All language subtitles for UFO.2021.S01E04.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-WELP_Track04

peaceful, otherworldly music

[newsman]
It is very rare

for thousands of people seeing
the same light at the same time.

[Fife Symington] I always refer
to it as otherworldly.

That was the feeling, you know,
when you watch this thing

go over and you think,
"Oh, my God, you know what?"

"Otherworldly"
really describes it.

[Kate Dorsch] What makes the
UFO so interesting is it is

such a scientific object.

But how do we separate

reputable witnesses
from crackpots?

[George Knapp]
95% of it is bullshit,

but if the other five percent

is true, it would be
the biggest story of all time.

The implications are
enormous for everyone.

[Ralph Blumenthal]
If these things are

our own government's
secret weapons,

why would they endanger
our own pilots?

It doesn't make any sense.

[Michael Smerconish]
Are we on the brink

of full disclosure
about visitors from outer space?

[Kevin Day]
Imagine if disclosure happens,

and all of a sudden,
the entire world

starts experiencing
these things.

I think there's
something about to happen.

And I think the world needs
to get prepared for it.

I really do.

[Greg Eghigian]
For most people in history

who have had
a sighting of a UFO,

those reports are pretty brief.

There's not a lot
of narrative to it.

"So I was walking the dog,
saw something weird

in the sky,
couldn't figure it out,

weird blue light," that's it.

There are then, however,
people, of course,

who tell more elaborate things,
truly mysterious experiences.

[interviewer] He didn't
communicate anything to you

while you were taken
back into the ship?

[Eghigian]
They start to question

their worldview,
their concept of reality.

dramatic music

fast, mysterious music

[Eghigian] The thing about
the UFO phenomenon,

is it really a tale

about stories and story-making?

Finding a way to turn
this stuff into a coherent

narrative is at the heart

of, I think, humanity.
We want to do that.

My name is Greg Eghigian.

I am professor of history
at Penn State University.

I teach a lot on the history

of madness and mental illness

and psychiatry,
history of science, as well.

When I was a kid growing up,

I got diagnosed
with rheumatoid arthritis.

And I was very sickly,
and there were times where I,

literally, I couldn't move.

I was really kind of isolated.

And I began

reading a lot.

The whole UFO thing
really fascinated me.

I would sit there
and scour over the images

of a flying saucer,

like the way people used to look
at album covers or something.

I had this voracious appetite
for UFOs.

I thought I was gonna
become an astronomer.

But as high school ended,

I went to college.

I kind of lost interest
in the topic.

Only recently,
I was at a conference...

uh, talking with a friend
and colleague of mine

who was working on...

some stories in Europe
after World War II

about how, particularly
in Germany, right after the war,

there was a kind
of almost a renaissance

of interest in the occult.

And I asked her offhand, "Did
you come across anything

about UFOs?"
'Cause I'm sure there's

tons of people
who've written about it.

Lo and behold, what do I find?

I find that
no academic historian since

the 1970s had ever really

looked at the history of UFOs.

The people who looked at it

were sociologists,
psychologists,

folklorists.

But nobody from my tribe...

[chuckles]
...the historians.

What's so striking
about the phenomenon

is so many
of the core elements...

they were all
basically minted by

the first five years
of the phenomenon.

And then there's just
a new riff.

They're variations on a theme.

[reporter]
Now they say that it's

balloons like this one
that have been

mistaken for flying saucers.

[reporter 2] In 1955,
aliens supposedly terrorized

a family farmhouse
in Kelly, Kentucky.

[reporter 3]
Nine disc-like objects flying

at a speed of approximately
1,500 miles per hour

near Mount Rainier, Oregon.

[man] I looked up, and right
over my head, virtually, uh,

it was a rim of lights
in the shape of a triangle.

[man 2] I'll be t... I'm gonna
tell you something, honey.

I don't know
what the hell it is.

[woman]
It's rotating.

[man 2]
Oh, good God.

[stammers] There's always
things like that going on.

Uh, flying saucers, and we've

had other things, you know.

But now we've got some things
that really fly, and Russia

put up the first one
if I'm not mistaken.

[Eghigian] So a good example
is the idea that

the military/government

knows what's going on

and isn't sharing
that information.

[Knapp] They've lied about it
for so long.

