Somewhere in the Skies - The Pentacle Memorandum

Episode Date: November 23, 2020

On episode 188 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, we are welcomed once again by author and podcast host, Micah Hanks, to discuss the highly debated two-page document lost in between the files of Project Blue Book. In 1967, noted astronomer and computer scientist, Jacques Vallée, was helping organize the overwhelming amount of backlogged files of Dr. J. Allen Hynek. He discovered a letter amongst the files that both fascinated and shocked him. It was stamped in red ink ‘SECRET – Security Information.’ and signed by a man Vallée would refer to only as "Pentacle." Was a secret UFO study running parallel to Project Blue Book and were those involved actually monitoring UFO events in real-time? Even more mysterious, was this secret group simulating planned UFO events as well? Hanks runs us through this highly intriguing Pentacle Memorandum from a historical context and then answers listener questions.  Full video interview available by CLICKING HERE Visit Micah Hanks at: www.micahhanks.com  Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Watch Mysteries Decoded for free at www.CWseed.com Episode edited by Jane Palomera Moore Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is part of the eOne podcast network. To learn more, CLICK HERE 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

As the crispy chicken sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always call me loud. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm crispy. Did you expect me to whisper? If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like, I know I'm a handful. I'm bold, I'm juicy. Throw some pickles and barbecue sauce on me, and baby, I'm a whole meal.

And with seven rewards, I'm just $4. Quiet. No. Krispy, saucy, and $4? Very. Only at 711. Valley 362326, participating stores only while supplies lastly out for full terms. Have you ever looked up to the skies and seen something you can't explain?

Or walk deep in the forest and sensed something watching you? Do you believe in an afterlife or a hidden veil that can communicate with the living? Then you need Shadows of Your Mind magazine. Download all issues completely free at shadowsmagine.com. Shadows of your mind, where your search for the answers begins. This is somewhere in the skies. with Ryan Sprague. Welcome everyone to somewhere disguise. I am your host, Ryan Sprague. And today we have one of our fan-favorite guests coming back on the show, returning for the umpteenth time to talk about something that I recently just discovered. And I feel like a bad euphologist for that. But we had James Fox on the show last week talking all about his number one documentary in the world, the phenomenon. And in that film was none other than computer scientist and noted astronomer, UFO, researcher Jacques Valet. And he talked about a little memorandum that he had found while working

with another very prominent UFO researcher and how this memo affected his work moving forward. And I knew nothing about it, and it blew my mind. And of course, the one person I knew I could count on to walk me through this memorandum that we're going to talk about, the implication to it, what it's all about is none other than Micah Hanks. How you doing, buddy? Great to be here as always, my man, and glad to hear that you are on the beat as usual. You know, I did catch James's new documentary and our good friend James Fox does fantastic work. And from my own part, first I have to say everybody should watch the documentary. I thought that, in fact, you know, you and I talked about this, I thought that as far as a historical perspective on the phenomenon and laying it all out there,

especially for a new audience, it's going to be great. For people who are pretty well steeped in the UFO subject, you're going to learn some new things. And I was extremely happy to see, of course, Jacques Valet, right there on camera. I had known, of course, he would be in the documentary because some of the folks involved with it had spoken to me about it, you know, early on. I was thrilled to hear about that. But again, Valet is just an icon in the field,

and he is kind of integral to the story. I'm sure that we will be talking about tonight. Absolutely, man. And again, I knew nothing about this, a program supposedly running parallel to Project Blue Book. I mean, a lot of us have theorized for years that this Project Blue Book that the U.S. Air Force had implemented to explain away most of UFO reports that came to them, that that was it. And that there was nothing between then and what we now know is the Secret Pentagon UFO program. and that, you know, everything had an explanation except for those unknowns that Project Blue Book came up with.

But now I'm learning that the story goes much deeper than that. And it all started with the Pentacle Memorandum, which I would love to talk to about. But before we get to that, let's talk about the two guys who kind of brought this all to the forefront. I mean, a lot of my listeners and viewers know these two names, But for those maybe just hopping in who don't know these people as well as we do, this being one of them, tell us a little about the relationship between J. L. and Heinek and Jacques Valet and how this all came to be, I guess. Would you mind giving us a little history lesson of the origin story of these two? Good cop, bad cop, buddy cop, yeah. I would be delighted. You know, Valet, of course, was one of the first scientists to publish. a popular book, but from a scientific perspective, looking at the UFO Enigma, that of course

anatomy of a phenomenon. Now, he, although at the time was also working with J.L. and Heinek, Heinek was one of the most visible UFO researchers you might say at the time, but really what he was was, he was a science advisor. As a professor of astronomy at Northwestern University, he was a science advisor to the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book. Now, again, little bit more about valet here. He had already been interested in UFOs when he was in France, and he comes to the United States with his wife, Janine, and they move here. And in pretty short order, Valet ends up working under Heinek there at the university. And of course, this makes him privy from a scientific perspective to much of the Blue Book, you know, work that was going on,

including, of course, their witness reports involving purported UFO sightings. And, you know, again, they had a good working relationship, but if one wants a really interesting perspective on all of this, I mean, the what you might call essential reading, of course, read the Heinek UFO report. This was a book that was written after Heinek, of course, had left his position working as an advisor to the U.S. Air Force. But during those U.S. Air Force years, when he was an official advisor to Blue Book, he had to kind of walk a certain line, you might say. Heineck couldn't go all in and say, guys, there's obviously a phenomenon here. In fact, he often kind of pivoted and was more skeptical. In fact, there were certain instances where he was skeptical enough that he was kind of held accountable by the UFO community and would never fully live down some of the statements that he'd made.

The most famous one, of course, you know, the UFO sightings over Michigan, which he had said were probably swamp gas. Now, Heinek later defended his position and said, I was kind of under pressure. I had to come up with a theory. of course I wanted to always be sceptically inclined and never seemed like I'm all in we're being visited, you know, the invasions underway. But for years, many commentators, including Jerome Clark and others, had noted that, you know,

that was kind of something that would haunt Heineck for many years. And his positions also would soften with time and he would even acknowledge. Saying what I had said at that time is not necessarily in line with my thoughts, having seen Project Blue Book from close to its outset through to the end and, of course, the University of Colorado UFO project headed by Edward U. Condon, you know, seeing all of that. Heinex's hope during those years having been that, well, the outcome of the Condon

committee might be that he, Valet, and other scientists working with them would be able to have a renewed, strengthened scientific effort and perhaps funding for it from the U.S. Air Force or scientific organizations to look more deeply at the UFO phenomenon. As we know, that didn't end up being the outcome. So, you know, as far as Heinek and his involvement at the time, he was having to really really kind of walked the tightrope. He was both an advocate at times if he saw that there was a case to be made for a legitimate UFO siding, but he also knew what the Air Force wanted to hear, and he himself was skeptical from the outset and became less so with time. Now, Valet, on the other hand,

he comes into this, having had an interest in UFOs while in France, bringing that with him, actually having seen a couple of unidentified objects of the aerial variety himself, bringing that with him to the United States, and he wanted, above all else, Dr. Valet, and this is an entirely respectable position, especially for someone who throughout the middle 1960s, seeing the developments in UFOs, seeing the speculation about what the Air Force was studying

and what the nature of this phenomenon might be, its provenance, where does it come from? Valet said, we need scientists looking at this. And so he at times was very frustrated with Heinek. And he would write, and this also on the necessary reading list, if you read the

Heinek UFO report, don't forget also to read the four-volume set that Heinek, or I'm sorry, that Valet wrote, Forbidden Science. Especially in that first volume of forbidden science, valet, he begins as a college student, and it carries you through those pivotal years of Project Blue Book. And in his journal he is writing and saying he's frustrated with Alan. He wishes that Heinic, instead of going on the lecture circuit, would be back at the university laboratory and we could be processing these UFO sightings. We could be analyzing these reports. This is the most important thing we could be doing right now.

Well, so he is frustrated to a point. I'm sorry, jump in there. Oh, no. I was just going to say that was one of the more fascinating things that I didn't personally know until I heard you speak about what we're going to be talking about this relationship between the two. Now, we see these archival images of the two, and they look like the two coolest guys out there. their their best friends, they're out there hunting UFOs and tracking down leads. But in reality, yeah, it seemed that Heinek was kind of on a different path. And he was really kind of craving that notoriety and that acknowledgement by the public. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. But as time went on, he became like a spokesperson for the Air Force on this. And he liked the limelight. Let's be completely

honest. He was no, he was not the most modest person when it came to, don't put me on television, just the facts. Like, he kind of like this, right, Micah, he kind of liked the attention. If you go on YouTube, there is a dating game show, okay, where Heinek is a guest on this game show. So, yes, he certainly did not shy away from the camera, but he was also a person who was attempting to be more fear and balanced toward the UFO issue maybe than most. Again, if you look at his contemporaries who, like Donald Kehoe, I mean, they were all in.

