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Hello, and welcome to Open Mind
UFO Radio. I'm your host, Alejandro

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Rojas, and I am here with
Martin e or Willis e Or. Oh

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my god, I just realized something. What I remind you of? E

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Or well just today because you said
you're you're you're kind of tired, and

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when we were talking just a minute
ago, because we're both kind of tired.

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I literally just got back from Roswell. I think that we both found

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like may sound a little bit like
a couple of e Ors just kinda oh

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dear, oh UFOs today, Oh
me, yeah, exactly. So,

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yes, we can do it.
Though, we're going to get through this.

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We're going to do it. And
especially because the topics are so exciting.

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I am charged up in that.
The Roswell event went great. Everything

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was cool there, so that was
a lot of fun. I bet they

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missed Stan Freeman. He was always
there, wasn't he for yours? Yes,

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it was very sad, you know, And I'll admit this because I'm

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a I'm a kind of a forward
thinking progressive man. But during the panel,

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I was actually moderating the big Roswell
panels on Friday or no Saturday and

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Sundays, which all the with all
the Roswell researchers, and at the end

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of the last one yesterday, I
you know, wanted to end with a

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moment of silence and said a couple
of things about Stan and I got really

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emotional, actually, which was surprising. I did, you know, just

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break down sobbing and bawling, you
know, on the floor or something.

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But it was it was a get
It was really hard to get out some

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of the words. And I mean, on the one hand, I was

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surprised that I got so emotional.
On the second hand, you know,

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a year prior, in that very
room, we were doing a panel and

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it was we all, you know, knew this would be Stanton's last panel.

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Not because he we we thought it
would be this way. It's because

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he said he was going to retire
and not come back to Roswell. That's

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right. So soon after he did
say he was going to come back to

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Roswell, but of course he didn't
make it back. But all I could

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think of is, you know,
at the end of the standing ovation we

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gave him because it was going to
be it, and uh, what a

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what a moment that was. And
that turned out to be, you know,

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his last panel at Roswell and yeah, he was a very important,

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a great person. Yeah, yeah, I remember always hearing that he was

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hearing that he was out there every
single year. Every year since I've known

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of him and the Roswell thing he
has gone. I mean his how many

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years in a row? Did he
ever miss a year going there? Fifty

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five years in a row? No, I don't know that. Actually,

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the fiftieth anniversary, I think is
when the festival started nineteen ninety seven.

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It was huge. I mean it
was in Time magazine. It was a

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big, big deal, lots of
news about it in ninety seven and it

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was so big and there's so many
people that it started the annual event,

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which is always huge. I live
streamed and I did it over Instagram,

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and I shouldn't have because Instagram,
and this is definitely an Instagram complaint.

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You can only unless I don't know
what I'm doing, when you do a

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live stream and share it to your
story, it'll only display for an hour

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or a day and then it's gone. So this great video I did of

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you know, live streaming the parade
while I'm on a float is now lost.

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My god, that's so strange.
Yeah, it's just like vanished.

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So but there were a lot of
people. It was a lot of fun

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so and lots of great talks and
it's always good to see some friends and

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everything. So oh yeah, and
you know we're going to get into the

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news in a second and the guest
here and actually talk about what we're here

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to talk about. But the the
paper loves me there. Of course,

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I write for them occasionally, and
they asked me to write something up for

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them, so I did and they
posted that on or they printed it on

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the print paper and put it online
on Saturday. But they also had one

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of my talks on the front page. They covered both of my talks at

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the event in the paper, so
like Saturday's paper with me on the front

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page and then about a story about
my talk and then my story in there.

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He was like a Rojas edition of
the Roswell Daily Record. So on

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wow yeah, wow, yeah,
yeah, I remember last year you had

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something to do with that two Yeah, I think it was similar. I

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was in there and I might have
I probably did write something for them,

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so and I might try to do
that more regularly. They said they'd like

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that. So yeah, that was
really cool. Oh this is cool too.

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I want to start. I want
to say, you know, shout

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out to to ninety eight point seven
Inkyle California. My sister texted me and

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I guess one of their interns went
to Roswell and they asked her about that,

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and then some of the DJs,
including this guy Woodie, were like,

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oh, yeah, I listened to
all Hundro Rojas. He was out

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there and he's got a great podcast. So I'm not sure if they mentioned

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you, Martin, but I'm sure
they love you too. But you know,

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to any of you guys listening ninety
eight point seven, thanks do you?

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Yeah? Yeah? Cool? It's
great dude, he getting coverage,

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awesome stuff. So, speaking of
awesome stuff, we have a remarkable guest

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today. I'm so excited about this
guest and our conversation. I think it

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clears up a lot of misperceptions people
have about information and vetting, you know,

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information. Our guest today is Brian
Bender, so you probably saw him

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on Unidentified, the History Channel show. He also he's political, Yeah exactly,

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He's with Politico. He is the
defense editor and he's the guy on

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Politico who's written about UFO stories.
He's broken some news. So for instance,

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he was the guy. Originally,
in twenty seventeen, he had confirmed

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with the DoD that Loue Alesondo did
work for a TIP. Later on,

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more recently, he broke the story
about the Navy creating new UFO guidelines.

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What was another story? There was
another one, Oh, Senator Warren speaking

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about UFOs and saying that, yes, we were briefed on UFOs. He

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broke that story. Of course,
now we have another senator who's spoken about

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seeing UFOs and then and someone else
that's very high in the government, the

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President, of course, it's about
as high as you can get, has

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been talking about being briefed on UFOs. So yeah, so really cool stuff.

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So he's gonna be on that's a
good get. Yeah. Yeah.

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He also worked for The Boston Globe
and Jane's Defense Weekly, which is a

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defense magazine. Jane's Defense very popular, well known, but the Boston Globe,

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he did a ton of war correspondents
back in the day. In fact,

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he's even got a book out where
this Iraq veteran had gone looking for

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this World War two fighter pilot,
you know, what had happened to him

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looking for his remains in New Guinea. And he's got a book out on

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that. So he's also a member
of the a board member of the Military

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Reporters and Editors Association. And this
is all very important because I think it's

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really important to establish his credibility and
his experience because some of the goofball UFO

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people out there have been doubting him, accusing him of some really ridiculous kind

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of stuff, I think, And
so this is great because we get a

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chance to talk to him. I
mean, some people have assumed, like

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somehow that he's incahoots with Alizondo and
to the stars, and he's not at

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all. He's very independent. His
parts were filmed separately. He's totally into

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planet. Actually, I've got to
have luncheon din with him lately because he

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lives here locally, and that's how
I got this interview. He's actually in

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the studio right here for the interview. But yeah, he really he's interested

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in this topic, but he is
not like you know, he doesn't like

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he doesn't have a dog in the
race. Essentially, he's just covering the

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news in the story and letting them
unfold and covering it like he would any

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defense story. And this is a
defense story of course, because it's the

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DoD that Lua Alsando worked for so
helping healthy skepticism right exactly, and he

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strikes me as someone highly intelligent and
very well spoken. I'm really excited to

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listen to the interview. Yes,
a great interview, So very excited to

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have him and I think the listeners
are gonna particularly enjoy this one because I

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think it does clear up a lot
of things, like, for instance,

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you know how you go about reporting
information, especially when FOYA is kind of

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a waste of time. FOYA is
not primary place you go the Freedom of

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Information Act to get information as a
reporter, especially when as seasoned as mister

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Bender is mm hmm excellent. Yes, But before that, just a quick

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intro. This is at Open Minds
CUFO Radio. We do cover the UFO

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phenomena in a more journalistic, serious
manner. We're looking at, you know,

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more of the credible substantiated information if
it is speculation. So for example,

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we had a lot of speculation in
our last show. But we'll let

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you know that, and we'll let
you know what is hard evidence and what

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is not. You know, what
is credible or what is a little more

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dubious or perhaps just isn't as substantiated
as other things, And until lately a

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lot of the UFO field was more
speculative, but now we have a lot

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of hard information coming out. So
in fact, you know, the first

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thing, I want to kind of
introduce the first topic in the news,

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if you don't mind, Yeah,
go ahead, sure, just because I

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would like to get your thoughts on
the last episode of Unidentified. That this

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History Channel show that was covering to
the Stars, which is a lot of

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former government officials and one rock star, and it includes Louis Alizonto who worked

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for the Pentagon program and their ongoing
investigation of UFOs, and the season finale

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was just the other night. It
was, and it's the first show that

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I actually watched live. I usually
catch them, you know, by going

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you know, on cable and you
know, spectrum and all that going in

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through that way. But I watched
it live, and these days I forget

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that's even possible. I watch everything
on streaming and sometimes, you know,

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Karen mentioned once in a while,
well maybe we can watch it live.

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I think it's on right now,
and I'm like, oh, yeah,

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that's it, my bother Yeah,
yeah, yeah, no. I I

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thought it was great. I was
really I was really happy with the show

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overall, and you know they are
looting that there's going to be another season,

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But do you happen to know?
I mean usually they know by this

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time whether it's going to be in
for another season. Do you have to

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say? I don't know for sure, but it is looking like there is

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going to be a second season.
I mean, things that were looking positive

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and at least the rumors on the
street. Not that I've heard anything official

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at all, but it is looking
like you will have a second season.

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And will definitely let you all know
when we find out, because we'll probably

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find out first because we're just that
cool. Well, I like, you

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know, at the very ending,
it sort of left a little bit of

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a left hanging, just a little
bit to make you think that they were

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probably going to be coming back.
I really liked when they went to Italy

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and they spoke with it. You
know, there was that one personality that

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spoke in English and you know,
really put Lou on the spot, you

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know, as far as trying to
get him to reveal he had classified information.

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Of course he didn't, you know, But anyway, I thought the

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encounter was pretty amazing, and they
had photographs of it. They showed of

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this object behind this helicopter and it
supposedly shot a Well, I don't know

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how much I should talk about this
as a spoiler for someone who hasn't watched

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it yet. Yeah, it is
a bit of a spoiler. But you

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know what isn't a spoiler is this
is funny? Is that. I don't

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know if you've noticed this, but
there were a lot of people online and

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I think someone had asked me,
oh no, someone found a story I

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wrote about these orbs of light that
were coming out of the ocean and essentially

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terrorizing this town in Italy, and
that, you know, they asked me,

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is what Because Tom DeLong had hinted
that there would be an Italian case

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like you're just described with a helicopter, and a lot of people somebody asked

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me, tweeted me, is this
the case that's going to be on the

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show? And I said, I
don't know. But people went wild with

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assuming that it was. They're like, this is it, this is the

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case. It's going to be on
the show. A one hunter wrote a

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story about it. So, and
actually it is essentially so there were these

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mysterious fires that were started by these
orbs that were coming out of the ocean,

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and it is that's what the helicopter
was going to investigate. In the

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show, they say, this helicopter
was going to go investigate this UAP phenomena

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that was happening in this area called
Caneto d Cora Coronea. And yeah,

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so this helicopter was involved with that
case. So you guys called it wow.

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Yeah, yeah, that's what the
helicopter was there out there researching or

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was checking it out. What was
going on when that happened. Crazy.

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Yeah, that was really good.
So it was really good. I also

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liked that they covered a little bit
of lose motivations. You know, there

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was some more skepticism like you know, why are you doing this? What's

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going on here? And I you
know, some people might see that as

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disingenuous, but Anthony Lapey, at
least from my conversations and perhaps you got

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this sense too, he he,
I think was taking a trying to take

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and I think intending to take a
more unbiased look at this and to kind

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of grill these guys, you know, to make sure everything's on the up

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and up. And it was also
interesting that, you know, according to

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Lou well, we know the program's
going on. But this is something that

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Bender and I and I should say, the interview that you're going to hear

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with Bender and I was before that
episode came out, so neither of us

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had seen it, even though Bender's
in it. But this whole thing about

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people in the inside being upset with
him, and which is true, and

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you know, Bender and I talk
about that a bit, and this goes

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to this. You know, I
keep asking people involved with all of this,

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do you think that there's some bigger
conspiracy that you're part of some agenda

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to get UFO information out? And
they've all said no. But there's this

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major assumption by the UFO community and
others that that is what's going on.

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And just from my perspective, having
been involved with all of these people for

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literally decades, that just does not
seem to be the case. These people

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are very independent of the government and
many of these other people in the government,

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and I think that people are upset
with lou and they genuinely are demonstrates

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that you know, this isn't some
concerted effort of an organized group. This

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is, you know, people interested
who have been fighting for more paranormal type

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of topics to get taken seriously and
be investigated inside the government. And they're

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finally, after all of these years, essentially Robert Bigelow, this billionaire and

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his buddy's out of Las Vegas.
They're finally really gaining some ground and making

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some big headway with the help of
government insiders like Chris Mellen and Loue Alizondo.

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Now what makes people on the inside
angry at him? Because it doesn't

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make their job any tougher, does
it? Or kidding, of course it

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does because now for forefunding no for
for years, they have claimed, up

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until two thousand and seven or twenty
seventeen, before the New York Times article

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came out, that they had nothing
to do or no interest in UFOs.

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Now Elizondo has revealed that that was
false. That was just straight up false,

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I see, and that they've they've
had a program since two thousand and

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seven, and that this program continues. They don't want to talk about this

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stuff, you know, And so
that's why they're put in a position.

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That's why we're getting these really strange
responses, I think. But I won't

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get more into it because Brian and
I talk about this quite a bit in

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the interview Okay, yeah, I'll
be interested to hear more about it.

