Original subtitles

♪ ♪

CHRISTOPHER K. MELLON: November 2004,

off the coast of Southern California,

the radar operators on the USS Princeton

begin to see objects coming essentially from space.

COMMANDER DAVE FRAVOR: As I come up, I can see him as

he's crossing in front of me, it starts to accelerate,

gets right on my nose and disappears.

LT. COMMANDER ALEX DIETRICH: This particular object

was not following any of our rules.

Like, what the (bleep) is that?

Like, we're seeing something for the first time.

We don't know if it's a threat.

We don't even know what it is.

FRAVOR: We don't know what we don't know.

MAN (on radio):

SEN. HARRY REID: These unidentified flying phenomenon

or objects, you know, I don't know what they are.

But we've established one thing: they exist.

MICHIO KAKU: Our pilots have been seeing

these things for decades.

LESLIE KEAN: Their sightings go all the way back

to the '40s and '50s and '60s.

MAN: We have a report

of an unidentified aircraft south of the field.

REPORTER: There have been hundreds of sightings

in Westchester, Dutchess, and Putnam Counties.

MARCO RUBIO: Anything that enters an airspace

that's not supposed to be there is a threat.

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND: There's a lot of people

who feel very passionate about this issue

and they just want people to take it seriously,

as they should!

JEFF KRIPAL: The military and the government

basically decided on a policy of shaming.

KEAN: The witnesses were very afraid of being ridiculed.

FRANK MANNOR: They think you're a nut, tell you the truth.

That's just what they figure you are.

HELENE COOPER: We needed to remove the stigma.

REP. ANDRE CARSON: Republicans are just as curious

as Democrats when it comes to these matters.

KAKU: It used to be that the burden of proof

was on the true believer.

They saw something, prove it.

Now the burden of proof has shifted to the government.

Now they have to prove

that they don't come from perhaps

another universe beyond ours.

J. ALLEN HYNEK: We get reports every night.

MAN 1: I don't know what the hell it is.

MAN 2: Looks like a rotating light around it.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Yes, it came from outer space

to fill the world with terror.

To bring you unforgettable suspense.

LUIS D. ELIZONDO: When you hear the term "UFO,"

I think a lot of people

think of, uh, little green men

and Elvis on the mothership,

and tin foil hats.

NARRATOR: Where did it come from?

ELIZONDO: When in reality,

what we're talking about are real objects

that are being encountered over controlled U.S. airspace,

in some cases very sensitive locations,

performing in ways that, frankly, we can't understand.

GILLIBRAND: Honestly, we have video footage of UAPs,

unidentified aerial phenomena.

MAN (on radio):

GILLIBRAND: More and more things

that we can't identify.

(laughs) So we need to know what it is.

That is necessary for national security.

PILOT (on radio): There's a whole fleet of them, look on the ASA.

CARSON: Might this be from the Russians,

the Chinese government? Or another hostile nation?

A non-state actor?

Or are these aircraft otherworldly?

Are these beings from another galaxy or universe?

These are questions that, that have to be answered.

MELLON: I think the best way to characterize it

is we're vulnerable.

It's a vulnerability.

And that vulnerability could be exploited,

could be massively exploited.

So, that has to be a national security concern.

ELIZONDO: We've been looking at this topic

for the last 70 years as a country.

We have substantiated reports of UAP activity

from at least World War II.

LT. GENERAL JOHN A. SAMFORD: We have received and analyzed

between 1 and 2,000 reports

that have come to us from all kinds of sources.

MELLON: You're not taught this in history class,

but we had a phenomenal series of UFO sightings

directly over the nation's Capital in July 1952,

on two successive weekends.

SAMFORD: Air Force interest in this problem

has been due to our feeling of an obligation

to identify anything in the air

that may have the possibility of threat

or menace to the United States.

ELIZONDO: The American people wanted answers.

And unfortunately the Air Force chose to obfuscate.

LAWRENCE J. TACKER: Our critics continually charge

that the United States Air Force

is withholding information from the general public.

This is absolutely untrue.