They had really championed the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Kehoe had authored a number of articles in popular magazines like Look and True magazine, which, you know, at times maybe went a little further than just advocacy. I mean, they went really right up to the brink and sometimes beyond into sensational territory. Hynek, you know, for the skepticism that people criticized him for in years later, you know, when he finishes his advisory position with Blue Book and everything, and then he kind of goes out there and finally says, okay, you know, on further review, there is a case to be made for the existence of the phenomenon, whatever it is. You know, for those who would criticize his skepticism, I think he was trying to find a balance between the overt skepticism of Donald Menzel and others. Again, the Harvard astronomer, one of the first really, even before Valetianian. rather, to write a scientific book about UFOs, but again, Menzel's takes an extremely skeptical approach. And in his journals, Valet, as he is preparing for the publication of anatomy of a phenomenon, which we might say is the first popular book that is written by a scientist

from a scientist's perspective, but which is in advocacy of the existence of the phenomenon and in the furtherance of the case for studying it. That was Valet's whole point. He wanted to kind of be the, you know, he wanted to be, I guess, the antithesis of, but still a scientific perspective, you know, counter to what Menzel was doing. So anyway, you know, Menzel was the arch skeptic of his day. And then you had the keyhose on the other side. Heinek was trying to find that balance. So I found it to be a respectable position. And therefore, his desire to be, you know, in the limelight, so to speak, I mean, it had its benefits. He was probably the most balanced commentator of that era, who could be out there speaking to audiences. And so he was getting

a lot of attention, getting a lot of requests for presentations and things. And he didn't turn him down, but this frustrated valet. Because Jacques, of course, is sitting back at the university and he's saying, you know, here is where the work is done. And it's great to get out there and evangelize and tell the public about how science can benefit from the study of UAP. But, you know, if we really want to understand what this phenomenon may be, whether there's a threat potential, you know, whether this is something that science can actually examine and maybe explain. We've got to do that work in the lab first. And that included, of course, a careful review and a better organizational system applied to the file system related to Project Blue Book and, of course, its predecessors, grudge, and sign.

Now, that's really where this story begins in 1967. Valet decides he's going to help his friend, Jay Allen Heineck. He says, I'm going to go over there. I'm going to go to his office at his house. I'm going to get a bunch of these files that are in such disarray. I'm going to take these things back over there, and I'm going to try. And at the observatory, I'm going to try and classify. I'm going to try and straighten these files up and get them ordered.

And so he's going through the files, and he's trying to do this. He's lamenting in what poor shape so many of the files are in. And he decides, you know, I'm just going to try and go through these. And so he says, the worst section of the files, and I'm actually going to quote, valet here from my notes. This, a quote, a passage from his journal, which was published in that first edition of the Forbidden Science series, he said the worst section of the files concerned the history of the Air Force projects themselves from sign and grudge to Blue Book.

And so he is going through these documents, and again, a little bit of history here also in 1952 following a recommendation to the Intelligence Advisory Committee following the Central Intelligence Agency's own review of Project Blue Book. there had been a panel famously convened in 1953. This was headed by Howard P. Robertson, and hence it was aptly named, or it is best known as the Robertson panel. And its conclusion is, of course, or was that UFOs did not present a significant threat, we'll say, to national security. But the Robertson panel did express some concerns about other things related to UFOs, namely that widespread public interest in the phenomenon might also represent a potential threat. and in a couple of ways.

We don't want people getting carried away or getting frightened. We also don't want public interest to be something that might potentially be exploitable, maybe even by a foreign adversary, which would therefore allow for clogging of communication channels and things along these lines. Now, that occurred in 1953. The following year, there was a study that was also completed by the Battelle Memorial Institute, based on a statistical analysis that involved about 3,200 Blue Book reports that had been collected by that time. And then that was later published by the U.S. Air Force made available, I think, the following year after that, so it might have been maybe 19505 or six when that was published.

But this was the famous Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14, which you often heard Stanton Friedman and others talk about. So anyway, that's sort of the lineage of what was going on at that time in the 1950s. Fast forward again to 1967, there's Valet working through his friend Alan Hinex files. He says, Alan had misplaced many of the documents. And it is in that section, talking about these boxes of files from that era, that I found a letter that is especially remarkable, Vellet wrote, because of the new light it throws on the key period of the Robertson panel and of the classic report number 14. Now, as Valet describes it in forbidden science, he says it is stamped in red ink,

secret security information. It is dated 9th of January, 1953. It is signed by a man I will call Penticle. And this document disturbed Valet because as he is reading this memorandum, it's essentially a communication with a individual whose name later was released. We'll talk about that later because it's publicly known now. He calls him Penticle, but it seems to be describing a case to be made for some kind of a secret UFO operation. where, first of all, thousands of reports are being examined and being studied for various reasons

and in relation to various areas where UFOs are being seen. And one of the ideas that is proposed in the memorandum is that in these areas where people see a lot of UFOs, we should institute monitoring systems. And we should also plan for a number of secret Air Force operations and military operations. where we have aircraft flying in that area. You know, essentially it seems to be describing we should attempt to try and carry out secret exercises in the sky that would mislead the public to think that there is UFO phenomenon going on in those areas. That disturbed valet. That was what concerned him about this memorandum.

And he, of course, talks about it to J.L. and Heineck. And then it's kind of forgotten about for a number of years. it comes to light again in the early 1990s when he publishes Valet forbidden science. And then this kind of opened an entire can of worms for the UFO community because many people thought, well, maybe we can use the Freedom of Information Act or some other means to get a copy of this document, find out what it actually said. And lo and behold, a few years later, it actually did eventually surface. Right, right. And then, you know, once it did surface and we kind of learned who this person was that wrote it, that's where things. got really interesting for me, Micah, when we started to learn names of who Pentacle could be

and why this letter was being set to write Patterson, which a lot of our listeners and viewers know, is possibly the place where the Roswell wreckage was stored. I see the headline right behind you there down in the bunker. Love it, love it. So let's talk a little maybe about, if you wouldn't mind, the person who wrote this, that H.C. Cross, as we've come to learn. Do you know much about this individual, who he was, who he worked for? Yeah, what can you share with us about all of that? You know, there isn't all that much known about Howard Cross, but again, his name is known. Now, the memorandum eventually surfaced.

I actually would like to read from the memorandum because as we're going to find, and I want to go ahead and state this early on, even though I hope to somewhat vindicate some of Valet's perspectives, I do think that there is a strong case to be made that on further. historical review, we can certainly explain a lot about the Pentical Memorandum, and I don't fundamentally agree with all of Valet's conclusions about it. But I also think that we have to understand the historical context into which he interpreted the way that he did and the reasons that, you know, that kind of led to that. Because there was a lot going on at that time, chief among them, the fact that he and Heineck at the time had felt that they weren't being

made privy to all of the Blue Book reports. They had long felt that there was a military element that they were not fully able to access with relation to the actual reporting of UFOs. And I think that, in fact, that aspect of this can actually be shown. That can be proven. But coming back around to this memorandum and who actually wrote this, we'll start with the memo. And then we'll talk about how it came to light. The document can be read online. There is a website called Kufon, not to be confused with Mufon, and that is the computer UFO network website.

They have a copy of it archived in text form, and they note a bit of brief background that they provide here, actually, from 1993. They say the Pinnacle Memorandum has been a controversial item since its existence was revealed to the wider UFO community by Dr. Jacques Valet and his excellent work forbidden science, which, of course, we have referenced a few times here, and I believe it would have been published a year prior to this being posted on their site. They said, Valet found the two-page memo in 1967, as we know, while going through Allen's papers. shortly thereafter the document, which purported to be the Penticle Memo, came into limited circulation among certain researchers. Chief among them was Barry Greenwood, who was truly an icon in this field. And he, along with Lawrence Fawcett, co-authored a fantastic book, really yet again. I'm going to keep making must-read additions to the UFO History Chronicle throughout the evening here.

And that book, Clear Intent is the original title it was published under, but it was later republished under the UFO cover-up. But if you read Barry Greenwood and Larry Fawcett's work, you'll see why I recommend it so highly. In fact, I mean, it was the blueprint by which many modern researchers, I think, have built the crux of their UFO inquiries toward government through the Freedom of Information Act. So, as they note here at their site, among other things, this document, which Valet called Pentacle, contains confirmation that Battelle Memorial Institute was working on UFO projects at the time of the Robertson panel. Now at this point I want to skip ahead to the actual document and read to you and then maybe give you some further clarification and context for what we're reading about, but the listeners at home should try to put in, you know, put yourself in Valais's shoes. Imagine it's 1967. There's a lot about the UFO phenomenon and the government's involvement with it that was not known at that time.

