Original subtitles

WILLIAM SHATNER: An assassination,

an autopsy,

and the missing brain of a U.S. president.

Strange sightings of UFOs and a plot to cover them up.

And a secret military project with one goal: time travel.

Deep within the recesses of the U.S. government archives

are national secrets that will never been seen by the public.

But every so often,

new information about some of the strangest events

in our nation's past gets uncovered

and reexamined.

Could shadowy military programs hold the secrets

to advanced technology beyond our current understanding?

And might alien contact have reached

as high up as the office of the president?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

♪ ♪

A crowd of excited well-wishers gathers to greet

President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy

as they step off of Air Force One.

The Kennedys join Texas Governor John Connally

and his wife, Nellie,

in a waiting convertible limousine

and ride in a motorcade through the heart of the city,

surrounded by cheering onlookers.

LEE MANDEL: There were roughly 150,000 to 200,000 people

waiting in the crowds,

and Governor Connally's wife said,

"Mr. President, you can't say that Texas doesn't love you."

And he said,

"No, you certainly can't."

And those were the last words he ever spoke.

SHATNER: As the motorcade drives through the downtown district,

three gunshots are fired in quick succession...

(three gunshots)

...and two bullets strike President Kennedy

in the throat and head, critically wounding him.

(crowd clamoring)

By the time that first agent reached the president,

it was already almost too late.

The president had been shot twice,

and it was the immediate call, go right to the hospital.

SHATNER: President Kennedy was swiftly taken

to Parkland Memorial Hospital,

arriving just six minutes after being shot.

WILLIAM MATSON LAW: They put him on a gurney.

They take him and they wheel him into Trauma Room 1.

After President Kennedy is brought in,

they did these lifesaving procedures,

but I think, basically, they knew he was gone.

And then he's pronounced dead at 1:00.

SHATNER: News that President Kennedy had been assassinated

instantly spread throughout the country.

But while Americans were

experiencing both shock and grief,

a series of strange occurrences was unfolding

back at Parkland Hospital in Dallas

that would ultimately lead

many people to wonder if there was a government conspiracy

to cover up the truth about JFK's assassination.

LAW: After President Kennedy was dead,

there was a problem

in the fact that the Secret Service came in

and they wanted to take the body.

Now, by law in Texas,

the, uh, coroner Doctor Earl Rose said,

"You're not taking him."

One of the Secret Service said,

"You're either gonna get out of our way,

or we're gonna run over you."

The Secret Service was saying, "Yes, we are taking

the body back to Washington, D.C."

However, this is a homicide investigation,

locally, by the Dallas Police Department, the D.A.'s office.

The medical examiner has a duty

not to release that body.

Eventually, Vice President Johnson got involved,

and the body was released.

SHATNER: President Kennedy's body was

flown from Dallas to Washington, D.C.,

and then taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.

But why was the Secret Service so determined

to move JFK's remains halfway across the country?

Perhaps the answer lies in examining the bizarre events

that transpired during the president's autopsy,

which took place late in the evening

following his assassination.

LAW: There was a full autopsy done

at Bethesda, Maryland.

And the two doctors were James Humes

and James Boswell.

However, they were not board-certified pathologists.

Instead, they were pure military guys,

who would follow orders.

In essence, this may be the heart of the mystery

of whether there was conspiracy or not.

SHATNER: Even more questionable than the presence

of military doctors

is the fact that, during this autopsy,

President Kennedy's brain

was actually removed from his head

and placed in a collection of evidence labeled simply

"item number nine."

MANDEL: Item number nine was

a stainless steel bucket

that was about seven inches high,

eight and a half inches in diameter,

that contained President Kennedy's brain.

Also, in item number nine were several autopsy slides,

tissue slides, and also several boxes

of paraffin tissue samples.

And so there's something very unusual

about the way the whole thing was handled.

SHATNER: Three days after the autopsy,

on November 25, 1963,

President John F. Kennedy was laid to rest

at Arlington National Cemetery.

However, not all of his remains were buried,

because, for some strange reason...

JFK's brain was still locked inside a steel bucket.

And, as it turns out, over the next few years,

the president's brain would be moved

to multiple locations in and around Washington, D.C.

MANDEL: Dr. George Burkley, who was the White House physician,

requested the brain be delivered to him

immediately after the first autopsy.

Then the brain was sent from Bethesda

to the White House, where it was stored

at the old executive office building.

And it stayed there until April of 1965,

when Senator Robert Kennedy requested

that his brother's brain and all the autopsy materials

that were at the White House

be brought to the National Archives

and given to Evelyn Lincoln.

