All language subtitles for Fenomén (2020).en

(ethereal music)

- Everything that we know and have learned

about mankind and its
place in the universe

suggests that we are a part of the norm,

we are not the exception.

Within the last month,

a planet was identified that has water,

a mere 110 light years away from Earth.

We need to begin to prepare
to accept and understand

that we are not alone in the universe,

have not been at all throughout this time.

- [Narrator] The same year
that life-giving water

was discovered on the distant planet,

the US Navy made a startling announcement.

- [Pilot] Look at that thing!

It's rotating.

- [Narrator] Images captured by its pilots

of objects exhibiting a
vastly superior technology

were authentic.

- [Pilot] What the fuck is that thing?

Did you box a moving target?

- [Mellon] We can start
to finally, at long last,

after all these decades,

begin to answer these questions

about the origin of these vehicles;

where they're from, how they're made,

how they function, and why they're here.

- [Speaker] People need to know

there is something else out there.

- [Narrator] To fully understand,

we must examine a body of
evidence long-suppressed.

A parallel history to
the one we think we know,

stretching back at least 70 years.

(bomber engine roars)

On a clear, sunny day in 1955,

William Coleman, a decorated
World War II pilot,

took off from Miami on a routine flight

to deliver a B-25 bomber to
an air base in Mississippi.

- My copilot said, "Look at
that bright spot up there."

I think it's just a reflection of the sun,

a craze probably in the windshield.

- [Narrator] He and his
passengers, two aviation engineers,

realized it was a strange object

making a rapid descent right
across their flight path.

- My God, look at that thing.

I opened it up to max continuous power.

Here, we're clipping right along

at over 300 miles an hour,
right on the treetops.

I'm right on the tail of this sucker.

(bomber engine roars)

As we got close, I said,
"It doesn't have a tail,

doesn't have any wings."

Look at the shadow on the ground,

the shadow was perfectly round.

That's not an airplane.

And I said, "I'm overtaking it,"

so I said, "Hang on!"

So I'm gonna make a hard turn.

There it was, a disc,

going across the field
with two big swirls.

What I didn't see was any exhaust;

propulsion, no rivet lines.

A rounded edge about that size

where it all came together,

a true flying saucer.

- [Narrator] Then it seemed to vanish

until they spotted it
thousands of feet above them.

- Bright yellow, sun-ish looking object.

It went like a bat out of hell.

(wheels screech)
(bomber engine grumbles)

- [Narrator] After they landed,

the stunned witnesses
were separately debriefed

by Project Blue Book, the
Air Force investigation

of the UFO phenomenon.

Ironically, a little over a decade later,

Colonel William T. Coleman
became public spokesman

for Project Blue Book.

(gentle music)
(propellers rumble)

- Probably, what we saw may
have been from somewhere else.

(pilot speaks indistinctly)

Look, the Air Force is a very deadly being

when it comes to intercepting an unknown.

If it proves hostile,
we're gonna shoot it down.

Other than that, no problem.

(tense music)
(plane engine roars)

- [Narrator] In the late 1940s,

America seemed impregnable
to military threat.

It had just emerged from World
War II masters of the air,

the only nuclear armed
superpower in the world.

But in 1947, something appeared in the sky

and everything changed.

- [Caster] Every newscaster

and every newspaper across the nation

has made headlines out of it

and this afternoon we are honored indeed

to have here in our studio
this man, Kenneth Arnold,

who we believe may be able to
give us a firsthand account

and give you the same on what happened.

- [Kenneth] I kept
looking for their tails,

they didn't have any tails.

I thought, "Well, maybe
something's wrong with my eyes."

They seemed to flip and flash
in the sun just like a mirror.

I'd be glad to confirm it
with my hands on a Bible,

because I did see it.

And whether it has anything to do

with our army or our intelligence,

or whether it has to do
with some foreign country,

I don't know.

- [Narrator] Arnold had sent
this sketch to the Air Force

following his sighting.

He was later invited to California's

Hamilton Field Army Air Base,

where he was handed what he was told

were authentic photos of a similar craft.

- "At the request of Lieutenant
Colonel Donald Springer,

Commanding Officer of the
fourth Air Force Intelligence,

and was given the above
prints as a courtesy

for the assistance he had
given military intelligence."

- [Narrator] The photo
was taken in Arizona

just two weeks after his own encounter.

(eerie music)

- They said that my father's
sighting of flying saucers

got more attention than
the ending of World War II.

He was besieged by newspaper reporters

from all over the world.

Mm-hm.
(plane engine roars)

- [Narrator] Reporters interviewed

United Airline's pilot E.J. Smith,

who also flew the northwest route.

He joked Arnold had likely been fooled

by a cockpit reflection,

until he too became a
witness a few weeks later.

He and his stunned crew had watched

as nine discs maneuvered in formation

for a full 45 minutes.

- And from there, it just exploded.

The first few days in July of 1947

had a very large level
of inciting activity.

- [Narrator] These unknown objects

barnstormed across the country,

sometimes in fleet-like formations

that looked like a
deliberate show of force.

- [Bob Hope] Hundreds of people

told Air Force investigators,

they'd seen the saucers of their own eyes.

Bright, shiny things that
whished through the air

at incredible speeds.

Even airline pilots who
seldom indulge in fantasy

reported sightings,

and Air Force Flyers told of chasing them

or something all over the sky.

The Air Force called 'em
Unidentified Flying Objects,

but people went right on

calling them saucers and seeing them.

There was something in the air.

(plane engine roars)

(tense music)

- [Broadcast] Well, the Air Force has

the best brains in the
country working on it.

General Nathan Twining, the
Air Force Chief of Staff,

says that if there are
saucers from Mars or Jupiter,

or some for our planet,

and that there is a people

and a world that far ahead of us,

he doesn't believe we even
have to worry about it.

- [Narrator] But a then secret memorandum

by the same general

suggested that the
highest military echelons

thought there was plenty to worry about.

The memo states quote,

"The phenomenon reported is something real

and not visionary or fictitious."

It described metallic discs,

circular in shape with domes on top,

often traveling in formations
of three to nine craft.

It also listed aerodynamic capabilities

with disturbing implications
for national defense:

extreme rates of climb,

dazzling maneuverability,

and the superior capacity
for evasive action.

- A lot of people expected

that the United States government

was about to confirm, "Okay, they're ours.

This is an exciting, new
technological advance

that we were testing

and now it's time to
tell people about it."

- [Narrator] Occasionally,
eye witness testimony

included compelling photographic evidence.

Evelyn Trent was feeding her rabbits

when she spotted a
metallic disc-shaped object

floating over their farm.

She alerted her husband, Paul,

to grab his camera and he
managed to get two shots.

(camera shutter clicks)
(eerie music)

(camera shutter clicks)

They described the object slowly hovering

before it abruptly sped away.

Life Magazine picked up the story

and the McMinnville UFO
became a global sensation.

- There's no chance of this being weather,

there's no chance of this
being a star or an aircraft.

This is either some kind
of structured object

that we don't know what
it is, or it's a hoax.

Paul Trent and his wife, they were honest,

simple, hardworking people

who never made a dime off the
photographs that they took.

They never tried to make a dime off of it.

- It just come up like that

and then it tipped and just, "whoosh."

I mean, it really went.

It went fast.

I've never seen anything
go so fast in my life

as that thing went.

Yep.

- [Narrator] In 1951, future
astronaut Gordon Cooper,

while training in Germany,

chased a large formation with
his squadron of fighter jets.

- Unlike fighters, they would stop,

almost stop in their forward velocity

and change 90 degrees
sometimes in their flight path.

And within the next two to three days,

we'd had practically all the fighters

we could muster on the base

up climbing as high as they would climb

with guys with binoculars in 'em,

still trying to spot these
strange devices flying overhead.

We never could get close
enough really to pin them down,

but they were round in shape
and very metallic looking.

And they would come over

and do the same maneuvers that we make,

except every once in
while one of 'em goes zip!

And you just can't do that in a fighter.

(train rattles, rumbles)
(train whistle blows)

- [Delbert] Like two saucers,
one inverted over the other.

They seemed to be made of
some kind of polished metal.

When I first saw the objects,

they were almost overhead.

By the time I had the camera ready to go,

they had moved to a
considerably greater distance.

