Hello, and welcome to Open Mind UFO Radio. I'm your host, Alejandro
Rojas, and I am here with Martin e or Willis e Or. Oh
my god, I just realized something. What I remind you of? E
Or well just today because you said you're you're you're kind of tired, and
when we were talking just a minute ago, because we're both kind of tired.
I literally just got back from Roswell. I think that we both found
like may sound a little bit like a couple of e Ors just kinda oh
dear, oh UFOs today, Oh me, yeah, exactly. So,
yes, we can do it. Though, we're going to get through this.
We're going to do it. And especially because the topics are so exciting.
I am charged up in that. The Roswell event went great. Everything
was cool there, so that was a lot of fun. I bet they
missed Stan Freeman. He was always there, wasn't he for yours? Yes,
it was very sad, you know, And I'll admit this because I'm
a I'm a kind of a forward thinking progressive man. But during the panel,
I was actually moderating the big Roswell panels on Friday or no Saturday and
Sundays, which all the with all the Roswell researchers, and at the end
of the last one yesterday, I you know, wanted to end with a
moment of silence and said a couple of things about Stan and I got really
emotional, actually, which was surprising. I did, you know, just
break down sobbing and bawling, you know, on the floor or something.
But it was it was a get It was really hard to get out some
of the words. And I mean, on the one hand, I was
surprised that I got so emotional. On the second hand, you know,
a year prior, in that very room, we were doing a panel and
it was we all, you know, knew this would be Stanton's last panel.
Not because he we we thought it would be this way. It's because
he said he was going to retire and not come back to Roswell. That's
right. So soon after he did say he was going to come back to
Roswell, but of course he didn't make it back. But all I could
think of is, you know, at the end of the standing ovation we
gave him because it was going to be it, and uh, what a
what a moment that was. And that turned out to be, you know,
his last panel at Roswell and yeah, he was a very important,
a great person. Yeah, yeah, I remember always hearing that he was
hearing that he was out there every single year. Every year since I've known
of him and the Roswell thing he has gone. I mean his how many
years in a row? Did he ever miss a year going there? Fifty
five years in a row? No, I don't know that. Actually,
the fiftieth anniversary, I think is when the festival started nineteen ninety seven.
It was huge. I mean it was in Time magazine. It was a
big, big deal, lots of news about it in ninety seven and it
was so big and there's so many people that it started the annual event,
which is always huge. I live streamed and I did it over Instagram,
and I shouldn't have because Instagram, and this is definitely an Instagram complaint.
You can only unless I don't know what I'm doing, when you do a
live stream and share it to your story, it'll only display for an hour
or a day and then it's gone. So this great video I did of
you know, live streaming the parade while I'm on a float is now lost.
My god, that's so strange. Yeah, it's just like vanished.
So but there were a lot of people. It was a lot of fun
so and lots of great talks and it's always good to see some friends and
everything. So oh yeah, and you know we're going to get into the
news in a second and the guest here and actually talk about what we're here
to talk about. But the the paper loves me there. Of course,
I write for them occasionally, and they asked me to write something up for
them, so I did and they posted that on or they printed it on
the print paper and put it online on Saturday. But they also had one
of my talks on the front page. They covered both of my talks at
the event in the paper, so like Saturday's paper with me on the front
page and then about a story about my talk and then my story in there.
He was like a Rojas edition of the Roswell Daily Record. So on
wow yeah, wow, yeah, yeah, I remember last year you had
something to do with that two Yeah, I think it was similar. I
was in there and I might have I probably did write something for them,
so and I might try to do that more regularly. They said they'd like
that. So yeah, that was really cool. Oh this is cool too.
I want to start. I want to say, you know, shout
out to to ninety eight point seven Inkyle California. My sister texted me and
I guess one of their interns went to Roswell and they asked her about that,
and then some of the DJs, including this guy Woodie, were like,
oh, yeah, I listened to all Hundro Rojas. He was out
there and he's got a great podcast. So I'm not sure if they mentioned
you, Martin, but I'm sure they love you too. But you know,
to any of you guys listening ninety eight point seven, thanks do you?
Yeah? Yeah? Cool? It's great dude, he getting coverage,
awesome stuff. So, speaking of awesome stuff, we have a remarkable guest
today. I'm so excited about this guest and our conversation. I think it
clears up a lot of misperceptions people have about information and vetting, you know,
information. Our guest today is Brian Bender, so you probably saw him
on Unidentified, the History Channel show. He also he's political, Yeah exactly,
He's with Politico. He is the defense editor and he's the guy on
Politico who's written about UFO stories. He's broken some news. So for instance,
he was the guy. Originally, in twenty seventeen, he had confirmed
with the DoD that Loue Alesondo did work for a TIP. Later on,
more recently, he broke the story about the Navy creating new UFO guidelines.
What was another story? There was another one, Oh, Senator Warren speaking
about UFOs and saying that, yes, we were briefed on UFOs. He
broke that story. Of course, now we have another senator who's spoken about
seeing UFOs and then and someone else that's very high in the government, the
President, of course, it's about as high as you can get, has
been talking about being briefed on UFOs. So yeah, so really cool stuff.
So he's gonna be on that's a good get. Yeah. Yeah.
He also worked for The Boston Globe and Jane's Defense Weekly, which is a
defense magazine. Jane's Defense very popular, well known, but the Boston Globe,
he did a ton of war correspondents back in the day. In fact,
he's even got a book out where this Iraq veteran had gone looking for
this World War two fighter pilot, you know, what had happened to him
looking for his remains in New Guinea. And he's got a book out on
that. So he's also a member of the a board member of the Military
Reporters and Editors Association. And this is all very important because I think it's
really important to establish his credibility and his experience because some of the goofball UFO
people out there have been doubting him, accusing him of some really ridiculous kind
of stuff, I think, And so this is great because we get a
chance to talk to him. I mean, some people have assumed, like
somehow that he's incahoots with Alizondo and to the stars, and he's not at
all. He's very independent. His parts were filmed separately. He's totally into
planet. Actually, I've got to have luncheon din with him lately because he
lives here locally, and that's how I got this interview. He's actually in
the studio right here for the interview. But yeah, he really he's interested
in this topic, but he is not like you know, he doesn't like
he doesn't have a dog in the race. Essentially, he's just covering the
news in the story and letting them unfold and covering it like he would any
defense story. And this is a defense story of course, because it's the
DoD that Lua Alsando worked for so helping healthy skepticism right exactly, and he
strikes me as someone highly intelligent and very well spoken. I'm really excited to
listen to the interview. Yes, a great interview, So very excited to
have him and I think the listeners are gonna particularly enjoy this one because I
think it does clear up a lot of things, like, for instance,
you know how you go about reporting information, especially when FOYA is kind of
a waste of time. FOYA is not primary place you go the Freedom of
Information Act to get information as a reporter, especially when as seasoned as mister
Bender is mm hmm excellent. Yes, But before that, just a quick
intro. This is at Open Minds CUFO Radio. We do cover the UFO
phenomena in a more journalistic, serious manner. We're looking at, you know,
more of the credible substantiated information if it is speculation. So for example,
we had a lot of speculation in our last show. But we'll let
you know that, and we'll let you know what is hard evidence and what
is not. You know, what is credible or what is a little more
dubious or perhaps just isn't as substantiated as other things, And until lately a
lot of the UFO field was more speculative, but now we have a lot
of hard information coming out. So in fact, you know, the first
thing, I want to kind of introduce the first topic in the news,
if you don't mind, Yeah, go ahead, sure, just because I
would like to get your thoughts on the last episode of Unidentified. That this
History Channel show that was covering to the Stars, which is a lot of
former government officials and one rock star, and it includes Louis Alizonto who worked
for the Pentagon program and their ongoing investigation of UFOs, and the season finale
was just the other night. It was, and it's the first show that
I actually watched live. I usually catch them, you know, by going
you know, on cable and you know, spectrum and all that going in
through that way. But I watched it live, and these days I forget
that's even possible. I watch everything on streaming and sometimes, you know,
Karen mentioned once in a while, well maybe we can watch it live.
