The Rest Is Classified - 58. The Truth About UFOs: The Roswell Incident (Ep 1)

Episode Date: June 22, 2025

The date was July 8th, 1947. The Roswell Daily Record boldly announced: "RAAF Recovers Flying Saucer." How did this headline ignite a global obsession with UFOs, and why has the official narrative shifted so many times since? From eyewitness accounts of glowing objects zooming across the sky to official reports of a recovered "disk," the Roswell incident remains one of the most compelling and hotly debated mysteries of the 20th century. But is the government merely guarding classified information, or is there a more elaborate cover-up at play? Listen as Gordon and David embark on an exhilarating journey into the realm of the unexplained, starting with the Roswell incident, and get ready to challenge everything you thought you knew about what's really "out there." ------------------- To sign up to The Declassified Club, go to www.therestisclassified.com or click this ⁠⁠⁠link⁠⁠⁠. To sign up to the free newsletter, go to: ⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up⁠ ------------------- Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restisclassified It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ------------------- Order a signed edition of Gordon's latest book, The Spy in the Archive, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Order a signed edition of David's latest book, The Seventh Floor, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Email: [e-mail] Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@triclassified⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The intelligence office of the 509th bombardment group at Roswell Army Airfield announced at noon today that the field has come into possession of a flying saucer. The disk was recovered on a ranch in the Roswell vicinity. After the intelligence office here had inspected the instrument, it was flown to quote higher headquarters. Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot apparently were the only persons in Roswell who have seen what they thought was a flying disk. They were sitting on their porch at 105 South Penn last Wednesday night at about 10 minutes before 10 o'clock when a large glowing

object zoomed out of the sky from the southeast going in a northwesterly direction at a high rate of speed. Wilmette, who was one of the most respected and reliable citizens in town, kept the story to himself hoping that someone else would come out and tell about having seen one but finally today decided that he would go ahead and tell about seeing it. The announcement that the RAAF was in possession of one came only a few minutes after he decided to release the details of what he had seen. Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified.

I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera. And that, dear listeners, was of course the Roswell Daily Record writing on the 8th of July, 1947, about the sighting of a flying saucer over New Mexico. And Gordon, we are very excited, aren't we? Because we are going full UFO for the next few episodes on The Rest Is Classified.

And dear listeners, of course, don't be alarmed. Despite the topic, we are going to treat this with the probity and the seriousness that you have come to expect out of this podcast. But we are gonna be looking at the world of UFOs, UAPs as they're called now, and Gordon what life might be out there in the universe, isn't that right? That's right.

And I should just say that for those who are simply listening to the audio and not lucky enough to be watching the video, they will not have the sight I have in front of me now, which is an indication of how seriously David McCloskey takes this subject because yes, dear listeners, he is wearing a tin foil hat. And it looks like a pretty advanced one that you made. What it took to this one you already had before we were going to do these episodes. Yeah, you just wear it to protect your brain from the what are they even for tin foil hats? What to protect you from the cosmic rays, the alien stuff? Rays, government rays, I think primarily is how I was going to

capital capital G capital R. I've got several of these on my shelf that I like to bring out from time to time. Unfortunate people who follow me on Instagram and tik tok will have seen that I have done videos wearing these hats before. But I made this one Gordon last night in preparation for this very conversation. Because you're taking it so seriously. Because I'm taking it seriously. I also watched Independence Day and I've been reading a lot of New York Post headlines about aliens.

So that is going to be my contribution to this series about, well, actually is, Gordon. I think you'll acknowledge a very serious topic. Well, it is. It's my idea. We do it. And you, I think we're almost skeptical at one point, I is Gordon. I think you'll acknowledge a very serious topic. Well, it is. It's my idea we do it. And you, I think we're almost skeptical at one point, I would suggest. No, no, no, no. Revision is history.

