The Joe Rogan Experience - #1574 - Jacques Vallée & James Fox

Episode Date: December 4, 2020

Jacques Vallée is a venture capitalist, technologist, and world-renowned figure in the field of unidentified aerial phenomena. James Fox is the director of The Phenomenon: a new documentary about UFOs and a global effort to conceal their existence.

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Gentlemen, James, Jacques, welcome. Thanks for being here. We'll explain what this is all about, because on the new Spotify podcast, we don't really have an intro, the same way the old ones did. James, you produced a phenomenal documentary on the phenomenon, on what's going on with UFOs, and I just sent you an article that my friend Sager sent me today about a photograph, a very clear photograph that they've taken of this triangular UFO. So there's something that we'll be talking about in a little bit.

Jacques Vallée, you have been studying this most of your life. Too long. Too long. We discussed it last night at dinner, that your interest in this came from an experience that you actually had as a child. You actually saw a UFO. As a teenager with two other witnesses, in this came from an experience that you actually had as a child. You actually saw a UFO. As a teenager with two other witnesses, one of the witnesses was half a mile away with binoculars. So I'm pretty sure that that object was real. And it was a classic disc, middle of the afternoon,

clear sky, absolutely clear. At the time, I became convinced that it might be a prototype of something that would be coming out later. And, you know, we're here many years later and we still don't have anything like that. It was just hovering and it was there. And you've been studying this for so long, and this was something you guys talked about in the film, that you were actually the character

that the French UFO researcher in Close Encounters of the First Kind, or the Third Kind, rather, was modeled after, the Steven Spielberg film. Spielberg was intrigued with the idea of a character that was not quite as weird as, you know, the ETs, but was a lot weirder than, you know, the people on the ground in the U.S.

trying to make sense of this in the military and so on. So he needed this intermediate character. He thought, you know, Frenchman was the right thing to do. And so did you talk to him about the film? Did you talk to him about when he was putting it together? Yeah. A journalist put us together about halfway through the final shooting of the film. And there were gaps in the movie at that point. And so we had lunch twice together. And it was was a lot of fun. He was,

at the time, he was looking for a transition between the time when they know that, you know, the big thing is coming, the mothership is coming, and they don't know where. And the mothership is sending signals, but they can't decipher the signals. And he said, you know, he had spent the morning at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and he said he couldn't make any sense of all the mathematics they had. And I said, well, maybe you could have, you know,

two screens that give you an angle and the angle tells you where the thing is. And he said, no, that's too complicated, you know angle and the angle tells you where the thing is and he said now that's too complicated and takes too long it's got to be just a few minutes in the film and then I thought of a photograph that was on the desk of Dr. Hynek

you know Dr. J. Hynek who was the Air Force consultant on UFOs at the time and I was working with him building databases and so on. And on that photograph, there were three guys, you know, really well-dressed on ladders around a huge sphere of the Earth in the lobby of some building somewhere

with pieces of string that they were putting the string over the earth and I told Dr. Hynek, I said Alan you know what's the story behind this and and he said well the when the first Sputnik was launched you know October 57 nobody had a computer program to compute an orbit but they knew where the the Sputnik had been seen. Nobody expected the Russians to come up with this. And they needed to know where it was going next. So the New York Times called the director of Harvard Observatory,

saying, can you give us a comment on the Russian satellite? And the guy said, hey, it's 3 o'clock in the morning. You know, what Russian satellite? And so they got dressed in a hurry, and they were trying to compute the orbit by putting a string around the model of the Earth in the lobby of Harvard. And I thought it was so funny.

And Spielberg said, that's it, you know, that's it. The general says, come on, you know, you know, the the geographer who is the interpreter of the French of a French guy says, well, it looks like it's somewhere in Wyoming, you know, but where in Wyoming, you know, where should we go? And the general says, you mean we've got $10 billion worth of radar and cameras and everything else? Nobody's got a map of Wyoming? And they break into the lobby of the building next door, and they come back with this globe.

And, you know, they've got the globe, and they look at it and get their coordinates. And because it turns out the geographer tells them, you know, those signals, they look like a longitude and a latitude. So they get the point where it's going to be. And that was a piece that was missing in the movie. So I was really proud of that. You know, it was really fun. Also, it's the one funny part in the movie. So I was really proud of that. It was really fun. Also, it's the one funny part

in the movie. Yeah, it's a great movie. It is probably the movie that got me most excited about UFOs when I was a kid. I remember thinking, if UFOs were coming here from another planet, one thing that I remember thinking is, why would they even bother talking to the government? What do they care who the government is? Like if, if I was looking at an ant colony, I'm not going to ask the ant colony, which one's the, the elected official that's in charge of all the other ants. You don't give a shit. You're just like trying to study the ants.

And I felt like if something was coming here from another planet that was so sophisticated, it could either travel from another dimension or travel from another galaxy why would it care like who the president is or who the generals are you know not only that but the witnesses don't talk to the government either you know by now the witnesses are tired of being ridiculed by scientists and you know by and told that those things don't exist. So they don't talk. So they'll talk to people like you or people like me because they trust me.

And in Silicon Valley, you wouldn't believe the number of people who come to me, including CEOs of companies that I've worked with, who tell me about sightings that people in their family have had or sightings they had, including sightings in Vietnam, for example, when they were in the military that have never been reported. And the government isn't getting that.

When you first started studying this, James, when you started studying this phenomenon, when you started studying this phenomenon when you were thinking that you're going to put together this this movie what you've done other documentaries on ufos what what got you into this so i had a really good friend of mine who was a high school buddy this guy renee we traveled around Europe together after we graduated from high school. And in our early 20s, he told me about this UFO crash in Roswell in New Mexico. And I literally thought at the time, I'm going to have to write this guy off. I've lost my best friend. He's lost his mind. And that was that. And I sort of walked away thinking, God, we've had such a great

friendship. I'm so sorry. This guy's gone. And I brought it up with a guy that I was mentoring. He was my mentor, uh, at a production facility, excuse me, production facility in California. This guy, Richard, and he goes, oh yeah, Roswell. Yeah, that was an alien spaceship. It crashed. I mean, the government admitted it. I it i mean they they put the story out themselves these guys were the the only bomb unit in the world the 509th exclusively responsible for the deployment of atomic weapons these guys would not mistake an everyday weather balloon for a flying saucer he goes that actually happened and i went really so then I started looking into it. Before I knew it, I started making a movie. Wow. So when you heard about Roswell and you've investigated it now and you've gotten into it, what do you think that was?

Well, I can only go by the people that were there. And Major Jesse Marcel was one of the first military officers on the scene. He's part of the 509th. And Major Marcel said the debris was strewn over an extremely large area, and it was material that was not of this earth. And he described the material was one chunk in particular was three to four feet long, three feet wide, light as a feather. You could barely feel it in your hands when you carried it, but they couldn't destroy it with a blowtorch. They couldn't destroy it with a select hammer. This photo you're showing us right now, Jamie, is the debris that they threw on the floor

that was clearly just aluminum foil and sticks and stuff from a weather balloon. That's the fake debris. Yeah. Well, there's two stories, right? There was a story that came out the first day that said, we've recovered a crashed UFO. And then there's a story that came out the second day, whoops, it was a weather balloon. And this was after they had taken the wreckage and they flew it to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

And it wasn't what you would do with wreckage from a weather balloon. What they'd done is they'd flown it in two separate jets or planes. I don't know if there were any jets back then. Two separate planes to make sure that they had at least some of it. Like if one of them crashed, they at least had some of this stuff. And to this day, there's people that were there that swear that this was something that was from an alien world. And then you've got all the debunkers

and all the other people that swear that it's nonsense and that people are just making things up and they get a lot of attention from this. And so they've been telling these stories for decades and they might even believe it themselves, but it's all bullshit. Well, my approach to that is, you know, no single case. And I think the scientists are not completely to blame there. No single case can prove either that we're being visited or even

that there is a phenomenon here on Earth that we still need to be discovering. You need to, I've been trained to look for patterns. You know, my background is in artificial intelligence and computer science. And you look for patterns, whether it's in medicine, in business, you know, in other fields, in physics. And one case, even as good as Roswell is, you know, that doesn't do it. as good as Roswell is, you know, that doesn't do it. So I've been looking for other cases that can reinforce the pattern and reveal, you know, what is really behind it. Because the idea that it's just ET coming here, that doesn't really answer all the questions we have.

Well, it seems like there's been so many reports over time and it's so difficult to find out who's telling the truth and who's not because many of these are just anecdotal stories they're just eyewitness accounts and we know people are occasionally or quite often full of shit this is just that's just a part of people they lie and they make things up I wanted to put the cap on Roswell because what people don't realize is that they announced to the world that they recovered a flying saucer. There had been a whole massive wave in the 40s and late 40s. And this is following the detonation of the first atomic bombs.

Yeah, the tests, you know, and then the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan. tests, you know, and then the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan. Yeah, so we had the Trinity site, 1945, and then there were two bombs dropped, and that was from the Enola Gay, which was stationed at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 when this incident occurred. They announced and told the truth to the world. That's a fact. They were flying the debris to Wright-Parrison Air Force Base.

There was no cover-up. It was all out in the open with a quick stop in Fort Worth. When they got to Fort Worth, they had debris filled in their B-29 bomber. Major Marcel gets off the airplane, and General Roger Ramey, there's a flurry of press activity, and he says, keep your mouth shut. Let me handle this. Grab some debris from an everyday weather balloon, throws it on the floor. He says, keep your mouth shut, let me handle this. Grabs some debris from an everyday weather balloon, throws it on the floor, he says, keep your mouth shut, and they pose with DuBose, Colonel DuBose, and with Major Marcel and General Ramey. Two out of the three people came clean on camera before they died and said that was a fake press conference, that was fake debris, what we recovered was the initial story that came out was true.

It was not of this world. Now, what is the current understanding of what happened to that debris? You know, back in Silicon Valley, we're sort of, you know, there's a group of people who are getting really interested in this because we've got new technology to analyze materials. And we've got materials from a number of similar incidents. Again, what we're looking for, and it's hard to do, okay, and it's only now that we've really got equipment, scientific equipment that can really look at this. The characteristics of, I mean, materials are the same throughout the universe. I mean, iron from Mars is just like iron from, you know, from the Earth. The isotopes would be the same ones. The isotopes are the, you know, the components

that define the orbits of the, you know, of the atom and what goes into the nucleus of the atom. They would be the same ones in outer space when they are on the Earth. What could change would be if somebody was altering artificially the ratio of the isotopes within the elements. So it gets pretty complicated. We are doing a survey of all the samples that we have from a number of crashes like Roswell.

Roswell was not unique. It was not unique in New Mexico. And now we have samples from Europe. We have samples from South America. There are a number of people who have started to look at that. There were publications by a professor from Stanford, Professor Sturrock, 30 years ago, about material recovered from Brazil, where, again, the isotopes were measured. I'm the guy who, the French volunteered to measure the isotope ratios, and I carried that precious little sample to Paris to get it to the people who were doing the experiments. The jury is still out. Obviously, somebody could take common elements, refine the isotopes, and put them back together. Of course, that was done for the atom bomb, you know, it was between different isotopes of uranium,

you know, and you have to differentiate between, you know, which, what goes into really making the bomb. And now you can buy, for medicine, for example, you can buy radioisotopes in small quantities, but they cost an enormous amount for a few grams. So if we find that some of those samples have been altered, that's a revolution, because it means that there is somebody somewhere, either on Earth or off planet, who has the technology to do that for a particular purpose.

If we find that, that's a revolution. But did they find that with Roswell? Is there any record of what happened with the wreckage, what was studied, what they discovered? So you have to go in two directions. First, you don't need something, you know, three feet by five feet to do that. You can do it on a few grams.

We've got instruments now, new instruments that were created by some of the people that I work with that can just do it at the biological level, you know, like almost the level of, you know, a few grams or a few milligrams. So we're in the process of doing that. And in fact, the book that I'm preparing is going to talk about that.

The other thing is, you know, where would the big thing go? You know, we don't have the big thing. Well, you know, after a few years people talk. And again, both in Silicon Valley and other places, scientists need to talk to each other. And I've had discussions with people who handle that material. One of them I can tell you about was a very high-level engineering manager in a large company that has research labs in Silicon Valley.

He was asked 30 years ago to look at some material, and he described to me what that was. And actually, he showed it to me. He said it was a matrix of orthosilicates, and he could not understand the deep structure. I mean, he could analyze it in his lab. He was a man who developed the magnetic coating for disks and tapes. So I don't need to tell you how many billions of dollars of business those companies that he worked with, you know, made based on his patents. So he had a good lab and he was able to do the analysis. He could not understand the deep structure of that material.

Now, the problem that the people who have those vehicles have is they will, because it's top secret, they have to compartmentalize everything. So one company would get the material, another company might get some descriptions of maybe the beings, another company might get something that looks like fiber optics or electronics. Only a few people would be able to put all the information together. That's not a good way to do research, not a good way to do science. We've got to get that stuff to the scientific community and open it up. Well, this is what Bob Lazard said about working at Area S4,

that that was the problem they were having. One group was working on propulsion. The other group was working on metallurgy. But this material that this gentleman had seen where he couldn't identify the structure, what was that and where was it from? It was from a crash. From a crash where? He didn't tell me. He didn't tell you?

No. But they had, and he had gotten it through what method? He had been asked on a secret project to do the analysis. So this had been something the government had brought to him? He had a lab that was unique in the United States. And, you know, that was, he was the appropriate guy. Is it possible that this could have been some material that was created by a foreign government that has an extremely advanced understanding of these materials? If it had been, that material would have been used by now.

And we've never seen that material again. And what year was this, when he did this study? I don't know when he did the study. He's dead now so he's not going to be right. And because this is all top secret. Look in Silicon Valley people from different companies and so on get together and they you know they they look at things together if they trust you you know because then you need to get different minds on the same page. So that conversation was over 20 years ago. I've never forgotten it.

I had another conversation with a military man who is retired now, who told me that he was brought in to a large hangar where there were pieces of things that looked like a vehicle. And there was a wing that would have been the size of this table. And he could lift it with one hand.

It was, again, very light, you know, like what James was saying about Roswell, extremely light material that was very, very strong. Well, still today, we don't have anything like that. We've got fancy titanium things and so on, but he knew what technology went into our advanced aircraft. He was with the Air Force, and he couldn't believe that he could lift that entire metal surface with one hand.

So what is the current speculation on where the wreckage from Roswell went? As far as people know, people do talk like clearly if there was some material that was recovered that was from an alien spacecraft it must be somewhere it would well typically the the way you know a secret project works uh if if you look at other projects that we know now how they were handled, like the submarine, you know, the Russian submarine that was recovered. And it would go to different places, because you'd send different parts to the best experts, absolutely the best world experts in those people you already have under contract. And you might not tell them, you know,

where it comes from. You might tell them this is something, you know, one of our guys got this out of Czechoslovakia, you know, and we think it's Russian stuff from a MiG, you know, and why don't you analyze it? They wouldn't necessarily tell you that it comes from a UFO, whatever UFOs are. Ask Jacques where the bodies are.

