The Rest Is Classified - 59. The Truth About UFOs: Alien Sightings (Ep 2)

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

In the mid-1970s, new, more outlandish claims about the Roswell incident began to surface: not one, but multiple crash sites, military recovery of alien bodies, and secret autopsies. What do these reports of "bald" creatures in "silver unitards" have to do with the original 1947 mystery? As the Roswell mythology grew, accounts emerged of strange bodies, often described as small, mangled, and blackened, with large flexible heads and concave eyes. But the official US Air Force report from the mid-90s offers a different, more grounded explanation for these seemingly credible sightings. Listen as Gordon and David uncover the surprising connections between these alleged alien encounters and a series of covert US Air Force experiments involving high-altitude balloon flights, crash test dummies, and even human-like forms dropped from the sky. Was it a cover-up, or a perfectly explicable, albeit highly classified, series of events? ------------------- 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

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the Declassified Club at TheRestIsClassified.com. Come around, bend the royal. We come around Bendley Royal, we're able to see part of our head on the next ridge line is a large silver disc shaped object embedded in the side of the ridge line. There was debris and wreckage strewn about the area and we got up to there, four bodies there. Were they right next to the vehicle? They were sitting back on the edge, creatures, all of them, about four and a half feet tall.

Very large heads that were shaped larger on the top and they kind of tapered down, not to a real sharp point but just tapered down where they were thin. And they had very large oval-shaped or almond-shaped eyes. They were so shiny they had almost a bluish tint to them when the light reflected off of them. Their skin coloration, best way I could describe this was kind of bluish tinted, milky white. How about ears, nose, mouth? No, no visible ears on the creatures. What about hair color?

No hair. They're completely bald. And no sounds? I never heard a sound one, not out of any of the creatures. They're wearing one piece suits. All of them are dressed exactly the same. Sort of a real shiny, silverish gray color. My brother, one of the first remarks I heard him say, I'm saying, that's a goddamn spaceship. Welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I am Gordon Carrera.

And that was the transcript of an interview with Gerald Anderson, who's played by me, and I guess his very British interrogator. Now, Gerald Anderson is a supposed firsthand witness to Crash Site 2, which was 175 miles northwest of Roswell. That was my best attempt at a Roswellian accent. So the repertoire is expanding on the show from German to I think we had some French, I think we had some other sort of unknowable accents as well. There's a Roswell Ano in there. And this is, of course, the second episode

in what is likely to be a 30 or 40 part series on- Full parts. On UFOs and UAPs. No, four parts, yeah, don't worry. And the last time, Gordon, where we left was we were looking at this Roswell incident from 1947, this sort of mysterious wreckage in this kind of area outside of Roswell, New Mexico.

And we're looking at the mythology around that incident. We're looking at the very top secret classified balloon project, Project Mogul, that is very, I think, frustratingly likely the cause of the Roswell incident, not actual aliens. But we left the last episode in this cliffhanger. There'd been a crash and there had been stories, Gordon,

that appear in the 70s about alien bodies being discovered. And Gerald Anderson, who I read, is of course talking about these creatures that are bald, they don't have ears, they're wearing silver unitards. And I guess, Gordon, the question that we're gonna start looking at today is how do we explain these credible reports that emerge in the 1970s of autopsies on alien bodies?

That is the question. Second only to the question of why you are still wearing a tin foil hat, which people who are just listening to the audio and are watching the video will not be able to see, but it's still there. Also it is very hot, I will note. I did think before we started recording this episode that I might take it off because it is cooking my brain. When I signed up for this podcast Gordon I knew a certain measure of physical pain was going to be required and so I'm let's press onward. Let's press onward.

