All language subtitles for Alien.Files.Reopened.S01E02.1080p.WEB.h264-FREQUENCY_track3_[eng]

[narrator]
Ever since humankind
first looked to the heavens,

we have asked the question,

"Are we alone?"

Tales of
otherworldly beings...

ancient prophecies
and predictions...

and sightings here on Earth...

have heightened
our sense of anticipation.

But in recent years,

these claims
have become more frequent.

Do you believe our government
has made contact with

intelligent extraterrestrials?

Something I can't discuss
in a public setting.

[narrator] More insistent.

Biologics came with some
of these recoveries. Yeah.

[narrator]
And ever more dramatic.

Charles James Hall,
a U.S. Airman stationed

on a highly protected
military base,

claimed that not only
were extraterrestrials real,

but that for two years,
he lived among them.

Top secret investigations
were launched.

Explanations proposed.

Denials issued.

But the truth
remained elusive.

And new revelations
from military whistleblowers

have only added
to the mystery.

Do you believe UAPs

pose a potential threat
to our national security?

Yes.

-Yes.
-Yes.

[narrator]
What are we not being told?

Our team of experts
reopened the files.

They'll analyze
the intelligence.

Investigate the science.

And reveal the truth.

In 1964, Charles James Hall

enlisted in
the United States Air Force.

After basic training
in San Antonio, Texas,

Hall trained
as a weather observer
at Chanute, Illinois.

In the spring of 1965,

he was stationed
at Nellis Air Force Base,

just outside
Las Vegas, Nevada.

It was a deployment

that would
change his life forever.

Nellis was
a tactical fighter center,

and Hall's
mathematical ability

made him a good fit

for the base's
vital weather stations.

It wasn't
a glamorous assignment,

but with the U.S.
at war in Vietnam,

it was a safe,
domestic posting.

Or so it appeared.

Hall's harrowing experience
at Nellis

began shortly after
his arrival at the base

when he was taken
to his observation post.

The weather observer that
I was supposed to replace,

he didn't seem to know
where anything was.

He was shaken with fear.

[narrator] As they pull up
to the weather shack
on Range 4,

Hall's escort
refuses to leave the truck.

Instead, he delivers
a stark warning.

He said, "If you see anything,

I'll go get help.
We won't abandon you.

Just know that
if you can't find me,

we're coming back for you."

Perplexed by the warning,

Hall continued to his post.

He had no idea
what his predecessor
could be talking about.

On entering the weather shack,

it became obvious

that nobody
had been inside for months.

Hall's guide would
leave the base soon after,

claiming that he couldn't
spend another night there.

His fear was clearly real.

For Hall, however,
this was just the beginning.

One night,

he's going to the latrine,

and out of the corner
of his eye,

he sees this
almost glowing white figure,

a woman,

clutching some kind of weapon.

In the 1960s, there were

no enlisted female personnel
on the Air Force base.

[narrator] He put it down
to an overactive imagination

and went back to bed.

Since his arrival at Nellis,

Hall had been warned
by other airmen

about a glowing white phantom

that roamed the ranges,

nicknamed Range 4 Harry.

He had written it off
as standard Air Force hazing,

but his early time on the base

was marked
by strange experiences.

At Range 3,

he could see lights
floating up in the valley.

He said he would hear
rustling sounds
in the sagebrush,

but could
never see anything...

until one day...

[Laurie] So Charles Hall,
he's doing his usual patrols.

It's 100 degrees,
and he notices,

somehow, a little girl,

about 100 yards into

a very thick brush,
as he described.

A brush so thick
that he needed

some form of

a hatchet
to cut his way through.

I looked at her, and I saw

that she was a little girl,

but she wasn't
a human little girl, okay?

And the shock I felt

can hardly be described.

I was coming down

the last big wide trail,

and I stopped
and turned around slowly,

and running straight
towards me,

50 feet, maybe less,

was a tall white man.

[narrator] This was
the phantom figure

the other airmen on the base
warned him about.

It was Range 4 Harry.

A few nights
after his strange encounter,

Hall was awakened by a group

entering his bunkhouse.

[Hall] One of them sounded
like the Air Force General.

