Hello, and welcome to Open Mind UFO Radio. I am your host,
Alejandro Rojas, and we have uh here with me, mister Martin goofball Willis.
I know I've called you that before, but you're being uh extreme goofy
this morning, a little bit extra today. Yeah, I guess I deserve
that or this afternoon or this evening for you out in the East coast.
That's right, I deserve that again. So we're recording early because tomorrow is
going to be a busy day. So it's actually Sunday. So happy Father's
Day. Way, well, thank you. I enjoying it to your father.
Yes, And how's your day going. It's good. I'm just puttering
around and you know, it's it's a good day here and mein good good.
Well, let's do our introduction to this is Open Mind UFO Radio,
where we cover credible UFO news and information. We do it from a journalistic
kind of standpoint, looking at substantiated information and calling out, you know,
letting you know if it's speculation, which is different from a lot of the
UFO field because a lot of it is based on speculation. And today's really
or this era and time is interesting to see how everybody deals with all of
this interesting information that's coming forward lately. So at the beginning of the show,
we'll review the news here with Martin, and then the second and third
parts of segments of the show are our interviews and who are we interviewing.
Well, this is a special show. We have Nick Pope, who used
to work for the Ministry of Defense investigating UFOs, so a very similar job
really to Elesondo's, was a little bit different in that they were public facing,
so he had to deal with the public, whereas the Advanced Aerospace Threat
Identification Program a TIP was more hidden and secretive where they didn't have to deal
with the public. So Loue Alezando, the former head of that organization,
is now having to deal with the public and no doubt has his hands full
with that. But we'll be talking to Nick Pope about his experience, similarities
between the criticisms that he's received and Lou has received, and a particular interest
is Nick's insight into how press offices work with the in the defense arena,
because, for instance, he's used the term spinning dirty tricks, essentially saying
you know that the way that you dealt with the press is to try to
kind of throw them off the scent, and he sees similar things happening with
the way that especially the Defense Department is dealing with all of this right now.
So we'll get into those details with our interview with Nick. Of course,
every time I talk to him, it's extremely insightful and educational, and
so I thoroughly enjoyed this interview. So yeah, we'll be talking about that
momentarily. Yeah, it's great. You know Nick. The thing about Nick
is he only he only interviews with a few people, and you're one of
those people that he don't interviews with. He's very fussy, so he is.
Yeah, it is hard because he's mostly he gets a lot of attention,
mostly pays attention to the mainstream media. But fortunately I have lots of
friends in the mainstream media and he's one of them. We've always kind of
seen eye to eye or at least been able to communicate well with one another.
So very exciting stuff, very exciting. Great, So we'll get into
that in a minute. But there's been a lot of exciting news this week.
So would you like to start off the news, mister Willis, Well,
sure, you know, when something happens, I'm sure it happens to
you as well. I get a flood of email, and I'm sure you
did too. In this one this morning. I woke up starting last night.
Actually, and about the exclusive, Trump says he doesn't particularly believe in
unidentified flying objects. And this right here at ABC News, and so that's
the title of it. Actually, and President Donald Trump said he doesn't particularly
believe in unidentified flying objects UFOs, despite a rise in reports of unidentified aircraft
by US Navy pilots. I think that's interesting. They actually added that to
the part of the news. In an exclusive interview with ABC News chief anchor
George Stephanopoulos this week, the president was asked what he made of the increased
reports. Well, I don't know if I should try to do a Trump
impersonation, I'll probably get hate mail. I'll just wing it, so he
goes. This is a direct quote that he says. I think it's probably
I want them to think whatever they think. They do. They say they
see I've read, I've heard, and I did have one brief meeting on
it. Now. I think that's the interesting line right there. But people
are saying they're seeing UFOs. Do I believe it not particular, he said,
and asked if he thought he would know if there was a case of
extraterrestrial life. The President replied, well, I think my great pilots would
know. Great pilots would know. They see things a little bit different from
the past. So we're going to see, we're watching and you'll be the
first to know. So I think that's uh, I think that's interesting.
In other words, you know, he might tweet this out if if you
find something out, something that would that would be something, wouldn't it?
Well, who knows? I mean what's interesting, like you said, is
that he did receive a very brief meeting on it. So who told him
what? That'll be interesting to know. We do know from Leapey, who
was an executive producer on Unidentified who I'm actually doing a special little interview with
tomorrow. That's one of the things I'm going to be busy with. So
I'll post that tomorrow. But he has some things that he wants to share,
so that'll be a little bonus kind of piece for you all coming tomorrow.
You can expect tomorrow being Monday, so this airs the same day,
so sometime today, I guess for most of you, but I don't know
if that will be reflected in the show as although Lopee has told us that
there To the Star's influence on getting information to the Congress is featured on the
show. So we'll talk a little bit about that with Lapey. But it's
interesting he says he does not believe, but he does say, you know,
I think that our pilots would know. And of course we know from
David Fraber thus far and then the female pilot who was his wingman or wing
person in his incident in two thousand and four. Of these were, you
know, Navy pilots and they believe that they encountered something that was beyond our
technology. We also have these small clips from Lieutenant Grays and a Coin,
a couple of Navy jet fighter pilots who had encounters in twenty fifteen, and
that will also be in the fourth episode of Unidentified more about them. But
the other videos that The New York Times released, or that To the Stars
release, they released three total, one from the Nimic's incident, the other
two from the twenty twenty fifteen incident off the coast of Florida with Graves and
a Coin. Two of the pilots involved with some of those encounters, but
they also believe that they encountered something unusual. So the pilots, at least
some of them, do believe that, you know, there's something to the
UFO phenomena. And of course the Navy seems too as well, because they
have some new guidelines they put together for tracking UFOs. So the Navy's certainly
taking it very seriously. And maybe because his meeting was very brief. We
don't know when this meeting happened or the nature of it, but perhaps if
he got updated, he would think differently. Maybe he's watching the show or
speaking of news items, another item that you'll see in the headlines on op
TV is that lou Elizondo wrote an opinion piece this week just the other day
for President Trump's favorite news outlet, which is Fox News. So Fox News
actually posted something from Elizondo. Not that there is a lot of new information
in this opinion piece, but he's essentially sharing, Hey, I worked for
the Pentagon. It was my job to look and investigate these military cases.
Myself and others came to the conclusion that there was more to this phenomena than
many people believe, and it is worth a closer look. And he left,
you know, because he wanted the government to pay more attention to this
phenomena and his leaving and then kind of you know, all of the splash
that's been made in the media seems to have prompted the government to take further
action. So his leaving has been successful for those reasons. But yeah,
that's interesting, right that Fox News would have of course, they've interviewed Alizondo,
Nick Pope, Fravor, the Wing commander. Maybe I wouldn't doubt if
these other pilots will also be interviewed on Fox News. So certainly the president
is seeing some of this stuff. I would imagine. Oh, you know,
I never even thought of that angle. That may have prompted the briefing.
He may have even asked for a briefing on that. Wow, interesting
because I know that is it Tucker Carlson or something like that. He does
a lot of the lot of the interviews on UFOs, Nick Pope and everyone
else, right exactly, He's had a lot of these guys on multiple times,
which is great. You know, I just wanted to talk you talked
just a second ago about unidentified and did you happen to catch the tweet from
Tom DeLong, what if I was briefed by Italian intelligence that a UFO shot
a military helicopter out of the sky and that there are picks to see and
this is all for you to see on our next two episodes Unidentified on the
History Channel. Yeah, that was mysterious. I know what you're talking about.
Tom DeLong tweeted exactly what you said, which, of course is shocking.
If you said that, I would freak, That's my answer. That
would be crazy. But he said what if I told you? As a
question mark? And then he deleted that tweet? Oh, he deleted it.
He did, So why did he post that? Is? Is this
kind of you know, we've I've heard that there's something mind blowing in the
last episode, the sixth episode of Unidentified. I have no clue what it
is. You know, nobody's alluded to what it might be. But it
is that it? And if it is it, why is Tom DeLong spoiling
that news, you know, getting it out there? Or is he messing
with us? Is that, you know, even the case at all?
But I don't know what to make of that tweet. Yeah, yeah,
the fact that he took it down. He must have gotten some grief from
that, you know, from the History Channel. Perhaps you never know,
Yeah, maybe, because I would imagine show there obviously you and I,
for instance, got these interviews with Elizondo, and we know how careful they're
being the History Channel with all the information, because of course we had it
was quite an effort to even get those interviews. So and I know from
trying to arrange different interviews and information and people keep I don't know if this
is happening to you, but it's happened to me over the past few months
that people are like, how do I get there a Lozondo? You know,
And I always send them to the History Channel and they're usually bummed because
you know, they have to wait in line or or you know, go
through like we do with the process. But yeah, that could be.
I would not imagine that they would want him sharing information about future episodes like
that. So maybe it was them. So is that true or not?
I don't know that ought to be. Well, I guess we'll find out.
And we don't have to wait long. We're already essentially halfway through the
series where they had episode three just the other day, another great episode.