Okay, but hold on. Is anybody speculating as to where the material from Roswell is? Is there a legend is there rumor not something that would pass you know, there were people working on advanced materials for ultralight aircraft, for rockets. You know, the transistor, people say, look at the transistor. We must have gotten this from the aliens. Well, the patent for the transistor is a German patent from 1934. You know, the German scientist discovered the transistor effect, and he described it. But nobody had any need for that. I mean, there was no electronics in 1934. So nobody really had

any need for it. And then the electronics was in glass tubes and so on. So that was rediscovered, you know, at Bell Labs by the people who patented the transistor in the US. Yeah, that was one of the big UFO conspiracy theories was that some of the technology that was recovered from Roswell was used and back engineered to create transistors. And they did this at Bell Labs. And there was a company called the American Computer Company that had a whole website dedicated to explaining where some of

the technology that we currently use came from. And they were all in on this conspiracy that it came from Roswell. I don't think you would find too many people in Silicon Valley who would believe that because, you know, some of the people from Bell Labs, you know, came west and some of them are still alive and they would tell you how it happened. And when you look at the old films, the old movies from Bell Labs, you know, you can see what they were doing. And it's kind of laughable. I mean, it's, you know, high school physics, you know, hooking up the thing with big wires and so on.

This was not really advanced stuff. But they understood the transistor effect, which was known since the 30s. It was not new science. It was just something that had never been required by industry. There was no application for it. To develop because the amplifiers worked fine, and there was no real need for it. When there was a need, then they started working on that. That's one of the big rumors, all right, is the transistor. Well, fibers. You know, Colonel Corso, who was

someone I, you know, respect and admire, revealed that he was in charge for the army of getting, he got a lot of, and somebody gave him a, you know, a cardboard box, literally, full of stuff that came from places like Roswell. And they were fibers. And when you put a light at one end, you know, the light would go to the end of the fiber. Well, that effect has been known, you know, in physics for a long time.

So, again, that doesn't prove anything. I had that conversation with Carl. So I spent two days with him, thanks to Mr. Bigelow. You know, we brought him to Las Vegas to, you know, talk to the science board of Bigelow Aerospace. And then I had some private conversations with him about some other things that were not in his book. But the fiber, I told him frankly,

glass fibers were known before World War II. People used them in lab work and so on. So that's not really new. It's not really proof. He said, look, I'm not a scientist. I'm a military guy. But I was asked by the head of the lab to preserve this. And what he did is to give it to different labs.

Give it to MIT, give it to, I don't know, Battelle, give it to a few others. And what happened when he did that? I don't know what happened. I interviewed Colonel Corso. Do you believe him? Yes. Okay, so I interviewed Colonel Corso on camera in 1997 in Roswell.

It was right at the 50th anniversary of the Roswell event. There was a lot of hoopla around what had happened. And he told me on camera, A, that he saw these bodies that he assumed were childlike, these big heads and eyes in a warehouse somewhere. But he described the materials. What he said to me, and I'm not saying this is true or not true, but what he said to me was that they were shocked at the lack of provisions on the craft, that the bodies had no reproductive organs, slits for mouths, no vocal cords. There were these little pen-like things that later turned out to be lasers.

stringy stuff that was later to be determined to be fiber optics and that the material had this you could crumple it up with light as a feather and then it would regain its original form that's what he told me on camera and he I think he died like a year later he told that also to Paola Harris who traveled with him you know in Europe and published his book in Italy and other languages. His English book was censored by the publisher and he died really, I mean he was given the proof. He had 24 hours to check the proof. He didn't check everything.

He didn't have time. And there were parts that were missing and parts that he had told me. Fortunately, you know, I can testify to what he told me. But the, you know, a lot of what he knew wasn't in the book that was published in the U.S. It's in books that were published in other languages, you know, thanks to Paola Harris, who preserved all that. But there was, you know, still at that stage, you know, there was some, you know, some tricks being played.

Not to get all the information out. This is something Clinton looked into when he was a president, right? President wouldn't necessarily be cleared. That's hilarious. I mean, number one, obviously I don't know the facts. You would think that if you get to the top office of the United States that you would get access to that. But I guess because it's transient because they're in and out.

Well, it's not a matter of curiosity. It's a matter of need to know. And you also want to protect the president. And also the president changes every four years. Yeah. And also there are three different classes of secrets. You know, there are secrets that are under the control of the president.

There are secrets that are under the control of the State Department that have to do with foreign intelligence that don't go through the same channels. And then there are

the atomic secrets. And the clearances for, you know, over the years I've occasionally been cleared I was cleared for the Bass Project under Mr. Bigelow the but the clearances for atomic secrets

are the P clearances, the Q clearances, the R clearances. They are completely segregated from the kind of clearances that we had as part of the BASS project or the ATIP project. So those people would not have been cleared for some of the scientific information. for some of the scientific information. And I think we're getting to the point where somebody needs to open up the doors and the windows and get the scientific community involved. Well, it does seem like there's more openness now from the penthouse, right?

There was the one person who worked at the Pentagon that was saying that they've recovered crafts that are off-world vehicles, not from this earth. Like, that was a direct quote. And then these photos that supposedly exist now from this new article that's out that are top secret, but people are trying to get these photographs released to the general public that show this triangular ufo this but just these kind of

statements and just the release of the go fast video and the other videos uh from the um the uh the gimbal video that that show these vehicles that are being observed by these fighter jet pilots that are watching these things in real time going, holy shit, what is that? And you get to hear their words, you get to see the video, you see the actual object jetting across the surface of the ocean, and they don't know what it is. And they're trying to figure it out while they're watching it. That's never existed before. There's never been this much openness so there's a new level of at least admitting that there's an issue that there's a phenomenon that didn't exist before you're talking about the u.s yes in other countries people have been a lot more open

yeah including russia you know i mean and certainly including france I mean, there was one incident in 1978, a Mirage, you know, a guy flying a Mirage, a full-cannibal French Air Force. The Mirage doesn't have any weapons. It's just coming in to Dijon, you know, Dijon where the mustard comes from. Okay, well, they happen to have, you to have a base, an atomic base there. And the Mirages are fighter bombers.

They can take nuclear ammunition. He was unarmed. He's flying at late afternoon, early evening. No problem. He sees a light at his 2 o'clock position. Bright light. Doesn't know what it is, gets bigger. He thinks he sees a structure behind the light,

but he was never really sure. There seems to be an object there, solid object. But the light goes around him and stops up on his tail, which is a kill position, you know, for a fighter, for a fighter jet. He doesn't like that. He takes evasive action, which he wasn't prepared to do. I mean, he didn't have, you know, special suits or anything. He dives. The object starts moving again, goes around him, makes a

360 degree circle at high speed. And he can't believe it. I mean, number one, there couldn't be a pilot because the pilot would be crushed. But there is nothing that can move that fast. And the thing is back on his tail. He has to dive a second time. He lands in Dijon, writes a report.

The report would probably not have come out except that there were a number of people on the ground who saw this happen, saw the whole thing. And there was a gendarme, you know, who was French police, a branch of, you know, parallel to the French police who wrote a report and that report was public. So they interviewed, they found the pilot, they interviewed him. I mean, there is no question that happened.

And this was 1978. So, I mean, what else is new, okay, that we've got those things? What's new is we have footage, I mean, what else is new, okay, that we've got those things? Well, what's new is we have footage, you know, and some of the footage that James had in his, you know, in his movie that actually proves it. But actually, you know, footage doesn't prove anything because you can fake the camera. But when you have the pilots themselves and the footage

and the instrumentation and the radar, I mean, that thing was tracked on radar that saw the whole thing. You know, you don't really do that to a nuclear bomber. Would you have something? Yeah. So this is a breaking story. And former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon literally sent this to me about 15 minutes ago, and he wanted me to read it verbatim. So I was going to read this. It's pretty startling stuff.

So I'll read it. In the last 48 hours, the public has learned of two stunning incidents captured on film by U.S. Navy carrier pilots earlier this year. U.S. Navy carrier pilots earlier this year. One of the cases features a photo of a bizarre flying sphere and a black cube inside that is identical to dozens of other reports by Navy pilots. These strange objects have been shadowing East Coast naval ops since 2015. They sometimes maneuver in formation and have occasionally been reported achieving supersonic speeds. The other incident produced a stunning detailed photograph of a massive triangular shaped vehicle that emerged from the ocean and flew vertically straight up and out of sight just past a Navy F-18 operating off the U.S. aircraft carrier. These iPhone photos taken by the pilots should be released to the public as there are no sources and methods to protect and the national security benefits of raising awareness regarding this issue vastly outweigh any conceivable

benefit from concealing the information. It is hard to believe that in the face of such radical and incredible technology within our vast defense department, we only have a so-called task force consisting of two individuals with no budget who are still being stiff-armed for access to relevant and timely information by the Air Force and other security organizations. By comparison, 60 years ago, in response to Sputnik, America entered the space race, which led to landing on the moon. Our government needs to wake up and address the far greater technology gap that these and many other incidents are revealing.

There is obviously a glaring strategic mismatch between the current task force and the technology that has been identified. Why did he send you this? Because he felt this is a developing story and he wants people to be aware that there's really compelling evidence right now, photographically, that needs to be released.

And so you told him you were coming on here and that's when he sent it to you? Yes, and he said that these people need to feel some pressure. They need to know that we are requesting, not demanding, but requesting further government transparency on this issue. And he's very passionate about it. He knows of these photographs. The government's, we got the story, I think it was yesterday, and the government is refusing to release these photographs. The pilots want these photographs released.

The people that were involved with the incident want the photographs released. And so he wants the public to know that these photographs exist and that they should be released. And they're currently in the possession of? He wouldn't reveal that. He knows the person, but he said that the government is not wanting them released, and he feels that that we have a right to these photographs and there's video that came with this story as well well remember this comes from the very guy who uh was strategic christopher mellon in getting those videotaped evidence from the cockpits of those f-18 fighter jets off the east coast as well as off the west coast in 2004 2015 and ended up with that big story on the front page of the New York Times in 2017.

Yeah, see, that's a new thing. Because if you went to, like, 2004 when this all happened, no one was really talking about UFOs in a serious manner. Like, it was still something that would be mocked and ridiculed. But to have it on the front page of the New York Times and to have this spokesperson for the Pentagon say that they've recovered off-world vehicles, not from this earth, not made on this earth.

This is a change, right? I mean, even though it doesn't receive that much public attention because it's all happening during a pandemic, and also the news cycle today is so bizarre. Something gets into the news cycle, and then it's gone tomorrow because of a news scandal, or people find out Ellen's mean, or whatever it is. There's always something new that's coming out.

And these things, though, it seems to be there's more of them and more of them coming out. And with each new story that comes out, people feel more emboldened to tell their story. You know, I think personally, everything changed in December of 2017 when that page, a front page of the New York Times revealed that secret AATIP program. And I know personally, because I've gotten ridiculed for decades for the work i do a lot less so recently um people are suddenly raising an eyebrow going wow there's clearly something more to this and just you know radar weather balloons and and misidentified aircraft jamie pull up the video of that's in that article there's a there's an

actual youtube video there's two ones from 94's from 94, one's from 2013. Let's go with the 2013 one. But these videos are very strange. You see this object. What's interesting, too, is that, okay, this is the one that I didn't see, but that this thing, the way it moves and behaves, the one that's from, I guess it was from the 94 one. This is the 2013 one.

This is the one from Puerto Rico. So it's just kind of cruising across the sky. It's hard to track here in this black and white. There it is. Does it estimate how fast this thing's supposedly going? It looks like they were near some sort of military base or something. On Aguadilla, which is like the west coast.

So weird to see. It's not clear what this thing is. So one of the things that I think it's really good to establish... Go further ahead in this video to see if maybe there's a better version of it or a better sort of check the other one has a little clearer video yeah there you go that's much clearer like what is that well that's not a bird like

yes moving through the clouds one of the things i wanted to make a distinction of is the technology, the observed technology that these guys are talking about. So you've got objects with no wings, no visible means of propulsion, the ability to hover, accelerate from a standstill to out of sight in the blink of an eye,

right angle turns at high speed, fly rings around our fastest jets. That is the technology that cannot be confused or explained away as something conventional so anytime you see an object like we're looking at here if it performs or exhibits that technology maybe it shoots off at high rate of speed does a right angle turn at high speeds no wings no tail no propulsion no sonic boom almost no sound that's and they're trying to get a close up on this thing so you get a better idea what the shape is it's very hard to tell but these objects also one of the weird things is it moves around the same way commander fravor described

that thing moving around that was hovering over the ocean that it kind of darts around left and right right and left almost like it's just not connected to what whatever our atmosphere is it's like it's moving in this weird zigzag sort of a way this is an infrared image, right? It's not visible. It's not a normal camera. I don't know. I don't know what it is. Is that what it looks like to you? I think it's the same type of camera as the one from the Nimitz. So you're looking at a heat signature.

You're not really looking at a visual picture. Right. So that's why it's not not you cannot get a clear definition of it well they need better cameras so if you go further along in the video it does uh they do get a better view of it there it is there you go like what the hell is that you know that was one of the uh more startling moments of producing the film the phenomenon for me was when i met with senator harry reed who spearheaded the atip program the advanced aerospace threat identification program that wound up on the front page of the new york times um i wasn't quite sure when i met with him how

where his comfort zone was and so i was really kind of cautious for the first half an hour of the interview. But then we started to relax and get more comfortable with each other, and I decided to kind of push it a little bit, and I said, Hey, Senator, I met with Gordon Cooper, who later became Mercury astronaut, who told me on camera that there was a landing incident that took place at Edwards Air Force Base circa 1957, where they happened to have a camera crew out near the dry lake bed capturing the installation of a new landing facility for F-86 fighter jets. And it was broad daylight, and all of a sudden this disc appears out of nowhere, and the camera crew turned their cameras on it, and they filmed the landing of this flying saucer on the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base.

And I'm telling the story to Senator Reid thinking, you know, I don't know how he's going to react when I, but this is what I was, I have him on camera. And, uh, and I said, he has the film footage developed. It was good footage. He held it up. He looked at it. It was a disc, you know, blah, blah, blah. And eventually he gets a courier jet from Washington, D.C. that flies in, pick up the footage. Senator Reid goes, and it was never seen or heard from again. And I said, yeah, exactly. And I said, did you guys uncover stuff like that? He goes, oh, yeah, it's all there. It's we we have it. It's all there. And then he goes to change the topic and talk about something else. And I said, well, hold on, there. We have it. It's all there. And then he goes to change the topic and talk about something else.

And I said, well, hold on, Senator. Are you saying that there's evidence that hasn't seen the light of day? And he looked at me and he kind of pauses and he picks up his water bottle and he drinks a sip of water. And that moment seemed like an hour, but it was probably just a second or two.

And he puts his water bottle down. He says, I'm saying that most of the evidence hasn't seen the light of day. So that for me was such a powerful moment because I'm going, look at who this is coming from. This is the former head of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid saying that the vast majority of evidence hasn't seen the light of day. And if the president of the United States can't get access to it, as I found out when I interviewed all the people around President Clinton, who can? Who has the authority to have this stuff released? And that's something that I would love to know. And I've been trying to find out. So someone does. Someone in some position of government or some intelligence agency, someone in some position of government or some intelligence agency,

someone in the Pentagon, someone or some group at the highest level of clearance has access to this information and knows about it. Absolutely. Senator Reid said they uncovered all this stuff during the program, and he said the level of resistance that he got from the intelligence agencies was insane. Like, I mean, they did not want this project going forward at the Pentagon. But they pushed and they pushed and they pushed and they got it through. It started in 2007.

It went all the way up until it ended up on the front page of The New York Times in 2017. And, of course, now we know that there's another project. But, Jacques, do you know who has the authority to release this stuff to the general public? No, no, not in this particular case. Where are the bodies from Roswell? I don't know. I mean, you know, all you have are rumors. You know, Walter Reed Hospital in the basement.

