The Rest Is Classified - 61. The Truth About UFOs: Whistleblowers, Warplanes, and Worlds Unknown (Ep 4)

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

For years, the term UFO conjured images of tin foil hats and elaborate cover-ups. But with recent official reports from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence detailing hundreds of UAP sightings, including objects that remain stationary in high winds or manoeuvre in strange ways, the conversation has fundamentally changed. What accounts for this new era of openness, and what are these "true anomalies" that continue to baffle experts? From sophisticated Chinese spy balloons caught floating over the continental US to the persistent question of advanced foreign adversary systems, the latest wave of UAP sightings mirrors Cold War-era fears of rival technologies. Yet, even as 70% of recent reports are attributed to balloons and 8% to birds , a stubborn 5% defy explanation. Listen as Gordon and David conclude their series on UFOs and secret government programs. They'll explore why the military is now actively encouraging pilots to report UAPs , and debate whether today's unexplained phenomena are next-generation military platforms, foreign intelligence, or indeed, something "that we don't yet understand... a different form of life." ------------------- 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. The truth is that when I came into office, I asked Wright, I was like, alright, is there the lab somewhere where we're keeping the alien specimens in space ship? And you know, they did a little bit of research and the answer was no. What is true, and I'm actually being serious here, well there's footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are.

We can't explain how they move, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern. And so, you know, I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is. Well, welcome to the Rest is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gulen Carrera. And that was President Barack Obama

talking to James Corden on the late show in May of 2021 after President Obama had of course left office. And he is talking Gordon about UAPs slash UFOs. He is talking about unexplained sort of anomalies and aerial phenomena that even he as the president of the United States, did not have the answer to. And so today we are finishing our deeply rigorous and scientific investigation into whether we are alone in the universe, looking at the history of UFOs through the, I'd say the

rest is classified lens, Gordon, of secret government programs and the CIA's involvement in both trying to calm down public anxiety over UFOs while also simultaneously feeding the flames. We've talked about the Roswell incident. We've talked about balloons and their role in feeding UFO paranoia. And we ended last time, Gordon, on the cliffhanger of, well, there's going to be a resurgence, isn't there, in recent years of interest in UFOs. And I think that Barack Obama quote sums it up nicely,

which is that there are these unexplained phenomena that even high ranking government officials don't seem able to explain. And this is the final episode, we're going to answer all the questions. So it is interesting, isn't it? Because there has been this recent resurgence, which is in about the last 10 years, in the idea that there might be something unexplained out there. And that President Obama quote is a great example of it.

A lot of that comes back actually to some reports in 2017 from the New York Times, that illustrious publication, because it came out with a couple of blockbuster stories on UFOs. And one was the existence of something called the Advanced Aerosprace Threat Identification Program, AATIP, which had been basically designated to look for UFOs. And the idea that this program had existed, but the second one, which was linked to that, was that one of the reasons that program had been created was that the U S Navy had some videos of UFOs taken from some of its fast jets. And these were actually leaked to the paper and published.

And so those videos, which came from the kind of early 2000s had led to the creation of this Pentagon program, which was in existence, I think for five years or so from 2007 to 2012. But like everything else kept completely secret. It's kind of interesting, isn't it? Because one of the reasons it came to existence was it had a big backer who funded it with, I think, $22 million, which was Senator Harry Reid, who was a kind of influential Democrat Senator, wasn't he? Which we should say, I mean, $22 million in the defense budget is sort of the equivalent of like rummaging around your couch and digging up coins that are under the cushions, right? So it's not-

The same in America, not in Britain. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's true. That's fair enough. But I mean, in the US defense context, I think finding $22 million in the Pentagon, it's not the most challenging thing, let's just say, but it does indicate high level interest. And that Harry Reid appropriated it.