Yeah, let's press on anyway. Alien abductions will come later. So Roswell. Roswell. Let's get back to Roswell. So yes, we talked last time about how the claims about Roswell had resurfaced in the late 70s. They also got more confusing and a bit outlandish. So there's talk about multiple crash sites, not just the one the rancher found, those kind of strange items. There's kind of the idea that this alien craft stopped, left some debris at the original site,

and then went on to crash at another site miles away where some bodies were found and there's two possible sites, one 75 miles and another 175 miles northwest of Roswell. That's where Gerald Anderson with that great accent was talking about and says he found something. So the common themes to all of this are witnesses who claim something happened at an isolated location. The military came along to recover bodies, often in what looked like body bags, and then cleared everything up as if nothing had

happened. And people are told never to talk about it. But they start talking three decades later. Yeah, they do start talking some people. Okay. But their witnesses like the one we heard about, they talk about the recovery of these strange bodies, four fingers, no hair, no eyelashes, no eyebrows, the shiny one-piece suits. So, let's have a look at what they were. And again, we're going to go back into the world of classified programs. Last time we mentioned in the mid 90s, the US Air Force did a kind of deep dive report to look into this. And the conclusions I think are really interesting because what's suggested

by that report, some people dispute it, is that a whole load of different activities by the US Air Force, which happened over a period of many years, are all kind of conflated and consolidated into all happening in July 1947, linked to the Roswell incident. And that these are all kind of confused together by different accounts. So let's start with the autopsies and the claim that there were kind of autopsies on alien bodies. There were some great faked photos a few years ago claiming to show this, but those were definitely faked. How do we know that they were fake?

They were fake, David. If you're going to go down the rabbit hole every time, this is going to be a very long episode. That's what I'm going to say. Yeah, this is where I wish I could play that X-Files music that we can't for legal reasons. Okay. You are definitely Mulder and I'm Scully in this. Is that right? I think. Have I got that right? Is Scully the skeptical one?

Yeah, I think Scully's the skeptical one. I think I got that right. You're definitely Scully then. Yeah, I'm open despite the hat. So the reports about the autopsy center on Roswell Army Airfield Hospital, where the bodies are supposedly taken for this autopsy. Now the primary source for all of this is a guy called W. Glenn Dennis. Now in the summer of 1947, he's a 22-year-old mortician

working at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, which has a contract with Roswell Army Airfield, which is later renamed... And will be a site on the Restless Classified Roswell Tour, right? When we do the tour, yeah. The walking tour of Roswell. Ballard Funeral Home will be the first place we go. Dennis had been excused war service for poor hearing and he starts as an apprentice in Barmer in 1944. Now his recollections are first reported again decades after the incident, so not at the time. And also much of it isn't first-hand, but it's information passed on by two crucial witnesses he's spoken to,

a nurse and a pediatrician at the hospital, neither of whom he names. We're off to a good start. This is also a theme of many of these kind of eyewitness accounts, isn't it? Where they're not first-hand accounts. No, but they're told by someone else. Yeah, somebody told me. And I can't say who told me. So according to Dennis, he received phone calls from the base on July 7th, 1947, regarding the availability of child-sized caskets. So remember, he's had a funeral home. And procedures for preserving bodies that have been lying out in the elements. There's also an emergency ambulance call because they were a kind of civilian mortuary service to respond to a minor traffic accident in Roswell. The victim was said to be an airman who was then

taken to hospital. This is all a little bit confusing. Now when he goes to the hospital he reportedly saw three military box type ambulances or vehicles, one of which contained wreckage. The wreckage had odd markings or symbols, bluish-purplish in colour, military policemen standing near the ambulances. Dennis claims he encounters a military nurse who's a friend who'd been assigned to the hospital. The nurse was upset, covered her mouth, tells him to just get out of here because he was going to get in a lot of trouble. Dennis also says he encountered a doctor who didn't talk to him at the time. When he asks a military officer if there'd been a plane crash, they say, who the hell are you? And they get military police to escort him away. It's a fair question.

It's a fair question. He's an apprentice embalmer with hearing problems. And he's asking questions. And he's asking questions. And he's asking questions. And when he turns around after that, he's quoted as saying it's a big redheaded colonel who said, you didn't see anything. There was no crash here. You don't go into town making any rumours that you saw anything or there was any crash.