- [Narrator] But the unknowns
showed no signs of hostility,

an other worldly power on
its own mysterious mission.

(dramatic music)

Commercial pilots, William
Nash and William Fortenberry,

former Navy aviators

with thousands of hours
of flight experience,

saw eight huge discs
fly in a stack formation

over Chesapeake Bay, Virginia;

just a stone's throw from Washington, DC.

- When they came out over
the blackness of the bay,

they're distinct, six red coins.

And when they got closer,
we could see that you were...

it looked like you were
looking down into it,

like a hot coal.

- [Narrator] They reported
the glowing red objects

had approached them head on

at a speed they estimated at six

to 12,000 miles per hour.

- They came in like this
and went out like this.

There would be no way of making

complete reversal or a ninety degree turn

at 12,000 miles an hour or greater,

without making the
occupants juice on the wall!

That kind of really shook us up,

looking at the thing shook us up.

Nothing could have gotten

to that degree of scientific progress

without some of the intermediate steps

having become public knowledge.

We just knew that they
were not from this planet.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] The next weekend,
the unthinkable happened.

The nation's capitol was
invaded from the skies.

Seven unknown blips
suddenly appeared on radar

at Washington National Airport.

Air traffic controllers at both Andrews

and Bowling Air Force Bases

confirmed the objects

as they danced through
restricted airspace.

(dramatic music)

- Capitol Building,

the White House where the president lived.

These were some of the most
important places in the country

when it comes to national defense.

And there were UFOs
violating this airspace

and there was nothing that the
Air Force could do about it.

- [Narrator] F-94
interceptors were scrambled.

(jet engines roar)

Pentagon Press Liaison Al Chop

was in the radar room that night.

- We could see the planes
coming in on this radar scope

and the minute we saw the
beginning of these guys,

the UFOs disappeared; they just left.

They obviously, whatever
these things were,

had intelligence enough
to get out of the area

when we had an intercept going in.

- [Narrator] But the next
weekend, it began again.

Pilot William Patterson pushed

his starfire jet to maximum speed

to try to intercept one
of the glowing objects.

- Flew right into the middle
of three or four of 'em.

- [Narrator] Al Chop recalls the pilot's

panicky air-to-ground transmission

as he streaked at 600 miles per hour

into a group of unknowns.

- He actually said,
"They're closing in on me.

What do I do?"

(jet engine roars)
(tense music)

It was frightening.

- [Narrator] The Air Force
had just issued orders

to shoot down the unknowns if, quote,

"They can't talk them down."

- I'm not gonna tell an Air Force pilot

to fire at the damn thing or anything.

I didn't say anything,
nobody said anything.

And then all of a sudden,

the things began to move away from him

and he said, "They're gone."

(indistinct chatter)

I'm convinced they're solid objects

and convinced that they're
probably from another planet

or from outer space somewhere.

I've always felt that
way since that night.

- [Narrator] The very next day,

the Air Force's top brass hastily prepared

the largest Pentagon press
conference since World War II.

Seen here in the last minute huddle,

General Roger Ramey,

Air Force Director of
Operations at the Pentagon,

Captain Edward Ruppelt
of Project Blue Book,

the Air Force's official
UFO Investigations Arm,

and Director of Air Force
Intelligence General John Sanford.

- Since 1947, we have
received and analyzed

between one and 2000 reports

that have come to us from
all kinds of sources.

Of this great mass of reports,

we have been able adequately

to explain the great bulk of them.

However, there have been

a certain percentage of
this volume of reports

that have been made by credible observers

of relatively incredible things.

We can say that the recent sightings

are in no way connected
with any secret development

by any department of the United States.

- [Narrator] In the Q
and A with reporters,

Sanford suggested a 50-50 chance

it could have been radar waves

bouncing off temperature inversions.

- The point that Sanford put
across all too effectively

was that they were not real,

they were just tricks of the atmosphere.

And atmospheric phenomena can't be

a threat to national security.

You don't shoot at clouds.

- [Narrator] The public was pondering

the implications of possible
extraterrestrial contact.

- [Caster] Robert L. Farnsworth,

president of the United
States Rocket Society,

urged defense officials
not to permit our planes

to fire at any flying saucers.

He says this might alienate human kind

from beings of far superior forces.

Farnsworth feels that
friendly contact should be

sought as long as possible.

- [Narrator] Behind the scenes,
the CIA had other concerns.

A secret internal memo urged

immediate attention to unexplained objects

in the vicinity of major
US defense installations.

- I would dare say if anything happened

that we thought was a threat
to our national security,

somebody out there,

one of the services would respond to it.

(tense music)

- Remember, this is the
height of the Cold War.

Okay? There are bombers on both sides

loaded with nuclear bombs.

- [Narrator] Dr. Jacques
Vallee was the inspiration

for the French UFO researcher

in Steven Spielberg's "Close
Encounters of the Third Kind."

(doctor speaks in French)

- Have you recently had a close encounter?

- [Narrator] In real
life, Dr. Vallee conducted

sober scientific research
on the phenomenon.

- We know now that there
is no simple answer.

- [Narrator] For decades,
he met with witnesses

and traveled the globe gathering evidence,

ultimately creating the first
database on the UFO subject.

- Mr. Chairman, all the
great nations of the world

are represented on this committee.

Let us keep in mind
that the UFO phenomenon

may represent an even greater reality.

- [Narrator] Vallee also consulted with

scientific, military and
government officials,

including Project Blue
Book's top science advisor,

Dr. J. Allen Hynek.

- I began my work as scientific consultant

to the United States Air Force

as an open skeptic.

- [Narrator] Hynek was
a university astronomer

with a high security clearance

when the Air Force recruited
him to investigate UFOs.

- And it so happened, when
the Air Force got the job

of trying to figure out

what some of these strange
flying saucer stories were about,

well, they needed an astronomer

to see how many of the reports

could possibly be explained as meteors

and twinkling stars and planets.

- [Narrator] The two scientists
became close colleagues,

with Hynek entrusting Vallee to index

the reams of Blue Book files

scattered throughout Hynek's home.

It was there that Vallee
made a chance discovery

of a letter so secret

he had to appeal to the Chief Counsel

of the Senate Defense
Appropriations Committee

to get it declassified.

- That document changed my life.

It taught me that the subject

had been taken much more
seriously than anybody thought.

- [Narrator] The document
revealed an ultra secret,

highly funded scientific investigation;

working parallel to Blue Book,

unknown to all but a select few.

The letter was signed by H.C. Cross,

Director of Exotic Metallurgy

at Battelle National Laboratories.

- These were the people
who had analyzed the files

with a large budget,

with highly competent physicists

and computer scientists.

(dishes hums, clicks)
(tense music)

Who are these people?

What information did they have?

- Good evening.

Tonight we go after a fantastic story.

The story that flying
saucers from other worlds

are visiting our planet,

just as we are exploring outer space

with our own rocket satellites.

Our guest is former Marine
Air Corps major Donald Keyhoe

in his campaign to prove
that flying saucers exist.

My name is Mike Wallace,
the cigarette is Parliament.

Why will the United States government

withhold information from
United States citizens?

For what reason?

- The Air Force is simply treating

the American people like children.

They don't trust them with the facts.

(gentle music)
(winds blow)

- [Narrator] During the
fifties and sixties,

it wasn't just the Americans
who were seeing flying saucers.

At the Westall school in Australia,

several hundred students saw an object

hovering over this power line tower

on their athletic field;

an event they vividly
recall 50 years later.

- A student came into
the classroom, you know,

(Marilyn gasps dramatically)
"There's flying saucers

in the oval! There's flying saucers!"

And everybody ran out.

(children shout indistinctly)

And I remember the fear

and the hysteria of all the students.

- I couldn't believe it,

because what I was saying wasn't possible.

- It was vertical, horizontal,

move away from us, back towards us,

appear somewhere else, somewhere else.

- My God, you know?
- Yeah.

- But it was exciting!

- It was like that and
then all of a sudden,

it just turned on its side

and I could see that it was a round disc.

- [Narrator] The children saw the disc

begin to descend into this wooded reserve

at the end of the school's running path.

- I ran towards the corner of the school,

jumped the fence and ran towards

where it looked as though
it went down into the trees

and then stopped dead

because it was right in
front of me on the ground.

Like a disc with a slight
rise in the middle.

