All language subtitles for UFO.2021.S01E02.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-WELP_Track04

eerie music

[man] This is the video,
it's called the Kumburgaz video,

which is a close-up of a craft.

So close that you can see
the occupants.

It is 100% real,

and I was there
as that was filmed.

[camera shutter clicking]

[newsman] The Pentagon
now confirms the existence

of a secretive UFO program
investigating reports

of unidentified flying objects.

[Diana Walsh Pasulka]
I remember, when I woke up

the day it came out,
it was a bombshell, right?

That's what it was.

[John Greenewald Jr.]
This is it.

This is when the government and
the military is gonna come out

and reveal the truth
behind what these UFOs are.

[man] I believe,
as do the other folks

that were on the flight,
that it was something

not from this world.

[Leslie Kean]
The question,

"Do you believe in UFOs?"

really doesn't make any sense.

There's no issue
of belief there.

-[woman] Those are aliens!
-[man] Look, they're stopping.

[woman] Literally, what
the actual [bleep] is going on?

[Pasulka] You have people
experiencing something

that they
don't quite understand.

[man over radio]
My gosh! Look at that thing!

[whooshing]

[Kevin Day]
When this whole thing started,

I tried to tell people about it.

I was really frustrated,
because no one seemed to care.

This thing
almost killed me, man.

pulsing, dramatic music

[wind whistling softly]

pulsing, suspenseful music

[George Knapp]
The UFO world's just crazy.

Everybody has their own turf.

[door bell tinkles]

I chose to move to Las Vegas
on a coin flip.

Just flat-out luck
that I happened to be

in the right place
at the right time

and got to meet
the right people.

Investigators say they're
having a tough time identifying

the four people killed in
a plane crash in Arizona today,

because there
isn't much left to ID.

I've done thousands
and thousands of stories.

In Mississippi,
a man says he's killed

at least 60 other people

and wants to be given
the death penalty.

I've won two Peabodys.

[newsman] George Knapp has
the story for us.

Residents of the exclusive

Siena Village
Golf Course community

have got to be shaking
their heads in disbelief

right about now
because of a prostitution ring

that has allegedly
been operating

right under their noses.

But I will always be
the "UFO guy."

In some cases, it does appear

that various
government officials

have withheld information
about UFOs from the public.

Wherever I go--
I'm in a grocery store,

I'm in a restaurant,
I'm in a bar,

I'm standing at a urinal--

people want to come up
and talk to me about UFOs.

These days, the locals use
these old airstrips

to race dragsters
and the old hangars

as an industrial park.

But 42 years ago,
this is where it all began--

the birthplace of what some have
called the "Cosmic Watergate."

[Greenewald]
A key player

in this entire story
is a journalist by the name

of George Knapp.

His name now is really connected
to the AATIP story.

We've been working on this story
for a long time,

and we'll tell you
right up front

that it's going to be hard
to swallow at first.

George has contributed immensely
to the UFO field

for quite a few years.

That's because George
is able to gain access

to reports,
sometimes official documents,

-and key players.
-[Harry Reid] You know, George,

I'll have to look at this.

I have heard
about this exact story.

[Knapp] I will tell you this:
95% of it

is bullshit.

But the other five percent

is really interesting.

And if it's true,

it would be the biggest story
of all time.

If it is true.

If even a little bit of it
is true, it's gigantic.

The implications are enormous
for everyone.

[beeping]

[Mike Wallace] The Air Force
has said, time and time again,

"All but a small percentage
of these reports

of unidentified flying objects

have been definitely attributed
to natural phenomena

that are neither mysterious
nor dire."

End quotes.

That's the top
Air Force intelligence men

and scientists under contract
sent the secret documents

to the commanding general
of the Air Force,

saying that whatever these
things were, they were real.

And they have been spending
a lot of money

investigating flying saucers.

If they don't exist...

why the money, why do
the intelligence teams rush out

every time there's a sighting?

There was a white,
glowing object in the sky.

It might have been a spaceship,
it might not have been.

I would say, since it did appear

to approach us,
it might have been.

[man] It was the strangest thing
that I've ever seen.

By far,
the strangest I've ever seen

in a few years of reporting.

[woman]
I just saw the round front,

and I could see the light
on either side.

And then the red light
was sort of casting a glow

over the whole thing,
so it looked like...

a round disk.

I wasn't afraid.

I... I just wanted to stay there

and keep my eyes glued to it;
I couldn't leave.