You know, I can't get to the basement of Walter Reed Hospital have you ever talked to anybody that's reputable anybody that you believe that seems to know yes well now you know there are physicians in you know who with clearances who have tried to to get that information. And to my knowledge, because they don't need to tell me everything, but if there was, you know, if there is material evidence, like the kind of thing I've got, that witnesses have given to me, that I went out and dug it up,

so I know where it comes from, okay? But if we found that it was really very strange, even beyond our ability to manipulate the isotopes, that still doesn't prove that there isn't somebody who is smarter than we are somewhere on Earth making that stuff, okay? So I still couldn't stand, you know, at the Academy of Sciences

and say, look, this proves it. But if we have bodies, I would think that if they have a different structure from any organism that we know from biology on Earth, I mean, I would have to think that would be a revolution. The strange thing...

Instantly, I mean. Yes, instantly. People would be confronted with it. The strange thing is that the iconic image of an alien seems consistent. That's one of the weird things, is that there's different versions of aliens that people claim to see,

but the iconic close encounters of the third kind, large head, large eyes, very thin body with no musculature, no genitals, that all seems to be very consistent. Correct. Yeah, like the African landing case in Zimbabwe in 1994. That is a crazy part of your documentary, because you see these children that are going to school in Africa. This thing lands, and then they draw pictures of it.

The children are all consistent. And then 20 years later, they all meet and talk about it again. And now when people lie, a lot of times when people lie, when they're making up a crazy story like being abducted by a UFO, they want to be special. They want to be different like i was the one they chose there's none of that from these kids they all have the same story they all have the same you know they didn't have the best drawing skills but they all drew something

that's incredibly similar it was all a classic looking ufo flying saucer type vehicle and a classic looking iconic creature that is just like the Close Encounters of the Third Kind. They all describe something that looked like it was wearing a black wetsuit. They all describe something that had large eyes and a large head for its body. I was doing my first documentary back in 1997 when I was just naive enough to think I can get an interview with Steven Spielberg. We had a mutual friend involved, this woman, Janet, and she gets back to me and she's like, yeah, so Spielberg's definitely not going to meet with you, but he knows you're working on this UFO documentary. He thinks you should look into this landing case that happened in Africa at the school. And I said to myself at the time,

and remind you guys that I was making a film on UFOs, And I dismissed it so quickly because I thought, there's no way that a mass landing with the sheer volume of eyewitness testimony at a school in broad daylight could happen and the whole world not know about it. So I just walked away from that story for about 10 years. 10 years later, I'm doing an event at the National Press Club with Leslie Kane, who was part of the article in New York Times that came out in 2017. And she introduced me to this guy, Randall Nickerson. And she's like, oh, he's working on this landing case in Africa. Long story short, he's working on a film now. I think it's coming out next year specifically on just that case.

Dan Farah is producing it. And he said, I'm working on the case. And if you want to do something with me on it, a small piece, I could. So I got back into it. I licensed some of the footage that Dr. John Mack, the Harvard psychiatrist that came and interviewed the school children on camera within a week of it happening. He unfortunately looked the wrong way in London, got run down by a car and died. So I contacted the Institute with the help of Randall Nickerson. I licensed the archival footage. We tracked down the witnesses today. We flew them in from all different corners of the world, brought them together. A lot of them were standing right next to each other. They came face to face. And one of the things I realized was

that there were roughly a 100 kids in the playground, broad daylight, aerial school, Rua Zimbabwe, 1994. And they got within arm's length of these beings and brought these witnesses together for the first time in 20 years. And a lot of them hadn't even told their significant others just because they said they were tired of having to defend this. And I myself didn't believe it when I first heard about it back in 1997. And that segment of the film is the most, in my opinion, is the most powerful segment. It's very compelling.

You've got all these children saying what they saw on camera after it happened. And then you see them 20 years later. And then we to africa and we meet with the head mistress or she was a teacher at the time we went with other witnesses we go to the landing site we talked to people at the school that case is absolutely and it was witnessed by lots of other people in and around the area for several days before it chose a school to land it's it's so compelling because the children are all clearly, they're not actors. So as they're adults later, they're all talking about this moment. And it's like they had a religious experience together. Like they're all sharing it and talking about it. And you could tell it's like, it's a deeply moving experience. If they were actors, they wouldn't have been able to do such a good job because

to convey the reality of that moment to them to to to to be able to have this interpretation of this event where they're all consistent in the story and they're all clearly still shook by this moment it's really interesting because if you had that scene in a movie it would take like a really good actor to pull it off and they'd probably need multiple takes they'd probably want to get the best one but those kids the way they were talking about it the way they were drawing it you're like wow it really does seem like something happened to them i i know how credible that the testimony of the children is because my partner, Rebecca, she's never had much of an interest in what I do, making documentaries on UFOs. I do other things as well.

But when I was reviewing in the studio the archival interview of the children, she just dropped off a cup of coffee and she stopped and went, oh, my God, those children are not lying. This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Because look, I ask your audience to don't take it from me. Just suspend judgment for a moment and imagine hypothetically if a UFO or several UFOs landed at a school in broad daylight in Rua Zimbabwe, Africa, and interacted telepathically with nearly 100 school children, not all of them had telepathic, but seeing the incident, how significant of a story would you give that? Well, not only that, they had the same message. Yes. But the telepathic message was that technology is a real problem. Yes. And there's things that people are doing

with technology that are going to ruin the Earth. Yes. And they were trying to relay this to children, which is very strange. You know, I mean, maybe they just thought they were adults because they were the same size as the aliens. I mean, do you think they knew that they were children? Do you think they understood that it was a school? I mean, this is all speculation, right?

But no, I definitely had to ask myself, look, during the production of the film, Paula Harris actually turned me on to another landing case that happened in Australia in 1966 at a school. And this time there were roughly 300 witnesses that saw a disc land right outside a playground in Australia. And we went to Australia and investigated that case, went to the landing site, talked to eyewitness testimony, people that jumped the fence at the school playground and ran over to where this thing landed. And then we even interviewed a guy who snapped a photograph of a disc, a Polaroid, back in 1966, two days prior to the incident. So it's very, probably that we have photographic

evidence, we have eyewitness testimony, and for the first time we've got testimony from a science teacher. So why do these things land at schools? It seems like, and I'm just totally speculating here, but it seems like if I were going to do that, it seems like a pretty benign environment. We've had testimony from military guys that we take a fairly hostile position towards things that penetrate sensitive military installations. And, you know, so maybe, I'm just saying maybe, maybe it's safe. Maybe it's safe. Yeah, but we have to stop reacting to, you know, intrusions by UFOs as a threat. I mean, that's the whole thing behind this new task force.

And as much as I respect, you know, the task force, my colleagues and I want to cooperate with them to the extent that we can bring information or resources to what they do. But there is more. This is not, should not be looked at specifically as a threat. I mean, with the phenomena that we observe, I mean, if they wanted to blow up those F-18s, they could do it. Obviously, that's not what it's all about. And this idea of just labeling it all as a threat because it's unknown, that's a wrong idea. 90% of the information comes from the public, comes from children, comes, and very, very little of it

is made up. You know, in France, I mean, the data we get at the French Space Agency comes through channels where if people reported something that's found to be untrue, they are going to be called by the police. And, you know, they may have some penalties associated with that. Now, you said that they can blow them up, but there's never been any evidence of a UFO attacking anything, right? Like the thing that...

There has been. Really? Yes. There have been people killed, apparently for no reason. Very rare, though. Where was this? 10, 12 cases. You know, I went to Brazil four times,

and I got to know Brazil and the data there pretty well. And I spoke to people in the armed forces, people in the Brazilian Air Force, and the police. There have been a number of cases where people died, and where witnesses died, and also cases where witnesses were chased through the jungle by objects with beams. through the jungle by objects with beams. And I was really interested in those beams because those beams were extensible. Well, it's hard to make an extensible...

If you turn on the light or a laser, you know, it's going to keep going. It doesn't go 10 feet and just stop in midair. Those beams stop, which means it's not just light. It's something else. And also they will pin you to, you know, a hammock, for example. Some of the people who are asleep in a hammock, they wake up and they see this light and the light comes down and pins them to the bed or to the hammock. And I've published pictures of injuries that people sustained as a result of those beams.

So, you know, this is at least a demonstration of, you know, of a power that, number one, we don't quite understand the technology. And number two, we don't understand why that is. And you're of the opinion that these things might not be from another planet, that it could be they're interdimensional. So, yes, I'm amazed that, you know, I mean, in the 50s and 60s, there was all that science fiction about, you know i mean in the 50s and 60s uh there was all that science fiction about you know

aliens from other planets and so on all these all these movies so that was okay and frankly when i started looking at the statistics trying to make sense trying to build those databases do ai on top of it i was looking looking for ET, extra-terrestrial. Now we've got so much more data that contradicts that. Things coming through the wall of a bedroom as a light, and the light turns into something else, and it has information in it, or it turns into something physical. This is way off. information in it or it has or it turns into something physical. You know this is

not this is way off. I mean these are not just vehicles that come from somewhere else. So it could be there are a number of contradictions in there. It could be there's a number of different non-related phenomena. Well you know to some extent I mean we keep saying that the scientists are skeptical and so on. But if you look at physics today, I mean, people will tell you there's probably more than, there must be more than four dimensions, you know, of space-time. There must be to explain, you know, atomic phenomena, to explain quantum mechanics, to explain all those things. There could very well be. There are theories that are published in physics journals about

multiple universes, about universes interpenetrating each other, maybe channels between those universes. There could be, you know, there could be another universe with a room like this five minutes ahead of us. We would never see them. We would never detect them. There could be another Earth five minutes ahead of us in another universe. And physics today authorizes us to think about those things. Now, they think about those things not because of UFOs. They consider it because it makes sense in the theories they have to build to explain what they see in the lab, okay? In the particle labs, in the accelerators and detecting all these all these other layers of of of matter of nature but it it implies that this isn't just you know not only the other planet but this isn't the only

universe i was going to say jacques one of the assets that jacques brought to this film the phenomenon um and he became involved through Lee Spiegel. And you could talk in a minute about your reluctance to get involved. Initially, Jacques was like, okay, well, I'll participate. Just this one little section. And eventually, I lured Jacques out to the studio. We were editing the film at the end of this dirt road in a very remote area. We had a place that had no running water, no internet, no toilet.

Long story, I was going to get a better space, but I just couldn't find one, and we just got so much work done in this space, I decided to just edit the whole movie here. It was a little cabin in the woods on the California coast. It was gorgeous, full of flowers and so on, but no facilities.

Just electricity some of the time. Yeah. And there were times when there wasn't even electricity. Oh, yeah. And Jacques would say, okay, I'm coming out for the weekend. He would do these marathon edits with us. And he'd say, I got my face paint. I got my compass.

I'm coming out. And one of the first cases I think that you got involved with, speaking of beans, was Socorro, New Mexico, that involved a police officer in April of 1964. This is considered to be the most well-documented close encounter of the third kind. That's when the witness described seeing beans associated with the craft in U.S. history. Turns out, when Jock found out that I'd already spent five years investigating this case, I interviewed the wife, I interviewed his co-workers, I interviewed his son, his daughter, and I went to the National Archives and I got all these new documents.

I revealed some of them in the movie. Jacques said to me, and I showed him this stuff, he said, my gosh, I can't believe you're doing this case. He said, I was at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in April of 1964 with Dr. Hynek. And you were telling Hynek, take it over, about these Close Encounters cases. Well, about all the cases we had in France that I had in my computer catalog. And that's when he wanted me to move to Northwestern, you know, from Texas. My first year in this country was here in Austin. So it's always fun to come back to Austin.

Austin has changed since 1962. I can tell you, I can testify to that. Sure, it's changed since 99 when I first got here. Yes. And so I told Alan, you know, let me, you know, look really carefully at the Air Force files. And you've got to have close encounter cases. In those days, we were calling them landing cases because there were traces on the ground.

And that's where you could do some physics. You know, there is more than a testimony. The guy says something landed in my backyard. It left these holes. You don't have to believe him. You can go see the holes. You can measure them. You can look at the temperature.

You can look at radiation. You can look at all these things. And he said, no, we don't have those kinds of cases. So I convinced him to let me look at the files. of cases. So I convinced him to let me look at the files. And he said, look, I'm going to Wright-Patterson, where Project Blue Book was headquartered, at the Foreign Technology Division, which is an intelligence branch of the Air Force. It looks at foreign materials. It was a logical place to put it. And what's funny is everybody assumes that that project was top secret. I mean, even in the movie production, the series now, the top secret Blue Book. Blue Book was never top secret. There were a few cases

individually that were secret because of that radar was classified at the time. But the observation itself wasn't classified. And in those days, I didn't have a clearance, and I wasn't even an American citizen. I had only been in the U.S. for a couple of years. So he said, that's no problem. You know, we'll get you just a clearance for two days, you know, to go, to get to the base.

But the archives themselves were, you know, any French scientist who wanted access could have had access. Any American scientist. And what frustrated the Air Force was that, you know, Carl Sagan never went there. What frustrated the Air Force was that Carl Sagan never went there. All these scientists who said that, who poo-pooed the whole idea of UFOs, they never went to look at the archives.

They never looked at the testimonies, at the wires, at the teletypes. We talked about Carl Sagan last night, and you felt that Carl Sagan was pressured by ridicule. And that some of the things that he had speculated that actually turned out to be true like water on the moon and possibly even some form of life that existed in the past or currently on Mars yes he was willing to they speculate they had interesting discussions between Hynek and Sagan Hy Hynek kept talking about the Air Force files, and Sagan said, you know, if we've got NORAD,

NORAD looks at everything, with radar covering the United States completely. So if there are these things, NORAD must be detecting them. So Hynek said, well, you know, go ask them. So Sagan went to NORAD and he went to, you know, a mountain where the headquarters are and the control system, Cheyenne Mountain.

And he explained that, you know, I understand you guys must have UFOs. They said no. And he said, but, you know, you're tracking everything. We've got these people, you know. Heineck tells me he's got these reports about, and you must have UFO reports. You must be detecting something.

They said, yeah, but we don't call them UFOs. So we have no UFOs. It doesn't show up in the files. Somebody says, keyword, UFO. NORAD doesn't have anything. So Carl Sagan said, what do you guys call them? And they said, we call them UCTs. And he said, what's a UCT?

And he said, doctor, it UCT? And he said, doctor, it's an uncorrelated target. And he said, how many uncorrelated targets do you get a month? They said about 10,000. What does that mean, though? Well, that means that

that's what he asked. He said, look, we're here to look for incoming trajectories of ballistic missiles from Russia. So if there is one data point, the system doesn't care. If there are two data points, the system starts looking. If there is a third one, it computes a trajectory. If the trajectory looks like an incoming thing, for example, from Alaska over towards Montana, we're going to alert, you know, the fighters. Otherwise, it could be a flock of birds.

It could be a weather balloon. It could be anything else, you know. And we're not paid to track 10 000 other things you know we're we're here to defend the united states well so who is looking at the other 10 000 well that's one thing i was going to say is that you said earlier that you felt that project blue book was fairly transparent but that one of the things that i uncovered when i was investigating this landing case which was a close encounter of the third kind, witnessed by a police officer in Socorro, New Mexico, 1964,

was that the military was on scene within less than an hour. It was Richard T. Holder from White Sands, Holloman Air Force Base area. He documented the landing prints from the landing gear of the spaceship, the so-called craft. Documented with photographs? Yeah, they took photographs. Those photographs exist today? Yeah, they're in the movie.