I think it's on right now, and I'm like, oh, yeah,
that's it, my bother Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. I I
thought it was great. I was really I was really happy with the show
overall, and you know they are looting that there's going to be another season,
But do you happen to know? I mean usually they know by this
time whether it's going to be in for another season. Do you have to
say? I don't know for sure, but it is looking like there is
going to be a second season. I mean, things that were looking positive
and at least the rumors on the street. Not that I've heard anything official
at all, but it is looking like you will have a second season.
And will definitely let you all know when we find out, because we'll probably
find out first because we're just that cool. Well, I like, you
know, at the very ending, it sort of left a little bit of
a left hanging, just a little bit to make you think that they were
probably going to be coming back. I really liked when they went to Italy
and they spoke with it. You know, there was that one personality that
spoke in English and you know, really put Lou on the spot, you
know, as far as trying to get him to reveal he had classified information.
Of course he didn't, you know, But anyway, I thought the
encounter was pretty amazing, and they had photographs of it. They showed of
this object behind this helicopter and it supposedly shot a Well, I don't know
how much I should talk about this as a spoiler for someone who hasn't watched
it yet. Yeah, it is a bit of a spoiler. But you
know what isn't a spoiler is this is funny? Is that. I don't
know if you've noticed this, but there were a lot of people online and
I think someone had asked me, oh no, someone found a story I
wrote about these orbs of light that were coming out of the ocean and essentially
terrorizing this town in Italy, and that, you know, they asked me,
is what Because Tom DeLong had hinted that there would be an Italian case
like you're just described with a helicopter, and a lot of people somebody asked
me, tweeted me, is this the case that's going to be on the
show? And I said, I don't know. But people went wild with
assuming that it was. They're like, this is it, this is the
case. It's going to be on the show. A one hunter wrote a
story about it. So, and actually it is essentially so there were these
mysterious fires that were started by these orbs that were coming out of the ocean,
and it is that's what the helicopter was going to investigate. In the
show, they say, this helicopter was going to go investigate this UAP phenomena
that was happening in this area called Caneto d Cora Coronea. And yeah,
so this helicopter was involved with that case. So you guys called it wow.
Yeah, yeah, that's what the helicopter was there out there researching or
was checking it out. What was going on when that happened. Crazy.
Yeah, that was really good. So it was really good. I also
liked that they covered a little bit of lose motivations. You know, there
was some more skepticism like you know, why are you doing this? What's
going on here? And I you know, some people might see that as
disingenuous, but Anthony Lapey, at least from my conversations and perhaps you got
this sense too, he he, I think was taking a trying to take
and I think intending to take a more unbiased look at this and to kind
of grill these guys, you know, to make sure everything's on the up
and up. And it was also interesting that, you know, according to
Lou well, we know the program's going on. But this is something that
Bender and I and I should say, the interview that you're going to hear
with Bender and I was before that episode came out, so neither of us
had seen it, even though Bender's in it. But this whole thing about
people in the inside being upset with him, and which is true, and
you know, Bender and I talk about that a bit, and this goes
to this. You know, I keep asking people involved with all of this,
do you think that there's some bigger conspiracy that you're part of some agenda
to get UFO information out? And they've all said no. But there's this
major assumption by the UFO community and others that that is what's going on.
And just from my perspective, having been involved with all of these people for
literally decades, that just does not seem to be the case. These people
are very independent of the government and many of these other people in the government,
and I think that people are upset with lou and they genuinely are demonstrates
that you know, this isn't some concerted effort of an organized group. This
is, you know, people interested who have been fighting for more paranormal type
of topics to get taken seriously and be investigated inside the government. And they're
finally, after all of these years, essentially Robert Bigelow, this billionaire and
his buddy's out of Las Vegas. They're finally really gaining some ground and making
some big headway with the help of government insiders like Chris Mellen and Loue Alizondo.
Now what makes people on the inside angry at him? Because it doesn't
make their job any tougher, does it? Or kidding, of course it
does because now for forefunding no for for years, they have claimed, up
until two thousand and seven or twenty seventeen, before the New York Times article
came out, that they had nothing to do or no interest in UFOs.
Now Elizondo has revealed that that was false. That was just straight up false,
I see, and that they've they've had a program since two thousand and
seven, and that this program continues. They don't want to talk about this
stuff, you know, And so that's why they're put in a position.
That's why we're getting these really strange responses, I think. But I won't
get more into it because Brian and I talk about this quite a bit in
the interview Okay, yeah, I'll be interested to hear more about it.
Yeah, so you can hear his perspective because he has a more educated perspective
on you know, because he's been working with these agencies for so long and
and there's some really interesting revelations that he gave to me that are pertinent to
this discussion. But what news did you want to discuss, my friend,
Well, I wanted to talk. You were talking about a briefing. You
mentioned that, and I want to talk. I know I did. I
believe I talked about this last time, about Trump's opinion on UFOs, but
again this was this is actually on Fox News, and this Tucker Carlson is
actually really pretty aggressive about the UFO tom as far as you know, the
mainstream news media. I mean, I would say that he's probably one of
the most aggressive people talking about it out there. And he actually asked the
President point blank during an interview at about UFOs and he persisted. And you
know, just like if you watch there's a video up on Fox and if
you watch that video, Nick Pope also speaks with Tucker later and after reviews
the interview and makes a very good point. You know, here we are
on the record President of the United States actually talking about UFOs on the record
in an interview, you know, and he also says, you know that
he he doesn't you know, I think he says the words something like I
personally don't. Trump says, he personally tends to doubt it, you know
that UFOs exists, that type of thing, but he does says, I'm
not a believer, but you know, anything as possible. Now, Nick
Pope makes a good point. He says, you know, of course he's
uh, you know, first learning about something, he's treating it with skepticism,
and you know, who wouldn't you know that that type of thing.
But also I do want to point out, you know, when I spoke
with Chris Mellan a few years ago, he said that, you know,
if any if the president wanted to know something, if someone knew something,
they had to tell him. But there's also you know, compartmentalized situations where
and need to know and uh private uh, you know, things can be
put in the private sector information. It all boils down to the fact that
I've said many times you've heard me say it that you know and you've I
think you agree with me that you know, maybe the government only knows so
much about what's going on, and not not everything. Like a lot of
people accuse them, you know, of knowing like exactly what's going on.
Yeah, I mean, it's been entirely possible. Robert Biggo's is the ownly
billionaire we know, dumping tons of money into this UFO topic. People may
not realize there was a Rockefeller. Laurence Rockefeller put a lot of money into
researching all of this as well. He's passed away, but both of them
have found kind of similar things, which is not much. And that Bigelow
of course, has said in the past that he knows aliens are here and
they're walking among us. I don't know what he feels justifies that if it's
information that they feel they obtain themselves, that would be my guess. I
think that's what he means. He could mean that he knows there's information inside
the government, but I've never heard him say anything like that. However,
his investigations with his guys have revealed some pretty interesting things, so I think
that's what he means. So I would agree with you. I think that
the president, and you know, it was first of all, we heard
him say last time that he only had a short briefing, a short meeting.
That's in fact, he called it a brief meeting. He didn't even
call it a briefing. It was a brief meeting this time, like you
said, Tucker pressed him on it. And one of the points Tucker pressed
him on was the same point that I pressed Lue Alizondo on which he told
Tucker Tucker that he believed and he said, I don't I can't say I
know this, but it is my opinion that the government does have materials from
a UFO. And Tucker did push the president, you know what, this
guy is saying that they have materials from a crashiophoks right, And he's not
saying that. He said it was his opinion that that is the case.
And Trump said, you know, he wasn't aware of that. He doesn't
know that. But the reason that's important is because they didn't share with him
a lot of information, just a very little. They probably the President indicated
he knew about the navy pilots and that's probably what they told him. Just
what the media is covering. The media is covering these navy pilots who are
talking. Trump did allude to saying that he had talked to with or watch
Tucker Carlson. We all know he's watching Fox News pretty much all day long,
so he's aware of some of this stuff, but just not too terribly
interested. So yeah, we'll see where this goes. One of the articles
I wrote in the Roswell Daily Journal was, well, there's two points.
I wrote. We may see another government agency from all of this. I
mean, there are a lot, we have these senators that are interested,
the President has been briefed. We may see another project blue Book. The
other point is how weird it was that here we are at the Roswell Festival,
which is usually seen as pretty silly even a year ago. A year
ago, none of us probably would have guessed that we would be here.
