WEAPONIZED with Jeremy Corbell & George Knapp - The Emergence Of AAWSAP - A Secretive UFO Investigation

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

Five years ago this week, former US Senate Majority leader Harry Reid arranged and hosted a closed-door meeting in Washington DC. The purpose of the get-together was a briefing about a then-unknown investigation of UFOs and related phenomena. The world had just learned about a Pentagon program dubbed AATIP, a UFO study headed by Lue Elizondo. But news accounts mangled the true story. Reid and colleagues had secured $22 million for a UFO study. The program was managed by the Defense Intelligence Agency using the acronym AAWSAP. In March 2018, Sen. Reid arranged for a meeting between the project manager for AAWSAP and journalist George Knapp, during which Dr. Lacatski outlined the operation and accomplishments of the largest government-funded UFO investigation in history. In this episode, Jeremy and George recall the events from five years ago and how the revelations from that day are still reverberating. GOT A TIP? Reach out to us at [e-mail] For breaking news, follow Corbell & Knapp on all social media. Extras and bonuses from the episode can be found at https://WeaponizedPodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Secrets, cover-ups, and strange phenomena. UFOs and ideas that challenge reality itself. All these mysteries, all this time. Are we ever going to get to the bottom of these? My name is George Knapp. I dig into news stories that others can't or won't. I'm Jeremy Corbell, and for some reason, people tell me things they probably shouldn't. And this is weaponized.

Yes, this is weaponized. Welcome back, everyone. Hey, Jeremy, how you doing? Hey, really good. So I figured today is sort of a red letter day on my calendar. I marked it. Something happened on this date five years ago today. In fact, right down to the hour that I wanted to share with our listeners. And I think it'd be pretty interesting. I've told you this story before. Yeah, this is one of those cool moments where you go on this like secret adventure and you're not exactly sure what you're going to learn, but you're let into some rooms and some secure places that typically journalists are not let into. And so I love this story because it shows people. kind of what your experience is as an investigative reporter? You know, I'd got to know a lot of the key people who sort of moved the ball down the field on the UFO-UAP issue, one of them being Senator Harry Reid, one of them being Robert Bigelow,

the Bigelow Aerospace Titan, Column Kelleher. And I came to hear this name, Dr. Jim Lakatsky, through the course of the OSAP study. I hear little bits and pieces about this guy, this amazing scientist who had run this program. in December of 2017, as everyone knows, the New York Times comes out with this big story. It has Senator Reid quoted in it. It has Robert Bigelow quoted in it. Lou Elizondo, the first time the public really got a look at him. And it was all about the ATEP program.

And somehow, as we know, some of the facts kind of got convoluted by the New York Times reporters. We can talk about the reasons why that happened. But the story was that Senator Reid had secured $22 million to fund. this secretive UAP UFO investigation and they called it atip. And I had to tell you, Jeremy, when I read that story, I mean, like everyone else, I was blown away, but I'd never heard the term ATIP before, never heard of it. So when it came out, I thought, well, that's a really great story and figuring it's the New York Times, it's got to be completely correct. Turns out it was not. So in the, in a weeks after that story came out, of course, the whole world went UFO crazy,

other media start covering and everything. But there were a couple of people, who are stewing about it. They were not happy about the story because it got some basic facts wrong. So I started hearing feedback from Reed, from Bigelow, and from other folks that there was another story to tell. And I was invited to go to Washington for a briefing, sort of a download about UFO investigations and programs. I didn't know who I was going to meet with. All I knew was I was invited by Senator Harry Reid to go there, paid my own way, got a hotel, I was ridiculous. I was being really furtive thinking I was going to be followed. So I changed hotels. I changed cabs. Actually, no one was following me around.

But I was just trying to be cautious because I wasn't quite sure who I was going to encounter there or what I was going to learn. In fact, I recorded part of it on this date five years ago as I'm walking from the hotel to this meeting. And here's a little clip of it. It is Sunday, March 18th, beautiful spring day here in downtown, Washington, D.C. flew in last night to attend a meeting today, a briefing, download about A-TIP, the history of A-Tip, how it relates to Skinwalker Ranch, what came before, what came after, expectations are high. Yeah, I actually remember when you told me that you can't tell me exactly what, but that you're going on a little trip and that you hope to learn some new information about the UFO study program.

So I remember this. Yeah, I thought I was going there to learn about A-Tip because that was the term. That was the acronym that had been used in New York Times. We'd reported the same thing. You know, we reported what the Times reported about this ATIP program that Lou Elizondo was involved in. And then I got to this meeting. It was with Harry Reid and I walked into the room. It was at the Ritz Carlton, in a conference room at the Ritz Carlton, which is where Senator Reed lived throughout his Senate career.

He lived at this plush hotel. He had arranged to get a conference room. I walk in and there's Senator Reid and one other guy sitting there. And he introduced me to Dr. James Lackatsky. And as I said, I'd heard this name before, little bits and pieces about this guy, this mysterious scientist who worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency and had been at the center of the UAP investigation, this $22 million program. But I'd never met him before. So he introduced himself to me. And then he started the download.

And boy, it just blew me away. And the story that he told was he went line through line, which is one of the things before I could get out of that room. And not that I wanted to leave. He went line through line through the New York Times story and told me where it was wrong and why he wanted to correct the record. Basically, the essential story was the $22 million, been incited as going to ATIP, didn't go to ATIP. It went to something called OssAP, Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program that had been initiated by Dr. Jim Lakatsky. A lot of folks in the years since then have discussed whether or not it was a genuine UFO investigation. because it delved into a lot of things seemingly not related to UFOs. Dr. Lackatsky told me beyond any

doubt that it was. The only recorded interview he's done is one that we recorded for KLAS and Mystery Wire, where I put that question to him about was it a UFO program? And here's what he said. Dr. Jim Likatsky, there has been considerable speculation fueled in part by statements from the DOD's spokesperson that the $22 million that was secured by Senator Reid and his colleague, in Congress to fund this program and study had nothing to do with UFOs. It was really just a study of future technologies, presumably by our adversaries. Can you address whether OSAP was first and foremost an investigation of UFO phenomena? Why isn't it made obvious in any of the documentation that's been made public so far?

