Somewhere in the Skies - UFOs 2020: Part 1

Episode Date: August 3, 2020

On episode 172 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan is joined by first-time guest, Tim McMillan. McMillan is a former law enforcement professional and investigative writer, covering UFOs extensively for venues such as VICE, Popular Mechanics, and The Warzone. In this massive two-part series, McMillan runs us through everything from the Secret Pentagon UFO Program, the recent NY Times articles, the proposed appropriation bill concerning a UFO Task Force, and we also hear the extraordinary personal UFO event that made McMillan continue to search the skies and wonder what's out there. This is the brutally honest truth behind government secrecy, bureaucracy, and transparency when it comes to UFOs. This and much more in the first part of this explosive two-part series. Follow Tim McMillan on Twitter @LtTimMcMillan Disaster Relief for Beirut Explosion Victims. Donate now through Impact Lebanon by CLICKING HERE Support the podcast with a one-time contribution. There's no commitment and you can tip as little or as much as you'd like when you like: https://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies The updated and expanded edition of Somewhere in the Skies is now available! Order now in paperback or E-book. To purchase, and to leave a rating and review, CLICK HERE Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK 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

UFOs seem to be invading both our skies and our news outlets like never before, and more people are starting to look up and are wondering who or what might be out there. In 2016, Ryan Sprague introduced the world to countless UFO encounters that had never been made public before. And now, in the second edition of his book, he revisits these events and introduces brand new UFO cases, in somewhere in the skies, a human approach to the UFO phenomenon. How have these events change the lives of those involved? And what might it tell us about the phenomenon? With in-depth follow-ups, brand new chapters,

and detailed testimony from credible witnesses and insight from those in the psychological, academic, and scientific fields, somewhere in the skies, a human approach to the UFO phenomenon, weaves together a story of stories, attempting to get to the heart of these mysteries one experience at a time.

Available now on Amazon in both paperback and ebook. To learn more, visit somewhere in the skies.com. Today on Somewhere in the Skies, part one of our two-part discussion with former law enforcement professional and investigative writer Tim McMillan. Tim has made quite a splash on the UFO front, writing groundbreaking articles for venues such as vice, popular mechanics, and the war zone. In part one of this discussion, you're going to hear what happens when Tim, one of the most skeptical and analytical minds tackling UFOs is faced with a phenomenon head-on himself. I've always been somebody who really wants to solve mysteries, and suddenly UFOs became a mystery.

A very real mystery for me. Because I saw something. And then we tackle the hard truths of the secret Pentagon UFO program, the most recent New York Times articles, the Senate Intelligence Committee bill, in relation to the U.S. UFO task force, and demystifying the secrecy, the sensational claims, and the want to believe in an elaborate strategic cover-up of the UFO problem. There is more info that I'll come out with soon that will give a lot more, hopefully it'll give people a lot better understanding of, indeed, this UFO problem in government, and

recognize that a lot of things that maybe don't make sense on the outside are attributed to cover-ups and all these different things. They're actually very, very normal, bureaucratic bullshit. And then we confront the reality of the true UFO issue, both the vindication for those who believe and confirmation for those who don't. And Tim shows us that the UFO topic is not only here to stay, but it's arguably taking center stage in a world of uncertainty like never before.

Everything we see right now is encouraging for anybody who's ever been ridiculed for being interested in the UFO subject, for having their own sighting, for saying that these are real. It is being treated very much like it is real. And it is a real world issue. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Tim McMillan, thank you so much for joining me today. somewhere in the skies for the first time. Yes, no, thanks for having me, Ryan. This is exciting.

Long-time listener, first-time caller. I'm glad to be here. Thanks, man. Well, hey, I've been following your work for some time, and the stuff you are cranking out for some of these mainstream outlets has been amazing. So I've got a long laundry list of questions for you. We're going to dive into it a lot tonight because I want the brutal, honest truth on some of these things from you.

Because there are some of these topics that I will admit I personally haven't looked into that we're going to dive into tonight. So it'll be good to get a very grounded observation and approach when it comes to some of these things, man. So, yeah, I'm excited. We don't start a ride on Twitter afterwards. Then I guess it won't be a good show. Exactly. We will try our best to do that tonight, for sure. Let's get those flames going.

All right. Well, I guess we'll start with the origin story, Tim. That's always a good place to start. Could you maybe tell us a little about your background and, yeah, what you do currently in relation to the UFO topic? What back then brought you to where you are now, I guess, is a good way to put it. Sure, yeah. Now, for the bulk of my adult life, from the time I was 21 up until about two years ago, it's almost 17 years. I was in law enforcement, and I did a lot of different jobs in law enforcement.

I worked for an agency near Savannah, Georgia. I was a violent crimes investigator. I was a criminal intelligence analyst, behavioral profiler, a whole bunch of things. I wore a lot, a lot of hats. And I ended up taking early retirement as a lieutenant there, worked as an investigator and an intelligence analyst for a private firm for about a year until about a year ago. And I guess I started dabbling in it while I was still in the law firm. I guess I can say that now. I'm no longer there.

So of, you know, doing freelance investigative work, investigative journalism on the UFO topic. I kind of came into it, the writing end of it, in a weird trajectory because it was always, I was covering stuff initially in national security, national defense world. It's kind of an aroundabout way the sector I came up from. And I'm always been interested in that kind of purview. And so, as we've all seen, UFOs have very much entered that world in a tangible sense. So, yeah, I started, you know, I got frustrated that I didn't feel, I felt that to not speak to anyone in particular, but I just felt like there was a lack of good investigative journalism. So good investigative work and then putting out information that was credible and could be backed up by evidence.

to the mainstream masses on the UFO topic. And I felt like everything that we saw in the news, going back to the New York Times in 2017, there was only really two kind of outcomes that could have come from this. And that was either there's something real to this. And so, yeah, I mean, that's a pretty big deal, or there were these high-level people coming from government

in positions that I was familiar with. So I kind of had an idea of what they do and the significance that they serve. And they're in these positions, and they're just batshit crazy. So either outcome for me is significant and newsworthy, I think. And so, yeah, I started kind of through my, put my investigative skills, my police and investigative background, the bulk of my experience, into seeing could that be applied towards the UFO topic.