If there's ever been a topic where it's true, where you could say the rest is classified, it is this. It's a story that kind of emerged in the late 40s. It's never gone away. There's been a recent resurgence of it. It's been the source, as you just suggested, for kind of fiction, movies, sci-fi, right from the 50s through to now. So the massive impact on popular culture, we'll be looking a little bit how fact and fiction intertwined, it's the roots of kind of lots of ideas about conspiracies in the deep states. And yet, for all the wildness around it, it is actually rooted in something quite real. And particularly what I think we should look at, which is real classified spy programs. And I think that in my mind is disappointed. I'm usually excited by that idea. But I'm now I'm now terribly

disappointed about the direction the series is going. And I feel ashamed for wearing my hat now, Gordon, on top of all of it. Aliens may or may not feature, but we are actually going to look at this through the lens of classified spy programs run particularly by the US government, but perhaps others as well and the Chinese government and recent stories about Chinese top secret programs. So I think there is definitely a contemporary resonance to this. And there's also there is a genuine element of cover up because I think one of the problems is that the US government particularly has sometimes covered up some of these classified programs and

what it's doing when it comes to these things, which in turn has fueled the belief that there is some deeper secret that's been covered up. It is interesting to look at the story of I guess UFOs or UAPs unidentified, we should get the acronym right up front, which is it unidentified anomalous? Phenomena. Phenomena. Yeah, sometimes unidentified aerial phenomena. Aerial.

And I think because some of these have been spotted in the water, they decided to change that. But it is interesting, isn't it, that at the heart of so much of the lore around this phenomenon is the intelligence community, is the sort of secretive parts of the Air Force, the CIA, and as we'll see even the Chinese intelligence community. It's interesting that there is this real kind of spy backbone to so much of the lore around this.

And in the reading that I so eloquently did, and by the way, I don't know who was editing the Roswell Daily Record, Gordon, but I think I would have some suggestions for tightening that prose. But the newspaper article I read, the Roswell incident, I mean, I guess maybe that is the place to start in the New Mexico desert

with probably a little green man in a spandex spacesuit. Not quite, but close. Oh, darn it. So yeah, Roswell is a good place to start. It's one of the most iconic, famous mysteries in UFO incidents. But as we'll see, there is something interesting that was going on around Roswell at the time. Let's go back. It's early summer 1947 and W. W. William Mack Brazel is a rancher working near Corona, New Mexico. June day, he and his eight-year-old son see something strange in the middle of nowhere. Now, he's in a hurry that day and he doesn't take a closer look. He just leaves it. So that kind of suggests one thing. But then a few weeks later, on Friday, 4th of July, he's in a hurry that day, and he doesn't take a closer look, he just leaves it. So that's kind of suggests one thing. But then a few weeks later on Friday, 4th of July, he goes back to that site with his

wife. Independence Day, he goes back. That's a good point. Yes. There's a link there. I'm going to draw connections, sort of questionable connections between things throughout this whole series. Okay, that's fine.

So he goes back, Independence Day with his wife and 14 year old daughter to take take a closer look at what was there. Now already, it's a little odd because first time around, he'd seen something but it wasn't interesting enough for him to actually go look at it. But now this time something has drawn him back to take a closer look. What is that that's drawn him back? What's the X Files music?

I actually should have had that I should download that on my phone. Yeah, play that. It is X-Files music? I actually should have had that. I should download that on my phone so I can just play that at random points in the podcast. It is not the aliens calling him, I suggest. But it's what's happened in between those two dates. Because in between the two dates, something happened called the Arnold Incident. June 24th, 1947, Kenneth Arnold, an experienced pilot, is flying a small private aircraft over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. Around 3pm

he sees a flash and 9 objects in the sky. He says, although his description does change a bit over time, that these are silvery or metallic, about 100 feet long and moving together in formation incredibly fast. Faster than the speed of sound, faster than the aircraft at the time, in the kind of shape of a boomerang. Now he describes their movement, I think slightly strangely, as like a saucer skipped over water. Not quite sure what that looks like, to be honest. Like a tea saucer that you've flung across a body of water? Yeah, I guess that's what he means. But from that comes the newspaper headlines about flying saucers. It's kind of a strange link. But that starts to trigger a flood of sightings. And you know, there'd been some before. So if you go back to World War Two, pilots are sometimes

seeing strange things in the sky and they call them Foo Fighters. Good band. Very good band. Dave Grohl, friend of the pod. Dave Grohl, friend of the pod. Yeah, you're welcome to come on sometimes, Dave, and tell us what you think about UFOs. But it's interesting, isn't it? Because the sightings are really taking off now at the start of the Cold War. And I think the context again, is kind of interesting, because you're in an era of technological advancement. But also, you've had things like the V1 and V2 rockets coming out of Nazi