I also heard a low sort of a humming noise

and I felt a bit of a heat
coming off it as well.

(tense music)

And it started to take off
pretty well straight away.

It had all bluey purple
lights around the bottom.

Don't remember seeing any windows,

and it took off to about probably four

or five meters in the air

and then turned on its side;

and just went zoom, straight up so fast

that there's just nothing even in our day

that could go that fast.

- [Narrator] Shortly
after the object departed,

the authorities converged on the school.

- We had Army, Air Force, Police

down there coordinating off the area

to prevent any of us entering the area

or disturbing anything.

- We got called to assembly,

the headmaster said,
"You have not seen this."

- Yeah, well.
- "You do not talk about it,

you'll be in trouble if you do."

- [Narrator] For the first time ever,

the school's science teacher agreed

to describe what he saw that day,

providing we concealed his identity.

- [Teacher] It was not a mirage.

There was something physical in the sky.

It was silver, it could hover,

it could move slowly, it
could move very rapidly.

Eventually, it moved away to
the other side of the oval

and down behind some pine trees.

I was not then, nor ever have been,

able to use my knowledge of the world

nor my scientific training

to provide a rational explanation.

- [Narrator] What he said next

sheds light on why the school staff

have remained silent all these years.

- [Teacher] There was a
knock on the door one night.

Two older men, one in uniform,

asked for my description of what I'd seen.

I was then told that I
hadn't seen anything,

that I'd made it all up,

possibly because I drunk

and that they would
have to report that fact

to the education department
and I would lose my job.

After that, I was told
that I would be prosecuted

under the Official Secrets Act

and I was told that there
wasn't anything there...

when I knew there was,

and that I had to keep quiet about it.

Why did I have to keep quiet?

- [Narrator] The Westall
landing may not have been

an isolated incident.

Four days prior,

a then-young engineer in nearby Baldwin

was taking photos in his mother's garden

when something caught his eye.

- This tremendous flash
of light and I looked up,

and I saw this object.

And I pulled... I had a Polaroid camera

and I pulled it up, hit myself on my face,

and I took the picture.

And I've got the photograph here.

- This is the original Polaroid?

That's it... (witness speaks indistinctly)

(tense music)

- It looked like it was made
out of some form of metal

and it was engineered.

And being an engineer, I was sure it was.

And that's when I took the photograph

and then it tipped around
and I could see the bottom,

and it looked like it was rotating to me.

And that was it.

And then after that, it
sort of gave a bounce

and it rocketed away to the
north at very high speed.

- [James] Can you
describe the acceleration?

- It was like almost instantaneous,

like it had been shot out of a gun.

Wham! You know?

- [Narrator] Air Force officers
showed up at his doorstep,

asking for every detail of his experience.

- And they also had some
photographs of similar things

and they also had a book

which had pictures of things

in which they didn't leave with me,

but I had to look through.

But they said it was an
unidentified flying object.

So that was it, you know?

- [James] What was the implication?

- That it didn't come
from anywhere on Earth.

- [Narrator] Project Blue Book,

with a skeletal staff,

continued publicly collecting
thousands of cases.

Despite efforts to explain them away,

hundreds were still filed as unknown.

- [Caster] Several reports of
a strange egg-shaped object

about 200 feet long,

landing on farms and highways last night,

in the vicinity of Levelland.

Sheriff Clem says he even himself

got a glimpse of the thing,

which somehow turned off lights

and auto engines when it came near.

- [Clem] The object did take off

almost straight up at a terrific speed.

- Within twenty four to 36 hours

after these sightings in Levelland, Texas,

at the White Sands proving ground

very close to the Trinity test site

where they first detonated
the first atomic bomb,

military personnel witnessed
a glowing egg-shaped object

that apparently landed.

- [Bill] This is Bill Haggard,

Public Information Officer

of White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico.

What they saw looked like
a landing and takeoff

of some controlled
object from outer space.

(weather vane squeaks)

(birds chirp)

(horse hooves thud)

(horse whinnies)

- [Lonnie] Well, I was
chasing a car up Park Street.

It was reckless driving.

I saw this big cloud of smoke,

so I decided to let go of the car

and go up there and investigate.

By the time I got there,

I could see a big white
object sitting in the arroyo.

I couldn't tell what it was at first.

(eerie music)

My radio was dead, it didn't work at all.

I could see some figures,

looked like they were walking
around the craft there.

- [Narrator] They appeared to
be dressed in white coveralls

and were "Child-like, that is, small."

- [Lonnie] One was in
front, the other in back.

- [Narrator] Zamora added
that one of the two persons

turned his head and
looked straight at him.

- [Lonnie] When I got out of the car,

about 50 feet from it,

I guess they saw me

'cause they started their
motor or whatever it is.

I could see a big blast of fire

coming from right under it.

(UFO engine roars)

So I was behind some bushes
there, behind my car.

I could see it and I could feel that heat.

(UFO engine roars)

That really got me scared, you know?

A lot of people say,

"Why don't you take your gun out

and shoot at it?" You know?

And that they weren't
doing nothing to me, so.

It just took a little
while to get airborne,

came up a little bit,
about twenty, 30 feet

and it stayed there a while,

and it stayed just as quiet as it could be

and then just flew away; that's it.

(ominous music)

- Lonnie was very, very scared.

He was as white as a sheet.

From here, went directly to the church

to talk to the priest, okay?

- [Narrator] Pablo Lopez
was among the first

to arrive at the landing and takeoff site.

- The ground was still smoldering,

some of the weeds that were around it.

- [Narrator] This rare footage gives us

a glimpse of the scene
shortly after the incident.

Patrolman Zamora stoops to point out

one of the landing gear imprints

where officers had just placed rocks

to protect the fresh ground traces.

- And then there was a set...
two sets of footprints,

two sets of footprints like so.

That was about the
approximate size of them.

In comparison to a quarter,
that's pretty small, okay?

That's about the size of them.

- [Narrator] Within an hour
and over the next several days,

officials from the FBI,
military and Project Blue Book

documented the evidence at the scene.

(camera shutter clicks)
(tense music)

- [Interviewer] Were there
any prong marks on the ground,

or anything like that,

where you could see where it had landed?

- [Lonnie] There were four.

- [Interviewer] Very unusual footprints.

How many were there?

- [Lonnie] Two footprints one side

and two footprints on the other side.

(tense music)

- [Interviewer] Of course,
the burn area there...

- [Lonnie] I was behind my car.

I could see it and I could feel that heat.

They told me that all over the state,

they had been seeing some
of those flying saucers,

whatever you call 'em.

They gave me a book on it, you know,

and they told me to go ahead and read it.

Eh, well, it says not
to say nothing on it.

Keep away from it, don't
say too much, you know?

- [Narrator] It was
the middle of the night

by the time Lonnie came home.

- Oh, he was real pale
and I thought he was sick.

I said, "Are you sick or something?"

He said, no.

He said, "I was just working."

He was like, like he was angry.

What I knew about it was when

I started reading the papers, you know?

It started coming out and
coming out, and everything.

I said, "Well, what's this that you saw?"

"I don't know," he said.

"It's just a headache."

He said, "Everybody's after me

and some believe me and some don't."

- [Letter 1] Dear Mr. Zamora,

- [Letter 2] Dear Mr. Zamora,
- [Letter 3] Dear Mr. Zamora,

I'm interested in UFOs.

(indistinct overlapping voices)

- [Letter 4] I saw a UFO
myself in the summer of 1958.

- [Letter 5] I could go on for a week

telling you what I've seen.

- [Letter 3] A boy in
our school's science fair

had three pictures that look just like

the flying saucers
- [Letter 6] I thought

I should write to you,

to tell you, you are not alone

in your sighting of this object.

(indistinct overlapping voices)

- [Letter 7] I read about
you seeing a blind saucer.

- [Letter 6] I'm retired teacher.

- [Letter 7] Well, you have a friend.

- [Letter 6] This saucer phenomenon

has changed my life and ideas.

- [Letter 3] The farmer
said when it took off,

it set his lawn on fire.

(indistinct overlapping voices)

Can you tell me how
long it stayed on Earth

and other things like that?

- And then people
started making fun of him

that he had seen little
men from outer space

and this and that, and
whole bunch of dirty stuff.

- [Lonnie] A lot of people ask me,

"Is that the reason you
quit the police force?"