And when it later comes out, he writes a piece where he says, I've always been fascinated by things I don't understand. He kind of grew up in rural Nevada and used to kind of look up at the sky and wonder what it contained. And then he says, as a Democratic Senator from Nevada, I visited area 51. So he got there, the top secret air force testing site. He saw the bodies. Well, what I love is in this article, he says, what I saw fascinated me, though

much of it remains classified. Oh, that's great. That's great. I don't think he's around anymore. Cause otherwise we could have just had him on the pod. He would have been like the perfect guest bonus episode. So he's backing it. Another backer is John Podesta, who'd been Clinton's chief of staff. So it's kind of interesting because you get a few powerful people in government who

have a view that something is out there and they are going to play quite a big role in driving programs and driving funding to have this stuff properly investigated. But it is coming after some real interesting sightings by, I think, predominantly US Navy pilots that have to be driving a lot of interest inside the Pentagon as well. I mean, it's worth digging into some of these sightings. November 14, 2004, the USS Nimitz carrier strike group training about 100 miles southwest of San Diego. An advanced new radar has detected multiple anomalous aerial vehicles over the horizon, descending 80,000 feet in less than a second. Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich in a super hornet was out there in the air when something

moving fast and erratically came into view. Dietrich's boss flew in for a closer look to check it out. There's a kind of white tic-tac object which begins mirroring his movement and then just disappears. And that's one of the videos and you can see the video of it. It's a kind of grainy video. So it's kind of it's not perfect to be able to see what's going on, but you can see all the kind of sensor stuff around it. But that's one of the ones that gets leaked in 2017 and causes a kind of big fuss. I have a friend who is a former US Navy fighter pilot and top gun instructor who flew Super Hornets.

And he has a story. It hasn't been made public, but he's given this kind of debrief to this Pentagon task force. He had actually a very similar incident. He was doing a simulated dogfight with a wingman over the Gulf of America, Gordon, I should say. Well done. Yeah, exactly. Over the Gulf of America. You can say.

And he saw, I mean, he's just kind of banking, he sees an object that is flying, then kind of moving between him and his partner in this dogfight, that is a sphere. It's like a white sphere, almost like a golf ball without dimples, that's just a little bit smaller than his plane. So a large object that is moving through the sky and then he sights it and it kind of comes and moves behind him. And then his wingman says that he sees it quickly change direction and follow him for a little bit

before they lose it. And you know, he's a highly credible guy. So you do have these very interesting reports from a lot of Navy pilots in this time period, which I think it is really interesting because I asked him, like, what do you think it was? And he's like, I don't know of anything that we have that moves that way with that kind of propulsion changing directions. Because the example he gave was, you know, as he's banking in a super hornet or something, as you're turning, you're doing kind of a wide arc to change directions when you're moving that fast. And this object is not obeying that same kind of expectation. It's just shifting direction super rapidly

and keeping up with an F-18 Super Hornet. He would say, he thought, well, maybe it's something that the Russians or the Chinese have developed that they're using in our airspace. He's kind of open-minded. he doesn't know what it is basically. Yeah, he doesn't. I mean, even now, it's like there's not an explanation for it. It's one of these small percentage of things that Barack Obama's talking about in that opening quote, where it defies our abilities as of now to explain what it is.

And so there definitely have been a kind of rash of these sightings. You also get some people who call themselves whistleblowers. So there's a former Pentagon intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, comes out and talks about that there is a program and he's been part of it and he's one of the people who reveals this kind of secret Pentagon program. And as you kind of referred to earlier, it's now called the UAP programs, unidentified anomalous phenomena. And that's partly because there was a stigma that was thought for pilots reporting UFOs. So UFOs are seen as people who wear tinfoil hats, whereas a different

classification makes it easier for people to talk about it. My friend did that very similar thing that there was a big push inside the Navy to get pilots to actually fill out reports and to log these things. And I think changing the name and really trying to push in the Navy to kind of de-stigmatize it, because you think, I mean, this is something we can't explain it, it would be great if we could, right? And if you have pilots who think they're going to be lumped in with the tinfoil hat brigade, you won't actually get a robust data set on, on all these incidents.