Evelyn Lincoln was

President Kennedy's personal secretary.

And she wasn't an employee of the National Archives,

but she was working there,

getting his papers ready, things like that.

And she put it the next day in a footlocker

in the National Archives,

and locked it up.

SHATNER: The idea of JFK's brain sitting in an ordinary footlocker

in the National Archives is surreal, to say the least.

But what's even more bizarre is

that on Halloween Day, October 31, 1966,

President Kennedy's brain simply...

...disappeared.

They opened the footlocker,

and lo and behold, none of the items

from item number nine were there.

The brain was gone.

No one knows what happened to it.

It was never seen again.

The popular story is, is that Robert Kennedy

took the brain and all that stuff because

he didn't want it to be a sideshow.

If Robert Kennedy did steal the brain

and took the slides and tissues and that sort of thing,

he muddied the waters,

and that's why we have all these mysteries.

SHATNER: Did Robert Kennedy steal his late brother's brain

in order to keep it out of the public eye?

Perhaps.

But others are convinced that the disappearance

of JFK's brain is connected

to the much larger mystery surrounding his murder,

which remains the most infamous assassination

in American history.

MARTIN K. A. MORGAN: Six decades out from the great tragedy

that unfolded in Dallas in November 1963,

we are no closer to having a sharp picture

of what happened to our president.

If we had the brain, there would be small particles

from whatever bullet struck him in the head.

Those particles could be analyzed.

But we don't have that brain.

So we're left with question marks.

And when you combine the fact that the Secret Service

illegally takes possession of the presidential body--

violating the laws of the State of Texas--

with the fact that the president's brain

later disappears,

it's very difficult not to be suspicious, now, isn't it?

♪ ♪

SHATNER: Twenty-seven million people

from around the globe

flock to the city for the world's fair.

The exposition showcases

a number of remarkable innovations

and the fairgrounds are illuminated

with 100,000 light bulbs.

The sea of glowing lights transforms night into day,

and astonishes the public,

most of whom have never witnessed

anything like it before.

This dazzling spectacle was made possible

by a new form of electricity

called alternating current...

...which was one of many important inventions developed

by famed Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla.

This period, around the end of the 19th century,

beginning of the 20th century,

was the zenith, really, of Tesla's career.

He became famous.

Tesla was the man who could see the future,

he was Mr. Electricity.

Everything that Tesla did

was directed towards this kind of overriding goal

of spectacular new inventions for electrical transmission.

SHATNER: Nikola Tesla is widely considered to be

a scientific genius who changed the course of history.

But there are those who believe

that Tesla should also be credited

with an even more extraordinary invention:

A time machine.

In 1943, Nikola Tesla died

and left all his notes at the New Yorker Hotel.

When he died, the FBI raided Tesla's rooms,

took the notes,

and in the notes

was a whole series of speculative diagrams.

Allegedly, the United States had access to time travel technology

from a number of papers

taken away from Tesla's apartment,

which gave details

on how to create a teleportation device.

And with teleportation, you could also have time travel.

SHATNER: Did the U.S. government really seize plans

for a teleportation device designed by Nikola Tesla?

And if so, is it possible they used this information

to build a working time machine?

Young Andrew Basiago is taken by his father

to visit a nearby manufacturing plant.

Little does Andrew know that this factory

conceals something truly extraordinary.

I was six years old in winter of 1968

when my father took me to building 68

at Curtiss-Wright in Wood-Ridge, New Jersey,

and there on the floor of building 68

was a Tesla teleporter.

It was basically a large device.

It went all the way up to the ceiling,

and it had two booms

that were roughly about eight feet high

and ten feet across on the floor.

They looked, essentially, like elephant tusks.

Between them was a form of energy

that was sort of cascading between the booms,

or armatures, of the device.

Jumping through that radiant energy

caused a holographic white tunnel of light...

...to open in time-space.

They were testing the effect of Tesla teleportation.

SHATNER: After witnessing the Tesla teleporter in action,

Andrew Basiago claims that he was recruited

by members of a shadowy military organization known as DARPA

to participate in a secret time travel program

called Project Pegasus.

BASIAGO: Project Pegasus

was a classified, defense-related

research and development program of DARPA.

They were essentially training and testing

American schoolchildren in eight modalities of time travel.

There were 140 American schoolchildren of my age

who were in the program.

We were also trainees, because we were expected

to become America's first generation

of chrononauts, or time travelers.

