All language subtitles for The.Gulf.of.Silence.2020.WEBRip.x264-ION10

[eerie music]

[eerie music builds]

[music climaxes]

[nostalgic piano music]

[Dr. Gale]: I grew up in Hot Springs, Arkansas

with my younger brother, Kyle, and my mother and father.

My father died when I was four in a car accident.

He was hit by a drunk driver. T-boned.

It was a closed casket funeral.

My mother was undiagnosed bipolar and

self-medicated with alcohol.

After my father died, it was challenging for her to manage Kyle and I.

And one day when I was 12, I came home and found her

what I thought was passed out on her bedroom floor.

I grabbed her by the hair and pulled her out and she was actually not breathing.

After that, we moved around even more.

Kyle and I were kept together for a little while and then separated.

And we just took it out on each other.

So we didn't want to stay in touch.

I did very well in high school.

I enjoyed science immensely.

I knew in the 11th grade that I was destined to become a marine biologist.

And I took my studies very seriously.

I didn't have a lot of friends.

Because I didn't know how to be a girl, really.

I graduated with honors and received a full ride scholarship to UCLA.

Which was amazing because I knew I was going to get to see the ocean.

And I was able to lead an expedition off the coast of Mexico

to study the communication methods of the Humboldt squid.

They change color through bioluminescence.

They flash, they communicate with light.

The Mexican fisherman called them “Diablo rojo”

because of how aggressive they are.

My diver had to wear chainmail.

I did not go into the water.

My diver’s name was Scott.

Well, we'll call him Scott.

Scott and I developed a very close friendship

spending so much time together on the boat

and we fell in love.

He was my knight in shining armor.

Literally.

Although if he was too shiny, that's when he got attacked.

He proposed on the boat with his grandmother's ring

stuck in a squid that he knew I was going to be cutting open.

It was disgusting, but sweet.

We were perfectly matched.

But that doesn't always mean that it's meant to last forever.

[ominous ethereal whooshing]

[Dr. Gale:] In 2002 I was flying from Heathrow to JFK.

Sunday, March 10th.

I was seated in the rear of the plane.

K57. In economy

I was seated next to a man who was trying to get my attention.

And I just was not in the mood.

So I tried to display my engagement ring.

He didn't seem to be affected by that.

So I thought I would just pretend to sleep instead.

As I was drifting off it suddenly got very quiet.

There was this light on my face.

It wasn't a cabin light, though, because it was coming from one side.

I heard a little bit of nervous laughter

and then the man beside me

He said “What the fuck is that?”

I opened my eyes and the entire cabin was illuminated

by a yellow glow.

I wanted to get up to see what it was.

The man beside me was frozen so I had to climb over him

and I found myself an empty seat.

When I looked out the window, what I saw was

two massive, glowing yellow disks.

Hovering somewhere between the plane and the horizon.

They were so bright.

Now, keep in mind, it was 2002.

So even though we all had cell phones, they were pieces of crap

and the cameras were garbage.

Not that anyone had the presence of mind to use them anyway.

When you see something like that, you just

you're stunned.

All you can do is stare at it.

And then suddenly, they just disappeared.

And it was completely black again.

I don't think I heard anyone even make a joke about it after that.

It was just totally silent on the plane.

I got up and went back to my seat

and the guy didn't bother me for the rest of the flight.

But my mind was spinning.

I was trying to process what the possibilities were.

What that could have possibly been.

Was it some sort of weather phenomenon?

Now something like that, with that kind of size

could not enter the atmosphere without going unnoticed.

Something of that mass, pushing its way from outer space

into the earth would ignite the atmosphere.

The sky would be on fire.

So it had to be one of a few possibilities.

Either it was something from the earth.

Some sort of natural phenomena.

Or if it was, in fact, a solid object

it had to either have been made on the earth

or it was created by a technology so

enormously advanced that it could completely sidestep

all the laws of physics as we know them.

And although I didn't get confirmation for many years

that was in fact what it was.

Disembarkment was just normal.

I thought about talking to the pilot, but

decided against it.

So I went home.

Scott and I were living in New York at the time

and I told Scott what happened.

What I had seen.

And he just looked at me like he was disappointed.

So I just didn't bring it up again...

Until later.

Despite the subject being taboo at home

I could not stop thinking about it

almost to the point of obsession for a number of months.

Then one day I was online and I saw an article from the Post.

The pilot, Ray Thompson, was fired

for quote unquote, making the airline look ridiculous

with his quote unquote, unbelievable story.

That was my pilot.

I was...

I was pissed.

So I immediately wrote a letter to the Post

backing up his claims.

I felt like my having a solid scientific reputation would somehow support him

and maybe have him not end his career.

I signed my own name and I gave them permission to publish it.

I did not think anyone would read it, nevermind care.

But I was wrong.

And it was possibly the worst decision I ever made.

Scott found out from a colleague of his who sent him the letter.

"Is this your Laura?"

He printed it off, brought it home and confronted me with it.

I honestly didn't feel like there was anything wrong with it.

We disagreed. It was our first fight.

The fallout from my acquaintances and colleagues was very swift.

Even at work, I felt like I was being dismissed, questioned.