Yeah, and I think it has. And we'll get to some of those articles, popular mechanics and vice. in particular, Tim. But sort of backtracking. I had the honor recently of telling your story in the second edition of my book that just came out this past week. And I was wondering, you know, a lot of people come into this topic, having had an experience, not everyone, but it is a good impetus for a lot of people to get interested

in this and look into it further to find answers for themselves. And I'm sure, as we are going to learn, maybe that was the same for you. But yeah, could you maybe tell us a little about what happened to you when you were still in law enforcement at the time? And you had a, what we would call a UFO encounter. Yeah, no. And actually, I want to say thank you, Ryan. It was an honor to be asked to participate in your book because kind of indicative of the rambling intro I just gave you. I always give kind of my professional background because that's what people are interested in.

And I skip the whole, yeah, but why UFO? UFOs part of it. And people don't realize that there's kind of a longer history with me in the UFO subject. About nine years. So not incredibly long. We've been doing longer. But you're absolutely right. And I am really eager to, I know your book just came out, I've been really eager to take a look at it because I'm sure there's a lot of good stories in it. My origin, my UFO origin story began with a sighting. That is correct. It was in 2011. So December, December, 2011 prior to this right I really you know I probably had what I would consider to be the normal interest or curiosity of the UFO subject so I didn't I dismiss it but it wasn't something that I was actively seeking or anything like that it was a toss-up whether whether I was gonna watch agent aliens or not type deal yeah I you know

in that particular night it's December 2011 I was a sergeant with the police force but I was off at the time and I was a actually visiting another friend of mine who is also, she's a sergeant with a separate police department. And we were in her front yard just chatting. I was getting ready to go home at the time. And she lived in a city, kind of a suburb of Savannah, a rink in Georgia. And I remember that night in particular because it was extremely, extremely cold for Savannah. And that's only important because living on the coast right there, it's only on the coldest of nights. You actually get to see a clear starry night because of humidity.

And so we were just chatting, kind of taking in the really brilliant night sky that evening. And out of the blue, you know, all of a sudden there was no forewarning. There was no sounds. There was nothing. These three lights, you know, I describe it as if someone just flipped a light switch. They just cut on. perfectly in a straight row, probably about 30 degrees off the horizon. And they were much, much bigger than a star or anything like that.

So there was no, you know, much bigger than a plane, even. You know, they were about the size as if, you know, maybe like a little pea, like a little frozen pee in arm's length. That's how bright they were and big. And they were, they weren't white. And they were kind of this antique yellow is the best way I can describe it. So it's interesting later as I started looking at this, you hear people say, you know, maybe whiteish yellow. And I'm like, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. And they just kind of sat there motionless.

So send this straight rope for probably 30, 45 seconds, maybe a minute at most. And then it was like somebody just flipped a light switch off again. And they just cut off. And, you know, this was one of these things, you know, there's a lot of times we see stuff. you know, a satellite or something in the sky. Oh, what's that? That was not one of, that was not this type of experience. You know, this was a, oh, shit, what is that?

I mean, it was attention commanding. Yeah. And they cut off. And there was, you know, the sky went back to normal for probably another 30, 40 seconds, maybe a minute. And then all of a sudden, the original first three that we had seen came, came back on just like somebody flipped a light switch. And but this time they were accompanied by two more. And they were all in a straight row except for the new, the two new ones were a little offset from the first three.

And so you've got these five big bright lights, motionless, no sound, nothing, totally stationary. And when all five were on, and I'm very cautious when I tell this part, because I'm my background. even in law enforcement, a lot of what I did was cognitive psychology. That's my academic background, actually. My degree is in, and I did a lot of work with that training and even in the UFO field. I will get into that, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I was very cautious because I understand that your brain tries to make sense of things you don't understand. And so I say this and say, it appeared to me, though. Once all five are on, that against the ambient light of the horizon. So the city lights, did you see the glow? Now there was this giant rectangular shape

the object that these lights were attached to that appear to be blocking out the ambient light. And so it was low on the horizon. And they stayed like that for about a minute and never moved, never heard a sound. The friend that was with me, she, you know, she was pretty freaked out by it. I was just fascinated. And I remember at the time that the only time in my life that I've ever had an Android phone was then. And that stupid thing would never work whenever I needed it to. And this was one of those times. And I was fumbling with it and it like rebooted.

And so it's interesting. You hear people go, why aren't there good videos of stuff? And I'm like, well, at least in my case, I can tell you why. And I wish there was a good reason. It just wouldn't work. But there was. After about a minute, the lights went out, and it was like the sky just returned to normal. And there was no airplane traffic.

There was no helicopter traffic. The area there in Savannah is kind of just a hub of air traffic, especially a lot of military bases around there. And in fact, for the 2015 events that are now famous, thanks to the videos, those occurred not far off the coast. from Savannah. But there was just nothing. And they disappeared.

And so that was kind of, that was the first moment when this, I've always been somebody who really wants to solve mysteries. And suddenly UFOs became a mystery, a very real mystery for me. Because I saw them. I saw something. And, you know, what was really incredible for me after this sighting is I, first of all, it's incredible I made it home because I remember driving, I think, halfway over my head out the window, freezing my ass off, but hoping I'd see it again.