You could get in a lot of trouble. Now he later contacts the nurse and she tells him she entered an examining room and saw two doctors she didn't know carrying out an examination on three mangled small blackened bodies. There was a terrible smell in the room. She described little bodies three to four foot in length that had large flexible heads, concave eyes and noses. Now, after this meeting, Dennis claims he never saw the nurse again, and he was told she'd been shipped out the same afternoon or the next day. Later, he says he receives a letter indicating she was in London, of all places, but he can't reach her again in the future. Here's rumours she was killed in a plane crash. The kind of implication

here is that perhaps she was killed as part of the Great cover-up. But we still don't know who this nurse is. No. This is just an unspecified nurse who was potentially operating on the alien bodies. And it all coincides, of course, this is all happening supposedly at the same time as that crash, which is where the rancher, as we heard last time, sees these kind of bits of material. Now on the investigation, the story starts to fall apart. There's no evidence of the nurse or her being shipped out afterwards or dying in the car crash. The name he gave for her wasn't accurate. There's no evidence of the doctor either based on the details he provides such as the doctor kind of relocates to Farmington. Now other interesting

strange aspects of this, I think these are really telling, he talks about an airman. Now, actually, I didn't know this, but there was no rank of airmen in 1947. It only comes a few years later. So they're using, I think, army ranks at that point. Also, it's interesting this, he talks about there being a black sergeant with the white officer. But again, this I didn't know, but in 1947, the US Air Force was still racially segregated. So that would have been quite not impossible, but unlikely and that only changes in 1949. And also there was a big

redheaded colonel in the area, but only between 1954 and 1960, so not in 1947. So lots of the kind of evidence when you start looking at it doesn't quite fit the timeframe of 1947. So it looks like, now this is the US Air Force official report. Take of that what you will. The implication is, I mean, this is the circular logic, right, of the conspiracy theory, which is it must be a cover-up because the report has been done by the government, right? Yeah. And people will talk about this report being part of a strategic disinformation campaign to kind of push people away from the truth. So we should acknowledge that this is a report that some people question. But what it looks like is that Dennis is taking accounts of victims of later

air crashes that did take place at the Air Force Base and things that happened at the hospital and kind of conflating them all together. So June 26, 1956, there's an accident involving a KC-97 and the aircraft has propeller failure, four and a half minutes after takeoff, a prop blade punctures the fuel tank. The aircraft is engulfed in flames, spins out of control, crashes in the desert, 11 crew are all killed. The bodies are taken to the hospital and there's an overpowering odour emitted by the burned and fuel soaked bodies and also a lack of proper storage facilities at the small base hospital. The day after the crash a local Roswell pathologist does carry out autopsies on three of those victims at the local funeral home where Dennis was

employed and they were in a terrible state and you imagine a fuel tank exploding and whatever happened to those bodies. Other elements of the stories look like they might come from a 1959 incident involving a manned balloon flight. So that crashes and three people are taken to the hospital for minor treatment. Now that tallies with the redheaded colonel because he is there at the time and he's overseeing those flights. It looks like the AI doesn't want people asking about the flights and supposedly there doesn't want to be an accident investigation. So the wreckage that Dennis talks about in the ambulance does fit the kind of wreckage which would have come from that balloon. It had even the inscriptions

he talks about like hieroglyphics on there and the extra security around the hospital with military police. All of that fits that incident. And actually, weirdly, one of the three balloon crew had a really badly swollen head when he crashed, which I note some people may have confused with him being an alien. And he was wearing a spandex unitard as he walked around too. I don't think he was. His whole face had swollen up to the point that just his nose protruded. That's what it's described as. And it was quite grotesque and people remember him looking like a blob.

That's what they said. And at one point he steps out and has a cigarette. Looking like- But if only his nose is sticking out, how did he smoke it? How did he smoke it? I don't know. But I just like the idea of this blob faced,

alien looking person coming out and having a cigarette outside the hospital. In a skin tight spandex suit, doubtless. So, I mean, that is kind of weird. I think a lot of people saw that. They think that might be an alien. There were also these other claims, Gordon, I mean, that is kind of weird. I think a lot of people saw that. They think that might be an alien. There are also these other claims, Gordon, I guess in this lovely dialogue that we started this episode with, of people seeing kind of strange bodies out in fields. Right. I mean, where do those come from?