My authority was gone.

I heard people referring to me as a UFO nut.

I was invited to a dinner party with Scott shortly after.

I thought maybe it was a sign that things were dying down.

It was a very prestigious party.

I won't name names, but...

It very quickly devolved into a round robin of people taking

passive aggressive potshots at me.

Making jokes about little green men.

In the car ride home...

Scott was... absent.

Just shut me out, really, from that point forward.

I think it was in the car that I knew that things would never be the same again.

It didn't take very long before he ended the engagement.

His career was in trouble.

People were questioning him because they were questioning me.

He had no choice, as far as he could tell.

My career was taking a nosedive, and he felt like his career would be following.

So... I understand.

It wasn't very long after that, that I received a form letter

telling me that my grants had been cancelled.

I suppose I could have recanted the story.

I thought about it.

[somber piano music]

After the engagement ended

I was without a job in New York, which is not possible.

So I decided to move back to LA

which was the last place I could remember feeling happy.

I didn't think that my new reputation would follow me

all the way to the west coast, but it did.

And I had trouble getting a job.

The only job I could secure was teaching high school biology

at Hollywood High School.

I was there from 2004 until 2006.

[mysterious glass harmonica music]

One day in June of 2006

I was grading finals in my classroom and two men entered.

They were like G-men out of a movie.

They started asking me about my UFO experience.

So I immediately got my back up.

I assumed that they were either tabloid reporters

or some sort of kooky UFO researchers

and I threatened to call the police.

They informed me at that point that they belonged to a three letter agency.

They said they were there to potentially offer me a job.

They handed me a white card with a phone number on it

and said that the phone number would be good for three days.

Then they left.

So I thought about it.

I had nothing left to lose. So...

On day three, I called them.

The voice that answered asked me if I would consent to an interview.

I said yes.

That was it.

And the next morning another G-man shows up

in a black sedan

knocks on my door and tells me he's there to take me to my interview.

We drive to an abandoned parking lot in downtown LA

where I'm transferred to a bus with blacked out windows.

I'm the only person on the bus and the driver does not speak to me.

We drive for what feels like about two hours.

I have no idea where we're going.

Then when we arrive at the destination

two more G-men get on the bus, fit me with blackout goggles.

Very dramatic, vey annoying.

And lead me off the bus.

When the goggles are removed, I am in a white room with a table, a chair

a very obvious two way mirror

and a mountain of paperwork.

There's a speaker above me, and a woman's voice comes on

and asks me to please go through the paperwork in order.

First thing is a ridiculous personality questionnaire

easily 500 questions.

The next thing is a bunch of legal texts outlining

how classified and confidential the information that I may receive would be.

which I read thoroughly.

After that, I am asked to make a list of everyone.

All of my close friends, relatives, acquaintances

Their contact information, their known whereabouts.

Very short list.

I didn't really have anyone in my life at the time

so I wrote that down.

After that, I was asked to write down my UFO experience.

Then I started to get an inkling of what this might be about.

So I was taken back to the bus with the goggles.

two hour drive back to downtown LA, into the sedan, and home.

I felt buzzed on the way home.

I couldn't sleep that night.

Like maybe something good would come of this after all.

A couple of days later, I got a call

asking me if I would accept the position.

I had no idea what the position was

but I just said yes.

The next day, new guy shows up at the door and a black sedan. Same outfit.

I'm taken to downtown LA again, onto the bus, driven for two hours.

Goggles, whole nine.

Back in the white room.

Only this time instead of a mountain of paperwork

there's an NDA and a book.

The book is blue, bound.

Nothing on the cover.

The voice tells me to sign the NDA

and then read the book cover to cover.

At this point, I'm starting to get the vibe of what it must feel like

for Scientologists when they're pulled into the little room

and given the documents about Lord Xenu.

Turns out it was something quite similar to that anyway.

The book, "The Assessment"

was compiled from over half a century of covert research.

Everything that the United States government knew

or at least this small cell within the Defense Department knew

about the UFO phenomenon.

So...

If you want to know the truth about unidentified flying objects

and the non-human intelligence that operates them...

Here it is.

[pulsing synthesizer bassline]

[Audiobook Narrator:] The universe is nearly 18 billion years old.

The milky way galaxy, in which our solar system resides

is aged about 13 billion years, and contains as many as 400 billion stars

and just as many individual planets.

These are spans of time so vast that it’s beyond the comprehension of the individual human brain.

Our Earth was formed around 4.5 billion years ago, and life evolved relatively soon after.

Electricity arced through the early seas and certain molecules, over a couple billion more years, coalesced into organized forms.

They became the same mindlessly-replicating nucleic acids that still comprise your own genetic code, as well as that of all other life on Earth.

This process still took another two billion years before it produced anything interesting.

The first sea creatures to shape their fins into feet and drag themselves ashore only did so 370 million years ago

while early humans finally appeared as recently as just 3-million years ago.

And even then we only arrived at a point of real technological ability within the last century.

Human beings took their first powered flight only as recent as 1903...

But something much more sophisticated has been flying around our skies since long before then.

The first real UFO report dates from 1878.

A farmer in Texas watched as a strange, apparently silent object flew overhead

which when viewed from below resembled, as he put it, “a large saucer”.