While we're at this festival, the President is on Fox News being grilled about
UFOs. Mm hmm, the wild wild wild stuff. How buddy, just
one more thing about the wreckage. I don't know, it just seems like
there's a lot of people talking in the UFO community, to be out community
about wreckage out there lately. Is there any is there any you know,
science on this. I mean there's an Adam project where where they're supposed to
be examining the material with in the TTSA, but we haven't heard from them
yet, so to me, honestly, I think you know they're the other
alleged things have been debunked. I don't know. We haven't seen anything yet,
and I'm even skeptical that we will, to be completely honest. Yeah,
but now we're out of time. So thank you so much for joining
us, Martin. You're very welcome. Always a pleasure. All right,
I'll be right back with Brian Bender. I am very happy to welcome to
the show. Brian Bender, thanks for being here, thanks for having me,
and this is fun. We're live in the studio and you have your
cool NASA shirt on there. Old school I do these T shirts you can
buy at Old Navy that look like you've had for thirty years. They're brand
new and probably made in China. So I guess to start off with,
I've been following your articles for a while and was excited when Politicos started doing
more space stuff and one of the things that you put together was a space
kind of forum, and you in the forum, you were interviewing a couple
of congressmen and someone who's on the Space Committee that advises Trump that he invoked
when he started his presidency, and you ask them about UFO. So why
were you, I guess prompted to do that. Well, this was back
in twenty eighteen, so about a year ago, maybe a little more.
And it was just a couple of months after we reported in the New York
Times reported the existence of this Pentagon Pentagon program a tip that was researching these
unexplained aerial phenomenon UAPs, as the Pentagon calls them. And we had launched
our Space newsletter, and this was an event where we had a couple of
members of Congress who have oversight of NASA, oversight of the space program,
and I thought it was a relevant question. You have Navy pilots, other
military personnel who were reporting these unexplained sightings, You had a Pentagon office that
was set up or a Pentagon program. I think program is more of an
accurate description. An office kind of makes it sound like there was some big
operation, But I think it was a couple of people in the Pentagon on
doing UFO research at the request of Congress back in the two thousand and seven
two thousand and eight time frame. For about five or six years and that
had just come to light. And here I had sort of a captive audience
two members of Congress who have oversight of the military oversight of space programs,
and so I asked them what they thought of this, And you know,
I think the fact that they did not dodge the question, the fact that
this was Congressman Beara, a Democrat from California, Congressman Holtgren, a Republican,
they both seemed to think that this was a legitimate issue to look into.
If you had reports of military personnel who were seeing things in the night
sky that they couldn't explain, that we're exhibiting characteristics that they hadn't seen before,
maybe we should look into this more deeply. In fact, I think
it was Congressman Holt who had joked that the chairman at the time of the
House Science Committee, Lamar Smith, who was getting ready to retire, should
hold a hearing, a public hearing on UFOs is his swan song before leaving
Congress. And obviously that didn't happen. But I think it demonstrates that Congress,
at least some members of Congress are interested in this issue in a way
that at least publicly, we haven't seen before. They take some of these
reports as credible reports, and they feel that the government should do more to
try and explain them if they don't know what they are. Were you nervous
at all asking that question? I don't think I was nervous at the time,
but I mean, there's no doubt having covered the military for I'm dating
myself, but for about twenty five years now, covering the Pentagon, covering
military operations, I think I was a little reluctant to dive into this issue
when I first got a tip about some Pentagon UFO research that had been going
on. As you know better than most, you know, there's a stigma
associated with this issue. The mainstream media has not covered it in a serious
way, at least in recent decades, in any sustained way. So yeah,
I mean I think professionally I worried a little bit. You know,
do I become the UFO guy if I start writing a bunch of UFO stories.
But I'm not so worried about that anymore because Number one, as I
said, members of Congress, former Pentagon officials, a whole host of you
know, credible people are talking about this, are interested in this, want
to know more. I think the issue is less stigmatized than it once was.
The fact that you have active duty Navy pilots willing to come forward and
talk about this and not be afraid their career is going to be over as
a result, I think shows that it an issue that's entering the more mainstream
discussion. Again, I mean, it's not like, as you know,
this issue was all of a sudden popped up out of nowhere. I mean
it's been discussed, hashed over by researchers, by government agencies for decades and
decades. But I think we have a moment here where people are paying attention.
Government officials are paying attention in a way that maybe they haven't before,
at least publicly, you know, having a discussion that the public can be
engaged in as well, and not just one that happens in secret behind closed
doors. I was most shocked, I guess I was surprised how open they
were to it. And not only that Bara, who is a ranking member
of the House Subcommittee on Space, I was surprised. He was very enthusiastic
about the topic. He said he had even brought it up and said we
need to do some more research into this. That was pretty cool. Yeah,
well, I mean I think it demonstrates that there's also I think a
generational shift here. I think younger people or the newer generation of government officials
lawmakers are just more open minded. I mean, let's face it. I
mean there's been a lot of policies that have nothing to do with this subject,
whether it's you know, the fact that gays can now serve openly in
the military, you know the fact that an openly gay man is running for
president of the United States, is running for the Democratic nomination. I mean,
we live in an era where there is broader acceptance of things that not
that long ago. You know, we're pretty controversial, and it's not like
they're not controversial now, of course they are. But there's a willingness to
be open minded about things that I think we're seeing in someone like Congressman Vera,
who is not just you know, bury his head in the sand and
saying this is just kookie stuff, forget about it. And so it'll be
interesting to see how much Congress really does take an interest in this. I
mean, clearly they've been briefed about some of the research the Pentagon has done,
but as far as I know, they haven't taken any action. In
other words, they're not appropriating more money for research, they're not creating new
programs to try and look into this. So, you know, I think
it remains to be seen whether this will really move the ball or not.
But clearly there's a conversation going on that I think is new and interesting.
And getting back to what you mentioned before about you know, being nervous about
asking a question like that in that kind of forum. You know, this
is a huge story potentially. I mean, if you cover the Pentagon like
I do, have covered the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, the defense budget,
sort of the bureaucratic machination that go on there. If the military is
puzzled about unidentified aircraft, spacecraft, under seacraft, whatever you want to call
them, that they can't explain and they're concerned about, I mean, that's
a huge story, no matter how it plays out, no matter what it
is, how it is, where it came from. If they're being spoofed
in some high tech spoofing operation, I mean that's a huge story too,
because whoever's doing it is getting the whole military up spun up over it,
and so I think my job, the way I see it, is to
continue to follow the paper trail. What is the Congress doing, what is
the Pentagon doing? What can we learn publicly that's not secret, that lends
maybe a little more understanding to what's going on, what these things are,
and you know, if we can figure out what they are, and it's
what some peopleeople have been predicting for many, many, many hundreds of years,
that we may be contacted by some extraterrestrials or you know, a race
that lives on another planet or another galaxy. I mean, that would change
the course of human history. So, like, how could you not cover
this story? Now we'll get more into that, but as far as covering
a tip, in particular the Pentagon program, what can you share about how
you first came across that it existed. Well, this was probably the middle
of twenty seventeen, I guess when I got a tip from a source in
the Pentagon that there had been an effort I don't know if it was referred
to as a program or an office, but that the Pentagon had been researching
some of the these unexplained sightings, and that it had been funded by Congress.
It had sort of in fact originated in Congress, and at the time
the source was not willing to say a whole lot about details who, what,
when, whe or how, but obviously intrigued me. You know,
if you could prove that there was such an office or such an effort,
I mean, Politico covers Congress politics policy, and if this was something that
Congress had sort of foisted it on the Pentagon or sort of directed the Pentagon
to do that in some ways made it even more interesting for our audience.
And so that got me sort of starting to dig around, starting to reach
out to other sources, both in the government, outside the government, but
also in Congress to see whether or not there was anything to this. I
mean, it's no secret to anybody that to the Stars Academy, folks like
Chris Mellen, Tom DeLong were very active in this area, and we're clearly
trying to get more of a conversation going, trying to get the government to
do more, say more. So that group of people was very helpful.
