All right, welcome to the Row Hospital point. I am here with Adam
Kehoe and no relation to Donald Keyhoe. I've been working with, you know,
writing about Donald key Hooe for so many years that I misspelled your name
in a few places, So I apologize for that. I appreciate that that's
an increasingly common question in my life right now about Donald key Hooe. I
bet we're no relation. Different spelling, fairly common Irish surname, but no,
we're no relation. Yeah. I did have a few people asking when
I did post this, But of course you have your PhD and information science
as you've got on. I kind of stoled your Twitter bio there. You
have an interest in AI data science and defense policy issues, the latter of
which I think it's probably been your inspiration for getting involved with all of the
interesting policy issues that arise when they begin to ask for you pay reports from
the different intelligence agencies. But I would like to hear from you yourself.
You know what is that? When did you first kind of decide to start
to look into this and blog about it? Sure? Well, I think
like a lot of people with an interest in science, I mean, it's
always been in at least my peripheral vision growing up, you know, stories
of UFOs and things like that. You know, I never had a sighting
or anything like that myself, and I think, like many people, around
twenty seventeen, the issue really started coming up on my radar, particularly as
we got more and more details about the Knimets case. So the more I
learned about nimics, the more it seemed to me that, you know,
there's really four broad categories of explanation, and so often, you know,
people get lost in the debate about what it was right, what it is
that we sort of forget to take a step back and think about, well,
what are the implications for all of the different alternatives, what would what
would be true if it turned out to be, you know, one thing
or another, And so that that really concerned me greatly. And you know,
I think my my first piece, which kind of laid out what the
implications are in each one of these scenarios, was kind of my entrance into
this topic. And then from there, as I've learned more, it's just
become more and more interesting and fascinating. Really, I mean, I think
the interesting thing from a defense perspective about UFOs is that they involve the unknown,
right, they're on the very edge of what we understand, what we
can easily identify, I mean, by definition, we can't identify them.
Uh, and so a lot of interesting things fall into that category. So
that's that's what, you know, sort of got my my interest mm hmm.
And I do want to I'm going to share the screen here and bring
up your website. I just want to show it to everybody where you have
your articles, because I highly highly recommend that people go there. Just blog
dot Adam keyho e h o e dot com uh Strategic Doubt, and they
can see of your article, all of which I've found really fascinating. And
we'll get into these topics, I guess first off, you know, it
was always it was interesting to me, and I feel this is a real
kind of strange policy issue. When I first started getting involved with this,
or at least, I decided to become a field investigator for the Mutual UFO
Network just to kind of speak firsthand with witnesses who saw things. At this
time, you know, I was just out of journalism school or you know,
fairly fresh out of it, and I was a bit skeptical about the
whole topic. So I wanted to see, you know, how convinced these
these witnesses and how credible are they. The very first one I had was
a someone who just came from Iraq. He was working security at a bank.
He had gone outside seeing this weird object near Lookout Mountain in Colorado outside
of Denver, and there are a lot of commercial airplanes that go over.
I called the FAA. I called, you know, a lot of different
organizations, and essentially they told me they're not interested in the FAA in particular,
told me to talk to Bigelow or you know, this other small UFO
research organization that is manned by one person who would just essentially log it in
Washington, Newfork for those of you who know that group. And it was
weird that, you know, here's a guy ex military, he's used to
reporting things that are of you know, you would think would be something that
could pose a danger in this pace, in this case the commercial airliner,
and that was his concern. But they didn't even want to take the report.
It seemed almost you know, medieval or something that that because of the
taboo of UFOs, they were ignoring a potentially important, you know, piece
of intelligence that could you know it could have been civilian technology that was posing
a threat. That seems like a real weird policy stance, don't you think.
I do? I do, And I think that a lot of people
have an impression that the government is this monolithic, super powerful thing that is
omniscient and can track absolutely everything and is on top of every kind of report
that might be coming out. But I don't think that's actually the case.
You know, the government is this incredibly complicated thing with many different aspects.
It doesn't often agree with itself, and things certainly do fall in the cracks,
And I think that, you know, these sorts of unknown aerial sightings
are very much one of those things that not many are particularly incentivized to look
at closely. And you know, the story you just told, I think
is a great example, you know that playing out. And that's one of
the things I've written about recently is that, you know, as we go
into the next ten twenty three years, we can expect that this eye is
going to become a busier, more complex space. They're going to be more
unusual things as drone technology proliferates. So having this kind of stilted cultural language
to describe you know, strange sightings. It's always been dangerous, but it's
becoming more acutely dangerous that things don't get reported, or when they do,
when they are reported, they aren't taken seriously. I think it's a real
problem and something that needs to be examined. Mm hmm. And it seems
that, you know, one way to kind of deal with the taboo is
the adoption of this term UAP. I know Nick Pope likes to say that
the Ministry of Defense first adopted that, but I think it actually might have
been Newfork, a different organization headed by scientists that looked at commercial airline.