The object shot away into the far horizon and vanished.

The paper which reported his story opined that it “deserves the attention of our scientists”.

Then, as now, it publicly received none.

More visitations soon followed.

Over the next few decades came waves of reports of bright lights with dark bodies attached racing about the night skies of America.

The quaint minds of the time interpreted these as airships created by some hidden genius.

As the wave wore on reports became more dubious and obviously the products of limited imaginations

but many of the sightings as described line up neatly with types of objects still being seen today.

Over the first few decades of the 20th century, the intelligences piloting the UFOs made only infrequent appearances.

Even the first World War, with its nascent aerial battles, was apparently not worthy of more thorough observation.

That would soon change.

World War II marks the emergence of the UFO phenomenon in its current form.

In both European and Pacific theaters of combat

pilots reported being tailed or paced by mysterious lights and wingless crafts that completely outmaneuvered them.

Despite these objects never acting in a hostile fashion, they were assumed by the militaries of the world to be a new weapon developed by one of the various enemy nations.

American pilots over Germany dubbed them “Kraut fireballs”, believing them to be some sinister Nazi innovation

while their counterparts stationed in England took to calling them “Foo Fighters”

which was originally “Fuckin’ Foo Fighters”, but this more colorful variant of the term was sanitized by the press of the time.

UFOs were now a subject of private concern to the military, but awareness would soon spread to the public in 1947

when pilot Kenneth Arnold and others reported seeing a fleet of saucer-like objects racing through the skies at supersonic speeds above Washington state.

Newspapers picked up the story and reported it without mockery or ridicule, and a tide of open curiosity and interest spread across the globe.

The public wanted answers.

The problem, however, was that the military had none--

a frightening scenario for the world’s most powerful nation.

Thus began a policy of denial and ridicule that would forever poison the topic in the minds of the scientific community

and make them unpaid stooges for the military’s campaign of secrecy.

But why were these advanced beings suddenly so interested in us?

That answer was obvious even then.

[Maj. Donald Keyhoe:] The Air Force has officially analyzed the motives of possible visitors from space.

Here is a direct quotation from the official report.

"Such a civilization might observe that on earth we now have atomic bombs and are fast developing rockets.

In the past history of mankind, they should be alarmed.

We should therefore expect at this time above all to behold such visitations."

[rising, atonal strings]

[explosions]

[ominous woodwind ensemble]

[Audiobook Narrator:] The start of the Anthropocene epoch

a proposed geological time scale that marks the era when human technology began to significantly impact the Earth

has been proposed to start in 1945 with the detonation of the first atomic bomb.

It is not coincidence that our visitors turned out in droves at this exact same point in time.

Their increased observation of our planet runs precisely parallel with our increased destruction of it.

Carl Sagan, the patron saint of armchair scientists

once opined that it was absurd to entertain the idea that beings from another planet would be such regular visitors to our own

likening such a scenario to every anthropologist on Earth running to go see the natives on some remote island develop a new fishing net.

His apparent prejudice against the worth of native cultures aside, this argument has always seemed to me to be both stupid and in bad faith

considering this view is commonly espoused by the same type of scientist who will also try to instill you with a schmaltzy sense of awe

about the wondrous nature of life on Earth.

Either this planet is a backwater dump unworthy of cosmic study, or it’s a glowing jewel of beauty unique amongst the vast emptiness of space.

I wish they’d make up their minds.

But we are not alone.

The question of the origin and purpose of the UFO craft visiting the Earth has spawned competing hypotheses

some more valid than others.

The most popular, and most obvious, is that they are extraterrestrial vehicles or technology

operated by intelligences that evolved in another solar system, possibly even another galaxy.

After all, they have been tracked on radar entering the atmosphere from outer space, and have been quietly observed by astronauts in orbit.

Though it is not the sexiest or most exotic explanation, it is the one that fits the data

and is the one subscribed to by myself personally, by the majority of CEU personnel and by most of the military.

Those more exotic explanations include the Interdimensional hypothesis

which argues that the craft originate from another dimension or plane of reality, which sounds exciting and dangerous, but is completely untestable scientifically

and basically tantamount to saying they are magic.

Then there is the Cryptoterrestrial hypothesis, in which the UFOs are explained as technology developed by an even more advanced species endemic to the Earth

who have somehow never been discovered and have also left no trace of themselves in the fossil record.

In a similar vein is another explanation, which every few years gets trotted out by some new researcher

who thinks it’s bold and novel and not something that has occurred to every stoned undergrad in their dorm room at 3am.

I am of course referring to the idea that UFOs are simply time travel devices used by humans from the future,

an idea so silly and far fetched that it was once even used as the plot of a Godzilla movie.

Finally, there is a hypothesis that has a depressing but unsurprising number of adherents at both the Pentagon and in government

which is the belief that UFOs are demonic in origin and emissaries of Satan meant to test the faith of our god fearing Christian nation.

The term “UFO”--unidentified flying object--as well as the fashionable, newer term “UAP”--unidentified aerial phenomena

are both something of a misnomer.

While the craft are often viewed in the sky, they are not "flying",

which describes a solid object moving atop the gasses that make up our atmosphere by some means of physical propulsion.

