Original subtitles

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING]

RON JAMES: I'm sitting in these rooms alone

with people who have run secret weapons programs,

interrogated terrorists,

protected closely-guarded secrets as a profession,

and all I can think about

is getting them to tell me something

they don't want me to know.

[EERIE MUSIC PLAYING]

It's gonna take somebody at the executive level to do it,

or there's gonna be

a incredible leak somewhere that's somebody's conscience,

and they don't end up, um,

you know, committing suicide by 12 bullet holes

to the back of the head kind of thing.

[CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING]

NARRATOR: The UFO reality can no longer be denied.

The secret has been managed and guarded

by a select few for over 75 years.

Advanced technology,

biological and physical materials have been recovered.

They've been secretly studied by compartmentalized factions

within both government and industry.

These claims are not new.

But you are about to see undeniable evidence

and previously unpublished accounts

that make this case stronger than ever before.

Somewhere between fact and denial,

you are about to discover

an accidental truth.

[RADIO STATIC BUZZING]

MAN 1 OVER RADIO: 3-7-8-2-0-5-8-4.

MAN 2: Knees up. Knees up.

[HELICOPTER HOVERING]

[FIRE CRACKLING]

[PEOPLE CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY]

NARRATOR: In 2017,

the UFO subject exploded into the mainstream.

PILOT 1: There's a whole fleet of them. Look on the S.A.

PILOT 2: Whoa! Got him!

[BOTH LAUGHING AND WHOOPING]

NARRATOR: The New York Times broke a front page story

about a shadowy government program studying UFOs.

October 2017.

Leslie Kean, who's a notable expert on UFOs

she was invited to a very private conference in Washington

with Lue Elizondo and some other people,

Chris Mellon, to discuss UFOs.

Lue Elizondo had just submitted his resignation in October 2017,

as the head of this very secretive Pentagon UFO office.

Program was established.

It was initially called AAWSAP,

Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program,

and very quickly that evolved,

morphed into the more common vernacular

AATIP, Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.

I was brought in initially to come in

to run the counterintelligence and security piece for this effort in 2008.

In 2010, I was asked by the former director to run this program.

The program was then taken out of DIA

and up to the OSD level,

Office of Secretary of Defense.

The Pentagon had this secret

UFO monitoring agency which nobody knew about.

New York Times, Politico, and followed by them,

everyone else covering the UFO subject

suddenly, with seriousness,

suddenly talking about encounters by the U.S. Navy with

objects that are supposed to be impossible.

The government is investigating UFOs.

Well, I almost crashed my car.

NARRATOR: Three cryptic videos were released

that claimed to show unknown objects

operating in military airspace

while defying known capabilities of flight

and physics.

BLUMENTHAL: There are more of them that have not been released.

These were only snippets, by the way,

and we knew that.

But we were happy to get them.

And they caused quite a stir.

NARRATOR: Lue Elizondo made the media rounds with shocking statements.

My personal belief is that

there is very compelling evidence that

we may not be alone.

Our cosmic neighborhood may be a hell of a lot bigger.

And by the way, we might, might, have neighbors.

That's a profound moment.

NARRATOR: At the 2018 symposium

of The Mutual UFO Network,

behind closed doors,

he went beyond his public statements to drop a bombshell.

Sometimes people may have associated you

as being fringe or being out there,

and all along, you were right.

NARRATOR: One of the pilots who engaged the craft,

Commander David Fravor,

chimed in with bold statements inferring otherworldly origins

of the mysterious phenomenon.

I believe, as do the other folks that were on the flight,

that what we visually saw, that it was something not from this world.

You are talking to a pilot who is looking at you

with complete bewilderment as to

looking to you for answers.

They're asking you, "Sir, what was this?"

Congress is now looking at the possibility of national security

that the military is now owning up to hours of videotapes

taken by Navy pilots.

There's been a sea change.

Things are changing.

People are more open to the idea that,

yeah, maybe we're not alone in the universe.

NARRATOR: We were given an updated phrase to describe it all.

Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon.

They're calling them UAPs sometimes.

Sometimes UFO, sometimes UAP.

It's a kind of a rebranding to a certain extent

and a redefinition of what the phenomenon is.

NARRATOR: A new group called To The Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences was introduced.

We are To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science.

A public benefit corporation.

NARRATOR: The group was co-founded by rock star Tom DeLonge.

I was working my way through NASA,

the Department of Defense,

and various "other" agencies.

NARRATOR: Its members spoke out,

hinting of unprecedented openness

and straight answers about the topic.

But who are these people really?

Dr. Hal Puthoff, former CIA operations officer.

Jim Semivan, a 50-year veteran of NASA, the CIA, and the National Security Agency.

Steve Justice,

former director of Lockheed Martin Skunk Works.

Christopher Mellon, former Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

Lue Elizondo,

fresh from a controversial Pentagon resignation.

Was anybody going to share anything that brought us concrete answers?

It was the first time I really digested the enormity

of the national security implications of the UFO subject.

The CIA and all these people associated with Skunk Works

and other intelligence agencies,

you're not the right people to come out with this.

[CHUCKLES] You're really not.

Because you're the ones that have been lying to us for 70 years.

We haven't trusted these individual agencies ever.

In fact, they've always teased our community.

We are dealing with insiders.

We are dealing with people who have been in government,

the military, the intelligence community,

have access to classified information.

But those people, all of them,

will have to be very careful.

For us to just go ahead and spew out to satisfy the idle curiosity of a few,

that's not our job.

Our job is to protect this nation from enemies,

foreign and domestic.

For what it's worth, I see it that they were trying to

make progress on this within government,

they took it as far as they could,

and then they realized that,

really, the only way to move it further forward

was to leave government and do it outside of that.

NARRATOR: Some believe that this new roll-out of information

was a cleverly crafted set of events

being orchestrated by hidden hands.

An evasive faction

who has controlled this information for years.

I'm not a believer in the conspiracy theory

that this is some plot to leak it to The New York Times and all that.

I mean, too many elements came together completely serendipitously.

And, you know, looking back,

you can, you know, try to make a case

that this was all orchestrated and not at all true.

I think that this was definitely something

that was organized, thought out long-term.

Again, I think some...

I think they know, and they're trying to get ahead of something.

I think... I use the analogy of a snowball at the top of a hill,

and it starts out really small.

And as it rolls down, it's going to get bigger and bigger,

and I think they're trying to get ahead of that.

You can't talk about this subject with a government background

without being the bad guy,

in some people's minds eye.

It just comes with the territory.

I refuse to discuss anything classified.

I've took an oath, which is, by the way, a lifelong oath.

As I've told people before,

don't ask me because I'm not going to tell you.

Lue is in a tough spot,

because he knows a lot of things that...

I mean, he still... He was...

He came out of the Intelligence community

and he probably still,

undoubtedly still has connections to the Intelligence community.

Well, you know, so he can't say everything he knows

and has been privy to.

These people promoting this...

agenda of UFO openness,

not disclosure, but openness,

they have enemies within that establishment.

So we're not talking about a unified message.

It's very uncomfortable.

Especially if you've lived a life

where anonymity has been your friend.

We have every right to know the truth.

And it's... It's not okay that they're holding that back.

It is not a fun place to be.

In fact, if I had any opportunity

for anybody else to stand up and take my place...

I would do it.

There are a lot of people that want this information out

and there are a lot of people who don't want this information out.

The level of pushback that

Harry Reid shared with me on camera.

When he tried to launch this investigatory arm

into creating AATIP,

he said he got so much pushback from the intelligence agencies,

that they, like, tried to destroy people.

They really did not want this to happen.

NARRATOR: After the initial media flurry,

the Pentagon promised a report

that might shed some light on the subject.

JAKE TAPPER: Do you expect to see real answers in this report?

What do you think?

Look. Honestly, I don't think so, Jake.

NARRATOR: The public only received

a few pages of inconclusive information.

A more elaborate report was delivered to Congress behind closed doors.