Yeah. But I got, you know, I got home and like everybody else, and when they want to figure something out, you start Googling and everything. And I, it was the first time I stumbled upon Mufant. And at that time, they didn't place their siting, their initial siting reports behind a paywall or anything. So you could see sighting reports people had made. And I was stunned to discover that someone else about 20, 30 miles just west of us,

so town just west of us, had already reported the exact. I mean, they saw it too. It was identical at the, it was about 15 minutes before we saw it. And so that was when, not there was any doubt prior to that, this was real, but the fact that you had someone else as well that I still I have no clue who that person is so completely separate independent eyewitness confirmed the exact same thing it was very real and though we never saw it move obviously because of where they were located in a county over this was something that was moving somehow it was it was conducting flight and so that really

that is what really vaulted my interest into the entire topic of UFOs. There's a lot of people don't know. That's why I was glad to kind of share that in your book, because people don't realize it kind of started about nine years ago, and there is a personal reason for it. 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 four. Free. The truth is ours. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100 N-EX 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. Oh, see, and that's awesome, man, because I know a lot of, um, a lot of the discussion that goes on on, uh, we'll call it UFO Twitter. People think you're this, you know, this hardened skeptic, um, because of your background and and this and that. And that's really important. And to see you're just human like everyone else out there having an experience you can't explain, it lends a level of legitimacy and credibility that you yourself have seen these things in our skies like so many other people. And I want to ask,

before we move on to sort of where your interest went from there and how you implemented your skill set into that, you worked a lot of like graveyard shifts and stuff when you were on the police force and doing security and whatnot. And I remember in the book you specifically mentioning, like, I saw some strange, you know, flight patterns and things in the air in all my years. Right now in 2020, Tim, do you think you'll ever know what it was you saw that night? Or is there, do you have maybe some ideas of what you saw? Or is it legitimately still a mystery to you?

Oh, yeah. No, it's legitimately still a mystery. I really don't know, Ryan. And I don't know, you know, I'm very comfortable saying I don't know a lot of things. So I'm comfortable with it. I know what I know and I don't know what I don't know what I don't know. And so I don't know what it was I saw. And I don't know if I'll ever know. I do know. Just like you mentioned, yeah, the last six years of my police career, I was the duty officer, which, you know, sounds nice to give you a rank and a salary and everything. But it actually just meant that you're kind of the nighttime shopkeeper. So I was in charge of all police. services when the other bosses were asleep. So it just means shitty hours. And so yeah, for six years, I worked 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. and Savannah, like I said, it's surrounded you have Hunter Army Airfield, Fort Stewart. We had the 165th Air Force Reserve right there, Gulfstream, Marine Air Station, Buford. I mean, it's just, it's surrounded. And so one thing when you're working nights so consistently

for years, you do. You learn the flight patterns. And so you learn where the flight lanes are between bases, you learn what is normal, what's not normal. I saw a lot of weird stuff late at night. People were very surprised at kind of just a strange military type activity that goes on in those areas at 2, 3 o'clock in the morning. But I knew it was always military. I knew it was always ours. There's nothing weirder than seeing one of the drone helicopters come flying over about

300 feet overhead. You can look in and see there's no pilot. You're like, oh, my God. And they've been weird, you know, they would do a lot of training. The F-22s would come in. And so they do these red-team blue team where you have jets that are pretending to be the bad guys. And they go flying out over the ocean, dogfighting, playing games. And so I saw a lot of this.

But what I saw that night was not consistent with any of that. And it wasn't in the flight lanes. It wasn't in the normal spots that I knew everything. And so, yeah, I guess I don't know. I'm definitely, I always said, I don't have a prosaic explanation for it. But at the same time, my sighting in particular was not nearly as dramatic as a lot of people's. You know, even Commander Fravor and some of the more famous ones, you know, what they saw. Mine didn't challenge my version of reality.

Let me put it that way. Because I didn't see it perform anything that just wasn't characteristic with flight performance. but at the same time, I don't have anything that could match that, you know, flares, it wasn't flares. I know that. I don't know. I don't know what it was. But, yeah, I don't know. Hopefully one day, but I don't know.

Hey, man, best answer anyone could ever give is I don't know. I agree with you 100% on that because I don't think any of us truly know, including the government, which we will get to. But, yeah, I guess sort of wrapping up your Tim McMillard. villain as a UFO witness. Your background in cognitive science, how did you implement this into studying the UFO topic? Thank you for asking me, Ryan. And that's why I said. I appreciate having the opportunity to share.

I've never shot away from sharing my sighting experience. And I really don't, nobody ever asked this. Maybe it's my fault because I don't share it. But a lot of people don't realize that, yeah, long before I started writing articles or anything for popular mechanics or vice. I was researching the UFO topic from that background in cognitive psychology. And in particular, my focus was on perception studies and perception-based research and kind of, you know, like how we form reality, how's camouflage work, these types of things and how I helped design and develop some courses for both the state and the federal government for how you can increase awareness and perception for officer safety or just plain be better cops or better law enforcement or, better security in general, how you can pick out the right patterns. And my approach for the first seven years of this was I purposely avoided what we will just,

I'm going to lump into this kind of ad hoc group called the UFO community. Just because you know as a researcher that the problem when you're engaged in anything like this is psychology research is very difficult because the object of study is being studied by the object of study, meaning the human mind. So you try to, you know, kick out anything that could form your own biases in there. So I try to avoid other people's theories, hypothesis. And instead, I examined the literature that was out there and felt like there was one area that I didn't see a lot of on. I think Jacques Valet had really probably would be the closest. And that was, you know, tracking down other people that had sightings and trying to examine this strange hypothesis of

wondering if is what people see what they think they're seeing is that really what they're seeing and this is strange but our brains are strange life strange it relates to how do we process information when we have no other a language to describe it which is which is very important I have to be a huge advocate of cognitive linguistic theory which means that our language helps form our cognitive perceptions. And so a great example of this, and usually blows everybody's mind. I tell them Google it and check it out, but don't just look at the popular science articles. You know, there is some good empirical studies. Look at that, because that's, we'll give you the good stuff. But there's a host of good empirical studies that showing that human beings couldn't perceive the color blue

up until about 2,000 years ago. So, really? Yeah, yeah, sounds so crazy, doesn't it? Because blue is everywhere around it's the sky what the hell the sky look like um but yeah no i mean there's some great studies there you know in fact the blue is not mentioned blue doesn't become mentioned until egypt really and in egypt i give this kind of two thousand year window but i think egypt has some references a little further back than that but but especially in europe and in the east blue is not referenced in any literature uh what is often called blue or sapphire in the bible is a mistranslation of the Hebrew, but people didn't see blue. So what we're talking about here is the idea that if something is just a visual stimuli, and you have no inference from it, you don't know

what to call it, you don't know what it is, your brain kicks it out. And as weird as that sounds, it's interesting that UFOs are considered fringe science, but the stuff that's real science is pretty crazy as well. But that's accepted science. You know, the thalamus, the thalamus. in our brain, just to get a little nerdy here, acts as a gatekeeper. And so there's a lot of extraneous external stimuli that every moment gets kicked out by our brains

because it's like, I screw that. That's not important. And there's a lot of good studies now coming out on LSD. That's what the LSD does. It just throws the thalamets wide open and floods with all these signals. And so, you know, it's not,

doesn't mean you're seeing a pink elephant floating by if you're on LSD. It just means that your brain's picking up a stimuli that may normally be kicked out and then trying to interpret it the best that it can. And so that was how I approached it. Was examining is the possibility here that people are seeing something. It still can be sentient. It could be cognitive.