They've diverted money

from legitimate
national security programs

into keeping this thing going

and keeping it
secret for a long time.

[Eghigian] There's different
versions. One is,

they're scared of creating
a mass hysteria,

mass panic.

[John Greenewald Jr.]
People were scared.

People did not know what it was,

who was powering them.

And that really fueled,
I think, the CIA's concern

that they had to squash it.

[Eghigian] There is the story
that, no, they're actually

in cahoots
with the aliens themselves.

Or there's just the-the plain,
old, simple idea that,

well, they're not sharing
the information about this

because these are secret weapons
that they're using.

That theme, we're seeing it
play out right now, right?

[Greenewald]
Now, what's really strange is

that The New York Times
referenced metal alloys

that were being housed
in specially designed buildings

within Bigelow Aerospace's
headquarters.

Fill in the blank
to define whatever

these metal alloys were,
but the implications were there.

[Knapp]
There have been, you know,

a number of these reports
over the years about crashes,

where bits and pieces
of strange material

were collected.

Those reports are...
that I've seen...

have varying degrees
of credibility.

But people that I know,
the people

who have worked in these
programs, think it's real.

[Harry Reid] I know that there's
a lot of talk about Lockheed

having things in there,
some special warehouse.

I've never seen them.

I've not been invited
to see them.

So, at this stage,
there's no evidence for me.

[Greenewald] That, to me,
could be potentially

the biggest aspect

to this entire story,
and yet The New York Times,

they just drop that bombshell
in one line and move on.

Why would you do that?

Let's just say that there
were these mysterious metals

retrieved from UFOs.

Would you give them

to the private sector,
number one?

But number two, would you give
them to a warehouse that anybody

that's off the Las Vegas Strip
can drive up to?

In the realm
of government secrecy,

none of that makes sense.

[chuckles]
Hi.

We did some follow-up
for The New York Times

about crash-retrieved objects
in July of 2020.

Very reputable sources

have told us they believe

indeed there are materials
that are in the possession

of possible aerospace companies

or special
secret-access programs.

My colleague Ralph Blumenthal

and I were privy
to briefing slides

that were actually used by the
Department of Defense program

to brief all kinds of people
in which they reference

anomalous aerial vehicles
that have been retrieved.

They call them crash retrievals.

And they even use
the word "off-world"

to describe
that these are, you know,

possibly off-world vehicles.

[Gary Voorhis] It could be any
of the major players: Lockheed,

Northrop.

I have a feeling that

there's gonna be a huge boom
in tech in the next ten years,

due to the fact that we're
understanding a lot more

of this reverse-engineered tech.

[reporter] The full U.S. Senate
Intelligence Commission

report on this phenomenon

is due out
before the end of the month.

That's right, there have been
narratives about...

crashes and bodies...

back since 1947,

and... there's no way to know,
if something is

that secret, you know,

whether it actually
happened or not.

[Dorsch] The narrative is that
the military has truth

and is hiding it from you.

To some degree,
it is even less about...

flying saucers and aliens

and some
extraterrestrial threat.

It's that whatever it is,

the military knows.

And they're hiding it from you.

And that's the part
that's really scary.

[Eghigian] As a historian,
when you look back

at when people
first started talking

about having contact
with aliens...

the stories that completely

dominate the UFO scene,

even into
the middle part of the '60s...

are a very different
set of stories.

Those are stories
about people meeting

aliens out in a field somewhere.

They look like us.

They typically speak
our language or they speak

to me telepathically,
and they come here

with this basic message.

We're here to help you.

We're here to warn you

about nuclear weapons,

and, you know,
stop killing each other.

[man]
We don't feel as paranoid

about the future,
about our place.

I don't, I don't think
we're afraid of...

as much as we used to be.

[Eghigian] And when people
have these encounters,

they come back
and they say this was

one of the most wonderful
experiences of my life.

I hope I get to see them again.

The interesting thing
to me, though, is that...

these stories are out there, but

for well over
almost two decades,

they make almost no mark

in popular culture.

[Kean] Well, it's not
the area that I focused on.

And I chose not
to focus on it because

the angle that I was taking
in my reporting was to try

to get credibility
for the subject,

and I knew that
that was not the way to go.

Whether it was true or not,
it didn't matter.

You know,
even if it were all true,

that was not the first step

in terms of getting people
to accept this.