Yeah. He documents the footprints that corresponded to exactly where the eyewitness reported, the on-duty police officer, where he saw these little childlike beings. They documented all this, and yet they downplayed that aspect of the phenomenon they of the encounter so much and i know that because they the lonnie zamora the

police officer said he was told not to talk about it because it's one thing to explain away an unidentified craft it's another thing to have to explain away beings on the ground and how did they describe these beings he said they they were small, childlike. There's the Getty images. Yeah, so that's Officer Lonnie Zamora. They placed rocks around the landing gear imprints to preserve the fresh ground traces. And then there were four of them.

Those rocks are still here today. Like, you know, from 1964 today, you'll still see those rocks. They're more in the ground at this point. But they documented, and I have the diagrams, the footprints of the creatures as well. So they knew it was a close encounter of the third kind. How did they describe the creatures? They were these tiny little, they looked like children. And they had white-fitting suits on.

White-fitting or tight-fitting? Tight-fitting white suits. Tight-fitting suits on. White-fitting or tight-fitting? Tight-fitting white suits. Tight-fitting white suits. Tight-fitting white suits. And what I was going to say to you is— What were their heads like? They were bigger heads, but the description of the beans was that there was only a couple of newspaper articles that came out regarding the beans because the Air Force wanted to really downplay the fact that it was a close encounter with the third kind. But that aspect of the encounter leaked out before the military

got there to the local newspapers. The officer, Lonnie Zamora, had cut out those articles describing his description of the beans, and he kept them in a black duffel bag, which I discovered at his home, and I feature those as well in the film. But again, then you had congressional hearings two years later, where you had people at Project Blue Book, Quintanilla, denying the fact that there was any substantial evidence that would prove we're not alone. That was a lie. And Quintanilla lied. And Dr. Hynek towed the party line during this entire time. But then afterwards, he left in 1969, the Air Force, and he founded CUFOS, which basically proves that he believed, he did a 180, and he believed that we were not alone.

Well, that was, he was waiting for a case like that. You know, I kept telling him, I kept showing him reports from all over the world, okay? And he still said, I can't, you know, I believe those reports. I believe we have the same thing in the U.S. I convinced him of that. But he was waiting for a case where he could convince Sagan and Menzel and, you know, Dr. Menzel at Harvard and his colleagues in science

because he knew those guys. And they would believe Quintanilla rather than believing Hynek. And, you know, the problem at Socorro was there was only one witness. One witness that saw the beans, but there were a number of witnesses that saw the craft. Saw the craft, yes.

And there were theories that this was an experimental thing from white sands. White sands is, you know, 30 minutes away. And it's full of things. And the other explanation was it's a test for lunar landing, you know, system and so on. It doesn't look anything like the lunar lander. And there was a lunar lander, but it was in California. It wasn't in New Mexico.

Egg-shaped craft, okay? It was white. I remember Fravor describing a tic-tac. I was investigating. When that story broke, I was still working on Socorro. Socorro, he described as an egg. I don't know.

Did we have tic-tacs back in 1964? Maybe we did. Maybe we didn't. Pretty close. But tic-tac egg. The police officer described it. Had no wings, no tail. It had a blue flame, but when it got to 20 feet off the ground, it went completely silent.

No exhaust vents, no wings, no tail. It had a little insignia on it, which we actually show in the film. So this is supposedly... That's a fake. That's not the real symbol. That's a fake symbol that was Richard T. Holder got to the site, told Lonnie to put a different symbol because they could quickly identify a hoaxer if they were able to.

We found the real symbol at the National Archives that was written in Dr. Hynek's own handwriting, which I shared with you, which is an inverted V, let's say an A, two lines here and one line across the top. It's an A. It's featured in the movie. But that was a fake symbol. Hmm

Oh, so someone put if you put a fake symbol on it just so to see if people were hoaxing it doc Well, what he did was he he said to the witness or they did rather they did the it was a good idea Actually, he said look Let's change the symbol that way if there's anybody else claims to have seen this thing and they say yeah That's the symbol will build and quickly identify a hoaxster. So that was the point behind that. That's pretty clever. Yeah, it's pretty clever. Did these things, the beings, the way he described them, did they have the archetypal alien appearance of very small bodies, large eyes?

Did they have all the characteristics that you're hearing from these other? He described them as being small, childlike. And then I interviewed the wife. Unfortunately, Lonnie had died before I got to him, but I got interviews with him that were done earlier on radio. But Lonnie's wife said, whatever my husband saw changed him forever. He was never the same, and he went straight to the church right after it happened. I mean, the military was on the way to the scene when he was at the church talking to the pastor about this incident. But she said, it changed my husband.

He apparently got eye contact with one of the two beings that was standing at the base of the craft. He wouldn't talk to Hynek until he had gone to the church and spoken to, yeah. And it changed his life. It changed Hynek. I mean, at that point, Hynek came back and said, you know, you're right. We have those things and we have to take it into consideration. So that's really the case he was waiting for to start looking at. Then there was another landing case that happened in 66 in Michigan. So two years after the landing case in Socorro, and this one was witnessed by police officers and a whole bunch of people in a college and reporters.

That was the infamous Michigan landing. And Dr. Hynek had a huge press conference and explained it as swamp gas. He later said it was one of his biggest regrets. And then Congressman Gerald Ford, who later became president of the United States, was like so up in arms about this that he was screaming from the hilltops, you know, how could you? It was his constituents. And they pushed for congressional hearings in the United States. A lot of people don't know that. He was up in arms in what way? He said he was so angry. He was so angry at the Air Force for dismissing his swamp gas

that he pushed for congressional hearings, which we had congressional hearings. And here's the crazy part. And this is something we realized in the edit studio. Right at the end of the hearings, the congressional hearings in 1966 in Washington, D.C., as they were departing the building from those hearings, a flying saucer landed at a school in Australia on the other side of the world. That was happening as they were walking out of the building. It's crazy.

It was just one of those things where we're like, wait a minute, the time, yeah, that was... Does it appear that these things happen in clusters? Yeah, and, you know, Socorro happened the day after Heineck and I left the Air Force Base in Dayton, Wright-Patterson. We were there for essentially three days. What were you doing there?

We spent the whole day in the vault, you know, looking at the files and so on. And then after that we flew back, you know, both of us flew back to Chicago. And next day, phone call from Quintanilla to Hynek, how soon can you be in New Mexico? And he said, why would I go to New Mexico? He said, because something landed in Socorro and you were there. It landed when, it happened just when we were leaving the Air Force Base. And I mean, there is nothing you can do about that. I mean, those are coincidences, you know, information coincidences that just happen.

I would love to take this opportunity to any of your audience out there. I came across a memo when I was at the National Archives regarding Quintanilla talking to Hynek. And Quintanilla was very concerned about a film crew that arrived in Socorro, New Mexico, shortly after the incident. And they didn't really want him talking. But he participated with the film crew, and he even said to Hynek in this memo, he goes, it would be too obvious if I show up there,

but why don't you be passing through to Hynek in 1964, 65, and just find out what the hell is going on. Why is this police officer, that's what we told him not to talk about it, participating with the film crew. The film is called Phenomenon 7.7, and it was done by a guy named Michael Musto, and I can't remember the other guys' names.

It's called Phenomenon 7.7, Empire Studios. I spent four years trying to find this film. If anybody out there knows where they can get their hands on it, it's color film, 16mm of the entire... They interviewed Lonnie and all the people around him just months after that incident it's the best case in America well you found some incredible footage like the UN

testimony footage and I lived through that with him watching what James was doing to try to by any means get to the real actual footage and that's incredible we spent, my sister Kelly to, by any means, get to the real, actual footage. And that's incredible.

We spent, my sister Kelly Fox worked as an archivist for several years, digging up never-before-seen archival footage. And one of them, the very man, Lee Spiegel, who put on the 1978 United Nations event with you and Hynek and Coyne and a handful of others, the footage has never seen the light of day it's just gone. And Gordon Cooper

and Gordon Cooper and we found that, my sister found that footage and it was one of the pinnacle moments of production this footage that had been missing for 40 years and it's in the movie and it's Heineck. And it's color and it's clear and the sound is clear and it's perfect. And once we found it, it took

a year to get our hands on it. Remember all the stuff we had to go through? Oh, my God. Your audience's eyes would glaze over if I gave you the details. And what does it show specifically? There was a... Well, you tell us about the event at United Nations. It's amazing.

But this footage, what is this footage that you found show? Oh, well, you're talking about the film? Yeah. It's a film crew that had a budget from Empire Studios in Los Angeles, traveled to Socorro, New Mexico, shortly after the most phenomenon 7.7, Michael Musto, Empire Film Studios. I cannot find this film. You have no idea how hard I found it.

I went and found the guy's wife. He's dead. I befriended her. I spent a year and a half getting to know her she finally let me into her husband's archives he had all these like uh storage facilities it's 110 degrees with no windows i'm inside there while she's bawling her eyes out because her husband had just died and i'm digging through all of his stuff i looked through there i contacted the head of the studios. I found out where Empire Studios got bought by other companies. I literally spent the better part of five years. I could not find this film.

But it's the best documentation of the best close encounter of the third kind in U.S. history. And it's all filmed in color. One of the things we talked about last night at dinner is Betty and Barney Hill, and I told you that Angela Hill, who's a top UFC fighter, is the granddaughter of Barney Hill, which is crazy,

and she didn't tell me until after the podcast, and I was like, what? I almost wanted to start our podcast back up again and have her just talk about that. I just wanted to talk about her mixed martial arts and have her just talk about that i i just wanted to talk about her mixed martial arts career and then that came up and i was like i can't believe this is real like you're telling me something you're related to your grandfather was the most famous abduction story ever him and his wife betty and barney Hill, the most famous UFO abduction story ever.

And that was in, what year was that? 61. Yeah, September 1961 in New Hampshire. Yeah, and that is a story, again, that featured the same sort of iconic beings, right? It was very similar. Jacques, you were there with them. You interviewed them.

Well, about a year or so later, they contacted me and Dr. Hynek saying that Betty thought that she had some

contact with the phenomenon that it might manifest, it might happen again. And she wanted to do sort of an experiment. So they had some land close to a big lake where they had a little summer place. And so Heineck couldn't go there and asked me to go there. and Betty and Barney were there and Dr. Simon who was the psychiatrist from Boston

who did the hypnosis of both of them separately and really broke the case was with us and so we drew a big circle in the grass, and I had a telescope, a little telescope with me. I had a little table set up and spent the night there waiting for UFOs and fighting mosquitoes because the time of year in New England, you're going to get mosquitoes.

We didn't get any aliens, but we had a lot of time to talk, and the next day, spent the next day with Betty and Barney and went through the whole thing. We listened to the tapes again. And, you know, the tapes are terrifying, and there is no question. I i mean people are coming now saying well maybe it was a test maybe they were you know maybe there was a psychological experiment that's not true i think these people were their story checks out completely from beginning to end and i took took Dr. Simon aside.

And, you know, there are lots of stories of people being regressed hypnotically by whoever, you know. But Dr. Simon was, you know, a psychiatrist during World War II for the army. And he was an expert in hypnosis. And he was a licensed hypnotist he wasn't just some ufologist who decided to hypnotize people which is very harmful by the way i don't know why people allow that to happen to them so i i took him aside and i said, if I had been sitting there in their car on the backseat,

and here is Barney driving and Betty next to him, and they see that, would I have seen the car stop and all these little beings and the UFO stopping them on the road and dragging them out? And he said, I have no way of answering that. I can tell you that by the hypnosis that my patients are telling the truth as they experienced it. I cannot tell you what we would have seen if you and I had been there. I cannot make that jump.

And I've never forgotten that. I mean, there could be a type of experience that some phenomena induce that just are not reproducible. And that's the toughest type of testimony. And how do you make sense of it? Even if you have physical data, you know the car did stop, I've never forgotten that dialogue with him.

A little over a decade later, you have Travis Walton, Snowflake, Arizona. Let's, before we go to that, I have a lot more questions. Yeah. So when you say this, that if you were there, you might not have experienced it. Are you saying that like this could have been something that they only experienced, that maybe even witnesses would not have seen that this could have been unique only to them like they were chosen for this experience they were abducted and i've spoken to quite a few witnesses who said that

uh their car stopped on the road there's a case case, you know, two years ago in France that I investigated. Again, the witness didn't report it to the French authorities because, you know, witnesses don't want to be laughed at. So they think it's useless because the scientists are blocked. They will never look at it. So they just keep it to themselves. never look at it. So they just keep it to themselves. But what happened is she was in a car with two teenage girls, one, you know, her daughter and the daughter of another family. And they were driving and they saw this thing. And I asked her, did you see any other cars? And she said, no. And well, this was an expressway in France in broad daylight. There must have been other cars. And that often happens. You know, they

suddenly, all the sounds stop. You know, the birds don't sing anymore. There are no dogs barking. You're in the countryside. You know, it's like there's a bubble around you, and this thing happens. You have an experience. And we know there were other cars on that expressway. I mean, there's got to be. And it's like it's an isolated thing that's outside of... As if there was another time and space there.

So you're looking at perhaps a phenomenon that we just don't have the capability of understanding. Well, but, you know, it's a goldmine for science. I mean, this is why we need to get the academia involved. We need to get the academy. We can't just look at the fighter pilots and say,

well, it's a threat because it went around the fighter pilots. How many experiences like this, though, are similar, where people have these similar stories where out of nowhere... Hundreds. You can talk to any of the groups that gather that kind of data around the world.

And it's similar in that everything stops. Yes. And so what this might... It's one of the constants. Really, one of the constants. So what this might be describing is some sort of an ability to control space and time that we don't understand.

Or control consciousness, human consciousness, long enough to create an experience. That's what, you know, Dr. John Mack, you know, I got to know him quite well. I read his book many years ago. Yeah. Yeah. his book many years ago. Yeah. Well, his book, Passport to the Cosmos, is an homage

to Passport to Magonia, which was my book of many years ago. We had those conversations. And his take on it was, he did a lot of hypnotic regression as a psychiatrist with alien abductees. The thing that was

disturbing to me about them, it was actually recommended to me by my friend Maura. She read it. She's like, you got to read this. This is crazy. These people, they're all having the same story. And she might have even given me the book. But when I read it, that was the thing that struck me,

like how similar the stories were. They were, all of them had a pattern that you could follow and they didn't know each other. They're from different parts of the world. Yes. And that's what I'm looking for. I'm not looking for individual cases. You know, I'm a computer science guy. I try to look at patterns and things that will take you to the next level of understanding. You take one case at a time. What was John Mack's conclusion after all his years? John changed.

I mean, initially, he was, you know, he got interested because there were all these books about hypnosis and so on done by amateurs, people who are not trained in hypnosis. And he started sort of retraining himself to do hypnosis. I asked him if he had used hypnosis in his practice as a psychiatrist, and he said no. He said he had a course in hypnosis of one week, but he never really practiced it. He relearned hypnosis with some of the ufologists who were hypnotizing people. And then gradually he found that what they did was very shoddy and was really completely unscientific.

I mean, there were some of those books, they were planting the idea, you know, James, tell me about the blue alien you saw yesterday at 2.35pm. Right, yeah. And you don't, if you do hypnosis, you don't lead the witness, you don't do that.

So he got disgusted with that and redid it, started to redo it his way. And unfortunately, that's when he was killed. What was his initial idea about what was going on? Initially, he bought the idea that these are aliens from somewhere. I mean, why not? And that they are here to probe our consciousness to understand humans.