And again, this is all coming in the 70s, right? This is not... Well, yeah. Or they're remembering stuff. Or they're remembering from the 40s and 50s. Yeah. So this is what I guess I think really interesting as well, the bodies, bringing up the bodies. So in some cases, we talked about all these balloon flights, which are going on around this region at the time. And some of the balloons had anthropomorphic dummies on board. So what we today call crash test dummies. And they were there to measure the impact of different environments, including being up high in a balloon on people before you would necessarily put people up there.

And they were kind of code named high dive and Excelsior. And they're actually testing things like parachutes and even ejector seats, what it's like for a body to fall with a different type of parachute and ejector seat from high. What happens to the human body when it's dropped 100,000 feet?

Scientists wanna know. And so in the 50s they are actually dropping bodies freefall from these balloons to study what it looks like. And they're looking at like could an astronaut or a pilot at high altitude survive, what would it do to the body? So they took about 67 dummies up to 98,000 feet by balloon. And then a radio command leads to them just being kind of dropped, ejected over the New Mexico desert, carrying measuring equipment to see how fast they accelerate and what the pressure is like. You can see how if you're a Roswellian resident and you all of a sudden have a crash

dummy hurtling from 100,000 feet and landing in the desert that it would be mildly alarming. Mildly alarming. Because of course they do just land all over the desert. And then of course there's a special recovery team which is sent to kind of pick them up and to try and take away the bodies. And they put them in caskets. And the reason they put them in caskets is they want to damage the instruments which are attached to the crash test dummies which have been recording the kind of pressure and altitude and things like that. And they use military stretchers to move them. So even though they're dummies, they're actually kind of taking care of them as if they were bodies. And more evidence, in some cases they've been wrapped in black or silver insulation bags to deal with the low temperatures,

which look like body bags. And of course, what are they wearing? They're wearing gray suits. So these are falling in the desert. They're not kind of super secret because on some of them, they've actually got a note saying, if you find this, there's a $25 reward for handing it in. And some go missing, some take a long time to to find some of the dummies also are smashed up when they land unsurprisingly falling from that makes sense. Yeah. And you know, one woman comes across a dummy and it's embedded head first in the ground and she just finds the dummy and she just starts screaming. He's dead. He's dead.

What was with the request for the child sizedsized coffins? Were some of these dummies very small? I think they were a bit smaller, some of these smallers. They're crashing all over the place. They're racing out to find them. The military units arrive shortly after a crash of a supposed flying saucer to retrieve the saucer and the crew. And so they're accurate descriptions in a way of what people have seen, like that Gerry Anderson quote we read at the start. He is seeing what he's seeing. He's not making it up that he's finding bodies littered around in the middle of the desert. And it's entirely kind of explicable, I would suggest, David, even to the most... You would suggest that Gordon. You would suggest this being very explicable.

It does seem like a government did this in the most nefarious way possible because you're dropping crash test dummies from the sky and you're also asking for coffins from locals. I mean, you're gonna get some conspiracy out of this. You're asking for trouble. You're asking for trouble. You're asking for trouble. So Roswell ends up being, I guess, kind of a mix of all of these stories is that the myth is consolidated

in the 70s. You have these actual crashes, you have real injuries and real deaths of US Air Force officers and pilots, you've got the balloons, you've got the dummies. But Gordon, because this story has of course been too American centric for you, I'm seeing here in your notes that one of these Holloman balloons actually does make it over to your lovely island makes it to the UK. And so maybe there with that little tease for our British friends, let's take a break. And when we come back,

we'll look at where else these wild reports spread. Whether it's a family member, friend, or furry companion joining your summer road trip, enjoy the peace of mind that comes with Volvo's legendary safety. During Volvo Discover Days, enjoy limited time savings as you make plans to cruise through Muskoka or down Toronto's bustling streets. From now until June 30th,

lease a 2025 Volvo XC60 from 1.74% and save up to $4,000. Condition supply. Visit your GTA Volvo retailer or go to volvocars.ca for full details. Well, welcome back. Gordon Carrera has succeeded in taking this UFO story back home to the UK, much to my chagrin and dismay. And so Gordon, we're gonna go from the lovely Americana of Roswell and these secret programs are going to literally float across the Atlantic. Is that right? That's right. It's not just the Americans who get their UFOs when you hit the 50s.