And Valet, along with Heinek, were people who should have known more than the average person would about this. phenomenon at that time and of course you know had access direct access to government information about it so it would have certainly surprised valet to read the following and i quote here address to mr miles e goal gives his address it says right patterson air force base ohio and attention captain edward j rupert of course this document dated january ninth nineteen fifty three at the time he was the uh i believe by that time he would have been the head of project blue book um rupert is addressed and it says dear mr goal this letter we're reading from the actual memorandum. This letter concerns a preliminary recommendation to ATIC on future methods of

handling the problem of unidentified aerial objects. This recommendation is based on our experience to date in analyzing several thousands of reports on this subject. We regard the recommendation as preliminary because our analysis is not yet complete and we are not able to document it where we feel it should be supported by facts from the analysis. So they make the following recommendation. They say we are making this recommendation prematurely because the CIA-sponsored meeting of a scientific panel meeting in Washington, D.C., and then they give the dates, to consider the problem of flying saucers. The CIA-sponsored meeting is being held subsequent to a meeting of CIA, ATIC, and our representatives held at ATIC on December 12, 1952. At the December 12th meeting, our representatives strongly recommended that a scientific panel not be set up until the results of our analysis of the siting reports collected, by ATIC were available.

And then they go on to also talk about a project stork, and they say that between Project Stork and the ATIC, this should be reached as to what can and what cannot be discussed at the meeting in Washington in January concerning our preliminary recommendation to ATIC. Now, again, going only that far, Valet is reading this document and saying, okay, hold on. So this is obviously referring to the panel in Washington and the CIA-sponsored meeting. this is, of course, the Robertson panel, right?

Yeah. And here's somebody, Penticle as he calls in, but we now know that this was a Mr. Howard Cross, and he appears to be saying, I'm advising you guys not to have this meeting until we have completed our review. And further, he actually says that there are thousands of reports that are being analyzed in this review process. Now, this disturbed valet, because he said, first of all, we were unaware at that time that, there were thousands of, you know, reports under Blue Book being analyzed that, you know, that that many even existed to be analyzed. Right.

And who was this, Mr. Cross, and who was, you know, conducting this analysis? And further, did they have, obviously they didn't because the Robertson panel convened anyway, but, you know, why were they saying that a CIA-sponsored panel shouldn't convene? Well, what is plainly evident now? And what we know in hindsight is that Cross was with the Batel Institute. Although they did not publish the findings until the year after the Robertson panel convened, as we mentioned earlier, Cross was with the Batel Institute. He was referring to the Batel Memorial Institute review, which, of course, after it was completed,

and then that was, again, supplied to the U.S. Air Force, it was subsequently published as the Project Blue Book Special Report number 14. He is saying we haven't completed the study that would eventually become that report. That scientific information would be of extreme use to the Robertson panel. We advise you guys, cool your jets and hold off until we finish this study. But they didn't. But what's really interesting is that apparently Falae had not been aware of the fact that they were conducting this study for the U.S. Air Force. At least that much could be gleaned from the fact that he was very surprised to hear that Cross, i.e. pentacle, was saying, we've got thousands of reports we're looking through.

I mean, again, more than like 3,200, I think, if memory serves. And so he's saying, yeah, give us some time. We've got to try and dig through all of this. But now, returning to the memo, what disturbed valet, the first portion here was nonetheless surprising, but, I mean, he really gets disturbed when he, disturbed when he reads further, and it says the following. Experience to date on our study, Battella, of unidentified flying objects shows that there is a distinct lack of reliable data with which to work.

even the best documented reports are frequently lacking in critical information that makes it impossible to arrive at a possible identification, i.e., even in a well-documented report, there is always an element of doubt about the data, either because the observer had no means of getting the required data, or it was not prepared to utilize that individual, the observer, was not prepared to utilize the means at his disposal. And so they say, therefore we recommend a controlled experiment be set up by which reliable, physical data can be obtained. It's a tentative preliminary plan by which the experiment could be designated or rather designed and carried out is discussed in the following paragraph. They go on to talk about the ways that they would hope to try and carry out a wide-reaching experiment that would help us gain more information about UFOs than the general public had managed to do.

In other words, they're saying, we realize the average observer doesn't have access to all the kind of instruments that might be helpful in studying UFOs. that namely because they aren't prepared. They don't know when a UFO sighting is going to occur or where one will be seen. So I said if based on the review of all this data, we could determine a few things. One, where UFOs are most likely to be seen. Okay. And then two, if we could, based on where we think we're likely to see them, we could set up tracking and monitoring stations.

So we would be prepared in the event that one actually does show up. We might actually be able to get better information about this phenomenon. than the public has as yet produced. Now, they go on to talk about a number of things. They say a very complete record of the weather should also be kept during the time of this experiment. Cross says that coverage should be so complete that any object in the air could be tracked. And information as to its altitude, velocity, size, shape, color, time of day, etc., could be recorded. He says all balloon releases or known balloon paths, aircraft flights, and flights of rockets in the test area should be known to those in charge of the experiment.

and notably he says many different types of aerial activity should be secretly and purposefully scheduled within the area. Now that specifically is the line that really troubled valet. He said, okay, what are we talking about here? Now, I could give you my interpretation if you'd like. Well, let's, yeah, let's unpack this, Micah, because this is probably the most sensational aspect to this entire memo. And I can understand why Valet would be troubled by that. We're talking about simulated UFO events, which is a, you know, seems like a very out there thing. But we have people in modern day theorizing that these things are going on.

So you do have to wonder, but I would love to get your interpretation of this. Because while it may seem like we're talking a planned UFO event, there's a lot to this. And I think a lot to unpack when it comes to this memo. It's not that big, but it says so much. So it's easy to kind of read between the lines. But yeah, what do you think? What do you think about this? Well, again, we have to remember that the memo was written in January, 1953.

Ballet is reading it in 1967. And so he presumably is asking himself as he's reading this, okay, well, then in the years leading up to now, these UFOs that I've been studying, how many of these might have been, again, different types of aerial activity that have been secretly and purposefully scheduled within UFO sightings hotspots. I mean, it would have been a fair question

for him to ask, right? Absolutely, yeah. And so I think for Valet, he was saying, well, you know, the UFO phenomenon we have been studying may not be necessarily what we thought it was. And again, his interpretation at the time, and that's key,

his interpretation at the time had been, well, it also seems that there is another group studying UFOs that we don't know about. Now, again, I emphasize the fact that that had been his interpretation at the time because that was based on the evidence at his disposal. But in hindsight, with our knowledge of the government studies that have looked at UFOs, we know, of course, about sign, Project Grudge, and Project Blue Book. But of course, there was also the Battel study, which we're talking about here. And at the same time, roughly coinciding with and in the midst of, we have the Robertson, panel. And then, of course, that all rounds out in 1968 with the University of Colorado project. It concluded that year. It actually ran for a couple of years. But with the conclusion of that project

and its findings, we also saw the end of Project Blue Book. And this was a tremendous cultural shift in attitude toward the UFO subject. We saw this shift in media coverage. You know, throughout the 60s leading up to the end of that project with the University of Colorado. I mean, you saw a lot of reporting about UFOs, especially in papers of record like the New York. Times. And after 1968, that coverage drops off. And it, you know, remains low, even though you see spikes

like during the 1990s when the, you know, the U.S. Air Force reopened the books on Roswell during the Clinton administration. You see periods where there are renewed interests, but never peaks again until really 2017 with the publication of the article. The shot heard around the world, you know, Leslie Kane, Ralph Blumenthal, and Helene Cooper

talking about, you know, black budgets and, you know, weird auras and things like this. You know, it had been since the 1960s, prior to the end of the Colorado project, that UFOs were getting that kind of attention. And so we have to recognize that in this period, a tremendous cultural shift was about to occur. And Valet, again, being, he thought, privy to all the Blue Book reports, but apparently had not been, he was very confused at the time about what this memorandum meant, having not been aware, apparently that it was a member of the Betel Memorial Institute, trying to advise that the CIA

hold off until they could finish their study. But I mentioned earlier, that we really needed to kind of try and put this into further historical context. And so in addition to all those elements I'm discussing right there, we also have to remember that, and if you read Forbidden Science, you'll actually see Valet comment about this a lot. Apparently, he and Heinex spoke a good bit about the fact that they were frustrated that they felt that there was information being gathered about the phenomenon, that they were not made privy to.

And so, again, Valet felt upon finding this memorandum, that this somewhat vindicated his view that, well, maybe the military is gathering more data than what, you know, Alan and I are being made aware of. Now, it wouldn't come to light for a number of years, and this is unrelated to the Penticle Memorandum, but if we think about the Janap directive, Stanton Freeman talked a lot about this. And others have to. John Greenwald also has talked about this a lot over the years. The Janep, I believe Janep 146 directive, it's essentially describing the communication channels for reporting sightings of unidentified flying objects, and other things. A number of things are discussed,

but UFOs being one of them. And it's essentially saying what to do if you are a military service man or woman who sees something, how you report it where it goes. And to give you the very briefest summary, essentially it says that, you know, we contact local military outlets,

but we also forward these reports of unidentified on to NORAD. And as we know, NORAD is exempt from FOIA. And so as Stanton Friedman and others have argued over the years, What this showed was, in addition to the fact that there were certain reports that were being sent to an agency, which was not subject to FOIA once FOIA came into existence. This also shows that there appeared to be a reporting channel outside of and distinct from Project Blue Book.