[woman 2] And then it seemed
to just go together,

make a ball

and fly out into that field,

and it was a great big, huge,
yellow glow out there.

eerie, chiming music

-[Knapp] Hi.
-[waitress] Hi.

-Would you like some coffee?
-Some coffee? Coffee, please?

Yeah. Thanks.

I was a debate coach
in the Bay Area,

and I met these bartenders
from Las Vegas,

and they were the craziest
people I'd ever met.

upbeat, rhythmic music

They told me, "You know,

we know a guy in television
in Las Vegas.

You should go there.
You can break into television."

That was 1979.

I drove a cab
for a couple of months,

and I was terrible at it.

[horn honks]

All I knew was
where the airport was,

and I knew where the Strip was.

I had no idea

about the Nevada
nuclear test site.

Or the secret programs
that were out there.

I certainly had no idea

there was a place called
Area 51.

[camera shutter clicking]

I look at it, and I realize--

and I was cocky at the time--
what this field needs

is a good
investigative reporter.

I'll have this wrapped up in,
like, six months.

[newsman] Have UFOs
been given a fair shake

by science,
journalism and the government?

George Knapp joins us now
with part one

of the cover story series,
"UFOs: The Best Evidence."

I banged away at this story
for decades.

There is now a staggering amount
of information on this subject,

collected not by crackpots

but by respected, mainstream,
level-headed people.

We stopped
at Edwards Air Force Base

to record video
for a future project.

Edwards has
a distinct relationship

with its more mysterious cousin
in Nevada, Area 51.

And then, bam,
The New York Times

does this story--
it changed everything.

[newsman] A recent report
by The New York Times

unveiled the existence of
a real-life X-Files department.

The Pentagon tells us
the program received

more than $20 million dollars
for its work, which included

analyzing reports
from military pilots

of encounters
with unknown objects

that appear to defy
the laws of physics.

[Knapp] A couple of weeks
before the story came out,

I had heard it was gonna happen,
and, of course, by that point

I'd been sitting
on some of this information

for a number of years.

I go: Well,
why can't I break this story?

I've been sitting on this.

I've been, you know,

I've kept my word.

I want to do it.

So I get a call from...

Harry Reid.

He gently sort of let me know,
you know,

"You're not The New York Times."

[Greenewald]
There is a secret UFO program

inside the Department
of Defense--

on the front page
of The New York Times.

[Knapp] The New York Times
is not pro-UFO.

This is not something

they like to cover
on a regular basis.

If I do the story, it's just the
UFO reporter doing the story.

It would fall with a thud,

and nobody
would pay attention to it.

So I backed off.

"Yeah, go ahead."

We're still feeling

the reverberations.

There's now a report

that will be issued by the...

by the Pentagon,

uh, by the Secretary of Defense

and the Director
of National Intelligence.

I actually wanted
to get this information out

and declassify it
before I left office, but...

when that information
becomes declassified,

I'll be able to talk
a little bit more about that.

[Kean] The Department of Defense
has been studying UFOs

since 2007--
that's what the story was.

The actual article
was really based on things

I'd learned from the director
of the program and...

interviews that we did

with other players
involved with AATIP:

the Advanced Aerospace
Threat Identification Program.

[Knapp] I'm aware
that the organization

was up and running.

I didn't know
what the program was called.

I had never heard
the name AATIP,

and I didn't know
who Lue Elizondo was.

I knew there was somebody
who was working on this stuff.

[Greenewald]
Mr. Luis Elizondo

talked about running
a program that dealt with

unidentified aerial phenomena,
or UFOs.

The Pentagon
was interested in it,

they were investigating it,
and he was the guy that led it.

According to Mr. Luis Elizondo,
AAITIP looked at videos.

When a military pilot
saw something

that he couldn't explain,
AAITIP was gonna come aboard

and try and figure it out.

[Keen]
It was originally instigated

by the Defense
Intelligence Agency,

and Harry Reid,
the senator from Nevada,

was very instrumental
in setting it up.

[man]
You guys ready?

Yes, we're rolling.

[Reid] When I was asked
by a reporter

from The New York Times,

I said: I'm happy to do
an interview with you,

but I want some ground rules.

We're not gonna be talking
about little green men.

I will only talk
about scientific issues.

And I recognize that...

what I got started here
was kind of taking a chance.

But I think it's paid off.

[Hayes] The remarkable admission
by the Pentagon

came as a result of reporting
by The New York Times,

pretty august publication.

[Knapp]
This is not birds.

It's not somebody else's plane.

It's picked up on radar.
It's real.