And then of course there was Louel Azondo, who it turns out was heavily
involved in this research in the Pentagon. It sounded like he was getting frustrated
that people weren't taking it seriously enough, and he was planning to get out
of the government, and as we now know, associate himself also with the
To the Stars Academy. And so I'll admit at first when I heard about
this, I was I was intrigued, But at the same time I was
like, you know, are you serious, the Pentagon searching for UFOs,
Like is this real? But what really convinced me, quite frankly, was
was not To the Stars Academy's folks. I mean, obviously they were helpful,
they had an interest in getting this story out. They had a relationship
with mister Elizondo. But going to the Hill and going to congressional sources and
you know, figuring out that it was Harry Reid who was behind this earmark
as it was called, this twenty five million dollars or so that was set
aside for this program, reaching some of the congressional staff who had worked on
that with him, not everybody. In fact, most people were not at
the time willing to go public about it, but they were willing to talk
about it at least convinced me that there really was something to this, And
there was a paper trail you could follow, or at least somewhat of a
paper crail to prove that this office had existed. There were other officials in
who at the time were out of government but had been aware of a tip
at the time, and they were helpful. Again, a lot of these
sort of ex government people did not want to talk publicly, but eventually I
think I built up enough of a head of steam to know that this was
real, that this had gone on, and that's when I kind of was
ready to go officially to the Pentagon and say, hey, here's what I
know, and here's why I think I know it. Tell me about a
tip. And the Pentagon was not officially very willing to say a whole lot,
but they were at least in a position to confirm that the office is
or the program had existed, that it was at the time now defunct.
Because we know by twenty twelve the money ran out, Harry Reid left the
Senate, they didn't really have a sort of a a champion for it,
I guess, to keep funding it. The other two senators who were crucial
in getting that money originally put into a defense bill, Daniel in Away and
Ted Stevens had passed away, so they were gone. But again, I
mean I think at first I was a little bit puzzled by it all.
But you know, the more you peeled back the onion, the more it
became clear that this was a real program. I also came to believe that
it was one program, but probably just one of a number in the government.
I mean, this was one where you had people involved with it willing
to talk about it publicly. That to the Stars Academy people, particularly lou
Elizondo. Clearly Harry Reid was willing to talk about it publicly. But yeah,
know what I'm thinking in my mind is there's no way, if there's
all these reports and all these potential sightings over the course of many years,
that a TIP was the only thing the Pentagon was doing. I mean,
in some ways, it's malpractice if that's the only thing they were doing.
I just think it's the only thing in recent years that we know about because
of the way it sort of came together, the way that you know,
there were parties involved that really did think that this should be part of a
larger public conversation. And you know, I think mister Elizondo probably very shrewdly
in some ways plotted while he was still in the Pentagon, how he was
going to get out of the government and talk about this and talk about it
in a way that he wouldn't be violating his security clearance. And so this
was kind of a perfect storm, I think where this program got out into
the public domain sparked a huge conversation that you know, quite frankly is healthy
in my view. But what I wonder is what else is there, you
know, in the military and intelligence agencies that is still going on in terms
of research that we just don't know about. And you know, it'll be
very difficult to get information about that, as you know, because a lot
of it is secret or classified. So you have a lot of sources,
and you were able to verify through several sources it seems that that the program
existed. Did you get a sense talking to any of those sources then about
these potential other programs? Not really. I mean, some of these sources
were We're pretty open about how at least in their view, there was more
to this. In other words, a tip was just wasn't the only thing
that you know, fits into that category of a government program or government effort
to try and learn more about some of these unexplained sightings. But either they
didn't these sources didn't have direct knowledge of those programs, or they you know,
weren't at liberty to talk about them because they were classified in a way
that a TIP was not. And that's what's interesting about this a TIP effort
as well. The earmark the name of the program, you know, Advanced
Aerospace Threat Intelligence Program. I think I got that right, identification program,
identification program. You know, it was kind of hiding in plain sight.
I mean they and they did that purposely. They created this program with a
sort of generic sounding name which could just as easily be about studying Chinese you
know, hypersonic missile developments that you know, as it could be anything else.
And so it was. It was obviously by definition easier to talk about
some of the work that a TIP did was was unclassified, some of the
studies, or at least some of the some of the basic sort of details
of what they were looking into, what they were researching. We've seen the
titles of you know, hosted these studies that they ordered up, theoretical studies
about what, you know, what these unexplained aircraft might be. But you
know, this gets to an interesting point. You know what else is there
and did sources talk about other programs around the government. I've come to believe
that one of the reasons why either sources familiar with a tip like Chris Mellon
who's come out publicly and is associated with the To the Stars Academy, lou
Elizondo, who oversaw some of this research in the Pentagon. The reason why
I think they are constantly saying we need to know more, we need to
do more research, we need to figure this out, is because I think
whatever the government is doing in other agencies, it's very decentralized and it's very
siloed, if you will. In other words, if the CIA has a
program that's looking into this stuff, or the Air Force does, or the
Defense Intelligence Agency, or you name it. I've come to believe, over
all these years of covering the Pentagon that unless you need to know this stuff,
unless you are actively brought into a program, you don't know anything about
it. And so I think even people that have done some work on this
issue in the government, either research or collecting data on some of these unexplained
sightings, I don't think a lot of them are necessarily aware of everything else
the rest of the organization is doing. And I think that's one of the
things that would be helpful going forward if Congress was going to do something about
this, force the Pentagon to sweep up all that stuff that it might have
elsewhere and put it in one place and create sort of a reporting process so
that it goes to some central database or some central office that collects it,
because otherwise we're never going to really get a good sense of we the public
is not going to get a good sense, but even the government itself is
not going to get a good sense of what it already might know. If
there was a branch of the service or an agency that didn't want to give
up their secrets and they didn't want the others to know it, probably would
it be difficult for them then to hide it and not share it to let's
say, the Congress if they were asking it would make it harder. But
you know, I'm under no illusion that there are parts of the government that
might have some relevant information that doesn't want to cough it up and doesn't want
to share it. And there's a lot of reasons why they wouldn't necessarily want
to share it. I mean, one could just simply be protecting their turf,
which, as you know, is a constant game battle that goes on
in the government where agencies and components within agencies are always jockeying for position and
authority and control and power. But you know, but if you had Congress
mandating by law that the Department of Defense and maybe other agencies as well in
the intelligence community, had to sweep up whatever they could on this subject,
whatever data they might have, and centralize it or collate it into some report,
you know, it would be harder for these agencies to sit on what
they might have or what they might know. You know. I think a
decent analogy for this kind of effort of getting the government to pull together what
it might have in its files, I think is I may get the official
name wrong, but the Assassination Records Review Board, which was set up in
the early nineties after the movie JFK came out and there was this public outcry
the government knows all this stuff about who killed JFK and it's hiding it,
which of course government probably didn't know all that much. But there were a
vast array of agencies, the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service,
who all had stuff still sitting in their files they might have some bearing on
could there have been a conspiracy to kill the president? And John Glenn,
since we're talking about space, former astronaut, was in the Senate at the
time. He was a key co sponsor of the bill that created this review
board underneath the National Archives. It was empowered to go out to all these
agencies and say, they give us what you got that might be relevant to
this sort of list of subjects that we think could have bearing on the murder
of President Kennedy. And I think a lot of historians, a lot of
experts will say that process which took many years. I mean, I think
the bill to create the Assassination Records of view board was in nineteen ninety two.
It was many years before agencies were able to cough up what they had.
Obviously, there's some skepticism that everybody coughed up everything that they had.
Maybe they didn't. There was resistance by the CIA to cough up some things
in the latter years, but eventually even they gave in. So maybe you
could create something like that for this subject of UFOs, A modern day you
know, review board that would be empowered to go to these agencies would have
security clearances and could gather up what might be in all these other places and
have the power to declassify some of it so that the public could see it.