No, the reason I quit the police force

was because I was going through

a lot of publicity and stuff like that,

and I didn't wanna hurt the town.

- [Narrator] The level of inquiry

went all the way to the
office of the president.

To this day, the Socorro close encounter

remains unexplained.

- Socorro was very similar to

the French cases that I had
brought to Hynek's attention.

Checked by the police, checked
by the French Air Force.

Where there were also
occupants who were seen,

short beings in connection
with the objects.

I think that's what convinced him

that there were UFO landings
in the United States.

(crickets chirp)
(gentle music)

- Looked like a toy top,
somewhat upside down.

- This is the diagram in
which we've come up with.

It's more flat here, other than round,

but it does have the hump up in here.

- It seemed to move off
the ground if it was down,

and then we saw three lights

that went from yellow to red.

- We got right up to it, it lit up.

I mean, it really had become bright.

And we could see it... the
outline of it, real good.

- [Narrator] Blue Book's Dr. Allen Hynek

investigated one of the
alleged landing sites

with the local sheriff.

At an overflow press
conference later that day,

the world held its breath

for an historic revelation
about the landings in Michigan.

Hynek, by now privately
convinced of the UFO reality,

struggled to follow the Air Force policy

of tamping down public excitement.

- [Reporter] Now, are you saying

that the sightings of the
Ann Arbor and Hillsdale areas

definitely were caused by marsh gases?

- I'm saying that the two cases

that I investigated most deeply

were most likely, I said in a statement

that I couldn't prove
it in a court of law.

But, it seems...
- [Reporter] In other words,

then you're saying then that
you don't know what caused it.

- No, that's not quite right.

I think that a person can be
pretty sure about something

without being able to
convict somebody of a murder.

(voices overlap indistinct)

- [Reporter] Can you say...
- Yes, I do,

honestly in this case.

In this case.

- [Reporter] But you
can't say without question

that this what caused it?

- [Narrator] Hynek's strained explanation,

which he later called his greatest regret,

ignited a public furor.

- [Reporter 2] Mr. Ford,
what about flying saucers?

You've had some in
Michigan in the past week.

- [Ford] Dave, we've had several incidents

that many felt were sufficient

to justify some action by our government

and not the kind of flippant answer

that was given by the Air Force,

where they passed it off as a swamp gas.

It seems to me that this mystery

does require that the Congress
take a good look at it.

Let them put their records on the line.

- [Narrator] On April 5th, 1966,

congressional hearings were held

with Dr. Hynek and Secretary
of the Air Force Harold Brown,

both giving testimony.

(indistinct crowd murmuring)
(gavel bangs)

- [Speaker 2] Mr. Ford has come out,

he has a pretty good size
stature in the Congress,

and so Mr. Secretary, see
if you can shed some light

on these highly illuminated objects.

- [Interviewer] Mr. Secretary,
there have been charges

that the Air Force is hiding
something in the UFO field.

- We have not been hiding anything.

The investigations have been made public.

The hearing this morning was
public for just that reason.

- There has never been any evidence

presented to the United States Air Force,

or discovered by the
United States Air Force,

which would indicate
that the UFO phenomena

represents any interplanetary
space vehicle of any kind.

- [Narrator] Amid growing pressure,

the Air Force commissioned an
outside panel of scientists

to analyze select cases

and settle the matter once and for all.

It was headed by physicist Edward Condon.

- Dr. Condon, do you hope to find

people from outer space here on Earth?

- Well, I don't know for sure,

but we'll try to just study the reports

and get as much additional
information as we can to see.

- [Interviewer] Would you
like to have us being visited

by these little... or big things?

- Well, that'd be fine with me

if I hope they're friendly.

- How do you propose to go about study?

- [Narrator] After the
project was launched,

Condon remarked to an audience

that he thought the UFO subject
was nonsense, but quote,

"I'm not supposed to reach that conclusion

for another year."

After a two year investigation,

the panel submitted a
massive 1400 page report

showing that many cases were
radar and weather anomalies,

but confirming a number
as truly unexplainable.

Among them were the
famous McMinnville photos

taken on the Trent Family Farm,

as well as film footage of
UFOs in Great Falls, Montana.

- [Nick] As I looked up,
I saw two silvery objects

moving swiftly out of the northwest.

No sound, except I thought
I heard a whooshing sound

when I first saw them.

The discs appeared to
be spinning like a top

and were about 50 feet across,

which was much slower than the jets

which shot by shortly
after I filmed the discs.

I could not see any exhaust,
wings or any kind of fuselage.

They appeared to be of
a bright shiny metal

like polished silver.

- There are cases

that are not explainable
in conventional terms.

There is the assumption of intelligence

or intelligent control,

but not necessarily the assumption
of direct communication.

Why are they here?

What are they doing?

What do they want from us?

What are their motivations?

- [Narrator] But it was Dr. Condon

who wrote the final word.

"There appears to be no verified

and fully satisfactory evidence

of any case that is clearly outside

the framework of presently
known science and technology."

- (indistinct) on that one.

You'd have to conclude that
what we were looking at

was beyond our current
state of the knowledge.

- But it began to hit me that Dr. Condon

has apparently not read his
own material very carefully.

You do an actual tabulation,

which he doesn't seem to have done,

and you find his percentage of unexplained

is five to six times
larger than the Air Force...

and yet what is his
principle recommendation?

The principle recommendation

that Dr. Conan has come through with

is there's nothing of scientific interest

that warrants further attention

on the part of the federal
government here in any major way.

He recommends dropping the whole problem.

- Nobody could get funded,

nobody would look at the data seriously,

because of the prestige of the academy

saying that the problem had been solved.

The Air Force closed
their reporting system

so that if the public
wanted to report something,

they would report it to the local police,

but it would never get to the attention

of scientists really
examining the phenomenon.

- [Narrator] In 1969, the
Air Force officially ended

its public investigations.

- Which would suggest what?

That they knew what it was?

- [James] Or didn't know what it was.

- Also the other way,

that they did know what it was.

(gentle music)
(wind blows softly)

(thunder rumbles and cracks)

- [Narrator] One aspect of the phenomenon

that was swept under the rug

was the pervasive
reporting of UFO intrusions

at the world's most sensitive
military facilities.

Details did not come to
light until decades later

at the National Press
Club in Washington, DC.

- Declassified US government
documents and witness testimony

from former or retired
US military personnel

confirm beyond any doubt

the reality of ongoing UFO incursions

at nuclear weapons sites.

- What you have heard here today

is evidence of a phenomenon.

It sounds fantastic and it is fantastic.

In 1967, I was a missile launch officer

stationed at Malmstrom
Air Force Base, Montana.

- [Narrator] Malmstrom was America's

first line of nuclear defense,

its silos packed with minutemen missiles,

each one nearly a hundred
times more powerful

than the bomb that devastated Hiroshima.

(phone rings)

Launch Officers could, within
minutes of confirmation,

send their birds arcing 6,000 miles

to incinerate key Soviet cities;

triggering a war that
would end our civilization.

(missile booms)
(explosion roars)

(eerie music)

- I was the chief of
party, I was the observer.

Basically what I was doing
was the star observation

to provide precise latitude and longitude

on our small three man team.

Came from the north and
stopped right over us,

and it had a white light from the center

looking down into the silo.

I just said to myself,

"What if this thing beams us up

and takes us off to some distant place,

and never returned to Earth again?"

I mean, this is going through my head here

while this thing's above me.

And then from this dead stop,

it shoots off to the east.

It's just like, now you
see it, now you don't.

It just... zoom!

- [Speaker 3] The strike
team that went out

claimed that they saw something.

- [Speaker 4] How did they describe that?

- [Speaker 3] He just
said a large round object.

- [Speaker 4] Directly over the LS?

- [Speaker 3] Directly over the site.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] Lieutenant
Salas was stationed

in his underground launch control capsule

when he received a frantic call

from one of his top side guards.

- Screaming into the phone,

saying they're looking
at a red, glowing object

hovering just above our front gate.

Our missiles began
going into what's called

a no-go condition or un-launchable.

Essentially, they were disabled.

(klaxon blares)
- [Alarm] Channel 11.

- [Narrator] In fact, 10
missiles began going offline

in a matter of seconds,
one after the other.

(klaxon blares)

- Personally, I'm never
aware of any two missiles

going down at the same time, let alone 10.