So they start to hit Britain as well. November 3rd, 1953, an RAF vampire night fighter pilots called Terry Johnson and Jeffrey Smythe are going to report seeing a strange sighting over an RAF base. Terry sees a tiny pinpoint of bright light over Kent at 20,000 feet. He thought it was a star, but there were no other stars in the sky. He watches it for 15-20 seconds. It remains stationary. But as it came overhead, it suddenly seemed to be moving fast. It was a round object with intense light around the periphery. He said he wasn't sure what it was, but he was going to keep an open mind. Now questions about this incident were raised in Parliament and actually as a result UK defence officials, like their American counterparts counterparts are going to start tracking these

sightings. Now what's interesting is if you want to understand what that was, there's not much in the UK but in the US they're citing English accounts of the incident, talk about the tremendous speed at being motionless, circular or spherical and white in colour, emitting or reflecting a fierce light, the altitude being 61,000 feet. And as a result of this, local saucer enthusiasts claiming the unidentified flying object is proof of their theories. Because clearly, it's 53, the Brits want in on this. They've seen Roswell, they've seen all this stuff, and they're like, it's not just the Americans. The aliens are interested in us as well. Even though our empire is crumbling,

they're still interested in us. Yes. Thank you, David. You're welcome. But was it a flying saucer? It does look like, again, it's an American balloon. It's those Americans coming in here with their balloons. It's not even a British balloon.

So it actually looks like balloon 175 launched from Holloman in America on the 27th of October, it failed to drop into the Atlantic at the end of a scheduled 12 hour flight. And so six days later, the balloon is cruising at 60,000 feet over Kent. Now, there are more British sightings. And again, these relate to some other quite interesting American top secret programs. So real spy programs. So one of them is the Moby Dick program. Now, a British researcher who's a kind of real expert on this stuff called David Clark

cites this as being one of the possible programs which is leading to those sightings. And that was a program, interestingly enough, which was designed to carry out surveillance of the Soviet Union. So the balloons were supposed to ride the jet stream with cameras in the kind of gondola and then snap pictures of military facilities over the Soviet Union at a high enough altitude to kind of evade detection and air defenses. So Moby Dick is running from 1951, 600 balloons, some from sites in the US and across the Atlantic and end up in the UK, Norway, Spain, Africa. Then in 1956, the CIA, here come the CIA, and the US Air Force launched them from Europe in Genetrix, which flew over East Europe, Soviet Union and China, in just in about three weeks of the start of 1956, 512 of these high-altitude balloons are launched from five different sites in Norway, Everton in Scotland, two in West Germany and also one in Turkey. It's a lot of balloons.

It's a lot of balloons in one go. And they've got two cameras which look downwards at a slight angle, battery powered, operated by a timer, entirely at the mercy of the winds. The idea is they're too high for air defenses, but at night they might sink a bit lower. So like an early version of the U2, it's trying to solve the same problem, right? Which is how do I fly above air defenses and actually take pictures? And take pictures, yeah. And again, it looks like they're using similar to that kind of skyhook method we talked about, because at the end of the mission, while some of these genetics balloons were over the Pacific, the payload could be detached and fall by parachute,

where it then gets captured in midair by a C-119 cargo aircraft towing one of these looped cables equipped with hooks to snag the parachute. So again, that's a kind of skyhook recovery. Interestingly enough, they briefly looked at delivering biological and chemical weapons through the balloons to the Soviet Union. What could go wrong? You're right. What could go wrong with a balloon carrying anthrax or something floating over the sky subject to the winds? Let's attach these sports to something we don't control and put it up at 100,000 feet and see what happens.