Germany, you've had the US developing the atom bomb. So suddenly, there's a sense that new technologies are possible, and you've got the Cold War competition. So you've got a kind of, I think, quite a heady mix of things going on there, I'd suggest, in this period. And so suddenly this Arnold incident explodes the idea of, are there firing sources? Is there something in the skies? And it's after that that Matt Brazill goes back to the Rancher New Mexico and takes

a closer look at what he'd seen a few weeks earlier. So already got that kind of context for what he's seeing. Now he describes finding a material that was lightweight, consisting of items resembling bamboo type square sticks, metallic reflecting paper, tin foil, like your hat, David. It's actually a replica of the Roswell debris. Yeah, exactly. You've mirrored it perfectly.

And he vaguely recalls finding a small black box, like a weather instrument. No words written on it. But the tape, there's tape around it, and it had pictures of flowers, which is kind of weird in itself. An alien crafting project that has collapsed into the New Mexico desert. And there's a kind of smoky gray color and it's in about a kind

of scattered an area of about 200 yards in diameter. So the following morning he's in town to sell some wool goes to see the sheriff and he whispered confidential like that he might have found some kind of flying disc to the sheriff. So good trade. He's using good tradecraft, proper tradecraft, yeah. Talks to the sheriff, says, I found a flying disc. So the sheriff then gets in touch with Roswell Army Airfield, which is nearby.

Base intelligence officer, we'll come back to him, Jesse Marcel, along with a plain clothed counter intelligence corps officer, are dispatched to the ranch to inspect the material. They gather it up, put it into their vehicle. It's not too much, obviously, if they can gather it all up, take it away to the ranch to inspect the material. They gather it up, put it into their vehicle. It's not too much, obviously, if they can gather it all up, take it away to the base. Now, this is where the story gets a bit out of hand, because the base commander has been reading all this stuff in the news about flying saucers so quickly and without consulting anyone, he gets

his press officer at the base to put something out and the press officer issues a press release saying the army air force had recovered a flying disc. It's probably kind of boring down there right? I mean this is this is one of the most exciting things that is going to happen is the potential recovery of a flying disc slash a bunch of tinfoil and a box covered in floral tape. So I guess I kind of understand the incentive here. He's looking for some excitement, right? Yeah. This is exciting. Yeah. I mean, if you're a press officer and you want to get press for Roswell, this is probably the way to do it, isn't it? Is to kind of go, we found a flying disc at that moment. And it worked.

It worked. Here we are. Here we are. So the newspapers go nuts. The Roswell Daily Record runs a headlined article, RAAF captures flying saucer on ranch in Roswell region. And of course, the story is as far as anything can go viral in 1947. This goes viral, I think it gets picked up pretty fast. So up to this point, there's obviously there is sci-fi, there's novellas, there's pulpy stuff, in the 30s and 40s, is the flying saucer, the visualization that we have of an alien aircraft as a saucer, is it from this or does it predate? That's a good question.

Cause like, I'm just trying to, I'm thinking in the war of the worlds, I don't actually remember there being like a saucer type shape referenced. I think that comes from this period. Admittedly, I didn't actually remember there being like a saucer type shape referenced. I think that comes from this period. Admittedly, I didn't reread that for this. I just watched Independence Day and they kind of saucer like thing going there. So I think that the kind of notion of flying saucers and disks, that's this. That's this. Yeah, that's from this. But quickly, at the air base, particularly at the Eighth Air Force at Fort Worth, Texas. Brigadier General Roger Raimi, who is the commander there, intervenes because he can sense that this is kind of getting out of hand.