So not all the sightings of UFOs that were occurring, especially those made by the military, were being sent to the Air Force and studied within the context of Project Blue Book. Obviously, there was a separate reporting channel, and there were some reports that went elsewhere. What happens to all those? Those reports, by the way, have a designation there called CIRVIS or Cirvice. You can actually read some of them online because, yet again, my colleague, John Greenwald, did manage to obtain a few of those a few years ago, but he didn't get them from the U.S. side of NORAD. He went to the Canadians. He called the Canadian branch. He asked for documents, and they were happy to give them some, but, you know, the United States, they will very seldom ever even acknowledge a request for those Ciravis reports.

So, again, we might say that Valet was not wrong, that there was a separate reporting channel. And that's not what the Penticle Memorandum dealt with. But again, his interpretation of the Penticle Memorandum had been his suspicion that such a separate reporting channel might exist. And I think he was fundamentally correct on that point. I would have to agree. I mean, it's clear. I mean, especially when you're dealing with something like Jane App, like you mentioned. The government is very good at finding ways to funnel things into a certain place where,

the public will never figure it out. And I think this is a prime example of that. And I apologize, you can probably hear the train outside my window, Micah. Welcome to New York City, brother. It could be back. I know. It's not the same right now, but we'll get you back here soon. Well, yeah, I think what we can deduce is that Vellet was definitely right. You know, there were clearly reports that were not making it to Hineck during Blue Book.

We know Blue Book was kind of an. exercise in public relations and getting the most filtered version out to the public as possible. But one of the interesting things that I read in an article that you wrote on the Pentecost, entire affair, is when Valet finally approached Heineck about this memo, and Heineck then went to, I believe it was Battelle, and said, what is this? What is going on? Would you mind maybe kind of running us through that whole aspect of all this because their reaction was not exactly what you'd expect. Well, you know, you thought that they would say, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, that's just our stuff.

No, I mean, really, they were not happy that Heinek approached them about it. And they essentially, if memory serves, they kind of tell Heinek, you know, you're not supposed to ever talk about that. And they just kind of shut him down. Now, what I'll point out is, and this is something that is pretty well known, I guess, in certain UFO circles. but I mentioned Heinex book, the Heinek UFO report earlier. Early in that book, I believe the first chapter around page 21 or 22, it's one of those or somewhere in there. He mentions a document from Battell Memorial Institute that was sent to members of the Robertson panel. There's only about a paragraph about it, and then there are some additional paragraphs thereafter that discuss sort of the context.

But Heinek, back in the 70s, when he published that book, he was referring to the Pinnacle Memorandum. Now, obviously he knew about it because it was in his files. Valet found it, and Valet goes to Heinek, and he addresses the issue with Heinek. And then, like you mentioned, yes, Heinek went to Battelle, and he asks questions about this later. And so their response seemed to further vindicate Ballet's view that we are being told not to talk about something that we found, and this clearly shows that there's UFO study going on outside of what we are being made privy to. And we were supposed to be the scientific advisors to Blue Book. But I think it's interesting to point out that even though Ballet would write about the Pinnacle Memorandum,

and he had essentially been the first person to really reference it in detail back in 1992, I mean, a number of years beforehand, Heineck did mention it in his book. He didn't refer to it as Pinnacle. He didn't name the author. But he references the document right there early in his book, and it's a clear reference, and I actually went back and checked on that. And again, I want to give a shout out to Isaac Coy online. he is a fantastic researcher and he has an entire list at his website of references in various

literature from over the years that are made to that document. He actually includes Heinex's reference to it on his list. So good on him. He is a fantastic researcher, one of the best in my opinion. But, yeah, there it is. I mean, Heinek has talked about this, you know, even prior to Valet. Now, what does that mean? Well, I mean, it's not like he beat Valet to the punch. Of course, he knew about it. Valet had talked about it with him. He had found it in Allen's files. But the legacy of Penticle, I think, is a bit of a mixed bag because although I think that Valet was somewhat vindicated on his broader perception of what was happening at that time, I also disagree with his interpretation of that document because now with further historical insight about what was happening at that time, we know, of course, that Howard Cross was with Battell. They were conducting a study. Blue Book had gathered more than 3,000 UFO reports at that time. Those were being studied. that would be later published in the special report number 14. They were explicitly saying to the Robertson panel,

look, guys, hold off until we finish this study. You really will need the information that we could provide. So that's what they're saying. But now there's a bit of controversy, too. And I know you've got some questions from listeners. We'll get to here in a moment. But I'll just add, you know, there's been quite a bit of controversy about this document over the years. Because, again, Valet has maintained that even though we can agree on the historical circumstances at play here,

He says that in the coming years, this was his feeling. And I think that this was really kind of springboarding off of that controversial line about, you know, controlled experiments and things. Valet seemed to be of the mind that the full implications of the Pentical Memorandum would only be revealed with time. There were others who kind of thought that this was a fairly mundane document. And of course, one we've already mentioned had been Barry Greenwood. And I want to share a bit of a correspondence that the, uh, the computer UFO network website actually features online where, and again, you know, you talk about like just dialogue between Titans in the field.

Here's Barry Greenwood and Valet going back and forth about this memorandum. I'll first quote here briefly from Valet writing to another colleague, and he mentions that the question of the origin of the document may be unimportant. He says, perhaps the people who released it will go public eventually. He says the best course of action, however, would be to seek access to the original document, to others of the same vintage. And then he forwards along to his colleague, Dale, the following statements from Barry Greenwood.

Barry, again, gives us a lot of context for things like the Project Twinkle that are mentioned in this document. And he says specifically at the outset of his memo to valet, Barry Greenwood here, it makes no reference this document to any recovered UFO hardware at Roswell or elsewhere or to alien bodies. He says the greater significance of what it does say, No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Let me back up. This isn't Barry Greenwood. This is Valet writing to Barry Greenwood in their correspondence. Let's start there.

So he is saying to Barry Greenwood, the greater significance of what this document does say will slowly emerge in the coming years as the overall implications come to light. So Valet points out to Greenwood a few things. He says Project Twinkle and other observational efforts by the military, which you mentioned in an effort to show that Penticle was only dusting off an old idea were purely passive projects. In sharp contrast, the Pinnacle proposal, it was far beyond anything mentioned before, and daringly states that many different types of aerial activity should be, and he underlines this, Valle does, secretly and purposefully scheduled within the area. Now, Valet, again commenting on this, says it is difficult to be more clear. We are not talking simply about setting up observation stations and cameras. We're talking about large-scale covert simulation of UFO waves under military control.

So that is explicitly what Valet was concerned with, and in his letter to Barry Greenwood, he says, this is what they seem to be describing. Now, again, offering a bit of a different perspective, my interpretation would have been that the military, if they had, based on the blue book data, what they thought were UFO hotspots, places where people thought they were able to see more UFOs and where more sightings appeared to originate from. with little doubt the military would have wanted to try and put aircraft out there or put objects that they might be able to use to gauge how the public reacts. And that way they could see if people, again, the benefit to me would be that they would see how people respond. Let's say they put up a weather balloon and people go, there's another UFO and we've seen them here before. So we know this one must be a UFO too. It's obviously a flying saucer. Well, the military, if they knew what they had put up in the air and that's how people responded, they might come away from it going,

okay, well, you know, we put a weather balloon up, and people acted exactly as they had 10 years ago when they had said they'd saw a bunch of, you know, seen a bunch of UFOs in the same area. So we might glean from this that under those circumstances in that area, people generally describe very prosaic things as being unidentified flying objects. I would see that as being one potential benefit that the military might have derived from carrying out these controlled secret experiments, right? But again, to Valais' point, he's like, yeah, but if it's controlled and it's secret and they are essentially simulating a UFO wave, they are deceiving the public. And he seems to take issue with that. His next point that he makes to Barry Greenwood, and he says this is the greatest implication, which I'll quote him here, is perhaps not obvious on first reading, but which amounts to a scandal of major proportion in the eyes of any scientist, he says, has to do with the outright manipulation of the Robertson panel. He says, here is a special meeting of the five most eminent scientists in the land assembled by the government to discuss a matter of national security. Not only are they made or rather not made aware of all the data, but another group has already decided what can and cannot be discussed.