They lay claim to the term also, but it was a term used early
on to move away from the term UFO, which comes with all this baggage
and is typically used to mean alien spacecraft. But it almost seems as though,
and I've always thought that that this, this evolution to this new term
wouldn't work because you kind of need to rebrand the concept in that that baggage
seems to have followed them because we still get you know, in the daily
conversations in the media especially you know UAP now meaning little gray men, right,
I think that's exactly right. I think substituting one word or term for
another doesn't solve the root problem, which is a kind of maturity problem to
be able to look at this head on to discuss it. And you know,
something I argued recently is that almost assuredly, you know, if you
look at the pile of unknown cases, right, there's there's a fair amount
of misidentification in there. I don't think that's particularly controversial to say there's probably
some secret black budget programs in there, you know, particularly when people are
seeing things like some of the black triangles. You know, that can be
any number of different area craft. And then you know there's likely some foreign
adversary in there as well, particularly in terms of some of the drone incursions
that have been reported. There's I think at least some reason to think some
of that is foreign intelligence services probing and things of that nature. And then
finally, yes, there are some cases that are really strange. They're just
there's no other way to characterize them. That they're extremely strange. They're hard
to resolve, and so what you know, we've got to look at that
right like we look at any other issue. And I think until we kind
of have a cultural reckoning with that, it's going to be hard to escape,
you know, the kind of giggle factor, or I think even more
pernicious just replacing every time we encounter UAP and then doing the mental substitution of
that means alien or you know that means acts or why so a little bit
less of the debate about what is you know, each particular thing, but
about you know, all of these things kind of together and what they mean
collectively. Mm hmm, right. And I think that's where, uh,
I don't know if maybe the dear these hesitant to join in on this conversation,
but they're going to have to that they feel, at least I read
in their messages or messaging that they kind of feel that, Well, we're
the military. Of course we consider UAPs potentially or largely to be drones or
other man made aircraft. But I don't think the public gets that, and
I don't at What I've kind of been advocating for is that we all have
to educate the public and make sure they under unidentified. The U in UFO
or UAP means unidentified means we don't know. We're looking into it because we
just don't know. And that seems to be a campaign. Kind of to
your point that that you could mean these four different categories of I'm not just
one and the duds or any military in the world, isn't it sensitive delegate
position in handling these things, because none of them are particularly great from from
their perspective, So if you're talking about a misidentification, there's some potential for
embarrassment there, and there's also some potential for revealing vulnerabilities things that don't sort
of work well in current sensor systems, So admitting that you you know,
you couldn't identify something as a bit problematic. And then obviously in the other
categories, it comes to either revealing your own capabilities, which you don't want
to do, or revealing what you know about others capabilities in terms of foreign
adversary. And then when we get to the final category, which I think
is you know, the most difficult, it's just so strange, it's just
so far outside the realm of what they're accustomed to dealing with that, you
know, I'm not sure that there's a kind of vocabulary to deal with those
cases. And also there's you're always reserving doubt of what if this is some
sort of breakthrough project of some kind. I can understand and actually even sympathize
a little bit with a reluctance to deal with that. But nonetheless we have
to be able to have the conversation because the cost of not having the conversation
is the stigma, which leads to missed intelligence opportunities and all sorts of different
things. And that's assuming that this is all forsak, which if it's not,
then there's a whole other kettle of fish. Yeah, And you know,
it's funny because as you say these things that dozens of questions come to
mind, because really I think tackling each of those categories, you know,
are very big topics. So for instance, you know, reading just this
week or just last night about the Mola report and the counterintelligence report that the
the Senate Select Committee on lou called it sissy in my last interview the SSC,
I, you know, in that the manner in which counterintelligence works,
which is very heavy towards what you were mentioning. You don't want to tip
your hand. You don't want to tip your hand as that you recognize that
this might be foreign technology. You don't want them to know what we know
that they have, nor do you want to tip your hand towards technologies we
have because we don't want them to know what we have, which kind of
you know, it caused difficulty with the with the molar you know, the
investation into the Russian interference in the election. But of course it also pertains
to this topic because it puts them really in a difficult situation in that they
really it seems to me and I've always felt that this would be a difficult
thing for blue Book two. You know, if it ever came out,
how do they categorize because they really can't categorize. They can't definitively say,
oh, we figured out this was just ours. If that's the case,
you know, it's something that we're working on, then they're tipping their hand
towards information that's classified that we really don't want out there. Right. Absolutely,
it is an incredibly, like I said, delicate position to be in,
and they have a lot to weigh in making those kinds of decisions.
You know, it's interesting hearing people talk about blue Book I actually think that
with the Senate Intel developments, it might be better to look at the Post
nine to eleven report, or even the post Iraq War Invasion intelligence Review as
a model for that. And one of the reasons I say that is Chris
Mellon obviously in that you know, I hate to characterize anyone's career, but
nine to eleven in Iraq, we're really quite central for him, And as
kind of the architect of that policy moment, I think the idea is that
you do a one time, relatively short, comprehensive review that's primarily designed for
the government, so we know from earlier versions of the language, the kind
of draft language that originally he envisioned, a process that may or may not
be fully public, like there might be a purely you know, classified component
of it, UH, with the intent of you map out all these issues,
you find the gaps and the vulnerabilities, and you do it in the
legislative branch exactly so that you can then go and make new law, or
reset priorities, or do whatever you need to do to fix the problem.
And yes, you let the public know about it as a matter of public
confidence, but the primary design is to make sure that the intelligence system is
working properly, you know. And I think someone who's you know, his
life experience has shown him the intelligent system not working properly, you know,
in two really conspicuous moments in history. So to me, I think that
is the kind of DNA of the Senate Intel report, and I think,
you know, it's it's tough sometimes in eupology, where there's a tendency to
just look at the UFO cases and we've got what seventy years of them,
but it's important to take a step back and look at the wider world because
you know, all of this has a context that goes, you know,
far apart beyond UFOs. It has everything to do with our political a moment,
our geostrategic moment, you know, all of these things all at once.
Mm hmmm. I think you make a lot of very very good points,
and now I want to get back to to the point you just made.