And that was one of the big things that this review board did on
the JFK assassination was collect up whatever they could that was still sitting in these
old files and then if they were still secret, try to figure out if
you could make some of that public. We're out of time for this segment,
so we're going to be right back in just a minute. Fascinating conversation,
especially with someone with the experience that you have, and we'll go over
that a little bit when we come back from the break, but we will
be right back. For those of you listening on a radio station, you'll
hear a commercial. Otherwise you'll hear a short musical interlude and you're listening to
Open Mind UFO Radio. We are back. You're listening to Open Mind GFO
Radio. This is your host, Alejandro Rojas, and we're here with Politico's
Brian Bender. And one of the things I was thinking about what one of
the difficult things would be, and you know, we talked about this with
the U two. Let's say back in Blue Book, and we even have
some CIA files about that, how they were happy for people to think that
U two's the U two sightings were UFOs. If there's an official kind of
review board, uh, you know, it kind of would make that difficult.
So if like, you know, let's say the CIA went and said,
well, these sightings here, you know in California where we were testing,
those are are not UFOs, and they'd say, well, how do
you know that, And they'd say, well, we just know. But
the problem is, then you've just alerted the public and the Russians that this
particular, these sightings here are something special. They're not UFOs, but there's
something else. So now we've just thought the Russians know, take a closer
look at these sightings here. So I mean that kind of causes a difficult
situation, doesn't it. Yeah, But you know, I think it would
all depend on I mean, if Congress wanted to do something about this,
and it wanted to force the executive branch to gather up in some comprehensive way
what it knows, what it has other reports of sightings that have come across
over the years. You know, it would be part of figuring out how
do you write that law, what's included, what isn't included. I mean,
you could conceive that some review board established allah of the JFK assassination to
look at UFOs would carve out black programs. In other words, if it's
a black program, a secret test program at you know, Nelli's Air Force
Base or in the skunk works, that's not relevant because that's a government program.
It's not an unidentified flying object. It's not a you know, something
we can't explain because we have an explanation for that. So you carve that
stuff out. And maybe that would be one way to avoid what you're talking
about. And I also think a time frame would be important for this.
And you know, there's so much scar tissue and baggage going back decades.
Whether it's Project Bluebook that the Air Force ran for twenty years that that didn't
have a ton of credibility in the aftermath, If it's uh, you know
other cases that are so old that you know there's there's no uh, first
person testimony from them anymore, or there's no primary sources involved. Maybe you
don't worry about those. I mean, maybe this is I don't know nineteen
ninety to now, which I still think would be important and would move the
ball because it's number one, a relatively finite period of time that's manageable for
the bureaucracy to do. I mean, if you're going to ask for CI
in the Air Force to go back to nineteen forty seven and dig up everything
they know, I mean, nothing would take years. There probably would be
huge gaps, you know, and there'd be a lot of things they wouldn't
have any records on it at all because you know, you know, people
don't realize this, but you know, the stuff that goes into the National
Archives or the stuff that by law these agencies have to save is like two
or three percent of what they generate. So I think, you know,
maybe nineteen ninety I'm just throwing that out there, but that's you know,
a significant period. You know, nineteen ninety to twenty twenty is what thirty
years, And you know people are going to be around who wrote those reports
or who saw those things in the sky and went to their commander and said,
hey, what the hell is that? Which we mean about it?
And and so you know, I think to your point, I think they're
you know, you'd have to sort of carefully think about how do you write
this law, how how do you how do you mandate the government to do
this? Do it in a way that is manageable, makes sense? So
when, uh did you had you know, various sources to kind of vet
the story to figure out that this Pentagon program existed, and you obviously were
ahead of the game once this information started rolling out New York Times article and
everything. Did you ever question any of the statements made by Two the Stars
or Louise Elisondo. Were you like, hey, that doesn't sound you know,
to drive up to it to what I had discovered? I mean number
one, I mean pretty much everything that to the Stars Academy's people, and
and obviously that includes Chris Mellen, includes Luelasondo even though he had worked in
the Pentagon, and some of the others. I mean, everything they told
me turned out to be true. In other words, I mean that was
went a long way and convincing me that they were credible because there were you
know, there were for example, there were documents associated with a tip that
I was able to see early on. I wasn't able to report on them
because that was the ground rules. But as I educated myself about this program
and started to come up with ideas for how do I verify this other ways,
there were documents that named other people, other offices that I was then
able to sort of track down and see if what the Tooth of Stars Academies
people were telling me panned out. And everything they told me about a tip
panned out, and so that gave me confidence. But there's no doubt I
was wary of their motives. I mean, you know, what's their dog
in this fight? Is it just public knowledge and you know, understanding and
we got to get to the bottom of, you know, the biggest mystery
of human history or is there some other motive? And so, you know
I was I was certainly aware of that. But again, what they told
me panned out through other sources. I think the congressional side of the reporting
was key. I mean, that's where this A tip program was born.
There were people that were still up there, staffers and the like, who
had direct knowledge of it, who were able to verify it. But you
know, to this day, I still look at the to the Stars Academy
folks as sort of one very key piece of this story, but just one
piece of it. And and you know, in the end, I think,
as I said before, I mean, as the story goes forward,
in some ways, I think it's becoming less and less about them. I
mean, if the Navy, well, the Navy's issuing guidelines. They're not
doing that because to the Star's Academy is telling them to do that. They're
doing that because members of Congress give a shit about it and are being briefed
by these pilots and saying, what are you doing about this? And so
the Navy's saying, well, here's what we're doing about it. And so
I think to the Stars Academies, folks kind of lit a fire, and
I think it they deserve credit for that. But you know, let's face
it, Tom Belonga says some pretty kookie things. I mean, and I
say kookie, you know not. I mean that sounds negative, but like
I mean, he's obviously got a vision, he's got ideas that as a
reporter I can't verify. There's no paper trail for some of that stuff.
So in some ways, I, you know, I try to try to
ignore some of that and stick to what I said before. What is the
government doing? What is it learning? How much of that can can we
learn? Are there things we could foia? I think that answers a big
question because I get that a lot too. Why aren't you paying attention to
what Tom DeLong says? Well, it's another opinion out there, but it's
nothing substantiated, right, And there's you know, opinions that a diamond doesn't
and everybody's entitled to them, and some have more interesting ones than others.
But like, I can't traffic an opinion, right, I mean, we
have people who write opinion pieces of Politico, but that's that's not my job.
And Tom DeLong has not been and might hit the right one about and
yeah, right, as far as I know, you haven't pitched one either,
and I'm sure we would look at it if you pitched it. But
but you know, there's a difference between a sort of source reporting, using
multiple sources to verify facts, and trying to path you know, this thicket
of theories and ideas of what this might all mean or what this could be.
That brings up another topic. One of the sources of information, of
course, is the Public Affairs Office, and the Public Affairs Office that the
DoD in particular has been kind of I feel and you can correct me inconsistent
in that they have kind of at times said they couldn't verify information essentially that
Arizondo had said. At times they said, well, we don't even think
that's accurate, and later they kind of recanted. So does that surprise you
that they've kind of had this, these all these varying answers all over the
place. Doesn't surprise me. I mean, one thing I've learned covering the
Department of Defense all these years is that, particularly when it comes to the
most sensitive issues, that by definition, if the bureaucracy talks about it,
they know they can't control it. In other words, the message cannot be
controlled. It's just going to spin out of control. The public affairs people
are usually the last now and the last to be empowered to say anything about
it. So I also think it's important when the Pentagon spokesperson, any spokesperson
says we can't verify that. That's a very sort of specific term of art.
It doesn't mean it didn't happen, it doesn't exist, it's just that
we can't verify it. In other words, people won't share information with me,
the spokesperson, or there's no paper trail or we can't prove it.