UFOs do not do this.

While they move at often hypersonic speed, they do not create sonic booms, or any sound at all, which indicates there is no displacement of the air around them.

They give off no exhaust plume or indications of conventional propulsion.

In fact, one of the fastest ways to send a UFO report into the trash at the CEU

was to say that it made loud noises, gave off exhaust or any other indicators of conventional jet propulsion.

Such cases can almost always be comfortably written off as hoaxes or misidentifications.

Not only do the craft not create sonic booms, they also sidestep the concept of inertia.

They regularly make hard right angle turns going at speeds of over 14,000 miles an hour

so fast that they can lap the entire circumference of the Earth in less than an hour.

Theoretically, anything with mass that occupies physical space should be subject to inertia, gravity, the whole lot

but UFOs, which occasionally show up on radar and therefore have a concrete, physical presence in conjunction with their visible appearance

have apparently never heard of any of these human concepts of physics, because they disregard all of them.

Not only do they merrily zip through space completely unimpeded, they plunge into the depths of the ocean without so much as a splash or a ripple.

They seem to be both here and not here at the same time, phasing through space, or simply bending it around them somehow.

They don’t really move in and of themselves--what they actually seem to do is move the immediate universe around them.

In addition to this, they have advanced cloaking capabilities.

UFOs will commonly show up on radar or sonar while being completely invisible to the naked eye, only becoming so when viewed through infrared or the ultraviolet spectrum.

Conversely, they will often show up plain as day for all to see, but remain completely undetectable by radar.

If they are detected or seen, it seems to be either an intentional display, such as their frequent appearances above nuclear weapons sites in both the United States and former Soviet Union

or simply a rare instance of them letting their guard down and apparently not caring.

After all, even if they are seen there is nothing we can really do about it.

Their favored method of concealment, however, is also the most simple.

They are not really hanging out in our skies.

Their preferred habitat on Earth is at the bottom of the ocean, where they can conduct their business with almost no interference or detection by humanity.

One of the jokes commonly told among CEU staff was the idea that someday we will finally crack the language of the dolphins and the whales

whereupon they will tell us that space aliens have been visiting and communicating with them for aeons

but did not want to talk to us stupid, primative landwalkers on shore.

We know they are here--but why are they here?

The CEU still does not know.

Neither do the various other top secret research groups, I’d wager,

many of which are housed and protected at private corporations so as to be off limits to government auditors.

And neither do the civilian investigators.

Modern ufology is not a science, it is a subculture

and it attracts mainly either New Age post-hippies or paranoid right-wingers

who add UFOs to their list of fringe hobbies next to the Illuminati and various antisemitic conspiracies.

And it is also no coincidence that the Alien abduction craze reached its zenith in parallel with the Satanic panic of the late 1980s and early 90s

when quack investigators used the supremely unreliable technique of regressive hypnosis to make their victims believe that they had been anally probed by space beings

or forced to participate in suburban basement blood orgies.

What I do know is that there are over 9 million species of life on Earth, which means over 9 million points of potential study for hypothetical scientists from elsewhere.

That number, however, is rapidly shrinking thanks to just one species on Earth, which will probably soon include itself among the number of the vanished.

I often think of the intelligences visiting us as being akin to our own scientists stationed in Antarctica

who occasionally cross paths with a disoriented penguin heading away from shore and into the endless frozen wastes.

The scientists follow a strict code of non-intervention; and so they must watch as the poor creature waddles out into the white horizon to die alone

unable to save it with merely a simple nudge in the other direction.

[Dr. Gale:] So after reading all of this, I was given two choices:

Either join the Counter-Espionage Unit, the CEU

or rot in mediocrity for the rest of my life in complete fear of all the NDAs I just signed.

Needless to say, I joined the CEU.

The CEU was so named because the UFO phenomenon is so elusive that it's nearly impossible to gather data on them in the first place.

So we can either do it by chance, or through purposeful spying.

However, whenever, wherever we can.

The UFO intelligences observe us, so we do our best to observe them.

The CEU was formed in 1972 by the Nixon administration.

Now, Nixon was a paranoid psychopath

so it must come of no surprise that he would be spooked by the UFO phenomenon and want to do anything possible to get as much information as he could.

Although there were several other organizations that existed prior to the CEU,

the CEU was the first one that was actually beginning from a point of acceptance.

All of the other organizations from prior administrations began with the idea that we need to investigate this phenomenon, to see if it actually exists.

Whereas we said, we know that this exists, we know that there are alien craft or alien intelligence of some sort.

And we're going to start from that as our benchmark, and then investigate from there.

The woman who ran the CEU during my tenure was--we'll call her Rachel.

She managed to hold on to her position for more than 20 years.

She was appointed by Ronald Reagan in the 80s.

[Ronald Reagan:] I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide

would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.

And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us?

[Dr. Gale:] She had wonderful stories about her time in the CEU when Reagan was in charge.

He used to come by the office and demand to see the "dead space aliens".

At which point she would tell him there are no dead space aliens...

That we know of, on earth.

And he would say "Oh, okay", and then leave.

And then he would come back a couple of months later demanding to see the space aliens again.