[Eghigian]
I remember very, very vividly

stories about the Hills.

Their story
absolutely riveted me.

I couldn't stop reading,

even though
I couldn't get to sleep

properly every night
as I was reading it.

[Kean]
I'm not writing it off.

The problem with it is
it's very hard to prove it.

[Eghigian]
There were many other cases,

some remarkable stories

in the '50s and the '60s
and the '70s.

But they're not something

that gets a lot of attention.

And then suddenly
you hit the early 1980s,

and bam!
[chuckles]

Everything is about
alien abduction.

[reporter] Creatures with large
heads and huge dark eyes

who usually appear
in the middle of the night

and often perform
sinister medical experiments.

I've had eggs removed
from my ovaries repeatedly.

[woman] My mother and I have
both had close encounters

of the fourth kind, also known

as abduction experiences.

So what's been happening is,
we're being transported

aboard a UFO of some sort,
a craft.

We've undergone
physical examination,

mind scan process,
and reproductive processes.

They're creating
a hybrid race between humans

and extraterrestrials.

[Eghigian] So the question
then, to me, becomes:

why are they interesting now?

Why does this become
something fascinating?

And there I think
you have to start

looking at things that are
going on in popular culture,

but things that
are going on in society.

Technological changes,

and you have
a whole host of things.

One of the things
that becomes a very big part

of public discussion

starting in the 1960s,

into the 1980s,

is a focus on home invasions.

Starting with basically
Truman Capote's

-In Cold Blood.
-[gunshot]

This case becomes sort
of this one pivotal moment,

where people start to say
this could happen

to anybody.

The Manson Family killings
become

a kind of a flashpoint

for talking about these things.

This is also, by the way,
the age of hijacking.

When people talk
about encounters

in, say, the early '60s,

the encounters overwhelmingly
were outside.

"We were outdoors or in my car."

By the time you get
into the 1990s,

the majority of people say,

"My encounters are
in my bedroom."

I'll be laying down on the bed,
and whichever

direction I'm facing, they
will be behind me every time.

[Eghigian]
I'm not saying that people

are just making things up.

That's not my point.

All of this seems
to lie in this idea

of a traumatic experience.

And it's interesting to me that,

that trauma, that term
"trauma," when does that

start to really become part
of the public conversation

about experiences
that are terrifying?

Well, it's, it's there,
already being talked about

after World War II
in the wake of the Holocaust.

It's being talked about
in the 1970s

and the feminist movement,

about women who are victims

of domestic abuse.

But it's of course

institutionalized in 1980

by the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual

with the invention of the post-
traumatic stress disorder.

And that's exactly
when you get John Mack.

[Blumenthal]
I love books, and so,

everywhere I go,
I look for books,

especially vintage books.

In 2004, I was a correspondent
in Texas and I picked up a book.

I think it might have been
in Larry McMurtry's town

in Texas, where he runs
a lot of book shops.

The whole town is devoted
to Archer City,

which became, you know,
Last Picture Show.

So I picked up a book called
Passport to the Cosmos,

which was a book by John Mack.

[reporter] Passport
to the Cosmos is Dr. Mack's

newest book.
Quite simply, it's about people

who claim they've been
abducted by aliens.

[Diana Walsh Pasulka]
John Mack,

who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning
Harvard researcher...

...in the '80s wrote the book

Abduction:
Human Encounters with Aliens.

That's not an easy topic
for an academic because

it could ruin your career.

[Blumenthal]
He was very eminent in his field

and he had a very
distinguished career

writing
about Lawrence of Arabia.

He had been written up many
times in The New York Times.

He was an expert
in childhood development.

He had written
a book on nightmares.

He had written a book on,
uh, teenage suicide.

He had been on Oprah.

He was, you know, famous.

Infamous in some circles
at Harvard

but very, very well-known.

What the source of this is,

what... who these beings are,
where they come from,

what creates
this intelligence...

uh, I don't know,
but there's something

profoundly important
going on here

that is authentic and real.

John Mack is a pivotal
figure in this history.

He has a kind
of recognized legitimacy

that most people in the UFO
community did not enjoy.

So the idea is, if someone
like him is interested

in this topic and feels
there's something worthy

to look at,
we've got to look at that.

[Charlie Rose]
Do you, as an intelligent person

who's investigated it,
believe...