And then he gave up on that as he learned, as he did more and more interviews and understood more the process and looked at the data. And what did he decide it was after that, when he was giving up on the idea that they were being probed? I think he was on a whole new track of research. But what was the line of that research? I think he was coming to, maybe I influenced him a little bit, but he was coming to my idea that we have to look

at more than the extraterrestrials that we see in the movies from the 50s, you know, from the 1950s, that this is not it. I mean, we need something more complex if we're going to get the scientific community involved. Meaning not just space travel from space as we know it. It's not some super rocket that comes here. Something interdimensional is more possible. And there are not explorers coming here to pick up a few stones because we have 200,000 well-described cases.

So why would you come from and we're exploring mars you know now we're sending a probe you know we're sending a couple of probes to the moon we're bringing back the stones but we don't do that you know every friday i mean once you've done it you've got you've got it. Why would you keep doing it? What is your speculation? What do you think is happening? I don't see myself as the scientist who should speak on that

because I know too much about the work of teams you know I've worked with many teams in Silicon Valley I've financed a number of companies there in medicine in space research in computing of course

it takes a team we need to get... What I can do is I can bring some of the history, like the Socorro thing where I try to help you in the movie, because I know the history. I've met many of these people. I've met the researchers. I know what they went through,

including the Air Force officers. I know what they went through, you know, including the Air Force officers. You know, I mean, they were under extraordinary pressure. So I can bring that context and I can bring, I would know how to put the AI component on top of the files. But then other people would have to work with it to come to a theory. I understand that. But about all the years of studying, surely you must have developed some sort of an idea of what you think this is. Well, I'm a student of that material.

There is some form of consciousness out there that's teaching us something. You can, I could show you. Teaching us something. Yeah. They are teaching us something. Like, you know what you have in the movie with those kids.

I mean, that's what the kids are saying. I asked Jacques this exact question. I remember where I was when I did it it was in a cafe in silicon valley i was with dr peter stirrick regarding some metal stuff and i looked at you and i said jacques you know god can you please tell me what's going on and you said regarding government secrecy is two points and i'll get to yours in a quick second and correct me if I'm wrong here, but you said to me, James, look at the government secrecy this way. It's not so much a question of what they know. It's more of a question of what the government doesn't know. They can reveal that we have structured craft of unknown origin that exhibit flight characteristics that are light years advanced from anything we have.

They have no wings, no tail, no visible means of propulsion. They can go from a standstill to out of sight in the blink of an eye. There are some reports they can travel underwater at hypersonic speeds. They go into space. We don't know who they are, where come from or what they want there's no governing body that wants to disclose that nature of of reality because suddenly and i'm not saying it's a threat because clearly if it was we'd know about it that you know we can't these fly rings are on our fastest jets we don't we can't just disclose that type of information and the other thing you said

to me correct me if i'm wrong again because this is what you're getting at. What's the bigger picture? What's going on? And you said, think of it this way, James, is an omnipresent intelligence, okay, that has the ability to manifest itself in a multitude of ways. It's nuts and bolts, but it's also psychic. That Fravor talked about that That object went to his cat point I mean he said it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up straight because those coordinates weren't known They explain what you're saying to people. So this is a standalone podcast. So they know what you're talking about. Sorry

Yeah, so David Fravor who's the Navy pilot that had that dramatic encounter with a tic-tac off the coast of San Diego back in 2004 that was also documented with the radar and visual confirmation, but also filmed on another subsequent flight just moments afterwards. But he said that this object, first of all, reacted to him when he was flying down to intercept it, but then after it flew rings around him, and he said it made a joke out of the fastest plane that Navy had at the time, it went to their cap point, which is the predetermined

Latin longitude strategic point of the military exercise. So how on earth, he said, how on earth could this object know where that point was? So what I'm saying is there's a psychic, it's a nuts and bolts phenomenon, but it's also psychic. Is what I'm saying a fairly accurate assessment of what's going on? Absolutely. What gives you the impression that they're teaching us something? Well, that, you know, I could give you a couple of, you know, quick reactions. I mean, they are appearing to children. You know, those children are going to grow up,

and they will remember what they've seen and so on. But there is another, there is an analytical answer that, you know, one of the things I did when I had a good databases, filtering out, I mean, I think we all agree that 90% of the cases are not true UFOs. Okay, so, you know, there are things, the moon seen through a layer of clouds. Ball lightning. Ball lightning, whatever. All the things that the scientists say. Yeah, that's true.

90% of it should be removed. Very, very few hoaxes, by the way. Very, very few. Because if you're going to come up with a hoax, you're going to come up with something better. You know, something better than that. You can reveal and you can laugh and so on. This is not it.

You don't hoax about something that's that terrifying that people can check. I started looking at patterns the way you look at patterns in science. In other words, you do regressions. The phenomenon is not constant. It goes through waves two months or three months over a country like France or over Florida or over, you know, Japan. And it's very intense. And after about two or three months, they go somewhere else or they disappear. So you have this structure. And I started looking at the structure to see if it correlated with anything we know. So I started looking at, does it correlate with Mars? You know, Mars right now is in the sky because it's close to us, okay?

It's a conjunction, you know, of Mars. of Mars and maybe when Mars is closest to us, you know, we can, you know, it's easier for them to come here or something. There is something that happens that facilitates it. That broke down, okay, that correlation didn't quite work. And it looked like it was almost correlated but not quite. And there is something in psychology called the schedule of reinforcement. If you want to teach, say, a chimp to do something, to, for example, pick up a ball or something, every time he picks up the ball, you give him some food. So you reward every good action. Works with kids too. I mean, it works really well with human beings.

That's why we have advertising. But you reinforce the action that you want to encourage. Except that if you reinforce every instance where the chimp picks up the ball, after a while he goes play with something else. And he forgets the experiment. If you want to induce a behavior that will stay there forever,

that will never be forgotten, you have to have some randomness. In other words, you don't always reinforce the same thing. And sometimes he picks up the bowl, fine, and he doesn't get the food. And, you know, so you make it random. And that, you know, that the psychologist who did those experiments was Skinner. Dr. Skinner published all these experiments.

And that became gospel for the psychologists. A lot of psychological experiments are run that way of reinforcement of behavior and behavior control. And that got applied to a lot of different fields. Well, that's what the schedule of UFO cases, if you look around the world, not just one country, not just the Air Force pilots or the Navy or something. You have to look at the whole thing if you want to see that pattern. The pattern is a worldwide reinforcement of behavior.

The behavior seems to be you need to let go of some of the things you're doing and you need to let go of technology that's harmful and you need maybe to be prepared to go into space i mean that's my interpretation where are you getting this interpretation from what what aspect of these experiences is giving you that interpretation places where that reinforcement has taken place and the appearance of the phenomenon. Because the phenomenon is just at the border of what we can recognize. It's a little bit weird, but they are basically humanoids. I mean, they are not monsters with tentacles and so on.

They are humanoid. And the people like, you know, Lani, Lani Zamora, and they think that there is communication, that they can look at the eyes of that creature and they get something. You know, they get that reinforcement. I want to say something about the Africa case, because I was in China a couple of times doing filming for the phenomenon, and I learned of this landing case. It's known in China as Meng Jiao Gua. And I didn't prep any of the Chinese

people that I was hanging out with about what I'd filmed already in africa the landing case and the telepathic message that these beings allegedly gave the children and i got this interpreter was telling me what this landing case in africa 1994 same year in china as in africa and this guy mung jaguar got the same environmental message in china and the children got and i got goosebumps i'm sitting, you've got to be kidding me. And here's another crazy part. One of those wow moments in the film, I was in Africa meeting with Judy Bates, who's now the headmistress. And she said, well, come into my studio. I'm going to show you some drawings.

I keep them in a very special place of what the kids saw that day. And she's taking these drawings out of these beans. the kids saw that day. And she's taking these drawings out of these beans. And, you know, this, the quintessential big black eyes and big head. And, and, and even at one point had these two indicating these two little apostrophes that would indicate some sort of brain telepathic wave going out from the head. And fascinating. I took photographs on my iPhone. About two months later, I was in Australia doing the landing case in 1966 and I came across these cave paintings that I was learning about from locals from the one Gina and I saw these drawings that were thousands of years old of the exact same beans that I just saw in Africa and I literally had the

hair on the back of my neck stand up going wow this is the one Gina's they were driving these they were drawing these Cape how could what is the back of my neck stand up going wow this is the one gina they were driving these they were drawing these cape how could what is the name of these these photos one gina one gina yeah nice not sure exactly but it's australia cave paintings or cave art you've seen the one gina you did the book on on um ancient date has there been a cataloging of various crafts and various beings? And how many versions of them are there? Like how many versions of crafts have been seen? I know there's a square that appears inside of a circle. There's the ones that look like the triangles.

There's the ones that look like the tic-tac. There's the discs. There's a cigar. Cigar, right. I've got video footage of one of those that a guy took and sent to me. Really impressive. You have it here? Salida, Colorado, 1995.

Tim Edwards. He can look it up. You'll see it. It's available somewhere? Yeah. So these are the cable. Yeah. What the fuck?

See? Look at that one down at the bottom there. Look at those. I mean. He said these are from Australia? Yeah, those are from australia yeah real similar and i i literally saw the drawings and there's one in particular that was just really gave me goosebumps uh and i don't know exactly where it is but it had the face and

it had these two kind of apostrophes indicating some sort of communication telepathic um just just crazy i mean that's what the children had drawn look at those eyes those are thousands of years old thousands of years very strange isn't it crazy there's there's also this thought that human beings will one day be something different right we used to be some sort of an ancient hominid now we're this and if you extrapolate if you go from what we used to be we're're hairy and muscular and, you know, very ape-like to what we are now, which is softer. Our heads are larger. We're far more intelligent.

If it just keeps going in that direction and if we keep with our integration with technology and electronics, like that, we might be something very different in the future. And it's probably going to look like an iconic alien there's a lot of speculation that what we're looking at is us in the future and that these things are what we are going to become or what we are if there are multiple timelines that are running simultaneously in different dimensions that these things are what a human being becomes in these other timelines a million years from now a hundred thousand years from now whatever it is you know you guys were talking earlier about the time freezes during encounters this is a little side story i want to tell you about

when i brought the children together in africa as adults they had time to process their encounter and you know they were adults they could articulate. They'd had 20 years to think about it. And they said, I said, put me there. I just, I want to be there. It's such an exciting moment to hear from people who got within three feet of a potential being from another world. And they said, well, if you've ever been out in the remote wilderness and you come across and you have a rare sighting of a wild animal,

there's this moment of intrigue and curiosity, almost like time stops. And what you're looking at is just as curious and intrigued about you as you are of them. And they said, that's what it was like with these beings, that they were literally standing there and the beings were looking at all the children, their eyes were scanning, just moving, and there was this moment of curiosity. They did not feel threatened. It was a benign encounter, but time had stopped, and it was just mystery, intrigue, curiosity. So with some of my colleagues, we decided to go back to, you know, and reinvestigate some of the primary cases because there is something missing in all this. You know, we're missing some clues.

And so we are about to publish a book called The Best Kept Secret because some of it, some of what we've uncovered was kept secret and is still secret. Even from, you know, the ufologists who've really researched all that stuff. It's going to be published, you know, early next year. But we are pre, you know, people can pre-order it on Amazon. It's called the best kept secret. And what we've done is to go back to some of the key cases and some new cases where we found that there may have been some superficial information about it,

but most of the information was kept hidden by the witnesses. Now, you know, we keep talking about cover-up, cover-up by the government, which is true. But the witnesses are not stupid. They don't want to be laughed at by scientists on 6 o'clock news. So they may give you some report because they think

it's their duty to report something to the police or the Air Force and so on. But they won't tell you the whole story. And if you want to know the whole story, you've got to go there, which may take a couple of days. You've done that.

And you've got to, you know, gain their trust and sit in the kitchen. And if you're lucky, they give you a cup of coffee and you talk. And you talk to their kids and you talk to, you know, and you get to know them and they get to know you. And if you're genuine, if they can see that you're not playing any games, you will eventually get the whole story. And we've been doing that. And that's what the book is about.

And it's going to change history. It's going to change the history of the phenomenon. How so? It builds on, you know, what you did history of the phenomenon. How so? It builds on, you know, what you did. The human element. The human element. But how so? The human element.

How is it going to change history? How is it going to change it? Yes. That, number one, the structure of the information is amazing, the real structure, not just what the police blotter or the, you know, Air Force teletype. It's not necessarily about the object. It's not necessarily about, you know, what somebody heard. You've got to look at, and we found especially one case that's extraordinary. The people had never talked. And it came to us, and we've been studying it carefully from every angle.

And then we've been looking for patterns around that case. Again, that's the best kept secret. People can pre-order it. Right, but what is it about the structure? What is so astonishing about the structure of the information that you're getting from these accounts? I mean, you have to read the book. Okay, but- Well, people will read the book.

What you would find was a commonality of the structure has to do with the intrusion in the life of someone. This is not something that, oh, by the way, I saw Flying Saucer yesterday, you know, and now I'm going about my business. How profound the information goes inside the consciousness. Even those pilots are changed, you know. They are changed permanently, you know. And the information, the thing stays with them. And you can talk to the witness 40 years later, which we've done. And it brings back, I mean, their memory is completely clear.

You know, they know exactly where they were, what they were doing. Because it's such a profound experience, right? Yes. But what about the structure of the information that's so astonishing that's going to change history? the information that's so astonishing that's going to change history? Both the materials, and we continue to look at the, you have to look at the materials at that level, not simply that, oh, goody, you know, we can take it to the lab and we'll analyze it and we'll patent it and you know we'll sell it as a new weapon or as a new, which is sort of the, you know, the stupid way of looking at this.

These materials are earth materials, okay, in most cases. We're looking at where the complexity is and where, why they were there at that particular time. That's certainly one aspect of it. We don't understand why these materials would be associated with an instrument or a vehicle that does what those things do. The situation also is structured in such a way that it ties into our culture. And, you know, in most cases, there is no anthropologist with the team that goes out there,

whether it's a military or scientists or ufologists. They don't bring in an anthropologist. When you look at the traditions, the local traditions, when you look, you can begin to tie the details of the sightings to what would be in the conscious. I saw that in Brazil.

I mean, in Brazil, you can't just go there and ask people, you know, to fill out a questionnaire, you know, about how many degrees to the left of the North Pole was it, you know. It doesn't work that way. You have to get into the culture. And the phenomenon works on the culture at a very deep level. I think that's what we're showing. So they're taking apart that mechanism. These beings are having these interactions with people, they're teaching these people something, and that this is becoming more and more prevalent.