He specifically said,
"I have a man down here.

He's bunking down here
at the end.

Harry, go down
and get him like you always do
and march him out front."

I can't explain
the feeling of terror

that I felt.

And he pointed
the squarish instrument

at my temple,

and it half hypnotized me.

[narrator]
They took him outside,

but the colonel was concerned
he wasn't fully under.

So they moved him
to a storage shed.

Despite everything
he had seen,

Hall wasn't sure he could
believe his own eyes.

He thought
he must be dreaming.

I went back
and I covered up myself

and went to the fetal position

and said my prayers
and went to sleep.

[narrator] Hall had other

infrequent brushes
with these Tall Whites

and began to believe he must
have imagined them all.

Until one day, he was
checking equipment at Range 3.

I'd taken the reading
and as I was turning
to the left,

this tall white lady in a suit

leaned over my shoulder.

Because she was floating,

I thought it was me.

I thought my brain
was malfunctioning
or something, you know?

And so to control my fears,
I just smiled.

[narrator]
He was convinced she was real.

He called her "The Teacher,"

and her visit would mark
a turning point for Hall,

giving him an entirely
new understanding
of the universe.

[narrator]
After Charles Hall's
first encounter

with a Tall White alien
he came to know as The Teacher

in the spring of 1965,

the Tall Whites
began to communicate
with him more frequently.

Hall began to learn
about their lives,

their technology
and their culture.

The Teacher was
equivalent in age

to a human lady,

21, 22 years old.

[narrator]
Through his encounters
with The Teacher,

Hall learned
that the Tall Whites

could live
for up to 800 years.

They stood about
two meters tall,

and their eyes changed
from blue to pink

as they aged.

Hall claimed the Tall Whites

were physically fragile,

and their language was

a high-pitched flute sound
similar to the meadowlark.

[high-pitched whistles]

[narrator] Hall said they were
nervous around humans.

[Hall] Talking to the aliens,

they're always well-armed.

Even if they're your friends,

you never, never,
never once wanted to

surprise them or scare them.

[narrator] Charles learned

that each carried
a single personal weapon.

Shaped like a pencil,

it focused frequencies
to create microwaves

that interacted
with the body's ions.

The device could hypnotize,

stun, or even kill humans.

Torn between feeling
that the Tall Whites

were absolutely real

and the possibility that
he was losing his mind,

Hall told nobody
of these apparitions.

He continued doing his job
as a weather observer,

visiting the ranges
and taking wind measurements.

And over a period
of more than two years,

he learned answers
to the questions

we all have about
alien beings visiting Earth.

Where have they come from?
How did they get here?

And why are they here?

[Hall] When the Tall White
deep spacecraft come in,

you say that spacecraft
could have

covered 100 light-years.

A hundred light-years
is actually

nearly one
quadrillion kilometers.

That's 1,000
trillion kilometers.

Now, even traveling
as fast as we can

with current technology,

that journey would take

nearly four million years.

So we have to ask ourselves,

without a huge
technological leap,

is such a journey
even possible?

[Hall]
Their craft travel faster
than the speed of light,

and they reduce
the forces of inertia,

which makes
space travel possible.

[Hall] Charles Hall claims
the aliens' technology

defied physics
as we know it, making their

faster-than-light journey
possible in just a few months.

[Maggie] The speed of light

is 300,000 kilometers
per second.

Now, Einstein's theory
of special relativity

says nothing can travel
at the speed of light

apart from photons.

Because to accelerate things
up to the speed of light,

you would need
an infinite amount of energy.

[narrator] As an object
approaches light speed,

its mass
increases exponentially,

which means
the force of gravity

would also increase.

To date,

there is no theory
that suggests

faster-than-light travel
is possible.

Hall, however, was adamant

that it was possible
for the Tall Whites.

He even believes he calculated
where they came from,

though the Tall Whites
refused to tell him.

[Hall] Their home planet
is much further away.

My best guess,

coming from a star

something around
105 light-years away,

and something above

the 21st line
of southern latitude.

It's a southern
hemisphere star.

[narrator]
And he claims to have learned
how they managed

a precarious Earth landing

after such
an incredible journey.