Yeah, I mean, that's wild. I mean, they never did it. It didn't happen, right? They didn't do it. So this is a kind of interesting spy balloon program. And the Air Force expected that, you know, they sent me like 2500 balloons, 75% of them were across the Soviet Union, about 40% of them, 1000 balloons Soviet Union, about 40% of them, a thousand balloons would get recovered, and that they would get 1.4 million photographs. That was the plan.

But in practice, they only get 44 payloads recovered. They weren't able to recover all of the balloons they sent around the world. 32 of them had any usable photographs, and most of the photos were of clouds. Were of clouds. So that also seems predictable. I mean, I guess you've got to try it to know, but it does seem like a lot of what you'd get from 100,000 feet would be clouds.

I mean, which, again, as a non-scientific expert, I would suggest might have been obvious. I mean, they do discover, let's be fair, they do discover a nuclear refining facility in Siberia. So they do find something with them. And what's interesting, again, is that it's not super secret because the Soviets spot them. And some of them get shot down. And because

people can kind of see them, especially when they go to lower altitudes, you know, you get diplomatic protests from Albania, China, the Soviet Union for these balloon flights going over them. So there's kind of, it's not a very popular programme, which is why I think it doesn't work. It's not very secret. It's not a great one in the history of classified programmes. But the balloons are still going and again another UK story. 1962, Donald Mackenzie, who's a shepherd in the Scottish Highlands, comes across wreckage and the authorities take it away. And again, they tell him to be quiet about it.

And this becomes known as Scotland's answer to the Roswell incident. I mean, but in a slightly kind of, it doesn't quite have the cache or the... No, you don't even have the name of the Scottish village or the town in the Highlands, it's just referential to Roswell as opposed to being your own, your own thing. I know. And so David Clarke argues that the US are running a secret mobile balloon base nearby. And so lots of these sightings also seem to be these kind of Holloman balloons. And they're trying them with different payloads over the years. Interestingly enough, they use them for trials of what would be NASA's Viking and Voyager Mars probes.

trials of what would be NASA's Viking and Voyager Mars probes. Now, they, you know, the probes looked like kind of dome-shaped flying sources. And they launched some of these probes, sometimes at 100,000 feet. Some of them are kind of self-propelled and, you know, flying very fast. So in a sense, I mean, these would have looked like spaceships because they actually were a spaceship. It actually was a spaceship. It was a spaceship. Yeah, they're testing. You know, the things that they're gonna kind of launch

as probes into space by dropping them from the balloons and flying them. So you could kind of see why there's a lot of balloon UFO action at this point and why people are kind of thinking this might be something suspicious. One thing we haven't really come back to though is this 30-year seeming gap between a lot of these incidents or are frankly not even just a 30-year gap, but the kind of cumulative

impact of all of these programs occurring in the early years of the Cold War. And it's kind of all spilling out in the mid to late 70s. I mean, we talked about that time period as being maybe a little bit more fertile ground for conspiracy, but I'm just, what do you think is the reason for all of this stuff kind of melding together at that particular point in time? Like, what is it about the kind of cultural climate

of that time period that made it so, I guess, fertile or open to these kind of ideas about extraterrestrials? I guess it's a combination. And we talked a bit about kind of scientific advance and Cold War fear. And I always quite liked that theory, which was there was that whole rash of films, which were about kind of invasion of the body snatchers, you know, people whose bodies had been taken over by aliens. And there was a kind of big thing about that, you know, they look normal, but actually they're aliens. And that came again in the kind of 50s period, didn't it? And one of the theories was this was a kind of metaphor for communism. This is the era of kind of McCarthyism. And the idea was people were your neighbor could look like a normal person, but actually secretly be an alien slash communist.