And he's the one who's ordered the debris to be flown to the headquarters for inspection. Now, upon viewing it, he and his staff recognize elements of it. So he holds a press conference saying, it's all a misunderstanding. It's a weather balloon, which does seem like a very plausible explanation given the debris too plausible, perhaps, to one might say, and you are right to be skeptical about his description, because we will come back to the fact there is already a cover up going on here. So he basically tries to kind of kill the story and the Roswell Daily Record prints a follow up story

that reads General Ramey empties Roswell saucer, which I think is kind of, that's a better headline. That's a good sub-editor there. That is, yeah, the Daily Records picking up their game here throughout the story. By the way, this has to have been like the most exciting time to work at the Roswell Daily Record. These journalists are like, this is the gold mine. Yeah, exactly. And there's another piece, I think the next day, harassed rancher who located saucer, sorry, he told about it, which could be, you know, misconstrued either way. It could be like, sorry, because there was nothing in the weather balloon, or it could be sorry, because now I've got the power of the state. Now, what's interesting, and this is, I think, really interesting, is that then the Roswell story basically disappears

for 30 years. So they effectively kind of kill the story at that moment. And there's very little record of it again until the late 70s, even though there's lots of talk about UFOs and mysterious sightings in the intervening period, Roswell is kind of forgotten. It's not like the hub of the kind of lore. No. So it only emerges again in the late 70s and then in a kind of much wilder form. Because at that point there will be the claim that there was a cover-up and that General Raimi failed to disclose some of the things that had been found in the ranch. Even more, David,

there will be claims that alien bodies were pulled from the wreckage of the flying saucer. All right. Well, maybe there, Gordon, with charred alien bodies being yanked from a saucer outside of Roswell, New Mexico. We should take a break. And when we come back, we'll see what actually was covered up in the Roswell incident. See you after the break. The Chevrolet employee pricing event is on now.

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Hurry in, employee pricing is on for a limited time. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer for details. Welcome back. We have left you on, of course, the cliffhanger of charred alien bodies being covered up by the US government at Roswell. But Gordon, as you've said, essentially from the late 40s, until the 70s, sort of Roswell incident goes quiet, but then a

participant in the original cover up, I guess we'll say, pops up and starts, I guess, the modern lore around Roswell and aliens. Isn't that right? That's right. Jesse Marcel, who we mentioned earlier, one of the people who'd recovered the wreckage back in 47, he claims the weather balloon explanation had been a cover story and that there had been a retrieval of an object which had been an extraterrestrial spaceship. And there's more, because also around that time claims emerged that there were multiple crash sites around Roswell in the broader area, not just one, and the debris included exotic metals with hieroglyphics and fibre optic-like materials.

And crucially, this is where for the first time the aliens appear, because there are claims that among the things that were recovered were the bodies of extraterrestrial creatures. And now they're described as humanoid, with features like four fingers, bald heads and hairless bodies, wearing one-piece suits, which were shiny silvery grey or grey in colour. It's wearing like a spandex unitard basically as it's flying the saucer. Roswell. And their bodies have been secretly taken to a morgue.

Now some of the accounts also talk about alien autopsies, the bodies being transported to Fort Worth or Wright Field, the number of bodies recovered varies, there's talk of witnesses being silenced. Is this all coming from Marcel? No, it's going to be multiple places. So this is really interesting. So I think at this point, suddenly, Roswell comes alive again. Now, I don't want to suggest this is all influenced by popular culture. But what film comes out in 1977

by Steven Spielberg? Close Encounter, the third kind, classic. So I feel like it's in the air again, for another reason at this point, in the late 70s, the idea of alien encounters. And also this period kind of mid late 70s. It's also a more conspiracy minded period, isn't it? When it comes to government coverups. Watergate has just broken church pike. There actually is a lot of, I guess, actual cases, Pike, there actually is a lot of, I guess, actual cases where the CIA, the intelligence community more broadly, was doing things, I guess, in the name of American national security and kind of ensuring that the public knew nothing about them.