[Hall]
The Tall White craft come in

on the night of the full moon.

The Moon, the Earth,
and the Sun are lined up.

You have a region in space
where the gravity field

is smooth with no bumps.

And so when you're coming in,

you can sync up
with the movement

of the Sun and the Earth

and let the Earth's gravity
pull you in.

When the Moon is leading
the Earth in its orbit,

no spacecraft pilot

ever wants
to get caught in between

the Earth and the Moon

when the Moon is leading
the Earth in its orbit.

[narrator] According to Hall,

the Tall Whites utilize
our planet's gravity

like a slingshot.

A gravitational slingshot
is a technique

used in space flight to change

the trajectory
or the velocity of an object.

And it's done by using
the gravitational force

of a celestial body,

like a moon or a planet.

[narrator]
And he claims they had to use
this technique because

the fiber-optic-powered
propulsion systems

on their ships
tended to overheat

through faster-than-light
speed travel.

And needed repairs.

The Tall Whites claim
they've been visiting Earth

for thousands of years.

And this group said
they had been hit

by a meteor shower.

[Hall] It was obvious
that one of the things
they were gonna need

was high-grade titanium

to do repairs
on the interior of the ship.

All of them need

to have a hangar.

[narrator] According to Hall,

in exchange for accommodations
at Indian Springs

and access
to repair materials,

the Tall Whites would share
technological knowledge.

But they weren't willing
to share everything.

[Hall] For example,
the Tall Whites,

there were parts
of their technology

that they did not wish
to share with us,

such as their
engine technology.

[narrator]
They apparently refused

to provide information about
anti-gravity drive technology,

light-speed travel,

or advanced weaponry.

But whether or not

the Tall Whites would
eventually share

their technology,
Hall would never know.

On the base
just over two years,

in 1967,

he was sent
to fight in Vietnam.

He never saw
the Tall Whites again.

Years after these meetings,

Hall confessed to his wife

that he had
never come to terms
with the fear he felt.

He had been secretly keeping
notes about his experiences

for over 20 years.

And his wife insisted
that they publish

fictionalized accounts
of what he claims
happened to him.

Hall now travels the world,

giving paid talks
to UFO enthusiasts

about his experiences.

Many people have written off
Charles Hall's stories

as unbelievable tales.

[narrator] However, two years
prior to his encounters

with the Tall Whites
at Nellis,

an unexplained event

may provide some
corroborating evidence.

[narrator] On the evening

of 18th April, 1962,

residents of Oneida, New York,

saw a flaming object
speed westward
across the night sky.

It was at high altitude

and emitted no noise.

[Chuck] It was
picked up by radar.

Operators watched
as the object

streaked from
county to county,

state to state,

crossing the Midwest
in minutes.

[narrator]
As it approached Utah,
there were reports

that the Strategic Air Command
had launched

F-94 interceptor jets from
Luke Air Force Base, Arizona.

This thing was
flying over cities in Utah

and it was bright enough
to turn night into day.

[narrator] Then,
as it passed over Eureka,

it came down. Whatever it was,

it disrupted the electricity
for the whole area.

But just a few minutes later,
it flew off again

and headed
towards Reno, Nevada,

where it made
a sweeping turn south

and disappeared
from radar view.

Calls from terrified residents

inundated the sheriff's office
in Clark County,

all reporting the same thing.

A flaming ball

flying almost
horizontally overhead

before coming down

in a huge explosion
near Mesquite,

just 75 miles
from Nellis Air Force Base.

This was seen by
thousands of people,
civilian and professional,

drivers on the freeway,

people in their yards,
pilots in flight.

[narrator]
One pilot reported seeing
the ball light up an area

of roughly 20 square miles.

As if it were day.

This was not an illusion
or a weather event.

Something physical had
streaked across the sky

in multiple states,
recorded by multiple people.

The only question was what.

[Chuck]
Initial responses assumed

a plane crash,

so the sheriff's office
immediately organized

a ground-based
search and rescue party.

But they found nothing.

No debris, no indications
of a physical crash.

[narrator] In the morning,

they continued
to survey by plane.

But still,
they found no evidence.

[Chuck] No planes
had been reported missing.