It was completely UFO related. The reason you haven't seen the documentation is we used a statement of objectives format for the request for proposal. That is insufficient for anyone examining the contents of the contract. They must have the proposal. Now, within the proposal, and in this case, it was from Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, it's clearly mentioned among the topics proposed a worldwide database of advanced aerospace vehicles. There can be no ambiguity here. this was being proposed as a UFO project. Now, if you want to look at the tail end of the project, you'll find over 100 documents required to be reported to the Defense Intelligence Agency

that were UFO related, in part, of course. I mean, they were large, very large documents. And you also have technical studies, and you have that database, probably the largest UFO, database that exists in the world and is currently being used by the U.S. military. So, yes, it was completely a UFO project. One of the other things that's been confusing for the public over the last almost four years. The New York Times and other major media outlets reported that that $22 million went to ATIP, not to A-TIP. Can you clarify the difference between OssAP and A-TIP? Yes. The name A-Tip was a new.

nickname for ASAP for certain security reasons. But the difference between ASAP with the nickname ATIP at DIA and ATIP at the Pentagon is quite distinct. AASAP had $22 million of funding. It covered military and civilian UFOs, yielding a massive database. It also had a main contract and subcontracts. Now, ATIP in the Pentagon, as described in the articles, was basically zero funded, looked at specific military UFO encounters and very important ones because they had film and it had no contract. So getting back to how did this mix up occur, I think it's not deliberate. It's not due to authors, to television personalities, etc. It's the fact we were running not an official sap but a closed program. I can tell you for a fact that within my own office, they did not know except leadership that this contract was being run.

They had no idea whatsoever. Our security was that tight. So this distinction between ASAP and ATIP is still kind of muddled and it doesn't really have to be. And by By pointing out the differences between the two programs, this is not an attack on ATIP. ATIP was real. Lou Elizondo was in charge of it. It was a very different program with a different scope and a different focus from the OSAP program. What I learned that afternoon five years ago today absolutely blew me away. Jim Lakatsky described how big the parameters of OSAP were.

I knew some of it from interacting with Column Kelleher and Robert Bigelow, but had no idea how big it was. For example, he showed me the contracts that had been signed with the DIA between DIA and Bass. That later, month or so later, was the first document that I released to show, yeah, ASAP was real. There really was a contract between the DIA and Bigelow Aerospace, and here's the first page of it. Then he told me about the dirds. And again, I had seen one or two of these things, but had not seen them all. Those are the Defense Intelligence Reference documents, right?

Right. So I knew that Bass had undertaken something of this nature, but didn't realize how big it was and the types of papers that they had commissioned. But they had 38 papers. I think Hell put off physicist and former contractor for the CIA was in charge of sorting, plotting this out about what kinds of studies they would commission. They wanted to have a baseline for all these different topics related to UFOs that doesn't mention UFOs at all.

But for example, how do you track hypersonic objects through space? They commissioned a guy named Dr. William Colbreath, an engineering professor at UNLV, to write that paper. And he, the information came from open sources. They put together, here is the state of knowledge about hypersonics. Here's what we know today. And here is what we project out for the next 40 or 50 years where we might be. So that they have a baseline when they see an object traveling at hypersonic speeds, they know what humans are capable of doing and what were not.

There were 38 total of those papers. I was given them. I was given all of them on that day in this meeting with Dr. James Lackatsky. He had told me those papers were never meant to be classified. They were meant to be widely distributed in the defense intelligence arena. I think they were first published on J. Wicks. The reactions from the consumers, the people who read those reports, were all very positive. It gave them a baseline to understand where science and engineering was headed, metamaterials, for example.

Anyway, the public now knows about those reports, but they had no idea what was going on. I think only one of them had been released as of five years ago when I met with Dr. Likatsky. As we know, Jeremy, you and I were able to release a bunch more of them in the months after this meeting. I forget how many. I think I released more than a dozen, maybe 13, 14, 15 of those. Yeah, and that's excellent. It allows the public to kind of catch up a little bit with what it is that is being studied.

But I want to try to understand something better. You've made this distinction numerous times. And some people take it as an attack, you know, that the New York Times got it wrong. Well, that's just fact. They didn't get the whole story in there. But this is not an attack in any way against Lou Elizondo or against ATIP itself. That was a very heroic program, the idea that they would take the reins and focus in on military encounters with UFOs. So anybody in our audience that isn't quite following this all-sap program, I called it kind of like the mother program.

It encompassed a lot more. It was a big program, one of the biggest ever for UFOs that we know of publicly acknowledged in history. But the A-TIP program was, or call it a program or whatever words you want to describe it, it was a group of people that focused in on military encounters. And that is so cool. But for you, George, what is that distinction? why is it important that that was poorly reported or wasn't accurately reported and hasn't been corrected yet? Why for you is that important? Well, because the $22 million went to something much broader than that military program looking at military UFO cases only. It was a contract. It was a

full-time program. They had 50 full-time investigators hired by Bass to look at UFOs and related phenomena. Skinwalker Ranch was one focus of the program, but it, covered so much more. It was a lot of civilian cases. They ended up building the largest UFO database in the world that exists, that we know of anyway, with something like 200,000 cases. They went out and gathered up all kinds of different databases to incorporate into this massive data warehouse that was overseen by Dr. Jacques Valet. And it's an incredible accomplishment. And as Dr. Lakatsky has told us several times, and as Jay Stratton has confirmed, currently the UFO related agencies in the U.S. government do use this database on a regular basis. They can access it,

unlike a lot of the other material that was produced by Ossap for the DIA. So I think it's important to get the record right that the $22 million went to a program run by the DIA, overseen by the DIA versus the Pentagon-based program that was overseen by Lou Elizondo. The one-hand OSAP had a contract and a budget and 50 full-time employees. The ATIP program was much smaller, had a smaller focus. It didn't have an office. It was real. It was a real thing. Lou Elizondo wasn't charge of it. And as we've talked to Lou in person, Jeremy, it was an amazing thing. What he did is to resurrect some remnants of OSAP and keep it going after the money had been pulled. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet.