Can you imagine

the steps they had to go through
to sell that story

to the editors about UFOs?

Tough sell.

[Kean] I don't think most people
realize what's involved

in putting together
a story like this.

[Greenewald] This was
one of the most exciting things

that had come out
in a long time.

The entire basis
of all of my research

up until that point

was proving
-that the U.
-S military

did have an interest in UFOs.

And this man,

and what he did,
was that smoking gun.

[Luis Elizondo]
For nearly the last decade,

I ran a sensitive aerospace
threat identification program

focusing on unidentified
aerial technologies.

It was in this position
I learned

that the phenomena...

is, indeed, real.

I was shown three videos

that had come
from the Department of Defense

and also the documents
that showed

that the videos were legitimate.

[Knapp] I've never said this
before in public,

but this report,

the executive summary
of the Tic Tac incident,

started at the Navy.

There was
an initial investigation

after the incident itself
back in 2004.

The commander
of that carrier strike force,

that carrier group,
didn't want to delay

going to the Persian Gulf,
so whatever information

was gathered back then
got tossed into a drawer

and closed,
and it was gonna be forgotten.

And then a couple years later,
some people in the Navy

renewed the investigation.

It bounced around

inside the Pentagon
and the intelligence community

and then ended up at AATIP.

tense, dramatic music

[Day]
I've been gravely concerned

about what happened for...

I guess 15 years ago this week,
2004.

And when it first happened,
I was

trying to tell people, you know?

My chain of command
and, uh, others.

But no one seemed
to really believe me,

and it really, really bugged me.

And it started manifesting
in nightmares.

[clears throat] I didn't know
what the hell to do, you know?

I wasn't really prepared
for that day.

Our command on USS Princeton.

We were
the air defense commander

for the Nimitz strike group.

Anything that flies,

as soon as I gain it on radar,
I'm actively trying

to figure out what it is.
Is it high and fast?

Is it low and slow?
Is it on a commercial air route?

We put all these little pieces
of the puzzle together

to come up
with an identification.

In, uh, 2004, we were
off the coast of California

doing a standard training cycle,

and I noticed
these really strange tracks

off the coast of Catalina.

Those things were up
at 28,000 feet.

They were kind of
in a loose group,

and they were all
tracking down 100 knots,

28,000 feet towards the south
really, really slow.

Usually, something that high
going that slow

is gonna fall out of the sky.

You can't create enough lift
to stay airborne,

so I-I knew
they were something anomalous.

I was up in the CIC,
in combat information center,

and I was scanning
a position on watch

called
antiair warfare coordinator,

AAWC.

And that position is the-the guy
that actually presses the button

to shoot a missile
if you have to.

You know what, all
of our systems are automated,

but they're not automatic,

so it's a person like myself

that has to take
all the pieces of information

and actually use my brain

and tell everyone else
what the identification is.

Man, I'm telling you, it's
probably the only air contacts

that I've ever detected
and tracked on SPY radar

that I was never able
to identify.

And I still want to make
that identification.

That's why I'm here today.

[elevator whirring]

I think it's difficult
for some of the guys,

but I've never had a problem
talking about it.

I can only tell you what I know.

Ironically,
I didn't even see any of that.

I didn't see The New York Times.

I didn't know anything about it.

And then out of the blue,
I get a message

from Kevin

telling me
that one of our shipmates

has come out
to talk about the event.

He-he didn't even have to say
what event. I already knew.

Like, the event event?

I kind of went numb, like...

People are actually gonna
believe us now.

I was
on the USS Princeton CG-59.

It's a guided missile cruiser.

I was a computer technician,
so I handled all the mainframes,

data recording.

All the systems run

off of my system.

We were seeing flying objects,

uh, that we were tracking
on the radar,

which is why
we call them "tracks."

And they were...

They were just flying due south
at 100 knots,

on and off for seven days.

They'd just appear, disappear.

After the third day,
I got an idea

that it might be close enough
to just barely see it

through
these big, huge binoculars

attached to the side of the
ship. They're called Big Eyes.

It was basically just a dot
on the horizon

at the right bearing
and the right altitude.

And I was just waiting
to see if it moved

or did anything,
and sure enough, it did.

At a certain point,
it moved over to the side,

and then just gone.

[Day]
I became concerned.

So, Cap comes down to combat.
I say, "Hey, sir,

you know,
we've been tracking these things

for a few days now,

and I strongly recommend
that we get an aircraft

to launch and intercept it."

[clears throat]

And none of us were prepared
for what happened

when that....
when that happened.