SHATNER: According to Andrew Basiago,

the Tesla teleporter was used to send chrononauts back in time

to observe and even influence historical events.

A chrononaut essentially was a time travel agent

in the sense that I wasn't just involved

in testing and training,

I had missions when I went there.

I was sent to Ford's Theatre to see, for example,

who shot Lincoln.

And I was also sent to meet General George Washington

with the mission to urge him

to immediately retreat his troops from New York Harbor.

There was always sort of a very expert

educational session where they would sort of acclimate us,

so we'd understand what was gonna happen next.

SHATNER: While some may find Andrew Basiago's story

hard to believe,

during the Cold War, the United States government

conducted numerous bizarre experiments.

These programs involved everything from mind control

to remote viewing.

What this story really plugs into

is the widespread suspicion about

the military-industrial complex.

The idea that the military

are conducting experiments behind our back,

and it's a widely-held view

that governments around the world,

particularly the United States,

have been researching time travel for a long time.

BASIAGO: Time travel technology, the best I know,

because of my experiences, is presently controlled

by the United States government.

It's not a tall story or some kind of urban legend.

It's part of American history that's been forgotten.

SHATNER: Could Nikola Tesla have actually invented a time machine?

While it sounds like science fiction,

the fact remains that there are many government programs

that we know next to nothing about.

Like the recruitment of the world's top scientists

and the construction of advanced rocket technology

that may be the true origin

of the flying saucer.

SHATNER: The Soviet Red Army has surrounded the city

and the total defeat of the Third Reich is at hand.

On May 7, 1945,

the remaining leadership of the German Army

officially surrenders to Allied forces.

But as people rejoice around the world,

the United States government initiates a top-secret program,

code name: Operation Paperclip.

SPENCE: Operation Paperclip

was a secret Allied plan at the end of World War II

to acquire former Nazi German talent

in the areas of aeronautics, especially,

but also physics,

chemistry and medicine.

In other words, they were rounding up

former Nazi scientists

and bringing many of them to the United States.

LANCE GEIGER: The name "Operation Paperclip"

came because if you were a high-value target,

a scientist that we really wanted,

then there was a paperclip on your folder.

This would have been things like aircraft production,

rocketry, atomic weapons.

Eventually, about 1,600 scientists and their families

were brought to the United States

where, officially, they did not exist.

POPE: Paperclip was essentially an acknowledgment

by the Allied powers that the Germans, in so many areas,

were technologically ahead.

They had science and engineering skills

that we simply didn't have.

So, they wanted to identify these people,

bring them back to the U.S. and set them to work.

GEIGER: We kept Paperclip very secret

because we did not want to tell the American public

that we were out finding Nazi scientists

to come work in the United States.

And so, a lot of the paper trail is still just missing.

That's why Operation Paperclip

still leaves you wondering today, you know,

what-what came from it, and what are we hiding?

SHATNER: What were Nazi scientists

working on in the United States

that, even today, remains a closely guarded secret?

Some say a clue lies in the remarkable events

which transpired throughout 1947,

which has been referred to as "The Year of the Flying Saucer."

BIRNES: During 1947,

flying saucers were sighted all over the country

from the northwest all the way to the southeast.

There was so much panic about, "What are these things?"

"Who's piloting them?" "Where are they from?"

and the sightings of UFOs were on front pages

of newspapers across the country.

SHATNER: On July 8, 1947,

the Roswell Daily Record famously reported

that a flying saucer had crashed in the New Mexico desert

and was seized by the U.S. Army.

While many people believe that the unidentified craft

was extraterrestrial in origin,

others claim that it may have actually been

the result of Operation Paperclip.

GEIGER: The Germans were known to use nontraditional techniques

and unconventional aircraft design.

Some people say what happened at Roswell

was a saucer-shaped disc

that we got from Nazi technology.

Because there's some anecdotal evidence

that they were working on some sort of saucer-shaped aircraft.

And that's the sort of thing we would have been

taking to the United States, that we would have hidden

from the American public.

SHATNER: Is it possible

that the mysterious flying object

recovered in Roswell, New Mexico

was an experimental craft developed by Nazi scientists?

Perhaps the answer can be found by examining

an iconic UFO sighting

that took place only a month before the Roswell crash.

On June 24, pilot Kenneth Arnold reported

seeing UFOs near Mount Rainier in Washington State

flying at supersonic speeds which, interestingly,

matches the velocity of the German V-2 rocket.

And when Arnold described

the mysterious crafts that he had seen,

some pointed out their striking similarity

to an aircraft developed by German scientists

in World War II.