There were
no military exercises
in the area.

It was a real mystery.

[narrator]
The search was called off.

But the investigation
had only just begun.

One of the first interviewed
was the Air Force pilot

who had reported
seeing the ground

lit up like daylight.

[Chuck] This pilot,
Captain Herman Shields,

was flying at about 8,500 feet

in a C-119A
military transport plane.

Not only did he see
the ground lit up,

he saw something flying.

[narrator]
Shields recalled a slender,

rounded object whose shape
he couldn't describe.

It looked like
nothing he had seen before.

Shields says
there was no exhaust,

no trail following after it.

[narrator] His description was
confirmed by a witness

on the ground
in Silver City, New Mexico,

who also claimed to have seen
the object come down.

He said it slowed down,
that he could hear
a gasping sound,

like it was stalling,

and then it surged ahead.

He said
it did this a few times
before arching over,

starting to fishtail,
and then descending.

[narrator]
The investigating officer,
Douglas Crouch,

from Hill Air Force Base,

interviewed all those
who'd witnessed
the strange phenomenon.

[Chuck] He said that
everyone he interviewed
seemed logical, and mature,

and that what they had seen

was not a balloon
or a conventional aircraft.

[narrator]
He continued to write off
other potential explanations,

including missile test,

unusual weather,

or astronomical conditions,

and even cast doubt

on the most
obvious explanation,

a large meteor.

[Chuck]
Shields had his doubts.

Several witnesses
spoke about a flat trajectory

and noises
coming from the object.

Neither of those
are common with meteors.

[narrator] But despite Shields

and the others'
compelling testimony,

investigators found
no physical evidence.

After a day of quizzing
witnesses in central Utah,

they concluded that
they had seen

a very rare meteoric event
known as a bolide.

[Maggie] A bolide
is essentially a big meteor

that doesn't burn up
in the Earth's atmosphere

or hit the Earth.

Instead, it explodes
in the upper atmosphere.

It can be 100 times brighter

than the full moon.

[narrator] That became
the official explanation

of the U.S. Air Force,

at least until people
started asking questions.

[Laurie] What they witnessed

was major deviation

from a trajectory,
changing directions, landing,

and then taking off again.

Uh, because it was witnessed,

I believe, through
eight or nine states
in two countries,

uh, it could have been

an extraterrestrial craft.

Certainly could have been.

And it could have also been

a test pilot

flying one of our own

secret planes.

[narrator] Meteors enter
the Earth's atmosphere

at about
100,000 miles per hour,

or 40 miles per second.

But rarely do they
change directions

as dramatically
as this object.

[Chuck] The UAP was tracked by
Air Force radar over Montana,

Idaho, Wyoming, Utah,

New Mexico, Arizona,
and California.

Not only is it incredibly rare

for a meteor
to be tracked by radar at all,

but a meteor would
make that journey
in about a minute.

Then you have the height.

Other than exceptionally
rare circumstances,

bolides usually explode
in the upper atmosphere.

[narrator]
Both Captain Shields

and a commercial airline pilot

flying out of Las Vegas

at around 11,000 feet

reported seeing the object
flying beneath them.

[Chuck] There was
a Utah Highway Patrol sergeant

who reported
he was seeing something

from a missile range
explode right over him,

creating a shower
of white sparks.

And controllers
in the towers at Reno,

Elko, and Las Vegas airports
all said they saw a flash.

[narrator]
The eyewitness accounts
and radar readings

cast significant doubt

over the bolide explanation.

But internal papers suggest

the military had
an explanation for that.

[Chuck] The Utah incident
with the fireball

and the explosion
could be explained
by the bolide.

While the radar tracking
from New York

across the Midwest
and into Nevada

follows a flight path
of a high-altitude
weather balloon

or a U-2 spy plane,

two wildly
different propositions

that exhibit
entirely different behaviors.

[narrator]
All flights above 14,000 feet
were tracked.

If there had been a U-2 flight

or a high-altitude balloon
in that area,

the Air Force
would have known about it.

And if they had
known about it,

they wouldn't have
scrambled jets

from two separate air bases.

Project Blue Book
initially labeled it

as unidentified, before later

changing it to
insufficient data

for scientific analysis.