And then all this is coming out, you know, heart attack guns and domestic surveillance and all this kind of stuff has popped out in the mid 70s. So the idea that the government could be doing things nefariously and try and keep them secret and have conspiracy, you know, that is now suddenly more resonant in the culture at this point when these new allegations come out. So a book comes out in 1980, witnesses come forward, we'll kind of look at those witnesses a bit more detailed. This talk about Area 51, which is where the spacecraft have

been taken and being reverse engineered. So it's definitely entering into popular consciousness. So there Roswell is now kind of this thing. In the 90s though, a congressman, Steve Schiff, asked for a report, which requires the US Air Force to kind of go and really investigate it properly and look through the records. Now pop culture is also playing a role here because 1993, one of the great series I think comes out, The X-Files. You're too young aren't you to watch Mulder and Scully and to have a thing about them, aren't you? I am. I am too young, Gordon. My parents watched The X-Files pretty regularly. I remember my dad and my uncle talking about it a lot on vacations. I did want to play the X-Files theme music whenever we mention aliens over

the course of the series, but was told by our producers that that might violate copyright. We're making it into some legal troubles. So I'm not doing that. What will be a theme throughout this story, particularly as we get toward. So I'm not doing that. What will be a theme throughout this story, particularly as we get toward the end, is the idea that even among members of Congress, there's an interest, I think, in investigating these incidents. I don't know if we'd want to say

that conspiracy theories have seeped all the way into the upper echelons of our government, but I mean, there's a lot of interest in these kind of UFO, UAP incidents on the part of members of Congress. Yeah, and they're going to drive some of it. It's a really interesting story. So of course, the X-Files is about the Phoebs, though. It's the Phoebs. It's the Phoebs paranormal investigators. One skeptical, a bit like us, one skeptical and one believing. In 1994 and 1995, two big US Air Force studies come out, which have looked into Roswell in detail.

So no sign of UFOs or aliens or autopsies, but there had been a cover-up. So this is what's interesting about it. And what was that cover-up? Well, General Ramey in his press conference has said it was a weather balloon. Now that is half true, but he had effectively misled people about what it really was and had withheld details because it was part of a classified program codenamed Project Mogul. It's quite a good name. So Project Mogul was a top secret program, ran from 1946 to 1949, and it used high-altitude balloons to act as a long range detection system for Soviet nuclear

detonations and missile launches. So I think this is interesting because we are in the era, aren't we? Going back to another one of our previous series of Klaus Fuchs and the fear that the Soviets are developing nuclear weapons and missiles and the US being desperate to find out about what they might be up to. And it turned out that the idea was you could put on the balloons a machine which could detect acoustic sound waves, which would be generated by a launch of a missile or an explosion in the upper atmosphere.

And then an NYU graduate student working under contract for the Air Force made a breakthrough to find out that you could use polyethylene to make the balloons, which means that it got to a much higher altitude because they're so light. And that means they can carry several tons up to 170,000 feet. So that means you can suddenly put them up high and carry lots of cameras, probes, sensors on these balloons. And Mogul was one of these programs,

and it starts flying in June 1947. Now, auspicious timing. auspicious timing because as you may remember, that is the month of the Roswell incident or when Mack first sees something in the desert is June 47. So the idea was these big balloons and sometimes, you know, the idea was to have a kind of trail of them strung over 600 feet, sometimes going individually with all these payloads, all this equipment and components, including foil, wood and tape. And some of the

tape featured symbols such as arcs, flowers, circles, and diamonds, often pinkish in color. I mean, which meant they were getting tape from like, a desk at the base and using it to like jerry rig components together. Right? I mean, it was a US Air Force crafting project. Yeah, that's right. And it's a big project because they're kind of transport and sea vessels to pick up the balloons and the equipment from

them run out of airfields in the US and the Pacific. And now it only lasts for a few years because eventually they realize you can use seismic detectors to detect explosions and missile launches in the ground. And that's going to be far more useful. But for a while it ran and it was very, very secret because they're worried about something, nuclear weapons, you know, the technology involved is secret. So very few people were told about it. Only a few

US Air Force officers knew the whole project. The academics who were involved in it were told it was just weather balloons. But one of the problems is it becomes quite hard to hide the balloons. I mean, there's a big thing. It's a giant balloon floating in the air. And so what happens is that they're often mistaken for UFOs in those days. And there's something called the Mantell incident in 1948. Now this is a kind of tragic one because on the 7th of January 1948 a Kentucky Army airfield gets a report from Highway Patrol about reports of an unusual object, circular 250 to 300 feet in diameter, moving with a pretty good clip in a westerly direction. Four F-51 Mustangs scrambled, one piloted by Captain Thomas Mantell approached the object.