We are not hiding anything. We have nothing to hide.

ELIZONDO: So in the early 1970s,

the government concluded its investigation into UFOs.

As a result of that, there was this quiet period.

This point where the U.S. government

had washed its hands of the topic.

That occurred for, for several decades,

or at least that's what we were led to believe.

But in fact, in 2008,

I was approached by a couple representatives from a little,

small, obscure office somewhere in, in the Pentagon.

That office was called the Advance Aerospace Threat

Identification Program: AATIP.

The individuals asked me if I would be part of an effort

which, quite literally, looked at UFOs.

AATIP was the deliberate

and purposeful study of

Unidentified Aerial Vehicles

that were being encountered in controlled U.S. air space.

People asked me, "Well, why you, Luis?"

And as it was explained to me

was because of my, my background.

I'm a career counterintelligence special agent.

Many of my assignments were overseas,

initially in the Latin American, uh, hemisphere,

and then later on, after September 11th,

over in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

I took an oath many, many years ago

to defend this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

And that's why I accepted the offer to join AATIP.

I approached this job the same way

I did every other job I ever had in intelligence.

The exact same methodologies

that we used to hunt terrorists,

we were using to hunt UFOs.

The sources of information that was collected

was primarily through Department of Defense and military assets.

Think of fighter aircraft and, and military eyewitnesses.

We did not engage the public.

These pilots are, are not only trained observers,

but they are some of the best aircraft pilots on the planet

operating some of the most sophisticated weapons systems

on the planet.

When they're telling you

that they are encountering something

that they cannot describe,

that impacts our national security

and our ability to respond to a perceived threat.

And so when they are encountering these objects

we have to take their testimony seriously.

Imagine something that had the ability

to fly in space, under water,

and in our atmosphere at 13,000 miles an hour, and,

and change directions instantly.

We fly the SR-71 at 3,200 miles an hour.

If you wanted to take a right-hand turn,

it would take you roughly

half the state of Ohio to do it.

And yet what we are seeing are objects

that can do 90-degree turns instantly.

And we're not talking about speeds of 3,200 miles an hour.

They've been clocked at over 13,000.

The question arises: How is that possible?

GILLIBRAND: On the Armed Services Committee,

the one thing I did become aware of

that I was very concerned about

is that members of our armed forces

have come forward over many years

with reports of

Unidentified Aerial Phenomena that they actually captured

and instead of that information being well-received,

it's often been denigrated.

MELLON: By and large,

most of the data was not even filed,

or saved, or reported.

The information that was stored

did not go to a central authority.

GILLIBRAND: That's not acceptable.

And if we don't know what it is,

it's not an appropriate response to say, well then,

let's not look at it, or let's not admit it's there.

And so I wanted to look into this further.

DIRECTOR: So is that like an adrenaline junkie,

is that what you'd call yourself?

FRAVOR: I wouldn't say I'm an adrenaline junkie,

but I like fast cars and flying jets are pretty cool.

I think it's the greatest job on the planet.

My name is David Fravor.

I'm a retired Navy Commander Super Hornet pilot.

I flew for 18 years for the United States Navy.

I'm, uh, at the foot of the ladder...

July 1969, I was with my mom

watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.

MAN (on radio): Both hands down, about the fourth rung up.

And I was fascinated with space

and my mom said they were all former military pilots.

And about from that point on,

I had this goal that I was gonna fly tactical aircraft

somewhere in the United States military.

I got some pilots that I worry about.

'Cause, the first thing, you don't want to lose anybody

and number two, the airplanes are pretty expensive

and it's tax dollars.

In November of 2004,

we're gonna work with the USS Princeton

and we were flying, we're training our aircrew.

SOLDIER (on radio): Stand by for word from Commanding Officer.

FRAVOR: As Alex was flying the other plane,

The Princeton came up and said, "Hey, sir,

we're gonna, we're gonna hold on training today."

So he said, "Hey, we have a real-world vector,"

and they turned us off to the West.

It goes to, "Oh, real world.

Maybe we're going to intercept some drug runners."