And he again quoting Penticle, i.e. Cross. So Valle says Dr. Heineck categorically stated to me that the panel was not briefed about the Penticle proposals. Now, again, unpacking that aspect. Heinex upset because he sees this as manipulation of the CIA-sponsored Robertson panel. But again, my takeaway, and I think this had been Barry Greenwoods, would be, well, what they were saying was, we advise that you guys postponed because we haven't finished the study. If we finish the study, then you guys can see our results. So you might call that manipulation, but again, it would have been, in my view, to the best interest of the Robertson panel to hold off until the Batel Memorial. Institute completed their study. So I could see it from that perspective. And again, I might disagree with

Valet on that point. There's little I disagree with him on, I'll mind you, but again, that's one point I'll take. And so, but again, he also says nonetheless, though, that Heineck categorically stated to him that the panel was not briefed about the Pinnacle proposals. The reason that might be, of course, had been that the Bettele Memorial Institute had not finished their study. So why would Robertson's panel have been briefed until that point. If anything, it seems based on the fact that the memorandum exists that their desire would have been to be able to brief Robertson, but they didn't have anything to brief them with. They said, you know, we aren't done with our study. Give us some time. If you guys can wait, then we can brief you. So if they weren't briefed, it was probably because Battel hadn't

finished the study yet at that point. So in. Patel, procrastinators, man, I tell you. Well, those are the green points again. And you can kind of see why this became such a big, because at that time, you know, Barry Greenwood with the Just Cause newsletter he was doing, he had again with Larry Fawcett published the book at that time called Clear Intent, but the same book you can find now under the title, the UFO cover-up. He then began to publish another newsletter, Barry Greenwood, called the UFO Historical Review. And you can find all these online. By the way, if you go to the Greenwood Archive, just go online and search for the Barry Greenwood

or just Greenwood UFO archive. And you'll find the website. It's a very simple blog website, but Barry has uploaded as PDFs, a lot of these newsletters. So you can go online and you can read all of these. And if you're interested in the history of this subject like I am, and obviously I am the kind of guy who, as this pandemic has ensued,

I have been reading a lot about the history. I mean, you know, it's nothing different. But I highly recommend Barry Greenwood's work. He is one of the most diligent researchers. And again, he is a documents guy. You know, Barry is a historically-minded researcher who works with documents. Valet is also someone who has worked a lot with documents over the years, having been one of the first scientists who had access, he thought, initially,

to the majority of the Blue Book documents, and later he found maybe not as many as there actually were in existence. But he's a scientist and a person who tries to apply the scientific method toward a very novel and perplexing topic. And this is really, rather than a right versus wrong, you know, Greenwood was right, no valet was. you know, this is more like two different areas, you know, converging, trying to find some semblance of truth. And although I think that Barry's interpretation really of the history of the documents is correct, again, Valais' experience as a scientist working with Heinek at that time informed his opinions about it.

And he wasn't entirely wrong about some of his takeaways about the nature of government and its attitudes, especially its secrecy toward the UAP subject. Choice hotels get you more of what you value. Comfort in It's calling your name Save on the stay Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim Book direct at storeshiltails.com What's up guys, Ryan Sprag here

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Thank you and keep looking up. Absolutely. I think you're right. I think while one looks at it at one way, another's going to look at another way. And we always hear with these documents is read between the lines. So many people, say these types of things. So of course, they're going to interpret them differently. And I think you're right. I don't think there's a right or wrong when it comes to this. It's a fascinating historical piece that we have in this entire UFO thing that we will probably debate till the end of time. But I found it super interesting. I'm so happy that you were able to kind of walk us through this because it's so easy for these things to get overlooked, Micah, that the public would never even know

this existed. I didn't know. And the minute I said, whoa, did anyone know that there was a project running parallel to Project Blue Book? And everyone starts commenting on, you know, my social media like, oh, do you mean Stork or do you mean Penticle? And I'm like, no, no, no, something else. But lo and behold, that's what it was. So I definitely got taken to school on this one. And what I think is, that's all right. That's all right. Look, you know, there's this attitude that, oh, you don't know this, you don't know that. look, we're all in this together to try and educate one another. I get schooled frequently by my friends and not just in the UFO field.

Try hanging out with guys like Tim McMillan or Jason Penn Trail for a while. I mean, you'll learn really quickly that, yeah, you know, there are limits to what any one individual can know. And I hope also, you know, with all of my colleagues to be able to fill that gap for them at times too. So there's no shame in not knowing everything. And, you know, anyone who acts like, oh, you didn't know this or that, you know, look, everyone at some point is going to be afforded that opportunity to be told something they had no idea about. So again, no shame right there. We're all in this to learn. That's such a good point, brother. And I think it's important, too, to look at the history of these things, because then we can start to see

how it bleeds into what we're dealing with today. And I do have some listener questions, kind of relating to Pentagon and some not so much. But these should be fun because we have a lot going on in the UFO world right now, upcoming UAP task force by the Pentagon. And we have some bombshells that are apparently supposed to be dropping soon as the internet and social media has told us. We will not comment on that just yet. But let's get to these listener questions. MISCA on Facebook asks, what criteria do you, Micah, use when trying to decipher a report or a memorandum's vera? if and when they are revealed.

Yeah, okay, well, the first and most important thing that you must do, if you're looking at a document, be able to establish the chain of custody. And again, you actually see that at the Center for UFO or rather the computer UFO organization website there, Kufon. Again, it's trying to keep up with all these acronyms. Kufon is not, as I understand, an active organization any longer, but the website remains online. It was one of the early online efforts to try and get documents online. Again, you've got Mufon, they've got Kufan, easily mixed up with the Center for UFO Studies. So anyway, Kufan, which is the computer UFO network, they actually stayed in their page about the Pinnacle Memorandum, which I'm sure is often visited because it is one of the only links online where the actual document can be read in its entirety.

You know, they state that this came to light through, you know, I don't know that they ever really state exactly who released it, but in the dialogue that they include in, changes between Barry Greenwood and Jacques Valet. Valet says, we hope at some point that that will come to light. He says, I have a suspicion about who might have released these documents. So at the time that this was posted, Valet didn't even know exactly how it had come to light. But it was later confirmed, as I understand it, and I think it had actually been Barry Greenwood, who probably was able to obtain a copy of the memo through official channels. That would be through, you know, following the FOIA request. And that's one way that you would do this. Again, if someone says here's a document and this is what it claims, make sure that you can establish the

provenance of that document, even if that means, and you'll often find this. You know, when I file a Freedom of Information Act request, often what I'll do is I will go first before I file anything, and I will, of course, you want to go to the respective government agency, go to their online reading room. You know, the FBI has one called the vault. The CIA also has a document reading room where you can go online and you can see documents that have been posted online that already have been released. And often they will link to popular documents or documents that are frequently requested. Make sure that what you're looking for hasn't already been posted online that could save you some time and trouble. But something else that you might also look for

is FOIA logs. If you can get access to the FOIA logs for a year or for several years, you can find out what kinds of things other people have been asking for. And honestly, sometimes reading through the FOIA logs can be as entertaining as reading documents themselves. see all the crazy crackpot stuff that people go and ask for. But if you can't find the FOIA logs online, then one thing you can do is you can FOIA the FOIA logs. You can file a Freedom of Information Act request for the actual FOIA logs. And then you can access information about what has already been asked for. Then something I've seen journalists do this. When you read the FOIA logs, journalists will actually say, I'm respectfully requesting all documents filed by said individual.

And so if someone has come forward and said that they've gotten a document, you know, a journalist or a journalistic organization can go and FOIA what they requested. And then hopefully the same documents, if they were supplied to one individual, will be supplied to another. And a lot of, you know, websites, blogs, news sources, outlets, you know, one, for example, that a friend of mine, Brett Tingley writes for, is the war zone headed by Ty Ragoway. those guys won't publish anything, even if the documents already exist, unless they can independently verify the documents through their own establishment of that chain of custody. So to the question, one of the best ways you can, you know, again, assure yourself of the veracity of the documents. If it's posted online, I don't care if it's already been reported. I mean, there was an instance like this earlier this year where Yahoo News reported on something in a leaked FBI memo. When it appeared online, what did I do?

I was curious. I went to the FBI. I foyered the document that was already available online. And that is certainly one of the best ways, in my opinion, that you can establish that chain of custody, certainly really probably the most accurate way, too. And that's definitely going to help you assure yourself of the fact that the document in question that you have at least what portions are reasonably exempt and non-redacted actually are available to the public in where they came from. Absolutely. And like you mentioned as well, our good friend and colleague, John Greenwald, you can go to his website as well,

the black vault.com, and just go to the search engine, right on the website. And if you have something you're interested in, type it in, see what comes up. I mean, we're talking millions and millions of pages of declassified documents. So, yeah, I would have to agree. He's just a monster.