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Yeah, so you can hear his
perspective because he has a more educated perspective

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on you know, because he's been
working with these agencies for so long and

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and there's some really interesting revelations that
he gave to me that are pertinent to

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this discussion. But what news did
you want to discuss, my friend,

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Well, I wanted to talk.
You were talking about a briefing. You

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mentioned that, and I want to
talk. I know I did. I

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believe I talked about this last time, about Trump's opinion on UFOs, but

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again this was this is actually on
Fox News, and this Tucker Carlson is

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actually really pretty aggressive about the UFO
tom as far as you know, the

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mainstream news media. I mean,
I would say that he's probably one of

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the most aggressive people talking about it
out there. And he actually asked the

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President point blank during an interview at
about UFOs and he persisted. And you

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know, just like if you watch
there's a video up on Fox and if

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you watch that video, Nick Pope
also speaks with Tucker later and after reviews

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the interview and makes a very good
point. You know, here we are

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on the record President of the United
States actually talking about UFOs on the record

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in an interview, you know,
and he also says, you know that

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he he doesn't you know, I
think he says the words something like I

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personally don't. Trump says, he
personally tends to doubt it, you know

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that UFOs exists, that type of
thing, but he does says, I'm

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not a believer, but you know, anything as possible. Now, Nick

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Pope makes a good point. He
says, you know, of course he's

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uh, you know, first learning
about something, he's treating it with skepticism,

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and you know, who wouldn't you
know that that type of thing.

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But also I do want to point
out, you know, when I spoke

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with Chris Mellan a few years ago, he said that, you know,

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if any if the president wanted to
know something, if someone knew something,

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they had to tell him. But
there's also you know, compartmentalized situations where

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and need to know and uh private
uh, you know, things can be

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put in the private sector information.
It all boils down to the fact that

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I've said many times you've heard me
say it that you know and you've I

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think you agree with me that you
know, maybe the government only knows so

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much about what's going on, and
not not everything. Like a lot of

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people accuse them, you know,
of knowing like exactly what's going on.

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Yeah, I mean, it's been
entirely possible. Robert Biggo's is the ownly

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billionaire we know, dumping tons of
money into this UFO topic. People may

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not realize there was a Rockefeller.
Laurence Rockefeller put a lot of money into

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researching all of this as well.
He's passed away, but both of them

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have found kind of similar things,
which is not much. And that Bigelow

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of course, has said in the
past that he knows aliens are here and

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they're walking among us. I don't
know what he feels justifies that if it's

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information that they feel they obtain themselves, that would be my guess. I

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think that's what he means. He
could mean that he knows there's information inside

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the government, but I've never heard
him say anything like that. However,

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his investigations with his guys have revealed
some pretty interesting things, so I think

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that's what he means. So I
would agree with you. I think that

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the president, and you know,
it was first of all, we heard

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him say last time that he only
had a short briefing, a short meeting.

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That's in fact, he called it
a brief meeting. He didn't even

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call it a briefing. It was
a brief meeting this time, like you

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said, Tucker pressed him on it. And one of the points Tucker pressed

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him on was the same point that
I pressed Lue Alizondo on which he told

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Tucker Tucker that he believed and he
said, I don't I can't say I

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know this, but it is my
opinion that the government does have materials from

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a UFO. And Tucker did push
the president, you know what, this

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guy is saying that they have materials
from a crashiophoks right, And he's not

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saying that. He said it was
his opinion that that is the case.

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And Trump said, you know,
he wasn't aware of that. He doesn't

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know that. But the reason that's
important is because they didn't share with him

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a lot of information, just a
very little. They probably the President indicated

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he knew about the navy pilots and
that's probably what they told him. Just

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what the media is covering. The
media is covering these navy pilots who are

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talking. Trump did allude to saying
that he had talked to with or watch

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Tucker Carlson. We all know he's
watching Fox News pretty much all day long,

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so he's aware of some of this
stuff, but just not too terribly

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interested. So yeah, we'll see
where this goes. One of the articles

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I wrote in the Roswell Daily Journal
was, well, there's two points.

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I wrote. We may see another
government agency from all of this. I

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mean, there are a lot,
we have these senators that are interested,

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the President has been briefed. We
may see another project blue Book. The

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other point is how weird it was
that here we are at the Roswell Festival,

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which is usually seen as pretty silly
even a year ago. A year

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ago, none of us probably would
have guessed that we would be here.

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While we're at this festival, the
President is on Fox News being grilled about

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UFOs. Mm hmm, the wild
wild wild stuff. How buddy, just

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one more thing about the wreckage.
I don't know, it just seems like

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there's a lot of people talking in
the UFO community, to be out community

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about wreckage out there lately. Is
there any is there any you know,

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science on this. I mean there's
an Adam project where where they're supposed to

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be examining the material with in the
TTSA, but we haven't heard from them

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yet, so to me, honestly, I think you know they're the other

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alleged things have been debunked. I
don't know. We haven't seen anything yet,

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and I'm even skeptical that we will, to be completely honest. Yeah,

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but now we're out of time.
So thank you so much for joining

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us, Martin. You're very welcome. Always a pleasure. All right,

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I'll be right back with Brian Bender. I am very happy to welcome to

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the show. Brian Bender, thanks
for being here, thanks for having me,

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and this is fun. We're live
in the studio and you have your

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cool NASA shirt on there. Old
school I do these T shirts you can

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buy at Old Navy that look like
you've had for thirty years. They're brand

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new and probably made in China.
So I guess to start off with,

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I've been following your articles for a
while and was excited when Politicos started doing

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more space stuff and one of the
things that you put together was a space

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kind of forum, and you in
the forum, you were interviewing a couple

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of congressmen and someone who's on the
Space Committee that advises Trump that he invoked

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when he started his presidency, and
you ask them about UFO. So why

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were you, I guess prompted to
do that. Well, this was back

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in twenty eighteen, so about a
year ago, maybe a little more.

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And it was just a couple of
months after we reported in the New York

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Times reported the existence of this Pentagon
Pentagon program a tip that was researching these

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unexplained aerial phenomenon UAPs, as the
Pentagon calls them. And we had launched

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our Space newsletter, and this was
an event where we had a couple of

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members of Congress who have oversight of
NASA, oversight of the space program,

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and I thought it was a relevant
question. You have Navy pilots, other

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military personnel who were reporting these unexplained
sightings, You had a Pentagon office that

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was set up or a Pentagon program. I think program is more of an

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accurate description. An office kind of
makes it sound like there was some big

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operation, But I think it was
a couple of people in the Pentagon on

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doing UFO research at the request of
Congress back in the two thousand and seven

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two thousand and eight time frame.
For about five or six years and that

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had just come to light. And
here I had sort of a captive audience

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two members of Congress who have oversight
of the military oversight of space programs,

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and so I asked them what they
thought of this, And you know,

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I think the fact that they did
not dodge the question, the fact that

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this was Congressman Beara, a Democrat
from California, Congressman Holtgren, a Republican,

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they both seemed to think that this
was a legitimate issue to look into.

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If you had reports of military personnel
who were seeing things in the night

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sky that they couldn't explain, that
we're exhibiting characteristics that they hadn't seen before,

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maybe we should look into this more
deeply. In fact, I think

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it was Congressman Holt who had joked
that the chairman at the time of the

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House Science Committee, Lamar Smith,
who was getting ready to retire, should

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hold a hearing, a public hearing
on UFOs is his swan song before leaving

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Congress. And obviously that didn't happen. But I think it demonstrates that Congress,

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at least some members of Congress are
interested in this issue in a way

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that at least publicly, we haven't
seen before. They take some of these

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reports as credible reports, and they
feel that the government should do more to

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try and explain them if they don't
know what they are. Were you nervous

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at all asking that question? I
don't think I was nervous at the time,

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but I mean, there's no doubt
having covered the military for I'm dating

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myself, but for about twenty five
years now, covering the Pentagon, covering

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military operations, I think I was
a little reluctant to dive into this issue

359
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when I first got a tip about
some Pentagon UFO research that had been going

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on. As you know better than
most, you know, there's a stigma

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associated with this issue. The mainstream
media has not covered it in a serious

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way, at least in recent decades, in any sustained way. So yeah,

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I mean I think professionally I worried
a little bit. You know,

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do I become the UFO guy if
I start writing a bunch of UFO stories.

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But I'm not so worried about that
anymore because Number one, as I

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said, members of Congress, former
Pentagon officials, a whole host of you

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know, credible people are talking about
this, are interested in this, want

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to know more. I think the
issue is less stigmatized than it once was.

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The fact that you have active duty
Navy pilots willing to come forward and

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talk about this and not be afraid
their career is going to be over as

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a result, I think shows that
it an issue that's entering the more mainstream

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discussion. Again, I mean,
it's not like, as you know,

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this issue was all of a sudden
popped up out of nowhere. I mean

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it's been discussed, hashed over by
researchers, by government agencies for decades and

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decades. But I think we have
a moment here where people are paying attention.

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Government officials are paying attention in a
way that maybe they haven't before,

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at least publicly, you know,
having a discussion that the public can be

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engaged in as well, and not
just one that happens in secret behind closed

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doors. I was most shocked,
I guess I was surprised how open they

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were to it. And not only
that Bara, who is a ranking member

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of the House Subcommittee on Space,
I was surprised. He was very enthusiastic

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about the topic. He said he
had even brought it up and said we

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need to do some more research into
this. That was pretty cool. Yeah,

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well, I mean I think it
demonstrates that there's also I think a

385
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generational shift here. I think younger
people or the newer generation of government officials

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lawmakers are just more open minded.
I mean, let's face it. I

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mean there's been a lot of policies
that have nothing to do with this subject,

388
00:31:22.400 --> 00:31:26.119
whether it's you know, the fact
that gays can now serve openly in

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the military, you know the fact
that an openly gay man is running for

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president of the United States, is
running for the Democratic nomination. I mean,

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we live in an era where there
is broader acceptance of things that not

392
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that long ago. You know,
we're pretty controversial, and it's not like

393
00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:52.440
they're not controversial now, of course
they are. But there's a willingness to

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be open minded about things that I
think we're seeing in someone like Congressman Vera,

395
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who is not just you know,
bury his head in the sand and

396
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saying this is just kookie stuff,
forget about it. And so it'll be

397
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interesting to see how much Congress really
does take an interest in this. I

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mean, clearly they've been briefed about
some of the research the Pentagon has done,

399
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but as far as I know,
they haven't taken any action. In

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other words, they're not appropriating more
money for research, they're not creating new

401
00:32:22.440 --> 00:32:29.359
programs to try and look into this. So, you know, I think

402
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it remains to be seen whether this
will really move the ball or not.

403
00:32:32.079 --> 00:32:36.400
But clearly there's a conversation going on
that I think is new and interesting.

404
00:32:36.480 --> 00:32:39.759
And getting back to what you mentioned
before about you know, being nervous about

405
00:32:39.759 --> 00:32:47.319
asking a question like that in that
kind of forum. You know, this

406
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is a huge story potentially. I
mean, if you cover the Pentagon like

407
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I do, have covered the wars
in Iraq, Afghanistan, the defense budget,

408
00:32:55.759 --> 00:33:02.319
sort of the bureaucratic machination that go
on there. If the military is

409
00:33:02.720 --> 00:33:09.400
puzzled about unidentified aircraft, spacecraft,
under seacraft, whatever you want to call

410
00:33:09.480 --> 00:33:16.519
them, that they can't explain and
they're concerned about, I mean, that's

411
00:33:16.559 --> 00:33:20.440
a huge story, no matter how
it plays out, no matter what it

412
00:33:20.559 --> 00:33:23.480
is, how it is, where
it came from. If they're being spoofed

413
00:33:23.680 --> 00:33:30.359
in some high tech spoofing operation,
I mean that's a huge story too,

414
00:33:30.599 --> 00:33:35.720
because whoever's doing it is getting the
whole military up spun up over it,

415
00:33:35.960 --> 00:33:38.400
and so I think my job,
the way I see it, is to

416
00:33:38.720 --> 00:33:43.519
continue to follow the paper trail.
What is the Congress doing, what is

417
00:33:43.559 --> 00:33:49.039
the Pentagon doing? What can we
learn publicly that's not secret, that lends

418
00:33:49.119 --> 00:33:52.359
maybe a little more understanding to what's
going on, what these things are,

419
00:33:54.400 --> 00:33:57.400
and you know, if we can
figure out what they are, and it's

420
00:33:58.720 --> 00:34:04.400
what some peopleeople have been predicting for
many, many, many hundreds of years,

421
00:34:04.559 --> 00:34:12.159
that we may be contacted by some
extraterrestrials or you know, a race

422
00:34:12.239 --> 00:34:15.239
that lives on another planet or another
galaxy. I mean, that would change

423
00:34:15.280 --> 00:34:16.679
the course of human history. So, like, how could you not cover

424
00:34:16.800 --> 00:34:22.880
this story? Now we'll get more
into that, but as far as covering

425
00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:27.440
a tip, in particular the Pentagon
program, what can you share about how

426
00:34:27.480 --> 00:34:35.360
you first came across that it existed. Well, this was probably the middle

427
00:34:35.639 --> 00:34:44.920
of twenty seventeen, I guess when
I got a tip from a source in

428
00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:52.920
the Pentagon that there had been an
effort I don't know if it was referred

429
00:34:52.960 --> 00:34:59.519
to as a program or an office, but that the Pentagon had been researching

430
00:34:59.639 --> 00:35:05.159
some of the these unexplained sightings,
and that it had been funded by Congress.

431
00:35:05.199 --> 00:35:10.679
It had sort of in fact originated
in Congress, and at the time

432
00:35:12.760 --> 00:35:19.920
the source was not willing to say
a whole lot about details who, what,

433
00:35:20.119 --> 00:35:23.599
when, whe or how, but
obviously intrigued me. You know,

434
00:35:23.679 --> 00:35:28.039
if you could prove that there was
such an office or such an effort,

435
00:35:29.519 --> 00:35:37.159
I mean, Politico covers Congress politics
policy, and if this was something that

436
00:35:37.440 --> 00:35:40.199
Congress had sort of foisted it on
the Pentagon or sort of directed the Pentagon

437
00:35:40.239 --> 00:35:44.480
to do that in some ways made
it even more interesting for our audience.