It could be intelligent. It could be interactive. All the things that we associate with all the other hypotheses of interdimensional, aliens, all these things are, I guess, technically still on the table. But my question was, do they look like? like what we think we're looking at. And there's some interesting evidence that could suggest maybe not. For example, if you look at the literature, you know, you can go back to the late 20th century

with the airship waves and people's versions of UFOs and these, what we would call now a UFO flap that were mechanical airships that were piloted by human beings. That's what they saw. That's what they reported. But this coincided with the, really, the kind of technological zygus at the time. We knew we were on the cusp of mechanical air flight. It hadn't been developed yet. And so, you know, fast forward, I'll just skip into the 40s with the fly saucers.

But it didn't become alien until we realized that after rocket technology was being developed and that the idea of leaving the Earth's atmosphere was a potential possibility. It was possible. So once it becomes possible that we could possibly do it, well, then somebody else could, too, and come here. And kind of the disc lenticular shape lost a time. But back in the late 30s, early 40s, this was kind of perceived to be the aerospace design for the future. You know, it was going to be aerodynamic. This is what we're going to look like.

And then, you know, if you continue to kind of fast forward, even today, I think that you'll hear a lot of the leading hypothesis is that these are, these could be AI drones of sorts of. some extraterrestrial origin, this type of thing. But it just coincides with what, it's always just a step ahead of what our technology potential and how these things are perceived. So they look like tick-tacks now. They look like something else. They kind of change form. I wish that I could give you a firm conclusion to that.

There's several historians I interviewed in the book as well and scientists. And I'm so happy you brought this up because they all, sort of you can tell they're on the same path in how they're viewing the UFO phenomenon and how we perceive it. And I think you're right. It's it's this aspiration and this like what could be, you know, where we, our pilots are seeing something so far advanced and sophisticated that we don't personally possess. And, you know, not until we started looking to the stars and wanting to travel elsewhere to maybe find life. That's what becomes this, this, this, lore and these sightings throughout time is, like you said, that one step ahead of us all the way up. And right now and for a while, it's been alien, you know. And like you said, maybe eventually it'll be interdimensional. Maybe we'll circle back to Bigfoot coming off a UFO.

I don't know, but I mean... That'll be fun. Yeah, right? But no, it is very fascinating. And when you look at the decades of UFOs, like you said, airships up to saucers, the triangles. Now we're seeing more stuff that represents what could be some sort of unmanned drone activities. So yeah, no, I think it's a really interesting approach that you took and something I think we need to look further into. But, okay, so taking, taking off the Tim McMillan witness hat,

let's move to some hard investigative journalism, Tim. Dun dun dun, done. We got to go there, man. This is going to be fun. Let's paint a picture of this massive article you wrote in February of 2020 for popular mechanics. It was titled Inside the Pentagon's Secret UFO program. And you unearthed some pretty interesting stuff. And I think you dropped this, if I can remember, on Valentine's Day, I think, or it was right around there. It was the perfect gift you could have given me, Tim, for Valentine's Day. So yeah, maybe tell us a little about this article. and maybe some of your biggest takeaways you personally gained from looking into this one. Sure, yes. And it was on Valentine's Day. In fact, our good buddy, Micah Hanks, will tell you, he refers to that as the Valentine's Day Massacre. That's perfect. Yeah, I think for the Pentagon's sake, because it put a lot of heat on him since then.

Yeah. Well, first of all, you know, nothing but respect and love for popular mechanics who, you know, I'm a freelancer. and they allowed me to share that entire article in its totality. Because it was a monster. It was about a 6,000, 7,000 word piece, which anybody who's ever written for publications will tell you that. Most editors are like, yeah, give me 1,500 words, tops. If you're lucky, yeah. Yeah.

No. But really that article kind of exemplifies my approach to it and the info that I try to share. I don't work in volume. That's what's fortunate about being freelance. It allows me to pitch something when I'm ready and not also have to be assigned stuff, and so I don't have to turn smaller pieces. And instead, what that article was is really the accumulation of just what it said, over a year or more worth of investigation into the ATIP,

the Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program, or ALSAP, the, oh, Lord, The advanced aerospace weapons systems program, something, you know. Yeah. Alphabet soup always with these things, man. Yeah, just stick to the three-letter acronym. I'm good with them. What's up, guys, Ryan Sprague here, and I'm just dropping in to remind you about our Patreon campaign. Somewhere in the Skies is always free to consume, but it's not free to create.

So if you want to help the show on a monthly basis, we have tons of rewards for you in return. including shoutouts on the show and website, bonus content and episodes, and free merge. Want to be my guest or pick a topic for the show? You can do that too. So if you'd like to learn more and to help support the show, visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Thank you. And keep looking up. But yeah, so these official programs that were being sponsored for run by the government in some capacity,

was my investigations into them? you know, what did they involve? And really when I began these things, you know, as recently as last year, I think there was still a lot of controversy over did they even exist at all? Or were they being embellished and everything? And so I approached that article just like I approach any of them, which is for me, it's as if I'm presenting a case to court. So I'm not a classical journalist. I tell people I'm not a journalist. I'm an investigator who will write stuff sometimes.