Underneath their clothes is actually another set of clothing, which is a silver unitard. So I think there's something there in that kind of fearful, slightly paranoid era of the 50s. And then 60s is a kind of, I don't know, maybe a period of a bit more optimism, there's sci fi certainly around. If you think of Star Trek, for instance, it's a kind of optimistic view of encountering aliens, isn't it? The kind of Star Trek world of the 60s is, we're going to go out, we're going to meet alien civilizations, we're going to educate civilized. Then you get to alien, and that is a decidedly more negative take, or Independence Day in the 90s. Then you hit the 70s though, and you're into the kind of

parallax view, conspiratorial mindset, post-Watergate. So now you've got the deep state conspiracy stuff. And then you get kind film aliens. It's kind of interesting, isn't it? You get different trajectories over time, which track elements of culture and politics. It reminds me a little bit of the kind of hotbed of MKUltra, the series we did on the CIA's quest for mind control. And the propulsion for that being this deep fear of the Soviet Union, of kind of international communism, but it sort of in itself created, I guess, the groundwork for nowadays even more conspiracy about what the CIA or these secretive parts of our government might be

up to with respect to mind control. I feel like it's coming out of the same sauce in a lot of ways. It is interesting. It's quite American though, isn't it? I mean, it's like your point about the Scottish Roswell doesn't quite do it or any popular culture. I mean, I don't know what you think, but it's something about, is there something about America? Do you not have like a UFO contingent in the UK? There is definitely. Maybe just smaller than in the States.

I think it's less part of popular culture. There are some kind of alien and sci-fi movies, but I don't think they're quite the same as the American ones you get in the 50s and later. I mean, you know, we get Doctor Who. That's different, you know, we get Doctor Who, that's different, you know, Daleks and stuff like that. Again, it's a slightly different era of sci fi. That's more in the kind of 60s Star Trek zone, rather than the aliens are inhabiting my body and they're coming in flying saucers.

It does feel very American. I mean, even in frankly, you know, let's make this about us. We're the ones that the aliens visited. Right? I mean, it happened. It happened in New Mexico. It's all about you. It's all about America. It's all about us. Even the balloon that went over to see you was one of ours.

So it's the ground zero, I guess, of all of this really does seem to be the States. Although I did come across in my various researches, Gordon, for this series outside of just watching Independence Day a few more times. The KGB had even picked up reports of alien visitations in Ukraine during the Cold War. So it's not purely Americans, but I think we can say that the aliens were predominantly and overwhelmingly interested in Americans, although not exclusively. It's interesting you mentioned the Soviets, because I did read an interview with Kruchkov,

who was the last head of the KGB at the kind of end of the Soviet Union. And in it, he's asked about aliens. And he's actually asked about it. And he said, did you ever know anything about it? And he said, look, I was the head of the KGB. I knew every secret in the Soviet Union, and I was never told about the aliens.

I don't think everything went up to the top of the KGB, though, Gordon. I think the KGB, I think you'd know that. I don't think everything went up to the top of the KGB though. I think in the KGB, I think you'd know that. I don't know. And he seems to be skeptical about that. But I think that might be a good place to leave it because next time we're going to look at the CIA and aliens. This is an important part of the story, David, because the CIA did have a UFO research team and did some very interesting stuff. And I'm afraid also fueled the world of conspiracies through its involvement. They experimented on me too. So we'll have, we'll have all of this the next time. No, that's for the members of the Declassified Club, remember? You can not just hear, not just hear all the episodes in this series, but also hear David's

story of alien abduction and what happened to it. That's right. And I hear there's going to be a sort of graphic novel-esque kind of cartoon done about that story as well. There's going to be lots of interesting ways we can do this. So join at therestisclassified.com if you want to. Join us next time for part three of Aliens and we will have Aliens meet the CIA. You don't need to wait though, of course, you can join the Declassified Club and get access to that episode right now at therestisclassified.com. And if not, that's fine. We'll see you next time.

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 therestisentertainment.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. Who are eventually played by Robert Shaw and Richard Rophers 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, it's a brilliant performance. He's so sort of, it's an amazing performance. So put upon and like every man. Yeah. I mean, the other people considered were Paul Newman, Charlton Heston, Robert DeVille, 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 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 had this idea for how he could get the shark to jump onto a boat. Roy Scheider 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. Charlton Heston, by the way, vowed never to work with Spielberg after that. From Wandery, this is The Spy Who.

This month, we open the file on Oleg Lenin, the spy who saved MI5. Lenin'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. to Britain's streets. Follow the Spy Who on the Wondery app or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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