I thought and so we've only got three left. Yeah, that's right.
Do you think they're gonna now renew or do any more segments or this is
the whole shebang and they're done. No, I think they have a second
season. And I can't remember specifically why I believe this if I was told
this, but I'm pretty sure I did hear through some you know way that
they do have a second season queued up. Wow. Well, it's certainly
not like anything else that's ever been on TV before. No, it's not.
It feels weird. I mean, it's weird that we have this show
that's on the History Channel. It has, you know, kind of the
music and the trappings of a regular kind of reality show, but you have
these officials, these retired officials, these this guy who worked at the Pentagon
essentially almost like a whistleblower, giving us information from behind the scenes, and
and that spills out from just the show. Usually it's just you know,
contained within the show or the fan base of the show. But no,
this is also playing out on Fox News, on CNN, on ABC with
George Stephanopoulos. It's you know, it's also a big news thing where we've
got this wild you know, information kind of coming forward through the show and
through the news, and it's just it is so strange. It's it's very
surrealistic. It is. It's it's really you said it at the top of
the show. It's interesting times we're in. It just seems almost seems like
a slight snowballing of it, you know, things happening. It is and
it's really surreal for me, and I think for listeners, I wonder if
you would agree, and not to pat myself on the back, really,
but if you've been reading my articles and my stories, I think, what's
really strange. And I know that Tyler Rogaway because I've been speaking with him,
who writes with you know, the Drive war Zone, kind of feels
similarly with some of the stuff he's written. Is that we're seeing a lot
of the information from our articles playing out on the screen and it's just really
weird. It's kind of a great thing because it shows, you know that
I was accurate in my reporting and like Lou said in my interview, but
you know, not a lot of a lot of people were kind of hung
up on different things instead of paying attention to the meat of what is going
on, and now we're seeing that, and I think, you know,
my listeners will be like, hey, you know, Alejandro already told me
about this. He already told me about that. This is just like Alejandro's
article, and you got to know what's weird about this also, And I
think that's why I've been hearing from La pay is that, you know,
I wrote my articles completely independent of these guys. I didn't even know the
show existed. So while I'm writing my articles, they're writing their scripts and
or even had shot this stuff already, and you know, they turn out
very similar. But that's the way, you know, the facts should play
out. If you're both following a trail of facts. You know, the
facts don't change. You're maybe able to look at them in different ways.
But I think they're laying them out just like an investigative journalist would, and
so the facts are laying out in a similar way. And it's very exciting,
it's very strange, it's fun, and I can't wait to see where
this all goes. Because of course I've only written about bits and pieces of
this. I've been able to catch wind of or get interviews about with some
of the people in the know, like George Knapp and Lela Kane and of
course George Knapp his writing, He's been revealing a lot of these nuggets all
along. And these are people. You know, people have been bashing us,
and I'm not even sure why because we're sharing information and they've been grouping
together me with Leslie Kane and George Nappen saying things like, oh, we're
biased and everything. But you know what, I first of all, I
am so honored to be grouped together with these guys, even if it is
to be bashed together with them. But I feel that their writing has been
proven over and over and over and over again to be accurate, one hundred
percent accurate, which isn't surprising to me because I've been following these guys for
years and they've always been accurate. But their work has held up to screw
and boy has it been scrutinized, And it's really held up even to my
own scrutiny because I've scrutinized their articles. I mean, it's our job to
make sure you know all of the points that they have said are accurate and
to substantiate them on our own, and they have. I mean, even
though, for instance, Leslie Kane's original article or the article that was a
group effort with Ralph Blumenthal and Helene Cooper on the New York Times in December
twenty seventeen. It was a group effort, of course, but even though
they didn't include the original organization that received the funding as app the Advanced Aerospace
Weapons System Application Program, it didn't include any of that or the paranormal background,
it still was accurate as to the perspective and the information they had.
They just know people are picking on one that one little detail, you know,
as if you know, to throw the baby out with the bathwater,
right, Yeah, so, and I think they've done, and they've been
proven over and over again. In fact, they've been right when the DoD
Press Office has been wrong, and then that their work has proven to be
right over the press office. So this kind of comes back to one of
the things you said, you know, the New York Times, they don't
mess around when they bet their information, you know it. You know that
their information is very solid, and they've been proven to be right over what
the Department of Defense has told us. And we're going to get into that
some of that with Nick coming up here. When I when I first read
that article that Keith Klore put out. I sent it to Leslie and just
asked for her two cents and she just sent back. You know, she
usually is very wordy with me when she replies, and this was We stand
by our reporting. That's all you said. And just for the audience to
know this was Keith Gore wrote an article in The Intercept in which Idea,
the spokesperson, had told him that Lou had no responsibility towards a tip the
program that he says he ran with the Pentagon. Since his article, George
Knapp has released a further unredacted document that Harry Reid had written. It was
a letter asking for special Access program status for a tip, and in that
list, the names of people mostly were redacted, but George and Napp unredacted
help put Off's name and Lou Elizondo's name, so you could see they were
listed as people who worked on the program help put Off. Doctor help Putoff
was a contractor. I contacted doctor help put Off and I told Chlora,
this is what you should do if this is what the DoD is telling you.
We have documents that say otherwise, who else would be in the know
The contractors, So asked the contractors, who did you report to? How
told me Lou definitely was in a tip and in fact, he just told
John Greenwald, who's been questioning all of this also along with Keith Klore.
He gave John Greenwald a more clear answer, saying, yes, I was
a contractor working for Big Low Aerospace the Bass project and a tip, and
yes we were under the leadership of Lou Arizondo. So he was very clear
how put Off about this, and we know, you know from official documents
that help put Off worked for it, so he would know. And he
even went on to say, I'm not surprised that the press office wouldn't have
this information. They have access to very little information. They weren't part of
the program. And that's what we've heard from a lot of different people.
And in fact, you know, people have been concerned, well, why
isn't Brian Bender or some of these others, like from political concerned about that.
And he's been criticized as well because he's a mainstream journalist, I guess
writing about this stuff, But he says it's not surprising. He says the
same thing as hell. The Public Affairs Department, first of all, they're
going to say what they're told to say. Not to that I'm saying there's
a conspiracy, but I'm just saying that they're not going to have all the
information. They would have to do a lot of research to be able to
figure out the in and out of this program that we know was kind of
being kept hush hush. So it's not surprising that they wouldn't have all the
information. And that's why we've seen this pattern over and over again. The
DD says no, you know, those those videos were not ours. Then
they later say, Okay, they were ours. You know, we've seen
this over and over again where they've said one thing and then had to change
their story later after they received more information because they didn't have that information to
begin with. I wonder why they're just blatantly saying that, you know,
the press people are just blatantly saying, you know, he had no affiliation.
You know, I mean, but this is why this conspiracy theory breaks
down, where oh no, you know, I keep hearing people even just
now and I won't say who, you know, some guy saying a prominent
UFO figure saying, see, this is all part of the government. The
D to the Stars is part of the DoD. This is a DoD effort.
Well, why are they arguing back and forth about the facts, then
why is the DoD calling into question the facts that to the Stars are putting
forth? That does not show a cooperation in any way. And I've said
this over and over again. I believe that you know, they have been
put on the back foot. They didn't know lou E Alisanda was going to
come out and talk about this. They probably didn't even know this project existed.
Just imagine you're a press guy in the DoD and all of a sudden
you have a flood of media coming to you and saying, what about UFOs,
what's this thing about UFOs? You'd be like, I don't know nothing
about UFOs, what are you talking about? And so then they've got to
try to figure out how to answer all of these questions and figure out what's
going on. So I'm sure it hasn't been easy for them, and I'm
sure they are not appreciative of the position that they've been put in. Well
do they actually go to like a superior and say, you know, what
do I do in this situation? I mean, I just wonder how that's
well you're going to have to listen to my interview with Nick pot So.
Actually we talk a lot about this and he has insight into this, so
we'll be talking more about this with Nick Pope. Well, I didn't we
about out of time. Yeah, we're pretty much out of time. But
we've got a lot of other news stories. Those ones that we've talked about
you can see on the front page of Openminds dot TV. But let's go
ahead and get to our interview with Nick. And thank you Martin Willison podcast
UFO joining us once again with the news. You're very welcome, sir.
I am so happy, especially at this time, to have back on the
show. Nick Pope, Hello, mister Pope. Hi there, good to
be back. Yes, you know, we were just talking a second ago
when we came online about you know, we've talked over the years, and
there's certainly times where there's it, there's not much going on. It feels
almost like we're just talking to each other for the heck of it, as
supposed to talking to an audience. But right now, I mean, all
the eyes are on UFOs. What an interesting time we're finding ourselves in.
Absolutely. I wrote a recent op ed for the New York Post, where
I said, essentially, this subject has now come out of the fringe and
into the mainstream. And as you say, it's interesting to speculate just a
couple of years ago if you'd spoken to people in the UFO community and said
to them, where do you want to be a couple of years from now?