I just remind you, you are currently wearing a tinfoil hat. I forgot actually, as I was saying that. Yeah. It's true. I just remind you you are currently wearing a tinfoil hat. I forgot actually as I was saying that Remind you about I'm an honorary member of the brigade Gordon There's another one called David Grush He's a decorated combat officer served in Afghanistan works in different bits of the wider intelligence Community and works on this now He's at the kind of further end of stuff because he goes, the government has knowledge of UAPs, which were the product of, as he puts, a non-human intelligence. So this becomes known as NHIs.

And he says that for decades, there's been a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program. And that also there's a kind of Cold War arms race between the US and its adversaries to kind of reverse engineer this technology to kind of get an advantage. Now, again, one of the kind of challenges with his testimony is that he hasn't seen any of these kind of crashed items from what I understand firsthand. Now, there's a very interesting statement about him from Marco Rubio back when Marco Rubio was a senator, so before he became Secretary of State. And he says, right now what I know is reliable people tell us, and we've seen objects operating over restricted military and national security airspace. They claim it's not ours. They claim they don't know whose it is. That's like the definition of a national security threat.

We have a number of people, including Grush, who have come forward both publicly and privately to make claims. One of two things are true, either A, they're telling the truth or some version of the truth, or B, we have a bunch of people with high clearances and really important jobs in our government who are nuts. Both are a problem. And I'm not accusing these people of being nuts. That said, that's something we'll look at and continue to look at seriously. It's a really kind of interesting statement. Because when you get to the kind of Grasher ideas, it's not just that there's something odd, like your pilot seeing it. He's like, there's a crash retrieval program and we're reverse engineering it and it's

being kept secret. And now that is either true or not true. That's not in the kind of mystery phase of things. But what feels maybe a little bit misleading about this logical choice that then Senator Rubio laid out is that what is verifiably true is that there's a handful of these incidents, a small percentage that do not have an explanation as of right now. And that the US government at the highest levels is basically saying, look, these aren't ours, whatever it is, it's not something we're doing. It's not a balloon.

It's not a secret CIA platform. It's not next generation technology that the Air Force is actually testing or the Navy is testing. We don't know what it is, right? But what Grush is doing is he's then making the jump from that to aliens. Oh, non-human intelligence. We should say that. Non-human, okay.

Non-human intelligence. So that to me feels like. A leap. A leap. Where Marco Rubio's A and B are not actually quite true. It could be the fact that the people who Grush is talking to are in fact misleading him about this being aliens or some kind of reverse engineering thing, right? Like that to me feels like the sort of distinction.

But as a result of this kind of new last few years interest in it, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence now kind of regularly does these reports on UAPs. So June 2021, they looked at the kind of previous 17 years, they found 144 reports. You know, some of these UAPs remain stationary in winds, moving against the wind, you know, maneuver in strange ways, all the stuff we're talking about. It says like most of them can be explained and it breaks it down, I think, into basically five categories. One is airborne clutter. That's kind of birds, balloons, recreational drones, debris, plastic bags even, which kind of get in the way.

Then there's natural atmospheric phenomena, ice crystals, moisture, which might kind of affect infrared and systems. The third one they do list is US government or industry developmental programs. So they say this some UAP observations could be attributable to developments and classified programs by US entities. We were unable to confirm, however, that these systems accounted for any of the UAP reports we collected. I think that's kind of an interesting answer. Then the next one they've got is foreign adversary systems. Some UAP may be technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or a non-governmental entity. And then finally, there's another category called other. Ah, the other bucket.

The other bucket. That one. Although most of the UAP described in our data set probably remain undetected due to limited challenges, limited data, we may require additional scientific knowledge to successfully collect on, analyze, and characterize some of them. So they basically go, some we can't say.