[Ralph Blumenthal] This was not
the usual New York Times story.

All along, the UFO debate

has been whether these things
are real or not real.

In other words, are they
a figment of the imagination?

Are they
some psychological phenomenon

that has no physical reality?

And what was most interesting
in the reporting

that Leslie and I and Helene did
for The New York Times

was that the most
highly trained observers

that exist, Navy pilots...

The government spends millions
of dollars training them.

[chuckles]
They are not mentally deficient.

They're tested
for psychological aberrations.

These people are trusted
with the most powerful weapons

in our arsenal.

They've seen them
with their eyes.

[David Fravor]
Both airplanes see

a disturbance in the water

and a white, 40-foot-long
Tic Tac-shaped object.

The controller starts talking
to us. He says,

"Hey, sir.
We've seen these objects.

We need you to go investigate.
We want to know what these are."

They got to a point
where they say,

"Hey, merge plot."

[Day] He gets
into the merge plot position,

which is basically two objects

in the same vertical piece
of sky.

A two-dimensional display
now looks like one object.

[Fravor]
As we're looking around,

we look to the right,

and we see white water.

What we see is this white
Tic-Tac-looking object

just above the surface
of the water

pointing north-south,

and it's going north,
south, east, west.

It's just erratically moving

forward, back, left, right,
at will.

I go, "Dude, do you see that?
What is that thing?"

We're looking down
at this thing,

and I said,
"I'm gonna go check it out."

So I start driving around,

just in a nice, easy descent.

As I'm coming down,

the Tic Tac starts coming up.

I'm like, "Well,
this is getting interesting."

[Day] All of a sudden, we
hear on the radio, "Oh, my God!

Oh, my God!
I'm engaged! I'm engaged!"

And whatever that object was,

the thing
seemed to recognize him,

and it actually got
in a dogfight with him.

[Voorhis] The target
started moving left and right

at very jagged angles,

and then it would disappear

off the screen,
come back onto the screen.

[Fravor] It's kind of starting
to cross my nose,

and it starts to accelerate.

And within less than a second,

it crosses right in front of me.
Just goes "poof," and it's gone.

[Day] I can tell you
the reaction on the ship

was total befuddlement.

Total be...

But we didn't know
what to think.

What flies like that?
Nothing I'd ever seen.

Not even close.

After that happened, I was...
My mind changed a little bit.

I decided,
"Yeah, these are probably...

UFOs
that I'd always heard about."

Uni-Unidentified flying objects.

slow, intriguing music

I went up to a machine
that's called the RD-390,

and it records all
of our external communications

onto an optical disk.

Just in case
something like this happens,

an investigator can go back,

play it back and figure out
what the hell happened, right?

Well, I went back up to combat.

And all the comms were gone.

And I could tell by looking
at the lead technician--

I'm not gonna say
what his name is,

'cause I'm hoping
he'll still come out--

I could tell by looking at him
that he knew what had happened,

but he couldn't tell me.

The whole thing
kind of got swept

under the carpet pretty quickly

by the strike group commander

and even by my own captain,

which kind of pissed me off,
actually.

We were completely defenseless
against these things.

[Voorhis]
All that data gets reported

down in our computer room

on optical disks.

Helicopter landed.

Two people got out.

Then, 20 minutes later,
I was asked

to get all the tapes.

Get them all.
Everything in the computer room

that would have had
anything on it.

And so I had to bring
all the tapes down there,

and those guys were in there.

dramatic, intriguing music

They had civilian clothes.

You know, no men in black

or any weird things like that,

but nondescript
civilian clothes that...

Just like me and you
are wearing now.

All of those disks were taken.

Uh, that was given
to my chain of command

and then given to somebody
that brought them offship.

[Knapp] This is all
supposed to keep secret.

None of this material
was being made public.

The problem that's been

since the beginning is,
"This is my information,

and you can't have it."

And the people who have it
consider it to be theirs

and don't want to share.

Not with the Air Force,
not with the Navy,

not with the CIA. It's theirs.

And, uh,
it's sort of for the purpose

of plausible deniability.

If they didn't want it out,
they wouldn't have released it.

It took a number of years,

but somebody in the Navy
made it possible.

[Blumenthal] Well,
after the December 2017 story,

which was a bombshell,

we continued working on it.

Took us a year and a half

to come up
with a-a good follow-up.

And the other story
we came up with

was that in 2015,

the Roosevelt had encounters
between Navy pilots

and UFOs, which, incidentally,
Helene, our other partner,

she was actually embedded
on the Theodore Roosevelt

for a story
on its mission in the Gulf.