What is your desired in state? Short of the rather cliched my fellow
Americans, people of the world, we're not alone. But assuming you're not
going to get that, where would you like to be? And people would
respond with answers like, well, I'd like to see this subject in the
mainstream media. I'd like to see it in the Times, the Post,
Politico and addressed in a serious manner, without a little, you know,
snide jokes and laughing asides. And that's what I would like. And that's
exactly where we are. And I have the same sentiment. And you know,
I've asked some people this, especially like Leslie Kane. I've asked the
same ques question and her answer was similar to what you had just said,
and I felt the same. What's interesting, though, is how great this
is for you and I the majority of the UFO community. This is when
I've posited, you know, this is a great direction, This is a
direction we should go. I disagree. They want something bigger and grander,
and you can kind of see many of them feel let down that, you
know, the hanger doors were not opened at Area fifty one to reveal,
you know, the alien technology that they've been flying around there with aliens and
stuff. A lot of people aren't satisfied until we get that. Yes,
And the problem, of course, is that that might be undeliverable, not
because it's politically impossible, because it just doesn't exist. The real answer might
be that the government doesn't know what this is. The real answer might be
that all you want to get to get it's pretty much what we have now.
The DoD the US Navy essentially acknowledging yes, there is something here.
We call it UAP. We can get into the terminology later. I'm sure
it's in our airspace. Our radar operators track them, our pilots chase them.
We don't know what it is. It's a defense s we need to
find out. We need to take preventative action. But yeah, no spaceship
in a hangar, because we don't have one. But we do have these
unauthorized incursions. So yeah, I think you're right people in the UFO community.
In one sense, it's like the kid that doesn't quite get what they
want for Christmas. They get a nice present, but because it's not the
really big, shiny thing they wanted, they're disappointed. Well, you should
be grateful for the things that you have and not worry about the things you
don't have. It's funny you say that, because, as you say that,
it feels like some of us that have been in this field who have
kind of seen or wanted this progression, hoped for it, and it certainly
has happened, at least at an increased rate that I certainly could never have
predicted. But it is almost like we're parents to the kids. Hey,
you know this is still good. This is still a good present. Yes,
And I think if you'd have said to most people in the UFO community
prior to December sixteenth, twenty seventeen, what if we delivered this? And
as I say, this is the coverage in The Times, the Post,
and the Politico. This is retired intelligence officials and military personnel involved in both
investigations, policy work, and encounters speaking out on the record in a serious
way. I think people would have taken that. Sure, it's not disclosure
with a big D, it's not the spaceship in a hangar. But I
think if you'd have said to people before December sixteenth, twenty seventeen, will
you take that, they would have said yes, well, you know,
And I asked those a lot of those kind of questions, and people surprisingly
weren't saying yes so much. They said if that happened, I don't even
think I would trust those people. And we are seeing that kind of play
out to me, and I'd love to hear your perspective on this. More
and more so, I'm seeing that this really, what is going on right
now is not so much for the UFO community. They're not, you know,
enjoying the gift that they got there, taking it for granted perhaps,
but more so this is they're looking for something else. But what this gift
is great for is the general public, peaking interests, incredible venues that this
has never really been able to get a platform in before or attention from.
That's what's really I think is most exciting about what we see going on.
Well, I agree, and I think it's a little bit of a slow
Burner this one. And I think it doesn't have the immediate effect that maybe
people in the UFO community, the deep specialists would hope and expect. But
what it does, what all this constant background coverage, It's sort of background
noise that's gone on since The Times broke the story a year and a half
ago. It what it does is it it kind of slowly but surely changes
the debate about this, the background perception that people have. And when I
say people, I don't mean the UFO community now, I mean I mean
there's sort of everybody else who's who's not particularly interested in it, sees something
thing from time to time. But what they have had for the last year
and a half now is a steady stream of articles in these top level publications
that have flipped the narrative one hundred and eighty degrees. So even if they're
not necessarily consciously aware of it and talking about it every day, as the
deep specialists in the UFO community do, their perceptions are slowly but surely being
changed. Managed if you'll excuse a somewhat conspiratorial word. And I think what
this does is it means that we are now in a different world and if
this subject comes up now to a neutral person who's not particularly interested, hadn't
given it much thought, but their response, if they're asked, will be,
oh, yeah, yeah, I read something about that. The government
does that. Yeah, they know about these things in the airspace. Yeah,
then the navy chase them, the radar people track them. Sure,
sure it's real, not particularly necessarily interested in have the in depth knowledge.
But when people when people respond like that, that sort of yeah, I've
heard it, I know about this response, then you know that you have
moved progress. The goalposts have been subtly but majorly moved over a period of
say eighteen months or so. And there is something that you're participating that is
along these lines that I think is pretty extraordinary in that you have The New
York Post doing these videos with John green Street one of their writers, and
you talking about UFOs. I think that's pretty incredible for a mainstream paper.
Of course, the New York Post can be a bit of tabloid dish,
but that they would be doing this is pretty extraordinary. Well, I think
it's important to cover all ends of the political and demographic and social spectrum with
this, So we started off discussing how this had gotten into the Times,
the Post, and Politico, But yeah, to get it into something like
the New York Post, it's a different audience, but it's an equally important
audience. And of course, let's not forget it. It was the host
of the Basement Office, Stephen green Street, who first got that great scoop,
and it was published on May twenty second, where the DoD spokesperson confirmed,
I think for the first time that yes, a tip And this next
bit is the direct quote, did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena.
Now, right up until that point, I think people forget. But
right up until that point, the skeptics were saying in response to this,
ah, yes, but this is just probably next generation aircraft, missiles and
drones. And indeed, if you look at the letter that the DIA sent
to Congress about this, that's exactly how they tried to spin it. But
UAP, there is no getting away from the fact that unidentified aerial phenomena UAP
is the recognized phrase that government, the military, and the intelligence community uses
for what the media and the public term UFOs. And I know because I
was doing this at the Ministry of Defense back in the nineties, and one
can see the UK influence on this, which is great. So yeah,
what the New York Post are doing is really good. They have I think
this series is going to be five or six episodes, and each of them
about twenty five minutes. The host, Stephen green Street and myself just sitting
down discussing not just the current story about the Pentagon's A tip program and the
Navy encounters, but the history of this subject. How did we get to
where we are today? Story? And I think that's great and a lot
of people we forget, but a lot of people are coming to this pretty
much for the first time. And I look down at the comments when these
things get posted on YouTube, and the overwhelming response that you get from people
is finally somebody is taking this seriously. Thanks people. M hm. How
else has it been received? Have you gotten responses from people you would not
have expected, especially this being in New York? Yes, I think so.
I think I've received a lot of emails about this. As I say,
when they're put up on YouTube. I think the first episode has over
two hundred thousand hits now, and it's probably on other platforms too, So
that only tells part of the story. I think when they did this they
weren't quite sure how it was going to be received. But I think everyone
is phenomenally pleased. And I have to say that Stephen green Street has done
a fantastic job of putting this all together. When I flew to New York
to meet him and get together with him, he came armed with absolutely reams
and reams of paper on all this. He had done a deep dive into
the history of this subject. He dug up documents and clips that I say,
even deep specialists in this subject probably couldn't necessarily put their hands on.
And it's getting this subject to a different and new audience, and that's what
it's all about. I think in all of this we should forget that.
We should not forget that there are two important things. The message is,
of course hugely important, but so's the audience. There's no point just preaching
to the choir with all of this. It's all about getting it to a
new and different audience, changing the debate, changing people's perception of this,
not just in the UFO community, but right across society. Mm hm,
I agree one hundred percent, and that's what's exciting. I think Stephen is
an exciting person. You know, he's a lot of fun to see him
react to what your discussions. And he's also obviously very well versed, and
like you said, started right off the bat with this major revelationist comment from
the DoD. So we'll get it more into it. So let's I guess,
get more wank you get into the weeds here, but I guess we'll
go kind of backwards or just a bit ago. You talked about how the
US took the UK's lead. So you think that they noticed you all were
using this term UAP back in the nineties and adopted that. Yes, now,
I can't claim credit for inventing the phrase UAP. It had been around
for a while, but there's no getting away from the fact that in the
early nineties we at the Ministry of Defense in the UK sat down and deliberately
strategized this and we said, look, not for the media in the public,
but internally for the defense community, for the intelligence community audience. We
wanted to reframe the debate by changing the language. And I think you and
I have discussed some parts of this before. We effectively ditched the pop culture
baggage that came with the term UFO by replacing it with UAP. Now,
I brief that certainly to a US political, military, and intelligence community audience
in June of two thousand and eleven in DC. And it's a matter of
record that obviously even people like Hillary Clinton suddenly started saying in her media interviews
about this. No, no, there's a new term for this. It's
not UFO anymore, it's UAP. But it wasn't just Clinton. It clearly
got into the system. And I don't want to claim undue UK influence here
or kind of reach in terms of a TIP. I will let the people
involved with ATIP speak to that themselves. But again there's no getting away from
the fact that if you look, for example, just at the use of
the word UAP, we were doing that in the Ministry Defense in the nineties.