- I was a top secret control officer

and I passed out nuclear
launch authenticators.

I can clearly recall a message

coming through my communications center,

which basically said that a UFO

did in fact shut down several
missile silos in Montana.

(tense music)

- I was on duty at Echo,

which is our squadron command post.

We had strike teams respond
to alarms from the missiles.

They were three to five miles away.

And they said, "Sir, lack
of a better description,

there's a flying saucer
hovering over that missile

and there's a beam of reddish
light going down to it."

It had to be a data collection thing.

I'm sure they scanned
the warhead or something.

(tense music)

- In 1980, I was reassigned
from the Pentagon

to RAF Bentwaters as a
deputy base commander.

At that time, Bentwaters
was one of the largest

tactical fighter rings in the world.

- [Narrator] It was also the largest

American nuclear bomb
storage depot in Europe.

- In December, 1980, early in the morning,

several of our security policemen

discovered strange lights in the forest.

- [Narrator] Expecting to
find a crashed aircraft,

they came upon an unrecognizable object

resting on the forest floor.

- They observed it for a period of time

and it very quickly and silently vanished.

- [Narrator] Two nights
later, Colonel Halt

received an urgent visit from
the base security commander.

- He was white as a sheet.

He said, "It's back."

I said, "What's back?"

He said, "The UFO."

I took several security policemen with me.

I also had my small cassette recorder

I carried everywhere when I was on duty.

- [Halt] What is it?

- [Security] We don't know, sir.

(voices overlap indistinct)

- [Halt] Yeah. It's a
strange, small, red light

and all the barnyard animals

have gotten quiet now; deathly calm.

This is weird.

One object approached
us at very high speed.

Hey, here. Here he comes from the south.

He's coming toward us now!

Now we're observing what appears to be

a beam coming down to the ground.

This is unreal.

We stood there in awe.

Was this a warning?

Was this an attempt to communicate?

Was this a weapon or just a probe?

Just as suddenly as it
appeared, click, disappeared.

We stood there.
(Col. Halt sighs)

About that time, we noticed
the other object to the south

was sending on beams about a mile,

mile and a half away over Woodbridge Base.

We had great difficulties communicating,

but we were able to discern

that some of those beams
were either falling into

or near the weapon storage area

and there's a great deal of concern.

I also found out later

that both the tower
operators at Bentwaters

saw an object and picked it
up on their bright two radar

and watched it.

- I was just sitting there

and I happened to see a
dot come on the scope,

and it just went like,
one dot at the beginning,

then another dot and another
dot, and it was gone.

And then it made an
immediate right hand turn

and came right towards the base.

Just absolutely phenomenal.

- It's not like any radar
target I've ever seen,

traveling in an extremely
high rate of speed.

It passed over the control
tower and then it stopped.

It was an orange-ish color,

sort of popped into my mind at the time

that somebody's flying
a basketball out here.

There were like... lights
around the center of it.

It was more like portholes

and then you were seeing
the light from the inside,

but it over... momentarily
reversed its course

and went back out at a high rate of speed.

- [Narrator] Even more alarming incidents

took place on both sides of the Cold War.

(soldier speaks indistinctly)

According to once secret Soviet documents,

a UFO hovered over a
Ukrainian nuclear base

for nearly an hour.

Inexplicably, several
missiles suddenly switched

to full combat readiness

and began a launch sequence

without any authentication codes.

After 15 heart stopping seconds,

the countdown to a potential Armageddon

ceased as abruptly as it had started.

- [David] As this object
passed with the missile site,

we would start getting erratic
indications on that missile.

The bad thing was we also
got a launch indicator.

- [Interviewer] Does that mean

that the launch sequence
has been triggered?

- [David] That means that the missile

has received the launch signal.

- [Narrator] The countdown
had to be manually aborted.

- We have UFOs in the area.

- [Narrator] These witnesses
are some of the most

highly vetted military officers

in charge of the world's
most devastating armaments.

If what they're reporting is accurate,

then the pattern is hard to avoid.

UFOs have been making incursions

into top security nuclear
facilities decade after decade.

- To me, it's pretty clear.

This is just... we're
shining a light on this.

We're pointing it out.

What are you people doing
with nuclear weapons?

(tense music)

(ominous music)

(on-screen year count clicks)

(explosions boom)

(explosions boom rapidly)

(crowd shouts indistinctly)

- [Narrator] As the nineties dawned

and the walls fell down,

it was as if humanity itself

was demanding to be seen

as one people and one world.

The Soviet Union had dissolved

and history's spotlight began to shine

on long darkened corners.

- Different officials
were looking for ways

to open dialogue with the west

and embrace all the changes

that were underway in
their country at the time.

- This is George Knapp and Moscow,

the city many are...
- [Narrator] Knapp's team

was invited to Moscow by government

and military officials
who were willing to share

decades worth of UFO files.

(General Maltsev speaks native language)

- [Knapp] General Igor Maltsev,

For seven years commander

of the entire Soviet air defense system,

recalls a UFO flap over Moscow in 1990,

hundreds of visual and radar observations

by military personnel.

Maltsev confirmed his standing order was,

don't fire on the UFOs.

March, 1991 radar at the Leningrad Airport

detects first one, then two,
then three unidentified objects

hovering over a nuclear plant.

From a dead stop, the UFO zipped away

at 2000 miles per hour.

Jacques Vallee was one of few westerners

to personally investigate the case

by meeting with Russian sources firsthand.

- An object hovered near

a nuclear power plant in (indistinct)

and a beam from the object
melted the asphalt there.

- The intention was maybe we would be able

to find out from the Russians

more about what the American
government knows about UFOs

than we will ever learn

from the American government itself.

- Governor, are you
ready to take the oath?

- I am.

- [Narrator] When a young
open-minded president

was sworn in,

one of America's most
highly placed civilians

saw a chance for a new
government transparency

on the phenomenon.

- As a means of access to people,

to the wonders of nature.

- [Narrator] Heir to
the power and influence

of one of the world's wealthiest families,

Lawrence Rockefeller,
philanthropist and conservationist,

also had a passionate interest in UFOs.

- His idea was to approach the president

with a plea for making available

the data that the government
had on the subject.

- The first inclination,

by particularly people in government,

is, "You gotta be kidding me."

You want me to risk my career

by getting deeply into the rabbit hole

of talking about UFOs?

And so there's a tremendous resistance.

- [Narrator] Rockefeller met with

President Clinton's science
advisor Jack Gibbons

at the White House

and persuaded him to take action.

Rockefeller was then asked to pick a case

that the White House should
attempt to declassify.

He chose the 1947 Roswell
incident noting, quote,

"Many are convinced that Roswell marks

the beginning of government
secrecy about UFOs."

- Jack had actually gone to the Air Force,

asked then-Secretary Widnall,

who was the secretary of the
Air Force to take a look,

particularly at the records
around Roswell, New Mexico.

- [Sheila] "Dear Colonel Cavitt,

the general accounting office

seeks to fully explain the claim

that the US government
recovered an alien spacecraft

near Roswell, New Mexico in July, 1947;

and since that time has
covered up that fact."

- [Radio] The Army Air
Forces has announced

that a flying disc has been found

and is now in the possession of the army.

(lightning strikes)

- [Bill] According to my dad,

there was a bad thunderstorm
the night before.

The next day he was out going the ranch

and he found this debris.

- [Radio] The disk landed at
a ranch at Corona, New Mexico,

and the rancher turned
it over to the Air Force.

- [Narrator] Roswell was then home

to the world's only nuclear air wing,

including the B-29 that had dropped

the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

The base's chief intelligence
officer, major Jesse Marcel,

was dispatched to the
ranch to investigate.

- We had to follow the rancher out there.

With just verbal directions,
we never would've found it.

- [Narrator] Marcel and another officer

were the first military to
arrive at the crash site.

They came upon an expanse
of unrecognizable debris

strewn across an area the size
of a dozen football fields.

- There was so much of it.

It was scattered over such a vast area.

We found a piece of metal

about a foot and a half to two feet wide

and about about two or three feet long.

Felt like you had nothing in your hands.

It wasn't any thicker than the foil

out of a pack of cigarettes.

The thing that got me is that
you couldn't even bend it,

you couldn't even dent it,

even with a sledgehammer
would bounce off it.