And again, actually, just let me add, too, that in addition to the reading rooms at the respective websites, yeah, don't forget to go and check the Black Vault, too, because John may already have asked for those documents. Again, insider knowledge. A lot of people aren't aware of this, even though it's well known.

but the Bigfoot file that the FBI released a few years ago, you know where Peter Byrne, who I interviewed, had actually sent a hair sample to the FBI and their forensic laboratory analyzed this for him. I think it came back. It was dear, not surprising. But John Greenwald got those documents before the FBI, subsequently after their release,

posted them on their reading room. And then when journalists saw them at the reading room, it was big news. But John had posted the files like a year earlier because he was the one that requested and got them. Boom. There you go. That's John, knowing stuff before the FBI. I love it. I love it. All right. Well, Daniel on Facebook asks, Micah, do you think this has been the same secret study all along or are different agencies doing their own secret studies at different times? Also, will anything be released to the public from the new UAP task force? These are great questions and kind of what I was thinking from Pentagon and the Project Stork. How this is? of bleed into today. I mean, do you think between Blue Book and A-Tip that Battelle was still doing their studies

them specifically? Or do you think there are projects going on constantly when it comes to UFOs in the government's study of these? Not known to the public. That's, you know, it's a bit of a complex question. You know, what I would say is that we have to define what we mean by a study. For instance, while Blue Book. book was underway. There were two UFO investigative studies, I guess you might call them that,

or you might call them research efforts or projects that were initiated during the Vietnam period, and these actually overseas in the midst of the conflict. These, I think, occurred in the summer of 1968, I believe, or maybe 67. And they were called Have Fear and Lethal Chaser. These were very, very sophisticated, um, uh, instrumental arrays that were instituted on the ground in order to try and, um, analyze unidentified aircraft that were being observed by U.S. troops over there in the demilitarized zone, okay, during the Vietnam conflict. And, uh, I learned about these documents. They were released as a result of, uh, you know, military, I guess they were called, um, lessons learned and people who have fought a lot of, you know, FOIA requests for

documents with relation to military history. You're probably familiar with lessons learned reports. These were obtained, I believe, by Paul Dean first. Paul Dean, of course, you know, brought them to my attention. And he has a couple of blogs on his fantastic website. UFO's documenting the evidence that's his blog. Mr. Dean has done a great job reporting on that. And he and I've talked pretty extensively about it, too, on the phone.

And also, he came on my show at one point and talked about it. But, you know, Paul and I keep in touch. But, you know, again, these were very limited in scope, but basically the story was that people first were seeing these objects, egg-shaped objects, not unlike the Tic Tac from the famous 2004 in Mitz incident. And seeing these over the militarized zone, people were saying, you know, are these Viet Cong aircraft or something?

What are we observing here? It was quickly determined that these were not the enemies, and they certainly were not ours, and so we were trying to identify what they were. And so, you know, telescopes, lasers, radio, radar, a lot of different kinds of instrumentation, as well as mobile units, which were essentially mounted on backpacks and used by American servicemen. They're on the ground were instituted throughout the summer of that year to try and identify what these objects were.

They made no sound. They moved very quickly. They sometimes produced a bluish glow. We never determined what they were. Big surprise, huh? But based on the descriptions of UFO sightings from during the Vietnam Conflicts, I mean, it sounds very much like tick-tac-type aircraft were being observed during that conflict. And that's very interesting to me.

But again, to the point, this was a limited study which occurred during the Blue Book years, but which did not have specific relevance to Blue Book, again, emanating from within the U.S. Army and not within the U.S. Air Force. But prior to the closure of Project Blue Book, I suspect that there have probably been a lot of very limited studies like that, which, you know, in terms of maintaining operational security during a conflict like Vietnam or something, probably were seen as necessary at the time or would have been beneficial had they been successful. But, again, they merely observed things that they couldn't identify. And so there was extremely limited success. And then there's a, you know, lessons learned report written.

And then it gets filed away until somebody, you know, like Paul Dean finds it via FOIA. So, again, there probably have been a lot of ongoing studies over the years. I don't know that we could say that, again, what the Battelle Institute was studying began and continued throughout the years and has continued and that we're seeing that continuation even right up with ATIP, ATSAP, and what have you. I don't think that's the case.

We in fact know that the Batel Memorial Institute concluded their scientific review of Blue Book reports the year after the Robertson panel convened and then that actually was published. But let's not forget what Project Blue Book Special Report Number 14 actually said. I mean, it said that like a lot of these, UFO studies from over the years. A lot of these reports can be explained, but there are still a lot we can't put a finger on. We can't conclude what this actually is. There seems to be something worthy of study, and we can't identify it. And I'll note, this is significant. The University of Colorado project under Edward U. Condon came to the same conclusion. There were a lot of reports and, you know, sightings and investigations from the Blue Book years that they studied and that they reviewed. And on further,

inquiry, they could not come to any conclusions. You know, the R.E.F. Redwater's incident, not the one from, again, Suffolk in 1980, but we're talking about the one from the 1950s, which was a radar visual case, well-known, and it was also cited in the Blue Book files. They couldn't come to any conclusions about that one. And although Condon had said, you know, we can't see any benefit to further scientific study right now of the UFO issue, we don't say that this should never be studied or that the book should be completely closed. maybe on down the road we should, you know, reopen studies into UFOs. That's what Condon really said.

Interesting, because, I mean, all we hear of Condon is, you know, I don't think there's anything to this UFO thing, but I'm not supposed to make that conclusion for another year or so. So you do have to wonder, maybe he was an advocate more than he would let on. But I don't know. I mean, I do think he was dismissive of the UFOs. and I think he was biased when he went into it. I think his conclusion was his conclusion. But again, I think he also was fair enough to say, look, this is what I think. We don't see anything worth studying,

but we're not saying it should never be studied. We're just saying you're going to be wasting your time right now. But again, should the same hold true today with technology like the Raytheon Zapfler targeting pod? Obviously, we have better instruments at our disposal today, don't we? Absolutely, man. Absolutely. And I think the other thing we have to keep in mind is

when it comes to these studies or these programs, as we learned with atyp and offset, these things can be masked in many different ways. I mean, they're called things that we would never expect. The word UFO or, you know, UAP isn't used in the programs or the studies. It's, it's AVs, you know, aerial vehicles, or it's, you know, insert acronym here for what could actually be an unidentified aerial phenomena study, but we would never even know where to begin looking for it. So I think you're right. I think there's so many tentacles to the pentacle and everything in between.

But let's move on to Matthew here on Twitter. He asks, Micah, has anyone ever considered a UFO flap that wouldn't fit what was proposed by the Peko memo? There's been rumors about Hopkinsville, for example. Is it possible that the Benowitz affair might have been an extension of what the memo proposed, kind of these simulated or planned events. Benowitz, I never would have even ventured to go into that territory with something planned. But yeah, what do you think? Could any of these things we've heard about, Hopkinsville, Rendell Schum, this, that have to do with what the Battell Institute proposed as simulated events?

That's an interesting question. With Hopkinsville, if they decided to institute a simulated event, the description of the events that occurred there with the Hopkinsville. Again, we're talking about presumably the Hopkinsville Kelly incident. I would put that one more in the high strangeness camp, but it nonetheless, because of the fact that it involved at least tangent observations of UAP around the time of the famous goblins, you know, that were seen there purportedly around the farm. It was interesting enough that it did warrant the attention of Blue Book, and there was an investigation, and it was included in the Blue Book. book files. You've got to keep in mind, though, also that Heinek especially was interested in trying to log different stages of UFO encounters from, you know, the, you know, the daylight

disks and the radar visuals all the way up through the CEEs, one, two, and three. Close Encounter, by the way. So the Hopkinsville Kelly incident might have been a qualifier for, you know, one of those close encounter type cases. To me, it's almost too strange to even really call it a UFO incident, although it certainly warrants some attention, but if we were to try and ask, could this be the kind of thing that was being discussed by Howard Cross? He seems pretty explicitly to be describing the institution of, and again, just to quote him, he talks about, where is the quote? I thought I had it right here in front of me, but I guess I could pull it up again. It's worth quoting him twice here. He says that there should be many types of aerial activity

secretly and purposefully scheduled within the area. Well, the Hopkinsville, if that's what we're talking about, wouldn't probably constitute aerial activity. But it's not outside the realm of the possible that, you know, one might interpret that as being a controlled affair, that that might have been some kind of an experiment. I think Nick Redfern has probably proposed that over the years. I know he said the same of the famous Flatwoods monster and suggested that that might actually have been some kind of a sort of a weaponized system. In fact, he found a description of something very similar in a Rand Corporation file, which he wrote about a number of years ago. So, you know, there's always that interpretation. But the problem with that interpretation of some classic UFO sightings from over the years is to me that, again, it is supposing that there is a conspiratorial government-based explanation for some of these high strangeness encounters, which again is as speculative as saying that it might have been exactly what people claim that they saw. And at the end of the day, we don't have any kind of clear resolution.