[narrator] What is certain

is that this incident happened
near Nellis Air Force Base

just two years
before Charles Hall

claims to have encountered
the Tall White aliens

who were
living there and repairing
their damaged ship.

Could these incidents
be connected?

Could Charles Hall's
fantastical stories be true?

[narrator] In the mid-1960s,

U.S. Airman
Charles James Hall claims

that he lived with
a group of aliens

on Nellis Air Force Base

have prompted curiosity
and mockery in equal measure.

Now let's see if they stand up
to our experts' scrutiny,

or whether there may be
another explanation

for these strange apparitions.

According to Hall's account,

the Tall Whites traveled here
from a planet

some 105 light-years away.

Well, that translates to

700 trillion miles.

So even if you were
traveling at light speed,

that would take you
well over a century.

And that raises
some questions.

[narrator] Hall claimed
that the aliens could

live up to 800 years.

And more importantly,

they found a way to cancel
the force of inertia,

allowing them to fly
at these incredible speeds.

[Eric] Well, first of all,

if you start increasing toward
the speed of light,

your equivalent mass
increases, which means

you need infinite energy
to move you that fast.

And with infinite energy,

you have infinite mass
and inertia.

So to cancel that,

there's no known way to do it.

To cancel that
is the equivalent

of eliminating your mass,

which means
you wouldn't be there.

It contradicts
every known law of physics.

The bottom line here is

he doesn't talk
like a real physicist.

[narrator] But Hall is adamant

that the Tall Whites
traveled here

faster than light speed,

and that it's possible
because Einstein was wrong
in his belief that

nothing in the universe
can travel faster

than the speed of light.

The claim that Einstein
was wrong might be true,

but it requires
an extraordinary
amount of proof.

Where's the proof?

To date, we have found nothing

to dismiss Einstein's ideas.

These theories
have been extensively tested

and have provided
accurate predictions.

They have been confirmed
again and again.

While Einstein's theory

still remained the foundation
of modern physics,

there are some phenomenon

within the quantum realm
or dark energy and dark matter

which it still
can't fully explain.

[narrator] So even if
our current understanding

of physics falls short,

Einstein left us
some wiggle room

for traversing the galaxy.

One of the theories is that
a warp drive could be possible

to create the effect
of faster-than-light travel

without real
faster-than-light travel.

The idea is that

space and time are one thing.

It's called space-time.

And they are shaped
by objects and energy.

So if you have intense mass
or intense energy,

you're gonna warp space-time.

And so space-time itself would

carry you and your vehicle

along with it. And that,
in theory, could happen.

You would not be violating
the relativity.

You would still be traveling
below the speed of light.

In theory,

a wormhole could allow

very fast travel
across vast distances.

And they actually grow out

of Einstein's theories
of relativity.

But there's no evidence

that wormholes
actually do exist.

Or if they did exist,
you could travel through them

without being

squished to death
by the intense gravity
at their core.

[narrator]
Although many obstacles
stand between

our current
scientific knowledge

and the possibility
of interstellar travel,

Eric refuses
to rule it out entirely.

[Eric] I think we have
to be humble.

Just because we don't know

of any theoretical way
this could happen

doesn't mean it didn't happen.

[narrator] In theory,

how could an interstellar
engine operate?

Almost certainly not
as Hall described it.

And if it did malfunction,

could it really be
repaired here on Earth,

as Hall claimed?

So Hall said that the ET's

space drive was broken

and they had to use
our fiber optics to repair it.

But it takes infinite energy

to move at the speed of light.

So it's completely ludicrous
to believe

that they would use
our low-tech fiber optics

to repair their

unimaginably high-tech
space drive.

[narrator]
In fact, NASA scientists

have calculated that
to power the theoretical
warp drive

would require
energy equivalent

to 1.5 million
Hiroshima bombs.

Another element
that undermines Hall's
light speed claims

is the aliens' reliance
on gravitational slingshots.

Hall claims that
they can go faster
than the speed of light.

And Hall also claims
that they had to use

gravitational slingshots
to achieve

great accelerations.

Well, those two things
don't go together

because going faster
than the speed of light

gives you many millions
of times greater velocity

than any
gravitational slingshot.