But I go with what I know. And that is, can I present a case that I believe provides more than enough probable cause that could end up in a conviction of something beyond a reasonable doubt? And that's what I get before I present that. And for this, that's what it was. Was examining A, was the government officially looking at UFOs, as it had been reported, in what capacity, what scope? And so it kind of splinters in from there because it was, you know, you had. some denials about Luis Alizanda, a former employee with the Undersecretary Defense for Intelligence

Office, former executive, you know, said he had ran this UFO program from 2012 until he resigned in 2017. It was, you know, the Pentagon had disputed this even. I mean, there was just a lot of confusion going on. And this was my attempt to get away, or to get a handle on that. And I feel like I did. I walked away from it. You talk about the biggest takeaways is that. I think there was an absolute just wealth of evidence, in my opinion, both physical and testimonial and people that I talked to, stuff that I tracked down, that's showing indeed, you know, the U.S. government had commissioned a, the AllS. program, and indeed, it was a UFO program. One of the most strikingly interesting things that I was able to discover was how the government

was able to kind of deny it and why the lack of information. And this was because they ran it similar to what's called a carve-out. When you see carve-outs typically in the intelligence industry and technology industry, almost exclusively defense, some acquisitions. But this just means hidden programs. So it means in this case, if you read the solicitation order or if you read the materials for what this program was supposed to be, It read like they were examining advanced aerospace platforms from 40 years in the future. So what's the landscape in the aerospace industry and the defense aerospace industry

it looked like 40 years from now? And that was true. They weren't lying there. However, what they were examining to try to get an idea of where the technological innovation was going had to do with examining UFOs. And so the object of study was UFOs. And I mean, there was, there's no doubt in my mind that that went on. And then after that was shut down, you know, defunded in 2012, there was some idea of whether or not, you know, did he carry on, you know, Luis Alizando said he did, carry it on, brought it over with him to the Secretary of Defense's office. And frankly, I was able to find that there's a ton of compelling evidence that shows, indeed that happened.

And it wasn't, it's still to this day, I think a lot of people get confused and they think, well, where's the. A-TIP office as if there's like this building with a flagpole out front. And that's not how it works. And in fact, frankly, for me, a lot of things that other people questioned and draw up conspiracies and think are weird, in my experience in dealing with just the intelligence industry and the defense industry, I was like, now this is totally normal. This is exactly how things happen. You know, it was the program was what's called bootstrapped, which meant it wasn't an appropriated

funding, but yet it was officially approved. And so it was kind of borrowing money from other programs and stealing from Paul to feed Peter and Mary, but still engaging in this endeavor to examine, once ALSEP ended in atyp, examining these encounters of what they're now referring to as unidentified aerial phenomena by people in the United States military. That in itself is really interesting. And there's no doubt in my mind that I don't know everything they examined, but that whatever it was, and through a lot of conversations with him, especially after the articles, for stuff I'm working on in the future and everything, but a lot of conversations with Mr. Elizondo, you know, whatever he did see and whatever they were doing was compelling enough that he

was willing to quit his job and bring it out in the open, maybe in this weird medium that people don't understand with time to long. But if I had to say anything, the biggest takeaways from that article for me is that everything that we had heard kind of up to that point about the government's interest in UFOs. And there was compelling evidence, both for the existence of these objects, and that the government was interested in that. It's absolutely true. I think the evidence showed that. But for me, I think that was the biggest takeaways that allowed me to move forward and go, okay, well, that all is real. So now let's keep going forward. And I think a lot of people, We're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it was real for me anyway.

And I'm like, yeah, but it wasn't for me yet. There wasn't that compelling. There wasn't another evidence for me. Like I said, to bring a court case. But I think so now. And so it's interesting. And I think, you know, it's vitally important that these things do get scrutinized and, you know, criticized in some ways for the claims that they're bringing forth.

You know, when the original story broke in the New York Times, Like, yeah, good, fine, this is amazing. But then you start seeing, like, well, let's really look at it and see if it is what they say it is and this and that. And I think for me, the takeaway from your article, Tim, is pretty much what you said, but that this was a UFO program. Because that was the contention for a while is, did they actually study unidentified aerial phenomena? Are we talking, you know, rivaling nations aerospace programs? or are we talking about a non-human technology being displayed? And I think what your article did is it cleared up a lot of misconceptions.

It showed the stove piping and the complexity of the government. We always look at the government as this capital G. The government knows what UFOs are. They're not telling us. Well, what does that mean? You know, I mean, the government is made up of hundreds of thousands of people. And like you said, different programs. So, yeah, I think it's.

It really cleared up a lot in there. There's so much more so that'll be coming out soon. And I hate, I don't like teasing stuff. And so don't call it a tease. But there is more info that I'll come out with soon that will give a lot more. Hopefully it'll give people a lot better understanding of indeed this UFO problem and government. And recognize that a lot of things that maybe don't make sense on the outside are attributed to cover-ups and all these different things.

They're actually very, very normal bureaucratic bullshit. And, you know, this confusion and things that go on government is largely, when it comes to this topic, is largely from the fact that, you know, in the eyes of the Department of Defense policy, an official policy, such a rigid structure as Department of Defense, it lacks any framework. And so therefore, UFOs and the normal channels of things. don't exist like even to this day that the term UAP, which they formally use and has been approved by the general counsel's office, it's not an official joint chief's acronym. That seems silly to people, but it really is.

I mean, like the words that are used in the Department of Defense, just so many things are very, very rigid in all policy outlined. And for whatever reason, UFOs are not. And therefore, it's very difficult to get any kind of concise information or really to be concise, even if you're working in that system. So, you know, public affairs, people, you know, I don't think there's any overt cover up by a lot of people. It's very, very human and normal. Now, one of the things that'll come out is why was General Mattis? Never, you know, because Lou Elizando said, I wanted to, you know, he wanted to get this in front of the Secretary of

the defense and above. Why didn't that happen? And I talked to those people, the advisors that were there, that were briefed by Luke, who confirmed everything he'd said that far, and being briefed all the way back to late 2016. But the reasons it didn't move up, once you hear them, you're like, oh, man, that makes so much sense. It's not nearly as exciting as people probably want, but it makes it real world. And I think that's important, you know. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, once it's a real world, it's real.