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Hi, I, let's get you a basket. And isn't it true like when a lot of people were trying to say that Lou Elizondo didn't work in the UFO programs, didn't have any official responsibility, some of the stuff that even our Pentagon put out, isn't it true that you were able to kind of reveal his name on one of the documents that you had exposed to the public? You helped clarify for the public that, no, Lou is legit, that he was part of these UFO programs. Can you tell me about that? Yeah. So toward about a year into the OSAP program, they had made so much progress. They had gathered so much information who had produced all kinds of gigantic

multi-hundred-page reports and were pretty happy with the direction it was going. They didn't want to be in a position where they had to scrap and fight every year for the funding that had been promised. It was supposed to be a five-year program with funding every year. But once this letter was written from Senator Harry Reid to an official in the Pentagon asking that they take it into a special access program status, SAP status. They figured once it got there, it would be secure and they wouldn't have to fight every year to maintain its funding. They'd also, it would be secure in the sense that they wouldn't have other snooping eyes within the defense establishment coming to see what they were up to and trying to intervene. Unfortunately, this letter that was written by Senator Reid

got leaked. At the bottom of the letter, there's a bigot list of all the people who were on the receiving end of this program. In this letter, it's the first time the A-Tip moniker was ever used. We know from our friend Jay Stratton, he told us that he made up that. He made that, he made that name up. He had a number of different kind of scenarios that, in different kinds of nicknames that he could use. And that's the one that stuck. And that's the one that got in this letter that was sent to the Pentagon, Department of Defense, and then was leaked. But at the bottom, those names, among the names, I blacked out a lot of them when we eventually released it in 2018. But after all the attacks on Lou Elizondo, I asked for permission to go ahead and release this letter and was given it.

And I revealed that Lou Elizondo was, in fact, on the list of people because he was right there. He was working on this program. It's horrible to see the nonsense. When someone like Lou does good work and he has to defend himself against nonsense, and can't quite prove it in the traditional sense, and then you're able to put out a document that shows Lou Elizondo's name on this list, dealing with the UFO program and just kind of removing that black out of his name, I thought was a revelation for people, Hey, I should maybe pay more attention to Lou and what he has to say. But to kind of back up for our listeners, when you're talking about Harry Reid creating this document asking for special access program status, I think that's really important to understand what that means, like what he was trying to do. So Harry Reid created essentially this budget and this program to fuel the investigation, the technological investigation into the UFO phenomenon, technology based.

That's what he did. But over some time, from what I understand, there was suspicion that there were other special access programs dealing with the UFO phenomenon that have not been yet public. They have not been made public. And somehow Harry knew this is how I understand it. So what they did was they were trying not only to secure funding, but they were also trying to secure the status they needed to possibly interact with these other technology programs that deal with UFOs, and then that would hopefully allow them to gain information that was

studied in those other programs to help the OSAP or ATIP. So that's how I understood it. Is that accurate? That is accurate. You know, we interviewed Harry Reid multiple times about this. To be honest, I don't think he knew the distinction between the nicknames, Ossap, ATIP. He doesn't memorize that kind of stuff. At the time, this was happening, he was a Senate Majority Leader.

He was involved in every single fight in Washington. He had really high priorities on his plate every single day. So once he got the money for the program, he wasn't memorizing what the moniker, what the acronym stood for. When the New York Times does a story and puts it out, $22 million went to A-Tip. Reed's not going to call that up and say, that's not correct. It was really called ASAP. He went along with it.

But when I reminded him of what he had done and what the original program was called, he understood the significance of it. I think it is important to be accurate here. And I don't fault the reporters at the New York Times for not being accurate. They went with what they could at the time. They didn't have information about OSAP when they wrote that story. They were able to confer, yes, it's $22 million. Harry Reid got the money. A contract went to Bigelow, and there was a secret program, not knowing that there was a much bigger story and a much bigger program that they ignored, that they didn't report on. I think they did what they could do. They tried to not confuse the audience. I also think there was probably reluctance to get into Skinwalker Ranch related material.

To tie that together with the Tick-Tac incident and the study of military UFO cases, I think they were worried that it might smear the credibility of the whole story if they included that. So they left it out. But the fact is, it was wrong. The 22 million didn't go to A-Tip, but went to Ossette. And that distinction, I think, is really important, which is that when you're focused just on military cases, you kind of leave a lot out. So I think that distinction is more than just a distinction in name. It's showing our public that this study went far beyond just these military close encounters

that could get uncomfortable for some people, but it is the truth. And so reporting that, making that distinction allows us to understand that the interest that our defense intelligence agency, as an example, had in the UFO topic, goes far outside of the realms of just lights in the sky or craft. And you see this in the dirds that were created, the defense intelligence reference documents, one of those documents deals with the negative biological effects of close proximity to UAP or UFOs. So when people come into close proximity to these machines, what seem to be machines, there are oftentimes these effects that occur on their bodies. And this is actually well documented. It's well researched. And we saw a taste of that in one of these,

what now public defense intelligence reference documents and people were blown away by some of that information that is highly detailed. There is a great deal more that has not been made public on that particular issue especially. One of the angles that was pursued by ASAP that's now some of it is public is that encounters with UFOs can lead to serious consequences, health, psychological consequences as well. And they studied, I forget what the total number is, but well over 100 cases of people who have had deleterious physical effects from being in close encounters. And this not only includes just people who see a UFO out in the farmland. It applies to pilots, say, aviators as well, military folks. You get too close to these things, there's an effect that happens for a lot of them.

