Hello, and welcome to over mind UFO Radio. My name is Alejandro Rojas.
I am your host for today and I am here with Martin Ruski Willis.
That's right, yo, coming at your live from Russia. Yo again.
Yeah, you're back in Russia, well for about a month this time.
Wow, back in the US. Back in the US is socc but
it's not the USSR anymore, that's right, yep, So that's cool.
Off tour down that wall the mother country. But it's not your mother country,
right, it is not? What is your mother country? Do you
have one? England? Well, Wales? Wales. That's interesting where there's
no UFO sightings because it's foggy all the time. Not foggy, but overcast.
That's where Catherine Zetta Jones is from. I know where I used to
see her all the time. Oh yeah, the coffee shops. Yes,
everything, I say, yes, Well that's fun. So is there any
particular reason you went out there? Yes, it's actually a medical reasons for
my girlfriend's uh you know, a mother, I mean father. I'm sorry,
but you know, everything will be fine, and that's why I'm here
for a prolonged time. It's actually, you know, just a couple of
surgeries that need to be done, and you know, and that's it.
We'll be here for a while. And uh, you know, I got
to say, I'm not a fan of the food, and I'm really glad
that they can't understand my English because they're in the next room. Like you
know, this so just so many ways you can cook porschh. I mean,
that's just it's like a bunch of vegetables with some type of I don't
even know what type of brothit is, and then sometimes there's meats in it.
You know, this has been vegetable porsch and it's well, you know,
I've had it for every meal I've been here, except for breakfast,
which is other very strange things. Yeah, what do they do for breakfast?
Well, it's an oatmeal that's like a powder, so it's like a
liquid and it's just I mean it's it tastes as bad as it sounds,
if you ask me. And then these weird egg things on top of bread,
almost like a thick layer of French toast that you do nothing with.
And you know it's good because you know, I can take off a few
pounds and getting a lot of exercise and on the Black Sea. It's pretty
Yeah, that'll be helpful. I mean, I guess losing rap. Did
they have like smoothies? Can you eat smoothies? They have nothing here?
No restaurants, No, really yeah, I mean there's a couple of them
somewhere in the town. There's only two hundred and fifty thousand people in this
town. Holy cow, are you having any problems with old ladies this time?
Well? I about to murder you. Yes, I did spot that
same exact woman. Oh about two hundred and fifty thousand people actually with her
little again and I just steered clear. Yeah, it doesn't recognize me.
Yeah, wow, harrowing, very adventurous. Huh. It is going to
Sochi tomorrow for number of days, so that'll be that'll be exciting going to
be staying in a big place there. And it's really a beautiful, uh
town right on the Black Sea as well. It's a full day drive away.
And but you know, you go up into the mountains that's where the
Winter Olympics were. But this is right on the Black Sea itself, nice
and toasty warm seventy five degrees Wow. Great, here is it pretty out
there? Oh? The Black Sea is absolutely beautiful, you know. I
mean it's it's you know, it's big. I mean it's huge, but
it's the water sort of turquoise, so it's kind of nice. Wow,
that is so cool. I'd love to see it. But I'll pack my
own lunch, I guess. Huh yeah, I would bring your own Porsche.
Cool. Well, that sounds like fun. So we'll be talking to
you and checking up on your Russian adventure over the next few weeks. Huh
yeah for a little while. And the Internet sounds great. I mean,
you sound better than some of my guests here in the States. I know,
it's amazing. I've been talking to people on my phone all day and
it's like the phone works perfect too. You know, we may be making
fun of Russia right now, and we're going to make fun of Russia a
little bit more and a little bit here, I know, related to some
UFO stories, but from what I understand, I mean, really, the
US surprisingly has terrible internet compared to many other countries. You know, I've
heard like the worst is Australia, but I'm not sure. I mean that's
you know, I guess, yeah, they're pretty I guess what happened is
since we were first of the game. We rolled out these cables all over
the place. But since others kind of came in later, they were able
to roll out the fiber all over the place. Why, I think fiber
optics. Yeah, that's the magic. Yeah. Pretty cool. Well awesome.