But there is a question, someone says, and I think you've demonstrated
quite a bit of this already, but they ask, silly humans asks,
how does Adam apply his expertise to the field and what have his recent articles
been about? And why? Well, that's that's a it's a really good
question and it's going to be hard to answer very concisely. I'd recommend him
having a little bit the site. So in a weird way, you could
read my first article on there in my last article on there and it would
be a good look. And so most of what I do right now is
analysis. So I take the data and developments that are coming out and I
try to place them in context, right, so I try to connect them
to other bits of history, bits a policy and politics, and to kind
of try to show some of the workings of government and the kinds of questions
that you know that come up. But you've given me actually a really nice
opportunity to talk about hopefully what I what I'm planning to do more of in
the future. So I'm actually working with Tim McMillan, who's been a guest
and I'm sure at least a couple of times here, to partner on some
stories where we kind of combine his really incredible investigative skill with some data science
projects. So there are quite a few places where there is a data out
there that can be examined and aviation and so on, and so we're working
together to hopefully not you know, at least for my part, just analyze
news, but hopefully eventually to make some down the road. Now you know,
getting back into your expertise, which I think that you've demonstrated in that
observation of policy and how policy has made and how particular players had fit into
that historically. In particular, Chris Mellon is a really good point in that
it is a similar situation in that we had a major issue that happened that
demonstrated we had intelligence gathering problems, which is kind of what they're facing now,
and that at least in Chris Mellon's eyes, and I wouldn't believe he's
alone in this, but who knows what the people who actually do these jobs
day by day, phil, but that this represents another intelligence gathering problem and
certainly that's the way that it was framed by the SSCI. I think when
they wrote their request that you know, there's disjointed there's no central location where
this material is all captured and analyzed to kind of get a sense of the
situation, which is what they've requested and what hopefully will happen, and it
seems to be happening. But in that sense, you know, we also
have the a tip that it existed, you know, the program Advanced Aerospace
Threat Identification Program that Louise Elizondo was a part of and potentially a tip being,
you know, event continuing on as this UAP Task Force. Either way,
we now have this UAP Task Force apparently at least since June. That
was the first time they kind of referred to it that I'm aware of to
Roger Glassel, a researcher. And then you know, we have this recent
essentially press release saying that, yeah, we did establish this officially on August
fourth, and it exists in that sense. Then do you feel that perhaps
the UAP Task Force is more of a tool to create this report or something
that will continue on or potentially create a report and then it'll be determined whether
or not they continue on a role they play. That's an excellent question and
one I can't really amd. I mean, my suspicion, based on what
we know so far is that it's largely a continuation, a continuity of previous
efforts. I think that Alizondo and Melon and TTSA have have played a successful
role as a forcing function to essentially say this is under resourced, it needs
to be taken more seriously. So I think that that already seemed to have
been happening I mean only only insiders was known for sure, and then certainly
the Senate Intel Developments just puts an exclamation point on all of that because it
does create a responsibility to eventually have this report. I don't think that the
current effort is designed solely to produce the report, you know, particularly because
the language, the Senate language references some precursor of whatever this effort was,
So I think that there was an awareness that it existed, was doing some
work. But yeah, I mean I think that again, you know,
whenever you see references to things like strategic surprise, like in policy terms,
is like a primal screen, right, this is really serious, deep national
security stuff. So I think that there's a seriousness now, you know,
and attending to this mm hmm, now that you've kind of dipped your toes
in the UFO Twitter world and you've kind of seen what goes on in kind
of the UFO community. Uh, it's there seems to be a major disconnect
to the end, and you're kind of highlighting that and it really hasn't been
voiced in that Chris Mellan, I guess has somewhat gone there, but that
you know, when you're talking about strategic you know, blind spots. Chris
Mellan is bringing up issues that are gaps in our real world current government that
could be problems that you know, like the Intelligence Committee needs to be aware
of the committee he worked for, you know, in the past, that
he's familiar with, Whereas the UFO community is kind of looking at this,
Oh, finally we're going to learn about Roswell and all these other things,
and they seem to not really get it with those parts. So even Mellon
had said when he recommended this this report or this you know, attempt to
get more information about UAPs, he suggested it be classified and it would likely
need to remain classified for reasons we outlined earlier, most likely, which is
kind of you know, the UFO community wants, of course, more transparency.
They don't want this to remain classified. So it does seem like completely
different goals and ideas of what will be happening or what this major goal is,
and that seems to cause a lot of problems and misinterpretation, not just
with the UFO community, but the media who seems to be confused about that
as well. Yeah, and it should really be an issue for the scientific
community as well. So I think one of the things that concerned me early
on is that the understandable security issues and secrecy issues surrounding this means that a
very small group works on it, and generally science, a particularly modern science,
doesn't thrive in those conditions. You need large teams. You need you
know, multiple perspectives on a particular problem. So, particularly for those really
really hard problems, you know, the ones that as far as we know,
have gone unsolved for what fifteen sixteen years, You're just not going to
solve those with you know, four people or or whatever it may be.
You're going to need a wider perspective. And to be sure, you know,
the DoD has a lot of scientific power and technical power, there's no
doubting that. But at the same time, if you have a hard enough
problem, you know, you need more eyes. So I think that there
there's a need for transparency. Actually, I do agree with parts of the
UFO community quite strongly about that, because without at least some transparency, without
at least some you know, responsible production of data, if it can be
done, it's just not going to move forward from a from a scientific perspective.
And if it doesn't move forward, you know, I've said this before,
but fifteen years is a long time to be surprised, right if we're
talking about strategic surprise, that that in of itself is alarming that something so
significant has gone, you know, so long unsolved. So there is some
overlap I think, you know, to those that want to throw open the
doors or in many cases, they may be convinced that there's a particular solution
and they think there's a particular secret that's that's actively being held. Well,
I mean, I don't know, right, maybe, but you know,
I think it keeps It's worth bearing in mind that there are a lot of
things to deal with this issue, and there's a lot of reasons why it
may sometimes have to proceed a bit more cautiously than people would like, right,
And you know, I think that people get upset, at least in
the UFO community when the idea of drone is brought up or uass on unmanned
aerial systems. But that actually seems to be maybe one of the major issues
that this organization's you know, jumping leaps and bounds, not only in the
hands of our adversaries, but in the general public who you know, in
cases just being foolish or not knowing the rules accidentally. You know, we
have this incident in Colorado where the war Zones covered it. D Johnson has
covered it, and they still don't know where all of these you know,
drones that seemed to you know, and it happened in Arizona. And that's
actually it was a story I wrote a couple of years ago. It was
happening throughout you seemingly, you know, flying over nuclear facilities, in power
plants, and people are concerned, you know, in Europe there major concerned
is what if these were terrorists, you know, they could cause major problems.
And so that seems to be something that would be quite a tax to
track all of that and to understand, you know, who's drones, CIEs
ares are there, theirs are there ours. Not only is it a difficult
task to keep track of all of them, but it seems to be vital
to security to do this. I think this is a massive issue. I
think Johnson and then the war Zones coverage of it has been essential and alarming.