Now Mantell climbs to 15,000 feet, but it's still above him because you remember these balloons fly high. So he climbs to 22,000 feet. His wingmen don't follow because they know that, you know, they haven't got the oxygen equipment to kind of deal with that. But once he gets to 25,000 feet, Mantell blacks out from no oxygen and his plane just spirals down to the ground and crashes on a farm near the Kentucky border with Tennessee.

Now it's going to later emerge that what Mantell was chasing in the air was another balloon, but this one's slightly different from the Project Mogul one because it had a basket and some cables attached to it. So it looks like this was part of something called Project Skyhook. And the idea of Skyhook was that you could then use an aircraft to swing by and use a hook, hence the name Skyhook, to hook up whatever the payload is that's being carried from that balloon, hooking around the cables in the basket to pick it up midair or somewhere else. Or the ground. The operation I'm thinking of was in the early 60s. I think there had been a Soviet like sort of research facility in the Arctic that had been abandoned. And some CIA officers, I think, were sent in to have a look.

And they were extracted in something, I think it was called like Operation Cold Feet or something like that. Also good code name game there, where they basically like would fly a plane over that's got a giant hook on it. And the person on the ground is wearing an apparatus that allows them to be sort of scooped up by the hook and the plane never has to land. Cause presumably I guess at this facility in the Arctic,

they weren't able to actually land the plane. And then the person gets scooped up into the air and taken off, which sounds a bit jarring, but very useful if you're trying to get someone out of somewhere very quickly and you don't have a proper airfield. And crucially, this is also used in one of the Batman films, isn't it? Oh yes. That they use a Skyhook. Yes.

He's extracted from Hong Kong, I believe. But I think the idea was that they could use Skyhook to collect the material from the balloons as well. Like the balloon drops it and the plane comes and picks it up midair. Yeah, exactly. And a bit like Skyhook in that Arctic operation will, you know, pick up a person. In this case, they can use Skyhook to pick up the kind of payload from one of these kind of secret balloons that have been floating around. I think that's also how the film was collected from some of the very first few generations of spy satellites, because they were actually, there's actually film up in the satellite

that you need to collect to develop to actually look at the imagery. And I think the satellites would essentially drop the payload and it would float down. And if memory serves, it was also captured in a similar manner before it could hit the ground ocean to be taken by the Soviets or anyone else. So what you get a sense of here is that at this point in the kind of late 40s, there were just lots of interesting balloon experiments going on in the United States but which are all pretty secret. And a lot of these are known as Holloman balloons because they come from Holloman Air Force Base. And what's interesting is they seem to generate a specially high number of UFA reports because they're coming in the New

Mexico region and the balloons are flying at about 100,000 feet. And there's this way in which they're coming in the New Mexico region. And the balloons are flying at about 100,000 feet. And there's this way in which they're illuminated during the periods just after sunset and just before sunrise. And they receive sunlight kind of before the earth. And so the plastic objects appear as large, bright objects against the dark sky. And also the kind of refractive and translucent kind of qualities of the balloons make them kind of appear to change colour, size and shape.

So that's generating the images that we have of the saucers potentially. Yeah. Now, one of the things I think we're going to be is kind of open-minded because I don't think it necessarily explains everything, but certainly it explains a lot of the incidents. And what's clear from that US Air Force report in the mid 90s into the 1947 Roswell incident, is that Project Mogul is the explanation for the Roswell incident. What's being found matches exactly not a weather balloon, but a Project Mogul balloon, which was launched a few days earlier. They even think it's NYU because it was linked to New York University was doing some of the research. It was the graduate intern on the top secret balloon program.