I don't know of a better word...

think it happened to them?

Nothing in my 40 years
of working with people

prepared me for this phenomenon.

In spite of all
the criticism that I may be

taking it too seriously or...

uh, believing
this really happened,

there isn't a single case
where anybody has found

another explanation of what
an individual has reported.

[Blumenthal] The Harvard
psychiatrist who's researching

alien abduction.
I thought

he'd make a great story
for The New York Times.

I was thinking about calling
him up for an interview.

And then literally
a few days later,

I picked up The New York Times
and I saw his obituary.

I was shocked.

He was run over and killed
by a hit-and-run driver,

a drunk driver in London.

I thought it was very strange.

The Internet was already
well along, so there were

suspicions
and allegations by people

that he'd been assassinated.

[Eghigian] There's no question,
like a lot of famous people

who have worked in the UFO area,

whenever they die,

particularly an untimely death,

there are people
who come forward and say

this is part of the conspiracy.

The Men in Black narrative.

Again...
it's a common kind of thing

that you see take place.

[Blumenthal]
The most common rumor was that

another person named John Mack

was run down at the same time,

so that shows that John Macks

were targeted, and it's not
true as far as I could, uh,

determine, there was
no other John Mack run over.

[Brandon Harris]
This is happening on the heels

of the popularity
of The X Files television show,

with a sort
of burgeoning interest

in alien culture.

The early days

of the Web allows people

who have an interest
in aliens and UFOs

to find each other more easily.

Where conspiracy theories

or myth can take hold

and find purchase with a group

of people that can
spread it more widely.

[Blumenthal] It really was sadly
much more simple than that.

He was run over and killed
by a hit-and-run drunk driver

in London.
He looked the wrong way

and died almost immediately.

Well, I mean he was
a psychiatrist,

so he was an expert scholar

of-of the human mind and psyche,

and he found that these
people were eminently normal.

There was nothing
to distinguish them,

except for the fact that

they came to him telling

of these
extraordinary experiences.

And went
from the white light hitting me

to then being paralyzed

to being floated out of my room,
going up into a spaceship,

lying on a table.

I was aware that they
were putting an instrument

in my neck.

[Eghigian]
John Mack tells us in interviews

when you look
at what he talked about.

His first response was,
"This is nonsense.

This is utter nonsense."

But what really struck him
as he looked more at this,

the people
seemed legitimately upset.

I'm remembering
what they did to me.

I don't want him
doing that to her.

And I... And I just blurted,
"Don't touch her.

Don't take her.
D-Don't do those things to her."

[Eghigian]
They were telling stories

that were consistent
with one another

though these people
had never met one another.

They would hear
that another person

had had the same experience.

They would become
very much disturbed

because it meant they couldn't
dismiss it as a dream.

They couldn't dismiss it
as their private mental illness

or fantasy,
and that, to a psychiatrist...

at least to this psychiatrist...
was very powerful.

It was a broad cross section
of humanity.

Men, women, blue-collar people,
professionals,

psychiatrists also, doctors,

lawyers, politicians

and children
as young as two years old

who would tell stories
about little men

who took them up into the sky.

And he realized, of course,

that these children
were not reciting

stories from books they had read

or movies they had seen.
They were two years old.

They were not mentally ill.
He was convinced of that

because that was his field.

They were not delusional.

They were not deluded.

They were not looking
for publicity.

On the contrary,
they were horrified

by what they think
had happened to them.

They were traumatized,
often to the point

of shaking and crying when
they revealed these encounters

in sessions
that he had with them.

He didn't communicate anything
to you

about why you were taken back
into the ship?

I just remember being able
to see that light again.

[Blumenthal]
Basically,

he could not find
any other explanation

other than what the people
said had happened to them.

intriguing, tense music

[Mack]
In these cases, these people

have been examined by myself.
They've been

tested psychologically.

They are
of above-average intelligence.

They are of sound mind.
They've been shown

as of sup-superior mental
functioning by the testers.

So the-there is not indication

of any kind
of psychiatric condition

that can account for this
that I've been able to find.

Because they don't want
to believe it's true.

They would rather believe
it's a dream

or a form of mental illness
than that this is something real

because it's so shattering
to their notion of reality.

[Pasulka] If you look
through John Mack's book,

you see these people have
these contact experiences.