GEIGER: The Germans did a lot of crazy aircraft design,

and one of them was this massive bomber

that was called the Horten 229, it was a flying wing.

The two look so similar, how could they not be related?

And those are the sort of scientists

that Operation Paperclip was grabbing,

is the people that built that aircraft.

And so, when you keep a lot of secrets, then

you leave room for a lot of speculation.

SHATNER: It's intriguing to think that aircraft

built by former Nazi scientists

may have been misidentified as extraterrestrial spacecraft.

But on the other hand, many still believe

that these UFOs came from another world.

So, is it possible that one purpose of Operation Paperclip

was to analyze recovered alien technology?

Let's say that you got ahold of some sort of alien craft.

Who are you gonna bring in to look at it?

You would bring in the most savvy people

in terms of aeronautics, rocketry, propulsion systems.

And if you're talking about the late 1940s or 1950s,

Paperclip-connected scientists would be

some of the key individuals you would want to have there.

POPE: There is a direct potential connection here

between Nazi scientists and the Roswell crash.

But there's still vast parts of it

that we don't know, and maybe we never will.

Could Project Paperclip and the work of German scientists

on behalf of the U.S. government

have played a role in the events of July 8, 1947?

Was the Roswell crash

an advanced military test gone awry?

Or was it evidence...

that we had been visited by something from another world?

Whatever the case may be,

as more UFO sightings were reported

throughout the 1940s and 1950s,

a new top-secret group was deployed to investigate.

They were called... the Majestic 12.

SHATNER: An unidentified object slams into a hill

eight miles northeast of the Kingman Airport.

Within moments, the United States military

springs into action.

This time, they won't repeat the mistake they made at Roswell:

of letting the public find out about it.

(engine revving)

BIRNES: The Army descends on that hill.

Locks it down. Onlookers are trying

to climb the hill to see it.

Nope, can't see it.

The Army puts up a tent,

but it invites different scientists

to come out and kind of examine it.

DOLAN: It was estimated to be about 14 feet high,

classic flying saucer shape.

It had, uh, like rows of lights along the perimeter.

And they were all told to examine this site

and provide their assessment.

And then they were told, like, you are to take an oath

and you are never to talk about this again.

The Kingman crash was really not even discussed

until the 1970s, when one researcher

was able to interview a primary witness of it,

an atomic scientist who gave a very detailed description

about the Kingman event.

SHATNER: Unlike the crash at Roswell six years earlier,

the U.S. military's response to the Kingman incident

was so swift that it wasn't until years later

that the world knew anything had occurred there.

But how was an event of this apparent magnitude

kept secret for so long?

In my experience of government,

there would need to be what we would call

a standard operating procedure

and it's claimed that one was drawn up

for UFO crashes after Roswell.

And it seems that this was used in 1953

in relation to the Kingman UFO crash.

SHATNER: An operations manual on how to deal with UFO crashes?

As far-fetched as it sounds,

UFO researchers believe that such a handbook not only exists,

but was put in place to avoid the mistakes

the U.S. military made trying to contain

the earlier crash at Roswell in 1947.

And they claim that the authors of this handbook

were members of a shadowy organization

known as the Majestic 12.

DOLAN: Majestic 12 or MJ 12, is believed by many researchers

to be a group of individuals

who are-- essentially are controlling the UFO cover up.

MIKE BARA: There are many, many documents that exist that say that MJ 12

actually was a real government organization.

Majestic 12 was signed into existence

by President Harry Truman in September of 1947.

Shortly after the Roswell incident,

when the U.S. government decided it needed

to have a main central oversight committee

that would handle the so-called alien problem.

And it contained many, many prominent members,

including the head of the CIA at the time,

or what became the CIA.

Of all of the documents that I have ever received,

most important to me

is the Majestic 12 extraterrestrial entities

and technology recovery and disposal.

The document is about

how you would take military units out into a field,

gather extraterrestrial biological entities,

alive or dead, how you would get the craft,

and it has top-secret classification throughout.

SHATNER: Are we really to believe a secret government agency

was established in order to cover up evidence of UFOs?

According to many experts,

even if that organization did exist,

it would be nearly impossible to keep such information

under wraps for long.

They argue that it's much easier to convince eyewitnesses

that what they saw wasn't really there in the first place.

High school basketball coach Reggie Bone and his players

are driving through the Ozark woods

on their way home from a game

when they spot a bright shaft of light coming from the sky.

In 1973, I was general manager of KPLB radio station

in Piedmont, Missouri.