If you look at Harry Reid's all important June twenty fourth, two thousand
and nine letter to William Lynn, the third Deputy Secretary of Defense, one
of the very few of paperwork that we still have on the a TIP program,
but probably one of the most important, if not the most important.
You can see now not a lot of people have actually done this, but
if you look at some of the emerging disruptive technologies that Harry Reid talks about,
you'll see a clear parallel between the language that Harry Reid uses and the
language that we used in the Ministry of Defense in an intelligent assessment of the
UFO phenomenon that was code named Project Condine. Now, the official title of
that study, Project Condine, was Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defense
Region. A bit of a mouthful, I know, but there are clear
parallels which not many people have I think picked up on in the language there.
So again I'll let the ATIP people speak to this themselves, and they
don't want to make inflated claims, but the language that the similarity in the
language is interesting. And it's also interesting that Harry Reid in that letter talks,
for example, about what he terms the human interface and human effects aspect
of the ATIP program, when again, this is something that we were doing
in Project Condine in relation to the Rendalsham Forest incident, where we were talking
about prolonged exposure to what we termed uap radiation. So this, again,
I think is an important part of the story, and the full story has
yet to emerge. I think we're going to be hearing more about this in
the next few weeks. I suspect, but I wanted to put it on
the record, and I've certainly done so in a couple of interviews and in
an art to kill the UK national daily newspaper Metro published a few weeks ago.
Now I want to get into that. But it's great that you brought
up Condine because that was put together by the Defense Intelligence staff and a story
that you put out just recently. And this normally would be a big story
in the UFO community, but of course it's gotten overlooked by everything that's been
going on. That finally a couple of these last UFO files. The UK
DOODC or Ministry of Defense, said they had released all their UFO files.
It turned out that they in two thousand and eight, turned out that they
hadn't. There were still some stragglers and it's taken them years to get these
documents out. And finally the last two files come out, and you found
something really interesting. This infighting going on between the Defense Intelligence staff and others.
Tell us about what you found in those files. Well, it was
interesting, and you make a very important point actually that perhaps this story didn't
get the publicity that it would have. I think there are two reasons for
that. Firstly, it's been overshadowed, understandably by the bigger and still unfolding
story of the A TIP program and the US Navy interaction with this phenomenon,
and the new Navy guidance to their pilots and radar operators another personnel about this.
The other reason why I don't think this story made quite the media splash
that it might have is that, in one sense, it looks like we've
had this story before, and we have. The Ministry of Defense in June
two thousand and thirteen announced that they had completed the program to declassify and release
the files, as you rightly point out, they hadn't. They then discovered
further files that had not been released. They went backwards and forwards between the
Ministry of Defense and the National Archives in the UK again, as you say,
literally for years, and interestingly Rendelsham Forest witnessed John Burrows played arguably I
think the key role in discovering or lobbying the Ministry Defense to release these further
files. But it's still even from that took some years and in all,
the program has taken eleven years. I mean I left the Ministry Defense in
two thousand and six. In two thousand and eight, as I think you
know, because we've discussed it, I came out of retirement to help with
this program, and I actually made the official announcement on the National Archives website.
I've probably done literally thousands of interviews over the last eleven years. But
it does have a sense of deja vu about it because people correctly recall having
read from June twenty thirteen onwards. Yes, yes, this is the last
of the files, and of course every couple of years there was a oh,
well, here are a few extra ones we've discovered. Now we really
do have I think the last of them. And yes, this dog fight,
this skeptic versus believer dogfight going on in the Ministry of Defense in the
United Kingdom between the Defense Intelligence Staff, who wanted to do much more in
depth research and investigation into this from a scientific and technical intelligence point, and
the Policy Division on UFOs, who handled the way that this subject was viewed
and investigated and researched across government. The Policy Division wanted to back off and
were far more worried about how this would be perceived in the British Parliament and
the media, for example, whether it would whether it would contradict statements previously
made by defense ministers, including the Secretary of State for Defense, that we
don't really put much resources into this, and then something like Project Condine comes
along and wait a minute, this is effectively an intelligence assessment of the phenomenon.
So the files show this story of the fundamental breakdown in relations between the
two parts of the ministry who were supposed to be cooperating on this. Now
I say not guilty from a personal point of view before you ask me.
When I was there, because of my high security clearance, my need to
know, and my good working relationship with colleagues in the Defense Intelligence staff,
we didn't have any of this. It was seamless. We were in and
out of each other's offices, you know, every week, swapping ideas,
plotting how we would take this forward. It was my opposite number and I
who sat down and changed UFO to UAP and all this is in the files,
by the way. But yes, it was unfortunate that for a number
of reasons after I left there was this breakdown in relations and if it wasn't
so dire in terms of the defense and national security implications. It would also
it would almost be comedic. I mean it was almost literally by the end
of the relationship, they weren't even talking to each other. Wow. So
we've got to take a break. But we're going to get more into this
because there are a lot of parallels with what's going on, what's being revealed
in the television show about to the Stars and Alezando and this Pentagon program,
but also some of the infighting between departments. There's just a lot of parallels
between what you all experienced rotating in the UK and what's going on now.
And we'll get into that after the break. We're going to take a short
break. For those of you listening on a radio show or program, you'll
hear commercials. For the rest of you, you'll hear a short musical interlude,
and we'll be right back with Nick Pope. I am back. This
is your host, Alejandro Rojas. You're listening to Open Mind UFO Radio,
and I'm talking to Nick Pope, formerly of the Ministry of Defense. UFO
Desk, that's that's how we call it, but the UFO Desk, So
some of the controversies going on right now that parallel what you used to do,
and we'll get this will all get into what we were just talking about
as well. But one of these controversies is people are arguing that Lou Alessando,
who worked for you know, a tip, ran it, this term
ran it, and people give you a lot of heck about this. In
fact, I get it because they are like, why do you say Nick
is so great when he says he ran the UFO desk, that there was
no big department he was in charge of, And people are kind of saying,
Lou, the same thing you're saying, you ran this a tip thing
it was it was smaller, you know, debating the semantics of the turn
ran. Do you feel there's a similarity in the attacks against Arizonto that you've
received for any same kind of accusations, Yes, there is, And in
fact Lew and I have discussed this very issue with a kind of rye smile
and the laugh. I think he's beginning to experience what I've experienced for the
last few years. Sometimes. I mean we we in the UK, for
example, and I know the parallels are uncanny. Remember all the debate about
what a tip was actually called whether it was aerospace or aviation, whether there
was an extra and in the title somewhere what the relationship was between a TIP
and ORSAP. I had exactly the same in the UK. Was it the
UFO project, Was it the UFO Desk? Was it the UFO program?
Technically it was neither because we didn't, unlike the US with Blue Book,
we didn't actually give it a name. So it was a workstream that was
embedded in a division called Secretariat Air Staff. But Secretariat air Staff is meaningless
to people outside the department, so one has to communicate through nicknames and colloquialisms.
Now I'm fortunate. I'm fortunate in that of course, for anyone that
doubted my position, not only has it now been confirmed by the British Parliament,
but of course, as we've just discussed before the break, somewhere in
the region of sixty thousand pages of documents pertaining to my old job have now
been declassified and released, and I tell you several hundred of them still have
my name on, even though I think they were supposed to redact them.
But you know, never mind, it's all out there, and I'm sure
that as time goes by Lou will be completely vindicated by similar disclosures. I
think that there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of a TIP related
Freedom of Information Act requests in the pipeline. I've heard estimates that it will
be twenty twenty maybe twenty twenty one before all of those are necessarily dealt with
with full responses. But when they do, I'm sure we're going to find
Lou's name all over this, just as we found in the UK. I
mean not only not only am I mentioned in these files, as I say,
I wrote a large proportion of them, and I think that's what we're
going to find with Lou. But here's the other point. I think people
sometimes seem to forget a couple of things. I just sent a tweet this
morning pointing out this very thing. For anyone who says, well, look,
a DoD press officer has now made this statement, and doesn't this call
in to question lose role in relation to a tip, whether he ran it
or whether he was simply somebody who was on it or had access to it,
or however you want to describe it. You know, we can get
too bogged down in the words, if you had gone this is my point.
If you had gone to the DoD before December twenty seventeen and ask them
about this, you wouldn't have got anything other than the line that the subject
wasn't investigated by the department. So let's not get too hung up on what
public affairs officers and press officers say. And let's also not kid ourselves that
any of those people are going to have anything other than a brief sheet of
paper that they're given by the subject matter expert saying this is your line to
take. They are not going to have actual access into those intelligence programs,
and rightly so exactly, I think. Yet you make a great point.
