're getting here somewhere in the skies. I have no interest in it. We will wait till the book comes out. And I eagerly await the publication to begin to parse through it as well. So, Grant... And I have a question for you, my friend. Speaking of books, how are you going with your book?

You're currently working on a new one. Is that right? Thank you for asking. Yes, I actually posted about this a couple days ago over on my personal Facebook. I am halfway done with my new manuscript for my third book, which will sort of be the final one in my quote-of-book trilogy. I guess it's my return of the Jedi or my Revenge of the Sith. But yes, it'll be the most global spanning personal endeavor I've ever done on the UFO topic within my book. I'm super excited about it. I've been working over six years on it. So I've been working on it as I was writing the other books. So, yes, I'm hoping sometime in 2025 I will have that out.

So yes, busy as always writing, doing the podcasts, ghost hunting in Canada, of all things. So staying busy over at somewhere in the skies and Unhaunted in Nova Scotia. So yeah, thank you for asking. And correct me if I'm wrong. So your first book and this is, just for my interest, was really focused on the human element to the phenomena, you know, the human condition. The second book, which I have is more about specific cases that you have curated over

years from people you've spoken to. If you can share, what is the third book? Does it follow a similar track or is it different altogether? It's kind of a melding of the first two. So it will be my personal journey through all of this. whether it's UFOs, the paranormal, the people we've met along the way. It really is, each chapter focuses on an individual who has inspired my work. So not so much the plethora of UFO cases that I've looked into or that I've covered,

but the people who've inspired me and their personal journeys along the way. So, you know, I can say right now, I have a chapter on Peter Robbins, who is my mentor in the UFO field. There's a gentleman in Hawaii who I got to spend a lot of time with, a master storyteller, native Hawaiian, who I do a whole chapter on him and his experiences growing up on the island and the mythologies there. So it really does focus on one person in each chapter.

It's extremely detailed, rich, and it's, again, in their own words, which is my big thing, Grant. I don't like to put words in the mouths of those who've had experiences. So I kind of let them speak for themselves while I create a narrative around it of my journey with them, if that makes sense. Interesting. Yeah, yeah.

It's a, it's a opus. Yeah, yeah. And do you, do you, out of interest, again, sorry to bore your audience, but do you actually journal as you, you know, go out and, you know, because, I mean, I'm terrible that if I was considering writing an article or something on, you know, what I've been trying to do to date, my recollection is, I mean, often I can't remember what I did yesterday. So I'm really bad at recalling stuff.

So, but do you find, do you journal, does that help your writing process? Or do you just recall a lot of the stuff as you go? It really depends. You know, there are many times where I will write down like a emotional buzzword. that happened during something I did. But I can tell you this, my short-term memory is the worst. Like you said, I can't even remember what I had for breakfast. However, I can remember things from two, three years ago in like almost crystal clear detail.

So I wouldn't say I have a photographic memory, but I do have, and I get this from my grandfather, actually, who could like recall what he did have for breakfast when he was like 10 years old, some 50 years later. but he couldn't remember, you know, what he had for breakfast that morning. So it's a blessing and a curse. But so a lot of it does come from memory. And a lot of it comes with follow up with the individuals. You know, I've been sitting down for hours upon hours with each of them being like,

what do you remember what happened here? Let's connect these dots. And again, just really diving into how strange the world really is, the people who choose to pursue those. things and how that's inspired me as a investigator of the anomalous. So yeah, yeah. It's, I'm really excited. So thank you.

This is really the first time I've spoken about any of the content. I'm very interested to hear you talk about it. So, for me, thanks for sharing. No, thank you. No, thank you. No, thank you. All right, my friend. We've been going over two hours.

So I'm going to let you go. I know it's getting made over there. and Suzanne's got to start her morning as well. Sorry for keeping you up, Suzanne. She's been doing incredible today. I want to thank everyone in the chat for your questions, your comments. But most importantly, our last question for you, Grant, before you go, where can we find everything you're up to and what comes next for Grant Robach?

So I'm mostly on terms of social, mostly on X, Twitter, if anyone wants to follow my journey on the topic. Just follow me at at Grant LaVac. My YouTube channel is the called the Unexplained rundown. If you just search for that in YouTube or just type in my name, you'll find my channel. My primary focus is again, we're trying to understand Australia's involvement and rather lack thereof on the UAE topics. So most of my videos are on that that theme. But I do have obviously other documentaries, the Westall case. I did a documentary on Kurt Russell and the Phoenix Lights, one of my most, one of the cases I'm most interested in. And in terms of what I'm working on, I've got a couple of projects that I'm trying to work on

in the time that I have available. One of them is, again, think of these gentlemen what you will, but both Dr. Stephen Greer and Chris Bledsoe have claimed on numerous occasions now in the last 12 to 24 months that they have had engagement with the Australian Department of Defence on the UAP topic. And the Department of Defense said that it stopped investigating UAP in 1996. So if Dr. Stephen Greer has briefed a former Australian Minister for Defense in possibly 2013, I want to try and dive down that rabbit hole and see if I can find any documentation that confirms that claim or completely refutes it.

And likewise with Chris Bledsoe, he has made some claims that he has been engaged by the representative in the Australian Department of Defense. And so that's another rabbit hole I'm following down again, just trying to find documentary evidence that supports the claim or refutes it. So whenever I hear anything about, and the UAP topic, my ears prick up and I want to learn more.

So that's what I'm currently working on. Awesome. And we have put your Twitter handle in the show notes as well and in the chat. We have links to the UFO documentary series and your video on Westall and the UAP caucus as well, guys. So be sure to check out the show notes for this episode for all of that. Be sure to go follow everything Grant's doing. subscribe to his YouTube channel right here on YouTube if that's where you're joining us. And brother, I got to thank you.

This was a marathon. We covered so much. And it gives me so much hope. It really gives me hope that we're going to get some answers to at least Australia's involvement in this topic. Because I am sick about talking about the United States, man, in every way, shape, and form. Well, look, and that's what I'd say, what has, what I've been really pleasantly surprised by is, how just this document that we've reviewed tonight, and I'll say this is my closing thought,

has really triggered other folks in those other countries, you know, Gary Hestelin in the UK, who I've had some engagement with, UAP Altea Roa in New Zealand, Daniel Otis in Canada, John Greenwald Jr., in the U.S., obviously. There are people in each Five Eyes country that are now following up lines,

of inquiry that are important to them on what their respective countries' involvement was in this RO's 5-I-UAP caucus working group. So I'm really pleased that I've been able to bring something to the table that has motivated others to now ask their respective countries and exercise their right to information and try and get more answers to questions that we have. And that's what drives me. If we can get more information that helps each of us find answers to questions that are important to us, then that's only a positive thing. That's only a good thing. Absolutely.

Let's focus on the positives, guys. And you are definitely one of them, Grant, in this field. So again, I want to thank you, man, for coming on somewhere in the skies today. And I want to thank all of you for joining us today for this. special live podcast recording. And I will leave you guys with our outro as always. And that is keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching somewhere in the skies. The Somewhere in the Skies podcast is part of the Lionsgate Sound Network. Please take a moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever possible. Thank you for listening.