[Kean] The incidences
at the Roosevelt...

There were lots of sightings

of these very strange
kind of smallish objects

of different types,

and a lot of them
were picked up on radar.

They were different.
They weren't, like,

these Tic Tacs
that were buzzing around.

But they could pick them up
just for long periods of time.

[pilot]
Well, if there's--

[Kean]
We had

two pilots
that went on the record.

We spoke to five others

who would not put their names
on the record.

Again, they're all afraid
to talk about it publicly,

and it was

very difficult to even get two
to talk to us.

The Navy says it still doesn't
know what the objects are,

and officials
aren't speculating.

A Navy spokesman
simply confirming to CNN

the objects seen
in the various clips

are unidentified
aerial phenomena,

or UAPs.

The conversation
has finally moved, folks,

from the fringe.

So, congratulations.
You succeeded.

For some folks,
the-the article that came out

in The New York Times

is the very first time

they've ever actually
even considered this topic.

slow, dramatic music

[Knapp] After the New York
Times story comes out,

we start producing stories
about AATIP,

the program
that Lue Elizondo worked for.

I traveled to Washington
to meet with Senator Reid.

It was like
a secret agent thing.

I changed hotels,
I changed cabs.

Because I knew that Senator Reid
was very sensitive.

I was just trying
to be cautious.

[Reid]
George and I have

been interested in this
for a long time.

And, for decades,
we've shared information.

[Knapp]
He was gonna help me understand

the bigger picture on this.

So, had the meeting
with Senator Reid.

And, you know, I had
a general idea about AATIP.

I didn't know that there
had been another program,

that it had started out
as something else,

that it had been AAWSAP.

And I was shown the contract

for the creation of AAWSAP,

the Advanced Aerospace Weapon
Systems Application Program.

That was the name of the program
that was created by the DIA,

the Defense Intelligence Agency.

[Reid]
It was dark money, black money.

Even members of Congress
don't know it's there.

Because there would have been
such criticism.

"Why are they studying
flying saucers?"

We wanted to make sure
that it was put out to bid,

and it was.

[Knapp]
They let out a contract.

BAASS is the company
that got contract.

$22 million dollars
is given to BAASS,

Bigelow Advanced
Aerospace Systems,

an organization created
by this guy,

Robert Bigelow.

I've seen so many crazy stories
about him.

funky, upbeat music

[newswoman]
Meet Robert Bigelow,

a real estate developer
who made his fortune building...

[newswoman 2]
Bigelow Aerospace is going

to expand
its current operation...

[newsman] An acronym
for Bigelow Expandable

Activity Module.

[newswoman 3]
Those are the big dreams

one local business owner has.

[Knapp]
Robert Bigelow

is a billionaire
Las Vegas businessman.

At one point, he had more hotel
rooms than the MGM Grand here.

-Everybody knew Bob.
-[newswoman 4] He's more at home

on the Vegas Strip
than at America's space agency.

[Reid] Bob Bigelow is
a very conservative Republican,

so, on political issues,
we didn't agree on much.

But he was a self-made
multi-multimillionaire.

He spent

a number of years of his life

being inquisitive
of what this is all about,

and he has the money to play
around with it a little bit.

[Lara Logan] Do you believe
that UFOs have come to Earth?

There has been and is
an existing presence,

uh, an ET presence.

And I spent millions and
millions-- I probably spent more

as an individual than anybody
else in the United States

has ever spent on this subject.

[Kean] Robert Bigelow has been
a really important figure

for years and years on UFOs.

He develops

technology
for traveling into space.

[Greenewald]
You have these guys

like Branson and Musk

trying to tap into
this commercialization

of space travel
and space exploration.

It's a very small list of names.

You can count Robert Bigelow
up there as well.

[Logan] NASA has partnered
with Robert Bigelow,

who's an unconventional figure
in the aerospace world.

He's obsessed with aliens
and UFOs.

[Blumenthal] We did report
in our 2017 article

Bigelow saying
that he believed in aliens,

that, I mean,
he-he believes that.

Do you believe in aliens?

I'm absolutely convinced.
That's all there is to it.

We felt it was only fair
to give his full context.

Because, if we hadn't,
someone would say,

"Oh, yeah,
Bigelow believes in aliens.

You didn't mention that."

So we-we said, "Yes,

he's made statements
in the past."

[Logan] You don't worry
that some people will say,

"Did you hear that guy?
He sounds like he's crazy"?

-I don't care.
-Why not?