DIETRICH: We were flying in a tactical

combat spread formation, two aircraft.

Each aircraft had two aircrew.

As the radar hits on the USS Princeton ,

scopes start to march towards each other.

They get so close that they can't differentiate them,

and that's called a merge plot.

And a merge plot is when

you would expect to merge with this other aircraft,

and if you're in a combat situation,

that's obviously a very tense moment.

(indistinct radio chatter)

FRAVOR: So, when you do that,

you start looking outside, so we're kinda doing this...

looking around to see where it's at

because it's somewhere around you and you don't know.

And I looked down, I go, "What is that?!"

Close your eyes and imagine a long cylindrical white object

with rounded ends, roughly 40 feet long,

that looked like a giant Tic Tac.

It was white, pure white, it had no windows,

no wings, no visual signs of propulsion.

And this thing was going like this...

And I, I describe it as like if you put a ping pong ball

and it was bouncing off a wall.

DIETRICH: This particular object

was not following any of our rules.

It didn't have a turn radius that we would expect.

It didn't have a period to accelerate and decelerate.

It just seemed to zip so quickly that it was again

really disorienting, really confusing for us.

RICKI STERN: David said it was the "WTF moment."

DIETRICH: Yeah. (laughs) Yeah.

There were definitely some "WTFs" on the radio.

(laughs)

Not in a scared way but like,

"What the (bleep) is that?"

Like, we're seeing something for the first time.

FRAVOR: You know, some people go "what is that" and they run.

And then some people say "what is that"

and they're curious and they want to get closer and closer.

I wanted to get closer and see what it was.

DIETRICH: My lead, Commander David Fravor,

he says "I'm in,"

which means that he's engaging with this thing.

FRAVOR: We're going around,

we get to about the 12 o'clock position

and this thing is still pointing north-south.

The Tic Tac goes...

and turns and starts coming up.

So, now it's mirroring me.

Whatever it was, was aware that we were there.

And as I come up, I can see him as he's crossing in front of me,

it starts to accelerate,

gets right on my nose and disappears.

For something to come off the surface of the ocean

like it was moving around, to be able to just accelerate,

to match my speed and then to rapidly go away,

we do not possess that technology.

COMMANDER CHAD UNDERWOOD: Dave Fravor was my commanding officer.

Dave had his encounter.

He comes back and lands on the carrier

and goes "I'm a little weirded out."

Uh, we were out there, and we saw this object.

"I need you to go out to this sector of airspace

and try to find it."

He's been flying his entire career,

over 20 years.

When he says something like that,

I take it seriously.

FRAVOR: Chad decided, "If there's any way possible,

if I can get this thing on video, I'm gonna do it."

DIETRICH: I think it's a testament to Chad Underwood

and his pilot, their experience, their expertise,

their, their technical acumen that they were able to launch

and find it and bring back FLIR footage.

UNDERWOOD: You can see we just jumped to infrared,

target is now white against a black background.

It's the same picture, it's just a different kind of polarity.

I told my pilot I'm like, "Hey, I'm going to go into

"every single field of view, zoom, TV...

and just try to bring back as much footage."

So we pop the tapes in and take a look

and every single eyeball in the room

was just like wide-open like, "whoa."

How do I describe this to someone

who's gonna be, you know, skeptical

and, and there was kind of that stigma of like

"Alright, you saw an alien."

I'm like, "I didn't say I saw an alien."

All I can tell you is that I couldn't describe it.

ELIZONDO: There's a lot more videos there.

What we're seeing on gun-camera footage

is being validated and verified by eyewitness testimony,

which is also being further substantiated by radar data.

My intent was to have this information

presented to the Secretary of Defense

so he could make an informed decision.

There are aspects of this phenomenon

that definitely belong within the national security arena.

Especially if these objects were over controlled U.S. airspace.

That's inherent government business.

The boss needed to see the data,

and unfortunately

that information was not permitted to get to him.

On a regular, routine basis,

I was brought up to the Secretary's suite,

and I was briefing his direct reports.

But they wouldn't bring it to his attention.