Well, first of all, how do you notice? It sounds like you might have seen documents that are yet to be public. How very perceptive of you. As I said, that day in that room, I got the full lowdown. It went on for hours. And they showed me. me the full scope of what OSAP had done. Again, astonishing. I mean, a lot of these are civilian cases. There was a working relationship with Mufon where Mufon would feed intriguing incidents and cases to Bass, and then Bass would pick the best ones and go out and investigate them. And there are reports that are written on these things that are extensive. There is a report on the Tick-Tac. The very first case investigated by Ossap, by Bass, was the Tick-Tick-T-T-T-T-T-Nmitz incident. You know,

and I broke that story long before the New York Times reported on it, but there is a report that I was shown that day, five years ago today. It's the first real investigation of the Tick-Tac incident, and it is 13 pages long. And in the months after my meeting in D.C., I made that stuff public. We now know the guy who wrote it was a Navy guy named Jay Stratton, who ended up creating and running the UAP Task Force a few years later. So it sounds to me, if I'm very perceptive, it sounds to me like you have some of some of the documents and reports from the OSAP program. Is that fair to say? I'll say it's fair to say that I've seen it. I don't want to say that I've got it. But yeah,

there is a, so I had that report that we made public in the spring of 2018. And I think it added a lot of fuel to the fire in terms of having details about the Tick-TAC incident and how deep the investigation went back then. There was a subsequent investigation that was a report that was produced by ASAP, that's a couple hundred pages long. That has never seen the light a day, that I hope will become public. The agreement that I had is I was given access to this material, some of the material, and I could see others, but I couldn't just wholesale just release all of it. I had to have permission for which pieces get released and when. So the DIRDS came out, the contract came out, the Tick-Tac report came out, and there were a lot of other things that we've reported since then.

And they, you know, this database itself is a monumental undertaking. But the reports that were produced by OSAP after the dirds were done are absolutely mind-boggling. They're deep dives into particular phenomena and cases, cases that the public has not heard. Cases that involve military personnel, but also quite a few that involve civilian personnel, the health effects that you mentioned a minute ago, foreign governments. They get files from foreign governments. They had a deal with the Brazilian Air Force. They got all of the Kolaris incident reports, medical effects, encounters with UFOs,

some pretty drastic examples of what the interaction between civilians and UFOs can lead to. And then there was the Russian material. They got my material that I obtained in Russia 30 years ago this year. They put a team of Russian translators on it, re-translated the documents that I had brought back, and then did some analysis on how the structure. of the Russian UFO investigation, how it really laid out, stuff that I could not understand, a lot more detail and analysis of what that Russian UAP program was. And that program actually was one of the impetus for the OSAP program.

The fact that the Russians have been studying this became an argument in favor of the $22 million being spent for a UFO program here in the U.S. I hope that that will be, I'll be able to release the Russian material at some point from OSAP, it's not really clear what I'm allowed to make public. But after having this download from Jim Likatsky that day, it was very clear to me this was a real program. It produced real stuff. And 95% of what it produced, the public has not yet seen. It's still sitting there. Yeah, I want to tell our audience a little bit about your unique filing system that you have for these documents. When you obtain certain things, you need to, or we both need to really take our time. Oftentimes, it's just

vetting it. But then also, as journalists, it's the responsibility to make sure that what you're releasing is not going to be damaging in any way to national security. So a couple weeks ago, when we released the Reaper drone footage designated UAP or UFO by our Air Force, when we released those images, we really took our time to make sure this would not be damaging in any way to national security. So when you're talking about these documents, you have this very unique filing system where sometimes you'll have something in your hand. And I distinctly remember this time we were at a place called the Pepper Mill, which is this cool little restaurant in Las Vegas, a place where George and I like to go and have a bite or a beer and we'll meet up there. It's a really unique

place. It looks like a mothership from the fourth dimension with pink and purple lights. It's just a cool place to go. So we've been in there. And at one point, we walked out of there and you could have sworn you had something in your hand before we left. And then you did. didn't after. We went through this absolute crazy moment where we went up to security in there and we're looking, did somebody take it off of the table? What's going on? Turns out it was uniquely filed underneath the front seat of your car. Is that correct information? It is correct. And I believe that maybe you did that somehow, just to mess with me and to send me into a panic. But there was a moment of panic there. It's this material is not classified. It's not going to reveal any deep,

dark secrets, but boy, I was really scared that I had let it out of my grip out of my hands. And there was a lot of shuffling going on right there in the aftermath of that, right? Yeah, I couldn't believe they let me up into the security place to like film their recordings so we could review the tapes. That was pretty funny. I must have been very compelling that day. But what was interesting is, although these are not, you know, state secrets and not classified documents, they were the first time when I believe both of us are wrapping our heads around.

First time I was wrapping my head around the OSAT, the program itself, the scope of that program, even the term, the name itself, you weren't sure if it was appropriate to say at the time, Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program. You didn't even know at that time if that was appropriate to report. We've learned so much since then, but just an awesome amount of information that I really do hope that you are able as a journalist to put out into the public realm so people can see these individual cases and what a cool program it was. Yeah, you'll recall this same month, five years ago, you and I made a trip to Skinwalker Ranch with Matt Adams and with Robbie Williams to work on the

film. And then at the end of that trip, we come back and you interviewed me in the parking lot of KLASTV, in which I said something kind of cryptic, hey, there's something coming. It's coming real soon. Explosive stuff is coming out of it. Something's going on right now. Can you talk about that? If everything goes as planned, I think we are on the eve. of something momentous that will change the on a tectonic level the UFO subject. It's going to be really big. I think it changes the tone of how other media would treat the UFO topic from here on out. I hope so anyway. And it's going to reveal some things that have been going on for a long time. Government involvement in studying the phenomenon itself.

Yeah, it's beyond just lights in the sky or radar returns. They've been investigating, and looking into associated phenomena, things that occur in proximity with what we call UFOs, things that you would think the government would find too far out. Well, any of the fingers to be pointing toward Skinwalker Ranch. What was coming was the New York Times story, is that we knew that it was happening, and they were going to break open this tale about this secret UFO investigation. And I think you also, then a day or so later interviewed me inside KLAS. I'm wearing this blue suit and you referenced the name.

And we had to bleep it out for your film. That's right. We really wanted the public to know about this, but it was a little premature because we didn't know the sensitivities. So you were real, you know, hesitant to actually put that on record. So I actually, for the first time ever, and one of my films had to really bleep out like something I wanted to put in. I want to go back to talk about Jim Lakatsky a little bit because he's sort of still a mystery man in this whole picture. He is not out doing a bunch of interviews. In fact, he's only done one on-camera interview that the public has seen, I should point out.