It's not the world of fantasy. and even good critical, open-minded skeptics hear that and go, yeah, that makes sense. I get that. I think that's what's important. And so, yeah, no, I mean, once you see the layers of bureaucracy involved in all this stuff, you realize it's a very nuanced topic that it lacks a lot of the excitement people hope for in terms of like MJ12 cover-ups. Right.

Topics. Oh, we will get to that, Tim, for sure. because there's another set of documents that we're going to talk about. But before we get there, yeah, I think you're right. It's like it's depressingly real, is a way to put it. So a lot has happened to him since, you know, the A-Tip revelations and everything we just discussed up to the Navy in regards to UFOs. And now we know that there were congressional meetings that took place.

And now a bill, a bill trying to be passed conservative. a UFO task force. So I have to get your opinion on this. Could you maybe give us a little background on what this bill is, Tim, and who's working on it? And, you know, with your knowledge of national security, special access programs, all this sort of stuff, what do you feel that, what do you feel we can expect from this Senate Intelligence Committee that we are now learning about? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. This was, so what's come out in, I guess it was, June, yeah, is June is we're getting ready for the fiscal years. They're getting ready to do all the boring budget stuff. And the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, so this is made up of different representatives who are on this committee, whose job is oversight and delegating assignments, task, and request to the intelligence community, which includes all the Department of Defense, the CIA, everybody, the big scary ones, the UFO community is afraid of. And they included in the fiscal year 2021 Intelligence Authorization Act a provision requesting,

first of all, they specifically, you know, it was titled the Advanced Aerial Threats. So in terms of the exciting news for some people, is that it, again, now it, in no uncertain terms, that put it in legislative language acknowledging that there was a UAP or unidentified aerial phenomena task force that was being run out of the Office of Naval Intelligence, who's heading up this task force, that they were currently investigating UFO sightings. And so, you know, this cooperated what we've been told. By all intents, I think this is just a continuation of the same program. In fact, I know it is.

It's a continuation of the program that Mr. Alizano was running up until he left in 2017. And so that's real. You know, it's in legislative language. But then a part of this provision is that there was an expression that they were concerned in terms of what was the interagency cooperation in examining this. So, you know, is everybody talking with each other? Does the task force have the authority to reach out to Norah? and get information and find out things, they have authority to reach out to the Air Force,

the CIA, or whoever. And so they asked for kind of, this is fairly normal, is this is part of the oversight process. They want to know what is the status of this program right now, all the, you know, how the collection methods are going,

what agencies are participating, how well are they participating, and what could or should we be doing better. And it provided, I think, the most exciting thing for the public was. said, you know, the request specifically said that they wanted an unclassified report on all of this with a classified annex. So if there's any classified information, you put it in that, but we want

this all to be unclassified. So by nature, that means it's public information. You know, its current status is it was voted in the past unanimously in the Intelligence Committee. So now it will go through all of that, you know, schoolhouse rock. I'm a bill on Capitol Hill. I'm picturing that right now in my head. Yep. So it's got to go through the House and then the Senate and everybody votes. And if there's any disputes, they bicker and try to work that out. You know, I think with a pretty good high, a pretty high degree of certainty, I think it will pass because this specific request isn't.

It's just a request. And there's no, there's no money attached to it. So there's not a funding thing. And UFOs aren't really a partisan issue. You know, you're not going to see it. become a big feud between Republicans and Democrats over it. And so I don't, I think it will stay in. I think it'll be passed. I think it will get signed. It's what comes next, which will be interesting. Right. And what do you think of that, tip? Because I know a lot of people are really focusing on that

unclassified part, obviously, as the public. So yeah, what do you make of it? Yeah. And I got it. This is the time, this is why you said people on UFO Twitter or whatever will be like, you know, blasphemy. Burn the witch. You know, I think that people should probably be pretty tempered in their expectations of what an unclassified report is going to say, or if it is even produced. And everybody says, but wait, it's in the bill. I go. I know. But first thing is important as to understand that this is a request.

It is not a law. So technically, the Director of National Intelligence, and O&I can say, yeah, thanks for your request, take care, and not fulfill the request. If that sounds crazy, just do a little research about the Department of Defense budget audit. I think they were requested to audit their budget in 1999. They're still waiting on that. They're working on it. It takes a while. And the other thing is that I'm just saying, this is where it's hard because I think people, the UFO topic, especially for people of even my generation.

So I'll be, how well of you, almost 40 in a year? I guess it'll be 39 this October. So even, you know, born in the 80s, we haven't seen a lot of the political UFO actions like you used to see back in the 60s, 70s, this type of thing. And so people maybe are a little more excited about it than they maybe should be because at the end of the day, if you have objects that are unknown and they're real, so they're showing up on sensors, you have visual sightings by train, military personnel, multiple sensors, identifying these. object. So there's no doubt in your mind these are real, but you can't identify them. And they're flying in proximity or over secured airspace, secure facilities in combat areas. This is an unmitigated vulnerability to national defense. And I know, you know, people are going to be like, what? No, the Space Brothers, they love us. Okay, I got that. But unfortunately, at least from everything that I know

from the defense side, the Space Brothers have not conveyed that to the military. And so vulnerability to national defense are things that are very, very, very, very, very, very, very classified. They're not discussed for very obvious reasons, Ryan. You know, you're not going to say, hey, guys, that new stuff that, you know, Russia, China, Rans got, that would kick our ass. So this is not what happens. And so until those are mitigated risk, and so until those vulnerabilities, until you have some understanding of what it is, is and then are able to, you feel confident that risk associated with that can be mitigated, those are highly classified.