And I did the news for the station.

I interviewed Reggie and five of his basketball players.

After the team had seen a light flashing in the sky,

several miles later,

one of the boys explained, said, "Hey, there's that light again."

The coach and the ballplayers got out and they saw

these lights, circular, in red, amber, green and white.

And then it started raising up, and no sound,

and went over a hill.

And that's the last they saw of it.

SHATNER: At first, Reggie and his team thought

what they had seen wasn't actually a UFO,

but merely a trick of light fooling their tired eyes.

But as it turns out,

they weren't the only ones who saw it.

HOVIS: Pretty soon, the local police department had received

500-plus phone calls from people saying,

"Hey, we're looking at this," "We're seeing this."

As a reporter, I felt like I needed

to do some more investigating besides just the local people

explaining to me what they were seeing.

So, I contacted personnel at Scott Air Force Base

to find out if they had any lights in the area.

And t-the gentleman at the time,

uh, explained to me that they--

nothing like that was going on.

SHATNER: According to one theory,

the reason why the Air Force was so unhelpful

was due to yet another government program

created to cover up UFOs.

One that wasn't designed to conceal UFO wreckage,

but to explain it away.

DOLAN: Project Blue Book was the official UFO investigative body

of the United States Air Force from the 1950s

through the end of the '60s.

And one of the tricks that they used

was they eliminated the category of possible.

And so, if something was a possible balloon,

even if it was the most remote possibility,

then it became "balloon" and that was the explanation.

SHATNER: Is there really a step-by-step government guide

to keep the public at arm's reach

following strange encounters?

It certainly makes you wonder how many chemical spills,

military tests or strange weather events

were something much more.

Like when a cluster of UFOs was spotted

not in a small town or remote desert,

but directly over the U.S. Capitol.

SHATNER: High above this remote oil-drilling outpost,

the United States Air Force detects

a mysterious, unidentified flying object on radar.

A pair of F-22 Raptor fighter jets are immediately scrambled

to intercept the UFO

and the pilots report seeing a strange,

cylindrical silver object

floating in the sky.

It's described as about the size of a car,

just kind of hovering around 40,000 feet.

It's deemed a threat to civilian aircraft,

and so President Joe Biden orders it to be shot down.

(whooshing)

And then the official statement was,

"We deemed it a threat to our airspace,

"we take those threats seriously.

We shot it down. It's not a concern anymore."

That's the end of the story.

BIRNES: There's this strange object hovering over Alaska,

but the government never revealed what it was.

Was it from China?

Was it from Russia?

Or was it a flying saucer?

SHATNER: What was the mysterious UFO

that President Biden felt needed

to be shot out of the sky?

Officially, the White House claims that the object crashed

into the ocean, and has not been recovered.

But this is not the first time a UFO

has come to the attention of America's commander-in-chief.

And many people are convinced

that U.S. presidents have been hiding the truth

about extraterrestrial spacecraft

for more than 70 years.

Air traffic controllers detect multiple

unidentified objects

flying in the sky over the nation's capital.

BIRNES: July 19, 1952,

squadrons of UFOs flew over the capital.

They flew over the Washington Monument.

They flew over the White House.

Go to The New York Times,

and you know what you'll see?

UFOs flying over the capital.

That's what you'll see.

Therefore, Harry Truman was the first president

to actually set American policy having to do with UFOs.

And here's what he did.

Immediately, the explanation

for all those UFOs over Washington, D.C., in 1952

was radar anomalies,

temperature inversion.

The pilots weren't sure what they were seeing.

So will the president say UFOs are among us?

Absolutely not.

SHATNER: Did the Truman administration cover up

the truth about alien spacecraft visiting our planet?

In the 1950s, many Americans believed

that the government was withholding

important information about UFOs and, in fact,

there are those who claim that America's

next president actually met

with extraterrestrials.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower is on a winter holiday,

when in the middle of the night,

he simply disappears.

When you're president of the United States,

we should know where you are at all times.

But this one evening,

in February of 1954,

Eisenhower just goes missing...

...to the point where the Associated Press

put out a wire saying he died.

He died in the middle of the night.

And then two minutes later, they retracted it,

and said, "No, our mistake."

And the next morning, he shows up at church.

So something happened in the middle of that night

that is obviously off the books,

unexplained and really strange.

SHATNER: Where was President Eisenhower

during the time that he disappeared?

Well, according to numerous accounts

that surfaced after the incident,

Eisenhower allegedly attended

a most unusual meeting.