And I suspect they were trying to save him from embarrassment,

because if someone in the media said,

"Were you ever briefed on UFOs?" he'd have to say yes.

And so after several failed attempts

to brief the Secretary of Defense,

I chose to resign.

Sometimes, if you want to help the system,

you have to leave the very system to do it,

and that's what I chose to do.

My resignation, it wasn't easy.

It was probably the most difficult on my family.

I had given up a successful career.

But it's kind of a code of ethic with us in government

that if you can't fix a problem internally

then you leave, which is ultimately what I had to do.

ZACH: Leslie interview take one, mark!

KEAN: My name is Leslie Kean

and I'm an investigative journalist

and I've been reporting on UFOs for about 21 years.

In the fall of 2017,

I got a call from a source of mine,

Chris Mellon, a former Under Secretary of Defense,

who was very interested in UFOs

and he invited me to a secret meeting in Washington DC.

And I eventually learned that the purpose

was for me to meet the former head of an official program

within the Department of Defense which was studying UFOs,

and had been doing so for 10 years.

I met Luis Elizondo the day

after he resigned from the secret program.

So this was unbelievable to me.

There was a program,

and I was actually about to meet the person

who headed up that program.

It was a big deal.

It was the biggest moment of my career as a journalist.

These are original copies

from the original negative of the-- probably the most...

When I first started writing about UFOs in 2000,

I was working at a public radio station in Berkeley, California.

And, suddenly, this colleague from France

sent me a report in the mail.

The report was called the COMETA Report

and I had the only exclusive English translation.

What it was was a 90-page study of official UFO cases

put together by French military officials, generals,

an admiral, the chief of police.

What really stunned me when I read it, was their conclusion.

What they said was that the extraterrestrial hypothesis

was the most valid, rational, and logical explanation

for the UFO cases that they studied.

So, I thought this was a huge story and I thought to myself,

"What if the equivalent level of officials in America

said something like that?"

Wouldn't that be front-page news,

wouldn't that go all over the world?

And then I pitched a story to the Boston Globe ,

and in May of 2000, that story came out.

The response was huge within the UFO world,

but what I was surprised about was that

there wasn't more response outside of the people

who already cared about this topic.

And so my goal in writing about UFOs

has been mainly to bring information forward

to the public.

But, beyond that, it's to motivate our government

to pay attention.

ELIZONDO: I commend the media for tackling this

because they're, they're putting a lot at risk as well,

reporting on this topic.

KEAN: Pilots are in a position

to provide very useful information to scientists...

ELIZONDO: That's how we have a comprehensive conversation

with the American people.

KEAN: I did not walk away from that meeting

with Luis Elizondo carrying anything with me.

I was shown three videos of UFOs.

And these were official Department of Defense videos

that were, without question, unexplained objects.

MAN (on radio):

MAN (on radio): Oh, okay.

ELIZONDO: She ran through the videos,

and she asked me, are these authentic?

And I said, "I can tell you that the videos are authentic."

And the only reason

why I'm telling you this is because they're unclassified.

I facilitated the review process for them

through the Department of Defense.

KEAN: Two of them had audiotapes of the pilots

exclaiming about what they were seeing and their shock

and their awe and everything else.

MAN (on radio):

KEAN: This was just absolutely stunning to me,

because there have been no official videos of UFOs

released-- I don't think ever, but certainly not for,

since way back in the '50s or '60s.

And they were official. That's the thing.

They weren't just somebody out with a cellphone taking a video.

MAN (on radio):

ELIZONDO: When you hear the pilots' reaction to,

to these encounters, it's very compelling.

PILOT: (on radio): There's a whole fleet of them. Look on the ASA!

My gosh!

ELIZONDO: They're obviously startled,

they're obviously encountering something

that they can't explain and we need to figure out

what we collectively are gonna do about it.

And that's why I resigned from the Department of Defense.

KEAN: Luis Elizondo's letter of resignation

that he wrote for the Secretary of Defense,

I think that might have just knocked me out

almost more than anything else.