In fact, that's exactly what I was going to bring up next is your
tweet from this morning, which I thought was great and brings us back to
reality. Just like you said, Yeah, before December twenty seventeen, they
were telling us there was no program. So I plus your perspective on this
is important because you understand bureaucracy, but they're and you know, kind of
getting back to your point, how you and Lou have found yourself in a
similar position. There actually is an advantage that Lou has in a way in
that he has a lot of colleagues that have kind of coming out as part
of all of this, such as contractors like Eric Davis or how put Off
who have talked about working with Lou with this program, or you have you
know, people like Chris Mellon who has mentioned that he worked with Lou during
the AIGHTEP period of time in trying to get this information to the Secretary of
Defense. So at least he even you know, beyond just these statements from
the DoD, has a host of very credible characters, you know, backing
him that he was working in this program. Absolutely, almost every statement from
anyone involved in this, whether it was at a governmental level or a contractor
level, has said, hey, it was Lou's sitting across the desk as
the guy in government that we had to deal with on this. So you
know, you can have a debate about whether he ran it or was director
of it, but there's no getting away from the fact that if anything went
on with a TIP, it was Lou Alizondo who was the guy in the
room at the meetings. He was the guy on the distribution list of the
document. So you know, let's not get to hung up on whether it
was a formal program or a project or a workstream or whatever it was.
And look, I've worked in that world myself in intelligence. The whole point
often is that you try and blur the lines. The whole point is that
you try to minimize the paper trail. The whole point is that very often
you're keeping this off the radar of people in your own department, even because
very often what people don't get is that that projects like this are incredibly vulnerable
in an environment where all sorts of managers are competing for limited resources and access
to senior managers. Everyone's after the same pot of money. And you know,
if you get a chance to kind of kill off somebody else's program at
the expense of yours, or or subsume somebody's program under your own authority,
I mean, this sort of thing goes on all the time. People have
this mistake in view that everything in government is all homogeneous and everyone's kind of
marching in the same direction. Absolutely not. It's often a case that people
work in silos. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing.
And then you factor in that this was not only highly classified, but deeply
sensitive politically in terms of just this whole subject being such a hot potato.
It doesn't surprise me that it's a little bit difficult for journalists and bloggers and
people making FOI requests to get to the bottom of every last question about this.
And that's exactly the way that people running those sorts of programs designed it.
So and that's why I think you're spective is really important in this,
because you have this background with press. Also, certainly when you were helping
the mod with the release of these final files, it was kind of a
pr effort right to to really it wasn't. It wasn't just let me go
back and make one more point about press officers. I've done this. I've
I've been the subject matter expert briefing the press office on on this, on
not just UFOs but on some some other unrelated defense business. And there's a
standard format for it in in the UK, where I'm I'm virtually certain that
you can read this across to the US. What you do is you you
on any given subject, you give the press officer what's called a key message,
and this is the message that you want the media to run. And
sometimes it's playing up a good news story or playing down a bad news story,
and you have this key message that you want to get cross, and
then you have what are called supporting lines to take, which are sometimes defensive.
In other words, you only raise them if the journalist actually asks.
But these are very carefully and cleverly crafted and they are given to the press
officers. And the press officers, of course haven't been working on these programs.
They are just given this brief to speak from and their job is to
get this key message across. So the story runs in a way favorable to
the way in which the department wants it to come out. End of story,
right. It's their way to keep some modicum of control on the message,
especially in this case where it appears, I mean there's some we like
you just said, the government is in a bunch of people who are all
headed in the same direction. Talked about in these recent UK files, there
was apparent, you know, arguments between these couple of departments, and it
seems like we have quite a bit of that going on as this a tip
story develops. As well, you have you know, the Navy being very
cooperative working with a history channel on this television show. But then you have
the DoD PR department or the public affairs kind of like you know, throwing
a ranch in things a bit. And honestly, they're kind of caught under
the gun. I'm sure you know lud didn't give them heads up. Hey
guys, I'm gonna be talking about this UFO program. You didn't know,
so get prepared for an avalanche of questions and foyer requests. So they're kind
of under the gun. And we've seen over and over again they've made these
these statements, these quick statements, and then had to retrack them or adjust
them as time has gone on. Yes, and let's not forget that any
time they wanted to could have killed this story by saying, look, people,
when we use phrases like unauthorized and or unidentified aircraft, we one hundred
percent mean conventional aircraft, missiles and drones. We don't necessarily say that we
can identify all of them at this stage, but we are one hundred percent
certain that this is just aircraft, missiles, and drones. And yet that's
not what they say. It's as if they deliberately go that step further.
And your right to point out the mixed messages that we've been getting, because,
for example, the DIA when they wrote to Congress about this. They
very much used the language of far term aviation threats. But then the US
Navy, just as you think that the government have got that particular genie back
into the bottle by by talking about this in terms of aircraft, missiles,
and drones, the US Navy upset the apple cart by coming out with this
bombshell statement, yes, we did pursue researching investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena.
So it's almost as if they've carefully tried to manage this and spin it one
way and then another part of the system. In this case, the US
Navy says, you know what, that's not right and we're not going to
let that stand, and they go and reignite the UFO speculation by throwing this
bombshell phrase UAP right back into the center of the stage. Now what do
you make of this? So, because there's another player here that's been mostly
very silent, although they've had a recent statement that I think is very interesting,
But that's the Air Force. When the Navy said they were going to
come up with sidelines, they said that we the Navy and the Air Force,
take this very seriously. I don't think that them including the Air Force
in their statement was a mistake. It seems very calculated, but what for
it does? It seemed like they were trying to drag the Air Force into
this conversation, who obviously has not inserted themselves in any way at this point.
Yes, I think if I was in the United States Air Force right
now, I'd be pretty annoyed with the Navy, because I think my strategy
would be, let's try and keep out of this, and then you find
another branch of the military kind of dragging you into the spotlight and out of
the shadows with this. And my goodness, if I in my twenty one
years in the UK Ministry Defense only three years on the UFO issue, But
if I had a dollar for every time some issue of inter service rivalry came
up, I would have a lot of dollars. And it's an interesting angle.
Some of the unasked questions about this are worth getting into. One is
to what extent does into service rivalry, including and this probably is a whole
another show, but including ideas about a space force. How does that play
into this debate? How much, if any of what we're seeing now is
about jockeying for position and scrambling for resources in a future battle space that is
clearly going to be critical in any future war. That's one one of the
big, frankly unasked questions about this. Right, that's a good point,
and to this, just real quick, don't forget your other point is that
we at least have heard a little bit of inkling. And George Napper referred
to this that some of that budget was essentially stolen away is probably not the
right term, but that someone just like you're talking about was successful in being
able to pull some of those funds their way. Yes, I mean,
my goodness, some of the dog fights in the UK about this were huge.
I mean, for example, the UK's strategic nuclear deterrent. The Royal
Air Force said we should have this, it should be delivered by long range
bombers. The Navy said no, no, you should put this on ballistic
missile submarines. And the Navy of course won out. But this was billion
dollar dog fight over resources and influence at the highest level, and so how
much of that is a factor. I think one of the other big unasked
questions about this, and I don't necessarily claim to have an answer, but
sometimes it's the questions that are important is how is all this playing out in
Russia and China. It will not have escaped the leadership in Russia and China
that for the last eighteen months or so, the US has kind of done
a one to eighty degree flip on this, that after decades of down playing
and denying this, it's almost as if they're now pushing it themselves. As
I say, just as you think they've got it back into the box,
they reignite the debate by using phrases like UAP that they know are going to
be like a red rang to or bull. What is the leadership in Russia
and China asking their military and intelligence chiefs and to what extent is that part
of the story here? So I think I think there are some big aspects
of this. We all get bogged down in oh, look at those look
at those three videos, and that's very important and interesting. But there are
other aspects to this, the geopolitical aspects that we haven't really kind of talked
through yet. Yeah. I think as this unfolds, especially people that are
more savvy around those sort of topics, will begin to ask those questions,
and those conversations are beginning So to get to your last point, no doubt
Russia and China are very aware of American perceptions, or at least very concerned
actively in America's perceptions of their technological capabilities. And that's where the Air Force
has come in. So Task and Purpose wrote an article recently where they were
debating, you know, and talking about could these be drones from China and
Russia, And in fact, they had a Navy spokesperson say it's possible,
we don't know yet, we're still looking into it, and then an air
Force spokesperson this is the only instance I'm aware of. You may be aware
of others that the Air Force has chimed in. And they said, no,
that's probably not the case. They said, any drone that could fly
from Russia or China to the United States East Coast would have to be at
least as large as an MQ nine Reaper, very big, and the data
link used to fly the aircraft would be detectable. So he's saying that,
well, we don't know what these things are, but they're probably not Russia
and Chinese Chinese drones. Well, it's all smoke and mirrors, and I
don't want to go too far. Down this road for obvious reasons, but
sometimes in intelligence work the trick is to hide a capability that you do have
and to make the other side think you have a capability that you don't have.
Right, So again there's that to factor in. But here's here's one
other interesting point about this. Nick goes back to your point about how little
we've heard from from the Air Force as opposed to the Navy. Again,
there's no getting away from the fact that as we look at our troubled world
today, so many of the major potential flash points are obviously going to involve
naval forces. Whether it's it's the East China Sea and the Spratly Islands,
whether it's the Strait of Hall Meus, whether it's the Baltic whether it's the
Black Sea. But it's going to be the Navy in the front line of
a lot of this. And again I can't help but wonder is that something
to factor into all this. That's another great point. So moving on to
another topic. And this was actually when I originally scheduled this going to be
the main topic, but there's so much that has happened that I've really been
enjoying the I think a very important conversation we've been having thus far. But
you had also written an article about you know, the New York Times had
mentioned that ATIP had looked into the physical effects of people in I even asked
this of Loue Elizondo in my interview with him recently. You know, it
is a rendal sham factor into that, and he said essentially no comment.