It's a different story. Again, if we FOIA about that and the government releases documents and says, you know what, yeah, we had a bunch of trained hedgehogs and silver suits that we put out there and everything and scared a bunch of, you know, farmers in Hopkinsville. You know, if there's a clear resolution, that's one thing. But again, everything else is just speculation. But again, I would not tie cases like that necessarily to what the Patel Institute was doing, nor would I say that those are a continuation and that we're seeing essentially the same thing right on up to the modern era with. A-TIP and some of the programs we hear about today. Yeah, yeah, I would have to agree with that. This is a good question from Deb. Now, we've talked a lot about, you know, U.S.-funded programs and everything, especially Pentagon, one of them, but globally, Micah, Deb asks, is there any agency that collates global data on UFO reports? So much info seems to come from the U.S., although this is a global phenomenon.

So have there ever been any programs or studies that you can think? think of that have been done globally. To me, you know, this is such a, um, a issue with national security when it comes to the government studying these things. So that's why I, I tend to only find things country to country. But yeah, what do you think? Has there ever a global study of the UFO phenomenon? Nothing's coming to my knowledge. I don't think that there's been a comprehensive global effort on part of governments, you know, there has been, of course, there have been instances where, for instance, you know, Lee Spiegel led the charge to get valet and a few others to actually brief the United Nations. That would be the... Right, right. It did not, I guess we would say it, um, it didn't result

in a UN resolution or anything saying, you know, okay, well, now we're going to institute a global UAP task force. Now, wouldn't it be interesting if the result of the actual institution of the UAP task force under the U.S. Navy that Norquist... is overseeing right now, that would be interesting if the result of a report like that was a global analysis, you know, a UN-sponsored investigative organization that is, you know, a unilateral observation of UFO information and recording of, you know, data forthcoming, you know, in the future on a global scale as a result of the cooperation of different world governments. I mean, that would be fantastic, but I don't think we'll probably see that.

And one of the reasons why is because if there's one thing we can take away from UFOs and what current studies from over the years seem to show us, it is that there's something that is with regard to UAP that involves very necessary secrecy. I mean, the Pentagon did disclose, well, they re-released three well-known videos earlier this in April. Yeah, they officially disclosed the three videos that again appeared back in 2017, which I guess we, have now learned that Chris Mellon essentially had kind of spearheaded that. And in fact, this is discussed, I believe in James Fox's documentary, that, you know, Chris had really led the charge with getting those videos released to the public, you know, which my understanding was that they had not been classified at that point. They just weren't public. And one of them

had already been online for a number of years, but without that provenance, that providence didn't exist. And so therefore, you know, there had still been some questions. When the videos were released through unauthorized channels. That again, the DOD's official explanation as of earlier this year in April. And again, John Greenwald and I went on coast to coast a.m., stayed up all night and drank lots of coffee talking about this and the implications of that. What we learned was that, A, according to the government, the videos that were released were the full version of the videos. There weren't longer versions. And no, they hadn't been doctored or anything like that. I mean, the videos as they were released in that format were acknowledged by the Department of Defense

as having been authentic videos from the, well, they were obtained by the Navy, but again, released via the DoD. And again, their conclusion after further review, and again, that review, Ryan, was aimed at making sure that there was no classified U.S. technology represented by the subjects of the film, nor was the technology used to obtain the information about the subjects, indicative of any kind of secret U.S. technology that should not be made public

to the general American or world public for that matter. Again, after that review process, they determined that nothing in the videos could not be released and that the subject of the videos, the purported phenomena, remained. They classed it as unidentified. So, I mean, that to me, and I think that, you know, John Greenwald, Tim McMillan, M.J. Benayas, you know, a lot of my colleagues in this field, Brett Tingley, yourself, you know, we would all interpret that to me. Well, okay, so the government just released videos of something that they say they don't identify or can't identify. We can still, I guess, play a little word salad here and interpret what exactly that means. But again, taking at face value, it seems to indicate that they have established that chain of custody. These videos came from us. We don't know what the objects are.

So yet again, we've got that verification through that chain of custody being established. That says a lot. It really does. It does, man. Again, I was very surprised in their official release where it did state, you know, these are genuine unidentified phenomena. And that that's huge for our U.S. government to acknowledge that finally after how many years of denying that UFOs even were an issue or a thing. It's a big step.

It really is. And now let me, can I clarify something? You guys said that the videos we saw that this, this is all they had lengthwise. Now, I've heard from several individuals that the video. might actually be longer. Is this just conjecture? Or has it officially been stated that the videos, the public see these three Navy UFO videos, that is the entire length of the incident as recorded by these Navy cameras? That is what the DOD's statement in April said. That is, that is what they say. But like yourself, I have spoken to, for instance, I have spoken to

petty officer Gary Voorhees, also video officer Ryan Weigelt. I've communicated with Kevin Day. a lot of my colleagues have spoken to others, including Commander David Fravor and some of the other individuals, such as the weapons officers, you know, who had actually been flying with him at the time of the 2004 Nimitz incident. Some of the folks I have spoken to, and I don't think Gary would mind me mentioning him by name, because again, he went on the record and told me this over the telephone for a podcast interview I did with him and Ryan Weigled, that yes, they had been watching. Again, what he described to me did not sound like. the Raytheon at Fleer because again as far as I understand the Raytheon at Fleer targeting forward targeting pod which was used to obtain the footage and keep in mind that what was described by Dave Fraver that's not what we see in the footage the footage was obtained thereafter by another pilot again that was um oh gosh um you you know you know his name uh uh uh underwood

yeah chat underwood thank you very much at underwood she came forward and did the interview with New York Magazine. He was the pilot. Oh, and also, I'm sorry, Underwood also did a fantastic interview with Jeremy Corbell, which is available on YouTube, where he speaks at length about that experience. And so again, for those who have said, we weren't sure what Underwood filmed, it could be a 747 in the distance. I find that I find that to be a highly dubious argument that Chad Underwood operating this sophisticated technology was unable to determine that this might just be a commercial aircraft in the distance. And further, For those who say that it could just be a drug runner flying without a transponder, if indeed what it was was a mere commercial aircraft off in the distance, there absolutely would have been, if it were a commercial aircraft, a transponder operative. Not only did this aircraft that Underwood filmed, not only did it not operate with a transponder,

not only was he not like a great distance away. I don't think he was any more than about 19 miles at most away from this object. But the minute he begins to attempt to try and lock in on it with the targeting pod, it attempts to jam his radar, and he's having a hard time actually getting a lock on it. And then, of course, as has famously been pointed out at the end, when the thing just kind of zips out of the frame, it's not moving slowly.

I mean, you've got to keep your mind. He's tracking an object that's moving at tremendous speed at that point, and this thing is going like probably Mach 8, 9, 10, who knows what, when it's zipping out of the frame. And as Underwood stated, I didn't attempt to try and continue to film it. I'd already gotten the footage of the object. I did what I was told to do. He said, I didn't think much about it thereafter.

He says, I'll let the scientists and the geeks, you know, determine what that thing is. I was just told to go out there and film it, and I did. So, that said, again, we have a lot of different data to unpack here. We have the testimony of Commander Fravor. We have the footage that Underwood obtained. We have the testimony of the radar operators aboard the Princeton, Gary Voorhees, and Kevin Day.

And talking with Kevin Day, he said, I'm sorry, Gary Vorheed. Gary Vorhees said to me that, yes, there was footage, what appeared to be a live relay during the intercept attempt by Fravor and others, where they attempt, and again, he said that this would have been, I guess, I don't want to misspeak here, I guess that this would be equivalent to the gun cam. This was not, of course, the Raytheon-Apflear targeting pod. That, to me, to my understanding,

there isn't a live relay feeding that footage back to the ship. But there is a live relay, a video system used on board those jets, which I think it would be I believe it would be correct to call that the gun camera but that should not be mistaken for what we see in the footage that Underwood obtained

that's not gun camera camera. I've heard some very good UFO researchers call that gun camera footage. It's not. That is not what that is. But Voorhe's indicated to me that and what's that system called the something link?

And I looked it up. In fact, you can read about it online. He told me I'll have to double check. It's unclassified, but I mean there is a system that they use for live visualization like that. So Gary's recollection was that there was a live relay and that he and others were able

to watch that at the time of the intercept attempt by Fravor at all, okay? And that that was when he saw the dynamics and the performance of this object. That's what Gary remembered. Petty Officer Wigelt also said that he recalled there being something on the screen, but he said he was dealing with a mechanical issue at the time, and he wasn't paying attention to what everybody was watching. But he said he remembered something being on the screen. But that would not have been the same thing as the footage that Chad Underwood obtained.

And therefore, when the DOD said this is the complete footage, I'm sure that that, well, at least I think it's a reasonable proposition that they aren't saying, they aren't lying when they say that there wasn't more footage in their possession. But what I think petty officers aboard the Princeton and others who said that they saw footage were describing was not the same thing as the footage obtained by Chad Underwood. Interesting. Hey, that demystifies a lot because I know there's been a lot of talk of, we're only seeing a portion of the video. Well, yeah, that very well could be the case. That's the only video that the DOD has in their possession. So I guess they're not lying. They're good. They're good, like I said, of tick towing and with wording and everything in between. So we cannot fault them for that. Yeah. Because of that, Ryan, I strongly suspect there are other, both video and. photo, you know, representations of these UAP.