Enjoy yourself out there, buddy. Thanks. Who do you have coming
on today for your guests? That's that's a funny you should say. I
was just about to mention my guest is Richard Hoffman. He is a state
director for moufon out in Alabama and I think Mississippi, Yeah, nearby two
places. And you know, he'll tell us in the interview because my memory
for some reason is failing me. Just a super busy morning Mondays of course.
And he's also got another title. He manages a I think grategy or
something like that for move On. He's got a couple of titles there,
so he does a lot of stuff. But he's been in this forever,
which we'll talk about some amazing stuff he did as a child in relation to
UFOs and so just a really impressive cool guy. He's also part of the
SDU team. So do you remember that they were the guys who researched that
Homeland security video. Oh yes, m h. So he's a part of
that team and he'll be talking about that case as well. Oh that's good.
I still want to follow that case because I don't think it's over yet,
right, it's not so far, so we'll talk about updates. Another
interesting fact is he's a bow tie wearer. Oh that's a rare reed.
Yeah, which I find I have a even more appreciation for recently due to
Doctor Who. I'm a Doctor Who fan, and if you know, the
Matt Smith character used to always wear bow ties and say bow ties are cool.
That was kind of his little catchphrase bow ties. Well, I got
to tell you. I don't know if you have ever tried to tie one
of those suckers, but it is not an easy task. Really. Oh
it took me hours to try to figure it out. It's really toss Yeah.
I'm not the most coordinated person in the first place. So yeah,
don't try. I don't think I will. I kind of like the long
tire. I like the you know, no tie personally, because yeah,
that's a cool look and it's kind of acceptable these days, right yep.
So let's go ahead and get into some UFO news. Have you been able
to see any uf BONE news out there in Russia? Yeah? Well,
I want to talk about This is about an army chief of staff and he
warns of you know his wording. I got to say it was all on
his wording, hybrid armies and little green men. Now, this was a
speech last week at Norwich University, and General Mark Miley is his name,
chief of Staff for the US Army, told the audience, many of whom
were ROTC cadets, that the future the cadets who'll be dealing with, among
other things, is hybrid armies and little green men. Now, some UFO
ors assumed this to be an admission that armies of aliens and alien human hybrids
are threatening the earth, and you can watch where they're going to go with
that. I bet it's going to be pretty big the way things can go.
But anyway, this is not what he was actually talking about at all.
He was warning them about the complex makeup of the enemies that they will
face, and that includes terrorists and armies without states, cyber warfare, unidentified
armies working covertly, and there's also there's also like in I think it was
Russia that these are armies, including forces that are just seen like in the
Ukraine that are believed to be Russian special forces and like in Ukraine and Crimea,
and they wear unmarked uniforms and drive unmarked vehicles. That's kind it's scary,
and so Russia has denied that they've deployed these forces. But it's been
a strange case anyway. Anyway, so we'll see again where people go with
what he said. You know, Unfortunately he wasn't meaning not unfortunately I'm gonna
say, but he wasn't meaning what I believe a lot of people will take
it, you know, at face value that it was talking about aliens.
Yeah, and it's kind of one of those crazy things. It's kind of
a turned into in some you know, corners, especially these online discussion groups
and stuff. It's kind of turned into one of the Mexican Roswell's Slade kind
of thing where there people heard him say this, and you know, and
he's very straightforward. Hybrid armies and little Green men and UFO people are like,
oh my gosh, you know, and they're riding and some well known
people wrote, this is finally disclosure proosy. The army knows that they're fighting
with aliens and all this stuff. And I gotta say, it wasn't very
difficult. I mean, when I saw it, I was going to write
about it. I thought, this is really interesting. He should use these
terms. But I thought he's either joking or these terms are military terms.