Freedom of Information Act requests,

known as FOIA requests, were submitted.

The responses received were heavily redacted.

Three years later, three and a half years later,

no new evidence has come out.

We've got no new videos.

Nothing like that happened.

NARRATOR: Congressman Tim Burchett

has become an outspoken crusader against the secrecy.

The American public deserves to know. We need transparency.

That's why nobody trusts government.

Nobody trusts either party when it comes down to it.

NARRATOR: Instead of new answers,

we've been given a whitewashing of the past

and further reinforcement of a "New Narrative"

created to fit the day.

NARRATOR: The New Narrative states that

the UAP's not ours or any foreign government's.

They display characteristics that defy explanation.

"We are committed to determining their nature,

"and assessing any potential threat."

There was no official government study of the topic

after Project Blue Book ended in 1969,

until the AAWSAP program started in 2004.

By sort of extracting a lot of the history out,

they're able to make it seem like,

wow, this is a real mystery here.

So, I don't agree with that.

I think their New Narrative, I think they have this fear,

you know, that it's a threat.

And the word "threat" kind of bothers me a little bit.

But I understand that in order to get government attention,

they need to call it, perhaps, a threat.

So we have an ongoing situation here.

This is a defense issue.

It's an air safety issue.

It's a national security issue.

It's a valid issue.

There is something flying around in our airspace

and we don't know what it is or we're not telling what it is.

Eighteen months ago,

if you had asked anyone in government the official line on UFOs,

you would have received a standard response

rather like this.

"There is no current interest or involvement in the subject.

"Since the termination of Blue Book in 1969,

"nobody in government

"is researching or investigating this."

You know, the department writ large

is clearly not interested in UFOs whatsoever.

NARRATOR: This story leaves a gap of over 35 years

that the government was supposedly

not engaged in the study of the phenomenon.

The media was quick to participate in the new story.

Were they complicit in delivering this new version of the facts?

There is a risk of believing the official narrative

too quickly and just reporting it.

There's many steps to go and it's going to take a while.

And, you know, they still have a totally compliant media,

for the most part.

I can tell you from my knowledge of The New York Times.

The New York Times is not afraid to confront the government.

Having been legal counsel for The New York Times

and for NBC News,

the people on the board of editors of those things,

you know, feel themselves to have a certain patriotic duty, as they perceive them,

to not reveal anything to the American public

that the National Security State people don't want revealed.

So I don't want to be bound

[CHUCKLES] by what Danny Sheehan said about his,

you know, concepts of what The Times prints and doesn't.

NARRATOR: This New Narrative has become the official story.

It was even stated as fact by Andre Carson

at the beginning of the first congressional UFO hearings,

in over 40 years.

More than 50 years ago,

the U.S. Government ended Project Blue Book.

An effort to catalog and understand

sightings of objects in the air

that could not otherwise be explained.

For more than 20 years, that project

had treated unidentified anomalies in our airspace

as a national security threat to be monitored and investigated.

In 2017, we learned for the first time that the Department of Defense

had quietly restarted a similar organization,

tracking what we now call Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

NARRATOR: We've heard all of this before.

The New Narrative is really an eerie echo of 70-year-old events.

We can say that the recent sightings are in no way connected

with any secret development by any agency of the United States.

Aircraft, we call them aircraft, are displaying characteristics

that are not currently within the U.S. inventory,

nor in any foreign inventory that we are aware of.

Air Force interest in this problem

has been due to our feeling of an obligation

to identify and analyze, to the best of our ability,

anything in the air that may have the possibility

of threat or menace to the United States.

We know that our service members have encountered

Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

And because UAPs pose

potential flight safety and general security risk,

we are committed to a focused effort to determine their origins.

However, there have been a certain percentage of this volume of reports

that have been made by credible observers

of relatively incredible things.

It is this group of observations

that we now are attempting to resolve.

There will be a recognized concerted effort

to figure this out.

NARRATOR: The old story was repeated almost verbatim by the current players.

We're still far from the goal line,

and there is a lot of positions

that they could take along the way

that still will allow them to maintain credibility

and avoid culpability.

The media and the public want more.

They want answers.

I'm not sure that there are going to be easy answers to this.

They're trying to sweep anything prior to 2004 under the carpet,

but we won't let them because we've got

all the historical cases and those can't go away.

They're not only whitewashing history, they're denying it.

They're only acknowledging the phenomenon back to 2004.

The government has a lot to answer for.

Absolutely right.

The history of the subject has been replete

with misinformation and disinformation.

It's just a complete cover up.

NARRATOR: What was going on in the time between the closing of Project Blue Book

and the beginning of the officially announced UFO programs

that we know about today?

Why is it important?

Because in those years, is where the truth lies.

A truth that many have gone to great lengths to conceal, deny, and debunk.

We start by taking a closer look

at the period between 1947 and 2005.

The existence of official UFO research

and programs by the U.S. Government in this time frame

has been staunchly denied.

The facts challenge that position.

In the late 1940s, the world was recovering from World War II.

The military was reorganizing.

In 1947, the Air Force was being created

as a standalone branch of service.

The Cold War and its strategic questions were looming.

But in the midst of all of this,

the United States Army created what they called

the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit

of the Scientific and Technical branch.

Why did they need that?

Numerous FOIA request verified the existence of this Army program.

They state that the unit disbanded

and was folded into Project Blue Book in the 50s.

But the files of this group

are not part of the official Project Blue Book Collection.

So where did they go?

During that time, there was advanced technology in the possession of Germany.

Scientists were brought over after the war to continue the work.

Stories of UFOs and crashes were abundant,

including the famous Roswell incident of 1947.

The late astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell

was given secret information about events of the time.

In this never before seen video,

he shares what he was told.

Individuals at the Pentagon,

had been attempting to get into the system

and find out about it,

thus confirming and had confirmed.

that the Roswell incident was real.

They saw some of the material from the crashed spacecraft.

Some saw bodies from the beings that were killed in that crash.

There were some that saw a live being.

A live being had been taken away and was in the system somewhere.

So those were real life incidents that were reported to me.

NARRATOR: Many believe in the formation of a group called Majestic 12

assembled by President Truman,

to strategize about how to handle the information

about these encounters and more.

Documents purport to detail the creation

and deployment of this group, but their authenticity

is still a hotly debated topic.

It makes sense, however, that under such circumstances,

just such a group would have been formed.

They would have had control of the subject

and accountability to a select few.

If a decision was made to enact secrecy,

this group would have made it happen.

After years of UFO hysteria and speculation between 1947 and 1952,

the government finally said that they were taking the subject seriously.

Enter Project Blue Book,

a public program

that was supposed to shed light on the UFO subject.

Paul Hynek, son of the late J. Allen Hynek, shared this.

My father was the chief scientific consultant

working alongside Air Force counterparts.

And it became clear that the role of Project Blue Book

wasn't to look for the truth, but was to manufacture answers

and to tamp down hysteria.

Somebody called it the Society for the Explanation of the Uninvestigated.

My father had to question whether he should stay involved.

James McDonald, one of his colleagues, said,

look, you're being played a fool by the Air Force,

and my father thought a lot about it.

He finally decided that

having that front row center seat to all these goings on

and being able to influence things, not control,

was worth the trouble.

But it became increasingly frustrating for him over time,

as he saw that the Air Force was not changing their colors.

NARRATOR: J. Allen Hynek was openly frustrated

by the fact he was never given access

to what he knew were compelling events shrouded in secrecy.

It haunted him until his passing in 1986.

Official Air Force statements regarding the conclusion of Blue Book say,

"Since the termination of Project Blue Book,

"nothing has occurred that would support

"a resumption of UFO investigations by the Air Force."

But another four-year request revealed a different story.

A 1969 memo from General Carroll Bolender,

a senior director at Air Force Research and Development,

stated, "After Blue Book was dissolved,

"that reports of 'UFOs'

"would still continue to be handled

"through a standard Air Force procedure

"designed for this purpose.