And we're learning something from this experience. And the more you have stories like the 2017 story in the New York Times the more this comes it's almost like a slow trickle effect of getting the information out and changing changing our behavior do you think it's preparing people for more frequent or more prominent visits? I don't know. Speculation? I can't answer that. Well, one of the things that I'm very optimistic about is that we're living in extremely divided times right now. And this is a story that transcends politics, transcends religion and borders. Whether people believe it or not, they're curious. And I think ultimately when this story is starting to come out and there are people

behind the scenes working diligently to get it to come out, that it's going to have a very unifying effect on humanity. I mean, I sound like a, you know, group hug moment here, but I actually do believe that it'll force us to look at ourselves as who we really are, one race, one planet. And that there seems to be this external consciousness that is affecting our evolution somehow. fragile. You know, I mean, it could be impacted literally, physically by a lot of things and impacted by our stupidity. I mean, there were three cases in history where the, you know, the alert went to go bomb the Soviet Union. I mean, three cases where the bombers were recalled because one guy thought, this doesn't make sense. I mean, he had images in front of him and he left the compound to go outside

and, you know, sort of readjust and realize that what he was looking at was a simulation of a Russian attack and that the bombers were up and ready to open the envelope. In other words, they mistook the phenomenon for a threat. For a threat. But everything in the defense establishment

is oriented towards a threat. If you don't have a threat, you don't need all that. That's the problem with the way you were describing the way we're approaching this phenomenon, that we're approaching it like it's a threat. Yes. And that instead of the military looking at this, there should be the scientific community that has access to this information. The military has very, very good platforms for observation, you know, like those infrared cameras, like the radar,

like all the sophistication that they have, the tracking systems, the satellites. That's very useful. But, you know, I'd rather have a cup of coffee with the guy in his trailer who has seen something and can show me the traces in his backyard, you know, because I can do something with that. What I was going to say is, you know, you look at what they do, but you also look at what they don't do. And one of the huge moments for me, and you could extrapolate on this, is when I met with Senator Reid, he kind of accidentally drops this huge bombshell where he talks about the most astonishing aspect of the phenomenon. As far as he determined from AATIP, that secret Pentagon program, was that they were not only observed over super sensitive military weapons installations, but they were shutting our nukes off. And Senator Reid went as far as to say in a couple of cases that he looked into, if the president of the United States wanted to launch,

he couldn't have launched. And I interviewed one of these officers, Colonel Robert Salas, who's a launch control officer, during the height of the Cold War, and he said, well, the message was pretty clear as far as I was concerned. I said, what do you mean? He goes, kind of like them taking matches out of the hands of a baby.

You know, I mean, you know, it's kind of interesting. They give these messages to the children. Look, I'm not saying that definitively one way or the other, this is exactly what's going on, but I get messages to the children, landing cases with children. Then you get these benign encounters and then shutting our nukes off. I don't know.

I mean, that has to mean something, right? Well, it's a powerful signal. Is it a show of force or is it a show of, hey, you shouldn't be playing around with these things? Or is it both? You know, for a while, I mean, we're testing those facilities. So for a while, when I was bringing that up, people would say, well, you know,

we've got incursions over those platforms to see if the guards are really reacting to detecting a threat and so on. Again, the threat. But that's one thing to fly over a nuclear facility or a storage area where you have nuclear bombs. It's another to, you know, overcome the code of the missiles one by one. And you have cases in your movie where all the missiles, all the silos were turned off one by one.

And as you said, if they had wanted to launch, they couldn't have launched the missiles. That's not something that, you know, is just an exercise. Especially since the Russians said the same thing. Yeah, and this is

something that the general public is always because i'm joe public myself i mean i'm a guy a civilian that just wanted to get to the bottom of it i found i'd sort of stumbled upon this thing accidentally and now i can't walk away from it because i'm going this is like the biggest story of modern history i think that every man woman and child is entitled to know this but i would always ask these generals every time I'd meet with these military guys, and I've asked them all around the world, why are you guys covering this up? And they said, look, you can't look at it that way. You have to understand from our perspective. We are employed by the public to protect you. For us to disclose that we have these

unidentified objects whizzing around in our airspace with impunity, flying rings around our fastest jets, you know, we don't know who they are, where they come from. That's just not in our nature to disclose that to the public, you know. That's going to open up the floodgate to a bunch of questions of which we don't have answers. So you can kind of justifiably so see why the secrecy has lasted as long as it has. But it's starting to come out now. And I think we're living in pretty exciting times with it all. I really do.

You know, I don't think I've ever mentioned this to you. It's a little anecdote. But I had a friend who was one of the early researchers in France, an engineer named M.A. Michel, was something of a philosopher, and he was compiling all this data. And he went to the Air Force and got, and the French Air Force was pretty open at, you know, with their cases. And the man was Carl-Noël Clairouin, I remember his name. This was from the mid-60s. And they would have lunch, which is a thing you do in France.

You have lunch with somebody and then you talk. And he convinced Clairouin that, you know, go to your superiors and find out. We should tell the public about this and we should open it up, you know, and we should tell them this is going on. And Claire said, well, you know, it's a good idea. Let's have lunch again in one month. You know, I'll tell you what I find out. They get to the same restaurant a month later.

And Amy Michelle says, what did you find out from your superiors? He said, it turned out my superiors told me to go to the Americans. So I went to the U.S. Embassy in Paris, and I talked to my counterpart in the military, and we're not going to open the files and emmy michel said why not he said well the americans think that there would be it would open up too many things you know that we couldn't control that society is not ready that people would be scared. People would panic.

You know, the religious ideas would float around. People would fight each other about, you know, what's happening in their consciousness and in their faith and in their life. And we couldn't control it. And, you know, they told us to shut it up. How long ago was this? 64, 63, 64. So the time is ripe. It's crazy that this has been going on for so long, and it's so remarkably consistent.

You should talk to people on the street. You know, they're not scared of this. And the vast majority of people believe that the government knows a lot more than what they're admitting. Well, they're admitting they know a lot more than they ever admitted before. They are, exactly. And one of the things I really wanted to establish, if you'll notice, I have a very dramatic encounter at the beginning of the film, which occurs in 1955. It was with Colonel William T. Coleman, who later became public spokes officer for Project Blue Book, which is the Air Force investigatory arm for UFOs. And you listen to his account of this encounter.

It's a really dramatic encounter. It started at a duration of about nine minutes. It started at 9,000 feet. It ended at treetop level at what he called maximum continuous power in a B-25 bomber over Alabama in 1955. And he describes, like, he had three engineers in the plane with him. They're at treetop level flying flat out, and they literally thought they're going to hit this disc, and they're looking right at it in broad daylight going, where are the wings? Where are the exhaust ports?

Where's the propulsion? How on earth is this object flying? And you listen to his description of it, and then you fast forward, because we bookend it, to David Fravor off the coast of San Diego. And their description of the flight, the observed technology, it's identical to what was documented in 1955. So we're clearly dealing with a technology that's light years advanced. It's the same description of witnesses back in the 40s and 50s.

It's what's happening exactly today. So I just wanted to mention that because a lot of people are like, oh, clearly it's some technology that Skunk Works are working on. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. This is the same stuff that's been going on in the 40s, and it's happening today. But we have to make sure that if there is, quote, disclosure, that it's not just the next chapter of the cover-up, because there are things that haven't come out, like Senator Reid told you on your movie. There are things that have not come out that should come out,

that have been, again, kept hidden, again, for fear that people would overreact or something. Or simply things that they haven't told their own superiors. Is there a concern that some of it would be disinformation, that they would make up some sort of a story to try to cover things up? Well, I don't know, but you could orient it to, you know, a message that would be both interesting

but reassuring superficially, and again, organize it around the threat and you know again that message of reacting to the threat it makes sense for the military but the cases that they are working on only 10 percent of the database should look at the other 90 percent You know, I interviewed this general, Parviz Jafari. He was an Iranian general who had that dramatic UFO encounter over Tehran in 1976. And at the time, I was more focused on the encounter itself and how extraordinary it was. And then Parviz Jafari, while piloting this F-4 Phantom jet, tries to shoot at the UFO. And he suddenly realizes, maybe that wasn't such a good idea. Parviz Jafari, while piloting this F-4 Phantom jet, tries to shoot at the UFO.

And he suddenly realizes, maybe that wasn't such a good idea. And his controls freeze up on him. And he has this really dramatic encounter where he talks about he was going to eject the plane. And like, you know, why did I try to shoot at this thing? I mean, it knew he was about to shoot at it, according to him. And 10 years after I interviewed Parviz Jafari, just looking for some sort of additional material for the credit roll at the end, I found this really powerful statement from Parviz. And he goes, he was reflecting back on the incident. And he said, my biggest regret was that I tried, instead of making peaceful contact, instead of trying to make peaceful

contact, I tried to shoot this thing. And I wish I could go back and have tried to make peace. It's a really powerful statement coming from an Iranian general about an incredibly dramatic encounter. You know, just reflecting back on why is it that we have this stance of, hey, anything that's unidentified in our airspace must be seen as a threat, and we have to go after it and shoot at it? I mean, that's not the kind of contact I'd like to—I don't want that representing me, you know? Also, I don't think it would work very well. No. But there have been cases where they shot.

Where they shot what? A UFO. Did someone shot a UFO? Yeah. When? 1952 over the White House. Yeah. I almost put this in the movie,

and Jacques and I went back and forth on this for a long time, and I'm so glad you brought this up. Yeah, because I said to Jacques. We had that fight. Yeah, we kind of did. Please, tell us the story because it's amazing. You were right to keep it at that level. Because in the 80s, there were congressional hearings, not about UFOs, but about something that I was doing professionally, which is building civilian computer networks

for crisis management, for industrial crisis management. And we were funded, the company I created, was funded to develop essentially the equivalent of computer conferencing we have today on Facebook. This was way before the web was invented.

Again, the mid-80s, to link together all the nuclear power plants in the major countries. Five countries, including Japan. When it was against the Japanese law to have Japanese data outside Japan. And for them to be on that network, the data had to be on our computer, which was in California. We operated that network for three years. And this was a closed network.

It wasn't accessible by people outside. It was just operated by the international, you know, industry essentially of atomic power. And we, by the way, detected a number of flaws. This was after the Three Mile Island accident, you know, that was, could have done a lot of damage. And people were scared, and they wanted to share the information. And we were essentially the Facebook equivalent to that industry. So I was asked to testify at the Al Gore hearings on emergency management. hearings on emergency management. And I and another little company were the only civilians there,

or the only non-government people there. All the others were from, you know, the three-letter agencies, the CIA, the NRO, the other agencies, or FEMA, you know, the Emergency Management Administration and so on. And that was extraordinary because those were the top people who would manage an emergency other than war.

I mean they told us don't even go into the nuclear war thing because even in nuclear war most of the damage is environmental damage, which I didn't know. It's the amount of dust that kills you. It's not necessarily the bomb that kills you. It's what happens after the bomb. So we were just looking at, you know, civilian just looking at civilian casualties and civilian crises. And there I met a number of people who were the people in the government who would be handling nationwide or international crises like the Berlin crisis, the people who had been there in the days of the Berlin crisis were there and so on. How do you structure the information

to get all the people who need to know, I mean, everybody goes inside into a bunker and then the bankers communicate somehow and then you get in touch with other countries, you get their experts, and then you try to manage the situation. Like, you know, suppose a big meteorite falls, the size of half of Chicago. What do you do after that?

And government needs to continue. One of the people there was an expert who had worked under five administrations managing the structure of crisis management for the U.S. government. He introduced me to Arthur Landau. Arthur Landau was a legendary member of the intelligence community. He was knighted by the Queen of England.

He's one of two or three Americans who were knighted. And then his buddies at the CIA used to call him Sir Arthur of the Light Table because a lot of the things he did was with negatives, you know, with satellite photographs that were on the light table. He is the one who discovered the missiles in Cuba and briefed President Kennedy,

showed him where that was and why there were missiles. and briefed President Kennedy, showed him where that was and why there were missiles and not just trees. It takes a lot of training, it turns out. You can't just look at one of those pictures and say, ah, you know, that's a missile. He was the one who told, who was sent by the U.S.

to brief Charles de Gaulle, President de Gaulle, about the U2 shutdown over the Soviet Union. And we became friends. And we became friends because I was introduced by the people from the Al Gore hearings. They knew what I was working on. And he had been a pioneer within the intelligence community in getting all the, you know, he started the Air Force's Image Interpretation Center in Washington for the Navy, the Air Force, CIA, and the other places.

He told me about 1952. He was very interested in UFOs because he had seen photographs. I mean, he was the Armed Forces Photo Interpretation Center, okay, EPIC. He was getting all those things. He had all the clearances from all the services. He didn't tell me the whole story, but he told me, number one, that those things had been photographed. He told me that at the Robertson hearings in 1953, he had He had the Mariana movie, you know. He gave it to the committee.

The committee took it somewhere and analyzed it. They said they were seagulls, you know. When he got the film back, the first 20 frames were missing from his film. From the CIA film, the CIA laboratory analysis of the film. It's a very famous... From the CIA film, the CIA laboratory analysis of the film. Very famous film, footage of the UFOs back in 1950

by Nick Mariano. So that tells you the level of the cover-up at that point, that they would do that to their expert. And then we talk about 1952. So 1952, the official explanation came from Dr. Menzel at Harvard.

Those were inversions of temperature over Washington. When it gets hot over Washington... And there's photographs of these, right? There was no photographs. There was no photographs of what appeared over the White House? No, but there were

there were, you know, there was tracking, radar, you know, radar tracking of it. And he interpreted the radar as being inversions of temperature. Multiple vehicles, right? But they sent, of course, they sent the Air Force after it. Yeah. Well, he said one of the pilots got permission to shoot, was authorized to shoot, and shot, you know, a piece of metal

out of one of the disks. Those were disks that were flying. They didn't care about the defenses. They flew over the White House. They flew, you know, over the major facilities in downtown Washington that are forbidden. I mean, there is no overflight. And so they had to do something and they shot at it. The thing was recovered.

The piece of metal. The piece of metal was recovered. And he told me, you know, I really shouldn't talk about what happened after that. There is no question that there was a piece of metal recovered from that encounter and that it was shot off, you know, a flying disc over Washington in 1952. And all the explanations that were given to the scientists and to the public were BS. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we feature this case in the film,

and we have the guy that was actually in the radar room, this guy Al Chop, and we had testimony from a gentleman that interviewed him, Tom Tullian, back in 1990-something. And it's very rare, extremely rare footage of an interview with the very man who was in the radar room listening to the cockpit, listening to the pilot as he was surrounded by UFOs right over the, you know, Washington, D.C., White House, Capitol building. And he was terrified. I mean, he suddenly found himself traveling at 600 miles an hour through the pitch black darkness, and he was surrounded by unknowns. And he literally radios down to the tower and says they're completely surrounding me what do i do and they were speechless they

didn't know what to tell the pilot they could see on the radar all the discs all these ufos around surrounding this plane and jock said well i know and we featured this in the film you probably remember that part um and then jock, well, it goes a bit further. We actually did shoot at them, and one of the pieces of the debris from the UFO fell to the ground. It was recovered. And where is that piece? We went back and forth on whether to include that in the movie,

and I finally said, Jacques. I kept, you know, maybe at some point I'll be able to. Tell you where it is? Yeah, talk about the piece. Sometime? Those are the things. When would you be able to do it? Yeah, do it now.

Why would you want to wait? You know, I respect the need for certain things to be managed in a particular way. And it wouldn't really add to, you know, to the story to talk about that. In the book, we go, you know, a lot further in talking about what those materials are, what the questions are for science, but also what the questions are for disclosure, if there is ever disclosure. But there isn't going to be one big disclosure that says, we've got contact with aliens from Alpha Centauri.

Disclosures come in layers. Everybody needs to get around the truth. But this piece of metal from the 1950s, isn't it about time? Yes. Well, we've got others. We've got plenty of others. You can answer his question indirectly by that memo, the cross memo that we did feature in the film and who wrote it. He was a metallurgist and what lab was he working at?