I think there's a Hollywood eyes version that everybody, a lot of people including
me, sometimes is sort of internalized about the military, that they're so together,
and then you know, everybody keeps track of everything and knows everything,
and the truth is they're just human beings like we are. And so it's
not surprising to me that it might appear that the Pentagon has changed its story
on Luella. I've come to believe that luel Azando clearly was deeply involved in
this program at its beginning. It was one of the very few people that
was approved to be involved in it. It was not his main job to
cover or research UFOs. In fact, wasn't his job at all until he
was read into that program. He was a counter intelligence officer who did lots
of other things over the course of his career. And I think that's where
there's some nuance here to his role that's gotten lost a little bit, and
I think the Pentagon spokespeople have kind of muddled muddled it even more. And
that is a TIP is created as a budget line and a sort of a
program, not an office. There wasn't an office with a TIP on the
door where a bunch of people were working. It was a portfolio in addition
to a number of other intelligence portfolios or jobs quote unquote that the people who
were associated with it had to do. My sense is that Elizondo gets read
into this, starts, you know, carrying out some of the work,
interviewing people, gathering some of these testimonies, and he sort of got obsessed
with it because you know, he was like, shit, I mean,
this stuff is going on, and you know where we have a measly twenty
five million dollar program about it. I mean, twenty that million dollars is
nothing in the Pentagon. It's like the coins in the couch that you clean
out once a year. And so I think he becomes obsessed with it,
he takes it on, and I think when a tip officially winds down in
twenty twelve, because the money runs down, I think he continues to operate
that portfolio, continues to do some of the work along with all the other
stuff that was actually his real job. And so if you're a spokesperson now
in twenty nineteen, and you've got to go back and verify that luel Azondo
quote unquote ran a tip till he departed the government in twenty seventeen. You
can't really do that, I mean, because there really wasn't an a TIP
officially, there was no budget line. And but what's clear to me is
that he was involved in it when it did exist, and then for a
number of years after that he continued to do the research kind of freelancing if
you will. I mean, I think he clearly had some buy in from
his superiors to keep doing it. In other words, they didn't say,
mister Alesando, stop stop doing that stuff. But it was one of a
number of jobs that he had and clearly one that so captured him that he's
still doing it now that he's out of the government. But I think some
of that background, at least to me, explains why there's this sort of
confusion like either he was there, he wasn't there. I mean, it's
not as clearcut as here's the office, here's the roster of the employees who
worked there, here's when they started, and here's when they left. I
mean, that's just not how the intelligence business works, particularly a small program
like a TIP. And like I said, it was very small, which
makes me think it's got to be one of a number of other things the
government has been doing in recent years. So at least end of response is
that the DoD has had the press public affairs. Does it indicate to you
that they have been kind of purposely kind of unhelpful or is it just that
they just aren't in the know, that's just normal kind of day to day
I mean it's probably. I mean, I don't know for sure. I
mean, I know Chris Sherwood, the spokesperson in question, he's you know,
he's been helpful over the years on lots of other issues, but you
know, he's a government functionary like pretty much everyone else, and he's got
to operate in a specific lane. He can't just you know, talk freely
about whatever he wants to talk about. And and I I think in this
case it's it's a combination of it's difficult to verify in a way that you
know, some very confrontational reporters might want. They want it black and white.
Either he ran it or he didn't tell me. It's it's not that
simple, or I should say, it's not that simple to verify years after
if you're the poor spokesman who you know, only gets told what higher ups
are willing to tell you to then go tell the public or to go tell
a reporter, and you have more access because you have more sources, and
perhaps he even has, and that you know, you have these sources who
maybe won't go on the record, but will at least tell you something or
you can put together a story, whereas Sherwood has a lot more restrictions,
it would seem than even you would have. And I think from Sherwood's perspective,
and again you'd have to talk to him. But this is an issue
that and I think people forget this that was this was an office or an
effort, a program, a tip that was foisted on the Pentagon depending on
didn't go to Congress like it does every year with a seven hundred and thirty
billion dollar budget request and say give us a UFO research office. They never
asked for it. Harry Reid wanted them to do it, and so he
had the power, He had the juice to get the money and get them
to do it. And so this particular effort was never sort of fully owned,
if you will, by the Pentagon. I don't think it's something they
want to talk about willingly. I mean, it's it's got so many minefield,
if you will, in terms of public messaging, probably more than virtually
any other issue because of the stigma, because of the distrust of how the
government has handled this issue for all these decades, and so the Pentagon would
probably prefer to say nothing and make this go away. But you know,
but a reporter is haranguing Chris Hillwood for a quote, and so he does
his due diligence, you know, to his credit, he tries to figure
out, can I verify can I prove that yes, luel Azondo did ABC
and D And he's like, I am not gun anywhere, so you know,
I can't verify it. So that's what I think where that came from.
It didn't mean that he wasn't doing it, that he was a fraud
and he's a liar, and none of this stuff he says about his work
for a tip, It's true. I just think it's not that easy for
a spokesman to sort of unpack it all and figure it out. Right.
But there is a public affairs office we've heard that has been very cooperative,
and we've heard a lot from at not the Air Force. We've heard very
little from the Air Force or anybody else. But you broke the story about
something you mentioned earlier about the Navy coming up with new UFO reporting guidelines.
They've also seemingly have at least given permission for the active pilots to go on
the show that you're on Unidentified for the History Channel and speak, So it
seems like there's a level of cooperation with the Navy. What's the difference to
what's going on there, Well, I mean, I think the Department of
Defense is a huge place, and there's not just different military services, the
branches of the military that all have their own different culture, but all kinds
of different agencies that just operate differently. So when you say the Pentagon,
you got to be specific about, well, what are you talking about in
the Pentagon? Now? The Office of the Under Secretary Defense for Intelligence,
under which Alzando worked and where some of this research went on, very different
animal than the Department of the Navy and is just going to deal with issues
differently and be more forthcoming or less forthcoming, depending on what the issue is.
The Navy, in my experience, has always been much more forward leaning
when it comes to public affairs and interacting with the media and the public.
You know, the Navy, unlike the other branches of the military, for
many years, being a public affairs officer was a real job. It was
your full time job to be a spokesperson. You were trained in it,
you went to school to know how to do it. There was a real
sort of culture of Navy spokespeople, men and women, enlisted sailors who were
in that specialty, but also officers. And so I think the Navy's perspective
is, you know, this is happening. These pilots are seeing this stuff.
These are obviously credible people. Otherwise we wouldn't let them fly twenty five
million dollar fighter jets. We'd find something else for them to do. Congress
is interested, and Congress holds the purse string. So if there's powerful members
of the Senate or the House who want us to do more, we're going
to do more. And then when it comes to talking to the media,
I mean, I think they're just their view is, let's be out in
front of it, because if we're not and we don't talk, or we're
mo or were no comment, it just feeds more suspicion. Well, they
must be hiding something. Why are they not talking about this? So I
don't think the Navy, you know, on the list of things they're like
anxious to talk about, UFOs is at the top of the list. But
I think it's a different culture where you know this is happening. The bureaucracy
is responding with these new guidelines for pilots to report these things, and so
they're willing to talk about it. And I just think they're probably a little
more forward leaning than maybe the Army would be or the Air Force, which
is also something I've been digging into. It's like the Air Force has said
very little about this, right the Navy seeing these things, why, I
mean, you would think the air Force would want in on it. I
mean, why are they being left out? And I you know, I'm
sure, but the Air Force is also a different culture, so maybe pilots
don't feel as comfortable coming forward to talk about it. Have you made any
progress with the Air Force? Not a ton, But I mean I've made
some inquiries, I've filed some foyas. How much confidence do you have in
the FOYA process. I mean it seems like that's at least from our discussions,
that's the last place you go, because there's it's not very fruitful as
opposed to going to sources or even the Public Affairs State. The FOYA is
very frustrating. I mean, number one, I think that you know,
these agencies by definition are created to hide things, not to reveal things.
I mean, it's the National Security State, and so by definition, FOYA
doesn't get a lot of attention. The FOYA office is always small and undermanned,
and and you know, the gap between how many people they have to
respond to these requests and the amount of requests is so vast that it's just
a time suck. I mean, you have to be very patient if you're
gonna FOYA things. That's different with some agencies, Like I said, different
cultures, some agencies are more responsive. I found for exams, the State
Department is pretty responsive. If you know what you're asking for and they can
reveal it, they can release it, they'll do it within relatively few months.
Very different, you know, if you're talking about some agency in the
Pentagon. But FOYA can be helpful if you know exactly what you're looking for.