I don't doubt that there are probably others. That's not some sort of an inside tip or anything. I'm merely saying that because of their efficacy at playing word salad, you know, I don't doubt that there are other things in their possession, which the public does not know about and which may not even be classified. And if we wanted to try and gain access to those things or file FOIA requests, you're not going to get access to something that you don't even know how to begin. to know what to ask for.

Yeah. And it could be years if we ever see these things, right? It could be years. It could be days. It could be weeks. No one can really say. But that's the UFO anticipation world we live in, Micah. Well, let's end these listener questions with a Bigfoot question.

I'm talking to a host of a Bigfoot podcast. So the Bigfoot Society podcast collectively asks Micah. Do you ever find your love for UFOs and your love for Bigfoot intersecting? And if yes, how so? At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV. Then I heard a voice.

Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows and they were all free. The truth is our scene. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2. Fringe Arrow, the 100, and the X-Files may cause excitement, loss of sleep, and sudden belief in extraterrestrials, no credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. Well, the closest I would say that they come to intersecting is that I try to apply a historical, scientifically informed historical approach to both topics.

But I understand the question that they're asking there. I do not find continuity between those avenues of research. For instance, Sasquatch to me, I treat as a flesh and blood animal and one that is more like humans than any other known species if it exists. And I have some reservations. But nonetheless, to quote the archaeologist Myra Shackley, even if we acknowledge, and I do, the folkloric aspects and the continuity between cultural traditions about purported wild people and things like that throughout time.

There's obviously a heavily steeped element that deals exclusively in folklore, but myths and folklore do not leave footprints in the ground. That was Shackley's contention in how she ended her wonderful book from the 1980s, still living, Sasquatch Yeti and the Neanderthal Enigma. Or I should say Neanderthal. But, you know, again, I share Shackley's contention that there is enough data that supports however little there is. There's enough, I think, that supports the treatment of that subject as a physical reality.

And there are many people who are like, you know, but yeah, lights show up in the same places where Sasquatches are seen. Okay, great. You know, you might also say that ice cream cones are sold in many of the same cities above which UFO sightings occur. But I wouldn't correlate ice cream cones with UFO sightings. And again, we have to remember this is a fundamental scientific tenet that correlation does not necessarily mean causation.

And just because two phenomena might occur in a similar area, that doesn't necessarily mean there's a correlation. So I draw no connections between the Sasquatch subject, which again I always try to treat and proceed with studying as a scientifically informed historical researcher. Do the same thing with UFOs, but I treat that in an entirely separate way. Same goes with my archaeology stuff I do, has no relationship to UFOs or Sasquatch. A lot of researchers, I think they want there to be some grand, unified, theory of the paranormal. I don't know that there is one any more than there's a grand unifying theory in physics. And the late Stephen Hawking said, you know, we may have to settle for there simply being many partial theories that explain the variety of things that we observe

in the universe. He said, we may have to settle for that. And if we do, you know what, I'm okay with it. You know, it just gives us more stuff to have to study. Absolutely. The theory of everything. I couldn't agree more with you, man. And hey, I think the historical approach that you've taken to many of these topics is a lot more important that I think people give it credit for. I mean, last time I had you on, we were talking about UFO cases from like, God, the 15th, 16th century. And I mean, the historical context in which you put some of these events, you were almost able to explain some of these events due to simply knowing the history behind what was going on in the area and the culture at the time.

So the fact that you, the time lord, are solving, possibly solving UFO cases from the 16th century, tells me something that you're on the right track. So I couldn't agree more with you of looking at these topics, not as a sort of nominal string theory, but from a historical standpoint. So I have to respect you for doing that. The same applies to the Pinnacle Memorandum. Again, if you want the answers, you have to understand what's happening at that time, you know, what was going on in government, what was going on, you know, what was Heinek doing and what was Valet doing, you know, what were their perspectives, what were they being told, what were they not being told? Again, I really think it's important. And, you know, Tim McMillan and I were talking about this the other day with our good friend M.J. Benayas, you know, that with UFOs, even though there's no overt threats to this, you know, there doesn't appear to be anything threatening about this phenomenon, but any what appears to be significantly technologically advanced phenomena in our midst that we're, you know, that we're not. We're not in our midst that we're, we're not. We're not yet,

we can't account for, it must be treated as a potential national security concern. If you don't want to say threat, although again, atyp, right, advanced aerospace threat identification program, that's exactly what they're doing. We assess the potential threat because if it seems to be able to outfox us and we don't know whose it is, we have to always proceed with caution and that potential on the table. But if we want to actually get to the bottom of what this phenomenon is, again, we must be historically and scientifically inclined. Those two things, I think, are going to take us, that's going to help us make leaps and bounds toward resolving this issue. And who knows,

once we or if we are able to at some point, it might make us as humankind all the better for it. We could hope so at least. We could always hope. I keep that hope, man. We need it now more than ever. Well, I have to ask, before we wrap things up here, you are one of the most hardworking, busiest people out there when it comes to podcasting and writing and, And everything, research you do, whether it's UFOs, paranormal, archaeological. So tell us what are you got going on right now. I'm sure this is going to be the most, the biggest question of the night since you're always up to so much. But yeah, tell us everything you got going on and what might be coming up with you.

If there's anything you're willing to share. Well, I've been, I can't say too much about my big project right now. But let's just say I have had an idea in the works since last fall that with the help and the diligence of a couple of dear friends who I've named a couple of times over the course of this conversation, but who I won't name specifically here. I've got to leave people wondering a little bit. Thanks to them and their help and our combined effort, we hope to really make some big waves in 2021 before then even. So there's going to be some big stuff coming. But now I know we hear that a lot from certain people in the UFO community. And so I try to, you know, shy away from that.

I actually look forward to a day where kind of borrowing this idea from the great Alan Hendry, who worked under Heineck there at the Center of UFO Studies back in the 70s and who wrote a book literally called the UFO Handbook. You know, he had advocated a non-revolutionary theory for UFOs. I look forward to a day where every report, every study, every article that's forthcoming isn't the latest bombshell, the latest revelation, I think once we can kind of treat this as, you know, here's another UFO study, and we've got some more data now. Let's add that to the mix and let's, you know, move forward. Then we're going to really get to a point where true progress

can be made. And so, you know, I want to keep my own expectations about big news and things. You know, I want to keep that in check. But I will say people have some things to look forward to, and you'll be hearing more about that from yours truly. In the meantime, of course, I am a podcaster, I'm a writer, and I love to engage with the community and talk about these things, and I probably spend far too much time studying and researching. So there will be a couple of books forthcoming on those two subjects, Sasquatch and also the history of UFOs. When I can finish them, they are serious undertakings.

And in the meantime, if you want to get my thoughts on all these things, micahanks.com, forward slash podcast is where you can find all the podcasts. And, of course, the main website there, micahanks.com is everything else that I do. So, you know, just check me out online. Love to hear from people. Awesome. And playing it like a true researcher author, never give a date of when a book is coming out because that is going to change inevitably.

But, hey, man, I couldn't agree more with you. There's been a lot of chatter and talk in the past few weeks about huge bombshells that are about to drop. And, hey, I blame James Fox, who on my show last week teased something that got the UFO Twitter world really going. And he's been doing this on several other. other shows. So James, if you're watching and listening, we blame you for the latest bombshells, uh, announcements. But, um, I would have to agree. I think if we keep playing these

things up and saying, this next big thing from the New York Times is going to shatter everyone's reality. Um, we're always going to be let down. I think, again, slow and steady wins the race. The more small discoveries we make with all this, the better. We're never going to get that one big bomb that's going to change the world unless the final. The phenomena wants to do that, in my personal opinion. I do think we're on it or they or whatever's timetable, in my personal opinion. So I'm glad to hear you say that, to be honest. Absolutely.

And when that happens, if it happens, it will be a new world from the one that we know today. Exactly. Yep, yep. And like you said, I think the number one word we can leave with everything going on in the world right now is hope for change, for healing, and for not. discoveries and revelations. And I think that's what you do best and all the other people out there watching and listening. Think for yourself. Do your own research like Micah has done tonight on the Pentagon Memorandum and keep looking up. So, brother, as always, I got to thank you

for coming on somewhere in the skies today. Yeah, next time I owe you one. You've got to come on my show too, okay? So thank you for everything you do. Every week I hear from people. Did you hear Ryan's show about this? Ryan's show about that. I do a show about UFO hackers and this kid, he emails me and says, did you see the show I did about this with a whole different angle on it. Again, you know, so the more we're able to do together, in my opinion, the better. And I always appreciate it and enjoy the time, brother. My absolute pleasure. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions, in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network.