Watched the show, so apparently they're gonna address this. But you have kind
of gone there and the Condon Report, as you said, John Burrows is
one of the witnesses in rendels Shom. In fact, at the UFO Congress
we gave him an award for the work that you had mentioned earlier getting finding
out about these other files. But he has written or at least spoken quite
a bit about how you know, in that Condon report they had talked about
UAP effects on them, in particular at Rendelsham. So it seems that that
it wasn't just Condon. Condon was kind of speculative, but that there is
actual physical work going on in studying these individuals. Yes, there is.
Now Again, I had no involvement in in the A TIP program obviously,
and I'm not going to attempt to speak for anyone involved with that, they
can, you know, discuss what they like in relation to their work.
I certainly was not cleared for any of that, and I had pretty much
left the mod anyway by the time that all came to fruition. What I
will say is this, it goes back to what Harry Reid termed as the
human interface and human effects aspects of this, and I have I'll choose my
words carefully because this is a very sensitive area, but essentially there is no
doubt in my mind that a number of people who claim to have had close
encounters, some of whom were involved in military events like the Rendalscham Forest incident,
have been approached over the years and asked, for example, to provide
blood and DNA samples, and this was I think represented to them as being
a scientific study, which was probably perfectly true. But I think raises the
question was the ultimate customer government and was a TIP involved in any of that.
Now, I'm not going to answer that question, and I'm going to
you know, I'm not involved in the Unidentified TV show. I had no
involvement in the ATIP program. But again, I think that there's no avoiding
the fact that some people have been looked at in relation to that, and
the roots of some of this, yes, were in Condine. I mean,
there was there was that throwaway line in Condine's final report where it speculated
that the Rendelsham Forest witnesses had probably been exposed to uap radiation for longer time
periods than normal. And I know that there have been at least two,
maybe three, possibly more settlements with the VA that some of which involved intervention
by US senators. Again, the sensitivity about this, and I can't get
into the full story, but again, a lot of this has gone on,
and I think we'll be finding out some more about this over the next
few weeks and months, but clearly for legal and ethical reasons and reasons of
classification, I want to err on the side of caution where it comes to
this. Most I suppose provocative and controversial aspect the human interface and human effects
aspects. I mean, some people have literally said to me, is this
the US government studying even alien abductees? And I'm not going to answer that.
I'm just going to let the cards for where they may exactly. Yeah,
those answers still have yet to be revealed, And like lou had said,
it turns out it seems as though we're going to get more of that
in the television show. So luckily we're not going to have to wait too
long to at least get some more information on that. And I'm not sure
if you're where I actually in my latest interview with Eric Davis, one of
the contractors a physicists with a hip or with he's worked with Big Low and
all kinds of other people, but he admitted, you know, he had
some things happened to him at the Skinwalker Ranch and they had the group had
felt he was kind of a magnet for these this phenomena and that he had
under contest and he had given them samples. So to your point, to
also show that you know, you're not the only one talking about this,
that Eric Davis himself is also mentioned he he gave samples. Right. Yes,
as I say, I think we'll be hearing a lot more about this
this sign it, but of course not least because of the scandal that followed
the mk Ultra situation. There are extreme sensitivities when it comes to this,
and there are also sensitivities in regard discussing individuals medical cases under hippa and such
like. So again, there are a number of reasons why I don't want
to go too far down this road except to say to people watch this space
right exactly, And I think you're right, And I think that people haven't
gotten their heads around it yet. They don't know what to make of it
because they haven't been speaking much about it. So I was even sort of
surprised that it would be featured on the show. Well, I don't know
what they're going to be able to come up with on that in a public
arena. I mean, of course, clearly I know, not least from
personal personal discussion, that there is still a very dipical line that that Lou
has to tread. And some of this is doubtless still fairly highly classified and
or sensitive, probably both. So so yes, I hope we'll we'll get
more. But goes back to the point we were discussing about press officers don't
necessarily expect when it comes to intelligence programs that that we'll be able to get
everything on a TV show or from a press officer. Right, so there's
some you know, you're you're telling people a clue, right there. Take
a look, pay attention to this this human the physical testing sort of aspects
of all of this. Do you have any other sort of parting predictions or
advice, Hey, keep an eye out on this area, that or that.
I think I would only reiterate to keep an eye on some of the
Freedom of Information Act requests that are still in the system. Some of them
are fairly bland catch all requests please please send me all your information on a
tip, But some of the rather more narrowly focused, cleverly crafted ones,
I think you're going to get into some fairly interesting areas. And it's where
there are these throwaway lines like, for example, if there is a map
of hotspots for example, which which I've heard kind of as as one point,
well, where are the data that populated that map? If there is
in the ATIP program a sort of what was it, two hundred and eighty
page document are sort of crown jewels, where is that dossier? So there
are some very specific things that have been mentioned that most people might have forgotten,
but not everyone has, and I think we might be hearing more about
some of these sorts of things. So one of the things I think it
staggers me how little official paperwork we yet have on a tip. As I
mentioned, we have Harry Reid's two thousand and nine letter to William Lynn the
IID, we have some of the contractual solicitation documents. We have the DIA
letter to Congress about the various studies that were undertaken, but we don't have
much more. But there's no doubt in my mind, even notwithstanding my point
that you try and suppress the pay per trail where you can, but government
is what it is, and there will definitely be despite that intention to sometimes
generate as little paperwork as you can, and where you do generate it to
make sure that it doesn't come out to press officers and bloggers and UFO community
people, there will be some material that inevitably has to come out just because
the FOI requests are sufficiently well crafted. So keep an eye on that.
I think that's a really great point. I mean, this is very fertile
ground. We know it exists, and as we've seen in the past,
and even as you all had experienced in the UK that even the most tightly
held records, it takes time, but eventually we'll start to see more.
So this may play out just like we just got. You know, these
last files from the UK. The whole release of files will probably be a
slow process that will go on for the next few years. Absolutely, but
don't rule out some left field revelation that takes everyone by surprise, whether it's
a new individual associated with some of this coming forward and speaking out, or
something that takes the debate off in an unexpected direction. I mean, there
are aspects to this. We've seen the videos, for example, the navy
jets chasing the UFOs. We've heard talk of meta materials, so there are
kind of and we've discussed the human effects. Don't be surprised if something else
that didn't previously have visibility suddenly explodes into the public consciousness. I agree,
probably multiple something else's I wouldn't be surprised. Well, thank you so very,
very very much for doing this interview. This has been incredible every time
we talk to you, it's so incredibly enlightening and it demonstrates, you know,
the importance of input from people who have had the experience to be able
to have some more insight into all of this for us. So thank you
for once again coming on the show. Thank you very much, and I
guess I'll be seeing you in alien con right in just a week. Absolutely
looking forward to that. Alrighty, fascinating and fun. Yeah, we'll see
you next week. Thank you so much. Okay bye now. Thank you
so much to Nick Pope for joining us once again. He's always awesome.
It's always wonderful to have him on the show because the insight that he lends,
having been kind of alue Elizondo in the UK, you know, someone
who was on the inside and doing this UFO investigative work for the government and
then also doing the public and as well, especially in these times, gives
us invaluable insight into what is going on here so we can interpret all of
these new revelations and new things that are happening with all of this. However,
we're not done. I have a special bonus audio here. So I
got a contact from Anthony Leapey and there are some things he wanted to share
with us regarding Unidentified. Leapey as the executive producer and showrunner for Unidentified Inside
America's UFO investigation. This is the show that is covering Tom Delongs to the
Stars and also the ATIP organization within the Pentagon and of course the guy who
used to run it lou Elizondo. The other guy that we talk about here
is Chris Mellon who's part of To the Stars and also in the show.
He is the guy who is the former United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
for Intelligence and then later for Security and Information Operations. So this is a
guy who served as a staff director for the United States seni Senate Committee on
Intelligence. So he's been in Washington sharing intelligence and information for a long time,
which is really important when it comes to some of the topics that we're
going to talk with Anthony about here. The other thing I wanted to remind
you all is if you haven't seen the show or you're not, you don't
remember this part episode three on unidentified Of course I've interviewed Chris Day or I'm
sorry, Kevin Day. And Kevin Day was a radar operator, the supervisor
on the nimits, and he had told them an area to go check out
near where the NIMES encounter happened. That was essentially Guadalupe Island off the coast
of Mexico, and that's where they go in episode three. So we'll talk
about episode three and then some really important upcoming information that's coming up on Unidentified.
So check out this interview with Anthony leape Alijandro. How are you good?