438
00:35:45.199 --> 00:35:52.039
And so that got me sort of
starting to dig around, starting to reach

439
00:35:52.119 --> 00:35:59.599
out to other sources, both in
the government, outside the government, but

440
00:35:59.719 --> 00:36:05.119
also in Congress to see whether or
not there was anything to this. I

441
00:36:05.199 --> 00:36:09.199
mean, it's no secret to anybody
that to the Stars Academy, folks like

442
00:36:09.360 --> 00:36:15.920
Chris Mellen, Tom DeLong were very
active in this area, and we're clearly

443
00:36:16.039 --> 00:36:20.719
trying to get more of a conversation
going, trying to get the government to

444
00:36:22.840 --> 00:36:27.639
do more, say more. So
that group of people was very helpful.

445
00:36:28.559 --> 00:36:32.920
And then of course there was Louel
Azondo, who it turns out was heavily

446
00:36:32.960 --> 00:36:39.280
involved in this research in the Pentagon. It sounded like he was getting frustrated

447
00:36:39.360 --> 00:36:45.280
that people weren't taking it seriously enough, and he was planning to get out

448
00:36:45.280 --> 00:36:51.360
of the government, and as we
now know, associate himself also with the

449
00:36:51.400 --> 00:36:55.760
To the Stars Academy. And so
I'll admit at first when I heard about

450
00:36:55.800 --> 00:37:00.280
this, I was I was intrigued, But at the same time I was

451
00:37:00.360 --> 00:37:02.840
like, you know, are you
serious, the Pentagon searching for UFOs,

452
00:37:04.000 --> 00:37:10.039
Like is this real? But what
really convinced me, quite frankly, was

453
00:37:10.599 --> 00:37:15.000
was not To the Stars Academy's folks. I mean, obviously they were helpful,

454
00:37:15.719 --> 00:37:20.360
they had an interest in getting this
story out. They had a relationship

455
00:37:20.440 --> 00:37:25.639
with mister Elizondo. But going to
the Hill and going to congressional sources and

456
00:37:28.119 --> 00:37:31.320
you know, figuring out that it
was Harry Reid who was behind this earmark

457
00:37:31.320 --> 00:37:37.360
as it was called, this twenty
five million dollars or so that was set

458
00:37:37.440 --> 00:37:44.079
aside for this program, reaching some
of the congressional staff who had worked on

459
00:37:44.159 --> 00:37:47.800
that with him, not everybody.
In fact, most people were not at

460
00:37:47.840 --> 00:37:52.719
the time willing to go public about
it, but they were willing to talk

461
00:37:52.719 --> 00:37:55.840
about it at least convinced me that
there really was something to this, And

462
00:37:58.960 --> 00:38:01.199
there was a paper trail you could
follow, or at least somewhat of a

463
00:38:01.239 --> 00:38:07.000
paper crail to prove that this office
had existed. There were other officials in

464
00:38:08.079 --> 00:38:12.960
who at the time were out of
government but had been aware of a tip

465
00:38:13.159 --> 00:38:15.280
at the time, and they were
helpful. Again, a lot of these

466
00:38:16.440 --> 00:38:22.679
sort of ex government people did not
want to talk publicly, but eventually I

467
00:38:22.760 --> 00:38:24.760
think I built up enough of a
head of steam to know that this was

468
00:38:24.880 --> 00:38:31.000
real, that this had gone on, and that's when I kind of was

469
00:38:31.079 --> 00:38:35.880
ready to go officially to the Pentagon
and say, hey, here's what I

470
00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:38.639
know, and here's why I think
I know it. Tell me about a

471
00:38:38.760 --> 00:38:45.880
tip. And the Pentagon was not
officially very willing to say a whole lot,

472
00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:50.599
but they were at least in a
position to confirm that the office is

473
00:38:50.880 --> 00:38:53.880
or the program had existed, that
it was at the time now defunct.

474
00:38:54.320 --> 00:39:00.119
Because we know by twenty twelve the
money ran out, Harry Reid left the

475
00:39:00.199 --> 00:39:06.239
Senate, they didn't really have a
sort of a a champion for it,

476
00:39:06.360 --> 00:39:09.920
I guess, to keep funding it. The other two senators who were crucial

477
00:39:10.039 --> 00:39:15.360
in getting that money originally put into
a defense bill, Daniel in Away and

478
00:39:15.480 --> 00:39:22.639
Ted Stevens had passed away, so
they were gone. But again, I

479
00:39:22.679 --> 00:39:29.519
mean I think at first I was
a little bit puzzled by it all.

480
00:39:29.679 --> 00:39:32.039
But you know, the more you
peeled back the onion, the more it

481
00:39:32.280 --> 00:39:37.239
became clear that this was a real
program. I also came to believe that

482
00:39:37.360 --> 00:39:43.320
it was one program, but probably
just one of a number in the government.

483
00:39:43.920 --> 00:39:46.039
I mean, this was one where
you had people involved with it willing

484
00:39:46.119 --> 00:39:51.559
to talk about it publicly. That
to the Stars Academy people, particularly lou

485
00:39:51.599 --> 00:40:00.000
Elizondo. Clearly Harry Reid was willing
to talk about it publicly. But yeah,

486
00:40:00.079 --> 00:40:02.960
know what I'm thinking in my mind
is there's no way, if there's

487
00:40:04.079 --> 00:40:07.320
all these reports and all these potential
sightings over the course of many years,

488
00:40:08.239 --> 00:40:12.400
that a TIP was the only thing
the Pentagon was doing. I mean,

489
00:40:12.840 --> 00:40:15.920
in some ways, it's malpractice if
that's the only thing they were doing.

490
00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:20.199
I just think it's the only thing
in recent years that we know about because

491
00:40:20.239 --> 00:40:23.920
of the way it sort of came
together, the way that you know,

492
00:40:24.800 --> 00:40:29.760
there were parties involved that really did
think that this should be part of a

493
00:40:29.840 --> 00:40:36.599
larger public conversation. And you know, I think mister Elizondo probably very shrewdly

494
00:40:36.760 --> 00:40:40.039
in some ways plotted while he was
still in the Pentagon, how he was

495
00:40:40.119 --> 00:40:44.000
going to get out of the government
and talk about this and talk about it

496
00:40:44.079 --> 00:40:49.480
in a way that he wouldn't be
violating his security clearance. And so this

497
00:40:49.639 --> 00:40:53.079
was kind of a perfect storm,
I think where this program got out into

498
00:40:53.119 --> 00:40:59.639
the public domain sparked a huge conversation
that you know, quite frankly is healthy

499
00:41:00.800 --> 00:41:05.840
in my view. But what I
wonder is what else is there, you

500
00:41:05.920 --> 00:41:10.360
know, in the military and intelligence
agencies that is still going on in terms

501
00:41:10.400 --> 00:41:14.039
of research that we just don't know
about. And you know, it'll be

502
00:41:14.280 --> 00:41:19.440
very difficult to get information about that, as you know, because a lot

503
00:41:19.480 --> 00:41:22.719
of it is secret or classified.
So you have a lot of sources,

504
00:41:22.760 --> 00:41:27.719
and you were able to verify through
several sources it seems that that the program

505
00:41:27.960 --> 00:41:34.760
existed. Did you get a sense
talking to any of those sources then about

506
00:41:34.840 --> 00:41:42.199
these potential other programs? Not really. I mean, some of these sources

507
00:41:43.440 --> 00:41:50.960
were We're pretty open about how at
least in their view, there was more

508
00:41:51.039 --> 00:41:53.599
to this. In other words,
a tip was just wasn't the only thing

509
00:41:54.840 --> 00:42:00.360
that you know, fits into that
category of a government program or government effort

510
00:42:00.400 --> 00:42:07.519
to try and learn more about some
of these unexplained sightings. But either they

511
00:42:07.599 --> 00:42:13.519
didn't these sources didn't have direct knowledge
of those programs, or they you know,

512
00:42:14.239 --> 00:42:16.480
weren't at liberty to talk about them
because they were classified in a way

513
00:42:16.559 --> 00:42:21.119
that a TIP was not. And
that's what's interesting about this a TIP effort

514
00:42:21.159 --> 00:42:25.440
as well. The earmark the name
of the program, you know, Advanced

515
00:42:27.840 --> 00:42:31.039
Aerospace Threat Intelligence Program. I think
I got that right, identification program,

516
00:42:31.039 --> 00:42:36.480
identification program. You know, it
was kind of hiding in plain sight.

517
00:42:37.320 --> 00:42:39.440
I mean they and they did that
purposely. They created this program with a

518
00:42:39.559 --> 00:42:45.599
sort of generic sounding name which could
just as easily be about studying Chinese you

519
00:42:45.679 --> 00:42:51.079
know, hypersonic missile developments that you
know, as it could be anything else.

520
00:42:52.159 --> 00:42:57.639
And so it was. It was
obviously by definition easier to talk about

521
00:43:00.079 --> 00:43:05.760
some of the work that a TIP
did was was unclassified, some of the

522
00:43:05.800 --> 00:43:12.199
studies, or at least some of
the some of the basic sort of details

523
00:43:12.239 --> 00:43:15.519
of what they were looking into,
what they were researching. We've seen the

524
00:43:15.599 --> 00:43:21.400
titles of you know, hosted these
studies that they ordered up, theoretical studies

525
00:43:21.400 --> 00:43:25.599
about what, you know, what
these unexplained aircraft might be. But you

526
00:43:25.679 --> 00:43:29.159
know, this gets to an interesting
point. You know what else is there

527
00:43:29.239 --> 00:43:35.639
and did sources talk about other programs
around the government. I've come to believe

528
00:43:35.679 --> 00:43:45.000
that one of the reasons why either
sources familiar with a tip like Chris Mellon

529
00:43:45.039 --> 00:43:50.159
who's come out publicly and is associated
with the To the Stars Academy, lou

530
00:43:50.199 --> 00:43:55.239
Elizondo, who oversaw some of this
research in the Pentagon. The reason why

531
00:43:57.159 --> 00:44:00.880
I think they are constantly saying we
need to know more, we need to

532
00:44:01.159 --> 00:44:05.559
do more research, we need to
figure this out, is because I think

533
00:44:05.599 --> 00:44:13.800
whatever the government is doing in other
agencies, it's very decentralized and it's very

534
00:44:14.159 --> 00:44:17.159
siloed, if you will. In
other words, if the CIA has a

535
00:44:17.199 --> 00:44:22.239
program that's looking into this stuff,
or the Air Force does, or the

536
00:44:22.320 --> 00:44:28.280
Defense Intelligence Agency, or you name
it. I've come to believe, over

537
00:44:28.320 --> 00:44:30.960
all these years of covering the Pentagon
that unless you need to know this stuff,

538
00:44:31.159 --> 00:44:37.280
unless you are actively brought into a
program, you don't know anything about

539
00:44:37.320 --> 00:44:42.599
it. And so I think even
people that have done some work on this

540
00:44:42.760 --> 00:44:47.360
issue in the government, either research
or collecting data on some of these unexplained

541
00:44:47.880 --> 00:44:52.239
sightings, I don't think a lot
of them are necessarily aware of everything else

542
00:44:52.400 --> 00:44:57.400
the rest of the organization is doing. And I think that's one of the

543
00:44:57.440 --> 00:45:00.960
things that would be helpful going forward
if Congress was going to do something about

544
00:45:00.039 --> 00:45:05.920
this, force the Pentagon to sweep
up all that stuff that it might have

545
00:45:06.599 --> 00:45:12.000
elsewhere and put it in one place
and create sort of a reporting process so

546
00:45:12.119 --> 00:45:16.960
that it goes to some central database
or some central office that collects it,

547
00:45:17.079 --> 00:45:22.800
because otherwise we're never going to really
get a good sense of we the public

548
00:45:22.920 --> 00:45:25.599
is not going to get a good
sense, but even the government itself is

549
00:45:25.679 --> 00:45:29.840
not going to get a good sense
of what it already might know. If

550
00:45:30.079 --> 00:45:32.599
there was a branch of the service
or an agency that didn't want to give

551
00:45:32.719 --> 00:45:37.039
up their secrets and they didn't want
the others to know it, probably would

552
00:45:37.079 --> 00:45:42.400
it be difficult for them then to
hide it and not share it to let's

553
00:45:42.400 --> 00:45:45.199
say, the Congress if they were
asking it would make it harder. But

554
00:45:45.480 --> 00:45:51.039
you know, I'm under no illusion
that there are parts of the government that

555
00:45:51.239 --> 00:45:54.920
might have some relevant information that doesn't
want to cough it up and doesn't want

556
00:45:54.920 --> 00:46:00.159
to share it. And there's a
lot of reasons why they wouldn't necessarily want

557
00:46:00.199 --> 00:46:05.199
to share it. I mean,
one could just simply be protecting their turf,

558
00:46:06.920 --> 00:46:12.320
which, as you know, is
a constant game battle that goes on

559
00:46:12.440 --> 00:46:19.079
in the government where agencies and components
within agencies are always jockeying for position and

560
00:46:19.760 --> 00:46:24.920
authority and control and power. But
you know, but if you had Congress

561
00:46:25.039 --> 00:46:30.400
mandating by law that the Department of
Defense and maybe other agencies as well in

562
00:46:30.480 --> 00:46:40.280
the intelligence community, had to sweep
up whatever they could on this subject,