He explained why he was resigning this job,

and it had to do with his understanding

that UFOs were a national security concern.

To see that written down,

and the courage that it took for him to do that,

it was just incredible.

ELIZONDO: In order to understand why I resigned,

I think you have to go back to where I came from.

I come from, on my father's side,

uh, Cuban immigrants.

That's meaningful for me

because this country offered my family opportunities

that nobody else would,

and so from a very young age, I've always wanted to,

to serve the, the country that gave my family so much.

You know, ironically, I left the Department of Defense

out of loyalty, not disloyalty.

I left the Department of Defense

to finish the very mission

they gave me in the first place.

After reporting all these years on UFOs,

there was nothing that came close

to the power of that particular meeting.

Once I realized this was a big story,

I teamed up with my colleague Ralph Blumenthal

who was a freelance reporter for the New York Times,

and he pitched it to the head editor.

I had never reported for the New York Times before,

so I didn't know what would happen

but that's where I felt this story should go.

The public has a right to know about what we're learning

about this extraordinary phenomenon.

COOPER: I think it was sometime in the fall of 2017,

my boss, who's the Washington Bureau Chief,

walked up to my desk and said, "Do you wanna write about UFOs?"

And we both sort of laughed and she said

Leslie Kean had information about a secret Pentagon program.

And that was easily, to me, fascinating.

There's no way I don't want to write about it.

I'm Helene Cooper.

I'm the Pentagon Correspondent for the New York Times.

I've been with the paper since 2004.

You can always tell a Pentagon reporter

'cause we like to say that's the best beat in Washington.

You're on aircraft carriers, you're on fighter jets.

I've been on bombers. I've been on the B1 and the B2.

You're on naval destroyers in the South China Sea.

You're never bored.

KEAN: Once Helene Cooper was on board,

we set up a meeting up with Luis Elizondo,

the former head of the Pentagon Program.

COOPER: We met up at a hotel

somewhere near Capitol Hill.

It started in the afternoon and ended up in the evening.

ELIZONDO: She made it very clear that she was,

she was writing this story.

I was a little bit, to be completely forthcoming,

a little intimidated.

When the New York Times comes knocking,

that'll get your attention pretty quickly.

COOPER: He had stacks of papers and information.

ELIZONDO: I think they were trying to get me to confirm,

you know, who was the sponsor of the program.

COOPER: He told us that Senator Harry Reid

had put money in the Pentagon budget

to fund this program.

Leslie, Ralph, and I all thought that Harry Reid would deny

that he had put the money in there.

This was black money,

it was kind of off the books and so all I wanted

was to nail the fact that the Pentagon had a UFO,

secret UFO program. That's all I needed to do.

I'm not trying to prove that they're UFOs,

I'm not trying to prove that anybody's visited.

I just wanted to interview the people

who were involved in this program

and put them on the record.

Going to interview Senator Reid

was a big deal.

We needed him to acknowledge

that he put the money into the program.

KEAN: If we didn't have Harry Reid,

we might not have a story. He was that important.

RALPH BLUMENTHAL: We didn't know

whether he'd be willing to go on the record

because this was a very sketchy field to begin with.

JOHN PODESTA: You know, most people thought

if you're a senior person in the government,

it's kind of a career-ender (laughs)

to say that the government should actually take seriously

the prospect that unidentified aerial phenomena might be,

in fact, UFOs.

COOPER: And so, I flew to Las Vegas

to meet with Senator Reid.

He, like, has this

huge suite of offices at the Bellagio.

This was gonna be it, this is my one shot.

And I walked in to talk to him and he was completely open.

REID: These unidentified flying phenomenon or objects,

you know, I don't know what they are.

But we've established one thing: they exist.

COOPER: In that moment, you're sitting there as a reporter.

And your blood is sort of pounding

because you're getting the goods.

I was so excited, it's like I'm writing it down,

and I can't believe he's telling me this stuff.

REID: My name is Harry Reid.

I served in the United States Congress from 1982 to 2017.

I was born and raised in Searchlight, Nevada.

Which is about 55 miles here from Las Vegas.