That's right. Only one. That was with us at KLAS and Mystery Wire, where I asked him those questions about OSAP and whether or not it was a UFO program. So he was a 20 years, he was one of the DIA's top rocket scientists, literally a rocket scientist who studied enemy rockets, enemy rocket technology, what kinds of missiles were being developed around the world. In 2005 or six, he read Hunt for the Skinwell. the book that Column Keller and I had written, and he became really intrigued by it, shared it with some of his colleagues,

one of whom was Jay Stratton at DIA. They thought that maybe there was a reason for the DIA to take a harder look at Skinwalker Ranch, that there had been enough activity of unusual phenomena at the ranch, what appeared to be holes in the sky with craft coming in and out, that there might be a legitimate national security issue there. Dr. Lekatsky sought out Robert Bigelow to ask for permission to go to the ranch, flew out to Las Vegas. Bigelow took him to the property. Dr. Lekatsky, within a couple of minutes of being on the ranch,

had a very clear example of the kinds of phenomena that pop up from time to time. An incident that made itself very clear to him. It seemed to be a message designed to impress him. It was something that nobody else could see. Robert Bigelow talked about this incident with us in an interview on Mystery Wire. Here's a little clip for his memories of that visit to the ranch with Jim Lackatsky. We were probably on property, George, all together, maybe 45 minutes, an hour at the very most. And he had a customized exhibition for him by the phenomena. We go inside the manager's house, which was Terry Sherman's house, and now it was Gene Richards' house, and our new managers. We go in there, and we sit at their little dining room, off the living room, in the store.

small house and there's a kitchen over here too. And so we're sitting north, south, east, west, around the table. And so the visits over and we'll get back on the plane and he says to me, he says, when we were sitting there at the dining room, did you see anything? No, I hadn't seen anything, I told him. It's okay. Finally, after a while, he says, well, I saw something. Oh. Well, Well, gradually, over days, he's loosening up and telling me about what it is that he saw. Well, he saw something that was elevated off the floor, wasn't supported by anything, and it was rotating, and it was tubular. And I got this over a period of time, because he wouldn't fess up and talk about it,

like it was a state's friggin secret, you know? Well, hell, you know, just an observation on the ranch, big deal. Just, you know, we all have these things. Tell us what's going on, you know. But he kept it very close to his vest for quite a long time, for days and days, weeks. And so finally, it was an object that wasn't supported by anything. It was floating in the air. It was in the kitchen.

Yeah. Which was right behind his line of sight. And it was tubular. And there was a rock group that, had an album called tubular bells yeah mike oldfield yeah okay and yeah and so that was on the cover apparently and he said that's the closest thing i can come to as to what the structure of this look like so it was it was george he was there for 45 minutes this thing was customized for him it decided it wanted him to see something yeah exactly i mean we couldn't have done anything to be more impactful if we

If we had tried to concoct something up, there's nothing that could have been more impactful for him to be able to see this at close range. This was probably like, oh, maybe 11 feet from him, you know, 10, 12 feet away at the most so close. So did he pitch you the idea of a study of a program then, or did he go back to Washington and talk to Harry Reid and then proceed from there? What's the process there? It was, it evolved. So you're telling me about Jim Lekatsky, and he is not a real public person yet and that he only did one interview with you that people know about, right? We might have recorded a lot more to get that stuff documented.

But at this point, the public's heard one major interview or even a small interview with him. So he is actually a rocket scientist, a smart guy who worked at DIA for how many years? Well, 20 years, I believe, is what he told us. He's a brilliant man. He has two PhDs. was an absolutely vital employee at DIA, had a great reputation there, and then he got involved in the UFO and UAP issues. And of course, you know what comes with the territory is getting slimed. You know, so there are attempts already underway to slime him before he really even comes out and tells

everything of what he knows. We worked on a book project. After I met him there at D.C. five years ago today, in the subsequent months, we had a lot of interaction about what can or can't be released. and he would generally give me a thumbs up and go along with it. Didn't want it all released wholesale because, you know, some of it was very sensitive. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. No one goes to Hank's for his spreadsheets.

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Likatsky grew frustrated. He had worked really hard on this program, was proud of the work they had done, and yet the media reports, even to this day, continued to blur the lines about who did what and where the money was spent, what was accomplished. So I think he's proud of the work. He wanted to set the record straight. And so we decided to write a book. It took 14 months after the manuscript was submitted, 14 months for the Pentagon to go ahead and approve the release of that material. They made us take a lot of stuff out, mostly dealt with names. It's also one of the difficulties in releasing some of the materials and the reports that OSAP put together is a lot of is very sensitive in terms of personal information, health information. They're real names of people in the documents, real names of witnesses who've seen strange

phenomena, but the witnesses gave those statements on the condition that their names not be attached, that not be made public. And when you're dealing with health consequences of encounters with UFOs, it's very personal. Some of this information is very personal, releasing it, ultimately making that stuff public. It has to be cleansed. It has to be scrubbed so that it does not violate privacy. And it doesn't violate the agreements that DIA made. I think right now we are hoping that there's a way to release a lot more from what the OSAP program produced. Also, behind the scenes stuff about how the program rose and how it fell.

And I'm confident a lot more will come out over time. But it's been a slog to try to get all that material released as it was a slog to get the book published and pass the Pentagon censors. Yeah. So there was a lot of stuff that they had to review to make sure it didn't breach privacy or anything. But they also did remove other things that weren't just names and that kind of thing. Is that correct?