I think it's actually something we should all be paying more attention to.
I forget the exact number of cases. I think it's on the order of
about fifty that that Johnson found in his reporting, and only five had been
resolved. These were specifically reactor cases of things flying over reactors that weren't identified.
That's a major major problem. Someone asked earlier, you know, what
do I write about? Actually I write quite a bit about the security issues
involved in that particular bit of reporting recent peace. You know, as far
as you know, sensitivity is to talking about drones. I think there's an
understandable sensitivity in the UFO community due to years of you know, neglect and
taboo and stigma and all of that, that anything that isn't dealing with the
most difficult cases is deflection or some kind of flavor of ridicule. And I
get that sensitivity, of course. But on the other hand, I think,
just realistically, we've got to realize that again, in that pile of
unknown cases, it's just the way it works that most of them are going
to be misidentification, some of them are going to be drones, and you
know, and a few are these really spectacular cases that everyone gets excited about.
And I think it's important to get to not get to exercise about that
that when you know, unsurprisingly we find one case sure is a is a
misidentification or a drone that doesn't throw everything out. You know, you have
to work each case individually. That's another point I mean recently, is that
resolving one case does not resolve all of them simultaneously. So I just want
to make that point that if you hear me talking about drones, it's not
to reduce or to eliminate the strange cases, but rather to just kind of
deal with the data that we have in front of us mm hmmm. Which
I think it's going to be a learning curve for the general public. Is
if we start to hear a lot of stories about drones and investigation of drones
in this U a p task for us, which seems appropriate, uh,
And that that doesn't necessarily uh. And I can see the headlines now you
know it turns out UFOs are all drones. You know, that won't be
the case necessarily even if we do, and we should be prepared that we
may hear a lot of type of things from this this group and that's not
necessarily a bad thing, right, And that what we're trying to do,
it's solve you know, unidentified cases. And I think it's it's actually really
important to know when it's a drone. I mean, for someone who's had
a stream sighting, I'm sure you don't want to walk around thinking it's,
you know, it was this this profound thing and then it turns out to
be a drone. You want to know the truth, whatever, whatever that
truth is. But then on the other hand, I understand there there are
plenty of people that say everything is a drone, right, Everything that's stranger
somehow must be a drone. It's like the replacement for for the UFO in
some respect, and that's you know that that doesn't pass muster either. Again,
it gets back to this this problem of nuance that I think is really
important. And I think the more nuanced anyone can be with an interest in
this field the better, because it's already charged with, you know, so
much history and emotion and everything. Mm hmm. The other topic I wanted
to bring up, which I know is very curious for you and it was
for me as well, is that latest New York Times article that kind of
brought into the mix UFO crashes, which was kind of strange, a strange
in many fronts. I'm not even sure it. My only guess is to
why that even happened was to kind of playcate perhaps that that side of the
UFO community that wants to know more about Roswell and some of these other things.
But the problem was it kind of introduced some very speculative, uh and
kind of you know, essentially hearsay, a second third hand source type of
information, whereas so far we had been working with some very good, you
know, credible information and data, you know, firsthand witnesses like like jet
fighter pilots. That seemed to be kind of strange. Yeah, it was
certainly a departure from the previous stories, and you know, I want to
be careful and respectful of the times, respectful of the reporters. I know
they're professionals and you know they and they're invested in these stories, clearly,
I think. Yeah, there were a few issues. There were the obvious
things that I think we all talked about. So some of them were the
decision to paraphrase or the thing to quote, and you know, those things
I think proved to be probably the most conspicuous there there were other issues there.
So to kind of rewind in our conversation earlier about blue Book versus nine
to eleven, as a model the nine to eleven report. If you the
mistake there about having a report every six months instead of in six months is
actually a little bit more significant. So it's it's a missed opportunity there to
recognize that the idea isn't we're going to have, you know, a rolling
update on how things are going in the world of UFOs, but rather that
there's going to be this intensive not necessarily whole of government, but the whole
of the ICE and National security apparatus really working on this thing for short period
to find where the problems are and then aggressively attack it. It's just a
different a different animal than I think that it was characterized there, and that
may seem like a small mistake, you know to the casual repeater reader.
You know they said every you know, twice a year, you know,
repeating report instead at once. Well you unpack it there. There's quite a
bit more there. I think that the other thing that stood out to me,
just from a perspective of science reporting is that it's always good to have
a expert in a field who's not necessarily directly involved in the work at hand
to comment. That's something that journalists often get wrong. With science coverage is
that they go and they talk to someone who discovered something and they get their
particular take on it. And of course that person, you know, is
really excited by their discovery and they have a reason they want to talk it
up. So you need to talk to other experts in the field. And
this is actually where I have a ton of sympathy for them as reporters,
because how do you do that? Here? Right there? There there's a
level of secrecy where it's difficult to go and get some you know, materials
science engineer or you know, a material science person to to comment. But
I you know, I think that that kind of effort to balance a little
bit more would have been helpful because in scientific efforts, it really never comes
down to, you know, one person say so, I think there's a
little bit of that idea that it's just just one person who's the expert.
It really rarely works that way. So yeah, I mean, you're you're
right. It was a departure. It was striking when it came out.
I think it surprised a lot of people. It certainly surprised me, and
it'll be it'd be really interesting to see where it goes from here. Mm
hmmm. The way Chris Mellon framed it is that it provided in those briefings,
uh leads for the Senate Intelligence Committee, which kind of essentially for the
dial report that should be coming out at some point, because it does seem
like, you know, they are moving forward with all of the that will
before, which should have all of the historic at least publicly consumable what we'll
see historic information regarding potential of materials. Yeah, well, I mean listen,
I mean, if if there are materials, then let's examine them,
right, and you know who knows what they are. But certainly if and
we're talking about doctor Eric Davis here and aroundabout way, if if Davis had
doctor Davis had examined these things and found them to be interesting, then clearly
at some point along the way they had them in their custody and they were
able to do some sort of work on them. So it should be possible
to do that again. So I'm all for if they think they found something
that has odd properties, of course, you know, let's look at it.