"Furthermore, reports of unidentified flying objects

"which could affect national security were, are,

"not part of the Blue Book system."

There was the creation of the Air Intelligence Service squadrons,

which were tasked with going to any spot

in the continental United States,

within six hours and picking up debris,

fallen pilots, and also containing information leak.

And so many people think that that would have been

the entity or the agency that gave birth to the Men in Black.

What seems to be clear is that there was a bifurcation.

That Project Blue Book may have started off

as a serious scientific endeavor,

but as of 1953, it no longer was,

and there was most likely the Air Intelligence Service squadrons

that picked up the banner

of going out and trying to find saucers

and then hand them off to people

who would try to reverse-engineer

the propulsion systems, et cetera.

DON SCHMITT: General Arthur Exon described to us

when he was base commander

at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in 1964,

that there would be an ongoing joke

that the Blue Book, you know, a two-man team would fly off

in a little single engine plane in one direction,

and then the actual project would arrive from Washington

on a commercial flight, they would change back into their uniforms,

and a team of 12-15 officers would fly off in a jet

to actually conduct full-scale investigations.

NARRATOR: Project Blue Book was headquartered

at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base,

but some of the other, more secret UFO programs

seem to have been located there, too.

One of these is the mysterious Blue Room,

an underground repository of recovered technology and debris.

MICHAEL: This is the location, allegedly, where they brought the bodies

and the craft from the Roswell crash

and where all of the other crash retrievals and bodies,

kind of like they have a consortium of where they keep all this.

So you've got the bodies, you've got the craft, you've got the debris,

autopsy reports,

the eight-by-ten glossy black and white photographs,

and the gun camera footage is all supposed to be kept

at the Blue Room, some type of an underground vault

or Building 18 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

NARRATOR: Senator Barry Goldwater sought confirmation of this.

At Wright-Patterson field,

if you could get into certain places,

you find out what the Air Force

and the government knows about UFOs.

Reportedly, a spaceship landed

and it was all hushed up, quiet, and nobody ever...

I've never heard about much of it.

I called Curtis LeMay, and I said, "General,

"I know we have a room at Wright-Patterson,

"where you put all the secret stuff.

"Could I go in there?"

I've never heard him get mad,

but he got madder than hell at me.

Cussed me out,

said, "Don't ever ask me that question."

NARRATOR: Supposedly, the contents of the Blue Room were filmed.

Exhaustive FOIA requests finally revealed that this film

did indeed exist, but was destroyed.

Nick Pope, a longtime ex-British government pundit on the topic,

denied official investigation of the subject for years.

Until he didn't.

The more interesting UFO sightings are being looked at,

but not under the auspices

of a formally constituted UFO research program.

We now know about a government UFO program,

but we might not know about the government UFO program.

[DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Pope has told a story about

a picture that hung on the wall of his office for years

until being removed.

The Calvine incident from the United Kingdom,

is one of the most intriguing sightings

in the British government's UFO files.

And for some years,

when I was working in Ministry of Defense main building on this issue,

we had a blown-up, poster-sized enlargement

of one of the photos that was taken.

The story is that two hikers

were out and they saw a large diamond-shaped UFO.

At one point, there was a military jet in the background.

And then the UFO accelerated away.

We had looked at them at the Ministry of Defense.

They'd been analyzed by various intelligence community imagery analysts.

It was literally a UFO.

The Ministry of Defense embarked on a campaign

to declassify and release its UFO files.

Documents about the Calvine incident emerged,

but the full-size color photos,

the negatives, the enlarged image that was on my wall,

gone. Disappeared.

There was an effort to see if the original photos

might be in the hard copy file held at the National Archives.

And, apparently, the hard copy file

will be released in about the year 2072.

NARRATOR: In an interesting turn of events,

just as we were finishing this project,

the picture appeared.

This is the mysterious Calvine UFO photograph.

The facts around this photograph

strongly suggest an unknown group

that was able to intercept the release of this image

and attempt to stop it.

But who are they?

Information in government,

in particularly intelligence information,

it's highly classified, deeply compartmentalized,

everyone works in silos.

The left hand often doesn't know what the right hand's doing.

NARRATOR: We saw an example of compartmentalization

and the evasion of scrutiny and straight answers

during the recent Senate hearings on UFOs.

So you're not aware of anything in between Project Blue Book and AATIP?

Hasn't been brought to my attention.

That data is not within the holdings of the UAP task force.

There are many things that are out there in the ether

that aren't officially brought to our attention.

GALLAGHER: How would it have to be officially brought?

[CHUCKLES] I'm bringing it to your attention.

Probably a lot of leads that we would have to follow up on.

I don't think we have resource to do that right now.

All I can speak to is, you know, what's within my cognizance,

the UAP task force, and we have not looked at that incident.

And then, finally, are you aware of a document

that appeared around 2019,

sometimes called the Admiral Wilson Memo or E.W. Notes Memo?

-I am... I am not... -I'm not personally aware of that.

NARRATOR: These answers are made possible by compartmentalization

that aids in deniability.

You can ask the questions,

but who are you going to ask them of?

And you've got to make sure you're asking the right people the questions,

because that's another problem.

You can ask questions all day long.

NARRATOR: While we're at it, what is the Wilson-Davis Memo

that Senator Gallagher asked about?

It's the leak of 15 pages of notes by Dr. Eric Davis,

of a meeting he had in 2002 with a retired member

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas R. Wilson.

And the contents of these notes are absolutely explosive.

NARRATOR: The Wilson-Davis Memo was found in the files

of the late Dr. Edgar Mitchell.

It was the existence of a reverse-engineering program

to reverse-engineer extraterrestrial technology.

After he learned about the existence

of a deep classified program to study ET technology.

And the fact that he had genuine legal regulatory oversight over this,

how he was denied access to this program.

We'd retrieved a functioning craft that was ET in nature.

I mean, this is all stated in there.

And that there had been this long reverse-engineering program.

But it had gone into a corporate company,

and the heads of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

have no business looking into it.

The memorable quote on that note is,

"Technology not of this Earth,

"not made by man, not by human hands."

They said, "No, you're not read in."

NARRATOR: Admiral Wilson denies the authenticity of the story.

Dr. Eric Davis plays a significant role

in the programs we are describing here,

the history and the research.

He said this,

"I am not at liberty to confirm or verify any aspect of those notes."

These notes, in my view,

there's no question about their authenticity.

NARRATOR: In a recent presentation to Congress,

MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network,

presented a slide pointing out nearly 20 government agencies

that have some program or study of UAP.

There were many.

In 1991,

New York Times writer Howard Blum

released the book Out There.

In it, he detailed an actual group

formed by the Pentagon to investigate new evidence

related to an extraterrestrial presence.

This group, referred to in the book as the UFO Working Group,

was led by a shadowy army colonel

referred to as Colonel Phillips.

It is believed that the mysterious Colonel Phillips

represents a real colonel who is even more of a mystery.

Colonel John Alexander is a central figure in much of this history.

In 1985, he became the director of advanced concepts at the U.S. Army Lab.

In 2009,

John Alexander spoke at the UFOX Conference

and was interviewed behind the scenes.

What I think needs to happen at this time is not disclosure per se,

because I don't think there is much to disclose.

What I think needs to happen is we need to make it okay,

permissible for serious scientists

who want to explore these fields to do this.

NARRATOR: Unknown at the time of this original interview,

he had been running a program

exactly like the kind described in Blum's book.

KEAN: A bunch of military, aerospace and government insiders

started with the Advanced Theoretical Physics Working Group.

Now, there's even some evidence that it existed prior to that.

I ran a program inside the government,

I had all of the services involved,

I had many aspects of the Intelligence community,

I had aerospace engineers.

It was at the top secret SCI level,

so everybody had the high clearances.

They had this meeting at BDM Corporation

in a secure vault room and said,

"We're forming up this group."