- [Narrator] Marcel was ordered

to immediately transport
the strange wreckage

to Fort Worth army airfield.

There, Marcel was met by
the commanding general

who told him to keep silent

in the face of what was
becoming a media frenzy.

- They had a whole flock
of microphones there.

They wanted me to... they
wanted some comments from me,

but I wasn't that liberty to do that.

- [Narrator] Marcel was instead ordered

to pose with wood, foil and rubber debris

from a conventional weather balloon.

- All I could do is keep my mouth shut

and General Ramey is the
one who told the newspapers

what it was and forget about it.

It was nothing more than a
weather observation balloon.

Of course, we both knew differently.

- [Narrator] Colonel Thomas DuBose,

who was also ordered to
pose with the fake debris,

describes how an iron curtain
of secrecy slammed down.

- This is the highest
priority you can exhibit

and you will say nothing.

"More than Top Secret," as he said.

It's beyond that.

This is the story we're
gonna tell the public.

It was a cover story,
the balloon part of it.

In order we don't have any more inquiries

about what we picked up on the desert.

- [Larry King] Congressman Schiff,

what got you interested
in this subject per se?

- I started receiving letters

a little over two years
ago from constituents

stating that they believed the government

was covering up what happened at Roswell.

Many of them clearly believed

that it was in fact an
extraterrestrial crash.

The weather balloon story never made sense

because there was clearly...

and undisputed in my mind,

extra military attention to this matter,

from extra security around the crash scene

to special handling of
whatever the debris was.

That could fit a classified project.

It doesn't fit a weather balloon.

(indistinct crowd chatter)

- [Narrator] In September, 1994,

the Air Force issued its response:

"The Roswell Report: Case Closed."

The Air Force claimed
it was a secret project

of weather balloons hung with
box kites and microphones

to spy on Soviet nuclear tests.

- Please roll the video.

- [Speaker 5] There's the famous box kite

that became the famous flying disc.

The weather balloons that
were on the balloon train.

- [Narrator] Same rubber balloon,

same foil box kite as
the original cover story,

only many of them strung together

with microphones dangling beneath.

- [Speaker 5] That's the tinfoil, paper,

rubber and sticks that they recovered

in the desert near New Mexico in 1947.

- [Narrator] The Air Force,
nearly 50 years later,

was basically telling the same tale:

that the top security personnel

of the world's only atomic bombing wing

really had mistaken this
rubber, wood and tinfoil

for a crashed flying saucer.

- Being an intelligence officer,

I was familiar with just
about every... all materials

used in aircraft and our air travel.

This was nothing like that.

It was not anything from this earth

that I'm quite sure of.

- My suspicion is that the
Roswell incident did happen

and something, maybe not from
our universe, went down there.

And we should allow the American
people to make a judgment

on what that might have
been by disclosing.

I mean, this is probably
the most blatant case

of overreaction to what
is national security.

The public has a right to know.

- [Narrator] Rockefeller put together

a briefing document
intended for world leaders

with a sobering observation.

"It is conceivable that
even the president himself

is not fully briefed on matters

classified as 'above top secret'."

- I did attempt to find out

if there were any secret
government documents

that revealed things and if there were,

they were concealed from me too.

It wouldn't be... I wouldn't
be the first president

that underlings have lied to,

or that career bureaucrats
have waited out;

but there may be some career person

sitting around somewhere
hiding these dark secrets,

even from elected presidents.

But if so, they successfully alluded me

and I'm almost embarrassed to tell you

I did try to find out.

(Bill Clinton and crowd laugh)

- [Control] Three feet
per second contact now,

that was a beautiful one.

- [Narrator] Apollo
astronaut Edgar Mitchell,

who had grown up around Roswell,

was an aerospace insider with
deep Pentagon connections.

He became convinced there were UFO secrets

concealed from normal government channels.

- Well, if the accounts
are being believed,

yes, there have been E.T visitation,

there have been crashed craft;

there have been material
and bodies recovered

and there is some group
of people somewhere

that may or may not be associated

with government at this point,

but certainly were at one
time that have this knowledge.

(ethereal music)
(ominous roar rumbles)

(birds chirp and call)

- No one has proven there's nothing to it.

No one's had the opportunity to prove

there's something to it,

and that's what I did.

And every passing day reminds...

- [Narrator] In 2007, the most
powerful man in the Senate,

majority leader Harry Reid,

persuaded two colleagues,

senators Ted Stevens and Daniel Inue

to secretly allocate millions
in defense department funds

to investigate UFOs.

The covert program operated

from the tail end of the Bush presidency,

through the Obama administration

and into Donald Trump's
first year in office.

In December of 2017, the lid blew off.

At long last, the government was admitting

a modern day program to investigate UFOs

and released startling official evidence,

including videotapes from the
cockpits of military aircraft.

One of the key authors of the Times story

was investigative journalist

and bestselling author Leslie Kean.

She went to Washington to
meet with Luis Elizondo,

who had just resigned from his position

as head of the Secret
Pentagon UFO program.

- I was invited to this meeting,

they wanted me to meet a Mr. Elizondo

to see what could happen.

- Objects that are moving so fast,

and yet we don't see an
ionization trail in the air,

and you don't hear a sonic boom.

How is that possible?

Another one is...

- [Narrator] Elizondo's
colleagues took her aside

to reveal some extraordinary documentation

related to the program.

- I wasn't allowed to
take anything with me.

I mean, the most important evidence

that was shared with me

at the meeting regarding
the phenomenon itself

were the videos.

(electric static buzzes)
(voice speaks indistinctly)

- [Pilot 2] Whoa, got it! Woohoo!

- [Pilot] What the fuck is that thing?

Did you box a moving target?

- I knew this was breaking news

for the front page of the New York Times.

- [Pilot] There's a whole fleet of them,

look on the ASA.

My gosh! Look at that thing!

- [Pilot 2] It's rotating.

- My co-author, Ralph Blumenthal and I,

set up a meeting with Mark Mazzetti

and said, "We have this explosive story."

Sat down with him in the New York office

of the New York Times

and we brought in all the documents.

These are the videos,

here's other documents that show

the existence of the program

and here's what they've studied,

and here's what they've learned,

and here's a letter from
Harry Reid about the program.

- [Narrator] Elizondo's colleague,

the former Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense

for Intelligence, Christopher Mellon,

managed to obtain the
tapes from the Pentagon

and chose the New York
Times to break the story.

- I received the videos,

the now famous videos, in
the Pentagon parking lot

from a defense department official.

I still have the originals
in the packaging.

This is a case where somebody
bent the rules a little bit

and they did so for the larger good,

and we're absolutely all
better off because of it.

In the end, I have to say

I was still extraordinarily disappointed

with the New York Times

because they focused on
this small ATIP program

and the real story... in my mind at least,

should have been:

these things are real, they're here.

This is happening now.

(indistinct crowd chatter)

- [Narrator] One of the Pentagon cases

reported by the New York Times

was an encounter by naval aircraft

about 200 miles off the coast
of San Diego, California.

- 5,500 people that were on the Nimitz

in 2004 when this happened,

and I guarantee every single one of them

knows that this event happened.

That's a whole air wing, that's
Mount Fuji, that's Japan.

- [Narrator] Commander David Fravor

was leading a training exercise

from the USS Nimitz carrier strike group

when he was abruptly
ordered to investigate

an unknown target that had appeared

on one of the ship's radar scopes.

- We're gonna suspend the training,

we have real world tasking.

So we're like, okay, cool.

- [Narrator] He and
another F-18 Super Hornet,

each carrying two airmen,

zoomed toward the coordinates.

- So it's myself and my wizo

and the other pilot and the wizo

in the backseat of that airplane,

so there's four of us.

(plane engine roars)

- [Narrator] When they arrived,

they first saw what appeared to be

a large object slightly below
the surface of the ocean

with a strange oval shaped craft

darting around in the air just above it.

- If you picture a tic-tac
that's about 40 feet long,

you know, round on both ends, no rivets,

no metal, smooth white... it was white.

It was just smooth, no wings,

no propulsion, no windows.

It didn't matter which way it was pointing

'cause it was moving over the water.

It would go, you know, it never turned,

it never changed its longitudinal axis.

It went forward, left, half right;

it was just doing this.

And I said, "Hey, I'm
gonna go check that out."