But I think with something with such a heavy kind of charge behind it,
it would be wise to do that work in advance and report on it
rather than to kind of anticipate what, you know, what the report might
say. Hmm, yeah, right. And I think and and I kind
of asked these questions too, and it kind of does relate to blue books
in that the idea of transparency. Will this or will this be as transparent
as hoped Hill the u AP Task Force be as transparent? You know,
I wrote up recently kind of the problem with the d O D Public Affairs
Office and and the responses they've given us thus far of the Pentagon project A
tip and I have these today that perhaps there will be more information that is
along the lines of some of the things that have demonstrably been wrong that they've
said in the past. If that continues, or if that happens, let's
say, in the next few days, it doesn't bote for the type of
I guess relationship that this organization might have with the public in the future.
Yeah, that's that's a question worth asking, is how the public relation aspect
of this will work. I mean, as I said previously, I think,
just judging by the draft LANK which before we you know, saw what
the Senate Intel Committee ultimately produced, it really I think was designed as an
intergovernmental process primarily, So let's fix the problem on the inside and you know,
get things working as it should and then along the way, you know,
we're going to try to do what we can for public confidence. I
think because of all the things we mentioned at the start of our conversation,
all the trick wires you run into and talking about this, so it may
be the case that realistically, the the you know, the public perception of
it is not the top priority national security is. And that's that's hard for
all of us watching this issue and caring about it, because of course we
want to be informed, and like I said, there's a good reason why
we need to be informed actually, but nevertheless, they're going to have to
balance you know, this equation, and you know, some parts of that
may be less than satisfying for us, right, and yeah, what's been
that kind of the theme of the conversation. But at the same time,
you know, they have real world issues to you know, some very important
national security issues to tend with here and too arguably should be consideration committally or
primarily anyway, even if it does disappoint some of us in the outside who
want to know more. Yeah, So one of the things that I've written
about. That's kind of on the opposite of this, because we've been saying,
well, there might be a need to kind of keep the information limited,
and you know, it may be very quiet and so on. I
mean, arguably there could be a reverse dynamic down the road. So let's
say that Christopher Mellen's basically right. You know that there's been bureaucratic in transigency.
The issue just hasn't been dealt with, and that some of these really
strange cases are exotic, whatever that might mean, and there is a recognition
of that at some point, and it does become at least in some measure
of public Well, you know, you're looking at very constrained options at that
point, because if you then decide not to investigate, not to communicate about
it, you're essentially playing right into the conspiracy and kind of cover up ideas
that I don't think will be tolerable at that point in time. And then,
on the other hand, you have now this acute question of what to
do about it, and that is a really serious and hard problem. I
mean, as far as we know, in all of the strange reports,
these things are pretty evasive that they don't seem like they're particularly interested in having
any kind of of an exchange. We don't can't predict when or where they're
going to be. So even if we can admit it, what do we
do, What do we actually do? You know, in the weeks or
months after, say, you know, Melan is proven to be correct about
this, It's a real dilemma and it opens up all kinds of problems in
terms of the way that the public might react to that news and what an
information we may have available to us at that point. So, you know,
as much as it sounds like this is all kind of boring national security,
the reality on the other side is, you know, there could be
some really I mean, it's it sort of feels, at least from my
advantage, I'm newer to this, I'm newer to these ideas. It's head
spinning, you know, to think about those sorts of things and to write
about right, And that's I think where the challenge is. And I guess
what's interesting about this conversation because you know, putting yourself in their shoes,
and of course I'm always thinking about the pr side of things. How do
you unicate with the public on this issue? That's a really difficult topic,
especially when you're contending with national's you know, classification, you know, counterintelligence.
It's really difficult to do that, and especially with fear or meant has.
We do have a few indications where they've kind of encouraged the idea of
UFOs to cover up projects. You know, we've heard this with the ox
cart Pro YouTube program stuff out of Area fifty to believe they're UFOs. H
Uh, that's really I don't know how they're they deal with. Yeah,
we've got a little bit of a delay here, so hopefully I caught you.
Yes, I mean that this is a really hard problem. I I
sort of suspect that there may be a situation where they have a great deal
of data, meaning they have more videos, they've got radar, they've got
whatever other capabilities they have, but they may not necessarily have more information.
So what I mean by that is, for all of those videos and all
of that data, it may be hard to kind of make hazard tails of
what's in them. In other words, that maybe just about as perplexed as
the rest of us. So then if that is the case, then how
do you communicate that to the public, that that really the secret is a
lack of knowledge, a lack of understanding of what you're dealing with, particularly
from institutions that are charged with you know, definitively no not just knowing what's
going on, but but defending us against you know, whatever things maybe out
there. So yeah, it's it's uh, that's why I say where it's
it's dizzying to think about the way this chessboard looks. If you're the person
in charge of national security, I think that you know what might be SETI,
or at least the SETI Institute in tackling very something that used to be
seeing this ringe not anymore astrobiology that the name, and even with NASAs.
So perhaps you know something like that can a bit where there are things saying
that what a group of scientists you know, working diligently here it out.
Yeah, I think Steudy is something that is certainly important. I think also
as underappreciated. But there's a parallel effort called medi of messaging extraterrestrial intelligence.
So scientists that think about how could you make a comprehensible message to another species
that doesn't perhaps share anything really with you in common? You know, and
and again you know this is a bit speculative. But if there is something,
you know, really truly strange out there, then we may be confronted
with that problem of how exactly do you communicate? How do you do that
in practice? It's actually a very specific technical problem. It's not as easy
as just sort of waving out the window, right. So, and there
are really fascinating debates within that community. So there tend to be medi scholars
who are anthropologists and historians and people with humanities backgrounds, and then there are
you know, physicists and computer scientists, and the physicists and computer scientists generally
tend to be on the side of we can build up communication through mathematics and
we can actually communicate very complex things in that way. And many of the
anthropologists and linguists and so on are skeptical of that, and they say,
sure, you know, you can show that you're intelligent, but how do
you go from mathematics to being able to talk meaningfully about society or culture or
ethics or you know, many of the things that you know, we might
want to communicate about. So those are very real, you know, live
debates in that community, and something probably the public hasn't really looked at much.