And that was in 1985.

NARRATOR: The real name of the group

was the Advanced Theoretical Physics Working Group.

The study topics included

Advanced Detector Deployment,

Established Communication, New Materials,

Develop a "Gravity Interaction System",

"Biological Controls of Processes".

We start by saying it's real.

So let's be clear.

UFOs are real,

sensor systems picked them up.

UFOs have been around, you know,

since, again, the beginning of time,

or recorded history as we know it.

It is a global phenomenon.

One of the things that will come up in this, undoubtedly,

is the BAASS study

or the one that Lue Elizondo said

came out in The New York Times.

We spent a lot of time

in the analysis piece of this,

getting experts within the community,

both the Department of Defense and the Intelligence community.

It basically followed the same thing

that I had done 30 years earlier

and found, I think, basically the same thing.

What we're talking about is something

that is probably not ours or adversarial.

Something that we really just don't know where it's from.

And may have been frankly here for quite a while.

The things that they knew about

the capabilities of UFOs were being observed

felt the same.

Really fast, high speed turns, anti-gravity.

You know, things that just can't happen.

And first of all, every sensorial system we have

does pick up UFOs from time to time.

We have hard craft more than a mile across,

multi sensor. I mean, absolutely real.

And thousands and thousands of variations in between.

UAP observed and interacting with

and flying over sensitive military facilities,

and not just ranges,

but some facilities housing our strategic nuclear forces.

One such incident allegedly occurred

at Malmstrom Air Force Base,

in which ten of our nuclear ICBMs were rendered inoperable.

People do look at some of these things.

Particularly, the incidents with F aded Giant

that Bob Salas talks about where you had missiles go down.

Absolutely real.

I have heard stories, I have not seen the official data.

No official assessment

that you've done or exist within DOD that you're aware of

regarding the Malmstrom incident?

We have not looked at that incident.

You're the guys investigating it.

I mean, who else is doing it?

Studied the hell out of it and end up with, "Have no idea."

NARRATOR: This stunning set of revelations

places John Alexander in the thick of the subject

during the elusive missing years in question.

A request for information on the military background

of Colonel John Alexander returned an absolute refusal

by the Department of Army personnel,

to even acknowledge Colonel Alexander's military record.

After retiring from the Army,

John Alexander worked at Los Alamos National Labs.

In 1995,

Alexander took a position at a new research group called NIDS.

The National Institute for Discovery Sciences.

NIDS was founded by a Nevada billionaire, Robert Bigelow.

These individuals became friends with Robert Bigelow,

and they became involved with him.

Shortly after that, another organization

was formed called NIDS,

National Institute of Discovery Science.

And Bigelow funded that,

and it involved all these same people and others.

NARRATOR: Shortly after forming NIDS,

Robert Bigelow bought the famous paranormal site known as Skinwalker Ranch.

John Alexander was there.

I was with Bob,

Robert Bigelow who owned it.

I was with Bob the day he bought the ranch.

Was the first one to,

you know, spend the night.

We spent years looking at that.

NARRATOR: He would go on to personally witness events

that led him to startling conclusions

about the complexity of unexplained phenomenon.

There was no single phenomenon that was happening at the ranch.

The stories are so bizarre, what you end up, though,

with is something that is terribly complex,

maybe more complex than we can imagine.

NARRATOR: It wasn't long before strange reports

of unusual activity at the ranch

attracted the attention of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

You look at the guys involved,

and some of them were, I mean, we're talking PhD-level scientists.

NARRATOR: Robert Bigelow went on to form Bigelow Advanced Aerospace Studies,

BAASS, as the evolved version of NIDs.

He was quickly rewarded with a Defense Intelligence Agency contract

to study subjects closely tied to the UAP phenomenon.

According to the original contract,

some of these topics included,

Lift, Propulsion, Control, Power Generation,

Spatial/Temporal Translation,

Materials, Structural Configuration,

Signature Reduction, Human Interface,

Human Effects, and Armament.

At one point, BAASS brought on MUFON,

the Mutual UFO Network,

to help in the study of UFO events around the world.

Richard Lang ran the program inside MUFON.

When we put this program together,

basically what they were doing

is they were paying MUFON for data every month.

At the time that we put this all together,

we didn't know that the DIA was funding this.

I knew based on some of the conversations I had

that there was somebody funding that, that wasn't Bigelow,

but I didn't know who it was.

I assumed it was some government agency.

NARRATOR: The BAASS program was called AAWSAP.

It was the precursor program to what we now know as AATIP.

Lue Elizondo says he took over the remains of the program in 2009.

So the initial focus of AATIP, which was really AAWSAP,

was very broad.

So imagine trying to shoot a fly with a shotgun, right?

Chances are you probably hit the fly,

but chances are you're going to hit a lot more.

So we quickly realized that we were getting a lot of information

as a result of this broad focus very quickly,

and we frankly, just didn't have the staff to deal with it all.

So a decision was made early on

to focus a program, the program was renamed to AATIP,

and really use, let's say, instead of a shotgun,

maybe we're going to use a sniper rifle this time, right?

So much more focused on what it is we were trying to collect,

and try to digest this elephant, one bite at a time.

And so the focus of AATIP was indeed...

Was indeed the phenomenon.

Again, the challenge is, where do you start?

We have got, and we may well get,

interesting information,

but we may never get all of it.

What I'm afraid happens, too, is that somebody

that has this knowledge, passes away or goes on,

and then the new person coming in doesn't quite

grasp what's going on.

One difficulty with getting information from the military is,

those who say don't know.

Those who know don't say.

In other words, when someone says that they know everything

about what's happening with the military, then don't believe it.

Because maybe there are things that they don't know.

So I think the mantra here is "Beware".

That is, be cautious.

Don't believe everything you hear from the military.

These private corporations that are running

the special access programs, they are the Mafia.

They don't want anything examining what they do.

They've got the future in their possession.

They've got the most exotic technology and science imaginable,

and they have it.

Why would they possibly want to share it?

Anybody that does know the truth,

I don't know their name.

You don't know their name.

They are not in the public right now.

They are not speaking to anybody.

They're not on camera.

You don't know them.

And that's where the dark programs, I think, come in.

The Skunk Works and things like that.

It's where the government and big business somehow are interlocked,

that we don't know and there's somebody knows.

Somebody is getting that money and it's going somewhere.

When it came to investigating UFO mystery,

a lot of people used to say

that all roads lead to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

But in the last few years,

and especially some of the more controversial subjects,

a lot of the roads lead right here.

NARRATOR: Recently declassified documents

now shed light on the other aspects of BAASS

and information that may have originated

from some of these older programs.

Since the early 1900s,

there have been reports of crashed UFOs.

For over a century,

hundreds of witnesses have shared their accounts.

There were 119 alleged crash retrieval cases.

All we need is one to be true,

and it's disclosure right there. All we need is one.

So, some of the cases that come to mind

are certainly 1941, Cape Girardeau, Missouri,

where there were three bodies recovered.

The craft was recovered as well.

It's alleged that the bodies in the craft were stored,

not at the Pentagon,

because the Pentagon didn't exist in '41,

but in the basement of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

So that's 1941, Cape Girardeau.

Now, move fast forward six years,

you've got July 2nd, 1947.

You've got the Roswell Crash retrieval.

There was a small egg-shaped craft

the size of a Volkswagen with a dome on top.

There were five bodies recovered,

one was still alive, so that's Roswell.

Move forward in 1953,

you've got the Kingman.

This is not the crash retrieval, but it is a forced landing.

There were four beings associated

with that particular retrieval operation.

They were all live, they did establish contact.

That craft was allegedly brought to the remote test site in Nevada.

Now, prior to that, we've got the '48 Aztec crash retrieval.

This was a 99.9 foot diameter, disk-shaped craft,

that had kind of a silver outer exterior color.

There were two bodies recovered on the upper dome of the craft

in the central part of the rim of the craft. On the interior,

there were another 14 bodies for a grand total of 16 bodies.