It's not gonna make
a difference.

It's not gonna change
the reality of what I know.

[Knapp]
I know the guy.

And I know about BAASS.

I mean, Bob Bigelow announced it

on my radio show.

[Bigelow]
The mission for this company

is to pursue exotic,
novel technologies.

As you know, George, there's
probably nothing more difficult

that you could tackle
than this kind of a problem.

low, eerie music

[Greenewald] Bigelow has
a very interesting history

that predates the AATIP story.

[Knapp]
A number of years before BAASS,

he made up his own
UFO organization called NIDS,

the National Institute
for Discovery Science.

1995,

he puts this together

and brings a number

of really distinguished
academics,

couple of guys
who had worked for the CIA.

There were two astronauts.

A colonel
who had done his own attempts

to get to the bottom
of the UFO mystery

from inside the Pentagon.

[Greenewald]
NIDS aimed to investigate

claims of the paranormal,

not only UFOs
but some other things.

[Knapp] 1995,
Bigelow puts NIDS together.

Spoke to that first meeting

in 1996,

made a presentation.

And my jaw is dropping at--

looking around the room
at who these people were.

That's when Skinwalker Ranch
enters the picture.

rhythmic, hypnotic music

[Reid] A lot of the stuff
on Skinwalker Ranch

is very, very, um,

difficult to understand.

You know, there have been things
reported up there

for generations.

[insects trilling]

soft, eerie music

[Greenewald] We know
that Robert Bigelow wanted to

investigate Skinwalker Ranch.

That ranch is a 480-acre ranch

that's located
in Northeastern Utah

in an area known
as the Uintah Basin.

For decades now,

there are stories after stories

about all of this paranormal
activity happening on the ranch

and around it.

pulsing, dramatic music

In fact, some of the legend
dates back

more than 15 generations
into Native American lore.

And they talk
about a shapeshifting witch

known as the skinwalker.

The Native Americans,
they wanted to avoid

that area altogether because of
what they were seeing in the sky

and on the ground.

[Knapp]
In the mid-1990s, uh,

a family move
into the property.

[Bigelow] I spent quite a bit of
time talking to Terry Sherman.

And he was the owner.

He and his wife and two children
lived there.

They operated the ranch,

and they had a phenomenal

diversity of encounters.

[Knapp]
Really strange stuff.

Off the charts strange.

Balls of light.

[man]
There's no flashes to it.

It's just a solid light.

[woman]
It won't make any sound either.

The ground would shake.

[rumbling]

They would hear

these disembodied voices
speaking in languages

they didn't understand.

It's like a haunted house

with UFOs.

booming, mysterious music

haunting, eerie music

And then
the animal mutilations start.

The rancher, I think,
at first felt

that somebody was trying
to drive him off the property.

There was an article
in a newspaper.

A local newspaper
had done a story about it.

'Cause the rancher's
trying to figure out

what the heck is going on.

By the time
that Bigelow hears about it,

they were scared.

They were so messed up.

They had been through
psychological hell.

They wanted out,
so Bigelow went up,

met with the family

and Bigelow offers
to buy the property.

[Bigelow]
Terry and I made a deal,

providing he would stay on.

Because I need somebody there,

in addition to...
he had backyard...

literally backyard knowledge.

There was an episode with-with
the ranch manager after Terry.

I hired some other folks,
some-some wonderful people.

low, dramatic music

[John Alexander]
I was

32 years with the military
in various forms.

Spent most of the time in
special operations intelligence.

I got to higher and higher
levels in the government.

I had met a number of people
who were interested in UFOs.

The opportunity came along
for Bob to buy the ranch.

I was with him

the day he bought it,

and I was first one to spend
a night up there.

[Knapp] John Alexander's
a counterintelligence guy.

He's, like,
an actual "man in black" guy.

He's interested in these topics

and just wants to get to the
bottom of it, like we all do.

[Alexander]
We set up NIDS,

the National Institute
for Discovery Science,

and started, uh, exploring it.

Cameras 24/7

and looking out at the events

at the ranch.

rhythmic, eerie music

Just amazing phenomena
would absolutely occur

and... totally beyond
explanation.

Frequently, things

would happen just off camera,

as if it knew where it was.

[birds chirping]

Other things happened

that should have been on camera
that weren't.

Very strange place.

soft, hypnotic music

[Chris Marx]
I'm not a UFO guy.

I'm not a, you know--
a huge paranormal guy.

I had just

returned from a two-year tour
in Iraq.

So I didn't really know much
about any of that.