And the number of reports grows. So by 2022, they say they've got 510 reports. So the number of reports, it's that classic thing, a bit like the fifties, isn't it? The more you look, the more you see. So the number of reports are growing. A lot of them do look like they're drones and some of them appears maybe back in the world of balloons. What else? And that's a good cliffhanger, Gordon, because in 2023, something will be seen floating above our great open American skies. And it's going to bring us right back to where this hopefully extraterrestrial journey started.

So we'll see you after the break. Hello, I am Marina Hyde. And hi, I'm Richard Osman. And we are the hosts of another great Goal Hangar show, the rest is entertainment. Each week Richard and I talk about our favorite entertainment news stories and incredible behind the scenes facts. Like, for example, often when people do podcasts, they are reading off a bit of paper. Well, when they do the trailers. You cannot not draw the curtain back can

you? You're drawing it back right now. Wait I'm about to read off a bit of paper. Now our two-part deep dive into the chaotic making of Jaws has already been absolutely massive with our club members. They've been calling it Marina one of our best bonus episodes ever. So if you like me are still terrified of getting into the water after seeing that Steven Spielberg classic and I am then you need to hear this series. We dive into the unbelievable details of why it was such a chaotic and almost killer production from rioting crew, rebelling actors, a robot shark that kept breaking down.

For a limited time, all Goalhanger Podcast listeners can get exclusive access to our complete Jaws series. What? Yes, absolutely free by visiting therestisentertainment.com. We've even left a little taste of our first episode on Jaws at the end of this whatever podcast we're talking. Maybe the rest is money, maybe the rest is history. Or go to the restisentertainment.com and dive into the whole Jaws series for free. No frills? Delivers! Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express.

Shop online and get $15 in PC Optimum Points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca. Hello everyone, it's Gary Lineker here from The Rest Is Football. Just a quick message to tell you all about the Club World Cup Tournament that's taking place in the US at the moment.

It's 32 of the best teams from all around the world battling it out to be crowned the best side on the planet. We've reached the knockout stages of the competition which means all the big guns will be going head to head. Manchester City, Real Madrid, PSG, Chelsea and Bayern Munich are just some of the sides vying to lift the trophy. Join myself, Alan Shearer, Michael Richards and our expert out in America, Alex Aljo, as we guide you through the explosive final stages of the tournament.

To make things even better, if you're watching the video version of the show on Spotify or YouTube, you can also watch all the goals and the best bits of the action as we discuss the games. A first for podcasting. Just search the rest is football wherever you get your podcasts. Well welcome back. We are in rural Montana. It's the first of February 2023. And Gordon, people, as they have for millennia, are staring up at the sky wondering, are we alone in this vast and unforgiving universe, a universe, Gordon, where the endlessness just expands and expands. These people in rural Montana, they're looking up at a starry American sky and they see, they see something in that sky.

What is it, Gordon? They see something and some wonder, could it be a spaceship? Could it be the aliens? Is it Independence Day? Are they going to get abducted? But it quickly emerges that it's not. Sadly, spoiler, it was, as people may remember, a Chinese spy balloon. And that balloon had first entered the US airspace over Alaska on January 28th.

It crosses north, comes back over mainland Alaska, over Canada, then comes back into US airspace over Northern Idaho on January 31st, then Montana on the February 1st, spotted by people. Good old American citizens Gordon staring up at the sky, spot it. Spot it. But it also seems to be on the path over Malmstrom Air Force Base, which I think is where Minuteman missiles are housed. So at this point, it blows up into a huge row once it becomes clear it's a Chinese spy balloon, because the Chinese are saying it's just a weather balloon. Do you remember that argument from Roswell and everywhere else? It's just a weather balloon, as the general said. But it's clearly not a weather balloon. There's kind of uproar in Congress, they're like, how dare the Chinese

be spying on us and sending balloons over our airspace? Secretary of State Antony Blinken postpones a trip to Beijing. At this point, US-China relations are not great. And this was a kind of big moment to try and kind of improve them with the Secretary of State going to Beijing and they just cancel it. The impact of balloons on our society, I think, is one of the themes of this series, because not only have they fed conspiracies about aliens for the past 75 years, but they've also thrown a real wrench into US-China great power politics. So the humble balloon, Gordon.