So, you know, fast forward after 1952. 1952 was a disaster for the Air Force because they realized that their lines of communication, which were already a network, it was a network of teletypes, were saturated by people reporting UFOs, including Air Force bases reporting UFOs. And somebody thought, if the Russians were to simulate a UFO thing by throwing, you know,

artificial things in the sky or whatever, they could saturate the communication and we couldn't deploy the defense system. So we've got to do something about it to reduce the level of reports from the public. So they created, they called together five of the top scientists in the land, you know, Felton Page, Lou Alvarez, people like that, Nobel Prizes, people who knew the nuclear secrets from the days of Oppenheimer and so on. And they brought them to discuss what they should do and be briefed by Art Lundahl. That's where he lost his 20 pictures, which were the best pictures from the beginning

of the film. He never saw again. That's where Hynek testified. But Hynek was, as he says, cooling his heels in the antechamber, in the lobby, and they would only bring him in for a couple of things before the scientists. Long story short, the outcome was a classified recommendation to explain away most of the phenomena to the public, to reduce the number of reports. So the idea wasn't to make the problem go away. It was to make the reports go away because the reports were clogging up the communication

channels that were vital to the defense of the country. That made sense. I mean, there is usually some reason why the military does something. Sometimes it's not obvious, but this case, it was logical. So Hynek was there and Hynek had a bunch of papers from his testimony and so on. After my PhD at Northwestern, I had an office at the Computing Center. There's a whole summer coming and I offered to Dr. Hynek to reorganize his files, which

were in a complete shamble. And so he says, sure, I mean, that would be great. You can put it in new folders. So I buy new clean folders and I start going through all the files because we had copies of essentially 20,000 reports from the Air Force that were unclassified. And so I make these new things, and I put everything back in order.

I also punch the cards for that, so that we have a database at the same time, which I still have. And with the names of witnesses, by the way. And I find this folder, which is full of stuff. And in it, there is two pages. An onion skin. Everybody, I mean, your audience, I'm sure your audience,

has no idea what an onion skin is. You know, when you have a typewriter, a hand typewriter, and you want to make several copies, you put a carbon between, and the first page is your letter, and the others are, you know, thin paper, you know, that thin paper is called an onion skin. Of course, now we have computers, so we don't need carbon copies. So it's a carbon copy of a memo from somebody I've never heard of to somebody in the intelligence community saying we should not have that panel because we are not ready.

And which is interesting by itself. I mean, who are these people who want to stop this top-level scientific panel of the United States defense establishment? I mean, who do they think they are? The other thing about the memo is that it's stamped secret. At that point, I still have a French passport and I have a green card. So I'm legally in the United States, but I'm not even a US citizen.

I became a US citizen a couple, you had to wait five years before you could apply for citizenship. But I certainly didn't have any reason to look at a secret memo. But I start reading it because I need to tell Hynek that this shouldn't be here. It shouldn't be in my files. Hynek told me that not only had he forgotten that memo, but he didn't think he had ever seen it. That if he had seen it,

that would have changed certain things. Well, it turned out that group turned out two things. Number one, that Robertson panel was not brought together by the Air Force. It was brought together by other people in the intelligence community. The Air Force was recovered. The scientists were never told that. They didn't know that. So you bring together the top, you know, top clerics, top physicists in the U.S., including a couple of Nobel Prizes, and you don't tell them who you are.

Well, okay. Can I step in just for a quick sec because this was something that we featured and it was really complicated story so basically what jacques is saying leading up this we had a really hard difficult time deciphering this so basically there was that massive sighting in 1952 over washington the Air Force had to do something. They decided to convene a panel of the most smartest minds that had to deal with this. It was called the Robertson Panel. The Robertson Panel was then told not to happen by this memo that you find,

which basically is an unknown government agency with more power, more influence than the CIA. It wasn't even an agency. It was a contractor. Contractor. But it was a contractor. They had a contract to look at UFOs. And what they were saying is, you know, it's a good idea to bring these scientists,

but this is premature. We're not ready to tell them about their patterns. It's always about these were top top level computer people in 1954. They were working with punch cards, but punch cards work. I mean, you know, there's nothing wrong with punch cards. They wanted to bring the best information and then had ideas that they wanted to discuss about how to test their hypotheses about what UFOs

are. The Robertson panel went on, ignored that memo. It went on, and it concluded that they should discount the reports from the public, and they should look at instrumentation from the military, which is what people are doing now. I mean, we see the military with these advanced cameras, the Nimitz, you know, all those things that are in your movie. And they've discounted reports. They kept Project Blue Book going

so that the public would have a place to write if they saw something, but it was a very low-level thing. But we got to this because you were saying about the examination of the medal. Yes. We never got to that. and I got only one other person in the confidence. The memo came from an organization in Ohio called Battelle Memorial Institute, top organization on the analysis of metals. They were the ones who invented titanium aluminide.

They were the ones who invented titanium aluminide. They were the ones who invented some of the coatings and some of the metals used in spy planes that were used later in the U-2, in the SR-71, in those undetectable airplanes and so on. They were, at that time, the experts. They were also the experts on UFOs because they had a contract with the Air Force. And I think that memo,

which I really didn't want to expose, but I would have written that memo. I mean, that conference was an attempt to cover up the reality. And what the Battelle scientists were saying was, wait a minute, you know, we need to look on the ground. We need to simulate a UFO wave, see what the statistics are. That's going to take another year. Don't convene that meeting now. They were overridden.

But Joe's question is, where would that piece of metal that was shot off the UFO, that memo revealed it was written by a metallurgist from the Memorial Institute. So if he had that metal in his possession, it would have been analyzed by a metallurgist at the Memorial Institute. Yeah, but at that point, the different parts were not communicating. But did they

examine the medal? I shouldn't talk about that. I think, you know, the book talks about how complicated it is to get, once you get the metals or the samples or whatever, what do you do with it and what does it mean? Why shouldn't you talk about whether or not they tested the metal? Well, because I'm not, I don't have the complete information. You know, I mean't have the complete information. You know, I mean, obviously that was classified.

Art Rondal told me that because, number one, you know, he knew that I knew the rest of the story. Number two, I had just testified before, you know, a congressional panel on crisis management for the United States of America. So he knew that I understood how those things happen, how they're managed. But there is plenty of other metal. I mean, I don't really care about that particular metal. You don't care about that particular metal. You don't care about that particular metal? Well, you know, we've got other samples. But if there's a piece of metal that was shot off of a UFO in 1952 that's proven to be of consistency or with some sort of a... We have others.

We have others. What do we have? We have others from Argentina, from Brazil You said there was something from Brazil From France, from Russia, from other places Has it been proven? You were talking about isotopes When I say we, I'm talking about my buddies And the lab we have in Silicon Valley But these metals

Other people have similar things Right, but these metals Have they been proven to be of a structure that we can't replicate? Not what I've looked at so far. What have you looked at so far that leads you to believe that they're extraterrestrial? The condition under which they were found and the reports from the witnesses about what they did. Okay, but if you're talking about something that doesn't seem obviously extraterrestrial, how do you know? How do you know that this is an extraterrestrial piece of metal,

if it has the same characteristics of metal that you would find here on Earth? The characteristics of the metal are going to be the same ones that we find on Earth because iron from Mars or Venus is like iron you can pick up. Right, but let's go back to the time we were talking about that one particular silicon matrix. If it is engineered at the atomic level for, say, 1954, at a level where our technology hadn't evolved

to the point of, for example, separating the isotopes. And you've found things like this? Yes. Not me, but some of my colleagues believe that they found things like that. But they only had a tiny amount. I went to Argentina, and I got more of this stuff, because there is still some stuff there. And I brought back test tubes with enough material that we are going to be testing it again.

So they haven't tested anything that shows that it's clearly extraterrestrial? No one has any concrete evidence from any of these samples? The metal that was found in Brazil, where people described an object flying over and then an explosion that showered. Some of it fell in the water. Some of it fell in the sand on the beach. Some of it fell on rooftops. And so there was a lot of stuff.

And for a long time, we only had, you know, a pinhead worth of stuff, which is good enough for one measurement. But people told me, you can't come here with one measurement. You need 20 different machines, different things, different techniques if you want to do it right. So that's what we're doing. Right, but do you understand what I'm asking? I'm asking, is there one smoking gun? Is there one piece

of metal that you can say, this was made at a time or this is from 1952, there was no technology to recreate this metal then. We didn't know how to make this. Well, the one that I'm talking about was 57, over Ubatuba in Brazil. And other groups have a similar thing.

And we'll compare notes. But what was found was that one of the components of the magnesium, one of the isotopes of the magnesium, was way over what it would be in nature, in the natural magnesium, which means somebody took it apart and reformulated the magnesium. And magnesium is very light and very strong, unusual metal. Yes, it also ignites in contact with air, so it blows up easily. And the reason our sample doesn't blow up is that there is oxide.

It oxidizes very quickly. So there is a layer of magnesium oxide on top of it. And the analysis, some of the analysis that have been done, would indicate that, number one, it's extremely pure, purer than the Dow standard for magnesium. But, you know, again, if you go to see a physicist, he'll say, well, I can buy the Dow standard and I can refine it further in my lab. Okay, it's Dow Chemical, you know, they supply metals to everybody. They didn't, never had a commercial need for that, but if I have a need for that, I can do it. So that doesn't prove anything.

But if we can verify it and if we can look at the ratio of the other isotopes and so on highly precisely, which we can do now and- But that hasn't been done yet? No. No. We'll do it in the next few months. Okay. So the answer is, if I can round this out, there's no real clear evidence that any of

this metal is extraterrestrial correct so when you say we have lots of metal that seems to have come from a ufo what would lead you to think that if none of this has been proven to be extraterrestrial well because people saw the thing crash yeah but people don't always tell the truth, right? Isn't part of the problem is that people don't always tell the truth? Yeah, but if they come up with, if they say this thing crashed, you know, you've got ordinary people in Brazil in that little town. You've got the police, you've got the, you know, telling you that this thing fell, and here is the stuff. You take the stuff to the lab. But is this stuff clearly manufactured? Is it clearly

refined and manufactured? Yes. So this is not something that could have come from an asteroid? No. Okay. I asked the same question. I was in the lab with him and Gary Nolan. And I was exactly like you. I was like, well, what are you... Right. Where's the evidence? Yeah, I need to know.

And Gary said to me, and some of which had to be edited down a little bit because it was at the he he went a little beyond the comfort zone of stanford university he said to me that what we're looking at has an isotopic value that he didn't understand that if it was to be recreated on earth it would be in the billions of dollars to do it yeah that's what he told me okay that's better yeah then he said to me, we don't understand it. It's engineered at an atomic level. We are learning that with this new device that we have at Silicon Valley.

We don't understand it. We want to understand it, and we feel like it could be a revolutionary breakthrough technologically if we could understand it. And this other material in the Silicon the silicon valley that they were had discovered 20 years ago that your friend had analyzed and he said there's nothing like it and we've seen nothing like it since then yeah there's this man who was given right that sample right and we don't know where that is now right we don't know where it is we don't know but but he set an ortho, you know, a matrix of orthosilicate that he couldn't probe within his lab. And, you know, obviously, Battelle would have been a logical place to look at that

because they had all the people who signed that memo were metallurgists. So that makes you think of something. I get frustrated with it too, because I went to the lab, and I saw the machine, I saw the metal samples, which you carried around like this, you never let them out of your sight, and I said, Jesus, are you paranoid or something? What are you worried about? You said these things have a strange way of disappearing.

And I asked the same questions you're asking. What do we know? And he's concerned that he's going to make a statement that's going to be premature, that the further scientific analysis, that the scientific journals and the peer review hasn't happened yet, and therefore he's being really conservative. But basically what he's telling me is the stuff's engineered at an atomic level it would be in the billions of dollars to recreate if we could even recreate it and we're talking about pieces that recovered as early as 47 and 57 and you know etc

so it's extremely exciting but they're it's too early to make any concrete statements. Okay, but that's much better. At least you're saying that there is something, some evidence that shows that there's something, and whether or not it's made from materials that exist as we know it currently on Earth, it's made in a way that there's no way anyone can make it today without some insane budget. And much less likely in the 1940s. Yes. Well, again, this is human testimony.

Yes. with that matrix of orthosilicate. The Air Force colonel who told me about the thing he could lift with one finger, you know, a whole wing. The, you know, Colonel Corso with the stuff that he recovered that he was given by the Army. I mean, initially the Army had the project to analyze this, right after the war, and that he gave to the different labs. What we need to do is go through the normal scientific publication process. Why hasn't this happened? Every time somebody tried, Dr. Hynek

tried, they wouldn't publish it. But in 2020, don't you think they'll be more likely to be interested in possibly publish this? We'll find out. So you still have all these medals in your possession or in someone's possession? Yes.

What other kind of evidence is there? Is there anything else that's compelling? I don't know of any biological evidence. That's what would... Like a body, you mean? Well, we don't even need a body. I mean, you need saliva from a mouse. We can do the DNA. I brought this up with Christopher Mellon recently, because you hear that same old argument, you know, oh, you know, the skeptic. And I think it's perfectly healthy to be skeptical. I'm going to be the first one to tell you that the vast majority of UFO reports

can and have been explained away in sort of down-to-earth conventional terms. But there's that core 10 or 15 percent of cases that truly after careful scientific investigation defy a terrestrial explanation and those are the cases that we focus on and i asked christopher mellon what do you say to the skeptic that says oh there's clearly just anecdotal evidence as to the reality of ufos he's like well we put that to bed a long time ago you've got visual confirmation radar confirmation uh, ground-to-air visual and ground-to-air radar. You've got photographic evidence from the cockpits of these military aircraft.

You've got landing prints in the ground. You've got soil sample analysis from the propulsion. You've got plants and soil samples. There's a preponderance of evidence of cases all around the world. You know, the only question is, you know, who are they? What do they want? Where do they come from? I mean, that seems to be where we need to set our sights. And Senator Reid said something really interesting to me. He's like, look, just because we don't understand something, it doesn't mean we should shy away from it. It doesn't mean, you know, we should, you know, focus in the scientific community and get to the bottom of it and put the necessary resources in place and stop treating

this like a taboo subject that we have to all, you know, shy away from. Well, whoever has a stranglehold on the information, the intelligence community seems to be in a position where a lot of what they have is I don't know. Yeah, and they're also sitting on footage of, you know, apparently, according to all the people, the military guys I've talked to, crystal clear photographic evidence, landing film footage evidence, cockpit film recording evidence. landing film footage evidence, cockpit film recording evidence. I mean, there's that statement I read earlier about this latest story breaking about two Navy pilots getting one triangular-shaped UFO that came out of the water. They've got a crystal clear photograph of that. They're not releasing to the public.

So I think we should get the pressure on for further government transparency. I really do, and I think that the more tangible, solid, compelling evidence needs to get released. It's so fascinating, and everybody wants to see something like this. It's the biggest story ever. I mean, the cockpit recordings that Christopher Mellon snuck out of the Pentagon that ended up on the page of the New York Times,

that was huge. Everyone is waiting for that type of evidence. We know it's there. We've had confirmation from extremely high-level government officials, people in the intelligence agency, saying it's there. We just have to get it released. Well, at the Al Gore hearings about emergency management, the question of the satellites came up. And somebody said, one of the Congress people,

we pay you guys to deploy these satellites and you look at the Earth all the time with 10 centimeters resolution. So if you see something you should be able to, that could be a crisis,

you should be able to tell us if it's going to threaten the population of the United States. There was one guy there who didn't laugh because he was respectful of the committee, but he said, with all due respect, I cannot, under the, you know, this audience, I cannot tell you where I work. But there are three letters to my employer. And what I can tell you is that I measure every morning the amount of snow that has fallen on the nose of the statue of Dzerzhinsky in downtown Moscow in front of the headquarters of the KGB.