That craft was allegedly brought back to Los Alamos, reassembled,

and then the retrieval operation or the reverse engineering operation

began at that point.

These are some of the retrieval operations

in cases that come to mind that, if we could get one of these,

the evidence for one of these, it would push this field of ufology forward.

There's a red line in this whole process that you're not allowed to cross.

And the red line is, well, the conspiracy line.

The red line is basically crash retrievals,

because if you acknowledge

that there had been retrievals of this technology,

and bodies,

there is no way to avoid the obvious conclusion

that this is a conspiracy.

Areas of materials recovery to the extent that they have been

recovered in crashes, are heavily classified,

so we don't have access to that material.

NARRATOR: We know about programs that have existed to study

and attempt to reverse engineer this technology.

The evidence has been circumstantial at best.

Until now.

Included in the 2017 media flurry,

was an additional story by The New York Times.

And they took the conversation right to the edge,

of crash retrievals. Right to the precipice.

If they took one more step, they're going off that cliff

and we're talking about genuine UFO cash retrievals.

What we do know, and what we put in The New York Times,

and I'm pretty proud of this because it was as far as we could go,

that was fully documented, was that a congressional committee's staff

were briefed on with slides referring to material recovery.

Apparent material recovery from crashed UFOs...

off-Earth, off-planet vehicles.

DOLAN: They quoted Eric Davis, they quoted Harry Reid,

both very positively

about UFO crash... Can you imagine what that's like

for The New York Times to talk about UFO crash retrievals?

NARRATOR: Senator Harry Reid was quoted as saying

that materials recovered from off-world craft

were studied as part of the AAWSAP Program.

After the story broke, Senator Reid strongly objected

to some of the wording of the story and demanded a retraction.

The verbiage was changed slightly,

but The Times still sticks by its original reporting.

Stories in The New York Times were fully documented, with named sources.

We didn't put in information that hid the origin.

It was very transparent.

We said where we got the information,

we had briefing slides.

One was put into a story that we wrote in The Times.

We actually had the slide, you know,

copied and and pictured in The New York Times.

NARRATOR: Dr Eric Davis again made an appearance.

This time, it was reported that he delivered a presentation

behind the closed doors of Congress,

acknowledging that some materials were recovered

from off-world craft.

Dr. Davis is quoted elsewhere as saying,

"We have crash retrievals and they've been analyzed.

"The program was terminated for lack of progress in reverse engineering."

Because there is no way at that point

that you can pretend there's something out there,

but we don't know what they are. Which has been a little

pretend game that everyone's been playing all this time.

Elizondo plays that game

'cause he has to.

'Cause he knows how far he's allowed to go.

I'm not a whistleblower, and as far as a leaker,

I'll be damned if someone's going to call me a leaker, because a leaker's

somebody who takes classified information

and provides it in an unauthorized manner

for the purpose of disclosure.

I've never done that, and I never will do that.

Do you think the U.S. Government has

debris from a UFO in its possession?

Unfortunately, Tucker, I really have to be careful of my NDA.

I really can't go into a lot more detail than that.

-Okay. -But simply put, yes.

NARRATOR: Chris Melon, former undersecretary

of Defense for Intelligence, said in a Washington Post Op Ed,

that the government had not been studying the UFO topic,

and because of his position, he would know if it was.

But when we pressed him on it, he made a stunning statement.

There's a bona fide issue there, and I understand that...

I was part of a process that was supposedly reviewing

all of the Defense Department special access programs,

and I'd also... People don't generally understand this taxonomy,

but there is a world of programs within the Defense Department

that is entirely separate and distinct from the Intelligence community,

and is not shared with the Intelligence community.

And to some extent, vice versa.

In addition, there's a group of programs at the Department of Energy,

and again, those are not generally shared.

So, there's sort of three galaxies which intersect to some degree

of very tightly held programs.

I was very deep on two of the tree, had some access to the third.

But as I've often said to people, "You don't know, what you don't know."

And you know, there is a possibility that there is some very small...

tightly held close hold group, for example, that has some crash debris or something,

and was working that...

The rest of the department, and even we didn't know about

at the Special Access Program Oversight Committee.

So now there are reports of perhaps debris.

Debris left over from UFOs.

NARRATOR: Even with thinly veiled admissions from those in the know,

and evidence pointing to corporations having received materials to study,

details about any of these physical materials

have been unverifiable.

Recently, that changed.

UFO investigator Anthony Regalia finally received a reply

to a Freedom of Information Act request that he filed back in 2017,

pertaining to "Physical debris recovered by personnel of the Department of Defense

"as residue, flotsam, shot-off material

"or crashed UAP, or unidentified flying objects."

NARRATOR: After two years of going back and forth,

and Ragalia's threat of lawsuits,

the DIA admitted that it had documents

responsive to the request on recovered debris,

and its analysis and a program under which it was administered.

Included in the FOIA release, are reports about a variety of advanced materials.

The reports speculated about how they may be created,

and what they may be capable of.

One is a well-known alloy, called Nitinol.

It's a shapeable, memory retaining titanium alloy.

Nitinol enjoys wide use today in a variety of applications.

But its capabilities bare similarity to the many accounts

about the so called Roswell memory metal.

Hey, is it from a crash?

How do you know about that?

We heard about it on the radio.

Everybody's talking about it.

Abracadabra.

How'd it do that?

NARRATOR: The origins of Nitinol help make a case for stories

of extraterrestrial technology

being recovered and delivered to science and industry.

It was supposedly invented in a naval weapons research lab in 1959.

But its origins have been traced back even further, to a corporation

called Battelle Memorial Institute.

Since the late 1940s,

Battelle maintained a contract to analyze metal samples

provided by Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

Another is a class of materials called metallic glass.

[COMPUTER BEEPING]

Transparent aluminum?

That's the ticket, laddie.

NARRATOR: The material described in the Star Trek film Voyage Home

in 1986 actually exists.

We find upon further research,

that the original patents for this type of metallic glass

was initially applied for in 1981

by the Raytheon Corporation.

These guys in the Lockheed and TRW,

and McDonnell Douglas or Boeing,

General Electric, Raytheon...

Look, there's no way they're going to voluntarily let this happen.

NARRATOR: There's more.

We now enter the stunning world of meta materials.

In this recording, from an interview Lue Elizondo gave to the MUFON journal.

He discusses the finer points of the materials claims.

ELIZONDO: So, it was never about unidentified metal alloys.

Any second year metal artist will tell you

elements are elements, and we can figure it out.

What was actually discussed was certain meta materials

in which they're isotopic ratios at the molecular level are so unique,

and so precise, based on the complexity

that the origins of those materials remain unknown.

If we do encounter extraterrestrial materials,

they would have isotopic ratios that are not found on the earth

because of their exposure to cosmic rays,

different kinds of manufacturer they would differ from us.

And so that's one way to analyze the fact that these are, in fact extraterrestrial,

because they have different isotopic ratios.

NARRATOR: There are more space age materials described in the reports

that the Defense Intelligence Agency acknowledges.

One type may be used to slow down light.

And even bring light to a complete standstill.

Another may induce invisibility by manipulating refraction, reflectivity,

and increasing light absorption.

Meta materials allow you to, in principle,

make objects invisible. In principle, allow you to stop light.

In principle, allow you to magnify things

beyond what we can do with present day technology.

We can do that in the microwave range.

We have not yet done it in the optical frequencies.

NARRATOR: Another has the interesting ability to compress

electromagnetic energy.

Things that we would consider impossible

would become child's play

if you have a technology that is centuries more advanced than us.

NARRATOR: Still another exhibits a particular tunable resonance,

which was likely determined during fabrication.

You see, if these objects come from a civilization

more advanced than ours, they have mastered the art

of manipulating individual atoms.

NARRATOR: The reports on these materials have something in common.

They all talk about what the materials might do,

and their possible uses.