So it's being tracked across the country. They scramble some fighter jets from Nellis Air Force Base when they first spot it. But interesting enough, they don't want to shoot it down overland. That's interesting to me because I remember watching this and thinking, why are we letting this just soar over our country once we know it's there? It does seem a little odd that they didn't shoot it down right away. Well, the official reason, cause I remember covering this as a journalist quite a lot of the time, it was like a big story was that the debris could actually crash to the ground and kill someone. Cause even though it's flying very high, it's flying at about 60,

65,000 feet, so much higher than a regular airliner, higher than some fighter jets can go, the US actually sends a U-2 spy plane on the February 3rd, which can go over 70,000 feet to take a look at it and to see what it is. It's an amazing image which gets kind of released where you can see the pilot in his suit looking down. You can see the curvature of the earth pretty much. And there is the kind of massive balloon. And I guess also that tells you why they're nervous about shooting it down because it's not just the balloon

but there's these two big kind of solar panels to the side of it and then a big box in the middle. And so clearly there's a lot of stuff. It's not just a kind of balloon. And so I guess the point about shooting it down is if that does land on someone, it's going to kill them. And it's pretty small chance of it, but that's got to be a risk. Well, and I guess also, and this part of the story is not reported, I think, at the time, and I'm just speculating

here, but I would have to imagine that once it was sort of spotted, that the balloon's ability to communicate with the satellite that it was communicating with was probably jammed, hampered in some way, right? Because I presume we wouldn't allow it to continue collecting as it just flies over the entire continental US. I'm sure they worked out what signal it's transmitting on and jammed it. So eventually it's shot down on February the 4th. Once it's gone over the ocean near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, they use an F-22 Raptor using a Sidewinder missile designed for air to air combat. But it is the right thing to hit a slow moving balloon, it turns out.

And it's kind of interesting because they need to ensure that the warhead of the missile detonates on impact with the balloon, rather than the missile just flying through the balloon without detonating and puncturing the balloon and then it'll just limp along. So I just love that idea. And then they've got sailors assigned to Virginia-based Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2, who recover the wreckage from the ocean. And it's got a big parabolic dish, 1.2 meters in diameter, kind of unidentified sensors, masked antenna.

And what they realize, it's got quite sophisticated reconnaissance capabilities. It's got a synthetic aperture radar, which can see at night, penetrate through clouds and topsoil and kind of thin material by sending pulses of microwaves to the Earth to create images, some kind of video camera with the ability to zoom. And engineers are going to say from the National Space Intelligence Center that the solar panel on it could generate upward of 10,000 watts of solar power.

So this is a kind of pretty sophisticated thing that we're talking about. Was it all jerry-rigged together with floral tape like the original Roswell crash? I think it's a bit better than that. But well enough, there's some detail from these leaks that come out from some US documents which show it was code named Killeen 23 by the US military. Now I mean this is bizarre. A US official supposedly tells the Washington Post that the US naming convention for balloons is alphabetical from A to Z or to Z even if you want to be

American about it. And it looks like they're named after notorious criminals. So I hadn't heard of Donald Killeen, but turns out there's another one, James Whitey Bulger, I remember him and Tony Ocado, who sounds like something out of the Sopranos. I mean, I knew they named hurricanes, and they have a kind of naming convention, but it turns out the US military has a balloon naming convention and uses criminals. It's violent criminals. This is weird, isn't it? And so, another balloon called Bulger 21 circumnavigates the globe from December 2021 until May 2022, while Accardo 21 carries also equipment as well as a foil-lined gimbal sensor.