That's true. Yeah. There were some real sensitivities. We're kind of surprised by some of the stuff that got through because there is a real big hint in there in the book we wrote about where as you were referring to earlier there was an attempt by the ASAP folks they started getting clues that there was a bigger program that someone had the technology they had recovered discs metamaterials things of that sort someone had this stuff had it stashed that was another reason for creating the SAP so that they could gain access

to those other programs because SAP status would be more secure and as we report in the book Skinwalkers at the Pentagon when they went and knocked on doors at the Department of Defense and other places inside the federal government where they thought this stuff might be housed, the door was slammed in their faces. It was pretty clear that no one wanted to answer questions, even to a program that was run by the DIA. No one wanted to let them in and see the goodies. That's still something that needs to be overcome. This is a part that I really want to get into to not be vague and be very precise. So in your book, when I have talked with Dr. Kelleher and you and Jim Lackatsky and we've talked about it,

page 153 in your book keeps coming up. And I just want to really understand that. Why is that page so important? Because I think it relates to this idea that there are other UFO programs being studied by other agencies. They were denied access. So what is it about page 153 in your book? It's not crystal clear, but there's enough information there that people should be. be able to connect the dots, is that the OSAP program managers went hat in hand to some of the agencies that they felt knew the real story on the goodies, where this stuff was stashed. They thought because they were working with DIA, that they could gain access to it, that with the backing of Senator Reid and Stevens and Inouye and a budget, that they could go ahead and

break through that barrier and get to see it. You'll recall in that first New York Times story, they reported that Bigelow Aerospace had undergone significant structural changes so that it would be secure enough to accept some of those materials. Robert Bigelow has made it clear they never got any of that stuff, but they were ready for it. They expected it. It's kind of that rope-dope thing that a lot of filmmakers have been promised over the years. Oh, we'll show you the footage, and then they yank back and don't fulfill the promise. But this is different because what you're saying is that Robert Bigelow, he retrofitted Bigelow Aerospace, physically retrofitted it. in order to be able to hold under the right classification and security process

actual physical materials related to UFOs. That's what you're saying. That's what I'm saying. We can assume some things that are unspoken there is that there were briefings, that people sat in on briefings that indicated that such materials, such technology does exist, is being held and studied by certain aerospace companies, defense contractors, and that they really hope that they were going to get some pieces of it, or at least some parts of that material, so that they could study them as well in a secure

location. That's a big deal. It is a big deal. It is a big deal. I mean, to the best of my knowledge, we are talking about pieces of UAP technology, let it be the skin of a craft, let it be a part of the system. That alone is shocking when it really dawns on you that this is people are being briefed on this. that they're retrofitting facilities, that they have a contract to, and they want to try to reverse engineer this stuff, and that they're trying to get access to these programs. But to the best of my knowledge, we're also talking about whole craft. And that's not something that one person has said.

It's not something two people have said. That's something that seems to be in the basis of reality is the best way to say it. Now, if that is the case, and if it is the case that we have not only fragments of UFOs, but actual craft. This brings me back to what Bob Lazar reported to you in Las Vegas in 1989. It's like a full circle here of actual physical hardware, whole craft being attempted on to be reverse engineered. To the best of my knowledge, that's the case. And there's a lot of things that point to that. One of the things I want to talk to you about is the Wilson Davis memo. You're talking about Senator Reid trying to establish special access program status in order to collaborate with

other aerospace companies and also defense contractors that have obtained the rights to study some of these non-terrestrial technologies is what they say. Well, if we believe the Wilson Davis memo, which I think you and I are both very clear that that conversation happened exactly like described in the Wilson memo. And this was way before it got submitted all the way into Congress on the congressional record, if you remember that. The Wilson memo got submitted by Representative Gallagher. So what we learned from that document is that there appears to be some sort of process where people can hold back or hide the information that is being requested from at the time it was the J2. So Admiral Wilson was the top dog having oversight over all,

and actually management of all the special access programs. This is a guy, Admiral Wilson, that said he would deny it if this information ever came out, which he did do is he denied this to be true. But he did have that conversation, and he did in the rank that he had as J2, which is only one ever at any given time, they're supposed to have management over the special access programs.

So he thought, well, if I don't know about it, how can I have management over it? So he went in to ask at one of these companies. And that's up for debate which company I think people can choose. Maybe it was TRW. Not sure. But whatever company he went in to talk with, they straight up said, we call ourselves a watch committee.

You do not have authority that there is a very stringent set of rules that would require us to show what technologies we're working on, that we've almost been outed once before through an audit, through an accounting thing, and we don't want that to repeat. And he was furious. This is a person who must have access and oversight over these types of programs or there's no accountability. So he was furious. And they basically threatened to destroy his career. So this is something we see a lot. When things are really tucked away, as you say, the goodies, when they're tucked away and certain people have control over them, within private industry, nonetheless, less as a way to create cover for FOIA requests and whatnot, and maybe for funding as well,

they're not given access. And that is a huge problem to not have congressional oversight over the way our money is being spent, especially something this explosive when it comes to non-terrestrial craft. The Wilson Davis memo is legit. It really happened. I remember hearing bits and pieces about it. I did not see the memo back then, but I did hear about that meeting because of friendships I had with Bigelow and the people who worked for him at Nids.

And it happened at a time after NIDS was basically shut down and was before the Ossap and Bass program got started. And in between that period, Eric Davis, Dr. Eric Davis, who'd worked for Bigelow at Nids and worked with Howe put off for a number of years, had this meeting with Wilson. And it's real. It really did happen. You know, the only reason I think that memo came out is because of the death of Dr. Edgar Mitchell.

Dr. Mitchell had been on the Science Advisory Board of Nids. He got access to a lot of the stuff that was passed around among those people. After he died, his papers suddenly became available to a lot of other people and it leaked out. It's real. It really happened back then in real time. And it does suggest that there are these programs so sensitive that the guy who's in charge of special access programs, even he can't get into him. There's a lesson there and how sensitive they are.

AOSAP learned that lesson all over again. As they get bits and pieces following the trail of breadcrumbs and where they think this material might be stashed, they go to knock on the door to ask if they're let in and the door is slammed in their face. It's real. And I hope that these whistleblowers who have now come forward to Congress, you and I know some of them, what they've been telling members of Congress behind closed doors, that they will be able to testify in a public arena and tell what they know where this stuff is and how the public should be able to access it.