And that's where you know. I've always advised other reporters, younger reporters
who want to get more familiar with the FOYA process don't think of FOYA is
like the be all end all. In other words, I'm going to write
a letter to this agency and I'm gonna ask for documents on subject A,
and they're gonna give me a bunch of good, juicy stuff. You have
to combine FOYA with source supporting. You have to do the source supporting up
front to know what to ask for. Because the more specific you can be
on a set of documents, a set of memos, who wrote them,
when they were written. I mean, the more specific you can be,
the easier it's going to be for that beer to go find it wherever it
is in the agency, if it is in the agency. I like to
tell this story about a colleague of mine with the New York Times, very
good reporter, nationally recognized reporter, once had a secret document that was really
juicy and he wanted to use it. Source gave it to him, but
it was classified so he couldn't use it. So he foid it and got
another copy of it, of course redacted in certain places, but he was
able to get it mainly because he already had it. He knew the date,
he knew the name of the guy who wrote it, who he wrote
it to. And so I tell that story because it's like it's like the
perfect not a very usual example. But the more specific you can be,
the more lucky you're going to be in or successfully you're going to be in
getting what you want. Which is kind of ironic because at least I know
one person, and well, you know there's someone, there's a person out
there, and I does it take to mention his name. I'm going to
mention his name because he's John Greenwall who's done a lot of great work,
but he's been critical of you and I recently. But he's done that where
he's had the actual document, foy is it and they're like, we don't
have it, even though he's like, I've got it right here. I'm
showing it to you a copy. And so it's funny how that happens sometimes,
but it may be kind of what you're going back to. They just
don't have permission to release it. They don't have permission to release it,
or maybe they can't even find it anymore. I was just gonna say,
I mean, if anybody spent even three minutes at the National Archives in College
of Park, Maryland, you understand pretty quickly how difficult it is for these
massive government agencies to just keep track of stuff and keep track of it in
a way that it's easily locatable thirty years later or twenty years later, or
even five years later. But it also doesn't mean that that government agency that
John's dealing with isn't trying to hide it either. I've come across that many
times where there are agencies, particularly national security agencies, said don't want to
be transparent. They just don't. It's not in their DNA, especially when
either one it might reveal sources and methods. I think that is a legitimate
concern if they're a spy agency or they're a national security outfit, they don't
want the enemy quote unquote to know how they operate. I think they overuse
that excuse to sit on stuff and hide stuff, and the courts usually side
with the national security bureaucracy because there's no court judge that wants to be blamed
for forcing the CIA to reveal something that then run national security. So they
totally abuse that sources and methods excuse, like, if we give you this
document, our enemy will know how we gather intelligence. They'll learn something that
they don't know embarrassing stuff. They hide that shit all the time, even
if it's decades old. They don't want stories that show that the CIA was
playing a double game or you know. And so by law, that's not
a good enough excuse. I mean, the Foyer law is pretty specific.
They can't withhold something because it's embarrassing. They have to have a better reason
than that. But I have no illusions that they've given other excuses just so
they can cover up something that looks bad. And then I think there's this
huge problem of just finding this stuff. I mean, if it still exists,
if it wasn't destroyed and not necessarily destroyed because somebody's hiding something. It's
just like it's like you do every spring, you go through your garage and
you just throw stuff out. I mean, these agencies do that too well.
Often if there's a box, even though I know there might be something
useful in it, I just don't want to go through it anymore. I
can tell a whole box away. So yeah, I mean, I think
FOYA is a tool, but it's one tool if you want to try and
get so we're running out of time, but so this will be the last
question, is where you alluded to this a little bit of the possibilities of
where this can all go. But do you have any sense of where it
might be going? It seems like, you know, there's a lot of
talk going on in Washington. Now. We had another senator just today say
she was briefed on UFOs and and kind of has a positive view. Yeah,
I'd have to look up who it was. I'll do that in a
minute. But could you see maybe an agency being created, or maybe the
Navy taking this on, or like you said, something more. Do you
think where is it going? And do you have any sense of that?
I don't. It's hard to know. I don't anticipate any major steps.
I mean, I think if there are steps, they will be incremental ones.
They will be something like you know, when Congress doesn't really want to
do anything, they always require the executive branch to send a report to Congress.
So, like, I think that's possible, like get the Pentagon to
report back on this, ideally in some public way, or at least some
report that could be could have a public summary or executive summary. I don't
think we're at the point where like Congress is going to hold public hearings about
this, I mean never say never. It's possible that one of these members
of Congress who've been briefed and have taken interest in this, could you know,
get the gabble of some key committee and decide, Hey, I want
to have hearings on this. But I don't anticipate that's happening anytime soon,
as you know, there's you know a lot of other issues on their plate,
and you know, I don't know that the UFOs is at the top
of it. I also think though, going forward, and I've just seen
this even just in my own inbox or people who send me messages, encrypted
messages through like different communications apps. There's people in the government that have seen
these stories in the mainstream, have seen these briefings on the Hill, who
know shit and want to talk about it. And I'm getting a sense that
there's sort of this this new environment where you might see other government people come
forward to the extent they can say something that's not the kind of other Ela
Zondo's who have information that's not as classified as right, or other pilots or
other personnel that have seen things. I've heard from some folks that I'm sort
of trying to vet their their claims who are government people who attest that they
know of some things too that might be of interest to the public, not
just in the Pentagon, other government agencies, more civilian agencies. But I
mean to that too. I mean that when it it comes to these sources
in vetting the information, I would imagine a lot of people in the government,
even some with high titles, maybe even generals, are also kind of
subject to believing in conspiracy theories or things that just maybe aren't even real.
They just have read it somewhere and they think, hey, this could be
and I think this is something that's going on, right, But you know,
I think I also think the more the mainstream media covers it, the
more you know, good or bad, the more some of these members of
Congress and others will feel like they can take this on more. They can
talk about this more. Right, I keep coming back to. I read
about it recently. I was not aware of it. But this thing known
as the Overton window, which is a theory that actually Elizabeth Warren, who's
running for president, talks about quite a bit. Overton was a professor not
that long ago, in the nineties. He died quite young, in his
forties, but The Overton window that he came up with was basically the idea
that there are only certain things that you can talk about in the sort of
public square, certain policy, certain ideas that are quote unquote acceptable, and
that could be on education policy, it could be on anything. It's just
sort of a window of what you can talk about and what you can propose.
And I think she's one who thinks the Overton window is cracking, that
it's widening. What is acceptable to throw out there as a policy, prescription
or as an idea is just a bigger universe now, and I think a
lot of the policy she's proposing on the campaign crail sort of fit into that.
Like ten years ago, nobody would ever propose any of that stuff,
but she feels like she can. And I think the UFO issue is maybe
one that's also kind of in that category where the the Overton window is widening,
and talking about this, I mean, let's face it's pretty cool,
pretty surprising that, you know, the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee in
the Senate will come out and talk to a reporter and say, yeah,
I got a briefing on RFOS, and I think it's important to get to
the bottom of this, I mean, is the fact that he's willing,
comfortable enough to say that and not be ridiculed. And you know, I'm
sure he's being ridiculed. I mean, in fact, I've seen Senator Mark
Warner be ridiculed on Twitter. But that I think is going to be interesting
to see going forward. As you were saying, what's next, I think
more stories about sightings, more reports from these credible witnesses getting coverage, and
organizations like Politico and you've said that you ran it past people. Hey,
it's cool. I'm covering the UFOs right, and it seems like you're okay,
and that the more you break the dark secret is it drives a lot
of clicks right exact, it does, I mean, people interested in this,
and that's not reason enough journalistically to cover. But I definitely have some
buy in that. You know, if we can keep following the paper trail
and learn new things about what the government is learning on this issue, then
that's that's newsworthy m hm so. And Politico is going to keep covering it,
and hopefully then the competition's going to see that and they're going to want
to jump into well I think they have I mean it's you've seen even just
some of these stories we've written, or the Times certain brought it up with
the President, And if the president doesn't believe it, then and he's supposed
to get that briefing and everything, right, I know, I mean,
but that gets back to the Hollywood eyes version. Yeah, I mean,
I think the government knows a lot more than they're saying. But I also
think it's quite possible that people in the government who are supposed to know all
that stuff don't know it because they don't know where it is, right And
you know, the guy who knew it retired twenty years ago and never handed
the file to anybody else. So maybe it'll pop up on any bay.
But a vast conspiracy in the government to sort of hide what they know,
at least in my experience, just gives them more credit than they deserve.