That's what I have keeping tabs on the temperature in my hat. Foil-lined gimbal sensor. The name of like, Bulger 21, do we know if the naming convention is at the same group of criminals and they just get like, there's Bulger 22 and Bulger 21. Do we know if the naming convention is it the same group of criminals and they just get like there's Bulger 22 and Bulger 23? Or is it? I think it's the year. So I think Bulger 21 is found in 2021. That would make sense. I'm guessing this. And Killing 23. So it's like COVID-19. Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm guessing. But anyone from the US military Chinese balloon threat intelligence center can happily kind of email in and tell us what they think.

So suddenly we kind of learn at this point that there's this massive spy balloon program. And it turns out even the Chinese foreign ministry didn't know about it and large parts of their military. But they do have this kind of big Chinese program, which is out of Hainan Island in China. You know, afterwards, it suddenly turns out there have been ones in Japan, which had been confused with the UFO in 2020, India, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Latin America. And once we know about them, suddenly more reports make sense again, about what they might be. So this was a question I had even when this balloon story was breaking, which is, I guess, in an era of really significant density of spy satellite coverage and, frankly, really advanced SIGINT platforms, or at least the potential for them. What purpose is this balloon program serving in the 21st century? I guess

at first blush, it just seems like something out of another era. Yeah, a bit old school. And I kind of tried to find out about it when I was asking a lot about it, when it was happening. And there were different theories. One was that they can linger over a target for longer than a satellite can. So that might mean they can get more pictures and they're a bit closer. So the resolution might be better.

But I think the other theory, which I think is quite plausible, is that they were more used to collect signals intelligence, where it's more useful to be close to the ground to collect those signals. So you're scooping up the communications or emissions. And there's this kind of thing called massint, measurement and signature intelligence. One of the more obscure ints, I would say. An underappreciated int. Massint. We'll one day do an entire an underappreciated int. Mass int.

We'll one day do an entire 10-part series on mass int. Mass int. Mass int through the ages. That's right. So you can use that to understand emissions and what a missile launch looks like. Soil samples, things like that. You can take soil samples outside nuclear sites. So I think that's the view is that perhaps it was a useful platform to collect that kind

of signals closer to the ground. Now, the other thing that was interesting is, of course, the question bit like the Cold War is, do we do this? And the answer is, of course, it's not just China with high altitude balloons. Both the US and UK had their own balloon programs. The UK had been codenamed Project Ether and the reports say it was intended to provide a stratospheric ultra persistent communication and intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance capability. So if that's what the UK version is designed to do, that gives you a pretty good sense of what probably the Chinese version is doing. So we're a long way away from Roswell, but we're still using balloons.

So we're still using flying balloons up there. That's a nice bow tie on this whole, on this whole story. And I mean, going back Gordon to these UAPs, I mean, now, you know, I mean, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is reporting on them. We've got various Pentagon kind of task forces that are still looking into these. It does seem like it's just kind of cool to talk about, you know, UFOs and UAPs again, isn't it? And it's not just the tinfoil abrogate that are talking about them. It is now very sort of reputable parts of our security and military establishment.

It's people like me, not just people like you. It's people like you and not just people like me who are talking about them. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And you've got the Pentagon's All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office. I like the way they keep changing the names. These are great. These are great names. Yeah. These are hard, hard acronyms, I would say.

That's really good. And you know, it's interesting because they're still doing it. They're still looking at this stuff. And it's often they can resolve what it was some of these sightings. So it's interesting. In one case, commercial pilots, he's flashing lights, and they can resolve it as being a Starlink satellite launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida the same evening. In other cases, you get birds, you get what they call sensor artifacts resulting from compression and pixelation that often renders an object as an amorphous blob. That's the kind of computer sensors which do that. Sensor glare, there's all kinds of interesting things going on. There's also, I think, a raft of things which happen near US nuclear infrastructure. So there's a load of reports of sightings near that. And it looks like they can categorize almost all of those as what are called UASs,

unmanned aircraft or drones. So they've got some of those flying over some for five minutes some for like. Nearly two hours over us nuclear infrastructure so i think it's quite interesting cuz that tells you someone is flying drones around the US and people worried about that and that's one of the problems actually i dug into some of these. I dug into some of these all domain anomaly resolution office numbers, Gordon, some of these arrow numbers. And it was interesting because they have like an open case and then they close cases if they feel like they've gotten to a point where they can actually render a verdict. In a period between, let's say about 2021 and 2023, I mean, there were almost 800 reports of sightings and almost 70% of them were balloons. In the end, so the vast majority are balloons.