But you know, boy, that could be very very relevant, you
know, depending how how these efforts go. Another difficult policy days not seem
to be not necessarily policy, but seemed to be unwritten, and has talked
about when he worked at the Ministry of Defense, working at the UFO desk,
how they would use spinning dirties and other words where if they're asked about
a UFO case, they make a joke of it and then the media runs
with that and then does look more deeply into their uh what they're acting,
which is taking some of these issues seriously. I think certainly you can see
a parallel in the way that we've dealt it here in the United States,
perhaps, you know, looking especially when I wrote my latest are you know
looking at the the the d O D has responded to Alizondo came coming out
and exposing a tip. Uh it seems that kind of is the rule,
and it seems like it's it's nature do that and are we be able to
have a credible gift from that sort of response to you know, more open
transparent. Hey, you know your friend and we're your partner and looking into
all of this. Yeah, I mean I think we're we're seeing that sort
of transition now, you know, and I think that's what many are trying
to do. And so, you know, I credit very much journalists like
Tim McMillan and m jbn Iisen so many others for giving this, you know,
serious coverage and not not you know, treating it as kind of the
wacky story of the week or whatever is it often gets characterized as unfortunately,
and I think, you know, the media history is really really interesting.
So a piece I wrote a while back now was about the history of the
Undish and Chorus incident, uh and the way that that was handled in the
press. And so in brief, so eupologists that was actually an international team
of euthologists from what I understand, work through Foya you know and other beans
to develop that case, and we're quite successful. They got documents sort of
in hand, and then when they went to their colleague in the press to
get to get to get the story out, they went to a newspaper that
had a huge amount of circulation but was kind of known for more salacious types
of stories. They were able to break real news, but they focused on
the more kind of exciting side. Well, that newspaper chose to write it
up in the most exciting possible version, but maybe not the best supported by
the facts, so they got it's a classic case in journalism of getting out
over your skis, and so predictably what happened was all the other papers knocked
the story down because they didn't want to see that they've been scooped on this
major thing, and it made the sort the story look silly very quickly,
and then the general sense was, well, there's nothing to it, right,
and then then the case died. We know from the kind of Condine
documents the UK's effort to look at these issues years later, there was some
reason to think that those events were significant. So this pattern, you know,
plays out over and over that there's an appetite in the public for the
more exciting aspects of these stories, and that appetite can actually be destructive to
the topic because it can lead you to again telling that most exciting version rather
than kind of the conservative but best factually supported version. So part of the
answer to that is that journalists need to be careful. We need to know
that tendency and to have it in mind. I think that learning from history
basically is the best answer I can think of at the moment to you know,
to your question of how we deal with this? Yeah, there,
you know, you're an article that brought up another great point and which I
think you know more to it now since you've written the article. It's the
Air Force. All of the you know, when it came to previous UFO
research projects, they were headed by the air The Air Force has always been
kind of the go to on this topic, but they've been practically nowhere to
be found. They did a you know, there was Tim McMillan, you
know that article about uh, the Air Force did investigate at those videos.
That's about all that we've heard them. And O n I, the Navy
Intelligence is in charge of all of this. That seems pretty strange as well.
It does. It does. I mean that that is kind of one
of the central policy mysteries here is why is the you know, the military
branch, that's his mission, it is to defend the sky is not more
involved you know, in these in this particular set of issues. Yeah,
it is. It is a It is a fascinating question. So one of
the things I wrote about one one of the surprising things if you compare the
language that that that Melon drafted and put out publicly, and then what's in
the actual Senate Intel report is that the Senate Intel Reports timeline is far more
aggressive. It's it's for if I recall correctly, it's his third as long
as what Melon had suggested. And one I so that it raises the question
right of why why that fast? Surely it was more time to do the
job. And I kind of lay out that if the problem you're trying to
solve is bureaucratic in transigence, one solution to that might be you give it
almost impossible to meet deadline that they're going to have to work really really quickly
to fulfill, because it will exactly show you who's moving slowly. When eventually
the Director of National Intelligence the DNI is sitting in the chair before the Senate,
that person is going to have to have an answer. They're going to
have to be able to support it. And if they're asked you know,
why couldn't you get better answers, they're going to need to identify someone.
And the argument that I made is that the Air Force is at a high
risk of being that entity that gets designated as the slow party, and they
don't want to do that they don't have to do that. I think they
actually have an opportunity if they'd like to be more active. I think they
can use this issue to showcase their incredible technological ability. There's new leadership in
the Air Force right now, so it's good timing from that perspective, and
I think that on the other hand, if it doesn't, if it doesn't
rise to the moment, it has the risk of seeding leadership to the Navy,
which is not great along any number of dimensions in terms of budgets,
but also just to the imagination of future recruits. Do you really want to
lead this really interesting area to another branch because that young person that's interested in
science and technology, they're going to want to go to the Navy because that's
where the interesting things are happening, you know, not the Air Force.
So I hope they realize that they have an opportunity also a risk, and
that they really grab the issue. Another gamble they all have to make us
to kind of gauged Publicterst also argued that perhaps the DoD you know, miss
miss that that they had felt there wasn't enough public interest that this would go,
you know, very far, and that's why they creat these dubious claims
to begin with, they just thought, you know, know, business as
usual, it's been in dirty tricks. We give them an ant, they
write their stories and they go away to story that hasn't gone away, and
that could be sort of you know, gamble that they might be thinking right
now, maybe the Air Force is thinking, well, once a report comes
out, they might highlight us as one of the problematic organizations. Who isn't
all But are they really going to push us on it? Right? Well,
to that, I would say, you know what percentage of scientists and
engineers that you know are fans of science fiction and are interested in, you
know, all of these kinds of issues, right, It's a very high
percentage. And those people are plenty mature enough to realize that, you know,
fiction is fiction, but you know, there are these strange cases that
we can't resolve. I mean, that's that's the other thing. So we
can even put the fiction's part of the popular culture part of it aside.