During the time that I grew up there,

it was a-- mines were gone

and the number-one business was prostitution.

So, that's the atmosphere I was raised in.

I can still remember looking up at the sky

just wondering what it was all about.

And I always, always have remembered that.

BLUMENTHAL: Harry Reid really stood out

because he was one of the few members of Congress

who were willing to talk about this issue.

And he had also gotten secret funds to start this program.

It was a modest amount, $22 million,

which is a drop in the bucket of the Pentagon Budget,

but it was the first significant amount of money

to be dedicated to this issue of UFOs.

REID: Well, it's interesting,

you know, my staff, they said in so many words

"Senator, don't get involved in this. This is too weird.

It's not gonna help your career."

MAN: Ooh, that is so strange.

PODESTA: It didn't tend to be a topic that,

that members of the House or members of the Senate

or people in senior positions in the executive branch

wanted to embrace.

REID: But I was determined to learn

more about this and so in spite of

the admonitions for me to stay the hell away from it,

I went ahead and did it.

CARSON: Well, God bless Senator Reid.

He was certainly someone I looked up to and admired.

People want their leaders and representatives to be bold

and if you're unwilling to be bold,

then why are you in office?

REID: And as I look back over my involvement in this,

I think, "What if we hadn't done this?

Where would we be?"

Without the work that we did, we would be nowhere.

From a scientific standpoint,

technological standpoint, security of this nation--

these are the reasons we have to continue looking into this.

MAN (on radio): Look at that thing! It's rotating!

COOPER: At the end of the interview

with Senator Reid,

I walked out of the Bellagio

and there's a bridge from the Bellagio over the Strip

to whatever's on the other side, and it's a pedestrian bridge.

And I called Leslie and Ralph,

and they were on the phone with Luis,

so we're in this four-way phone call

and I was like, "He confirmed everything."

KEAN: Harry Reid had never spoken out

before about this program,

so this was like the first moment

in which he came out on the topic.

And that was a big deal.

COOPER: We were ecstatic because,

that moment, we knew we had it.

It's like, no matter what happens next, we have the story.

The lead-up to the actual publication

of the story on December 17th was torturous.

Our editors were constantly saying

make sure we put skeptics in there,

we put people challenging this notion.

This caution by our editors

was starting to, naturally, get on our nerves.

It's like, run the story already!

We've like dotted every possible "i" we can dot.

And we knew at this time

that Politico was chasing the story as well.

It's Saturday morning, they still haven't posted the story.

I think it's 11 or 12 and we're hearing from Luis

and from other people that Politico's about to post

and I am on the phone with the guy

who's the Saturday editor going,

"Publish just, publish already!"

And he's, he's tinkering around

with "what kind of headline do we want?" (laughs)

It's just like "Publish! Publish!"

And he finally posted the story.

The story is up and I'm like "Thank God, it's up."

I put my phone in my pocketbook, I go into Costco,

and I'm buying I don't know what-- tenderloin for Christmas.

And, I'm in there for about an hour

and I come back out and my phone is like, has blown up.

REPORTER 1: In a striking exposé published over the weekend,

the New York Times revealed the existence...

REPORTER 2: ...has confirmed the existence...

REPORTER 3: ...of the Advanced Aerospace

threat Identification Program.

COOPER: People were calling me

and there were like texts

and it was just like, the response was huge.

KEAN: It was a firestorm.

REPORTER 4: Tens of millions of dollars for the project

were pushed through...

KEAN: It was all over the place.

REPORTER 5: ...unveiled the existence

of a real life X-Files Department.

KEAN: It was all over the world.

(reporters speaking Scandinavian)

(reporters speaking French)

KEAN: It just went like wildfire.

It was a huge deal.

DIRECTOR: Why do you think it attracted so much attention?

KEAN: I think one of the main reasons

it attracted so much attention

was because of those two videos that we included.

MAN (on radio): They're all going against the wind.

The wind is 120 knots to the west.

Look at that thing, dude!

KEAN: I mean, there's nothing like watching

a video of a UFO for people.