I don't know that that will happen, do you? I do know that there are more hearings coming. I mean, we were all told that by a congressperson that was on a news show with me. So if we believe that to be true, then there will be more hearings. What was really shocking about it was actually congressperson, Bershett, what he said on that newscast was that there are pilots being denied the right to speak in these congressional hearings. And that to me was unbelievable, the idea that they could be stopped from talking. So I know that there are in the works right now new congressional hearings that will have witnesses,

that will have witnesses like people, hopefully someone like Commander David Fravor on the record, Commander Chad Underwood, who filmed the TikTok UFO, Lieutenant Ryan Graves. Those are some great people that the public already knows about. But there's a lot of people the public doesn't know about. Now, your question that you threw at me, which is, do I think that these people that we know about these actual UFO whistleblowers from inside of government who know specifically some of these storage locations of specific types of machinery to quote Robert Bigelow, he called it in one of your interviews, by the way. He didn't say pieces. He didn't say parts. He didn't say metamaterials.

He said machinery, which I thought was really interesting. So are these people going to be able to publicly put? put their story out in a congressional setting, don't know. Some of this stuff is highly classified, and that's why they have to do these briefings in classified settings. However, I do know that one way or the other, their stories are gonna come out

because that's the job of journalists and reporters. So I can tell you for sure, that information will be public to the highest degree that it can be. Is that going to be in a setting of Congress and this sort of thing, public hearings? don't know, would hope so. If it is not released in a confirmable way, if these whistleblowers just come out and make

these allegations and no one backs them up, like Congress doesn't say, yeah, they told us that in a classified briefing, we think it's true. If they are restricted on what they can say about this information when the time comes, if these whistleblowers go public, then we're going to see those whistleblowers raked over the coals by the same cast of characters who attack every UFO case and UAP incident that comes out who are now attacking Jay Stratton and Travis Taylor on a daily basis, whose job it seems to be is to debunk and smear and attack anyone who comes out with information. It's going to take a lot of courage for these whistleblower folks to go ahead and put their names attached to these stories.

But we know their basic story. What they've told members of Congress, what they've told us, the material is real. It's out there. What happens if they make those allegations in public and nobody follows up on it. Well, they're going to be slimed is what's going to happen. I think that's to be expected. There's people that don't want it to be true, even though it is true. And there's also people that really make a hard effort to try to absolutely deteriorate any substantive truth by picking apart things to a point of nonsense. You know, like we see with the 2019 events. I mean, we brought forward witnesses, videos, all sorts of stuff. And there were so many of these unknown objects, these units, as we'll call them, you know, flying over these ships.

We even have the people observing the vast strait for our military saying there were no launches and no lands. Yet there's still this huge effort to completely dismiss everything as visual artifacts rather than looking at the evidence and the truth. So you can just, you know, sure as rain, you're going to expect that there's going to be smear campaigns on anybody that pops their head up above the sand in any way. We saw that with Lazar. We see that. moving forward with anybody that comes up and talks about this stuff. But, you know, people just got to have thick skin. They just got to allow people to, I would say, chop up their words and put them in wrong places. I mean, they do crazy stuff. But ultimately, the story will be told and time itself is on the

side of truth. You see it every day when the Department of Defense gets asked about this case or that case, the word games that are played, the word salad, the kinds of things that have been used to attack Lou Elizondo all these years later. No, A-Tip wasn't real. He had no managerial responsibilities, etc. There's fuzzy enough language in there that they're happy to pounce on it and allow people and encourage people to go ahead and slime folks who've come forward. He's still being slime to this day. There are people arguing about whether A-Tip existed and whether he had anything to do with it. We also know they play games with the videos and images that you and I have released. We reported this Baghdad Phantom a couple of weeks ago.

And, of course, we tell in that story. The Pentagon doesn't have this. It was stopped. The Air Force stopped it. They didn't send it up the chain. Arrow didn't get it. People call up Susan Goff and try to get a comment from her. And she says, I can't confirm that.

Of course not. She's never seen it before. I'm sure she's seen it by now. The other games that are played, the Reaper drone, that recorded those images. Oh, we can't release this stuff. It's just too sensitive. until this past week when a Russian warplane sprays fuel on a different Reaper drone, disables it, and then suddenly the Pentagon finds it can release that kind of material.

It's a double standard, right? Absolutely. It's, yeah, from an active conflict zone, they're releasing footage from a Reaper drone. It's almost ironic that that came out just a week after or whatever. There are a couple weeks after we release the Baghdad Phantom UFO imagery. So why is that important, though? why is that double standard kind of important? So on one side, we're saying, look, you know, flight safety is really important. We have a Russian plane that's messing with a Reaper drone.

We're going to put out that footage. But UAPs, UFOs, from a very core basic level, and this is something that Lieutenant Ryan Graves talks about. It is a flight safety issue because of near miss and that sort of thing. So already we have a known issue where there needs to be transparency, but nothing. I mean, just silence, like they're not going to acknowledge or put that information out because it's too sensitive dealing with UFOs. It is a complete double standard. It's side talk. It's absolute. It's wrong. It's wrong. And so it takes journalists to put out information, hoping to get a response to kind of mend the way the information is put out. And I'll tell you this too. There is more coming out this year on the show. We're going to be talking about shootdown attempts and we're going to be

showing imagery that has to do with these shoot-down attempts of unknowns. And I really hope that the offices that deal with the public, like Susan Go's office, you know, whoever's whispering in her ear, unless she's acting on her own, which would, it is at this point to me to say things that aren't true. I mean, that should be illegal if it's not illegal. I know it's a common practice sometimes. But we're now at a point where it's provable that it's incorrect information. She did a slime job, as you said, on Lou Elizondo, continued that. We now know that he did work in the capacities that he said. So hopefully we can hold people accountable.

But that discrepancy between what is put out, like that Russian fighter, putting all that jet fuel on that Reaper drone to disable it, there was a reason they put that out. There must have been beneficial for them to utilize that. Why would they put it out? So the choices of what's being put out is really interesting to me. Yeah, if they could release that, then they should be able to release the, you. actual video or footage from that thermal thing on the Reaper that was flying over Baghdad. Why not? It's not going to reveal any deep, dark secrets to the Russians don't know. We have thermal imagery on Reapers or what? Why can't they?