Because he was senile.

At which point she would again tell him there are no dead space aliens.

Until finally he came back and threw a complete temper tantrum.

She told him "Okay, give me a week, Ronnie, I'm going to show you the dead space aliens, but they're top secret."

She thought that maybe just telling him that would make him go away

but then he told her "If I don't see those those dead space aliens in a week, I'm cutting the funding to the CEU".

So her top secret location where she was holding the dead space aliens was actually a Halloween store in Burbank.

She went and found two foam prop space aliens, covered them with green slime and stuck them in a freezer

and then called Ronnie to come in the middle of the night and take a look at them.

After he saw them, he was so impressed he doubled the budget for the CEU.

In terms of staff at the CEU, there are several tiers.

There are approximately 10 to 15 high level staff who have read the Assessment

and who are in charge of interpreting data, either in part or in full.

And then there are approximately 30 to 50 low level staff who have not read the Assessment

but who do mostly field work, and they're in charge of collecting data or they're mainly functionaries.

Most of our time was spent either analyzing data that we stole from other countries

or that was given to us by [CENSOR BLEEP],

a billionaire who was obsessed with UFOs, and who proved to be a useful idiot for funding and other resources.

When I was at the CEU, we were understaffed. So Rachel and I included, there were only seven high level staff who actually got to analyze data as it came in.

Forming any kind of close relationship with any of my colleagues at the CEU was forbidden, because of the sensitive nature of what we were studying.

I did however get buddy-buddy with a colleague, who we'll call Paul.

Paul was in his late 50s, early 60s. Balding, paunchy, glasses.
Typical science nerd.

And Paul and I bonded over the fact that we had both been essentially laughed out of our respective fields.

Paul was an astronomer, and very well respected.

He had actually no interest in UFOs until he was at a conference

a high level conference actually, and he went outside to have a cigarette during the keynote speech.

Like most people of this generation, he was a pretty heavy smoker.

While Paul was outside he had a sighting.

A UFO descended from the clouds and hovered above the building where he was having a cigarette.

He ran inside the conference, interrupted the keynote speech
and yelled at the top of his lungs:

"There is a UFO outside, everyone come and look!"

350 astronomers, and nobody moved.

He said, "No, I'm, I'm serious! There's a UFO outside!"

He said people turned away from him.
Literally turned their backs to him.

Nobody went outside.

In that moment, he knew his career was over. And it was.

Until Rachel came and scooped him up, and brought him in to the CEU.

When I was at the CEU, the main focus of our work was codenamed "Deep One".

And this was the investigation of a deep sea base off the coast of Mexico that appeared to be some sort of waystation for the UFO craft visiting our planet.

The craft would descend somewhere north of Catalina Island, just off the coast of Los Angeles, then cruise along the coast to Guadalupe Island

and then submerge.

Now what they were doing underwater, we still don't know.

We took several trips out to the installation in order to ascertain what was going on there.

By the time I left, the only things that we knew for sure were, one: the coordinates

Two: the approximate size of the base, which was about three miles by three miles.

And three: that it was guarded by some very sophisticated sonic weaponry.

Anything that you send down there:
cameras, submersibles, divers...

doesn't come back, at least not in one piece.

The CEU learned this the hard way in the 70s when they attempted to send down a submersible, piloted by divers, that was capable of reaching the deep sea.

At a certain point, the crew topside received frantic messages from the divers that was quickly replaced by static.

[distorted screaming voices over radio]

When they tried to reel them back up, well,

they found the submersible had been crushed, like a tin can.

There were no survivors, obviously.

After that, the CEU's work at the site was mostly indirect.

No one wanted to be responsible for instigating an interstellar war, so we were forbidden from on high from trying to make any contact.

Which was much to Rachel's dismay,
because her sole purpose in life was to make contact.

We had videos of lights deep down under the sea, which was a potential glimpse of Deep One from far away.

We had sonar readings, we had videos of the craft entering and exiting the sea.

Always filmed from far away.

[eerie ambient music]

But whatever it was that was going on down there,
we just weren't meant to know.

We've talked about things that are.
Now let's talk about things that are not.

Majestic-12? Complete bullshit.
Project Serpo? Forgot it.

Anything that tells you that there are aliens running around or having dinner with the President? Complete crap.

No, there can't be any real government alien conspiracies because they're too stupid to actually create them.

It's incredible to me that the general public thinks that the government is capable of concealing a secret for 50 years over multiple administrations.

They can't even keep a secret through one administration.

And if one government can't keep it together to keep it a secret, how in the hell could the entire world's governments keep it together to keep it a secret

over the course of 50 years?

There is no conspiracy.

[Radio Announcer:] Headline news, July 8 1947.

The Army Air Force has announced that a flying disc has been found and is now in the possession of the Army.

Army officers say the missile, found sometime last week, has been inspected at Roswell, New Mexico

and sent to Wright Field, Ohio for further inspection.

[Dr. Gale:] No, a flying saucer did not crash at Roswell in 1947.

It was exactly what they said it was when they revealed the documents in the 1990s.

It was a balloon, an espionage balloon that was part of Project Mogul.