BLUMENTHAL: Those videos garnered tremendous views,

among the most-watched videos the Times had ever put up.

COOPER: So the response was, was huge,

but that was when I started to realize

just how intense the people who care about this are,

and just also how equally intense the skeptics are.

NEIL DEGRASSE-TYSON: I'm content saying, that's mysterious.

I don't know, maybe it's a glitch in the, in the hardware.

And if you're going to say, "No, it's not a glitch in the hardware,"

are you really sure?

MAN (on radio):

SETH SHOSTAK: For the navy videos,

there are in fact explanations

that involve nothing more complex than commercial aircraft

or balloons or things like that.

It doesn't mean they're necessarily alien craft.

I think that the assumption

that we're being visited fails on the evidence of it.

But it's not that it's impossible.

It's just from my point of view so difficult

to go from one star system to another.

I think that it's unlikely these are alien craft.

DEGRASSE-TYSON: The universe brims with mysteries.

And we so want many of those mysteries

to be a light in the sky you don't understand,

gee, I want that to be aliens visiting us.

But for a skeptical scientist,

that would probably be the last explanation.

KEAN: The skeptics had two major points of focus

after our story came out.

One of them was on the videos

because they didn't necessarily believe

that those videos showed some kind of anomalous object.

They thought they could be explained.

The second point is the skepticism

about these being extraterrestrial craft

which personally to me is, is a sort of a disconnect

because we, we're not saying that they're extraterrestrial.

We're just saying we can't explain them.

ELIZONDO: Now, I don't mind someone being skeptical.

I think healthy skepticism is important.

In the same weird sort of way,

skeptics are really no different than believers.

They're just on the opposite end of the argument.

At the end of the day,

data is what is going to determine

the validity of something.

DERRICK PITTS: Well, if humanity wants to understand

what is causing this phenomenon,

then we need to do real scientific study

and that means we need to collect data.

We need to analyze that data and understand

how it might be possible for that phenomenon

to fit within the laws of physics.

ELIZONDO: Now watch the way this thing starts to turn.

PITTS: But we can't speculate about what it is.

We can't just imagine what it is.

ELIZONDO: You're looking between 20 and 25,000 feet in altitude

and this thing, when it turns sideways, doesn't go down.

PITTS: We need real, hard data.

UNDERWOOD: This 99.9 and range 99,

uh, those are indications that my radar

is receiving jamming cues.

PITTS: It's possible that these objects

represent a threat to the United States.

MELLON: It's behaving in strange ways.

It has an aura around it.

PITTS: Then we need to know

exactly what they are,

so that we can respond accordingly.

And so, I think it's extremely important for us

to understand unidentified aerial phenomenon.

KEAN: After the New York Times story

was blasted out on the internet on a Saturday,

the story ended up on the front page

of the Sunday New York Times.

And then it was a whole inside page

when you opened it up, so it was a long piece.

During all the years I'd covered UFOs,

I had access to some newspapers,

but they weren't at the caliber of the New York Times.

And so to see a story on the front page of that newspaper

just meant everything to me.

STERN: Did you know it was going to be on the front page?

ELIZONDO: No (laughs).

No, I did not know

it was gonna be on the front page.

It was, um...

wow, looking back, it's a little pr--

I haven't thought about that in a long time.

Uh, it was profound.

KEAN: Not only had the New York Times

rarely covered UFOs at all,

and when they had, they were usually kind of ridiculing it.

PODESTA: It's really the fodder more for late night

talk shows than it is for front-page reporting.

JIMMY KIMMEL: We are back with President Bush.

Did you go through the secret files,

the UFO documents?

(laughter)

GEORGE W. BUSH: I'm not telling you nothin'.

(laughter)

BARACK OBAMA: When it comes to aliens,

there's some things I just can't tell you on-air.

JAMES CORDON: But you'll tell us off-air?

Great! (laughter)

PODESTA: But the New York Times piece,

it kinda opened up that you could treat this seriously.

FRAVOR: What it did is it removed

a lot of the stigma that was attached to the UFO world.