This seems to be an indirect confirmation

that we didn't create them, and we're not sure what they do.

And they have to be analyzed on several levels.

First, they have to be analyzed spectroscopically.

So we know what they're made of.

So let's say that there is... There are materials

that some other civilization has created

and that they have atomic grade printing

that we don't have today,

the only way to understand it is to de-assemble it atom by atom.

NARRATOR: Dr. Gary Nolan is a scientist at Stanford University.

He publicly stated that a new technique for mass spectrometry,

that he developed attracted the attention

of those in possession of UFO materials.

GARY NOLAN: Well, there is one technology

that's in my lab called Secondary Ion Mass Spec,

and we developed a company around it and the technology for using it

to read biopsy material from patients, right?

And we had a way of labeling the biopsies

with metal tags delivered via antibodies, and that would light up the tissue

in a way that would tell you something about the distribution of those proteins

in cancer cells and immune system cells.

That's a very successful technology that's worked very well.

It turns out that it was tuned to look at metals...

right, because we were using the metal tags

and so when in discussions with Jacques and others,

that they said they had these pieces of metal.

Well, I have an instrument that's perfectly tuned

to look at metals, so let's do it.

But what that stuff consisted of and why they think it's off-planet,

and, you know, what the testing showed about

the possibility that nothing like that could appear on Earth.

That's all stuff we were not able to get access to.

We don't know.

NARRATOR: Upon release of the FOIA request,

there was evidence of internal commotion inside the DIA and the Pentagon.

You know, the powers that be...

I mean, there are such people.

I think they realized

"All right. You just went, you went actually, as far as you can go,

"and in fact, you went a little too far.

"We're going to dial it back."

NARRATOR: Susan Gough, a Pentagon spokesperson,

said that although she was aware

of the social media chatter, the information provided by the DIA

actually relates in some way to an advanced weapons program

and not UFO items.

But if you start with different assumptions

about how something might operate,

you can come up with things that another

equally advanced civilization, America, let's say, or Western civilization,

doesn't understand how it works.

But that doesn't mean it came from E.T.

But I suspect that Freedom of Information Act

is talking about something a little different.

NARRATOR: Some of the main players in the material story

were making new statements that changed previously reported facts.

Right. This is a counter...

This is The Empire Strikes Back.

This is what we're seeing. You're seeing the major establishment,

which was on the back foot for over three years

because of the offensive of the UFO faction.

They were on retreat. They've gathered their resources.

They're like, you know, "We don't really want...

"We can't go any farther than we've gone."

Harry Reid walked it back as far as with The New York Times

about Lockheed having artifacts and so, they get these phone calls.

I mean, why else...

You know, catch yourself after the fact and go,

"I should have never said that."

And there's a pattern here.

It always pertains to physical evidence.

And in our New York Times story,

we said that a hangar was built

to contain materials, okay.

We didn't say that materials were obtained and put in the hangar.

You did an interview with Jesse Michaels.

-In that interview, you laid out some of the materials. -Mmm-hmm.

Very excitingly, we have parts...

Okay, the parts were a little anti-climactic and small,

but he claims to have much bigger parts that we can't see

due to national security sensitivities.

But then when you did the interview with Lex,

you said that she had materials just from, like, Jacques Vilet

which obviously wouldn't be classified,

and from TTSA, which wouldn't be classified.

There's two classes of materials that I've been given by people,

and they're not given by, like, the government or anything.

So have you studied classified materials,

but you just don't have them?

I just shouldn't say anything more.

You shouldn't say anything about that.

Okay, all right.

You can put that on there. I just can't say anything more.

Right. No, that's fine.

It might have been an accidental truth moment.

NARRATOR: FOIA responses are based on reacting to very specific wording.

The FOIA response from the DIA specifically refers

to recovered materials from UFOs being studied at Bigelow Aerospace.

This is official confirmation that these studies indeed occurred.

Bigelow Aerospace is massive.

It's surrounded on most sides by these gigantic vacant lots.

It's surrounded by multiple layers of fencing, including barbed wire,

video surveillance, 24-hour security guards everywhere.

This place is a fortress.

NARRATOR: Multiple reports also seemed to confirm the presence of materials at the facility.

But after the release of the documents, the story changed.

REPORTER: For years, one of the secret studies was carried out by BAASS,

a Las Vegas operation hidden within Bigelow Aerospace.

Documents first reported by the I-Team show that BAASS

landed a contract with the DIA, and one of the objectives

was to study so called meta materials.

Multiple sources have confirmed to us

there was a weird piece of something at the Bigelow plant.

New York Times reported that you modified your facility here

in order to house some material from somewhere else.

Did you ever have it?

-Never had any. -Did you ever see it?

Um...

But... I... you know, do you see...

Do you see...

It's the old Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse scene.

"We've got our top people working on it."

"Who are your top people?" "Oh, they're top."

NARRATOR: In March 2022, the Defense Intelligence Agency

responded to another FOIA request that demanded information

about the work of AATIP and its previous versions.

The result was 1500 pages that included 38 independent papers

about potential advanced technology.

The authors of some of these reports, are many of the same people

that have been involved in secret UFO programs

all the way back to the late 1960s.

These reports came in the form of defense intelligence reference documents.

Some of the technologies that were explored

include advanced nuclear propulsion,

for manned deep space missions.

Aneutronic Fusion Propulsion,

Pulsed High-Power Microwave Technology,

Antigravity for Aerospace Applications.

I think when talking about extraterrestrial civilizations,

we have to be open to the fact that their technology

is thousands of years more advanced than our technology.

But then the question is, is it possible that we,

that we humans can also partake of some of these advanced technologies?

NARRATOR: Space-Communication Implications of Quantum Entanglement

and Nonlocality, High-Frequency Gravitational Wave Communications.

I take two objects,

two particles that are quantumly entangled,

and if I do something to this one, this one responds.

And if you separate those two by a foot...

when I do something here, something happens here.

But something even more magical happens

that when I take these objects, and I put them one here

and one at the farthest end of the visible universe,

that direction, 13.5 billion light years,

and I take the other particle,

I put it in that direction, 13.5 billion light years away,

when I do this,

this one responds instantaneously.

NARRATOR: Traversable Wormholes, Stargates and Negative Energy.

Special relativity says you cannot break the light barrier.

But special relativity has a loophole.

The loophole is general relativity,

the theory of gravity,

whereby you can bend time and space into a pretzel

if you have enough matter and energy.

An energy which we won't have, perhaps for another 100,000 to one million years.

So it's not for us.

Perhaps for an extraterrestrial civilization,

but it's not for us.

NARRATOR: Warp Drive, Dark Energy

and the manipulation of extra dimensions.

We have to be open to the possibility that there are other dimensions,

and shortcuts.

Perhaps shortcuts between different universes.

Now, of course, moving through

these higher dimensions, would require a technology

much more advanced than anything we have.

NARRATOR: Concepts for extracting energy from the quantum vacuum.

You would have to be a very advanced civilization

to get net usable energy from nothing.

In other words, it's not for us.

That doesn't mean an advanced civilization can't do it.

NARRATOR: Quantum computing, and utilizing organic molecules

in automation technology.

Technological approaches to controlling external devices,

in the absence of limb operated interfaces.

Our most advanced understanding of the brain comes from BCI,

Brain Computer Interface.

We can take a chip, put it on the surface of the brain,

have that chip connected to a laptop computer

that then analyzes the impulses of the brain and deciphers it,

and then uses it to control something.

And so you can imagine what we can do today

and then extrapolate to the future.

NARRATOR: Aerospace applications of programmable matter.

If you could design something, atom by atom,

and position things atom by atom,

then there's a lot more we could do with material science

than we can do today.

NARRATOR: Ultra capacitors as energy and power storage devices.

Role of superconductors in gravity research.

Most of what we create today, in even the superconductor areas

is basically recipes.

They are not designs.

NARRATOR: Many of these technologies are beyond the realm of current science.