563
00:46:40.360 --> 00:46:46.599
whatever data they might have, and
centralize it or collate it into some report,

564
00:46:49.199 --> 00:46:51.639
you know, it would be harder
for these agencies to sit on what

565
00:46:51.760 --> 00:46:53.960
they might have or what they might
know. You know. I think a

566
00:46:54.079 --> 00:47:02.360
decent analogy for this kind of effort
of getting the government to pull together what

567
00:47:02.519 --> 00:47:09.599
it might have in its files,
I think is I may get the official

568
00:47:09.679 --> 00:47:15.000
name wrong, but the Assassination Records
Review Board, which was set up in

569
00:47:15.079 --> 00:47:20.559
the early nineties after the movie JFK
came out and there was this public outcry

570
00:47:20.639 --> 00:47:22.320
the government knows all this stuff about
who killed JFK and it's hiding it,

571
00:47:22.400 --> 00:47:28.199
which of course government probably didn't know
all that much. But there were a

572
00:47:28.400 --> 00:47:32.639
vast array of agencies, the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service,

573
00:47:32.880 --> 00:47:38.400
who all had stuff still sitting in
their files they might have some bearing on

574
00:47:38.559 --> 00:47:43.880
could there have been a conspiracy to
kill the president? And John Glenn,

575
00:47:44.599 --> 00:47:46.719
since we're talking about space, former
astronaut, was in the Senate at the

576
00:47:46.760 --> 00:47:51.880
time. He was a key co
sponsor of the bill that created this review

577
00:47:51.960 --> 00:47:58.079
board underneath the National Archives. It
was empowered to go out to all these

578
00:47:58.119 --> 00:48:04.400
agencies and say, they give us
what you got that might be relevant to

579
00:48:04.920 --> 00:48:10.480
this sort of list of subjects that
we think could have bearing on the murder

580
00:48:10.519 --> 00:48:14.599
of President Kennedy. And I think
a lot of historians, a lot of

581
00:48:15.719 --> 00:48:19.320
experts will say that process which took
many years. I mean, I think

582
00:48:19.360 --> 00:48:22.159
the bill to create the Assassination Records
of view board was in nineteen ninety two.

583
00:48:22.719 --> 00:48:30.000
It was many years before agencies were
able to cough up what they had.

584
00:48:30.159 --> 00:48:35.480
Obviously, there's some skepticism that everybody
coughed up everything that they had.

585
00:48:35.960 --> 00:48:39.000
Maybe they didn't. There was resistance
by the CIA to cough up some things

586
00:48:39.760 --> 00:48:45.480
in the latter years, but eventually
even they gave in. So maybe you

587
00:48:45.559 --> 00:48:52.000
could create something like that for this
subject of UFOs, A modern day you

588
00:48:52.079 --> 00:48:57.280
know, review board that would be
empowered to go to these agencies would have

589
00:48:57.400 --> 00:49:05.960
security clearances and could gather up what
might be in all these other places and

590
00:49:06.079 --> 00:49:07.920
have the power to declassify some of
it so that the public could see it.

591
00:49:08.280 --> 00:49:12.159
And that was one of the big
things that this review board did on

592
00:49:12.239 --> 00:49:16.000
the JFK assassination was collect up whatever
they could that was still sitting in these

593
00:49:16.039 --> 00:49:20.840
old files and then if they were
still secret, try to figure out if

594
00:49:20.840 --> 00:49:22.679
you could make some of that public. We're out of time for this segment,

595
00:49:22.800 --> 00:49:27.199
so we're going to be right back
in just a minute. Fascinating conversation,

596
00:49:27.760 --> 00:49:30.960
especially with someone with the experience that
you have, and we'll go over

597
00:49:30.039 --> 00:49:34.440
that a little bit when we come
back from the break, but we will

598
00:49:34.519 --> 00:49:37.960
be right back. For those of
you listening on a radio station, you'll

599
00:49:37.000 --> 00:49:42.239
hear a commercial. Otherwise you'll hear
a short musical interlude and you're listening to

600
00:49:42.360 --> 00:50:14.519
Open Mind UFO Radio. We are
back. You're listening to Open Mind GFO

601
00:50:14.639 --> 00:50:17.320
Radio. This is your host,
Alejandro Rojas, and we're here with Politico's

602
00:50:17.719 --> 00:50:22.840
Brian Bender. And one of the
things I was thinking about what one of

603
00:50:22.880 --> 00:50:27.159
the difficult things would be, and
you know, we talked about this with

604
00:50:27.239 --> 00:50:30.360
the U two. Let's say back
in Blue Book, and we even have

605
00:50:30.559 --> 00:50:34.920
some CIA files about that, how
they were happy for people to think that

606
00:50:35.119 --> 00:50:39.039
U two's the U two sightings were
UFOs. If there's an official kind of

607
00:50:39.199 --> 00:50:44.400
review board, uh, you know, it kind of would make that difficult.

608
00:50:44.599 --> 00:50:46.559
So if like, you know,
let's say the CIA went and said,

609
00:50:46.599 --> 00:50:51.719
well, these sightings here, you
know in California where we were testing,

610
00:50:52.320 --> 00:50:55.760
those are are not UFOs, and
they'd say, well, how do

611
00:50:55.800 --> 00:50:59.400
you know that, And they'd say, well, we just know. But

612
00:50:59.519 --> 00:51:04.480
the problem is, then you've just
alerted the public and the Russians that this

613
00:51:04.679 --> 00:51:08.559
particular, these sightings here are something
special. They're not UFOs, but there's

614
00:51:08.599 --> 00:51:13.159
something else. So now we've just
thought the Russians know, take a closer

615
00:51:13.199 --> 00:51:16.760
look at these sightings here. So
I mean that kind of causes a difficult

616
00:51:17.039 --> 00:51:21.440
situation, doesn't it. Yeah,
But you know, I think it would

617
00:51:21.440 --> 00:51:25.320
all depend on I mean, if
Congress wanted to do something about this,

618
00:51:25.440 --> 00:51:34.480
and it wanted to force the executive
branch to gather up in some comprehensive way

619
00:51:36.320 --> 00:51:43.440
what it knows, what it has
other reports of sightings that have come across

620
00:51:44.480 --> 00:51:50.239
over the years. You know,
it would be part of figuring out how

621
00:51:50.280 --> 00:51:52.679
do you write that law, what's
included, what isn't included. I mean,

622
00:51:52.719 --> 00:51:59.880
you could conceive that some review board
established allah of the JFK assassination to

623
00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:07.400
look at UFOs would carve out black
programs. In other words, if it's

624
00:52:07.440 --> 00:52:10.639
a black program, a secret test
program at you know, Nelli's Air Force

625
00:52:10.719 --> 00:52:16.280
Base or in the skunk works,
that's not relevant because that's a government program.

626
00:52:16.360 --> 00:52:20.239
It's not an unidentified flying object.
It's not a you know, something

627
00:52:20.280 --> 00:52:22.719
we can't explain because we have an
explanation for that. So you carve that

628
00:52:22.800 --> 00:52:28.800
stuff out. And maybe that would
be one way to avoid what you're talking

629
00:52:28.880 --> 00:52:32.840
about. And I also think a
time frame would be important for this.

630
00:52:34.320 --> 00:52:37.400
And you know, there's so much
scar tissue and baggage going back decades.

631
00:52:37.440 --> 00:52:42.800
Whether it's Project Bluebook that the Air
Force ran for twenty years that that didn't

632
00:52:42.840 --> 00:52:50.719
have a ton of credibility in the
aftermath, If it's uh, you know

633
00:52:52.440 --> 00:53:00.800
other cases that are so old that
you know there's there's no uh, first

634
00:53:00.840 --> 00:53:06.239
person testimony from them anymore, or
there's no primary sources involved. Maybe you

635
00:53:06.320 --> 00:53:08.239
don't worry about those. I mean, maybe this is I don't know nineteen

636
00:53:08.400 --> 00:53:13.880
ninety to now, which I still
think would be important and would move the

637
00:53:13.960 --> 00:53:20.719
ball because it's number one, a
relatively finite period of time that's manageable for

638
00:53:20.800 --> 00:53:23.199
the bureaucracy to do. I mean, if you're going to ask for CI

639
00:53:23.280 --> 00:53:25.800
in the Air Force to go back
to nineteen forty seven and dig up everything

640
00:53:25.840 --> 00:53:29.840
they know, I mean, nothing
would take years. There probably would be

641
00:53:30.039 --> 00:53:32.639
huge gaps, you know, and
there'd be a lot of things they wouldn't

642
00:53:32.639 --> 00:53:36.760
have any records on it at all
because you know, you know, people

643
00:53:36.800 --> 00:53:39.039
don't realize this, but you know, the stuff that goes into the National

644
00:53:39.159 --> 00:53:44.440
Archives or the stuff that by law
these agencies have to save is like two

645
00:53:44.559 --> 00:53:47.599
or three percent of what they generate. So I think, you know,

646
00:53:47.719 --> 00:53:52.800
maybe nineteen ninety I'm just throwing that
out there, but that's you know,

647
00:53:52.840 --> 00:53:58.760
a significant period. You know,
nineteen ninety to twenty twenty is what thirty

648
00:53:58.840 --> 00:54:01.800
years, And you know people are
going to be around who wrote those reports

649
00:54:02.159 --> 00:54:07.159
or who saw those things in the
sky and went to their commander and said,

650
00:54:07.199 --> 00:54:07.880
hey, what the hell is that? Which we mean about it?

651
00:54:09.760 --> 00:54:14.239
And and so you know, I
think to your point, I think they're

652
00:54:14.559 --> 00:54:17.280
you know, you'd have to sort
of carefully think about how do you write

653
00:54:17.320 --> 00:54:22.119
this law, how how do you
how do you mandate the government to do

654
00:54:22.239 --> 00:54:27.960
this? Do it in a way
that is manageable, makes sense? So

655
00:54:28.960 --> 00:54:31.239
when, uh did you had you
know, various sources to kind of vet

656
00:54:31.320 --> 00:54:36.400
the story to figure out that this
Pentagon program existed, and you obviously were

657
00:54:36.440 --> 00:54:39.400
ahead of the game once this information
started rolling out New York Times article and

658
00:54:39.480 --> 00:54:45.559
everything. Did you ever question any
of the statements made by Two the Stars

659
00:54:45.639 --> 00:54:47.760
or Louise Elisondo. Were you like, hey, that doesn't sound you know,

660
00:54:49.000 --> 00:54:55.400
to drive up to it to what
I had discovered? I mean number

661
00:54:55.480 --> 00:54:59.719
one, I mean pretty much everything
that to the Stars Academy's people, and

662
00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:04.800
and obviously that includes Chris Mellen,
includes Luelasondo even though he had worked in

663
00:55:04.840 --> 00:55:07.039
the Pentagon, and some of the
others. I mean, everything they told

664
00:55:07.159 --> 00:55:13.280
me turned out to be true.
In other words, I mean that was

665
00:55:13.519 --> 00:55:21.719
went a long way and convincing me
that they were credible because there were you

666
00:55:21.760 --> 00:55:24.400
know, there were for example,
there were documents associated with a tip that

667
00:55:24.480 --> 00:55:28.880
I was able to see early on. I wasn't able to report on them

668
00:55:30.599 --> 00:55:36.159
because that was the ground rules.
But as I educated myself about this program

669
00:55:36.280 --> 00:55:39.920
and started to come up with ideas
for how do I verify this other ways,

670
00:55:40.519 --> 00:55:45.039
there were documents that named other people, other offices that I was then

671
00:55:45.119 --> 00:55:51.480
able to sort of track down and
see if what the Tooth of Stars Academies

672
00:55:51.519 --> 00:55:57.000
people were telling me panned out.
And everything they told me about a tip

673
00:55:57.159 --> 00:56:00.639
panned out, and so that gave
me confidence. But there's no doubt I

674
00:56:00.960 --> 00:56:06.400
was wary of their motives. I
mean, you know, what's their dog

675
00:56:06.519 --> 00:56:09.679
in this fight? Is it just
public knowledge and you know, understanding and

676
00:56:09.760 --> 00:56:13.039
we got to get to the bottom
of, you know, the biggest mystery

677
00:56:13.079 --> 00:56:16.320
of human history or is there some
other motive? And so, you know

678
00:56:16.440 --> 00:56:22.400
I was I was certainly aware of
that. But again, what they told

679
00:56:22.480 --> 00:56:30.360
me panned out through other sources.
I think the congressional side of the reporting

680
00:56:30.480 --> 00:56:32.719
was key. I mean, that's
where this A tip program was born.

681
00:56:32.880 --> 00:56:37.039
There were people that were still up
there, staffers and the like, who

682
00:56:37.119 --> 00:56:44.480
had direct knowledge of it, who
were able to verify it. But you

683
00:56:44.559 --> 00:56:47.559
know, to this day, I
still look at the to the Stars Academy

684
00:56:49.280 --> 00:56:53.039
folks as sort of one very key
piece of this story, but just one

685
00:56:53.119 --> 00:57:01.119
piece of it. And and you
know, in the end, I think,

686
00:57:02.159 --> 00:57:05.639
as I said before, I mean, as the story goes forward,

687
00:57:06.480 --> 00:57:08.719
in some ways, I think it's
becoming less and less about them. I

688
00:57:08.800 --> 00:57:13.119
mean, if the Navy, well, the Navy's issuing guidelines. They're not

689
00:57:13.239 --> 00:57:15.800
doing that because to the Star's Academy
is telling them to do that. They're

690
00:57:15.840 --> 00:57:20.440
doing that because members of Congress give
a shit about it and are being briefed

691
00:57:20.519 --> 00:57:22.360
by these pilots and saying, what
are you doing about this? And so

692
00:57:22.440 --> 00:57:25.679
the Navy's saying, well, here's
what we're doing about it. And so

693
00:57:25.760 --> 00:57:30.760
I think to the Stars Academies,
folks kind of lit a fire, and

694
00:57:30.880 --> 00:57:36.639
I think it they deserve credit for
that. But you know, let's face

695
00:57:36.679 --> 00:57:39.719
it, Tom Belonga says some pretty
kookie things. I mean, and I

696
00:57:39.800 --> 00:57:45.360
say kookie, you know not.
I mean that sounds negative, but like

697
00:57:45.559 --> 00:57:49.559
I mean, he's obviously got a
vision, he's got ideas that as a

698
00:57:49.639 --> 00:57:53.119
reporter I can't verify. There's no
paper trail for some of that stuff.