Now, instead of looking at it as a joke,

we can start looking at these objects

from a scientific standpoint.

DIETRICH: We can gather the information,

we can gather the data and then have experts

who are qualified, analyze it in a systematic way.

And so that's why I think it's important

to destigmatize the issue.

REID: One reason that article was so compelling

and so good is that it was just very factual

based on scientific evidence

and I think that was the beginning of the,

having the American people

and probably the world take a look at this,

these areas of Unidentified Flying Objects

more intensely than they had before.

KEAN: So the New York Times article

generated a lot of questions among people.

"Whoa," you know?

They're studying these objects

and we don't know what they are?

Where, where's all the intelligence data?

How come we didn't know anything?

And they demonstrate technology that we don't seem to have?

And we didn't even know about this?

PITTS: There's no doubt that there are objects

that are seen that behave in ways

that are not natural for this planet

or for this environment.

This is a phenomenon we do not yet understand.

There's nothing wrong with us not understanding it,

there are many things in the Universe

that we do not understand.

But it asks us, to investigate, to learn more,

just as we'd wanna learn more about any of the stars

or galaxies we see in the Universe.

Any of the new creatures we find

at the bottom of our oceans here on this planet,

we wanna learn more about this too.

MELLON: My hope is that

we will use the U.S. intelligence community

to solve this mystery once and for all,

to find out, where are they coming from?

Who's behind them? What is the agenda?

We have the means and the capability to do that

if we set our minds to it as a nation.

PITTS: Unfortunately,

the government has been pretty secretive

about providing hard data to better understand

what this phenomenon might be.

So, right now, what we still have is a lot of speculation,

a lot of "what ifs," and no hard information.

KEAN: The biggest question that remains for me is,

what else do they have inside the government?

What do they actually know about UFOs?

And why can't more be released to the public?

ELIZONDO: And this is a, a big question

because we spent so long

obfuscating the truth about this topic,

that we've somewhat backed ourselves into a corner,

a corner for over 70 years.

REPORTER: Mr. Secretary, there have been charges

that the Air Force for reasons best known to the Air Force

is hiding something in the UFO field.

What is that, if anything?

ELIZONDO: And I do not think

this is a conversation like fine wine

where the longer we keep a cork on it, the better it gets.

I think this is a conversation more like rotten vegetables

in the refrigerator,

and the longer we don't address it,

the more it's gonna start to smell.

TACKER: There is nothing in Air Force files

that come to a conclusion

that spaceships have visited the Earth.

COOPER: I assume that the secrecy is just because

that is what they do in the government.

There's so many programs

going on in that building that they don't talk about.

You know, they classify everything.

It just adds to the mysteriousness of it.

GILLIBRAND: We should never be afraid of what we don't know.

That is an absurd reaction.

UNDERWOOD: The target is 3 degrees

to the left of my nose

and it's 5 degrees below my nose.

GILLIBRAND: Not knowing is where you start your inquiry.

DIETRICH: So, we were operating in and around these waters,

off the coast.

GILLIBRAND: It doesn't mean it's where you end your inquiry.

And that's where I think the U.S. Military,

if they haven't been doing the work, is mistaken.

WITNESS 1: Oh, my God!

WITNESS 2: Don't look like no plane!

Don't look like no helicopter. What the (bleep) is it?

MARK ROD: UFO sightings burst into the news in 1947.

KEAN : These sightings have continued ever since.

MAN 1: The Air Force made the effort

to clear the air about the phenomenon.

MAN 2: There's nothing to hide at all.

MELLON: I was stunned that we didn't have the integrity

to pursue this.

ROD: The U.S. government closed its study of UFOs.

KEAN: And so the work fell into the hands

of civilian groups.

HYNEK: UFO reports not only exist but persist.

MAN 3: I mean, it's a definite UFO.

KEAN: The government owes it to this country

to investigate sightings of extraordinary objects.

MAN 4: It covered the whole entire sky.

CARSON: People want to know, is this otherworldly?

KAKU: This could be one of the biggest events in all of human history.

Captioned by Point.360