Just a mystery, just a scientific mystery that is precise would get scientists and
engineers out of bed in the morning, is to solve those kinds of things.
So I would say that That would be a pretty profound, you know,
miscalculation to think that the public just doesn't care or it's just a small
group of people. Boy, just look at movies recently and I think you'll
see a whole lot of people are very interested, right And I would agree,
and you know, and it becomes interesting though, you know, the
role that the election plays in this. I mean, has that come up
with Biden or Kamala who comes to Senate Intelligence Committee? You know, our
people behind the scenes. This might be a Brian Bender question because he insight
in this arena, Brian Benner being the political writer who was Defense and Space
editor for Political when he started writing this now in your Correspondent. But you
know, what is the type for all of this? Is she on board
in this? You know, putting, you know, getting this information?
You know, even and the DNI changes, fit changes, if the intation
changes. Oh, there's so many there's so many factors to look at there.
But before I go into them, let me say, let's get some
panel discussions going. At some points it would be really interesting to hear with
with someone like Brian Bender would have to say in a question like this,
but but yeah, absolutely so the question of who the you know, particular
d NI is and who the people are in these positions is massively impactful in
terms of what life experience they bring to that job. Also just the the
issues and the agenda that they're going to be working on as they go into
that job. How much attention are they going to have? You know,
it's important to remember we're in the middle of a pandemic, We're in the
middle of serious questions about election security, among so many others, so all
of that is going to play a role. The world doesn't stop for UFOs
unfortunately. Yes, and some people have raised the question of wood Harris in
particular, you know, be more aware of this because she, you know,
sat on the Intel Committee. Maybe yeah, I think is a good
answer to that. Probably she would be involved. But but of course,
like staff tends to really be where a lot of the you know, the
nitty gritty work gets done. So you know, if you're relying on her
personally having an intimate knowledge of all of that may or may not be the
cases. I don't think there's any way to say, but to me,
you know, another question is you know, after the election, that committee
is still going to be there and and if they if the Biden Harris ticket
wins, while those are going to be her former colleagues, and so if
they run into trouble at any point and they need some help from the executive
branch, you know, those relationships may be significant. So there are all
those kinds of factors too that are that are hard to weigh precisely, but
you know often are very impactful in government. So well, it will absolutely
have a role. And I think if there's a turnover administration, you know,
there are many positions that will will likely quickly change and that will just
inevitably change some of the tone and tenor you know, how this work gets
done. Mm hmm. I think that's a great point that at least that
that will exist, that connection that they will have, you know, that
leverage by having one of their one of their own in the White House if
that happens, absolutely yeah. They both have unusual foreign relations and intelligence backgrounds
that that much is for sure. So I think you could expect that they're
gonna have a lot on their plane if if they win, of course,
I mean who knows, uh, but national security issues are going to be
are going to be huge basically no matter who wins the election? Mm hmm.
And you know other questions bringing up Brian that that he you know,
it's kind of been tackling is especially lately kind of this idea, and we
might have brought it up earlier that really kind of some of this history that's
going on is a bit under the bridge. That really right now, the
big questions are what is this task for us going to do? You know,
what is this report going to look like? Sort of the questions that
we've been talking about earlier, rather than kind of getting caught up in the
details behind what happened in the past with with a tip or you know,
some of these questions of you know, when did this change, what was
the name, who was doing what sort of thing. Yeah, absolutely,
I think there there are so many issues prospectively little looking forward that we ought
to have an eye on, exactly who goes into these positions, the backgrounds
they bring, all of those things. I understand that the historical questions are
important and that they have an important bearing, but I do agree with Brian
Mender, you know, fairly strongly that that some of those things are there,
while interesting, are perhaps less important than than where we go from here.
Mm hmm. So I mean your overall that I guess at where should
would people be looking right now in your mind with respect to you know,
with respect to policy and where all headed. I mean, if you were
to kind of meter people's expectations, how would that happen? Boy, that's
an excellent question, I think in general, and maybe this reveals a bias
on my part, I would always say meter your expectations in this field.
Right This is also a field that's known to have recurring moments of a feeling
of disclosure is imminent, you know, things are really going to change any
day, and then it usually is not the case. That said, I
do think we are in a departure from that. I mean, I think
long time observers will will know this better than I do as being in relatively
short term. But it things are changing here, and exactly what it's changing
is at the policy level. It's that someone like a figure like you know,
Christopher Mellan, with his you know, really deep background, has has
tackled this, has thought through a strategy to get the legislative branch to take
it seriously, and further has thought about a strategy to kind of compel parts
of the executive branch that normally don't want to deal with this, to deal
with this, Wow, that's that is a heck of a story. So
I think that is the part that I would look to. I would look
to the government aspects. And if I had any advice for people, I
guess it would be to also read outside of euthology too, particularly if you're
really focused on on the small details within kind of euthhological circles, you know,
make sure you're keeping an eye on foreign policy and other things rip large
and reading some history and things in there too for measure, because you know,
all those other issues aren't going to go away. If let's say there's
a stunning breakthrough and you know, the UAP Task Force says, yes,
proof positive, we've got extraterrestrials visiting us. Well, we still have a
pandemic, we still have national divisions, we still have domestic divisions. We
have all of these things, and someone who's in the policy chair has got
they don't have the luxury to just solve one thing. They've got to deal
with all of that all at once, and it's it's a really complicated student.
So if you think it's going to be simple. It's not so you
know, read up on the part that you don't usually read up on.