There was always some type
of incredible event,

and then they understood it
to be a real thing.

There are experiences
from hundreds of years ago

that look similar
to what people experience today.

One of the best examples of that
has to be Teresa of Ávila,

who is a doctor of the church,

and she was the Italian nun
in the 1500s.

She had this experience

that is very well-represented
in Western art.

And it's represented
in statues and paintings,

and it's this experience
where, if you looked at it,

you would see her
in kind of ecstasy.

And you see this angel.

There's a very famous statue

by Bernini in Rome

where there is an angel
carrying this dart.

And, you know,
it looks like Eros, right?

The god Eros with the dart
who's gonna get you,

and, you know,
you're gonna fall in love.

But if you actually read
her report of it,

it looks nothing
like her actual experience.

She says,
"This is not a normal angel.

But usually if I see an angel,
it's imaginative.

It's, you know,
something in my head.

But this thing's actually real.
Right?

This thing's, like, fleshy.
It is right there."

"And it's short.

You know, it's three feet.

And it's fiery.
It's all on fire.

And it has this prong,

and it's-it's, you know,

thrust the prong into my bowel."

You see this time and time again

in history with people who have
these experiences and sightings,

what are called
contact experiences.

And then what happens is

that there's an interpretive
framework around that

that the Church then declares

as what happened.

The interpretation
then gets done

after the experience.

That's what's called religion.

And then it's represented.

Like, you can say

that pop culture back then
were paintings and statues.

intense, dramatic music

Teresa has her event,

and it gets changed, right?

It can become
something completely different

than what
she actually wrote about.

We decided we're only gonna look
at these parts

because we can only deal
with those parts.

[Eghigian] John Mack
is unusual and important

because when he encounters
the alien abductees,

he says, "I-I could start
to question their worldview."

"Their cosmology," is what
he called it. "Their reality."

He said, "But I started
to come to believe

that I was being called on
to embrace

their experiences as something
that challenges me."

If this is a real experience...

that is,
some kind of entities, beings,

intelligences
are entering our world

and affecting
hundreds of thousands,

perhaps millions of people,
according to polls...

then this is something
really worth looking at.

So, that's what
I've been trying to do,

is get people
at least to look at it.

Think about it.

Once you kind of get hit
in the face with this

and there's a connection
you can make to it

where you just realize this is
too big to turn away from.

And it can just grab you.

That's what it feels like.

And I'm the same way, you know,

so I understand it.

I never went to formal school.
Actually,

I went to Burma,
and I was documenting

a lot of human rights abuses
in Burma

in the '90s, basically.

[overlapping shouting]

[screaming]

And when I came back,

I was invited
to go on a public radio show.

And then I started working
with the producer of that show,

who was really interested
in what I had,

and I was eventually hired
to work at this radio station.

I was curious, but no more
than your average person.

I mean, I never, ever
would have imagined

that I would ever be
professionally involved.

What started the whole thing
was, I was sent a report in 1999

from a colleague in France

called the COMETA Report.

It was a 90-page study
on UFO data

by a group of very distinguished
people in France.

Generals, admirals,
police chief,

scientists, engineers.

They were only looking
at official cases,

pilot cases, military cases.
Then they spent

three years studying
all these official cases,

and they came out
with this 90-page study

which basically said

that the best hypothesis

for all this data
they observed was

that we were being visited
by extraterrestrial vehicles.

And I was just
absolutely fascinated by it.

I thought this is
a massively huge story.

This was the first time
I went out on my own,

pitched the story,
and it was published

in the Boston Globe, and that
was sort of what launched me

on this journey,
and from that moment on,

I was... I was, like, hooked.

[Knapp] I'm not a UFO guy.
It wasn't my thing.

I was chasing the mob
in those days,

but this got my attention.

I was hooked on it.

[Kean] There was
a huge outpouring of excitement

from the UFO community because

I don't think a journalist

had ever taken it
seriously enough

to publish a long story

in a major publication
like the Boston Globe.

[Knapp] Suddenly, my phone
starts ringing off the hook.

People are calling.
They're giving me

tips about UFOs, and I realized

that this topic
touched the pulse of the public

in a way that I
had never considered before.

intriguing, dramatic music

[Kean] I started going
to some conferences

so I would meet members
of the UFO community.

And then I was actually
introduced to Budd Hopkins.