How are you? I am great? Exciting times. It is really
exciting. So first off, I want to apologize because I was informed,
and I think it was by a French Canadian that I had been pronouncing your
name wrong last time we talked, and it's Anthony leapey Wei, which is
it's a very pretty name. Correct. I'm glad they corrected me. So
before we talked, I don't think the show had aired yet, and now
it has. What's the response been, like, it's been really incredible people,
you know, just from the mainstream media catching on. I mean,
the whole conversation almost overnight has radically changed. You know, you're seeing things
like the Washington Post running opinion pieces saying, hey, we got to talk
about UFOs, The Atlantic, Bloomberg. I mean, it's been it's been
really wild. So it's very gratifying to see that. You know, we've
kind of cracked open the conversation. That was really all we really wanted to
do, and in some degree it's really exciting and it's so different. It's
very surreal to watch it. First of all, to see so many items
that I've written about coming to the screen, my most favorite stuff that I've
looked into. But second of all, it spills over in a way that
other shows don't. So for instance, and reality shows kind of have their
followings, but they don't make the news like you just reference, and especially
on really important topics, I mean policy when it comes to the Navy or
some of these other items and articles that have popped up. Yeah, and
that's kind of the turn that the series is going to be taking, and
that this upcoming week is you're going to see the beginnings of a chain of
events that again, this is wholly my unofficial opinion. I cannot prove the
following but and I think people can make up their own minds. But the
chain of events that you'll see that starts in this Friday's episode where Louel Zondo
and retired Commander David Fraver go and meet a lieutenant named Lieutenant Ryan Graves,
an Fateen Fighter pilot from Theodore Roosevelt, and he tells his story for the
first time. The chain of events that you see unfold in that episode and
then in the following episodes I believe are directly related to both this larger conversation.
Obviously, we saw the New York that, you know, we introduced
them to the New York Times. They the New York Times wrote the big
article, but also the Navy changing their policy. I believe it was the
events of the Theodore Roosevelt that pushed the Navy. To many of your viewers
listeners probably know about this, but you know, in April of this year,
the Navy announced new guidelines for reporting of UFOs and essentially tacitly admitted that
what these things are are not our own, meaning a US military operation,
and that led to this weekend's sort of mind blowing blockbuster news that President Trump
has been briefed on these recent events and as he said, is going to
be monitoring it closely, whatever that means. But I believe that there is
a direct line and you'll see that unfold beginning this Friday, which is really
exciting. Of course, you have the President saying he said he had a
short brief so who knows how much information he got. Apparently not enough to
convince him that, you know, UFOs are a real thing, although he
defers to the pilots. However, you know, the conversation to the level
that the conversation is reached. We had in this article Task and Purpose,
where the Navy spokesperson kind of says, well, it could be Chinese Russians,
where we're still not sure, we're looking into it. But then the
Air Force, and this is the first time I've seen the Air Force kind
of pipe in on the conversation, says, well, we don't think it
is Russian or Chinese drones. I think we think that they wouldn't have the
capability, and you know the nature of the technology that would be used is
not what's demonstrated in these videos sort of thing. So it's really excited.
I mean, it's inspired this conversation between the Navy and UFO, or the
Navy and the Air Force about UFOs, that Air Force that I'm so glad
you brought that up. That Air Force statement, which actually hasn't gotten a
lot of attention outside of I think a lot of the UFO circles and the
military circles. That statement by that Air Force general was major's major general actually
I think you said it. But you know, that is a really interesting
piece of the puzzle because now you have the Navy saying it is not us.
They're using the term UAP, which, as Nick Pope has you know,
explained, that was a term that was developed when he was at the
Ministry of Defense in the UK to to sort of reframe and talk about UFOs
in a different way, but has become the parlance in the intelligence and military
community to refer to this phenomena that's unidentified aerial phenomena. So the fact that
the Navy is using that term publicly, we all know that they they had
been using it, you know, within the realm of ATIP et cetera.
But the fact that they're using it publicly and essentially are saying that these are
not our own They're we're not The Navy is saying we're not experiencing unknown craft
of our own making, obviously, and then you have the Air Force General
coming out and saying they don't believe that the Chinese or the Russians have the
capability. I mean, it really is by process of elimination. You end
up in a very interesting place now writing kind of along these lines, writing
about UFOs for so long, it's not surprising to me that there's all these
conspiracies kind of crop up. But what you've been demonstrating in the show is
more of a bottom up effort, and some of these guys, like Chris
Mellan has been working with Bob big Low and they've been working on trying to
get UFO serious for a long time. Of course, we never knew that
Loue Alisanda was behind the scenes doing this because that was secret for so long.
So you really get the sense. And I've asked all of these these
players, including some of the contractors like doctor Help put out for doctor Eric
Davis. You know, is that what this is an effort that you all
have done to try to get this information out, as opposed to this belief
among many that it's a top down that there's some kind of hidden hand that
is kind of controlling all of this. And maybe we've talked about this before,
but even though you've been presenting how this is all happening, it seems
like people are like, yeah, but still you know there's somebody behind the
scenes. How do you react or what is you know? I think,
I mean, I think Chris Mellon says this at one point in the show.
It's hard to prove and negative, I have no evidence that there is
someone pulling the strings behind Chris Mellon in terms of what he's doing, and
you will see that in this episode. I don't want to give too much
away what happens, but what you're going to see in this episode is the
process by which Lieutenant Graves' testimony comes to Washington's. That's what It's not just
us getting Lieutenant Graves and Lieutenant o'coin talking on the record. What you're going
to see is how lou and Chris are working behind the scenes to get people
aware of what's going on, because that's the thing that I really learned doing
this process. And I think it's hard for people, a lot of people
to understand there's no such thing as the US government. There's so many different
agencies, and there's so many different people, so many different people with different
levels of knowledge about what's going on here. And what you're going to see
in this episode and what you see unfold in the rest of the episodes is
Congress. The members of Congress who are now taking interest in this and unfortunately
I can't share the names, that's all you know been told to me off
the record, but the members of Congress who are now paying attention to this
you know, these guys were pretty out of the loop, it seems,
on what was going on, and a lot of people, you know,
I think a lot of people don't really realize what a TIP was. At
least as far as I can tell, was a very siloed, compartmentalized program.
This wasn't you know, people, Not that many people were aware of
what was going on. And a lot of these reports, you know,
and I think because of the politics of the chain of command, just you
know, they don't spread. I mean, a lot of people are you
know, talk about well, there were five thousand people in the USS Nimics,
and there's probably the same amount on the Theodore Roosevelt. But those reports
of those pilots, you know, those are very small cadra of dudes in
these squadrons. You know, I spoke to many pilots in Lieutenant Graves,
not many. I spoke to five other pilots. I don't want to overstate
it when I say I spoke to five other pilots in Lieutenant Graves squadron who
wouldn't go on camera. And you'll see actually some of that process by which
Elizondo was trying to get and we were in contact with the guy who was
the weapons systems operator whose voice you hear in the two Theodore Roosevelt videos.
He was going to come on camera and then kind of backed out. I
spoke to several other guys in that squadron, all of whom confirmed the basic
scope of that story, but not I also spoke to a higher up guy
on the Roosevelt, and he wasn't even this is a really interesting story.
I spoke to a guy who was a much higher ranking officer on the Roosevelt
who was not aware of the sightings that were going on over twenty fourteen.
In twenty fifteen, who was a former pilot, but he told us a
story off the record of an incident he had an earlier work up, which
is another term for an exercise, where he saw a craft that he couldn't
explain. So it's interesting who knows what is? You really have to kind
of understand how these ships work, and how you know the different parts of
the puzzle fit together, and where all these guys are physically on the ships,
and who they talked to. It appears to me that you know these
pilots pretty much. You know, they stick stick together, you know,
so anyway, it's a little of the sidebar, but it's it's a it's
actually it's a larger metaphor for when you look at what's going on inside the
Pentagon. Is this information, you know, is not widely known. You
hear a lot of people And here's what's really interesting, Audra, I have
we haven't. I haven't told anyone about this yet. But if you notice
at the end of our app every episode, now we have an email UH
info at unidentified dot tv where we UH have put out the word for UH
military personnel to contact us. We have gotten scores and scores of emails from
people, all with telling us their name and rank and where they were deployed,
many of whom are talking about similar instance that you UH see in the
series, and including several people who are backing up the stories of some of
the guys that you've seen and who you know we're on ships, even sending
us pictures with them with what is a couple of the guys who you see
in our show saying Hey, I know that guy, I know that story.
He's telling you the truth. So it's it's really I feel like we've
kind of, you know, crossed the rubicon on this story in a lot
of way, and it's we're opening up floodgates and we're sifting through this as
we go, and if other military people are listening to this, we we
are absolutely reading every single one of those emails and we're going to be following
up with people for the stories that we, you know, feel are interesting.