Now, for some reason the first story that was created was that it was a UFO because UFOs were popular at the time.

And it was an idiotic story,

and they realized very quickly that it just made people more curious about what they were in fact doing.

So they wheeled back on that story and they told a new story,
that it was a weather balloon

which was closer to the truth but not actually the truth.

And then continued to just create stories about crash test dummies and other other stories that would convolute the actual truth,

which of course, when it came out in the 90s wasn't believed by that point because they'd been lying for so long and creating false information

that why should you believe them when they actually do tell the truth?

This has been a constant pattern with the military and their relationship with UFOs since day one.

[Digitally altered voice:] We operate from a designated base in the United States. It's in the state of Nevada in an area called

Area 51 or "Dreamland".

["Falcon":] The extraterrestrials have complete control of this base,
which is located in Nevada.

[Dr. Gale:] No, there are no aliens at Area 51.

The reason we think there are aliens at Area 51 is because the government has hired disinformation agents in order to propagate interesting tales about aliens and UFOs operating from that site.

The reason they've done that is because it is a site of testing of defense weapons, dumping of illegal chemicals...

All sorts of games that the government plays that wastes money, and they would rather not have people witnessing.

The mythmaking was started when the government
hired these disinformation agents.

Gave them basically, you know, free rein to create whatever types of stories they wanted to create.

It doesn't seem like they had a lot of oversight in terms of what was coming out of the mouths of these people.

It began with Richard Doty. In 1988, he made an appearance on a show called "UFO Cover Up? Live!"

He appeared as a secret government informant
under the codename Falcon.

["Falcon" speaks]

He revealed such top secret information as
aliens have big black eyes, and gray skin...

...and like to eat strawberry ice cream.

From there, he created all sorts of incredible science fiction stories.

As a matter of fact, I think he would rival L. Ron Hubbard for the sheer volume of sci-fi that he's created over the course of his career.

["Falcon":] MJ-12 was a group of people within the government.

MJ-12 was created by President Truman in the early 50s.

So after Richard Doty came Bob Lazar.
Very quickly after, actually.

[synthwave music]

Hi, I'm Bob Lazar.

During late 1988 and early 89, I worked on the propulsion systems of extraterrestrial vehicles for the United States government.

Bob Lazar is a complete fraud.

Nothing he says should be taken seriously.

Now, the CEU is a government agency.

We're a small unit buried under layers of bureaucracy, that of course no one within the government even knows exists for the most part

and definitely didn't know what we were doing.

So when you think about people like Richard Doty being financed by completely other arms of the government that are not focused on science at all

but are focused on the military and covering up whatever the military is up to,

"aliens" is just a convenient side story that they can use in order to distract from what's really going on.

Now unfortunately, when you're funded by the military
you have a lot more at your disposal

as opposed to our funding which was trickling down on a good day.

The CEU actually has one UFO in its possession.

It was found in the 60s. It is about the size of a camper van and shaped vaguely like a popcorn kernel.

Despite all the rumors about Area 51,
nothing has ever been reverse engineered from this.

It is extremely old. We know that from carbon dating of the stones that it was found embedded in.

It's made of a beautiful silver alloy.

The fuselage is impenetrable.

Because it's impenetrable,
we've never been able to get in in any way.

It's just sitting in a top secret hangar in storage, gathering dust.

[eerie ambient music]

We never studied alien abductions at the CEU

mostly because there was no scientific evidence to support that they actually exist.

Now the main reason for this is that every single explanation of an alien abduction always begins with the same story,

and that story is exactly in alignment with stories that come with sleep paralysis.

The second reason is that the narrative of alien abductions has changed over time.

If in fact the same thing was happening to everyone,
we would see very, very similar

specifications in terms of the story.

I'm not talking about, you know, I was probed and my eggs were stolen, and they made me ejaculate and stole my sperm.

I'm talking about the narrative surrounding what the beings look like.

So even the typical greys that have permeated pop culture, every person who describes them has a slightly different interpretation.

The eyes are positioned differently, they're bigger or smaller, and then that has even changed over time as well.

They've wrapped around the head, or there's a nose or there's no nose, or there's ears or no ears, and the skin is different.

The height is different. The noises they make are different.

I just don't give much credence to reports of aliens because the odds of something like that adapting on another planet that looks humanoid

are extremely rare.

The other thing is, how are they running around
with the ability to breathe our air?

If they did evolve on another planet, chances are, you know, they would need some sort of spacesuit

or clothing at the very least in order to be able to deal with our atmosphere.

Now people who report alien abduction stories
shouldn't be mocked or made fun of.

Sleep paralysis feels very real.

As you know, anything that happens between the waking and asleep state, it's very difficult to discern what is real and what isn't.

And for many people, these alien abduction stories become part of a recurring, waking nightmare.

And I have a lot of empathy for those people.

But it just seems as though the popular culture narrative has permeated these sleep paralysis experiences, nothing more.

I had a coworker at the CEU. We'll call him Joe.

He was an excellent researcher.

Seemed like a decent guy.

One day, he just completely disappeared from his desk.

I asked Rachel what happened.

She didn't want to tell me at first, but eventually she revealed that

Joe believed he had made direct contact with the aliens.