[Eghigian] Budd Hopkins is a guy
who already, in the early '80s,

had become quite famous.

The evidence suggests
beyond any doubt,

as far as I'm concerned,
that we're being visited

by some kind of...
some form of intelligence

which is higher than ours

and some kind of technology
which is higher than ours.

We keep it at arm's length
conveniently,

but it does upset
more and more people

as they see the evidence for it.

[Kean] Budd Hopkins
was a very well-known artist

before any of this
came into his life.

He was an abstract expressionist
painter and sculptor.

intriguing, tense music

The reason
this whole thing started

for him was because
he had a sighting himself.

I was fully convinced
that the Air Force had said

they were balloons
or something or other.

I never knew what.
And I accepted that.

But then, when we saw

this thing flying around,
I was very aware that,

okay, there's something up there
that has not been explained.

[Kean] He saw
a disk-shaped object in the sky,

and it turns out other people
had seen the same thing.

And then he's
in the liquor store one day

'cause he liked to have
his evening Scotch.

The guy in the store
just started talking

about this landing of a UFO

that had happened in New Jersey.

And he said that there had
been beings that had come out,

and there were marks
on the ground.

And he wrote about it
in the Village Voice,

a paper in New York City.

And it took off,

and he just got so many letters
from people who said,

"I've seen
things like this, too."

And I concealed deliberately

certain details about the UFO...
its color,

certain details
about the weather condition...

because I wanted to...

I-I was convinced
that there were other witnesses,

and I wanted to have some way
of checking their veracity.

And, in fact, we got

something like seven or eight
other witnesses

who were right
about these missing details.

And so I knew, all right,
these things are flying around.

pulsing, intriguing music

He ends up meeting John Mack.

And he introduces Mack

to some of these folks
who say these things.

[Hopkins]
I handed him 20 unopened letters

that I had not looked at myself,
had not read them,

not opened them, from people

who obviously were writing in
because they felt

they'd had experiences.
And I said, "John,

you open these, read...
these letters. You read them."

And he called me the next day

to say he was quite astonished
by this.

[Blumenthal]
Budd Hopkins trained himself

to hypnotize people,
but he was an artist,

and, as he said, nobody cares
what an artist thinks.

But John Mack

made people think twice

about the whole subject.

[Eghigian]
Mack was interested in this idea

that you wanted to focus
on the experience.

gentle, intriguing music

When they talk about him
going native,

it does seem to me
what any good

treatment professional,
any therapist would do.

You try to put yourself
in the position

in a sympathetic way,

even maybe empathetic way

of looking at problems
and issues

through the experiences
and lives

of the people you're treating.

[inhales deeply]

[grunts]

[speaks indistinctly]

-They're horrible.
-[Hopkins] Who's horrible?

-They are.
-[Hopkins] Who's "they"?

I don't want to talk about it.

Right.

He had won a Pulitzer Prize,

the biography
of Lawrence of Arabia.

John Mack
did identify with Lawrence.

The person who had a conflict
between his inner life...

very, uh, intellectual...
and his outer life,

obviously mobilizing
Arab tribesmen

against the Ottoman Empire.

A very action-filled life.

[shouting]

No prisoners! No prisoners!

Hyah!

Charge!

[Blumenthal]
He said many times, John Mack,

that he identified
with his struggles.

And he tried to emulate
Lawrence's methods

because Lawrence
was a master statesman, too.

Very politically savvy.

John Mack
was in similar circumstances.

You know, pillar
of the Harvard establishment,

interested in, you know,
aliens and UFOs.

intriguing, dramatic music

[Mack] Either we try
to shrink the phenomenon

into something where it...

as far as I can tell,
it won't fit,

or we're gonna have to stretch
our notions of the possible.

John really had a lot at stake
given his position at Harvard

and his credentials
and, you know, all of that.

[Blumenthal]
First of all,

Harvard was really no stranger
to anomalous research.

I mean, William James,
the father of psychology,

was attending séances

and writing
about paranormal events

a hundred years ago.

But something

about John Mack's manner
had put them off.

He was a little too popular.

Academia will never forgive...
[laughs]

...professors
who spend their lives writing,

you know, obscure papers
that never get any attention.

Then this guy comes along,
and he writes a best seller

after trying
to get peer-reviewed, you know,

-and being rejected.
-[Eghigian] Harvard ends up

doing an investigation

into his research practices.