NYU flight number four. He's just like, let's let this one off. Little did he know he would start decades of alien conspiracy theories. That gets launched number four on the 4th of June, 1947. And it does tally very, very closely with the recovery of the elements that we heard about, and the kind of talk about the blind disc and all the images of it. So, so that is part of the answer of Roswell. I do want to quibble with the language that you have used so besmirchingly throughout this episode, Gordon, which is coverup. I mean, I guess one man's coverup is another man's protection of a highly classified government program. What are the Roswell Airfield authorities gonna do

when they find this stuff? They're not gonna come out and say- Project Mogul. Project Mogul. This is a Project Mogul balloon. I can tell by the polyethylene and the flower tape that it's one of ours. And oh, by the way, we're using it to monitor

for Soviet nuclear tests and explosions. I mean, so cover up, I think, that's a little uncharitable. I think it's more like properly guarding and maintaining sort of classified information. I'm not gonna take any lectures from a man wearing a tinfoil hat. That's the problem about what the cover up looks like.

I've actually forgotten that I'm wearing the hat, but we did have reports Gordon of charred alien bodies wearing spandex unitards and we haven't yet gotten to the bottom of that. I have not explained that away yet, have I? You have not managed to explain it yet. So maybe let's leave it there. And when we come back for our next episode in this exciting journey into the world of UFOs and UAPs, we will uncover the truth about those poor dead aliens

and alien autopsies. But Gordon, we should note that if you don't wanna wait, you can simply go to therestisclassified.com, join the Declassified Club, get access to all the episodes now, and get all the way to the end where Gordon will no doubt become a believer in the extraterrestrial,

and I will reveal my alien abduction story. So with that, we will see you next time. The episodes like the truth are out there. See you next time. Hey everyone, here's that Jaws clip that we mentioned during the break. You can listen to the whole episode for free on the rest is entertainment.com. There's no cast at this point as well. The cast is so last minute for this. It was nine days before principal photography was due to start. Two of the three main parts, Quint and Hooper, still hadn't been cast nine days before.

So everyone's ready. Everyone's ready to go, you know, the whole unit is... Who are eventually played by Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss in the movie. And those two have a massive feud. There were so many other different people that they considered. Now Brody, who was actually played by Roy Scheider, is a brilliant performance. He's so sort of, it's an amazing performance. So put upon and like every man.

But yeah, I mean the other people considered were Paul Newman, Charlton Heston, Robert Duvall, Gene Hatman. Like definitely the last two of those could have done it. Yeah, so I think Charlton Heston was desperate to be in it and Spielberg, again, you know what, he was smart right from the beginning Spielberg. He said, think about Charlton Heston, he's too big a star. Why is he too big? Because you know Charlton Heston always wins. That's the problem. You know Charlton Heston is going to defeat the shark. You don't know what Roy Scheider is going to do. You just don't know. So it's really important. Roy Scheider has the look of a man who

could be eaten. Who could definitely be eaten. You'll be like, yeah, I can see it. I don't know if his agent is, you know, going to be saying he's going to be in it, but he can't be eaten. He could definitely be eaten. Charlton Heston eats sharks. The end. Charlton Heston eats sharks. Another, again, another great title for the book. Roy Scheider actually heard Steven Spielberg talking about it at a party and Steven Spielberg was saying he'd have this idea for how he could get the shark to jump onto a boat and I thought I'd like to be in that movie. That sounds good I like this kid. And he said I would like to be in this movie anyway. And Charlton Heston by the way vowed never to work with Spielberg after that.

From Wondery this is The Spy Who. This month we open the file on Oleg Leleyn, the spy who saved MI5. Leleyn's actions changed the course of the Cold War in the 1970s, a Russian who defected to Britain after being caught in a love affair that shook the world. His actions triggered the biggest removal of spies by any government in history. It's a story of an overstretched security service in need of a win and a covert plan to bring catastrophe to Britain's streets. Follow the Spy Who on the Wondery app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or you can binge the full season of The Spy Who Saved MI5, early and ad-free with Wondery+.