699
00:57:53.280 --> 00:57:59.000
So in some ways, I,
you know, I try to try to

700
00:57:59.039 --> 00:58:02.480
ignore some of that and stick to
what I said before. What is the

701
00:58:02.559 --> 00:58:07.079
government doing? What is it learning? How much of that can can we

702
00:58:07.280 --> 00:58:09.840
learn? Are there things we could
foia? I think that answers a big

703
00:58:09.920 --> 00:58:13.280
question because I get that a lot
too. Why aren't you paying attention to

704
00:58:13.320 --> 00:58:16.079
what Tom DeLong says? Well,
it's another opinion out there, but it's

705
00:58:16.159 --> 00:58:21.039
nothing substantiated, right, And there's
you know, opinions that a diamond doesn't

706
00:58:21.079 --> 00:58:23.599
and everybody's entitled to them, and
some have more interesting ones than others.

707
00:58:23.719 --> 00:58:29.119
But like, I can't traffic an
opinion, right, I mean, we

708
00:58:29.239 --> 00:58:31.920
have people who write opinion pieces of
Politico, but that's that's not my job.

709
00:58:34.920 --> 00:58:37.360
And Tom DeLong has not been and
might hit the right one about and

710
00:58:37.519 --> 00:58:40.760
yeah, right, as far as
I know, you haven't pitched one either,

711
00:58:40.800 --> 00:58:43.920
and I'm sure we would look at
it if you pitched it. But

712
00:58:45.280 --> 00:58:52.119
but you know, there's a difference
between a sort of source reporting, using

713
00:58:52.199 --> 00:59:01.039
multiple sources to verify facts, and
trying to path you know, this thicket

714
00:59:01.239 --> 00:59:06.960
of theories and ideas of what this
might all mean or what this could be.

715
00:59:07.440 --> 00:59:09.519
That brings up another topic. One
of the sources of information, of

716
00:59:09.599 --> 00:59:14.239
course, is the Public Affairs Office, and the Public Affairs Office that the

717
00:59:14.320 --> 00:59:21.079
DoD in particular has been kind of
I feel and you can correct me inconsistent

718
00:59:21.400 --> 00:59:27.280
in that they have kind of at
times said they couldn't verify information essentially that

719
00:59:27.960 --> 00:59:30.280
Arizondo had said. At times they
said, well, we don't even think

720
00:59:30.360 --> 00:59:37.119
that's accurate, and later they kind
of recanted. So does that surprise you

721
00:59:37.800 --> 00:59:42.719
that they've kind of had this,
these all these varying answers all over the

722
00:59:42.800 --> 00:59:46.559
place. Doesn't surprise me. I
mean, one thing I've learned covering the

723
00:59:46.639 --> 00:59:52.119
Department of Defense all these years is
that, particularly when it comes to the

724
00:59:52.199 --> 00:59:59.159
most sensitive issues, that by definition, if the bureaucracy talks about it,

725
00:59:59.519 --> 01:00:01.519
they know they can't control it.
In other words, the message cannot be

726
01:00:01.639 --> 01:00:06.760
controlled. It's just going to spin
out of control. The public affairs people

727
01:00:06.760 --> 01:00:12.639
are usually the last now and the
last to be empowered to say anything about

728
01:00:12.639 --> 01:00:17.079
it. So I also think it's
important when the Pentagon spokesperson, any spokesperson

729
01:00:17.119 --> 01:00:22.800
says we can't verify that. That's
a very sort of specific term of art.

730
01:00:22.920 --> 01:00:27.400
It doesn't mean it didn't happen,
it doesn't exist, it's just that

731
01:00:27.559 --> 01:00:31.639
we can't verify it. In other
words, people won't share information with me,

732
01:00:31.800 --> 01:00:36.440
the spokesperson, or there's no paper
trail or we can't prove it.

733
01:00:37.840 --> 01:00:42.360
I think there's a Hollywood eyes version
that everybody, a lot of people including

734
01:00:42.440 --> 01:00:46.480
me, sometimes is sort of internalized
about the military, that they're so together,

735
01:00:46.760 --> 01:00:51.039
and then you know, everybody keeps
track of everything and knows everything,

736
01:00:51.079 --> 01:00:54.880
and the truth is they're just human
beings like we are. And so it's

737
01:00:54.920 --> 01:00:59.400
not surprising to me that it might
appear that the Pentagon has changed its story

738
01:00:59.480 --> 01:01:05.480
on Luella. I've come to believe
that luel Azando clearly was deeply involved in

739
01:01:05.599 --> 01:01:10.559
this program at its beginning. It
was one of the very few people that

740
01:01:10.719 --> 01:01:15.320
was approved to be involved in it. It was not his main job to

741
01:01:15.440 --> 01:01:21.679
cover or research UFOs. In fact, wasn't his job at all until he

742
01:01:21.800 --> 01:01:24.639
was read into that program. He
was a counter intelligence officer who did lots

743
01:01:24.639 --> 01:01:29.480
of other things over the course of
his career. And I think that's where

744
01:01:30.320 --> 01:01:34.000
there's some nuance here to his role
that's gotten lost a little bit, and

745
01:01:34.119 --> 01:01:38.079
I think the Pentagon spokespeople have kind
of muddled muddled it even more. And

746
01:01:38.199 --> 01:01:44.639
that is a TIP is created as
a budget line and a sort of a

747
01:01:44.760 --> 01:01:49.280
program, not an office. There
wasn't an office with a TIP on the

748
01:01:49.360 --> 01:01:53.079
door where a bunch of people were
working. It was a portfolio in addition

749
01:01:53.239 --> 01:02:00.280
to a number of other intelligence portfolios
or jobs quote unquote that the people who

750
01:02:00.320 --> 01:02:06.280
were associated with it had to do. My sense is that Elizondo gets read

751
01:02:06.320 --> 01:02:09.400
into this, starts, you know, carrying out some of the work,

752
01:02:10.119 --> 01:02:16.119
interviewing people, gathering some of these
testimonies, and he sort of got obsessed

753
01:02:16.159 --> 01:02:19.440
with it because you know, he
was like, shit, I mean,

754
01:02:20.079 --> 01:02:22.960
this stuff is going on, and
you know where we have a measly twenty

755
01:02:22.000 --> 01:02:25.239
five million dollar program about it.
I mean, twenty that million dollars is

756
01:02:25.360 --> 01:02:30.480
nothing in the Pentagon. It's like
the coins in the couch that you clean

757
01:02:30.559 --> 01:02:34.480
out once a year. And so
I think he becomes obsessed with it,

758
01:02:35.239 --> 01:02:38.320
he takes it on, and I
think when a tip officially winds down in

759
01:02:38.400 --> 01:02:45.039
twenty twelve, because the money runs
down, I think he continues to operate

760
01:02:45.360 --> 01:02:49.440
that portfolio, continues to do some
of the work along with all the other

761
01:02:49.519 --> 01:02:52.719
stuff that was actually his real job. And so if you're a spokesperson now

762
01:02:52.800 --> 01:02:57.719
in twenty nineteen, and you've got
to go back and verify that luel Azondo

763
01:02:57.960 --> 01:03:01.800
quote unquote ran a tip till he
departed the government in twenty seventeen. You

764
01:03:01.920 --> 01:03:05.920
can't really do that, I mean, because there really wasn't an a TIP

765
01:03:06.079 --> 01:03:09.519
officially, there was no budget line. And but what's clear to me is

766
01:03:09.599 --> 01:03:13.920
that he was involved in it when
it did exist, and then for a

767
01:03:14.000 --> 01:03:21.039
number of years after that he continued
to do the research kind of freelancing if

768
01:03:21.079 --> 01:03:23.239
you will. I mean, I
think he clearly had some buy in from

769
01:03:23.280 --> 01:03:28.480
his superiors to keep doing it.
In other words, they didn't say,

770
01:03:28.840 --> 01:03:34.280
mister Alesando, stop stop doing that
stuff. But it was one of a

771
01:03:34.360 --> 01:03:37.760
number of jobs that he had and
clearly one that so captured him that he's

772
01:03:38.119 --> 01:03:40.840
still doing it now that he's out
of the government. But I think some

773
01:03:40.960 --> 01:03:45.800
of that background, at least to
me, explains why there's this sort of

774
01:03:45.880 --> 01:03:49.320
confusion like either he was there,
he wasn't there. I mean, it's

775
01:03:49.400 --> 01:03:52.920
not as clearcut as here's the office, here's the roster of the employees who

776
01:03:53.000 --> 01:03:57.159
worked there, here's when they started, and here's when they left. I

777
01:03:57.239 --> 01:04:01.000
mean, that's just not how the
intelligence business works, particularly a small program

778
01:04:01.920 --> 01:04:04.360
like a TIP. And like I
said, it was very small, which

779
01:04:04.480 --> 01:04:09.039
makes me think it's got to be
one of a number of other things the

780
01:04:09.079 --> 01:04:13.679
government has been doing in recent years. So at least end of response is

781
01:04:13.719 --> 01:04:18.920
that the DoD has had the press
public affairs. Does it indicate to you

782
01:04:19.079 --> 01:04:25.760
that they have been kind of purposely
kind of unhelpful or is it just that

783
01:04:25.920 --> 01:04:29.679
they just aren't in the know,
that's just normal kind of day to day

784
01:04:30.559 --> 01:04:32.960
I mean it's probably. I mean, I don't know for sure. I

785
01:04:33.000 --> 01:04:39.039
mean, I know Chris Sherwood,
the spokesperson in question, he's you know,

786
01:04:39.320 --> 01:04:45.239
he's been helpful over the years on
lots of other issues, but you

787
01:04:45.320 --> 01:04:49.599
know, he's a government functionary like
pretty much everyone else, and he's got

788
01:04:49.639 --> 01:04:56.480
to operate in a specific lane.
He can't just you know, talk freely

789
01:04:56.519 --> 01:05:00.360
about whatever he wants to talk about. And and I I think in this

790
01:05:00.559 --> 01:05:08.440
case it's it's a combination of it's
difficult to verify in a way that you

791
01:05:08.519 --> 01:05:12.360
know, some very confrontational reporters might
want. They want it black and white.

792
01:05:12.400 --> 01:05:15.840
Either he ran it or he didn't
tell me. It's it's not that

793
01:05:15.960 --> 01:05:20.679
simple, or I should say,
it's not that simple to verify years after

794
01:05:20.960 --> 01:05:27.880
if you're the poor spokesman who you
know, only gets told what higher ups

795
01:05:27.880 --> 01:05:30.519
are willing to tell you to then
go tell the public or to go tell

796
01:05:30.519 --> 01:05:33.880
a reporter, and you have more
access because you have more sources, and

797
01:05:34.039 --> 01:05:38.519
perhaps he even has, and that
you know, you have these sources who

798
01:05:38.519 --> 01:05:42.519
maybe won't go on the record,
but will at least tell you something or

799
01:05:42.639 --> 01:05:45.760
you can put together a story,
whereas Sherwood has a lot more restrictions,

800
01:05:45.880 --> 01:05:49.880
it would seem than even you would
have. And I think from Sherwood's perspective,

801
01:05:49.960 --> 01:05:55.559
and again you'd have to talk to
him. But this is an issue

802
01:05:55.679 --> 01:06:00.039
that and I think people forget this
that was this was an office or an

803
01:06:00.079 --> 01:06:03.840
effort, a program, a tip
that was foisted on the Pentagon depending on

804
01:06:03.960 --> 01:06:09.840
didn't go to Congress like it does
every year with a seven hundred and thirty

805
01:06:10.000 --> 01:06:14.679
billion dollar budget request and say give
us a UFO research office. They never

806
01:06:14.760 --> 01:06:18.800
asked for it. Harry Reid wanted
them to do it, and so he

807
01:06:18.920 --> 01:06:21.559
had the power, He had the
juice to get the money and get them

808
01:06:21.599 --> 01:06:28.119
to do it. And so this
particular effort was never sort of fully owned,

809
01:06:28.679 --> 01:06:30.320
if you will, by the Pentagon. I don't think it's something they

810
01:06:30.400 --> 01:06:35.559
want to talk about willingly. I
mean, it's it's got so many minefield,

811
01:06:36.280 --> 01:06:42.559
if you will, in terms of
public messaging, probably more than virtually

812
01:06:42.679 --> 01:06:46.840
any other issue because of the stigma, because of the distrust of how the

813
01:06:46.880 --> 01:06:51.480
government has handled this issue for all
these decades, and so the Pentagon would

814
01:06:51.519 --> 01:06:57.920
probably prefer to say nothing and make
this go away. But you know,

815
01:06:58.039 --> 01:07:02.159
but a reporter is haranguing Chris Hillwood
for a quote, and so he does

816
01:07:02.199 --> 01:07:08.360
his due diligence, you know,
to his credit, he tries to figure

817
01:07:08.400 --> 01:07:12.840
out, can I verify can I
prove that yes, luel Azondo did ABC

818
01:07:12.960 --> 01:07:15.760
and D And he's like, I
am not gun anywhere, so you know,

819
01:07:15.840 --> 01:07:18.519
I can't verify it. So that's
what I think where that came from.