I can measure, I can tell you how much snow fell that night because I measured it. So that tells you, you know, the kind of instrument that we have. By regulation, by law, I must turn off my satellite when it flies over the United States. I'm not spying on your house. If you authorize me to run the satellite, to run the acquisition, I could tell you when there is going to be a flood in Arizona because I could measure the amount of the snow that fell on the Rockies last night. And we've got these climate prediction schedules.

got these climate prediction schedules, we can approximately tell you where it might melt, and where it's going to go when it melts, and how big the reservoirs are going to be, and when the reservoirs are going to overflow. But I'm not authorized by law to look at any of the data, and if I looked at it, I wouldn't be authorized to disclose it to you, because you're not cleared for the characteristics of the resolution of my device. And I'm sure that in March, I'm going to be sitting with my wife and my kids looking at the TV. And I'm going to see this woman in Arizona

with her two babies in her arm, up to here in her kitchen, up to here in water, because the dam has flooded, because it happens every winter, because the snow melts and it comes down. But I'm not authorized to tell her. And even if I told her, I would have to tell the governor. The governor would have to tell her and even if I told her I would have to tell the

governor the governor would have to tell the sheriff and the sheriff would have to disclose you know send somebody right but did he say there are four levels of management indicate they were picking up UFOs no no well no we were not talking about you I know we were talking about UFOs. We were talking about emergencies. Right, but you were saying that if we have these satellites that can do these incredible things, why are we not picking up UFOs? Well, no, I'm saying why, if they are picking up UFOs, why they are not telling us? They can't even tell us when there is going to be a flood in Arizona. Okay, so they might be picking up these UFOs.

There is a good reason for that. They might be picking up these UFOs, but they're not giving us the data. That's what Art Lundahl was saying about his experience. The other compelling story of abduction that you had briefly brought up for a second before we were still on the Betty and Barty and barney hill story was travis walt yes we we interviewed travis for uh potentially for the film and then opted to kind of avoid that aspect of i don't consider the travis walton an abduction so much as an encounter that didn't end well and he probably was taken aboard to get recovered but what do you mean well he uh

they were in the woods right uh snowflake arizona i think was 1975 it was a logger right it was a logger they were they had a contract with the government to log a certain area or to clear a certain area and uh it was late and they were behind on the schedule so they're working a little bit later than they normally would and they all got in the truck. They had four-door trucks that had like seven of them driving out. And they saw a light in the sky. They thought it was a fire. And as they got closer to it, it was this perfect disc hovering about treetop level right out the window. I mean, they said it could have hit with a rock.

And he told the driver, Travis Walton, stop the truck. I'm going to jump out. And they all, against their will, don't do that, Travis. And he just leapt out of the truck and started running towards this thing thinking it was gonna just shoot off but it didn't it stayed there and as he got closer to it he started to kind of freak out a little bit and it started making a weird sound like it was spooling up or something and so he tucked down behind a log it was on the ground and, and he's, and they're screaming at him in the truck, get back, get back here. What are you doing? And he realized he was

dangerously close to this thing. So he was going to make a run for the truck and he got up as this thing was spooling up, according to him, it was, and he tried to make a run for the truck and some kind of energy force hit him and knocked him like a raggedy end all the way across like 60 feet and he landed and those guys took off thinking they were next and they left him for dead out there in the woods they're driving down the road hightailing and out of there and then the driver realizes like we can't leave Travis man we got to go back and get Travis and they were all freaked out thinking that they were going to be next. Finally, they argued and he said, look, man, I'm going back to get Travis, whether you guys are with me or not. And if you want, you guys can stay here. I'll come back and get you. They're like,

no, no, let's stick together. So they all stick together in the truck. They turned around, they went back, UFO gone, Travis gone. They go down into town and they have to tell the authorities. And you can imagine 1975, they're telling local authorities. And there's a small enough town where everybody kind of knows everybody. Hey, our buddy got abducted by a flying saucer and he's gone. They were like, yeah, you guys are all under arrest for homicide. It will start an intense search the next day with helicopters, dogs. It made world news all across, you know, as you can imagine. These guys took lie detector tests.

They said, you know, they stuck to their story, even though they knew that people wouldn't believe them. They thought they'd killed Travis, and then they buried him somewhere in the hills. So they're all doing this five-day intensive search. Well, Travis Walton reappears five days later with facial growth. Here's the really fascinating part of this story that I find incredible, because again, don't look at what the phenomenon does. Sometimes you look at what the phenomenon does. Sometimes you look at what they don't do. Well, they didn't drop him off where they picked him up.

That was the most remote. I've been out there. It's a really remote area in the mountains, in the forest. He would not have made it back alive. Drop him off in the middle of town? They didn't do that either. But they dropped him off right on the outskirts of town. A, they did it in a little valley so they

minimized any possibility of their exposure they dropped him off in a place where he could get help but they would minimize being seen they did it at night and five days later he reappears and of course he he's back and he recounts the same story and he's been recounting the same story and what is his story story is he woke up. It's funny, actually, I met with Travis a handful of times and I sat down with him. And a lot of times when I really want to absorb a story, I close my eyes and then their words recreate the visuals for me. So I see it. And so that's what I did with Travis at dinner, just the two of us. And I closed my eyes and he told me he woke up on board. He was on a table and there were and he was kind of

blurry eyed but he could see these little beans and initially thought i was what am i looking at here where am i and he saw these little beans and typical beans the diminutive body big head big almond shaped black eyes, and he was absolutely terrified. And he grabbed some sort of instrument that was on the table, and he said that he even touched one of them, and I was surprised at how light it was. It moved really easily.

And he started aggressively swinging some instrument that he found on the table towards these things, and then they scurried off and left the room. He went off. They went to the right. He went left. And he was walking down a to the right he went left and he was walking down a hallway and he said you can imagine like polished aluminum there were no seams no rivets no weld marks but it was all solid like one solid piece and he said it was tight and my shoulders were rubbing on either side of these of this hallway and i was running down the hallway

totally freaked out didn't know where he was, and he was having a hard time breathing. And he took a left, and he went into this room, and there was a command chair. And he sat in the command chair, and he started playing with buttons. He was trying to get out. He just wanted to get out. And all of a sudden, there was a holographic projection of like a star chart that was holographic that appeared. And he was moving with these buttons, and everything started to move, and he thought, my God, if I'm on a spaceship, I could crash this thing. I don't know what I'm doing. And then two very humanoid-looking people, beautiful, angelic people with these glass bulbs came in with tight-fitting suits on,

and he said, oh, my God, you guys are here to save me. Thank God. But they wouldn't talk with him. They just took him by the arm, and they escorted him out. He went down a ramp and then he said, I was either in a hangar or I was in a big, huge, another spaceship. I don't know if it was a huge hammer hangar on the ground or if it was another spaceship, but there were lots of discs of different sizes parked inside this hangar looking thing, it was indoors and they escorted him out. They met with another

woman. I said, well how do you know it was a woman? He said, it was a woman. It had a glass bulb and they took something over his mouth and he kind of fought but he said he was weak and the next thing he knew he woke up in a field and looked up and the disc was just leaving, departing and it was five days later.

There was a movie made about it called Fire in the Sky but the disc was just leaving, departing, and it was five days later. Whoa. Yeah, and there was a movie made about it called Fire in the Sky. But the ending was, Tracy Torme wrote that, and the ending of the film was changed at the last minute, and it was inaccurate. Yeah, because the- Fucking Hollywood. I know, Hollywood. Exactly.

These motherfuckers. Yeah, I know. And he fought it, and they said, look, you want the movie to get made? They were changing the ending. But that's the real ending in the movie. That was right from Travis Walton to me. Wow.

But I decided in the movie. Is he still alive? Yes, he is. Where does he live? Snowflake, Arizona. I believe he still lives there. Wow. Yeah, he's great.

His story is exactly the way. How old is he now? He's probably maybe late 60s. Yeah, and I went to the actual site with him. We actually drove out to that site, and I tell you, man, when we got there, he got out of the car, and he was just running,

just running towards the spot. It had recently snowed. There was snow on the ground, and I couldn't keep up with him, but he was running to go to the exact location and I could see him reliving the whole thing. I mean, it was a really powerful moment with him, and it was a very, very remote area of the mountain range.

It's a very compelling story. It's a really compelling story. And they all passed. And I interviewed a number of the eyewitnesses that were with him at the time. And there was a movie made about it called Travis, I believe. You should definitely look into it, but a documentary. But he was really funny.

He was working at like a Walmart. You're going gonna say pass a polygraph test yeah they all did yeah but i was talking to one of the witnesses i'll never forget this and he and i was like god what did you see can you describe what the disc looked like and he goes you ever seen like a brand new corvette like that beautiful brand new corvette and i said yeah i have he goes it was more perfect than that. It was just this perfect disc. And he said, it was lit up. Like you could see these almost little windows in it and it just suspended in this darkness and it was kind of just wobbling there. But the way

he describes it, he made the correlation of a Corvette, a brand new Corvette. Isn't that funny? Yeah. And, um, yeah, it's a fascinating case. And I And I decided that this is the first film that I was dealing with, my fourth one, that I dealt with close encounters of the third kind, which is when the witnesses claimed to report beans. And that was about as far as I wanted to go with it because I was concerned about the mainstream participation I was getting with, like, Harry Reid and Podesta and Governor Bill Richardson and and those Christopher Mellon Jacques Vallée and I was concerned not to go too far with it and to take baby steps and one of the things that's been incredibly exciting for me to see for the first time keep in mind is my fourth film on the topic is that not only are we seeing a we've got people like dan farah who's a mainstream you know he's produced ready player one with steven spielberg who's attaching he's the latest producer who's associating himself with this film but you're getting like harry reed and

all these household names that are not only looking at it participating but publicly endorsing it and that is extremely exciting because that is an indication that people are getting ready for this story to come out you know what i'm what i'm saying yeah and i felt it was important to take those baby steps and and not go too far because there are some aspects of the phenomenon that if you're unfamiliar with it might might be a bit of a stretch and so, it seems like the public is more interested and more open to it now than ever before. And it seems less ridiculous to people now. No question about it. And the New York Times thing really made the difference.

I firmly believe that. Yeah, it for sure did. Because it was sent to me by a bunch of my friends that are legitimate intellectuals, professors, scholars, people that are really legitimate intellectuals professors scholars like people that are really smart like look this is right up your alley like look at this New York Times now uh-huh exactly I had people that have been really killed me it really killing me for decades ago oh my god I mean like the guy that lives across the street from where I grew up his Walter Murch senior he edited

apocalypse now okay he's like the pinnacle of success editor and he's always kind of made little jabs at me over the years and then he finally goes boy james you might have been you might be right yeah that was really satisfying for me and then to see lou elizondo publicly endorsed the film and we're talking about like if you think about it that you've got people endorsing a film that take my name off it's just stories that we reported on, but that deals with potential close encounters of the third kind.

That's so amazing. I mean, if you walk down the street and you meet Average Joe and you say, hey, did you hear about the UFO that landed in Africa? The occupants got out and communicated telepathically with a bunch of kids. Get the fuck out of here, you crazy. Go sell crazy somewhere else. Like, you would. But it's happening

we feature it we were in the edit room for three and a half four years and we said where are we going we're on the road to Rua that was our mantra

road to Rua what we meant was let's compile the evidence and let's build our case so we can allow the audience to walk away at the end of the film saying

that landing case in Africa might have actually just happened and I think we succeeded the thing about all these cases whether it's might have actually just happened and i think we succeed the thing about all these cases whether it's travis walton or betty and barney hill or the the african case is if if you weren't there and you've never experienced anything like it it was just this one unique thing that happened it would be it's so hard for anyone to accept unless you see it with your own eyes unless you're actually there unless you experience it it's so hard and it's so hard for anyone to accept unless you see it with your own eyes, unless you're actually there, unless you experience it.

It's so hard, and it's so easy to be incredulous. It's so easy to be skeptical. But when you get people like David Fravor. Yeah. He's so compelling. He's so compelling. You listen to his testimony, and then you listen to the parallels of the observed technology, the no wings, and how baffled he was with the whole thing. And then you hear the stories, the same technology back in the 40s and 50s.

You should listen to him on, I don't know if you've listened to him on, Lex Friedman's podcast. No, I haven't. It's amazing because Lex, you know, Lex is, he does, he did artificial intelligence work with MIT. Brilliant guy. And him and David Fravor go on forever about the experience, the encounter, and also just his understanding and knowledge of aircrafts and just of air travel.

And it's an insane story. I had him on my podcast with Jeremy Corbell and that was great, but it was even better on Lex Friedman's podcast because it was just Lex and David together and they went deep into the weeds about the story. Yeah, I mean, apparently there was an object under the water, which we were like, did we cover that? We kind of mentioned it quickly in the film. There's so many aspects of that.

The thing is, you could only see the water breaking over the top of it. You couldn't see the actual object itself. But there's many stories about things that are in the water. If you wanted to have a base, or you wanted to have some sort of a mothership, you wanted to hide it in plain view. I mean, 90% of the Earth's ocean is undiscovered or unexplored. You could easily hide something in there and no one would ever see it. That's one thing Christopher Mellon said. He was disappointed with the New York Times. And I thought, well, gosh, the New York Times did something pretty brave, I think. And the due diligence they did, apparently, according to the authors, was insane. They had to cross-check everything, make sure they had to speak to Harry

Reid. They had to see the government documents. They had to verify the existence of AATIP. I mean, they really worked hard at it. But Christopher Mellon said, well, they kind of missed it. I said, what do you mean they missed it? He goes, well, it's great. They revealed the AATIP program, that secret Pentagon program. But the bigger story was these things are real and they missed it. He goes, well, it's great. They revealed the AATIP program, that secret Pentagon program. But the bigger story was these things are real and they're here. This is happening now. They've been going in and out of our oceans for 270 days out of 365 in 2015.

And the Navy finally just said, we can't stop them. We've tried to intercept them. They fly rings around us. Just leave them alone. That's crazy. It's crazy. Because that's when David Fravor what when david fravor was

communicating with the what was it the ship well who's he communicating with it was telling them nimitz yeah we've been seeing these yes yeah on the radar going up for weeks space yeah they would go from outer space 80 000 feet was the highest we could detect them and then they'd shoot down to the to like five feet over the water in a second like that yeah yeah and then just Yeah. And then just, you know, boo, boo, you know, shooting around. And then, of course, getting visual confirmation. But they didn't even do anything for like, was it days or weeks? Yeah. Leading up to that.

Yeah. It's crazy. Well, listen, your documentary is fantastic. I really enjoyed it. I watched it twice. It's excellent. Your contribution in it is amazing, too. And I really appreciate you guys coming down here and talking about it.

And I can't recommend the documentary enough if you're into ufos like uh i am obviously it's uh the phenomenon it's on i i got it off itunes apple always going to say really tv thank you for that i really appreciate you saying that but if if if you want to rent it rent it but if you want to buy it for the same price on itunes or vo, they offer three hours of bonus free material. So if you're going to purchase it, do it from iTunes or Vimeo. Don't forget to rate. And I want to put a shout out to Ernie Klein. He's got Ready Player Two out right now.

He's been incredibly supportive of us. He's right here from Austin, Texas. And my writing partner, Mark Barish, has been incredibly helpful. Jamie, didn't you just start reading Ready Player One? Indeed. Ready Player Two, rather? The new one, yeah. And people can pre-order the best kept secret

on Amazon. And when will that be available? It will be probably Q1 or early Q2 of 2021. Beautiful. Thank you, James. It was awesome. Thank you, Joe. Really appreciate it. Had a great time. Great time Thank you, John. Thank you, James. It was awesome. Thank you, Joe. Really appreciate it. I had a great time. Great time.

Bye, everybody.