I got my first marching orders

to go to Skinwalker Ranch.

We were primed that we would be

some sort of a paranormal
investigative team

and document these events

that seemed to be taking place
on the ranch.

We were advised to document

anything
that was out of the ordinary,

anything that seemed...

anomalous.

I went out a lot by myself,

taking a lot of pictures.

[camera shutter clicking]

[Marx]
I knew the ranch,

in those six years,
probably better

than anybody else, from

every cave there is,

to the valleys,
to the river area.

slow, suspenseful music

[Marx]
There was constantly a feeling

of being watched.

Almost like a presence
of something you couldn't see.

[Alexander]
The phenomena,

whatever "it" was--
absolutely in control.

It seemed to know how

we were going to respond

before events occurred.

[Marx]
It started slow,

by somebody just banging
on the door,

or opening the door,

and then you would go out,
and there's nobody there.

Or somebody, it sounded like,
had a stick

and went
around the metal skirting

of the headquarters, 360.

When you go out,
there's nothing.

But the crowning event was,
it was about 10:30 at night,

and I was writing a report.

[birds chirping]

And I hear the front door
being thrown open.

-[door opens]
-You can clearly hear

-somebody behind me.
-[footsteps]

You can not only hear it, but
you could also feel the ground

move. You could feel
the vibration of the ground.

And whatever thing that was

walked through the entire house,

-opened the back door...
-[door opens]

...and then, you could hear him
walk down the stairs.

[footsteps]

You could see the stairs
individually move.

I stopped,

at some point,
trying to find a smoking gun.

I just wanted to document
as well as I could.

[Knapp]
Skinwalker Ranch--

poltergeist activity,
weird creatures--

all in one area.

[Greenewald]
We know about Robert Bigelow

and his connection
to Skinwalker Ranch.

And he just happens
to be the guy

who was awarded the contract
for AAWSAP,

which turned into some
kind of UFO research program.

slow, suspenseful music

[Knapp]
In July of 2007,

a guy in Washington,

at the DIA-- he's a physicist,

a rocket scientist--
writes a letter

to Robert Bigelow, and he says,
uh, "Hey, I'm so-and-so.

I work for the Defense
Intelligence Agency.

I've heard
about the Skinwalker Ranch.

I'd like to visit the property
and see it for myself."

Writes this letter to Bigelow,
Bigelow gets it.

He calls Harry Reid.

dramatic, suspenseful music

[Reid]
One day, Bigelow called me.

He said,
"I got the damndest letter.

I want you to see it."

And so, I read the letter,
and I said,

"Now this is something
I think is interesting.

It came from a reliable source."

I said, "I don't know the man,
never heard of him."

But I said, uh,
"I will contact him."

After meeting with him
several times,

I called Bigelow, and I said,

"I think you should
give this guy permission

to go to your Skinwalker Ranch."

[Knapp]
Bigelow invites the guy out.

They fly together
to the ranch.

They're there for maybe hour,
hour and a half.

Within ten, 15 minutes
of being on the property,

this guy has an experience,

and it seems to have been
tailor-made for him.

Something appears in this room,

and it's something
that only he can see.

suspenseful, eerie music

He goes back to Washington.

He meets with Reid again,

tells him about it,
Reid arranges

a meeting in a SCIF
under the Capitol,

a secure facility.

And the scientist meets
with Reid

and Daniel Inouye
and Ted Stevens,

and they talk about,

should we put some
money together and study this?

[Reid]
In short, this is one

of the easiest sells
I ever had to make

because Ted Stevens
immediately said, "Good.

When I was
in the Army Air Corps,

I went up one time,
and there was a vehicle

off to my left.

I would go up and down."

And did everything
he could to shake that object,

and he couldn't.

And he asked some people
on the ground,

"What was that?"

And they said,
"We didn't see anything."

So he said,
"I'm in favor of this."

So that's where we got
the $22 million dollars.

[Knapp]
Stevens said, "Yes,"

Inouye said, "Yes,"

Reid says, "Yes,"
and it was a done deal.

Signed it in September of 2008,
and they were off to the races.

fast-paced electronic music

Bigelow recruits scientists,
private investigators,

former cop and military folks,

and then, they start
investigating cases.

Boots on the ground,
interview the witnesses,

collect physical evidence,

put it together in reports.

[Kean]
And he hired out

a whole lot of scientists
and experts to work

on various aspects
of this issue,

and papers were written
by them.

[Knapp]
38 papers to look at aerospace

and scientific
breakthrough technologies

50 years in advance.