Yeah, they can. All new drinks are now at McDonald's with refreshers like the strawberry watermelon refresher and the mango pineapple refresher with popping boba to crafted sodas like the Spriteberry berry blast with berry flavors and cold foam. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all. Now at McDonald's. Refreshers contain caffeine. Copyright 2026, the Coca-Cola Company. Sprite is a registered trademark of the Coca-Cola Company. I know that five years ago today, right about this time, I was getting in a cab, get ready to go to go to the airport and fly back to Las Vegas. And my head was throbbing because Jim Lackatsky, all this stuff that he had told me and that Senator Reid had confirmed sitting there in that room

hours of the download on the OSAP program, that there are lessons to be learned from the OSAP experience, of course. We're now seeing Congress members demanding that Arrow have an actual budget, that it'd hire some people, that three staffers is not enough manpower to get the job done, to get their heads around the UAP, UFO issues. So I hope that they're going to get some actual money, that they'll be able to hire enough staff to take on the kinds of things that AOSAP did. Ossap has been slimed by people who really have no idea what the program accomplished, but I think it serves as a model for what Arrow should and could become.

You can't just focus on military encounters and expect to solve this mystery. You have to follow the evidence where it leads. In the case of Ossap, they looked at the health consequences of people who become in context of encountered UFOs. They're serious. They're real. Arrow has said, look, we're going to have to follow the evidence to look at human consequences, health effects of UFO encounters.

And if they do that, if they stick to that, they're going to have to go down the path that OSAP followed to follow the evidence where it leads. There are health effects. There are psychological effects. I hope that they're going to be courageous enough to go ahead and expand the bounds of what that program is and what it could be because they're not going to get answers unless they look at the big picture. There was an exaggeration that kind of made its way around the internet. You know, a major media personality person said something like there was a hundred fatalities

associated with close proximity to UFO. That was incorrect information. There was a lot of cases that dealt with biological physiological damage associated with UAP and UFO in close proximity to them. And to the point, I mean, I think it's very obvious now. Dr. Gary Nolan was one of the prime people who was studying this. And it is my knowledge that a lot of that information was directly related to the UFO phenomenon, that there was, and they did trace over a long periods of time, what those damages were to the physical body. But it wasn't, from what I understand, 100 people that were murdered by close proximity to UFOs. No, that's, that never happened. That's not true. It's unfortunate that came out because it gives the debunkers a victory that can easily slime that,

and dismiss it. And I think it damages the overall credibility of what really did happen. That kind of research is still underway. Osap kicked it off. The papers that have been written about that and the OSAP documents that have not been made public are pretty persuasive and compelling. And hopefully later this year, some of that additional material can be released. But ASAP did a great job if it had been allowed to continue beyond the 27 months. If it had been allowed to go, five years, which was the original plan, we might have some answers by now. If they had been knocked at the door and not have the door slammed in their face, they might have gained access to that special access programs, the goodies, the meta materials, the craft, maybe bodies. And we could have some answers. But for now, we have to be patient, I guess. I do hope like you that we have a really robust program that does come with Arrow and that it does take this issue in the light in the way that it can be, but I know for sure as journalists that we are constantly obtaining information

and imagery and videos and documents. So I know for sure that there are cases that over military facilities, by the way, that have been hidden from all processes after the event itself. I mean, literally hidden. And once as journalists, you and I find out about them, we can dig into them, we can explore, and we can pass that information along. And that is happening. There's going to be a case that you and I reveal on this show that is pretty astounding. My point is that no matter what is done within government, journalists and reporters and people that are on this beat and interested in this, we're gonna move the ball forward.

Come hell or high water, there's no stopping it because people are frustrated and they continue to come to us. Well, I hope people appreciate this stroll down memory lane. Five years ago today, my mind was blown, going to DC to meet with Harry Reid and Dr. Jim Lackatsky, first time ever talked to him in person. That encounter that day has allowed us to more fully explain what really went on with these secret UAP, UFO-related studies. I hope that Arrow is paying attention. I hope that they will use ASAP as a model for what they're going to have to do to

really get their heads around the big questions. Another anniversary that's looming for us, 30 years ago next month, 30 years ago in April, I made the first trip to Russia. And we brought back a a bounty of documents. Many of those documents were analyzed by ASAP. There's a really cool report that will be made public at some point. But you and I can explore some of the information that I brought back and some of the interviews we got sometime, maybe the next month or so. Absolutely. I'm excited about that. I think that's really important. You know, the big picture. We learned more about UFO programs here in the United States from Russian documents than we have from our own government. That's something you said to me a bunch. So I think it's going to be really important

for people to be able to understand and embrace that information 30 years after you coming back with it because it really sets the tone for what's happening now. There are just certain facts. And the facts are our government did not stop studying UFOs in 1969 with Project Blue Book. That was a lie in that there has been constant studies in every branch of our military industrial complex. There has been study programs. So that's going to be an interesting light to shine on the Russian documents in this show. People may not realize this if they've been watching weaponized so far in the episodes that we put out. But you and I do have interests beyond UFOs, UAP. We're interested in culture and entertainment and movies and art and things of that sort.

And in the future, we're going to be veering off into talking to some interesting people that have nothing to do with this particular subject, right? Yeah, but all roads lead to UFOs, and you know that. Everybody's got a UFO story. So even when we're dealing with things like, you know, philosophy or movies, or this sort of thing, there's always that connection that kind of binds our interests together. So, yeah, it's going to be fun. I continue to enjoy these conversations.

I'm glad that we can let people in to hear kind of some of the stuff that we would normally just talk about. But, yeah, five years to the day of your kind of secret trip out to learn more about UFOs in Washington. Really cool. Thanks for sharing that story, man. All right. Talk to you soon. Never has so few had so much to tell but could say so little. Following this in a weaponized presentation of Jeremy Corbelle, George Knapp, Dark Course Entertainment, and Cadence 13 Studios.

Available now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your shows.