In the end, he is

allowed to continue his career.

This is also part
of that history

of the flying saucer
UFO phenomenon,

that whenever an institution

that is recognized as respected,

whenever they grant this stuff

some sort of legitimacy
as a topic

that is worthy of conversation,
worthy of investigation...

...it is credibility.

[Knapp] During that same period
of time, Bob Bigelow

is starting
to put the pieces together

for the National Institute
for Discovery Science, NIDS.

quiet, intriguing music

[Lara Logan]
Do you imagine

that in our space travels,

we will encounter
other forms of intelligent life?

You don't have to go anywhere.

-You can find it here?
-Yeah.

-[laughs]
-[Knapp] He and I would meet,

and during those years,
he would share with me

things that he was financing,

the kind of research
that he had funded.

He was, at that time,
providing financial support

to a number of
really distinguished academics

and researchers.

People like Budd Hopkins.

And eventually

Dr. John Mack from Harvard.

[Greenewald] When you look
at those connections, right,

and everybody seemingly
is more and more connected,

uh, into this story,

you see them all essentially gel
for decades together,

and they just keep popping up

in the same programs
or the same stories

or the same objectives.

Why is that?

Is it that they're just
all buddies and friends

and they have
this budding interest

in the same things?

Or maybe there's something else
being played out

at this point
that keeps them all together?

-
-[dialogue inaudible]

[Dorsch]
I want to be generous, but

if there's anything
we've learned,

there is money
and a certain kind of prestige

in being
at the forefront of this.

Thank you.

[Eghigian]
From the very beginning,

there are drivers of this.

There are people
who take up a role

kind of self-appointedly.

[chuckles]
They take up this role that,

"I am going to be

a campaigner."

-[applause]
-For a time,

they are the bright,

shining stars in all this,

but they ultimately fall away,

and new people take their place.

[applause]

There's never been

some central institution,

a central agency
or a group of people

who concertedly try
to keep this thing alive.

pulsing, dramatic music

But there's always been
this kind of interest

at an individual level.

I think you can go so far
as to say some people

really understand themselves
as crusaders for truth.

[Richard Doty] In 1947,
two craft crashed in New Mexico.

They collided,

and one crashed
near Corona, New Mexico,

which is public record.

The second craft
crashed way out west

of Magdalena, New Mexico,

and that wasn't found
until two years later.

But the one that crashed
in Corona,

they also found a live alien.

That live alien was named Eba,

and he was transported to...

It was a ma... a male.

He was transported
to Los Alamos, where he...

he lived out his life.

He died in 1952,

but during that time period
that he was with us,

he told us
a plethora of information

about what they have learned
about the universe

and what their technology is.

Their technology
is probably, uh, estimated

to be about 50,000 years
ahead of us.

They did have some tools
and some material in the craft

that the Air Force was able to

and U.S. intelligence community
was able

to retrieve
and reverse engineer.

[sighs] I don't know that
I necessarily have much

to say about that
except, like, at risk of...

I don't want to impugn
anyone's character,

but in the sort of post-Brexit,
post-Trump era

of social media and fake news,

there is something dangerous

about allowing
uncritical narratives

that undermine public trust

in really fundamental
institutions

like the United States military

and our intelligence
communities.

tense, dramatic music

[Kean] We have to move
in a way that's very credible,

that can penetrate
the status quo

and can get through to senators
and congressmen and scientists.

I've always advocated.

I started working on this
in the year 2000,

and one of my initial points
to advocate for was that we need

a government agency in order
to do proper investigations.

Somebody
who's interested in UFOs

writes a story about UFOs.

Well, there's a plot for you.

There's a dastardly plot.

Of course she's interested
in UFOs,

and of course she helped, uh,
get that story on-on the paper.

Is she supposed to cover stories
she's not interested in?

[Kean] It was Puthoff,
Mellon and Jim Semivan,

who was in the CIA
for many, many years.

And I had known Puthoff
for a very long time,

and I had known
Chris Mellon also.

They knew
that I was a journalist

who took this seriously,

so they were interested
in just bringing me down

and telling me
about the program.

A secret UFO program
has just been revealed.

The military spent
millions of dollars

to look into UFO sightings,

and those videos
are now being made public.