Can we duplicate
what we've seen UFOs do?

Can we, in 50 years,
create a plane that's invisible?

Can we go through a wormhole?

They put together
a gigantic pile of information,

99% of which
the public has not seen.

So, I-I released a couple
of 'em.

"Detection and High Resolution
Tracking Vehicles

at Hypersonic Velocities."

This is by Dr. Bill Culbreth
at UNLV.

2009, that was pie in the sky.

That's far off in the future.

Now, we know
in the last couple of months,

Putin has boasted they've got
hypersonic missiles that cannot

be stopped.

Bill Culbreth writes the paper
11 years ago

that says, "Here's what
our capabilities are.

We need to get started on this."

There's no UFO
that's mentioned in that report.

But it is talking about objects
that travel really fast,

and how do we track 'em.

You can see how that could be
applied to the study of UFOs.

fast-paced electronic music

[seabirds calling]

slow, eerie
synthesizer music

[Day]
A part of me's still on watch.

I was a TOPGUN graduate,
senior air controller,

had 18 years sea time.

This encounter
profoundly affected me.

I went through some really
hard times because of it.

I had changed.

It changed me, and everyone
around me noticed it.

I started having nightmares, um,

of the eschatological type,

like end-of-the-world
type nightmares,

um, out of the blue.

I didn't know
what was causing it,

but it started
to affect my work,

it started
to affect my marriage.

I ended up losing
everything I had.

Your worldview is shattered,

and I thought maybe
I was even going crazy.

I'd actually returned
back to my hometown

back in Cave Junction, Oregon,

and I was volunteering
at the local golf course,

working in the kitchen.

It was December 17, 2017.

CNN was on TV.

[Brian Todd]
He saw the object,

waves breaking over it,
and says

he saw something
hovering above it.

[Day] Story comes on--
the Tic Tac video.

[Fravor] It looks like
a 40-foot long Tic Tac

with no wings.

Some of this was gonna be
hard for me.

[clears throat]

That moment rocked me.

They showed the same video
that I had in 2004.

I knew in that moment.
I knew in that moment that

I had to talk,
I had to speak up.

If you think about it,

since 2004, up to the present,

the number of cases reported
by Navy pilots

and radar operators has...
has definitely increased. Why?

[Day]
No, not at all. I'm not angry

With my government,
I don't hate my government.

I support my government.

I don't hold anyone responsible

for what happened
to me personally.

I don't have those feelings.
Instead,

what I do feel is, I want to
figure out what this thing is.

And I think
they want to be found.

And we're gonna go find 'em.

slow, mysterious music

[Reid]
I am totally in favor

of doing all the exploration
we can on the world

beyond our world.

We must remain curious.

Intellectually, we need
to do everything we can

to try to figure things out.

I know

that people,
when I got started in this,

thought that I was going
in an area I shouldn't have.

"What the hell's
he doing on this?"

But as time has gone on,
even my wife,

who wondered why
I was so involved in

unidentified flying objects,
said to me a few months ago,

"You're not looking so bad now."

I am confident,

and I am cautiously optimistic

that in the next year,

we are gonna have
a fundamentally

different conversation
than we're having today.

I think there's gonna be
additional fidelity,

uh, to-to a lot of the things
that have come out recently

that are-are...
are gonna help us, um,

have a better understanding
of what it is

-we're actually seeing here.
-[applause]

[Greenewald]
Throughout the decades,

when it comes
to the field of ufology,

you see people at the top, which
are considered the leaders.

Based on the New York Times
article,

Luis Elizondo is one
of those people.

The day it was released,

I had filed multiple Freedom
of Information Act requests

to try and get more
information from the Pentagon,

from the Department of Defense.

pulsing, dramatic music

The Pentagon gave me
a "no records" response

to my original request.

Now what's really strange
about that is,

I gave them Mr. Elizondo's name.

And he said,
"Nope, we got nothing."

So I started drilling down,
looking into

Mr. Elizondo's background.

[camera shutter clicking]

He didn't have any background.

There were
very little things known

about Mr. Elizondo as a person.

Who was he?
What was he really doing?

Why is the Pentagon saying,

"That is not
what this program was.

There was no UFO aspect to it"?

And then, all of a sudden,
they said,

"Mr. Elizondo had
no assigned responsibilities

on the AATIP program."

The guy that you've been
seeing on the news,

and nearly every publication
on the planet

that we call Earth,
he did not lead that program.

What do you do with that?

Who do you believe
at that point?

pulsing, dramatic music