There's a story that on February 20, 1954,

President Eisenhower

had a meeting with extraterrestrials.

This took place at an air base.

Eisenhower was presumably asked

to renounce and give up nuclear weapons.

And, in exchange,

the extraterrestrials would give the U.S. technology

which would change the world.

The story is that Eisenhower turned down

this deal because he couldn't be sure that

the Soviets would do the same thing.

SHATNER: Did President Eisenhower

really meet with extraterrestrials?

Well, if he did, the government successfully

covered up any definitive evidence.

But in recent years,

it's become harder to keep secrets about UFOs,

because multiple government organizations

have been actively investigating

this mysterious phenomenon.

There have been several

recent hearings on UFOs,

both in Congress and with NASA.

And so what we've seen is this subject

increasingly moving out of the fringe

and into the mainstream.

Which makes me wonder

what is it they're not telling us?

The president,

particularly in his capacity as commander-in-chief,

can make that call.

And maybe we will see it one day soon.

My fellow Americans, people of the world,

we are not alone.

SHATNER: Just two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor,

a Japanese submarine surfaces off the coast

and fires armor-piercing shells

at the Ellwood Oil Field.

While the bombardment causes little damage,

America is on high alert.

Civilians are reading in their newspapers

on the morning of February 24 about a submarine attack.

And then, on the evening of February 24,

the headquarters of the 37th Anti-Aircraft Brigade

and the 4th Anti-Aircraft Command received a message

from the Office of Naval Intelligence stating:

"Predict Los Angeles attack tonight."

MORGAN: Everyone was on the lookout for the submarine

that had shelled the oil refining complex

right near Santa Barbara the night before.

All of Southern California went under a blackout.

No radio stations could broadcast.

There was a full military alert.

POPE: What happened was,

over a series of some hours,

strange objects were seen over Los Angeles,

in and around the city itself.

And the witnesses included

members of the public, but also

some of the people manning the coastal batteries.

And these people opened fire

on whatever this object or objects were.

SHATNER: Anti-aircraft guns erupted,

firing blindly at unidentified objects in the sky.

But were these objects Japanese planes?

Or could they have been something else?

This strange incident has come to be known

as the Battle of Los Angeles.

POPE: You've got to imagine all these coastal batteries

firing up into the air.

So the Battle of Los Angeles,

in many respects, took the war

to the mainland, continental United States.

And it was apocalyptic.

The city of Los Angeles is stunned.

Nobody's quite sure what's happening.

Are-are we under attack?

They looked as if they were, but by who or what?

SHATNER: In total, 1,400 rounds were fired

into the sky at unidentified objects.

Remarkably, after the smoke cleared,

there was no evidence of any downed planes

and no coherent explanation for what happened.

Within hours, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox

held a press conference, dismissing the incident

as "war nerves."

Frank Knox makes a very interesting statement that

it was a false alarm.

A lot of people say that there was a cover-up

and the military was obfuscating the truth,

and everyone's dodging this.

There more than likely is some truth to that.

The civilians didn't know anything except that shrapnel

was raining down on the citizens of Los Angeles,

because many rounds didn't impact and didn't detonate

until they hit the ground.

And this is pretty alarming.

SHATNER: What really happened

on February 24, 1942,

over the skies of Los Angeles?

Some say the answer can be found by examining

the iconic photo of the attack

that appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

NELSON: It's an amazing photograph.

And it shows these beams of light

going up into the sky

and terminating at one large object

that is, in fact, some kind of, uh, oblong shape.

MORGAN: The photo enters the general American cultural zeitgeist

in a powerful way, because in that photograph,

what they think they see is that

U.S. Army coast artillery

anti-aircraft searchlight batteries have illuminated

a flying saucer.

SHATNER: Did the U.S. military engage in a firefight

with a flying saucer during World War II, as some believe?

It's a tantalizing question

that is still up for debate, especially considering

that the photo in the Los Angeles Times

was altered for publication.

The original photograph is so faint,

that it shows some blurry blobs of light.

And then a few searchlights that sort of fade out.

So they helped the viewer see the search lights

by doctoring it and making it more acceptable for print.

So what is up there?

1,400 anti-aircraft rounds lighting up the night sky

over Los Angeles must have been quite a sight to see.

But what mysterious objects

were U.S. defenses really shooting at?

Perhaps we'll never know.

Because whether it's a top-secret technology,

a hidden government program,

or a carefully orchestrated cover-up of the highest order,

it's clear that some national secrets

continue to be, and may always remain...

unexplained.

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