8% were birds. So still a lot of bird sightings, but the Aero director said that there were 21 reports in that period that warranted additional investigation. Some of it she described as quote, true anomalies. So you do get this picture of the vast majority of this stuff. Very explicable, but small percentage is absolutely not. So yeah, I mean, what are we to make of it? I mean, some people do still believe something's out there. I mean, I love this quote from former CIA director,

John Brennan, says some of the phenomena we're going to be seeing continues to be unexplained, and might in fact be some type of phenomenon that is the result of something that we don't yet understand, and that could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life. There's a lot of sums and mays and possibilities in there. A lot of caveats. A lot of caveats there. It's like kind of, yeah, there's a lot of caveats. If I'm looking, there's like some, some, might, some.

But you know But he's kind of not ruling it out, basically. Which, for me, the story tells us that spy programs have fueled the belief in UFOs. Yeah, that's undoubtedly true. Yeah. The classified programs have fueled that belief and the idea that the government is hiding something because it often has been hiding something. Because it's had classified programs, which it's not wanted to reveal or classified investigations into UFOs. And so all of that has fueled this belief, which has kind of pervaded popular culture.

But does that explain everything? I don't know. You're the one with the Tim Fowler hat on. You tell me. I am. I am. One angle that I have considered as we've been talking in this episode is whether, if it's possible to imagine that what we're seeing today is actually in some ways a mirror image of the dynamic in the 50s and 60s, where are there platforms, technologies that our government is testing inside the Pentagon, inside the CIA, whatever, that we're seeing sort of bubble out into the public and that the government itself is, of course, they're not covering up alien life, but there's a reluctance to be public with really frontier technology, right?

I mean, the thing that feels different about this phase of the story is that so many of the sightings are, and some of the more credible sightings are actually from members of the military and the military establishment, right? So it does feel different in that sense. It also seems like we're getting, instead of necessarily a coverup, we're actually getting openness inside the Pentagon or the White House, or in this case,

John Brennan talking as a former cia director and openness to the reality that we're not able to explain what a lot of these are as opposed to trying to. Can i keep it quiet or explain this other bucket away with natural phenomena or something else to sort of cover up the fact that it's a. or something else to sort of cover up the fact that it's a highly classified program or some kind of advanced propulsion system that we, you know, has been worked on inside the Pentagon for years. So it does seem like that hypothesis that this is the US government sort of testing things that we haven't yet fielded militarily. I don't know if that holds as much water as it might have in the fifties and sixties. Yeah, I think that's right. Because I think when you look at that Obama quote that we started with, he is saying like, I went

and asked about this stuff, told me there's no Area 51, there's no reverse engineering, okay, but he says, there is stuff we can't explain. So I think there is an acknowledgement there. And it is almost consistently, it's maybe 5% the things which get reported, which they struggle to explain. And who knows what that could be. But by definition, it's anomalous, unidentified. So it's funny, isn't it?

Cause people often go, do you think UFOs exist? And I think the answer is yeah, they exist because there are unidentified flying objects or anomalous phenomena. They exist. It doesn't mean that they're aliens. They're two different things. You know, are they UFOs? Yeah.