M hmm, yeah, I think I did it. Why reporting like
yours is important so you can see the investigation unfold because the what people assume
how things work is not necessarily the case and sometimes can even be counterintuitive,
and so it's a learning process to learn how you know this all happens,
and how you know this information can only be held by maybe just a handful
of people as opposed to you, you know, to the the masses or
large amounts of people like some people assume. Yeah, I mean that's really
where this the the series kind of takes a turn where we start you start
seeing how Lou and Chris are working behind the scenes. You know. One
of the interesting things that I think is is that people really need to understand
about Melon and Alizondo is these guys are not whistleblowers. People are trying to
kind of put them into that frame. These guys still have security clearances,
and they're still working very closely with people both in all say, you know,
the military executive and the intelligence community. They have very close connections and
I've seen that personally. I've been in meetings with them, with different members
of these different branches of government. Say so, I think it's and they're
open about that. I think people are trying, people are getting a little
bit. Maybe we didn't make that clear enough in the show that these guys
are not trying to say that they're they're they're not there. And that's what's
such a tricky part about this storytelling is there's a lot of information that they
can't tell me and they can't say on camera about what they've learned. And
that's why we're going out in the show to get these first hand accounts from
the pilots themselves, because these guys, you know, are still bound by
their security clearances. I do want to talk a little bit about episode three,
Guadalupe Island, because it was the island is so cool. Of course,
isn't it incredible? Yeah, Kong Island, you know, that's exactly
what I was thinking. Monster Island from Godzilla or something right. And so
you get there and you've got these coordinates from Kevin Day, the radar operator
supervisor and the nimics in two thousand and four, and he said this is
where he was getting the hits. And you get there. Were you surprised
when you started talking to the locals? You know, I have to say
it was. I was super as a producer and a showrunner, extremely worried
about that trip because it was a major you know, I don't, if
you know, about making television, the major expense to rent a boat right
in the world of documentary filmmaking. So it was a major sort of risk
we were taking. We're like, okay, we're gonna go down to Mexico.
We don't know what we're going to find. We teamed up with this
amazing local journalist whom Jorda Lebreja, who works out of Tijuana, kind of
guy mostly covers the cartel wars down there, but he's you know, spent,
he's knows in Sonata area. And he immediately when I first talked to
him and said, you know, will you hear about that all the time
down here? This is like it's on the new Their their sightings on the
news. There's like big rares ufo radio shows on the local radio in Baja
California, so it's like a very well known thing. Uh that ufo sightings
are kind of a thing down there. So we sent him ahead of time
down to to Incinata and just to to look around and talk to people.
And he said, man, we it was like you know, swinging a
cat. It was all I had to do is just start talking to people
on the street. And all these fishermen seem to have these stories and none
of them knew about the Nimits incident. They had that that was something that
you know, wasn't really widely reported and there, or at least, you
know, wasn't part of the world. They didn't really know much about it,
so they were really kind of tableau Rosa's. We went down there and
it was a you know, crazy experience. I wasn't there, to be
clear, my producers went down there. I get really ce sick, so
I would have died on that love really but yeah, I would not have
made it to Gualupe. But no, it was incredible, and I think
the most eerie part of the spine tingling part about it was the pilot that
pilot Ojeda, who basically you know, flies in those waters all the time.
His incident where he basically had a run in with the tic tac shaped
craft was in twenty fifteen, right eleven years after the Nieman's incident, and
when he told us, he basically gave us the approximate location, you know,
he said he was twenty three miles south of Enconnada, about ten miles
off the coast. When we kind of roughly plotted that on the map,
it was like I believe, I believe it was twenty miles away from where
the Fravr and his wingman intercepted the Tiktak in two thousand and four, which
when I told one of the pilots about that, they were like, that's
basically the same location. Our turning radius is like ten miles when we circle,
you know, holding pattern essentially, So eleven years later, he runs
into a craft doing the exact same thing, moving in that weird ticked like
you know how Fraverr described it, almost like a ping pong ball inside of
a glass cube, and then when it kind of became aware of him,
shot right across his nose. That's very very similar to what fravr described the
knimahs tic Tac doing, so that really blew my mind. And then when
we got out to Guadalupe where and that's the location where the chief radar operator
from the new that said they were all disappearing off his radar envelope. So
he wasn't sure whether they were physically disappearing or but that's where he was last
able to see them. But he said they were all moving in the southerly
location down the Pacific, and then all right to that one location, and
he gave us those Latin lungs. And when we got out there on the
boat, sure enough, all the fishermen who work out of this tiny little
fisherman's collective all said they'd see things there all the time, including one of
the world's most renowned great white shark you know scientists, who also said he
saw something. So it was it was pretty mind blowing to hear that piece
of the puzzle and to hear that that now if you look, and this
went a little bit quick in the show, but we plotted them all on
the map and also by date, and it went they were seeing them before
two thousand and four, and they were seeing them the most recent one was
it was the last year in twenty eighteen, so it's an ongoing thing.
Whatever these are, whether you know, you want to argue that there's some
kind of navy drone swarm that they just constantly have flying around there, you
know, I mean, there is interesting, mysterious stuff going on there.
The you know, Guadalupe Island is like this really interesting controlled environment where foreigners
are not. Actually, we tried very hard to get permission from the Mexican
government to be able to land on it and go shoot on shore, and
we couldn't get permission. They claimed that that was it. Well, I
think it has to do with the fact that, I mean, it's it's
hard to get a straight answer exactly. I mean, the official answer is
that it's a marine refuge. So it's sort of like a Galopogos type of
thing, right where they are trying to keep the footprint really low. So
the only people who have permission there are there's like a tiny little fishermen's collective
and they have like some you know, small shacks where they sleep and fish
off there for a couple of weeks at a time, and then they go
back and you know, they live in Baja. There's also a Mexican Weather
Army uh weather station on the island. But other than but I think it
mostly you know, I don't know what it really has to be. One
of the other theories we heard from from our Mexican context was it has to
do if there's no immigration on the on the shore there, so they there's
no one to check a passport. So if you're if you're coming into Mexico,
if it's their first time you're entering Mexican soil, there's no there's they
don't have any facilities to basically allow you into the country. If that makes
sense, and honestly is probably it also probably something it also has to do
with drugs, in the sense that they don't want people, you know,
if that is, that could be a great jump off point, you know
for people bringing drugs up there, and if people were kind of you know,
so they're trying to keep it as the footprint as minimal as possible.
Or you could go conspiracy theory. Right again, you can't prove a negative
that maybe it has to do with whatever you see flying over there and there's
some secret you know, underground Illuminati UFO based on the Island, right,
I mean whenever you which if you want to go there. There's can't argue
that we know there's not right, So and we're about it out of time.
But it's a good thing to end on because we're to be at Alien
Con you and I this weekend, and now we're going to hear a lot
of pretty wild theories. I think. Yeah, I'm so excited. I've
never been to any of these conferences, so I'm really excited to be able
to meet you in person and to learn a lot more and to talk more
about the show and answer any questions I can. Well, the show is
awesome. Thank you so much for coming on with me again for a few
minutes to talk about the the next couple of episodes. And I cannot tell
you how excited I get watching this show. It's so much fun, and
you guys have done a great job. All right, excellent, all right,
talkulater, talk to you later. Thank you so much to Anthony Lapey
for joining us and sharing some of the cool stuff that's going on with the
show Unidentified. Hopefully you're able to catch that that's every Friday on the History
Channel, really good stuff. You can also go to the History Channel website
and look up the Unidentified website. They've got some great articles there, just
like they were doing with Project blue Book. They have some cool stuff up
there. Also. Of course, what's great is a lot of what Lapey
mentioned. He even mentioned Nick Pope was the type of stuff that we're talking
with Nick about. Remember you can go visit Nick pope'side at nickpope dot Net.
Awesome show today. Thank you so much to everybody who joined us.
Thank you to Martin Willis for joining us with the news. I also ron
remind you we have some really cool things coming up with the UFO Congress.
James Fox is going to be speaking, and we just added to the list
Chuck Sukowski. He's got a brand new show called Alien Highway that is on
the Travel Channel and it covers Skinwalker Ranch related to all of this stuff that
we've been talking about. So they did a great job with that episode.
They had some weird stuff happened too, So go check out Alien Highway on
the Travel Channel. Also, if you haven't heard, of course, I've
interviewed Check Sukowski many times because we've been buddies for a very very long time.
But I'll also have him and the whole crew from Alien Highway on.
Hopefully sometime soon. We're working on that, so be sure to go to
ufocongress dot com so you can see Chuck, you can see James Fox,
you can see Kevin Day, all of these really cool people at the conference.
It's going to be a lot of fun. Go to ufocongress dot com,
remember ufocongress dot com, and you can find out more information about the
event and sign up soon. Especially get rooms because the rooms typically sell out.
We've got more rooms at this hotel than we've had at a pre hotel.
But sign up as soon as you can, and especially your room so
you don't run to be sure that you get a room in the host hotel.
But thank you all so much. Come say hi this weekend at alien
Con if you're there. I always love to say hi to listeners. In
fact that Phoenix move On, I met a couple more and hello to those
of you who said hi and Phoenix move on. Thank you all so much
for joining us this week. We'll have another great show next week. Until
next time, Audios moved tuttos. You are must