Therefore, the whole arguments

are inconsistent
and contradictory.

[narrator] Looking at
Hall's other claims,

he said that the alien pilots
had to avoid getting caught

between the Earth and the Moon

for fear of being
blown off course.

He seemed to be saying that
the phase of the Moon,

which is to say where it was
in its orbit around the Earth,

made a difference.

It could make
a slight difference

if you were gonna
approach the Earth

on the side that the Moon was
or on the opposite side.

But those tidal forces
are so negligible

that I can't imagine
they would affect

the trajectory of
a spacecraft made by aliens

capable of
faster-than-light travel.

[narrator] And could
the Tall Whites' home planet

really orbit a twin star?

[Maggie] There are many
binary systems out there,

and we've found exoplanets
orbiting them.

The first of these

was Kepler-16b.

It's a gas giant
the size of Saturn,

experiencing double sunrises

and double sunsets.

This shows

that exoplanets can exist
in very complex systems,

different to those we find
in our own solar system.

[narrator]
And what of his claims

that their planet
remains fixed in its orbit

and is half covered in ice?

[Maggie]
Unlike the other planets
in the solar system,

Uranus actually spins
on its side.

This means that
as it orbits the Sun,

the pole away from the Sun

experiences a long,
dark winter.

This shows us that
there can be planets out there

that can be very different
from our Earth.

[narrator] Hall claims
to have pinpointed

the location
of the alien's home planet

on the 21st line of latitude
in the southern sky.

[Eric] Hall doesn't use terms
that astronomers would use,

and it really calls into
question his credibility.

For example, he talks about
lines of latitude

for positioning
celestial objects,

but those aren't the terms
that astronomers use.

When they talk
about coordinates,

they talk about declination
and right ascension

to describe where something is
in the celestial sky.

[narrator] Wherever they may
have come from,

the Tall Whites' technology
wasn't limited to their ships.

Charles Hall described
their universal translators

and their multi-purpose
microwave weapon.

Eric Haseltine
has spent several years

researching the effects
of microwave radiation

on the brain.

[Eric] The first problem
with his story

about the microwave weapon

is that it's roughly
the size of a pencil.

And microwaves are,
you know, roughly that long.

And when you have
energy that long

coming out of
something thin like that,

it's gonna
spread out uniformly.

It's what we call diffraction.

So if someone were
holding a device like that,

it would radiate them
as much as anybody else.

So that just

does not seem like
a credible microwave weapon.

-[audience applauding]
-[Hall] Oh, thank you.

[narrator] The serious doubt

cast over many
of Hall's claims

suggests his memories were
colored less by science

than by science fiction.

[Christopher]
Charles Hall's experiences
allegedly happened

in the 1960s,

but he didn't write about them
until the 2000s.

So he had a lot of culture
to draw upon

when he was
developing his story.

[narrator] Even Hall's
description of the Tall Whites

seems adapted
from other people's
alien imaginings

rather than
from his own experience.

Hall's description of
the aliens he encountered

combine characteristics of
the Nordics and the Greys,

two alien races that were

featured in UFO stories
around the time

he was developing his tale.

[narrator] Aside from
contemporary accounts
and science fiction,

Hall's vision
of the Tall Whites

may have been influenced
by a text

thousands of years old,
the Old Testament.

[Laurie] There are
many stories of legend

and lore and myth of

tall beings, some giant-like.

Now, the Nephilim

were the offspring

of most likely the Anunnaki,

the sons of the gods.

So the Nephilim

also interbred
with the humans,

creating, again,

tall white beings.

[Christopher] By the time
Hall's story appeared,

people were ready for stories

about military encounters
with aliens.

Close Encounters
of the Third Kind, Area 51,

the Roswell tales,
The X-Files,

all of these things were
available in the culture

at the time, and this story

is an amalgamation
of all of them.

Simply put,

Hall told his story
at the right time.

[narrator] Aliens or not,
perhaps something inexplicable

did happen
to Charles Hall at Nellis,

and over time, his mind
stitched the rest together.

And maybe
that triggering event

was even more insidious
than an alien conspiracy.