I mean, they're just not that good. And it doesn't mean that there
haven't been cover ups. It doesn't mean that they haven't hidden things. It
doesn't mean that they haven't put out this information. But who's they one little
component of this larger organization which doesn't talk to the rest or is it you
know, some Department of Defense wide conspiracy. I just don't Maybe that was
possible back in the forties and the fifties and sixties, before the internet,
before globalization, that you know, there was really a height knit group of
people, all white men, who could keep all that stuff secrets. Maybe
that's possible back then. I just don't see how it's possible now. And
again, it doesn't mean there aren't pockets that are hiding things. And that's
what we're trying to do is try to like shake the trees and see if
we can get more out of where are these pockets? Well, thank you
so much for joining us, great discussion. All right, Well, hopefully
be able to have you back to talk some more. Sounds good. Thank
you so much to Brian Bender for being on the show. He was awesome.
So check him out in Politico. Like I said, he's a defense
editor. He's actually the Space editor as well, of course, space being
another topic close to my heart. Hopefully you'll hire me to write an article
or two. No pressure, mister Bender, if you're listening. But I
really loved what he had to say. I think what's great about this is
he's very practical, pragmatic, and look, this is how I go about
vetting a story. This is why, you know, how he gauges the
veracity of one piece of information over another. There are a lot of people
who have been criticizing him and other journalists, some of them even lumping me
with some of these guys, which I'm completely honored to be lumped in with
with these groups of people because people like George Knapp or Brian Benner because or
Leslie Kane, because I think they're excellent and some of the best in the
business or best especially covering this sort of thing. And you know, there's
reasons why people do what they do and why they will you know, there
are methods to their madness, and especially when they're people that are seasoned and
experienced, you know, to find out you just have to ask. So
that's what we're doing here, is asking and figuring out, well, why
do you take this piece of information as more important as others? So,
for instance, I even't got that this weekend from some of my colleagues.
Well, I heard that someone at DoD said that lou did not work for
a tip. No that's not really what he said. What he probably should
have said is something along the lines of according to the information I have here's
the deal, because that's more accurate, because, as we learn from Bender,
you know, they just don't always have the information available to them to
answer the questions being posted to them completely. And that's the situation we have.
But when we have such a huge amount of associated people to all of
this confirming, you know, information such as Alizondo's participation and the level of
participation he had, then we've got pretty pretty strong information to support, you
know, his claims, which so far have all turned out to be accurate.
And I hope you get a sense too, because people have a case,
oh, Brian's on the TV show, so he's going to be helping
to push that. No, he doesn't make money off the TV sho or
he makes money off of Politico and his job, of course, Politico is
much more important to him than any television show, let alone his integrity as
a journalist, which is extremely important to any major journalist or any journalists worth
their salts. So and I think you get a sense here that Bender is
certainly worth his salt. So very honored to have him on the show.
It was wonderful to hear his insights, and to me, they have been
extremely helpful as far as helping to keep perspective and to unpack this information and
to understand everything that's going on. So yep, thank you so much to
Brian. Check him out on Politico. Otherwise, I do want to say
thanks to Martin Willis for helping us out with the news at the beginning of
the show. Oh yeah, a couple of things too. Brian, Well,
most likely it looks like he's willing to and we would love him to
participate in a panel at the International UFO Congress. So imagine this. Imagine
this if you will, a journalism panel with George Napp and Brian Bender and
me asking them questions, and the audience as well, you all getting to
join in on this. How cool would that be. Well, that's what
we're looking at doing and you're only going to find this at the International UFO
Congress. So go to Ufocongress dot com to sign up for that and look
at some of the other speakers. So we will have George Napp, We're
going to have a lot of other really great speakers at the conference, and
so check that out. A lot of stuff too, you probably haven't heard
anywhere else, and especially in today's environment where this topic is becoming more serious.
I think you're going to want to educate yourself on some of the cool
stuff out there and some of the more interesting cases, such as I'm very
excited to see this talk from Tooey Snyder. These late eighteen hundred cases of
mysterious airships what they were called. But some of these things I didn't perform
like airships, and these were written about in the news, really really cool
stuff. So I'm excited for her talk, among many of the other talks
that will be there. So check out ufocongress dot com for that. I
also want to thank my patreon patrons. Thank you so much. I got
to meet some of you this week. One of you dropped. One guy
got mad at me. I forgot about what probably it probably wasn't even my
fault. Whenever Elizondo says something on the TV show that people don't like for
some reason, they take it out on me and they're like, you see,
oh those under it is true, but he said something that is total
be us. I'm done with you, so then they get mad at me.
But and recently one person who is even a patron, was like,
I'm out of here, so sorry, dude. I didn't mean to make
anybody mad, just trying to share information. But luckily there are others who
have joined, and I do appreciate the information. I can't remember. And
then this listen. Unfortunately, this isn't show me who the latest are,
but just at this group of people are some of the latest. So I
want to say thank you to Kim and Kevin and Jamie and mister Physics,
and Ron and April and Chasing and Mark and Corey and Robert and Matt and
Chris and Dawn and Justin and Neil and Jennifer and Sondra and Matthias and Charlie
and Steve. Thank you all so so very much. If you want to
go become a Patreon patron, you can go do that and I post all
of my stories there. I have a story in Den of Geek actually this
week also where I interviewed the director of this new Apollo documentary on National Geographic
and I also interviewed in astronaut Mike Masamino. I've interviewed him before, but
I got to interview him again for this piece, and I actually interviewed them
together, so it was a fun conversation. And I wrote an article about
it. It's mainly centered around well, I talked with Mike what's the difference
between going to the Moon and going to the ISS. Mike actually did a
couple of a few trips on the Space Shuttle, so that's exciting, and
he gave us some really good insight there. But then we also talked about
the importance of going to the Moon and what it was like back then,
and if you weren't alive or old enough when this all occurred, such as
myself, then you are going to want to watch this documentary, Apollo Missions
to the Moon on National Geographic. It just started up yesterday. It is
so friggin' good. And here's why. It's not like it was even It's
all completely archival footage. There's no narrator, you know, So it's just
archival footage of everything that happened during the Apollo program, and it's just some
of the footage and material as never seen before or heard before, and you
know, you're hearing it from the astronauts themselves. It's incredible stuff. A
lot of news clips, you know, news videos, stuff like that.
What's cool too, is all of this then has been enhanced so it fits
HD and so when you're watching it, you know, it's not like the
resolutions or the scale is changing throughout, which sometimes happens. It is so
good. I absolutely loved it. It was really cool. So you'll have
to check this out on a national geographic channel and check out my article on
Den of Geek. But getting back to Patreon, you know, I post
all of my articles and everything I'm doing besides just UFO stuff on Patreon,
so you can see that there. Plus, I've even promised some of you
that are at the higher tier levels. As you know, I get inside
information sometimes, and if I ever get inside information on actually being able to
invite people to a meeting with aliens, then I'll do my best to get
you like on the VAP or the will call list or something like that so
you can join. However, more realistic, there are probably other will call
lists that I can get you on, such as Comic CON's coming up,
and I did this last year. I was able to get you all into
some comic Con parties. So I'll keep you keep an eye on Patreon and
I'll let you know if stuff like that pops up. In fact, I
just heard something about a Comic CoV party recently, and I think I'm going
to be able to get a few people in there. So exciting, I
know, I know. Oh yeah. Plus I'm giving away T shirts too,
so I'll post another T shirt to give away because I get all these
T shirts at these events and things I go to that are UFO and Space
related, and hey, you guys like UFO and Space, so you're gonna
probably like these T shirts. But you'll find all that stuff on Patreon.
You can also follow me in everything I do at Alejandro Trojas dot com.
That's my blog, allejondro t rojast dot com. However, if you're like
dude, I don't care about any of that other stuff, just give me
more UFOs, then you're gonna want to stay. Pay attention to Openminds dot
tv. And in fact, all of those UFO news story that stories at
Martin and I talked about at the beginning of the show, they're all going
to be at Openminds dot tv. So check that out. Thank you again
to Caleb Hanks for the opening and close music. Thank you to Systematics for
the bumper music, and finally, thank you to you all the listeners for
joining me here. Once again, we'll have another great show next week.
Until then, audio smooth, chuttos and mus