And so everything we see right now is encouraging for anybody who's ever been ridiculed for being interested in the UFO subject, for having their own sighting, for saying that these are real. It is being treated very much like it is real. And it is a real world issue. However, it is being treated like a real world issue, meaning from the difference. and military side, it's going to be treated that way. And so I guess I'll have the default background and say in terms of what we will actually see

from a unclassified report, I don't know. I wouldn't right now get my hopes up and believe that we're going to see incredible, you know, videos and incredible data and, you know, Grex-Roswell wreckage and bodies and all sorts. I truly don't foresee that happen. But with some tempered expectations and recognizing, okay, this is being treated as a real subject, maybe even just a report saying this number of UAP events occurred under this period of time, that in itself, for me, I think is impressive because just kind of understanding what goes on into the national defense sphere of things. The idea that you could have multiple sightings of something like this are multiple events that are unidentified on multiple different sensor systems.

That's impressive. And that's not, you know, that's if a foreign adversary, terrestrial origin has that, that's impressive. Because there's, I mean, it's just. You almost hope it's aliens at that point, right? Yeah, that's what Senator Rubio, who is the, the provision. He was the minority member of the Intelligence Committee report. So his name's on it. And that's what he said.

I agree with him. Because, yeah. I mean, if it's, you know, I'll say with everything that I am aware of and know, though, I have seen no evidence whatsoever that it's a terrestrial adversary or anything like that. Yeah. Better be a little. Yeah, it better be, man. I'm going to be way in, like you said, with tempered expectations.

That is a good way to sort of transition here, Timpered expectations. tempered expectations. So there's been a lot of build, I should say there was a lot of build and hype for something that people have been waiting for, maybe for the last six months or so. And that was in New York Times article. A lot of us thought, nope, it's not happening. It did happen. So kudos to those who said it was going to. But it may not have been what a lot of us expected or wanted, but some people hated it. Some people didn't. But as of this recording, now we have two new New York Times articles that just came out, Tim. So I got to ask your opinion on this.

What did you take away from either of these articles and this talk of off-world vehicles that just has gone insane in the mainstream and the alternative media? Yeah. What do you make of the New York Times articles, Tim? Okay. Yeah, no. And count me as one of the people who never doubted it was coming. I knew it was coming.

But I was in that group of people jumping up and down saying, kind of like I just did for this unclassified report of that provision, to say, hey, guys, we need to calm down a little bit because I don't think it's going to be what you think it's going to be. So first of all, I'll give my overall impression. And this is no disrespect to the writers or anybody. If they're open to critique, just like I am for any of my work as well. It really does go back to what I was just saying about the idea of treating this subject. is the real world and maybe not as much of the fantasy or as excitement if we've seen in the UFO community or in fiction or anything else. And that is, for me, I think if you're going to cover something

that is discussing crashed UFOs or off-world technologies or off-world crafts, I think is how they termed it, that's really freaking huge. That's a big deal. Especially if you're talking about, because the, you know, I don't think it was overtly said, but the implicit implication here is that there's a government cover of, you know, never said Roswell, I don't think in that article, but everybody was like, uh-huh, we know where that came from. Yeah. If you're talking about that, I mean, it's so not only the idea that, that, okay, no, no, no,

this is real, ladies and gentlemen, something of another origin that has, you know, visited Earth conclusively and, and crashed and here's the physical evidence for certain. That's, you know, in my opinion would be the only, the greatest discovery of mankind next to the advent of language in terms of changing our entire worldviews and society world as we know it in life. That's a big deal. If you're going to bring in this idea that the government has covered that up as well, now you're talking about something that, you know, you're talking about just kind of shattering

of faith in government, which there's already, when we've seen it in past four years or so coming up on it. There's already kind of a mistrust in government. The mistrust in government is inherent in any democracies. And so, but you're talking about Watergate times a thousand, you know, I mean, lying deception, all sorts of different things. And I think any of the reasons for why, if that occur, are going to be hard for people to swallow or accept. So again, there's that's a really big freaking deal. And so I think if you're from my point of view, if you're going to bring that into the into the public domain, if you're going to bring that in and present a case for that,

you've got a damn well present a case for it. And it's got to be really good. And it's got to be airtight. It's got to be something that, like I said, in the court of public opinion, it is going to render a verdict that, yes, this is true beyond any reasonable, but out. And so it's not just the height that went in. to going into there that this was going to be the big revelation. It was even the content. I'm going to stay with there is that I don't think that the case for this being true was presented well.

It wasn't, you know, there wasn't enough evidence to support that. And then, you know, unfortunately, there were a lot of little silly kind of errors, I think, that maybe shouldn't have been. It definitely didn't help the case. No, no. And Senator Harry Reid, you know, coming out, not only them having to make the correction, the Times having to write a footnote correction in terms of what they had attributed to him, but he, you know, coming out with a pretty full throttle rebuke saying that he had never said this and didn't believe this, that was really interesting to me. Yeah.

It does speak to the fact that it comes back to that debate always, Tim, is connecting alien to the UFO and the UFO to the alien. And it's something we in this field, quote unquote, have tried to separate them for decades now, that we're not saying it's aliens. We're saying it's an unidentified aerial phenomena. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was really surprised with Harry Reid's response only because, you know, I was thinking of it from my perspective. And this was something I was doing going into this, I'd realize that if I'm going to put it out there to the masses that a.

former Senate majority leader, 30-year veteran of Congress, former member of the intelligence community, former member of the gang of eight, which the gang of eight, for anybody who's not aware, the gang of eight armed services and intelligence, these are the eight highest officials in the elected U.S. government. These are the eight individuals in which they have access to all classified. Choice hotels get you more of what you value. it's calling your name Save on the stay Oh

And free waffles are yours to claim Book direct at storieshiltails.com Five programs across all branches of government So this is your If there's a majestic 12, they're eight of them, okay? Wow. So this is, if you're going to go on record with somebody that once held that,

I think he held that, he was in the gang and bait for seven years, I believe, when he was majority lever. So essentially, this is a guy who would know if that was true. And so, yeah, if you're going to attribute him as saying, because I think originally they said that he maybe knew that they had recovered stuff and people were studying it, you better be sure that, you know, even if he wanted to walk that back later, like you've got it in writing, you've got it recorded. I'm going to be like, no, no, no, no, no, you said this, buddy, you know. Yeah. I mean, that's a big deal. That's a really big deal.