Cause there's stuff which is unidentified. Are they little green men who are coming together and living among us? I'm more skeptical about that. I mean, the other angle to the hypothesis I raised earlier is, if I had been a random Nevadon in the 80s, when the Air Force is testing the F-117 Nighthawk, or you're starting to test the B-2 or something like that, and you saw that plane from the ground or something like that or from a commercial airliner, I guess similar to the reports of seeing the U-2 in the 50s, it would be so beyond your understanding of flight and the kind of aircraft that you would have seen,

sort of day to day or even out there on military bases. Like you'll be so beyond that you would make that jump to say, oh, this has to be extraterrestrial when in fact it is just an absolute kind of frontier technology that's being developed by the government. I guess today though, given that our own government is saying there's a bunch of these things we can't explain, if you assume it's a potentially a foreign adversary, I guess my question there is is it plausible that the Chinese or the Russians or somebody are so far ahead of us in a system of aerial propulsion that that we wouldn't have an understanding of it like is that is that a plausible hypothesis given where our military capabilities stand in our R&D stands relative to these other peer adversaries or near peer adversaries I'm not sure. It doesn't seem plausible to me, but I don't know.

No, I don't know either. I mean, there's bits of technology where they're ahead, like hypersonic missiles and things like that. But the idea that there's something so radically different, which they've got, which we don't understand. Yeah, I don't know whether you think it's aliens. Gordon was trying to end the series before we got to the only question that anyone's interested in is Gordon Carrera's opinion on aliens. I am. Well, see, the difference between us is I haven't been abducted, you know, as members of the Declassified Club now who've listened to the to the special bonus episode and your abduction. It's no wonder that I'm more skeptical when I haven't been through the kind of experience. I mean, that really painful experiences, it sounds like the evasive experiences you went through. But it means I'm unconvinced about the alien hypothesis.

But as I said, that doesn't mean I'm closed to it. But I'm yet to be convinced. And if they want, then they can subject me to the same abduction to prove it as they did to you. I guess we should say that maybe we should, you know, when we eventually do merch maybe we could do Tim Fall hats. Maybe that's what we should be doing. Oh we could, yeah. You could make them at home. Some secret squirrel out there could do a replica of the various hats that I've created over the course of this series. Go on David, what's your conclusion? What's your, well we know it because you've been there, literally. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not particularly convinced by the assumptions that underlie

a lot of the kind of, I guess, UAP community who look at these kind of unexplained events and say, well, it's got to be something from another planet. I'm not quite there yet. We'll check back in when we do another version of the series. Maybe we should do it every May, Gordon, or every June or something like that. We'll check back in when we do another version of this series. Maybe we should do it every May, Gordon, or every June or something like that. We'll come back and do an Alien series. That's where I'm at. So is the Mulder and Scully of this world. We're more Scully than Mulder, I think.

It's unfortunate, isn't it? The truth is out there. That's for sure. Whatever that means. I don't even know what that means. That's right. That's a good way. Yeah, we should end on that. Just end on that, end every broadcast, the truth is out there.

That's right. I guess we should close there, Gordon, and say thank you, dear listeners, for joining us on this interplanetary journey over four episodes to the world of the secret government programs that underlie so much of the modern lore around UFOs and UAPs. It has been fun, there's been tinfoil hats, there's been laughter, there's been headaches, there've been tears, and that is a wrap. But, and we should say Gordon, we've been saying throughout the series, of course, if you want early access to episodes, if you want a bunch of bonus stuff, go and join

the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com. Otherwise, we'll If you want early access to episodes, if you want a bunch of bonus stuff, go and join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com. Otherwise, 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 the rest is entertainment.com There's no cast this one the cost is so last minute for this It was nine days before principal photography was due to start two of the three main parts Quinton Hooper still hadn't been cast Nine days before so everyone's ready. Everyone's ready to go

you know the whole unit 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. Yeah, so put upon and like every man, but. Yeah, I mean, the other people considered were Paul Newman, Charlton Heston, Robert DeVal, Gene Hackman. 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 Shider is going to do. You just don't know.

So it's really important. Roy Shider 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. Charlton Heston eats sharks.

Again, another great title. Fill a 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. 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. And Charlton Heston, by the way, vowed never to work with Spielberg after that. From Wondery, this is The Spy Who. After that. 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 Wander E+.