He'd been camping and a grey alien with black eyes had come into the tent and brought him aboard the spaceship.

It's a very typical sleep paralysis story.
And frankly, I was kind of disappointed

in Joe.

I mean, regardless of what happened,
because who am I to say at this point, really

that story compromised the security of our unit.

It undermined the integrity of what we were trying to do.

We're never going to be taken seriously with gray beings with big black eyes.

So he had to go.

I have very mixed feelings about Rachel in retrospect.

She sought me out to work there, and she was very kind

and gave me a lot more leeway than I probably should have been allowed in that type of organization.

She had built something truly extraordinary, but then had leveled off.

In a way, it felt like at a point that she was
just humoring me professionally.

And the whole system, the way it's set up, really is quite ridiculous.

You know, to have a scientific organization reporting to a government.

It's like toddlers running a daycare center.

There were moments in, you know...

We spent a lot of time working together and

Rachel, I think was attracted to me from the beginning.

And when I started to realize that, a bitterness grew inside me.

Just for all the years of feeling like I was being promoted or paid attention to because of my looks and not because of my ability.

It's hard to articulate what the reason was for my departure.

But I just had had enough.

[waves and ocean in the distance]

[ominous, atonal woodwinds]

[Dr. Gale:] In 2009, Rachel received communication
from the Coast Guard off the Bering Strait.

There had been several counts of first,
contact on sonar and on radar,

and then sightings of a large, boxcar shaped object.

We immediately charted a flight and went to Alaska.
Myself, Rachel and Paul.

We arrived in Alaska and boarded a ship with a skeleton crew, and went out into the Bering Sea.

Into the spot where all of the the observations had taken place.

On the first day, about 2:30 in the afternoon,

we saw a large, boxcar shaped craft emerge from the sea.

It was two rectangular objects tethered in the center
that ascended from the sea to the sky.

Almost like an amusement park ride.

It almost looked like some sort of conveyor belt, in a way, that wasn't attached to anything by the way that it moved on top of itself

as it ascended.

We estimate that they were about 200 feet in length.

The vessel moved from the sea to the sky without
displacing any water, any air...

...and took about a minute to travel from the sea to the clouds, to the point where we couldn't see them anymore.

According to the Coast Guard, this was the same spot that it was occurring in over and over again, so we were pretty sure we were going to see more.

Although on the way out there, I didn't actually think
that we were going to witness anything.

Because what typically happens is that there's a sighting in a spot, and even multiple sightings. And then once people start to show up in anticipation

it's almost like they know and they don't come back.

So I was really floored that we saw anything at all.

On the second day, there was very poor visibility. Storms.

We didn't see anything.

The third day, in the morning,

we saw another craft, and then again in the afternoon.

At this point, Rachel hypothesized that they
were transport vehicles of some sort.

That they were mining something in the ocean
and taking it up into the sky.

Paul was disturbed.

You know, it's one thing to study but it's another thing to experience.

The next night, we were sleeping

and one of the Coast Guard staff came down and woke us up, and told us to get to the deck immediately.

And we did, and what we saw was...

a green glow coming from beneath the surface of the sea

with a very distinctive, spherical shape.

We tracked it on sonar.
It was in fact a solid object, and it moved

from where it was to directly underneath our ship.

Now the craft was about three times the size of our ship.

And our ship was nearly 80 feet long.

Nothing about the movement of our ship changed.

I didn't feel any vibrations. Nothing.

But I did feel afraid.

If it were to ascend, it would have toppled our ship in an instant.

Then all of a sudden it was gone.

It was no longer on the sonar, and the light had disappeared.

The next day, Paul and I had a long discussion about the very strong feeling that we both had that we should leave.

But Rachel was hearing none of it

and became obsessed with making contact.

That night, she started by shining a very, very bright
spotlight onto the surface of the sea.

And she decided to use Morse code, because she figured that since they've been able to disrupt our technology that they would be able to decipher Morse code.

That night, she started to fire Morse code with a
giant spotlight onto the surface of the sea.

"We want to make contact", over and over again, for hours.

Nothing.

The next day, she decided to emit audio signals through the water through a very high powered speaker.

She continuously, for hours, said: "We want to make contact, we are representatives of the United States government."

Nothing.

Until Rachel decided to shoot a laser

at the transportation vehicle.

But this time instead of, I don't know, her long ass Morse code message, she just shot "contact".

C-O-N-T-A-C-T.

For the entire time from emergence to ascendance.

No response.

Until the craft ascended into the clouds

and then every system on our ship shut down.

[ominous low strings]

The engines turned off. All of the communication devices, our cell phones, our camera equipment, everything dead.

For 20 minutes, the crew was running around trying to get everything back online.

Paul was completely frantic.

Then...

along the horizon line...

I saw a massive object start to ascend out of the water.

It looked like a landmass was rising out of the sea.

[intense ethereal whooshing]

As it ascended out of the water, bone dry, not a drop coming off of it

it was easily the largest thing I've ever seen,
and I've never seen anything that size moving.

As it cleared the water it started to move toward us

[low rumbling, whooshing]

and positioned itself right over top of our vessel.

Completely blocking out the sun.

It was so close we could have thrown a rock off the bow and hit it.