It is. And it's, you know, it's kind of sad that we see, I mean, let's be completely up front and honest. Reid is getting up there. He's battling cancer. And, you know, him like many politicians and members of government, there's a legacy to be left behind that they try to keep intact. So you do have to wonder, does he know more than he's letting on? like Luis Elizondo has even personally stated, he knows much more than he can say to the public or on television or even with to the stars. And that's why they're disseminating the information in the ways they are, is to hopefully get some of that out. You know, that's a whole other conversation in terms of truth and fiction being melded together.

But with Reed, Tim, I think you're right. Like, if this guy really was that high up and had carp launch to literally everything, our intelligence communities possess. It's troubling to think he still needs to, you know, create a program to investigate UFOs, but he probably knows more than literally anyone else on the planet about it. Sure. No, no, yeah. It's as a U.S. government. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind. Senator Harry Reid knows much more about it all the way across the board. What those truths are, I don't know. Right. And why does he make a little green men comment, you know? It's, that's where I'm like, well, that's kind of depressing if he does know that much.

And he's still saying, we're not dealing with little green men when it comes to all this. There goes 99% of the hardcore believers out there that were dealing with an alien phenomenon. Sure. And I, you know, I think that probably some of his rebuke was, and I'm not going to associate on what he knows or doesn't know and who is, you know, just trying to cover it up. But I'll say that maybe some of that was frustration that was shared by a lot of personal friends and other people that I've met, you know, over the past year who come from really credential backgrounds from academic community and science who you wouldn't think would be interested in this. But they enter it and they're very, very interested because stuff like this bill provision, the fact that when you have a politician like Marco Rubio, let's put his, we can put his politics aside, but the fact that he's coming out and discussing it, you know, Like you mentioned, politicians are careful with their words because they can come back and haunt them. The fact that he's okay saying, yeah, no, this is real and we need to look into it.

And we know that they receive briefings. That makes it tangible. It makes it interesting. It makes it very real world. And it makes it an object of scrutiny and study for normal mainstream science. Nobody needs to feel weird or fringe by it. But I think that bringing in the kind of crashed UFO thing, I think part of his rebuttal was probably that, that would allow for the more fantastic side of things to come into it, which may not be true.

And most importantly, I think it probably gives this impression to the public. And the UFO community definitely has it. The U.S. government may know a lot more. But I don't know that they have an answer for what, where, why, that in itself. I think that could be scary. You know, they come out and say, no, no, it's real. We don't have anything crash. Or, yeah, we do have stuff crashed, but we don't know what the hell this is.

We don't know how it works. We don't know where it's from. We don't know. Which is a stunning admission. And I mean, even the DOD said, yes, these are aerial phenomena. We can't explain. We don't know what they are. The videos are legitimate.

That is concerning. And it is kind of a turn of the tide, Tim, I would say, because for years, whether it's Project Blue Book or whatever, you want to pull up with that. The government has always just denied the phenomenon because, you know, that's the easiest way to say, nothing here to see. It's all explainable moving on. But, you know, there is that whole thing of, yeah, maybe the government doesn't know,

but they can at least control the information that gets out to the public. So, yeah, it is a constant dance or boxing matches. as it were when it comes to it all, I think. But you bring up a good point, too, that, like, people like Marco Rubio, now that he's connected to this, man, like, there is no getting out. It's like being in the mafia. Yeah. No, I just recently, I mean, this is a good example.

Just with Rubio, I just saw a campaign at, you know, obviously we have the re-election campaign coming up where, you know, Senator Rubio was at one point a Republican candidate for president. And so they're replaying him at one of his rallies saying, you know, you can't trust Trump and don't vote for you know so i mean his words are coming back to haunt him and yeah no so and rubio is a well-known politician uh you know that senate select committee if you really look at who was all on it i mean it's most of them are people names that people would know Kamala harris is on that you know a once democratic candidate for president in this current cycle and so there there it's a

very powerful committee and so yeah the willingness to uh for them to put their names behind it the willingness to vote to approve it, the willingness to discuss it openly and what little bit they have is very interesting because they have received briefing. We know that. They've acknowledged that. And so they're real enough and it's tangible enough that they don't think it's going to come back and haunt them or they're not going to be ridiculed for supporting this. And I mean, it should. It probably won't. But it all puts a nail in the coffin for this idea that this is all some kind of disinformation sci-op campaign or something

because it's not being illegal to be political suicide. Very, very good point. Yeah, and politicians are always looking to dodge that political suicide no matter what it entails. But

you did mention disinformation. Now, this is something I want to tackle with you here. Besides all of the recent New York Times discussion, you said powerful people. Admiral Wilson. Hey listeners, Ryan here dropping in.

I know things were just ramping up, but you're going to have to wait till next week for part two of our discussion with Tim McMillan. We'll be covering the hotly debated Wilson Davis memo and just exactly what it is if it's real and its place in this entire off-world vehicles revelation brought forth recently in the New York Times. Then Tim and I discuss Bob Lazare.

After over 30 years of being discredited and scrutinized for his claims of having worked on UFOs near Area 51, has Lizarre finally been vindicated with all the recent news of UFO wreckage and materials? And what if he did possess the mysterious element 115? Tim then gives us the inside scoop on his work on the History Channel television series Unidentified, and then we answer some of your burning listener questions. It's an explosive part two that is available right now as an early addition to all Patreon subscribers. So if you don't want to wait until next Monday,

hop on over to the Patreon campaign and help support the show and listen right now. Visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies to learn more. Again, that's patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Thank you to, everyone who helped make the book launch a massive success. We hit four different number one categories, both in new releases and bestsellers on Amazon. Be sure to check out the new edition of Somewhere in the Skies, a human approach to the UFO

phenomenon, available on Amazon and on the Barnes & Noble online bookstore. If you have a print copy or ebook, please also consider being part of our book selfie campaign, Post a photo with the book and tag me on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, and you'll be entered into a contest to receive all bonus episodes for free, for life. This should be fun. No matter what, I will see you here next week for part two of our discussion with Tim McMillan. And as always, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching, Somewhere in the Skies. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions, in association with the Enterington. Entertainment One podcast network.