820
01:07:19.000 --> 01:07:21.679
It didn't mean that he wasn't doing
it, that he was a fraud

821
01:07:21.760 --> 01:07:25.920
and he's a liar, and none
of this stuff he says about his work

822
01:07:26.000 --> 01:07:28.320
for a tip, It's true.
I just think it's not that easy for

823
01:07:28.440 --> 01:07:32.159
a spokesman to sort of unpack it
all and figure it out. Right.

824
01:07:33.079 --> 01:07:38.159
But there is a public affairs office
we've heard that has been very cooperative,

825
01:07:38.199 --> 01:07:41.719
and we've heard a lot from at
not the Air Force. We've heard very

826
01:07:41.760 --> 01:07:45.039
little from the Air Force or anybody
else. But you broke the story about

827
01:07:45.199 --> 01:07:49.840
something you mentioned earlier about the Navy
coming up with new UFO reporting guidelines.

828
01:07:50.199 --> 01:07:59.360
They've also seemingly have at least given
permission for the active pilots to go on

829
01:07:59.480 --> 01:08:03.480
the show that you're on Unidentified for
the History Channel and speak, So it

830
01:08:03.599 --> 01:08:08.280
seems like there's a level of cooperation
with the Navy. What's the difference to

831
01:08:08.360 --> 01:08:11.519
what's going on there, Well,
I mean, I think the Department of

832
01:08:11.559 --> 01:08:16.520
Defense is a huge place, and
there's not just different military services, the

833
01:08:16.600 --> 01:08:23.199
branches of the military that all have
their own different culture, but all kinds

834
01:08:23.199 --> 01:08:27.000
of different agencies that just operate differently. So when you say the Pentagon,

835
01:08:28.039 --> 01:08:30.119
you got to be specific about,
well, what are you talking about in

836
01:08:30.159 --> 01:08:33.640
the Pentagon? Now? The Office
of the Under Secretary Defense for Intelligence,

837
01:08:34.920 --> 01:08:40.800
under which Alzando worked and where some
of this research went on, very different

838
01:08:40.840 --> 01:08:45.399
animal than the Department of the Navy
and is just going to deal with issues

839
01:08:45.439 --> 01:08:49.560
differently and be more forthcoming or less
forthcoming, depending on what the issue is.

840
01:08:49.960 --> 01:08:54.439
The Navy, in my experience,
has always been much more forward leaning

841
01:08:54.479 --> 01:08:58.359
when it comes to public affairs and
interacting with the media and the public.

842
01:09:00.159 --> 01:09:02.159
You know, the Navy, unlike
the other branches of the military, for

843
01:09:02.279 --> 01:09:06.479
many years, being a public affairs
officer was a real job. It was

844
01:09:06.560 --> 01:09:10.720
your full time job to be a
spokesperson. You were trained in it,

845
01:09:11.399 --> 01:09:15.279
you went to school to know how
to do it. There was a real

846
01:09:15.439 --> 01:09:19.840
sort of culture of Navy spokespeople,
men and women, enlisted sailors who were

847
01:09:20.760 --> 01:09:26.720
in that specialty, but also officers. And so I think the Navy's perspective

848
01:09:26.880 --> 01:09:30.840
is, you know, this is
happening. These pilots are seeing this stuff.

849
01:09:31.359 --> 01:09:34.880
These are obviously credible people. Otherwise
we wouldn't let them fly twenty five

850
01:09:34.880 --> 01:09:40.680
million dollar fighter jets. We'd find
something else for them to do. Congress

851
01:09:40.760 --> 01:09:44.600
is interested, and Congress holds the
purse string. So if there's powerful members

852
01:09:44.640 --> 01:09:46.960
of the Senate or the House who
want us to do more, we're going

853
01:09:47.000 --> 01:09:50.279
to do more. And then when
it comes to talking to the media,

854
01:09:50.399 --> 01:09:55.760
I mean, I think they're just
their view is, let's be out in

855
01:09:55.800 --> 01:09:59.720
front of it, because if we're
not and we don't talk, or we're

856
01:09:59.760 --> 01:10:03.000
mo or were no comment, it
just feeds more suspicion. Well, they

857
01:10:03.079 --> 01:10:06.239
must be hiding something. Why are
they not talking about this? So I

858
01:10:06.279 --> 01:10:10.079
don't think the Navy, you know, on the list of things they're like

859
01:10:10.279 --> 01:10:13.439
anxious to talk about, UFOs is
at the top of the list. But

860
01:10:13.520 --> 01:10:18.319
I think it's a different culture where
you know this is happening. The bureaucracy

861
01:10:18.439 --> 01:10:23.520
is responding with these new guidelines for
pilots to report these things, and so

862
01:10:23.600 --> 01:10:29.039
they're willing to talk about it.
And I just think they're probably a little

863
01:10:29.079 --> 01:10:32.079
more forward leaning than maybe the Army
would be or the Air Force, which

864
01:10:32.159 --> 01:10:34.920
is also something I've been digging into. It's like the Air Force has said

865
01:10:35.000 --> 01:10:39.039
very little about this, right the
Navy seeing these things, why, I

866
01:10:39.119 --> 01:10:42.439
mean, you would think the air
Force would want in on it. I

867
01:10:42.520 --> 01:10:45.359
mean, why are they being left
out? And I you know, I'm

868
01:10:45.399 --> 01:10:49.880
sure, but the Air Force is
also a different culture, so maybe pilots

869
01:10:49.880 --> 01:10:53.960
don't feel as comfortable coming forward to
talk about it. Have you made any

870
01:10:54.039 --> 01:10:58.720
progress with the Air Force? Not
a ton, But I mean I've made

871
01:10:58.760 --> 01:11:02.680
some inquiries, I've filed some foyas. How much confidence do you have in

872
01:11:02.760 --> 01:11:08.159
the FOYA process. I mean it
seems like that's at least from our discussions,

873
01:11:08.199 --> 01:11:12.439
that's the last place you go,
because there's it's not very fruitful as

874
01:11:12.479 --> 01:11:15.880
opposed to going to sources or even
the Public Affairs State. The FOYA is

875
01:11:15.960 --> 01:11:20.800
very frustrating. I mean, number
one, I think that you know,

876
01:11:21.119 --> 01:11:29.000
these agencies by definition are created to
hide things, not to reveal things.

877
01:11:29.119 --> 01:11:32.600
I mean, it's the National Security
State, and so by definition, FOYA

878
01:11:32.760 --> 01:11:38.880
doesn't get a lot of attention.
The FOYA office is always small and undermanned,

879
01:11:39.000 --> 01:11:43.680
and and you know, the gap
between how many people they have to

880
01:11:43.800 --> 01:11:48.439
respond to these requests and the amount
of requests is so vast that it's just

881
01:11:48.520 --> 01:11:51.159
a time suck. I mean,
you have to be very patient if you're

882
01:11:51.159 --> 01:11:56.600
gonna FOYA things. That's different with
some agencies, Like I said, different

883
01:11:56.600 --> 01:12:00.479
cultures, some agencies are more responsive. I found for exams, the State

884
01:12:00.520 --> 01:12:03.239
Department is pretty responsive. If you
know what you're asking for and they can

885
01:12:03.319 --> 01:12:08.239
reveal it, they can release it, they'll do it within relatively few months.

886
01:12:10.279 --> 01:12:14.720
Very different, you know, if
you're talking about some agency in the

887
01:12:14.760 --> 01:12:20.960
Pentagon. But FOYA can be helpful
if you know exactly what you're looking for.

888
01:12:23.039 --> 01:12:27.000
And that's where you know. I've
always advised other reporters, younger reporters

889
01:12:27.039 --> 01:12:31.560
who want to get more familiar with
the FOYA process don't think of FOYA is

890
01:12:31.760 --> 01:12:35.520
like the be all end all.
In other words, I'm going to write

891
01:12:35.520 --> 01:12:39.560
a letter to this agency and I'm
gonna ask for documents on subject A,

892
01:12:40.199 --> 01:12:43.159
and they're gonna give me a bunch
of good, juicy stuff. You have

893
01:12:43.239 --> 01:12:46.399
to combine FOYA with source supporting.
You have to do the source supporting up

894
01:12:46.439 --> 01:12:50.479
front to know what to ask for. Because the more specific you can be

895
01:12:51.000 --> 01:12:55.600
on a set of documents, a
set of memos, who wrote them,

896
01:12:55.720 --> 01:12:57.800
when they were written. I mean, the more specific you can be,

897
01:12:58.359 --> 01:13:01.640
the easier it's going to be for
that beer to go find it wherever it

898
01:13:01.720 --> 01:13:03.920
is in the agency, if it
is in the agency. I like to

899
01:13:03.960 --> 01:13:09.319
tell this story about a colleague of
mine with the New York Times, very

900
01:13:09.359 --> 01:13:15.600
good reporter, nationally recognized reporter,
once had a secret document that was really

901
01:13:15.680 --> 01:13:18.000
juicy and he wanted to use it. Source gave it to him, but

902
01:13:18.079 --> 01:13:25.159
it was classified so he couldn't use
it. So he foid it and got

903
01:13:25.279 --> 01:13:30.600
another copy of it, of course
redacted in certain places, but he was

904
01:13:30.600 --> 01:13:32.199
able to get it mainly because he
already had it. He knew the date,

905
01:13:32.279 --> 01:13:34.159
he knew the name of the guy
who wrote it, who he wrote

906
01:13:34.159 --> 01:13:38.960
it to. And so I tell
that story because it's like it's like the

907
01:13:39.000 --> 01:13:44.079
perfect not a very usual example.
But the more specific you can be,

908
01:13:44.159 --> 01:13:46.880
the more lucky you're going to be
in or successfully you're going to be in

909
01:13:46.880 --> 01:13:51.520
getting what you want. Which is
kind of ironic because at least I know

910
01:13:51.800 --> 01:13:57.800
one person, and well, you
know there's someone, there's a person out

911
01:13:57.840 --> 01:14:00.319
there, and I does it take
to mention his name. I'm going to

912
01:14:00.359 --> 01:14:03.520
mention his name because he's John Greenwall
who's done a lot of great work,

913
01:14:04.279 --> 01:14:09.840
but he's been critical of you and
I recently. But he's done that where

914
01:14:09.920 --> 01:14:13.319
he's had the actual document, foy
is it and they're like, we don't

915
01:14:13.319 --> 01:14:15.279
have it, even though he's like, I've got it right here. I'm

916
01:14:15.319 --> 01:14:20.399
showing it to you a copy.
And so it's funny how that happens sometimes,

917
01:14:20.479 --> 01:14:23.880
but it may be kind of what
you're going back to. They just

918
01:14:23.920 --> 01:14:27.359
don't have permission to release it.
They don't have permission to release it,

919
01:14:27.680 --> 01:14:30.680
or maybe they can't even find it
anymore. I was just gonna say,

920
01:14:30.880 --> 01:14:36.920
I mean, if anybody spent even
three minutes at the National Archives in College

921
01:14:36.920 --> 01:14:44.079
of Park, Maryland, you understand
pretty quickly how difficult it is for these

922
01:14:44.199 --> 01:14:47.439
massive government agencies to just keep track
of stuff and keep track of it in

923
01:14:47.520 --> 01:14:53.960
a way that it's easily locatable thirty
years later or twenty years later, or

924
01:14:54.000 --> 01:15:00.239
even five years later. But it
also doesn't mean that that government agency that

925
01:15:00.359 --> 01:15:04.560
John's dealing with isn't trying to hide
it either. I've come across that many

926
01:15:04.680 --> 01:15:09.439
times where there are agencies, particularly
national security agencies, said don't want to

927
01:15:09.520 --> 01:15:14.720
be transparent. They just don't.
It's not in their DNA, especially when

928
01:15:15.720 --> 01:15:18.720
either one it might reveal sources and
methods. I think that is a legitimate

929
01:15:18.800 --> 01:15:24.680
concern if they're a spy agency or
they're a national security outfit, they don't

930
01:15:24.720 --> 01:15:29.039
want the enemy quote unquote to know
how they operate. I think they overuse

931
01:15:29.119 --> 01:15:35.000
that excuse to sit on stuff and
hide stuff, and the courts usually side

932
01:15:35.039 --> 01:15:40.560
with the national security bureaucracy because there's
no court judge that wants to be blamed

933
01:15:41.279 --> 01:15:45.560
for forcing the CIA to reveal something
that then run national security. So they

934
01:15:45.680 --> 01:15:48.199
totally abuse that sources and methods excuse, like, if we give you this

935
01:15:48.319 --> 01:15:51.920
document, our enemy will know how
we gather intelligence. They'll learn something that

936
01:15:53.000 --> 01:15:59.399
they don't know embarrassing stuff. They
hide that shit all the time, even

937
01:15:59.439 --> 01:16:02.760
if it's decades old. They don't
want stories that show that the CIA was

938
01:16:02.800 --> 01:16:08.079
playing a double game or you know. And so by law, that's not

939
01:16:08.159 --> 01:16:12.119
a good enough excuse. I mean, the Foyer law is pretty specific.