(plane engine roars)

All of a sudden you just see
it turn its body and go whoop

and start coming up at you.

You go, that was rather interesting.

We're just looking at
it, we're doing this,

we're looking at it,

we're looking at it, We're looking at it,

we go around, all the way
on the outside of a circle,

hundred and eighty degrees.

Well, I know where he is going

so I'll just go over there.

(plane engine roars)

So this thing goes poof! And it's gone.

I mean literally,
(Fravor's fingers snap)

that fast, gone.

You can think about
what we're saying, like,

"Holy shit, what the is that?" You know?

And then there's a lot of,

"Dude, what the... did you guys see that?

Do you guys see it?"

And they're like, "It's
gone. We don't see shit!"

Nothing accelerates that fast.

You're talking, you know,

something that not only accelerated

beyond anything that we had seen,

but it just was poof.

The controller comes up and says,

"Hey, you're not gonna believe this,

but that thing is back at your cap point."

- [Narrator] Meaning the
object had instantly reappeared

at the precise secret coordinates

of the fleet's critical
aerial defense zone.

- [Dave] It obviously had some awareness,

it knew where we were going.

It'll make the hair on the
back your neck stand up.

And I actually told my back's here,

I said, "I don't know by
you, I'm pretty weirded out."

- [Narrator] More jets
equipped with the Navy's

most advanced radar visual
tracking systems were scrambled.

This time, capturing the object on video.

- First thing he gets is a
little blip on the radar.

He puts his cursors over it

and he tries to grab a lock on it.

Basically when you take a lock,

you tell the radar, look at that location

and stare at it and put all
your energy on that point.

Well, as soon as it does it,

the radar gets indications
that it's being jammed

by the object it's trying to lock.

The infrared sees differing temperatures,

so the tic-tac is actually
hotter than the air around it.

It doesn't have to be by much,

but it's gonna appear white.

They're driving straight at it.

It's just kind of hovering there

and then it goes poof and
it takes off off the side.

I just don't know.

I doubt that we have
developed that technology.

- I interviewed three of the four aviators

who were with Dave during that encounter,

and it was readily apparent
to everyone involved

that that vehicle had what they call

a dominant battle space awareness.

It was in control of that
engagement from the outset.

There was no question that

it completely outmatched
our frontline fighters.

I served on the special access
program oversight committee,

so I had access to all of the
black programs in those days.

We know perfectly well
there's nothing like that

behind the scenes or even
on the drawing boards.

- [Narrator] Senator Harry Reid,

who instigated the secret
Pentagon UFO program,

confirmed what nuclear launch officers

have been reporting for decades.

- There's more than one up there.

- [Narrator] UFOs have interfered

with our country's most powerful weapons.

- If they had been called upon
by the president to launch,

they couldn't have done it.

- Did you have anybody in
the defense department,

the Pentagon, pull you aside,

bend your ear and say,

"Why are you doing this?"

- They did everything they could

to stop the program from going forward.

They gave the person
that came to me initially

such a bad time.

He's fortunate to have hung onto his job

'cause people tried to get rid of him

because they wanted
nothing to do with this.

The Defense Intelligence
Agency was one of the worst.

They drugged their feet,

even though there was one
of their senior scientists

thought they should look at this.

And remember, all we're saying,

nobody has to agree that... why it's there,

but shouldn't we at least
be spending some money

to study all these phenomenon?

Shouldn't we study this stuff?

The answer is yes, and
that's all this was about.

And why the federal government

all these years has covered up,

put brake pads on everything; stopped it.

I think it's very, very
bad for our country.

(gentle music)
(birds chirp)

- I interviewed Gordon Cooper,

Mercury Astronaut Gordon
Cooper back in the nineties.

Cooper said on camera

that there was a landed UFO circa 1957

at Edwards Air Force Base.

His camera crew captured
the filming of this object

and he presented this to the higher ups,

and eventually a courier
jet came in from Washington.

He handed the footage
over, which was good.

He viewed it.

- That's the last he saw of it.

- [James] Exactly.

Did you know where that footage went,

of the flying saucer that landed on the...

- Went to Washington,
that's all that I know.

- [James] Did you ever keep in touch

with anybody about it or discuss it?

- How would I keep in touch
with anybody about it?

There's no way, within the military

or within the government,

of keeping track of
something that is classified.

- [James] Did you try to
go after stuff like this?

- We did... we have, it's there.

- Are you saying that
there's some evidence

that still hasn't seen the light of day?

- I'm saying most of it
hasn't seen the light of day.

(eerie music)

- Astronaut Cooper had spoken

with the president at a cabinet meeting,

he raised this with Secretary Cohen,

and then Cohen's office called me

and asked me to pursue
this and chase it down.

The Air Force colonel that I
spoke with got very frustrated

and when I asked him what
happened to all of these records,

he said, "Well, that was all cleaned up

or thrown out to save space."

Something like that.

That sounded ludicrous,
but that's what he told me.

If there is some recovered debris, say,

it is so deeply buried and squirreled away

that it's outside of those
normal oversight processes

and that's where there's
a problem in this area.

(gentle music)

- [Narrator] Dr. Jacques
Vallee has collected

purported metal debris from UFO cases

dating as far back as 1947

that experts are analyzing in
a state-of-the-art laboratory.

- The breakthrough has come

with the invention of a
machine that enables us

to look at the atomic structure.

And at that point,

the atomic structure
is impossible to fake.

- This device is a
multi-parameter ion beam imager.

- [Narrator] Dr. Garry Nolan,
a Stanford microbiologist,

is using a revolutionary three
dimensional imaging device

to analyze the samples right
down to their individual atoms.

When Dr. Nolan placed
some of the fragments

in the vacuum chamber of his instrument,

he was astonished to find

their composition was
unlike any known metal.

- [Garry] Just one spot

and the isotopic composition
all the way across the...

- [Narrator] No matter where he looked

in the sample's jumble of elements...

whether magnesium, iron,
nickel, or titanium,

the ratio of isotopes
didn't make any sense.

- If you're talking about
an advanced material

from an advanced civilization,

you're talking about something that...

I'll just call it an
ultra material, right?

It's something which has properties

where somebody is putting
it together, again,

at the atomic scale.

So we're building our
world with eighty elements,

somebody else is building the world

with 253 different isotopes.

I intend to use the information

to try to build something,

to try to understand a physical principle

that we don't know today.

- This material was manufactured.

It's not natural.

It's not natural to the materials

that we have around us in
the lab or on the Earth.

It does not mean that
it was necessarily made

someplace in outer space,

just means that it was
manufactured specially

for a particular purpose
that we don't understand,

and we want to understand it.

(eerie music)

- There is an immense array
of unanswered questions.

What we observe some of these craft doing,

think about the possibilities,

what we may discover technologically;

how we might solve the energy crisis,

how we might raise our
standards of living.

There is an urgent need, in my view,

to get to the bottom of it.

We don't know the origin
of these vehicles,

nor do we understand the intent

of whoever is controlling them.

- [Narrator] There are
cases that seem to go

beyond encounters with
an advanced technology

to contact with an engaged intelligence.

Papua, New Guinea, June 1959.

An Australian missionary
spots a large disc

hovering just 200 feet off the ground

while standing with
thirty eight other people.

- This solid looking object...

and can you imagine what it's like

to look up in the sky and
see some figures up there?

- [Narrator] All were amazed to see

four small occupants
dressed in what looked

like black diving suits.

- Figures walking about on top

and not the slightest noise whatsoever.

And so, we waved.

Wouldn't it be wonderful

if we could get this object
down onto the playing field?

And as we waved, wondering
whether we'd get some recognition

and whether perhaps they would
understand what we wanted,

they waved back.

- [Narrator] The encounter
lasted several hours

before the object abruptly departed.

- There was this
amazingly incredible speed

that the whole craft disappeared
to nothing across the bay

in the matter of a second or so.

- [Narrator] In 1994,
three days of sightings

across Zimbabwe culminated
in what some believe

is the most significant close
encounter in modern history.

- Hundreds of people today phoned the ZBC

and BBC correspondent in Harare

saying they cited an unidentifying
flying object last night,

with some eyewitness reports.

- [Witness] It almost seemed
to be under the clouds.

As it came past, I
notice there's no noise.

And that's when I thought, well,

there's something very odd here.

- It was quite amazing. It was beautiful.