I suppose would be my world vice mm hmm. And my other question,
I guess, getting kind of also into latest news, is we also have
kind of You've mentioned Chris Mellon a lot. Nick Mellan gets his way,
and I think you're crediting him a lot with the with the kind of the
strategy behind all of this, and I agree with you. Uh, he
does seemed to be the mastermind. I mean he was. He's definitely familiar
with with all of these organizations, uh, and how the Hill works,
how the Senate Intelligence Committee works, and he kind of admitted that to me
a bit my my interview with him, that there was this grand plan that
seems to be coming to fruition, and Alessando has said, you know,
it's coming together much more quickly than we expected. But it's also a bit
of a handoff in that. Uh. You know, it was Elizondo that
exposed that the Pentagon program, uh was there then you know he joined to
the stars in this group of people including Melon, who then moved forward with
this in order to get the Senate to pay attention and get the Senate Intelligence
Committee to ask these questions with which they have. Now this UAP task Force
has been formally announced, what role is to the stars really have anymore?
It seems that you know, now that they've handed this off or gotten what
they wanted, are there even necessary and is there even a role for them
in all of this? Oh? I think there, I think there is
for sure. I think that at a at a bare minimum, as a
kind of watchdog of the process, because you know, remember that this this
the Senate provision has passed, but you know, the legislation as a whole
has not. And the other the important thing is that there's a long history
of the legislative branch making a request for something and then the executive branch stonewalling
or just sort of not really implementing it, you know, the way that
it's been asked for. So there's a lot of work to do, I
would imagine, behind the scenes to make sure that all of these parties that
normally don't want to cooperate with each other are cooperating. And someone like Chris
Mellen, who I guess we should say, you know, was under Secretary
of Defense but also a senior staff member in the Senate Intelligence Committee. You
know, he acutely knows that that landscape, I'm sure, and knows that
getting these agencies to work together is going to be no easy task. So
there's a lot to be done there. It gets back to what we're talking
about with monolithic government, right, These agencies don't always play nice with each
other, so a lot to catch out for right, I had to take
my out the screen to sneeze there for a moment, but that's where I
went. But you know, along those lines, because I think it's just
going to be to the stars role to play as a watchdog, but kind
of all of our role. But of course that's kind of where we've been,
and there are that large amount I always say this that a lot of
you know, kind of populist sort of UFO efforts turn into alien disclosure groups,
you know, disclose that you're dealing with or working with, or you
know, there's aliens. I feel that that's kind of a definitely a tenuous
position because I don't feel that we have evidence strong enough to kind of go
there really. But for those who are serious, like yourself or others who
are getting into this and seeing that you know, there's a lot of legitimate
information to the idea that there's more of a mythy some of these cases.
How would you recommend people go about that? I mean, what's the responsible,
effective way to be a watchdog? Well, following the relevant legislation helps,
So being aware of exactly what's in there, you know, make sure
that you're not just looking at the second and third order coverage of it,
you know, in tweets and so on. Read the primary document, so
to speak, and you can do all the things that that that you know
that we do in politics of writing letters, you know, talking to your
representatives when you write those letters, I would encourage people to be simple and
straightforward and to emphasize the importance of taking it seriously and to be well,
actually, I'll sort of steal a little bit of a line from from Alisando
and the TTSA crew of be aware of what you believe, you know,
what you think, and what you know, and really, I would say
in your advocacy, stick with what you know. That's that's going to take
you a lot further than than what you may you know, think or believe,
is the case. Yeah, And I mean essentially that's it. I
mean, I think stay involved in the public discourse, you know, speaking
your mind, following the news, being careful and critical and your information sources
is always an important thing in this field. All of that, that would
be my advice mm hm. And you know what, You've been a great
help in that. And I would recommend definitely people checking out your blog and
watching your blog for your articles. I intend to and I hope you will
join us again for to come as we watch this all kind of come to
come to come to fruition and then yes, you know, you've got a
great idea, and that is something I plan to do, is more panels
around some of these topics so we can all talk to kind of figure some
of this out as well. Because all of these people you're mentioning, all
these journalists that we've brought up or researchers all have kind of a different piece
of the puzzle and are getting information from different sources. So it does help
to come together and share information to get a clearer view of what's going on.
Yeah, and I'll just say, I mean, I suspect we're coming
to a conclusion here, but I just want to say that some of the
researchers and people in this community have been some of the absolute best I've encountered
in any field. Incredibly generous with their time, you know, incredibly helpful
and sharing. So there, they're really as much as the community sometimes gets
maligned a bit, you know, it would be at least among the community
researchers, there's some some real gems. So this is this is actually a
great space to be working in. Yeah, I look, I look forward
to future conversations. Well, and I guess I'll ask you know, because
I think you've stated this was your first interview on this topic. Now that
we're kind of wrapping it up, had it go? It was? It
was easy, huh, It wasn't too bad. The audience will ultimately be
the ones to judge how it went. But but yes, I I this
was a good first interview experience and good and even if the audience doesn't appreciate
it, which I'm sure they will, especially my audience, I greatly greatly
appreciate it and found it very insight just as I knew it would be all
right anytime, anytime. Well, thank you so much for coming on the
show, and for those of you who were watching live, Just so you
know, this link this video will change to only be viewable by YouTube members.
However, if you're a Patreon member, I do upload a special Patreon
video that I'll get up later today, very soon, so you'll have your
own video that you can watch and for good as well, so you'll all
be taken care of. And for those pod people, the audio listeners on
Patreon, I'll also have an audio version up very soon as well. But
thank you so much for joining Adam again. I'll bring it up again so
people could see. Uh. The website is a blog dot Adam key ho
k e h o E as we covered before, not uh in relation to
the Donald Keyhoe and that so that you'll be able to read all of the
articles. So uh and how soon is your next article coming out? Uh?
I'm going to pass on that one. So there's a couple of things,
a couple of things in the works. Like I said, I'm very
excited to be working with Tim McMillan and and yeah, well you'll be among
the first to know, I'm sure. Just as a quick note to strategicdoubt,
dot com should work, should take you to the blog as well.
Okay, great, all right, great, Well, thank you so much
for being on the show and uh until next time, Yes, pleasure,
have a good one.