940
01:16:12.239 --> 01:16:15.479
They can't withhold something because it's embarrassing. They have to have a better reason

941
01:16:15.560 --> 01:16:23.600
than that. But I have no
illusions that they've given other excuses just so

942
01:16:23.720 --> 01:16:26.680
they can cover up something that looks
bad. And then I think there's this

943
01:16:26.840 --> 01:16:30.520
huge problem of just finding this stuff. I mean, if it still exists,

944
01:16:30.600 --> 01:16:35.000
if it wasn't destroyed and not necessarily
destroyed because somebody's hiding something. It's

945
01:16:35.079 --> 01:16:39.079
just like it's like you do every
spring, you go through your garage and

946
01:16:39.119 --> 01:16:43.359
you just throw stuff out. I
mean, these agencies do that too well.

947
01:16:43.479 --> 01:16:45.279
Often if there's a box, even
though I know there might be something

948
01:16:45.359 --> 01:16:47.800
useful in it, I just don't
want to go through it anymore. I

949
01:16:47.840 --> 01:16:55.039
can tell a whole box away.
So yeah, I mean, I think

950
01:16:55.640 --> 01:16:59.600
FOYA is a tool, but it's
one tool if you want to try and

951
01:16:59.720 --> 01:17:02.199
get so we're running out of time, but so this will be the last

952
01:17:02.319 --> 01:17:06.880
question, is where you alluded to
this a little bit of the possibilities of

953
01:17:06.920 --> 01:17:11.159
where this can all go. But
do you have any sense of where it

954
01:17:11.399 --> 01:17:14.560
might be going? It seems like, you know, there's a lot of

955
01:17:14.680 --> 01:17:20.000
talk going on in Washington. Now. We had another senator just today say

956
01:17:20.079 --> 01:17:24.600
she was briefed on UFOs and and
kind of has a positive view. Yeah,

957
01:17:24.640 --> 01:17:27.319
I'd have to look up who it
was. I'll do that in a

958
01:17:27.399 --> 01:17:35.359
minute. But could you see maybe
an agency being created, or maybe the

959
01:17:35.520 --> 01:17:41.399
Navy taking this on, or like
you said, something more. Do you

960
01:17:41.439 --> 01:17:43.560
think where is it going? And
do you have any sense of that?

961
01:17:44.520 --> 01:17:50.159
I don't. It's hard to know. I don't anticipate any major steps.

962
01:17:50.800 --> 01:17:54.279
I mean, I think if there
are steps, they will be incremental ones.

963
01:17:54.800 --> 01:18:00.439
They will be something like you know, when Congress doesn't really want to

964
01:18:00.479 --> 01:18:03.880
do anything, they always require the
executive branch to send a report to Congress.

965
01:18:04.760 --> 01:18:08.399
So, like, I think that's
possible, like get the Pentagon to

966
01:18:08.520 --> 01:18:13.119
report back on this, ideally in
some public way, or at least some

967
01:18:13.319 --> 01:18:20.560
report that could be could have a
public summary or executive summary. I don't

968
01:18:20.600 --> 01:18:25.119
think we're at the point where like
Congress is going to hold public hearings about

969
01:18:25.159 --> 01:18:29.439
this, I mean never say never. It's possible that one of these members

970
01:18:29.479 --> 01:18:33.680
of Congress who've been briefed and have
taken interest in this, could you know,

971
01:18:33.840 --> 01:18:36.479
get the gabble of some key committee
and decide, Hey, I want

972
01:18:36.479 --> 01:18:42.119
to have hearings on this. But
I don't anticipate that's happening anytime soon,

973
01:18:43.560 --> 01:18:45.680
as you know, there's you know
a lot of other issues on their plate,

974
01:18:46.319 --> 01:18:49.439
and you know, I don't know
that the UFOs is at the top

975
01:18:49.479 --> 01:18:54.880
of it. I also think though, going forward, and I've just seen

976
01:18:54.920 --> 01:18:59.560
this even just in my own inbox
or people who send me messages, encrypted

977
01:18:59.560 --> 01:19:04.119
messages through like different communications apps.
There's people in the government that have seen

978
01:19:04.199 --> 01:19:09.760
these stories in the mainstream, have
seen these briefings on the Hill, who

979
01:19:09.960 --> 01:19:13.760
know shit and want to talk about
it. And I'm getting a sense that

980
01:19:13.880 --> 01:19:19.000
there's sort of this this new environment
where you might see other government people come

981
01:19:19.119 --> 01:19:26.119
forward to the extent they can say
something that's not the kind of other Ela

982
01:19:26.239 --> 01:19:32.880
Zondo's who have information that's not as
classified as right, or other pilots or

983
01:19:32.960 --> 01:19:40.520
other personnel that have seen things.
I've heard from some folks that I'm sort

984
01:19:40.560 --> 01:19:47.119
of trying to vet their their claims
who are government people who attest that they

985
01:19:47.800 --> 01:19:50.840
know of some things too that might
be of interest to the public, not

986
01:19:51.000 --> 01:19:57.680
just in the Pentagon, other government
agencies, more civilian agencies. But I

987
01:19:57.760 --> 01:20:00.800
mean to that too. I mean
that when it it comes to these sources

988
01:20:00.840 --> 01:20:03.960
in vetting the information, I would
imagine a lot of people in the government,

989
01:20:04.119 --> 01:20:08.399
even some with high titles, maybe
even generals, are also kind of

990
01:20:08.560 --> 01:20:14.840
subject to believing in conspiracy theories or
things that just maybe aren't even real.

991
01:20:15.000 --> 01:20:16.600
They just have read it somewhere and
they think, hey, this could be

992
01:20:16.800 --> 01:20:20.479
and I think this is something that's
going on, right, But you know,

993
01:20:20.560 --> 01:20:25.720
I think I also think the more
the mainstream media covers it, the

994
01:20:25.840 --> 01:20:32.560
more you know, good or bad, the more some of these members of

995
01:20:32.600 --> 01:20:35.680
Congress and others will feel like they
can take this on more. They can

996
01:20:35.760 --> 01:20:41.520
talk about this more. Right,
I keep coming back to. I read

997
01:20:41.520 --> 01:20:44.520
about it recently. I was not
aware of it. But this thing known

998
01:20:44.600 --> 01:20:50.439
as the Overton window, which is
a theory that actually Elizabeth Warren, who's

999
01:20:50.479 --> 01:20:56.439
running for president, talks about quite
a bit. Overton was a professor not

1000
01:20:56.600 --> 01:21:00.119
that long ago, in the nineties. He died quite young, in his

1001
01:21:00.199 --> 01:21:04.760
forties, but The Overton window that
he came up with was basically the idea

1002
01:21:04.920 --> 01:21:11.039
that there are only certain things that
you can talk about in the sort of

1003
01:21:11.279 --> 01:21:15.720
public square, certain policy, certain
ideas that are quote unquote acceptable, and

1004
01:21:15.840 --> 01:21:19.840
that could be on education policy,
it could be on anything. It's just

1005
01:21:20.079 --> 01:21:25.119
sort of a window of what you
can talk about and what you can propose.

1006
01:21:26.279 --> 01:21:30.359
And I think she's one who thinks
the Overton window is cracking, that

1007
01:21:30.560 --> 01:21:36.079
it's widening. What is acceptable to
throw out there as a policy, prescription

1008
01:21:36.520 --> 01:21:43.920
or as an idea is just a
bigger universe now, and I think a

1009
01:21:43.960 --> 01:21:47.000
lot of the policy she's proposing on
the campaign crail sort of fit into that.

1010
01:21:47.239 --> 01:21:49.800
Like ten years ago, nobody would
ever propose any of that stuff,

1011
01:21:50.640 --> 01:21:56.319
but she feels like she can.
And I think the UFO issue is maybe

1012
01:21:56.960 --> 01:22:00.560
one that's also kind of in that
category where the the Overton window is widening,

1013
01:22:00.720 --> 01:22:03.800
and talking about this, I mean, let's face it's pretty cool,

1014
01:22:04.439 --> 01:22:10.840
pretty surprising that, you know,
the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee in

1015
01:22:10.840 --> 01:22:13.199
the Senate will come out and talk
to a reporter and say, yeah,

1016
01:22:13.199 --> 01:22:15.720
I got a briefing on RFOS,
and I think it's important to get to

1017
01:22:15.760 --> 01:22:18.399
the bottom of this, I mean, is the fact that he's willing,

1018
01:22:18.960 --> 01:22:23.880
comfortable enough to say that and not
be ridiculed. And you know, I'm

1019
01:22:23.920 --> 01:22:26.479
sure he's being ridiculed. I mean, in fact, I've seen Senator Mark

1020
01:22:26.479 --> 01:22:30.039
Warner be ridiculed on Twitter. But
that I think is going to be interesting

1021
01:22:30.119 --> 01:22:33.720
to see going forward. As you
were saying, what's next, I think

1022
01:22:34.199 --> 01:22:42.119
more stories about sightings, more reports
from these credible witnesses getting coverage, and

1023
01:22:42.399 --> 01:22:45.920
organizations like Politico and you've said that
you ran it past people. Hey,

1024
01:22:45.000 --> 01:22:48.600
it's cool. I'm covering the UFOs
right, and it seems like you're okay,

1025
01:22:49.039 --> 01:22:54.039
and that the more you break the
dark secret is it drives a lot

1026
01:22:54.119 --> 01:22:57.760
of clicks right exact, it does, I mean, people interested in this,

1027
01:22:57.920 --> 01:23:00.960
and that's not reason enough journalistically to
cover. But I definitely have some

1028
01:23:01.079 --> 01:23:04.560
buy in that. You know,
if we can keep following the paper trail

1029
01:23:05.239 --> 01:23:09.479
and learn new things about what the
government is learning on this issue, then

1030
01:23:09.520 --> 01:23:14.880
that's that's newsworthy m hm so.
And Politico is going to keep covering it,

1031
01:23:15.159 --> 01:23:17.520
and hopefully then the competition's going to
see that and they're going to want

1032
01:23:17.560 --> 01:23:21.199
to jump into well I think they
have I mean it's you've seen even just

1033
01:23:21.319 --> 01:23:26.720
some of these stories we've written,
or the Times certain brought it up with

1034
01:23:27.000 --> 01:23:32.600
the President, And if the president
doesn't believe it, then and he's supposed

1035
01:23:32.600 --> 01:23:38.079
to get that briefing and everything,
right, I know, I mean,

1036
01:23:38.239 --> 01:23:40.520
but that gets back to the Hollywood
eyes version. Yeah, I mean,

1037
01:23:41.600 --> 01:23:45.000
I think the government knows a lot
more than they're saying. But I also

1038
01:23:45.159 --> 01:23:48.239
think it's quite possible that people in
the government who are supposed to know all

1039
01:23:48.279 --> 01:23:51.920
that stuff don't know it because they
don't know where it is, right And

1040
01:23:53.439 --> 01:23:57.479
you know, the guy who knew
it retired twenty years ago and never handed

1041
01:23:57.520 --> 01:24:00.720
the file to anybody else. So
maybe it'll pop up on any bay.

1042
01:24:01.159 --> 01:24:04.600
But a vast conspiracy in the government
to sort of hide what they know,

1043
01:24:05.680 --> 01:24:10.279
at least in my experience, just
gives them more credit than they deserve.

1044
01:24:10.439 --> 01:24:14.680
I mean, they're just not that
good. And it doesn't mean that there

1045
01:24:14.720 --> 01:24:16.119
haven't been cover ups. It doesn't
mean that they haven't hidden things. It

1046
01:24:16.159 --> 01:24:20.640
doesn't mean that they haven't put out
this information. But who's they one little

1047
01:24:20.720 --> 01:24:27.880
component of this larger organization which doesn't
talk to the rest or is it you

1048
01:24:27.920 --> 01:24:32.000
know, some Department of Defense wide
conspiracy. I just don't Maybe that was

1049
01:24:32.039 --> 01:24:35.079
possible back in the forties and the
fifties and sixties, before the internet,

1050
01:24:35.319 --> 01:24:41.199
before globalization, that you know,
there was really a height knit group of

1051
01:24:41.279 --> 01:24:44.960
people, all white men, who
could keep all that stuff secrets. Maybe

1052
01:24:45.000 --> 01:24:48.920
that's possible back then. I just
don't see how it's possible now. And

1053
01:24:49.000 --> 01:24:51.840
again, it doesn't mean there aren't
pockets that are hiding things. And that's

1054
01:24:51.880 --> 01:24:56.840
what we're trying to do is try
to like shake the trees and see if

1055
01:24:56.880 --> 01:25:00.039
we can get more out of where
are these pockets? Well, thank you

1056
01:25:00.239 --> 01:25:04.960
so much for joining us, great
discussion. All right, Well, hopefully

1057
01:25:05.239 --> 01:25:09.439
be able to have you back to
talk some more. Sounds good. Thank

1058
01:25:09.520 --> 01:25:13.840
you so much to Brian Bender for
being on the show. He was awesome.

1059
01:25:14.000 --> 01:25:16.399
So check him out in Politico.
Like I said, he's a defense

1060
01:25:16.600 --> 01:25:21.479
editor. He's actually the Space editor
as well, of course, space being

1061
01:25:21.720 --> 01:25:27.479
another topic close to my heart.
Hopefully you'll hire me to write an article

1062
01:25:27.640 --> 01:25:31.520
or two. No pressure, mister
Bender, if you're listening. But I

1063
01:25:31.960 --> 01:25:35.800
really loved what he had to say. I think what's great about this is

1064
01:25:36.159 --> 01:25:41.880
he's very practical, pragmatic, and
look, this is how I go about

1065
01:25:42.079 --> 01:25:47.840
vetting a story. This is why, you know, how he gauges the

1066
01:25:48.039 --> 01:25:53.800
veracity of one piece of information over
another. There are a lot of people

1067
01:25:53.880 --> 01:25:59.640
who have been criticizing him and other
journalists, some of them even lumping me

1068
01:26:00.600 --> 01:26:03.239
with some of these guys, which
I'm completely honored to be lumped in with

1069
01:26:03.439 --> 01:26:09.000
with these groups of people because people
like George Knapp or Brian Benner because or

1070
01:26:09.079 --> 01:26:11.800
Leslie Kane, because I think they're
excellent and some of the best in the

1071
01:26:11.880 --> 01:26:17.319
business or best especially covering this sort
of thing. And you know, there's

1072
01:26:17.520 --> 01:26:30.680
reasons why people do what they do
and why they will you know, there

1073
01:26:30.760 --> 01:26:34.239
are methods to their madness, and
especially when they're people that are seasoned and

1074
01:26:34.439 --> 01:26:40.479
experienced, you know, to find
out you just have to ask. So

1075
01:26:40.680 --> 01:26:43.520
that's what we're doing here, is
asking and figuring out, well, why

1076
01:26:43.600 --> 01:26:46.159
do you take this piece of information
as more important as others? So,

1077
01:26:46.319 --> 01:26:49.880
for instance, I even't got that
this weekend from some of my colleagues.