These technologies are discussed

as if someone knows that they are entirely possible,

even in some stage of successful development.

I will tell you unequivocally if a man like Robert Bigelow

were to ask you, to come on board and to do something,

man, I would do it in the blink of an eye.

It would be almost reflexive.

When do we start? Let's go.

He's a good man, and he's also a patriot.

Machinery really does exist.

Does exist.

That the problem has been the inability to back engineer

and I kind of think that some...

Some things require a weightless environment.

NARRATOR: It is generally accepted

that the New Narrative broke in late 2017.

It was actually Robert Bigelow, who made spellbinding revelations

before anybody knew that he was involved in government contracts

to study UFOs.

Do you believe in aliens?

I am absolutely convinced. That's all there is to it.

Do you also believe that UFOs have come to Earth?

There has been, and is an existing presence an E.T. presence.

You have the interview that Robert Bigelow did on 60 Minutes.

Really, an amazing interview.

This is one of the most knowledgeable people on this planet,

in my view, on the subject of UFOs,

He's also a billionaire, and he's also got a lot of influence in this world.

And here he is saying, aliens are real

and indeed they are actually walking among us.

NARRATOR: His unshakable statement regarding the reality

of an extraterrestrial presence,

drew some media reaction.

Its significance did not become clear

until the story of Bigelow Aerospace

and its role in AATIP began to unfold.

The New York Times came out with a couple of articles essentially downplaying any E.T.

component of these sightings,

but also playing down the fact that they may be Russian or Chinese

and also playing down the fact that these are advanced U.S. classified prototypes.

If they're going to play all of those things down,

then I would ask, what gets played up? Because there is nothing left.

NARRATOR: Confronted with the challenge of weaving Robert Bigelow's

informed beliefs

into the story Chris Mellon had revealed,

-Mellon said this, -There aren't many people

associated with the establishment who are so bold

and willing to make statements like that.

Many of the Navy pilots themselves who've engaged these crafts

go there because they can't conceive of any other explanation, frankly.

NARRATOR: When Lue Elizondo was asked about Bigelow statements,

his response corroborated Bigelow's position.

He has his own space stations in space.

People say "What do you mean?"

Yeah, he has his own, right now, in space.

I mean, I don't know who else has done that, and by the way,

he's done it for a long time, so give the guy some credit.

He knows what he's talking about.

They have stated flatly "They're not one of ours."

Then the question is, whose are they?

NARRATOR: All of the people involved in the current narrative

are deliberately stopping short

of identifying the phenomenon as originating from extraterrestrials.

We have all these tales going back centuries, millennia,

about visitations and strange beings.

Maybe it's a record of visits from alien civilizations.

You can't rule out the fact that, yeah, maybe we have been visited in the past.

You can't rule it out.

So you say one by one, they're not natural phenomena.

They're not weather balloons.

They're not U.S. technology.

They're not Russian. They're not Chinese.

They're not optical illusions.

They're not mental illness on the part of the people who report them.

Because these are our most highly trained experts

who are reporting these things, and they've been caught on,

as I said, Navy instrumentation. So what are you left with?

Well, no one is going there.

Our view is, let's follow the trail wherever it leads.

Let's get the data,

the best evidence possible.

There's probably more than one phenomenon at work here.

NARRATOR: They refused to say the "A" word.

Alien. Why?

You know, assuming that these things are all of alien origin...

for a variety reasons, in part because people shut down

and it impedes our progress and some of the allies

and people that we need to bring to bear,

who are sort of now getting on board,

wouldn't do so if we started with the premise that these are aliens.

I think the word alien is a little...

People are afraid of the word alien.

You know, E.T, extraterrestrial, non-humans.

I've always concerned about

getting ahead of our headlights, frankly,

and leaping to conclusions.

For me, it's more of the thrill of the hunt.

It's trying to figure out the unknowns

because once they are known, they are no longer a mystery.

What it is, no one's admitted yet.

And you've got plenty of video evidence

of Lue and Chris not admitting it because they can't say it.

But they've said it in as many ways as you can.

Just anybody bright enough to listen,

will, as you say, understand the accidental truth.

NARRATOR: During the interview in 2018, Lue Elizondo gave us an accidental truth.

JAMES: So, you've spoken about some of the technologies

that are being studied as a spin off the research

you did at AATIP.

Things like bending space-time, and Einstein type possibilities that may unfold.

Is there an interdimensional element to any of this

that you guys maybe explored?

Other dimensions may absolutely exist.

You look at String Theory, look at M Theory,

dimensions are all around us.

So I think you have to cast a wide net when you're looking at this.

And that's why I've said before, whether they're from outer space,

inner space or the space in between,

we just don't know, and we need to collect more data.

Is it possible? Absolutely, it's possible.

Is it possible that they're from the Pleiades? Sure.

Is it possible that they're from...

They've been here all along and they're from here,

they're just resonating at a different vibration?

Sure.

JAMES: It seems like the only question that is answered

in the ones you just posed,

is that whether or not, there is an actual "They."

That's a great question.

I don't know if I can answer that.

NARRATOR: A few seem willing to officially pronounce the phenomenon

as originating from extraterrestrials.

There is a willingness to concede

that there might be extraterrestrial involvement.

You know, what's here is probably just an A.I.

I mean, why spend all your time on one little planet

out in a dust speck at the edge of the galaxy?

You send your robots.

The question is, what's our definition of life?

I think life may exist, may exist,

and I'll caveat that, in all sorts of forms.

I don't think it's necessarily going to be

something that we might recognize or even initially even classify as life.

Because we don't have a full understanding of it.

NARRATOR: There is a growing consensus

that the extraterrestrial hypothesis

doesn't answer all of the questions.

There are multiple phenomena at work, that cannot be explained completely

without looking at other possibilities.

Maybe there's a whole range of different phenomena at play here.

In fact, I think, given the differences in what's been reported by people,

that's quite likely that there are many different parallel strands to this.

But whatever is involved, and as I say, I don't know,

I think it does raise important defense, national security and air safety issues.

The E.T. hypothesis, for instance, is a logical starting point.

If not from here, from where?

Until you start talking about, well, what do you mean, where?

We think that an object is solid and can only be one place at the same time.

But in quantum mechanics, electrons can be two places at the same time.

In fact, they can be many places,

and this is called the multiverse idea.

The idea that we exist with other universes simultaneously.

Well, wait a minute.

We're talking about multi-dimensional realities.

But doesn't really matter how far you go

in a three-dimensional space and distance,

that there are shortcuts, and those shortcuts exist

as part of the natural universe.

So that is a real world example where we know

other dimensions may absolutely exist.

Whether it's extraterrestrial or interdimensional, to me, is irrelevant

because whatever it is, clearly has

the ability to manipulate dimensionality.

These things can jump in and out, appear, disappear.

And so, for all intents and purposes, it's both.

NARRATOR: In August of 2022, Dr. Hal Puthoff released a paper in which he explored

other options for what may be at work.

He presented concepts such as ultra-terrestrial beings.

The concept that there could be another intelligent race living with us

inside the Earth or under water.

A civilization with advanced technology,

that has been here, long before us.

Time travelers.

While mainstream science debates the feasibility of time travel,

it still remains a possibility.

Some people say that the aliens don't come from Mars,

they don't come from a distant star.

They come from a different time.

Well, I'm open to all sorts of ideas,

as long as they are testable.

Our notion of time and space is flawed, seriously.

And you're entering issues where

there is no time and there is no space.

You've got man-made craft.

You've got possible extraterrestrial.

You've got interdimensional.

You've got...

Hmm. A pre-existing high tech civilization

that could have been on this planet for thousands of years.

And when you wrap this all together,

you can see how confusing it is because a lot of these things merge.

NARRATOR: Some of the phenomena seemed to point

to a direct interaction, with consciousness.

Well, the consciousness is interacting in all aspects of it.