Paul fainted.

I felt like, just...

incapable of moving.

And then...

a noise started to come out of Paul's throat.

It was like nothing I'd ever heard before.

It did not sound human.

And the noise became words.

And it said,

"No contact".

"No contact".

"No contact".

"No contact".

Four times.

And then it was gone.

It disappeared.

It was like it went from night to day,
because when it disappeared the sun blinded us.

Paul came to...

and was just out of his mind.

He needed medical attention, so we rested back at the Coast Guard facilities for a couple of days and then returned home.

When we got back to the office, I filled out my reports,
my observations, and the whole time

I kept thinking about how momentous this experience was, and how important it was to share this information with the world.

Rachel didn't want to talk about it.

Eventually, I just felt like I had to say something.

I cornered her.

And I asked her if this was the first recorded incident of contact?

And she said yes.

She said yes but it meant nothing.

She felt that if they didn't want to make contact with us, then what was the point?

She felt like all of the work that she had done at the CEU was for nothing.

So myopic.

Like, if this was the first known contact, recorded contact, then this is the most significant thing to happen to mankind in all of recorded history.

And the public needs to know.

And she said, "No".

And I said, "I don't think that you get to be the one to make that decision."

She said, "Yes, I am."

So I went back to my desk, and I memorized as many of the data points as I could.

And I left.

I knew I was never going to be back.

As soon as I got home, I wrote down everything that I could remember from that incident and every incident that had taken place over the course of my time there.

And I started writing my book.

I wrote for three days straight, completely lost track of time, but I didn't want it to get away. I didn't want to forget anything.

And after three days is when Rachel showed up at my apartment.

She found my address through the personnel files. The same way she had hunted me down and recruited me.

When she came, she told me she knew what I was planning to do.

That I was planning to go public.

I don't know how she knew, but...

She tried to reason with me, to tell me that she was once like me. Idealistic.

Wanting to change the world.

There was a very slight chance that I would ever be able to pull it off.

Something about having her in my home...

I felt violated.

And it colored all of my memories of her.

All the times she brushed my hand accidentally or stood a little bit too close.

She told me she cared. And I just freaked

Called her a dyke.

Slammed the door in her face.

That was mean.

I regret that.

[somber string music]

[Dr. Gale:] Well, what are they really?
I mean, we don't even know.

We sort of know what they're not.

It's not human technology. It definitely doesn't belong to us.

And if it belonged to Russia, or China or North Korea, we would know.

But if they are aliens from outer space hanging out in our oceans to avoid detection,

whatever they're doing, they certainly don't give a shit about us.

I mean, they've been visiting for probably millennia, and only started making themselves seen or interacting with us in any way in World War Two.

They didn't intervene during the Holocaust or Hiroshima.

Which leads me to believe that they probably only give a shit about the planet.

As a matter of fact, it's been said many times that we should count ourselves as lucky that they're not talking to us.

Because even according to our own history, when someone more technologically advanced invades a primitive culture, no matter what their intentions, the primitive culture does not come out on the other side better.

They come out with diabetes, or smallpox, or dead or enslaved.

If they are aliens, their technology demonstrates
such immense power and sophistication

that if they wanted to make contact with us,
they would have done it aeons ago.

But we'll never know.

Because the subject is a heretical taboo to academia.

We will never have the financial resources in order to properly study them, even if it is just counterespionage.

Because the government, administration after administration,
has turned it into a joke.

I mean, it's turned itself into a joke.

I think it's a tragedy, personally.

What have I gained?

A slightly more comprehensive understanding of the universe.

It may seem insignificant, but I think what I've lost has impacted me more.

I lost my career. Twice.

I lost respect.

And I lost the love of my life.

I heard that Scott married a hyperaccredited AI researcher.

Apparently, studying artificial intelligence is more respectable than studying extraterrestrial intelligence.

My life isn't exactly how I thought it would be.

I wrote a book called "The Gulf of Silence" in 2012

which contained most of the information from the Assessment and new information that I learned while working with the CEU.

The title actually came from something Rachel said.

She said the philosophy behind the CEU was to try and bridge the gulf of silence between us and whatever's out there.

I thought it was poetic.

Turns out books don't actually sell themselves, so...

I tour UFO conventions.

Answering questions, sometimes speaking.

Mostly just signing books.

You know, it's incredible. My book is every ounce of truth that exists as we know it concerning UFOs.

And I'm seated next to a guy who's written a book that he perceives to be every ounce of truth about the frog people.

If I think about it too much, it feels humiliating.

I suppose that's one of the reasons why I wrote my book. To like, drop a pebble into the ocean of disinformation.

So hopefully, at some point, someone will be
able to pick up the gauntlet and run with it.

It's not going to be in my generation, that's for sure.

I actually saw Rachel at the last convention I was at in Nevada.

I guess she knew I was speaking and I saw her in the audience.

And then she came up to my table afterward with a book and

asked me to sign it.

I was grateful to see her.

I signed the book and just said thank you for the title.

I imagine that's probably the last time we'll see each other.

She just smiled and walked away.

I don't think I'll see anyone from the CEU again.

Unless Joe writes a book.

[somber music]