- They're saying that Jesus
is passing through Africa.

That's what they are saying.

(dramatic music)

- [Tim] We interviewed about 64 children

in front of the camera.

The UFO story that happened.

- Just say exactly what
you want to say, okay?

- Well I was running and playing

and then I saw this
maroon color in the sky.

Why don't we follow it?

- We saw this like
silver thing down there.

- It was a silver oval thing

that flew past really slowly.

- I saw the bigger one and the space ship,

like four or five of them.

- It was red, green and yellow.

- There was this big ship.

It had these lights, these
patterns, and it flew.

- I thought, no, it's not a UFO.

And then I looked carefully
at it, and I thought maybe.

(eerie music)

- [Narrator] Dozens of children said

that one or more of the disc shape objects

landed just beyond the far
edge of their playground.

The next thing they knew,

something was standing next to it.

- We saw him standing by the silver thing

and he had big eyes.

- He had a big head and big black eyes,

and was dressed in a black body suit.

- They were wearing pure black.

- And I came down and I saw the
funny man with his eyes here

and I saw a spaceship,

and there were a few
little ones around it.

(eerie music)

- [Interviewer 3] How far away
were you when you saw him?

- Not very far, not very far.

About a meter away.

- [Interviewer 3] A
meter away, that close?

- Yes.

- [Interviewer 3] And
how big was the figure?

- It was about as big as a grade six.

Look, there!

- I believe that the
children did see something.

- I believed them because
normally children don't lie.

- I've always taught my
children seeing is believing.

Unfortunately, I didn't see, so.

(children chant to a game, clap)

- [Narrator] This alleged encounter

caught the attention of
Pulitzer Prize winning

Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John Mack.

- Seemed that he was looking at all of us.

- What was that... what did it feel like

when he was looking at you?

- I felt scared.

- It felt scary?

What was scary about it?

- Well, I felt scared
because I've never seen

such a person out there before.

- And I saw this person

and it had big eyes.

That's all I saw about it, big eyes.

- They had short legs
and quite a long top,

with a big head and eyes
that are bigger than ours.

- [John] How much bigger than ours?

- Four or five times the size.

- [John] Four or five
times the size of ours?

- So then I was looking at him, right?

- [John] Yeah.
- Then he was

looking at me back.

How could I just keep on looking at him?

So I just stopped and I looked sideways.

- But I was looking
straight into his eyes.

- Well, he never said anything.

It's just that the face is the eyes.

- Maybe they're trying
to communicate with us,

show us something which
we don't know about.

- I think they want people to know

that we're actually
making harm on this world

and we mustn't get too technoledged.

- We don't look after the planet

and all the trees will just go down,

and there will be no air
and people will be dying.

- Is this an idea you have had before

or did this idea come to you

when you had this experience?

- When I had this experience.

- [Narrator] For the first
time in nearly 20 years,

the Aerial School children gathered

from the four corners of the world

to talk to each other about
the experience they shared

that September morning.

- I remember something there,
- [Narrator] One they all

still struggle to understand.

- You know that it's moving, but you...

- I stand by what I saw.

There was no reason for
any of us to make that up.

- I've not spoken to anybody about it.

Not because I'm not proud of it,

but because I don't want the stigma.

- So it's something that
I've had to deal with

for 19 and a half years.

- I don't wanna say I felt like I knew it,

but I knew that I didn't
have to be afraid of it.

- Yeah.

- [Narrator] They took us
back to the moment of contact.

- No, exactly how I felt.

Exactly.
- I felt so...

- [Narrator] The details
still seared into memory.

- I was with one of the other girls

and saying to her, "This is amazing!"

- We all were just stopped in our tracks.

- A little man appeared on
top of the actual craft,

and that moment for me was very distinct

because I was like, "That's not human."

- Well I was just completely
engulfed in these eyes.

- The eyes. And in that
moment, however long it was,

'cause I have no idea of the timeframe.

It was just, it was mesmerizing.

- There was no talking,

it's all just images in the head.

Telepathic communication.

- They were trying to communicate,

trying to tell us something.

Was something to do with the environment.

- I kept getting these thoughts

and ideas in my mind of technology.

Technology's not helping,
technology's bad.

- And we're going down a wrong path,

and we have to start recognizing

that what we're doing is detrimental

and we need to make changes,

and I don't know what to do with that or...

they were reaching out to us.

It was as if they wanted
us to go with them.

At that moment, that was kind of

when I snapped right out of the trance.

- As soon as I broke contact,
all of those feelings,

technology, they're bad,

the horribleness that was happening

and going around my
body at the time, went.

- it's making me a bit
anxious being back here.

- I can feel it right now.

I was scared.

- They came running up
here in such a panic,

screaming, screaming, ah!

Then they were here, you know?

And a child can't make that up.

- So I was there when they
were interviewing them

and saw the way they were.

It was just a huge big mess and muddle up,

and just people everywhere.

Just asked them questions straight off

without explaining to the children

what they were doing and
why they were doing it.

- It was chaos in terms
of the media frenzy

that was going on,

and us being so young and
not even being allowed time

to comprehend what we had seen.

Our teachers certainly didn't believe us,

so that was a big deal

'cause we had to continue
going to school there.

- [Narrator] We went back one
last time to the Aerial school

to meet with Judy Bates,

a teacher at the time of the incident

and now the headmistress.

Something was weighing on her

that she wanted to tell the children.

- Yes, that I wanted to apologize.

I should have taken more
notice, but I didn't.

I was more concerned
about me and not them,

and what was going on in
my own sort of experience.

And that's what, yeah.

(indistinct group chatter)

- [James] And if you could
summarize in just one sentence,

what took place September, 1994,

here at Aerial School, Ruwa Zimbabwe,

what would you say?

- Aliens visited us and
that's about it, yeah.

And that's where if you
believe it, you believe it.

If you don't, well...

- [Narrator] We find ourselves confronted

with something that challenges

our very understanding of reality.

We may be sharing this
fragile blue-green oasis

with an unknown other,

one with a mysterious
relationship to humanity

and its own interest in our world.

- And if you saw him
again, what would you do?

- I'll ask him, what is he doing on Earth

and what does he want with us?

(gentle music)

(gentle music)

(soft eerie music)

- They were well-observed UFO cases,

just like modern cases,
in the 18th century.

In the 17th century, there was science,

they were astronomers, they had telescopes

and they were very good observers

because their life depending
on being good observers...

and these observations come
from all over the world,

they just have been forgotten.

(soft eerie music)

- I like to think of anomalies,

mysteries as opportunities,

and we'll go after those mysteries;

take the torch away from the campfire

and out of the cave into the darkness,

and make some amazing discoveries.

(soft, eerie music)

(tense music)

- The UFO phenomenon,

as studied by my colleagues and myself,

bespeaks the action of
some form of intelligence.

(tense music)

(Pereira speaking Portuguese)
Governments tend to cover up

everything they can’t

explain to their population.

(eerie music)

- These objects gave the impression

that they wanted to be seen,

with these enormous spotlights.

There was no way that they
were trying to hide, so why?

That is the main question.

Why do these objects want to be seen?

(tense music)

- Later on, I was so sorry

that why I did not call on the radio?

Ask them, who are you?

Please, make communication with us.

(tense music)

- I figure if they're smart enough

and capable enough to
come into our airspace,

with the technology that they have,

if they wanted to do us in,

they could have done
us in a long time ago.

So, I'm not fearful of this at all.

(tense music)

(witness speaking Chinese)
I can’t be sure what it was,

but it was definitely not an airplane.

(witness speaking Chinese)
They can also appear

and disappear in an instant.

They can even hover.

(speaking Chinese)
In my opinion, if it’s disclosed to the world,

it would greatly improve

humanity’s development in science and technology.

It would be beneficial to the
advancement of humanity.

It would be a wonderful thing!

(tense music)

- Except every once in
while one of 'em goes zip!

- It went like a bat out of hell.

- Jumped about 10 degrees to the right,

just like this.

- I've never seen anything
go so fast in my life

as that thing went.

- Incredible speed,
disappeared to nothing.

- And just went zoom, straight up so fast.

- It's like it'd been
shot out of a gun, wham!

- Now you see it, now you're
don't. It just... whew.

- But it just was, poof!

(tense music)

(tense music)

(ominous music)
(thunder rumbles)