And to take it a step farther,

going to Max Planck, suggests that maybe

the physical evolved from consciousness,

as opposed to the other way around.

NARRATOR: As part of developing new understandings,

it's hard to ignore the so-called experience or phenomenon.

A significant percentage of the population

report having encounters with non-human beings.

These encounters range from enlightening to terrifying,

Many, many, many people have had some very strange experiences.

Either seeing UFOs, and not just at night while they were dreaming.

These are not nightmares.

These are often described as more real than everyday reality.

The people who describe it, these people are solid.

They come from all walks of life.

NARRATOR: Ralph Blumenthal wrote a book about the late Harvard psychologist John Mack,

called The Believer.

Mack was one of the first members of academia

to acknowledge the validity of the experience or phenomenon.

John Mack investigated these stories of people who said that this and this

happened to them, and at least Mack, as a psychiatrist,

was able to evaluate their stories to the...

Couldn't prove that this happened or didn't happen, but at least could say that

these people were solid people and were not mentally ill.

We interface with whatever this is.

Contactees, abductees.

I think we can create some of the phenomenon itself.

So I do believe that there are certain individuals on this planet

who are more in tune, are more intuitive,

are more in touch with the unseen world

than the seen world.

Some of us are able to pierce the veil

and connect with whatever is going on out there.

NARRATOR: Stunning new research by Dr Gary Nolan,

has revealed a trait in the human brain

that may make some people more prone to abilities,

such as heightened intuition, psychic abilities,

and possibly an ability to communicate in undeveloped manners,

such as telepathy.

We had MRIs of claimed remote viewers,

high-end remote viewers,

and this area of their brain lit up like a Christmas tree.

NARRATOR: The condition has been observed in so-called "Experiencers."

Nolan has detected increased activity and development

in a region of the brain called the basal ganglia.

NOLAN: The thing that got me really intrigued

was that we did have MRIs from experiencers,

but these were high functioning individuals that we happened to notice

that an area of their brain, had a density in it

that we first thought was damaged because we were studying damage at the moment.

But then we realized, this is not damaged. This is living tissue.

And that became sort of a side discovery.

You're left then with, frankly, what was

an even less uniform group of individuals

with such varied interactions. Things that we're talking to them,

things that they had gotten close to and had been damaged and harmed.

And there were a couple of people in that group who were harmed.

But of the remaining individuals,

I would say that the majority of them were not harmed.

This area of the brain, that we came to the conclusion at the time

was probably involved in intuition,

when we actually looked into it,

and then looked into the literature,

believe it or not, people were finding that

it had something to do with intuition.

And that's the basal ganglia.

This area, the caudate putamen,

which is, you know, by many neurophysiologist

called the brain within the brain.

NARRATOR: What Dr. Nolan has discovered

may represent a leap in human evolution

or even a new variation of Homo sapien.

You have to ask the question "What kind of information

"is being perceived and how is it being translated into,

"let's say, traditional neuro-physiologic pathways?"

We don't understand...

space time the way we'd like to pretend we do.

And so, who is to say that there is not some kind of information transfer

that we just don't necessarily yet appreciate,

but evolution has found a way to latch onto.

NARRATOR: The people that we've met since 2017

seemed to have some genuine interest

in helping to make humanity more aware of these realities.

Chris Mellon continues to work quietly behind the scenes

to bring about an effective means of disclosure.

Very much changing within the government,

on the Hill and the executive branch,

as well as you can see with the media lately.

It's becoming respectable and legitimate,

and that's so crucial to engaging more minds and more energy,

and more resources to getting to the bottom of this.

NARRATOR: Lue Elizondo seems to have put

everything on the line since going public.

So if there's an issue where the government is doing something we don't want to

then it's up to us as a people to change that.

But it doesn't have to be an adversarial relationship.

I think where we go wrong is that people often times look at the government, they say,

"Oh, the government's bad, the government's bad."

NARRATOR: His role in AATIP has been challenged by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Lue fought back by hiring one of the most effective

and well known civil rights attorneys in the field, Danny Sheehan.

I was contacted by Lue Elizondo and asked to represent him

because he was upset

about the fact that the Pentagon

even after the publication of this

on December 16th and 17th of 2017,

there were officials inside the Pentagon issuing completely false statements,

still, saying, "Yeah, there's no such thing

"as the Advanced Aerospace Identification Program."

NARRATOR: Together, they approached the Inspector General

of the Defense Intelligence Agency

to reverse the Pentagon's failure to acknowledge Elizondo's position.

When Elizondo started, talking about this phenomenon publicly,

you can see the Pentagon had tremendous pushback against him.

They lied.

They said "No, he didn't run such a program."

That was a lie.

They said AATIP had nothing to do with UFOs.

-That was a lie. -We were trying at the same time,

trying to determine what Lue can say

in light of his security clearances, you know, publicly.

Not long ago, Elizondo supposedly said to his attorney

that he had seen a flying saucer in a hanger.

That gets out and the stuff hits the fan.

And, you know, Lue had to walk that back too.

What did he do? He said, "Well, you know,

"I went to a hangar that was designed

"to accommodate exotic materials, but I didn't see anything there.

"I never saw any intact craft." He was like, very lawyerly

in how he said what he did because he had to.

I guess I'm just genetically pre-disposed to not trusting government

and seeing it now, too, it's just a joke.

It really is.

NARRATOR: MUFON, The Mutual UFO Network

is the largest and oldest UFO organization in the world.

After over 50 years, MUFON is stronger than ever.

I'm Ron James. It's March 11th 2022.

I'm here in front of the White House.

It's been a historic week for the UFO community and for MUFON,

the Mutual UFO Network.

We have actually been taking meetings all week long

with key members and staff of the House and Senate intelligence committees

regarding the UAP phenomenon.

We've been here for three days now, four days,

and have met with about 10 different officials,

congressmen, representatives staff and senators,

and we've really had a tremendous welcome.

NARRATOR: Thousands of people over 100 years or more,

have challenged the official deception around the UFO topic.

They have been ridiculed and debunked.

Today, they are beginning to be vindicated,

but still have not accomplished their goal.

A total end to the UFO cover-up.

There is no way to inform the American people writ large,

all 500 million of us, and ensure that information

is not going to get into the hands of a foreign adversary.

Maybe it's that there are some elements

of the technology that has to be kept under wraps

or kept to a limited number of people because

if you cross the wires, bad things happen.

This is a version of disclosure.

But is it going to be the real truth?

And, I mean, I don't care

about anything except what the actual truth is.

So, we'll see if they can get there.

They could say, for example, down the road,

"Well, actually, yeah. We have had a few reports down the road,

"over the years, but we kept it quiet because,

"honestly, we needed to avoid public panic."

They'll say that.

At a societal level, I believe that we are completely ready

to incorporate this new reality,

and if the President were to go on

the evening news today and say, "My fellow Americans,

"people of the world, we're not alone,"

I think the reaction would be sorta two-fold.

Obviously, there would be a huge interest in it,

but actually there wouldn't be panic in the streets.

So to be part of that journey,

to uncover and to show links to this advanced civilization,

that would be a great honor, because as a scientist,

you go where the data takes you.

And sometimes the data takes you to places that are uncomfortable.

But, hey, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Yeah, I just... You know, I'm going to get hit on it.

They told me. They said, "Man, Burchett you need to cool this stuff out

"because it's gonna hurt us at the polls." But we'll see.

NARRATOR: We've shown that even today there is a narrative at work

that has been created to manipulate public perception about the UFO topic.

We are not alone in the universe.

There are those who have struggled to keep this truth a secret.

But the proof of the deception serves its own purpose

and tells us much more than ever before.

I have good news and I have bad news.

And the good news is the government's been telling you the truth.

The bad news is the government's been telling you the truth.

I mean, just look at Roswell.

There are no 509th bomb group members left.

They're all dead.

So according to the government, it's cover up complete.

All right, then what did I see out there in that field?

Oh, that...

Why, that was a weather balloon.