The United States government,

and other
world governments as well,

uh, and particularly Russia,
Germany, and China, have

often experimented
with mind control.

I feel that
Charles Hall's particular

psychological profile

lends him

into the category
of high probability

of him being manipulated

and tested on

to see if
he could be controlled.

[narrator] As far-fetched
as it may seem,

the U.S. military
and intelligence agencies

have admitted to having

a psychotronic
research program

throughout the 1970s and 80s,

named the Stargate project.

Which leads us
to the big question.

Is Charles James Hall
a reliable witness?

[Laurie] I believe that
he thinks his story is true.

I think that Charles Hall
has some body language

that indicates he believes
he's telling the truth.

But that doesn't mean
it is the truth.

On several occasions,
Charles was unsure.

And he did question himself

so many times,

and would, you know,

in his own words,

curl up into a fetal position
and go back to sleep.

Or question himself,

"Might I be dreaming?"

[narrator]
Though much of Hall's account
is unverifiable,

many of the details that
can be easily fact-checked

have turned out to be false,

putting his whole story
in question.

He talks about
hacking through the bushes

in order to get
to the alien actor.

And I actually grew up
in the Mojave Desert

not far from there.

And I never had to
hack through bushes

to get anywhere.
It's an arid desert

where the vegetation
is very sparse.

[narrator] One has to wonder,

did Hall even serve
at Nellis Air Force Base?

[Eric] He talked about
a one-star colonel.

Well, there is no such thing
as a one-star colonel.

There are full-bird colonels,

and there are
one-star generals.

Nobody who ever served
in the armed forces

would ever make
a mistake like that.

[narrator] Charles Hall
tells an alien account

rife with unproven details,

but one which stems

from a verifiable,
inexplicable event.

The much-disputed
bolide crash of 1962.

[Eric] Well,

it might have been
a bolide that broke up.

And when it broke up,

some of the fragments
still glowing

and giving off life
changed directions.

Or it might have been
a rocket that,

uh, was sent
into space and then

came back in reentry
and burned up on reentry.

Or it could be some

orbital craft that crashed

through the atmosphere
and broke up into
a lot of pieces.

Bolides and other meteorites

have a very
distinct trajectory,

falling towards the Earth
at very great speeds.

Although it may be possible

for bits to fly off
in different directions,

I cannot see any mechanism

where a bolide could land,

relaunch itself,

and then
continue flying around.

[narrator] Eyewitnesses

reported the object
changing direction.

Even in
less extreme circumstances,

eyewitness accounts
aren't always trustworthy.

[Maggie] I don't know
if you've ever seen the Moon
low on the horizon.

It looks big and bright.

But then when you
look at it later on,

it looks much smaller
in the night sky.

This is because when it's low
on the horizon,

you have other things
relative to it,

so the Moon looks bigger.

But when it's up there
in the night sky,

it looks much smaller
because there's no reference.

This is an example
of the Ponzo effect,

which says that
our perception of things

are disrupted
by what surrounds it.

[narrator] If it was a meteor,

why would the military
scramble jets?

[Eric] If they thought
it was a meteor,

they would not send jets.

But there can be ambiguity

about whether it's
a meteor or not

because a big enough meteor
will show up on radar,

and it might move in a way

like it was
an intercontinental missile.

So they may well have
sent jets out to investigate

if they thought there were
even a possibility

that it was a serious threat.

[narrator]
It's the military's job
to be vigilant and discreet.

[Eric]
You know, the military's
first instinct when

encountering the unknown

is to keep it under wraps,

to keep it secret
for lots of reasons.

But there were
a lot of classified things

that happened
during the Cold War.

For example,
ferret operations.

NATO forces
would sometimes probe

with aircraft,
Soviet defenses,

to just see how they reacted.

And the Soviets
did the same thing to us.

And sometimes
we shot them down,

and sometimes
some of their pilots
were killed.

And it was never talked about
by mutual agreement,

because during the Cold War,
that's just the way it was.

[narrator]
So is it possible that
a Soviet airborne incursion

was targeting Nellis

or some of the many bases
in the area?

Well, Nellis is
an important Air Force base.