1078
01:26:50.199 --> 01:26:55.279
Well, I heard that someone at
DoD said that lou did not work for

1079
01:26:55.399 --> 01:27:00.920
a tip. No that's not really
what he said. What he probably should

1080
01:27:00.039 --> 01:27:05.000
have said is something along the lines
of according to the information I have here's

1081
01:27:05.159 --> 01:27:09.840
the deal, because that's more accurate, because, as we learn from Bender,

1082
01:27:10.359 --> 01:27:15.479
you know, they just don't always
have the information available to them to

1083
01:27:15.840 --> 01:27:19.760
answer the questions being posted to them
completely. And that's the situation we have.

1084
01:27:20.039 --> 01:27:27.720
But when we have such a huge
amount of associated people to all of

1085
01:27:27.840 --> 01:27:33.680
this confirming, you know, information
such as Alizondo's participation and the level of

1086
01:27:33.800 --> 01:27:42.000
participation he had, then we've got
pretty pretty strong information to support, you

1087
01:27:42.079 --> 01:27:45.800
know, his claims, which so
far have all turned out to be accurate.

1088
01:27:45.000 --> 01:27:48.720
And I hope you get a sense
too, because people have a case,

1089
01:27:48.800 --> 01:27:53.560
oh, Brian's on the TV show, so he's going to be helping

1090
01:27:53.640 --> 01:27:56.840
to push that. No, he
doesn't make money off the TV sho or

1091
01:27:56.960 --> 01:28:00.640
he makes money off of Politico and
his job, of course, Politico is

1092
01:28:00.720 --> 01:28:04.800
much more important to him than any
television show, let alone his integrity as

1093
01:28:05.000 --> 01:28:12.119
a journalist, which is extremely important
to any major journalist or any journalists worth

1094
01:28:12.159 --> 01:28:15.119
their salts. So and I think
you get a sense here that Bender is

1095
01:28:15.199 --> 01:28:19.039
certainly worth his salt. So very
honored to have him on the show.

1096
01:28:19.199 --> 01:28:24.800
It was wonderful to hear his insights, and to me, they have been

1097
01:28:25.000 --> 01:28:34.600
extremely helpful as far as helping to
keep perspective and to unpack this information and

1098
01:28:34.880 --> 01:28:40.199
to understand everything that's going on.
So yep, thank you so much to

1099
01:28:40.279 --> 01:28:45.119
Brian. Check him out on Politico. Otherwise, I do want to say

1100
01:28:45.239 --> 01:28:48.880
thanks to Martin Willis for helping us
out with the news at the beginning of

1101
01:28:48.960 --> 01:28:54.079
the show. Oh yeah, a
couple of things too. Brian, Well,

1102
01:28:54.239 --> 01:28:57.680
most likely it looks like he's willing
to and we would love him to

1103
01:28:58.000 --> 01:29:03.840
participate in a panel at the International
UFO Congress. So imagine this. Imagine

1104
01:29:03.920 --> 01:29:10.760
this if you will, a journalism
panel with George Napp and Brian Bender and

1105
01:29:10.880 --> 01:29:15.000
me asking them questions, and the
audience as well, you all getting to

1106
01:29:15.119 --> 01:29:17.840
join in on this. How cool
would that be. Well, that's what

1107
01:29:17.920 --> 01:29:23.439
we're looking at doing and you're only
going to find this at the International UFO

1108
01:29:23.600 --> 01:29:28.760
Congress. So go to Ufocongress dot
com to sign up for that and look

1109
01:29:28.800 --> 01:29:30.520
at some of the other speakers.
So we will have George Napp, We're

1110
01:29:30.520 --> 01:29:35.800
going to have a lot of other
really great speakers at the conference, and

1111
01:29:36.039 --> 01:29:40.079
so check that out. A lot
of stuff too, you probably haven't heard

1112
01:29:40.159 --> 01:29:45.800
anywhere else, and especially in today's
environment where this topic is becoming more serious.

1113
01:29:46.359 --> 01:29:48.800
I think you're going to want to
educate yourself on some of the cool

1114
01:29:48.840 --> 01:29:53.119
stuff out there and some of the
more interesting cases, such as I'm very

1115
01:29:53.159 --> 01:29:58.000
excited to see this talk from Tooey
Snyder. These late eighteen hundred cases of

1116
01:29:58.199 --> 01:30:02.000
mysterious airships what they were called.
But some of these things I didn't perform

1117
01:30:02.199 --> 01:30:06.800
like airships, and these were written
about in the news, really really cool

1118
01:30:06.840 --> 01:30:11.319
stuff. So I'm excited for her
talk, among many of the other talks

1119
01:30:11.359 --> 01:30:15.880
that will be there. So check
out ufocongress dot com for that. I

1120
01:30:16.039 --> 01:30:20.119
also want to thank my patreon patrons. Thank you so much. I got

1121
01:30:20.199 --> 01:30:25.840
to meet some of you this week. One of you dropped. One guy

1122
01:30:26.000 --> 01:30:29.920
got mad at me. I forgot
about what probably it probably wasn't even my

1123
01:30:30.079 --> 01:30:34.000
fault. Whenever Elizondo says something on
the TV show that people don't like for

1124
01:30:34.079 --> 01:30:36.359
some reason, they take it out
on me and they're like, you see,

1125
01:30:36.439 --> 01:30:40.319
oh those under it is true,
but he said something that is total

1126
01:30:40.520 --> 01:30:45.720
be us. I'm done with you, so then they get mad at me.

1127
01:30:45.880 --> 01:30:49.159
But and recently one person who is
even a patron, was like,

1128
01:30:49.319 --> 01:30:53.600
I'm out of here, so sorry, dude. I didn't mean to make

1129
01:30:53.680 --> 01:30:58.960
anybody mad, just trying to share
information. But luckily there are others who

1130
01:30:59.000 --> 01:31:02.600
have joined, and I do appreciate
the information. I can't remember. And

1131
01:31:02.680 --> 01:31:05.399
then this listen. Unfortunately, this
isn't show me who the latest are,

1132
01:31:05.880 --> 01:31:10.439
but just at this group of people
are some of the latest. So I

1133
01:31:10.520 --> 01:31:13.840
want to say thank you to Kim
and Kevin and Jamie and mister Physics,

1134
01:31:13.960 --> 01:31:18.600
and Ron and April and Chasing and
Mark and Corey and Robert and Matt and

1135
01:31:18.800 --> 01:31:26.720
Chris and Dawn and Justin and Neil
and Jennifer and Sondra and Matthias and Charlie

1136
01:31:27.000 --> 01:31:30.640
and Steve. Thank you all so
so very much. If you want to

1137
01:31:30.840 --> 01:31:38.159
go become a Patreon patron, you
can go do that and I post all

1138
01:31:38.239 --> 01:31:43.000
of my stories there. I have
a story in Den of Geek actually this

1139
01:31:43.159 --> 01:31:50.640
week also where I interviewed the director
of this new Apollo documentary on National Geographic

1140
01:31:50.800 --> 01:31:58.960
and I also interviewed in astronaut Mike
Masamino. I've interviewed him before, but

1141
01:31:59.079 --> 01:32:01.880
I got to interview him again for
this piece, and I actually interviewed them

1142
01:32:01.960 --> 01:32:06.039
together, so it was a fun
conversation. And I wrote an article about

1143
01:32:06.119 --> 01:32:11.439
it. It's mainly centered around well, I talked with Mike what's the difference

1144
01:32:11.479 --> 01:32:15.119
between going to the Moon and going
to the ISS. Mike actually did a

1145
01:32:15.199 --> 01:32:21.800
couple of a few trips on the
Space Shuttle, so that's exciting, and

1146
01:32:21.920 --> 01:32:26.560
he gave us some really good insight
there. But then we also talked about

1147
01:32:26.600 --> 01:32:29.840
the importance of going to the Moon
and what it was like back then,

1148
01:32:30.399 --> 01:32:34.119
and if you weren't alive or old
enough when this all occurred, such as

1149
01:32:34.359 --> 01:32:41.319
myself, then you are going to
want to watch this documentary, Apollo Missions

1150
01:32:41.359 --> 01:32:45.439
to the Moon on National Geographic.
It just started up yesterday. It is

1151
01:32:45.640 --> 01:32:50.960
so friggin' good. And here's why. It's not like it was even It's

1152
01:32:51.119 --> 01:32:57.760
all completely archival footage. There's no
narrator, you know, So it's just

1153
01:32:58.079 --> 01:33:03.880
archival footage of everything that happened during
the Apollo program, and it's just some

1154
01:33:04.000 --> 01:33:10.439
of the footage and material as never
seen before or heard before, and you

1155
01:33:10.560 --> 01:33:15.439
know, you're hearing it from the
astronauts themselves. It's incredible stuff. A

1156
01:33:15.520 --> 01:33:17.159
lot of news clips, you know, news videos, stuff like that.

1157
01:33:17.560 --> 01:33:23.039
What's cool too, is all of
this then has been enhanced so it fits

1158
01:33:23.359 --> 01:33:27.279
HD and so when you're watching it, you know, it's not like the

1159
01:33:27.560 --> 01:33:32.840
resolutions or the scale is changing throughout, which sometimes happens. It is so

1160
01:33:33.119 --> 01:33:38.000
good. I absolutely loved it.
It was really cool. So you'll have

1161
01:33:38.119 --> 01:33:42.840
to check this out on a national
geographic channel and check out my article on

1162
01:33:44.000 --> 01:33:46.920
Den of Geek. But getting back
to Patreon, you know, I post

1163
01:33:47.079 --> 01:33:51.760
all of my articles and everything I'm
doing besides just UFO stuff on Patreon,

1164
01:33:51.880 --> 01:33:55.960
so you can see that there.
Plus, I've even promised some of you

1165
01:33:56.479 --> 01:34:00.720
that are at the higher tier levels. As you know, I get inside

1166
01:34:00.800 --> 01:34:08.079
information sometimes, and if I ever
get inside information on actually being able to

1167
01:34:09.239 --> 01:34:15.199
invite people to a meeting with aliens, then I'll do my best to get

1168
01:34:15.279 --> 01:34:18.359
you like on the VAP or the
will call list or something like that so

1169
01:34:18.439 --> 01:34:24.199
you can join. However, more
realistic, there are probably other will call

1170
01:34:24.319 --> 01:34:27.600
lists that I can get you on, such as Comic CON's coming up,

1171
01:34:28.039 --> 01:34:30.399
and I did this last year.
I was able to get you all into

1172
01:34:30.560 --> 01:34:33.840
some comic Con parties. So I'll
keep you keep an eye on Patreon and

1173
01:34:33.880 --> 01:34:38.520
I'll let you know if stuff like
that pops up. In fact, I

1174
01:34:38.760 --> 01:34:43.920
just heard something about a Comic CoV
party recently, and I think I'm going

1175
01:34:43.960 --> 01:34:46.760
to be able to get a few
people in there. So exciting, I

1176
01:34:46.920 --> 01:34:50.159
know, I know. Oh yeah. Plus I'm giving away T shirts too,

1177
01:34:50.319 --> 01:34:54.359
so I'll post another T shirt to
give away because I get all these

1178
01:34:54.399 --> 01:34:57.560
T shirts at these events and things
I go to that are UFO and Space

1179
01:34:57.640 --> 01:35:00.399
related, and hey, you guys
like UFO and Space, so you're gonna

1180
01:35:00.399 --> 01:35:03.399
probably like these T shirts. But
you'll find all that stuff on Patreon.

1181
01:35:03.960 --> 01:35:09.760
You can also follow me in everything
I do at Alejandro Trojas dot com.

1182
01:35:09.880 --> 01:35:13.880
That's my blog, allejondro t rojast
dot com. However, if you're like

1183
01:35:14.000 --> 01:35:15.760
dude, I don't care about any
of that other stuff, just give me

1184
01:35:15.880 --> 01:35:21.000
more UFOs, then you're gonna want
to stay. Pay attention to Openminds dot

1185
01:35:21.239 --> 01:35:27.039
tv. And in fact, all
of those UFO news story that stories at

1186
01:35:27.079 --> 01:35:30.880
Martin and I talked about at the
beginning of the show, they're all going

1187
01:35:30.960 --> 01:35:38.239
to be at Openminds dot tv.
So check that out. Thank you again

1188
01:35:38.439 --> 01:35:43.439
to Caleb Hanks for the opening and
close music. Thank you to Systematics for

1189
01:35:43.560 --> 01:35:47.319
the bumper music, and finally,
thank you to you all the listeners for

1190
01:35:47.560 --> 01:35:53.399
joining me here. Once again,
we'll have another great show next week.

1191
01:35:54.000 --> 01:36:46.079
Until then, audio smooth, chuttos
and mus