[newsman]
Christopher Mellon served

as Deputy Assistant Secretary
of Defense for Intelligence

for Presidents Clinton
and George W. Bush.

In 2017, as a private citizen,
he surreptitiously acquired

the three Navy videos
Elizondo had declassified

and leaked them
to The New York Times.

It's bizarre and unfortunate
that someone like myself

has to do something like that

to get a national security issue
like this on the agenda.

[Knapp] Chris Mellon is
one of the wealthiest

people in America.

He devoted himself
to a life of public service,

working for Senate
intelligence committees

and then at the Pentagon.
He doesn't need the money.

He's not out to besmirch
his family's reputation,

his own reputation

by engaging in some kind
of disinformation plot,

fooling the American public.

He's there
'cause he wants to know.

[Eghigian]
To the Stars... Academy

and the people involved in that

have definitely assumed
the driving role.

They are, in many ways,

the kind of
now center of gravity

for this stuff.

I really don't know
the inside story.

I mean, I just know
that they have moved on.

dramatic, intriguing music

And I think people
like Chris Mellon, Lue Elizondo

are working to try
to get as much as they can...

You know, to have the influence
to try to get

as much as can be released
released.

Having members of Congress
briefed,

speaking to all kinds of people
to keep the ball rolling.

I don't know.

It's just a slow process,
unfortunately.

But it's unpredictable.

[Eghigian]
The thing that defines

the UFO
is this elusiveness, right?

There's a French sociologist
who makes a really good point

about UFOs.

The thing that makes UFOs
so interesting

isn't that they appear;
it's that they disappear.

The thing that's frustrating
for so many

is the very key
to why it's so mesmerizing.

It's the disappearance.

[man] There goes one.
Now they're back to two lights.

Oh, there it goes.

Boom. All three.

[woman]
What is that?

[newswoman] I want to take you
straight to NASA headquarters.

Let's just listen
and see what might be happening.

slow, gentle music

And a picture there
that you can see

the first powered
controlled flight

on another planet,

so cause for celebration.

We've been flying on Earth
for just over 100 years,

and now we're-we're gonna go
to another planet and fly.

It's crazy.

[Blumenthal] You don't need
science fiction anymore.

[laughs] Reality
is really exciting enough.

I mean, it sounds quaint today
to pick up books

about voyages to Mars.

We've vastly outpaced
the science fiction of the '50s.

[Kean]
It's just a different world now,

and there's a level of openness

and now an acceptance
of the reality.

We've had some big events
in the past

where, you know,
there were hundreds of witnesses

where the government
would still just not comment

or ignore it or say it was
planes flying in formation.

Today, that could not happen.

The next big line

to be crossed is when there is
an acknowledgement that

it definitely is not
from any country on Earth.

loud, dramatic music

[man]
My gosh.

[Barack Obama]
There's footage and records

of objects in the skies

that we don't know exactly
what they are.

We can't explain how they moved,

their trajectory.

They did not have
an easily explainable pattern.

[Kean]
If Russia, China and America

all got together and said,
"We're gonna acknowledge this,

that this doesn't come
from any of our countries."

I don't know
if that's ever gonna happen,

but I think that's
the direction we're moving in.

[Eghigian] The thing
about the UFO phenomenon is

it's just not a phenomenon.

It has always been

shrouded in mystery.

There are people
who view this stuff

as a puzzle that can be solved.

We just need
to put the pieces together.

And then there are people
who see these as mysteries,

and mysteries are never solved.

I think that's
what John Mack felt.

It was a mystery that was just
going to constantly be there

because what we do as human
beings is work through them.

[Blumenthal]
There's two huge mysteries,

I think, uh, out there.
One is:

Are we alone in the universe?

The second mystery is:
What happens after we die?

And maybe they're related.

Those are the two big mysteries.

[man] Have you seen
this image captured

by the Hubble Telescope

of the farthest ever view
of the universe?

Every dot is a galaxy.

[Eghigian]
It's fantastic.

But, on one hand,
it makes you feel small,

makes us feel really tiny.

But you're also sort of
caught up with this sense

that there's something bigger
out there.

Carl Sagan used to say we are
all made of star stuff, right?

We are all made of this cosmos,
and so there's a sense

of being connected to something
that is bigger than us.

tense, dramatic music

dramatic music