A lot of exercises
happen there,

such as Red Flag,

but also there is

a simulated adversary
threat environment there

so that our pilots can train,

uh, against simulated threats.

And there are
various ranges there where

a snoop could see what our
advanced weapons and systems
are doing.

So there are very good reasons
to keep people away

from Nellis that have
nothing to do with aliens.

[narrator] In an area
with top-secret air bases,

it's possible that
the lights in the sky

could have been a mission
or tests that went wrong.

The official explanation
of bolide

doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

[Maggie] Typically, a bolide
will fall towards the Earth

with a steep descent angle.

Factors such as
the size, the mass

and velocity of the bolide

also has an influence,

as does the atmosphere
that it's passing through.

But with all these
different factors,

I can't see a bolide

traveling horizontally

for any significant
amount of time.

Therefore, my conclusion is

this is not a bolide.

When we see
something unexplainable,

our first instinct

should not be
something exotic like aliens.

We should come up with a list
of all the possibilities

that fall in the realm of
known physics and science.

And only when we've
completely exhausted that

do we start looking at

extremely improbable
exotic solutions.

[narrator] As ever,

science demands
irrefutable evidence

for fantastical claims.

But relying on
the testimony of individuals

will always be problematic.

They can be mistaken
or compromised.

In this case,

irrefutable evidence
of Charles Hall's claims

of the Tall Whites at Nellis

can only come from
the United States military.

But the U.S. government,

military
and intelligence agencies

are only now beginning to
open their files to scrutiny.

And as they do so,

new evidence
for the existence of UAPs

has recently come to light.

In 2017,

the U.S. Navy confirmed

the authenticity of two films
shot by their pilots

that appear to show UAPs

sharing many qualities
with the one Herman Shields

claims to have seen
over Las Vegas

before it crash-landed
near Nellis.

Perhaps we do have evidence
of alien vehicles after all.

With all the evidence
assessed and analyzed,

what do our experts make of

Charles Hall's
extraordinary claims

of what happened to him
in the mid-1960s

at Nellis Air Force Base?

[Laurie] I believe that
maybe at one point

he saw something that
might have been anomalous.

There is the possibility

that he witnessed
a test craft flying,

saw one of our own pilots

coming out in some
new form of test suit.

He may have thought
he saw something and let it

fire itself

into the story
that we know today.

[narrator] As ever,
with alien files,

the boundary
between truth and fiction

is constantly shifting.

[Laurie] Well, um,

I actually think that, um,

his body language

in certain areas of his story

indicate that
he does believe himself.

But at one point
he became compliant

and put out a second book
and then a third book.

So he obviously at that point
knew what he was doing.

[narrator]
It's a reoccurring theme
in our alien files.

An encounter with the unknown
and a need to be believed

undermined by an absence
of convincing evidence

and actors
with dubious motives.

[Eric] The fascinating thing
to me about Hall's story

is what it tells us
about human nature.

When we're faced with
something we can't explain,

it really
makes us uncomfortable,

because we can't predict it
and we can't control it.

So we have to come up with

some explanation that
at least makes sense of it.

So we come up
with ET and aliens.

And it really says a lot more
about our anxieties

and insecurities

than it says about
the reality of ETs.

[narrator] Truth or lies,

fact or fiction,

Charles Hall seemed convinced
of what he saw,

but he has no proof.

Like many of the claims
of interactions with ET,

they're based on
little evidence.

Is it possible?

Yes, anything's possible.

But there has to be more

to substantiate
that such encounters
actually took place.

I also think

that a civilization that has
the ability to travel here

would have contingencies
without requiring human help.

On the other hand,

I personally do think

some sightings of UAPs

are very real
and worthy of investigation.

[narrator]
Only now are we getting

the official documentation
and detail we require

to examine claims like Hall's

with the rigor
and depth they deserve.

It may be that the Tall Whites

were a figment
of an overactive

or manipulated imagination.

But even if they were,
the weight of evidence

for the existence
of UAPs and UFOs

is mounting by the day.

Elected officials are
beginning to ask questions.

Government secrecy
is being called into question.

Whistleblowers are
breaking cover.

Classified documents
are leaking out.

The truth is out there.

But are we ready for it?