But it wasn't very difficult to find out that. Surprisingly to me, these
were military terms. And people were saying, look, he's not joking because
there's a video of him out there and he's very straightforward about these comments and
everything, and so it wasn't very hard to find these were military terms.
But when people started saying that, you know, of course, the people
who have already committed to this idea that this army general is talking about aliens
did not give up. They're still out there to this day saying no,
you know, he meant aliens, He didn't mean aliens. And I mean,
these terms are on Wikipedia for goodness sakes, but this is really funny
development. So Friday, so I wrote my story to clear the water and
to write about, you know, what these terms really meant and everything,
to give people a reference just before it got too big, Hey, before
you get too excited. He wasn't talking about aliens. Here's what he was
really talking about. Well, on Friday, the Army Times wrote a follow
up story and about how UFO enthusiasts are going crazy with with that lecture,
and they quoted our story, our open mind story. They said, however,
yeah, really cool. They wrote, However, the UFO website,
you know, UFO news website, Open Minds, tried to debunk the whole
thing to let people know what was really going on, and they used a
quote from my story and then they went on to describe, you know,
what those terms really meant like you just had outlined. So that was kind
of cool. The Army Times given us some credit, but setting the record
straight. They moved pretty quickly too, to write there follow up UFO story.
Well, I got to tell you, if you watch what unfolds about
this, it'll be I can just almost guarantee you that you're going to see
some you know, spots in some of the UK tabloids and things like that
next thing you know, to be everywhere. Yeah. I hate to sound
like such a you know, pessimist, but I just have seen it so
many times. Right, they'll just take off with it. Yeah, And
I mean, I'm sorry to any listeners out there who are really excited,
I think that he was talking about aliens. But I mean, you could
read my story and go to my links and read the Army Times story to
see very clearly that you know, these are terms, and you know this
is like, these are terms that are in their lexicon. These are terms
that this guy probably goes to briefings every day and they talk about hybrid armies
and they talk about little Green men and so these are things they talk about
regularly. So for him, these terms are every day and he probably didn't
think that, you know, the general public doesn't know what he's talking about
when he says these things, and that they would kind of be taken aback
a bit. But yeah, so that's the story. And you know what
this week's kind of been like that. Some other people like there wasn't a
whole lot of news, but the news that was out there was mostly from
UK tabloids covering known hoaxes. So I'm sorry people, but you know this
as well. Martin Secure Team ten had one or two stories out there.
Those are fake videos, Those are hoaxes. Those are fake, Those aren't
real, no matter if the UK Daily Express or the Daily Star, Pick
Them Up or The Sun, all of which are tabloids, which, of
course, when you go to their stories, they're full of bikini girls doing
all kinds of weird stuff, you know, or women without bikinis or anything.
That's the other favorite thing to cover. But these are tabloids who really
don't care about accuracy as much as sensationalism. But the Secure Team ten and
they're only thinly veiled hoaxes. I don't even think Securit Team ten meant to
hoax everybody, but just have fun and people run wild with that stuff.
Wow. Just for the record, I never like to cover women without baby
in suits, if you catch my drift. Yeah, there's kind of a
pun there. You'd never like to cover women just a little bit. Yeah,
yeah, sorry, yeah, sorry, I'm gonna make you hang here
by are you trying to make like an awkward moment? Yeah, I'm making
any hang because if I would have moved on, it would have gotten you
off the hook. But by waiting and now by talking about it, it's
kind of about what and to pretend it never happened. Now, now that
you're out in Russia, you're gonna this is your version of Little Green men
tonight it ever happened even though we have a recording, So you're learning to
yeah. So yeah, and so did you want to vent any frustration about
Secure Team tenor or anything any comments? Do you agree that they they're not
real? Well, yeah, you know, it's just a well, you
know, it's just kind of goes along with what I was saying just a
few minutes ago. You know, Unfortunately, and there are so many cases
I was talking to Kevin Randall last night. There are so many cases where
like myth seems to become reality in these stories. And you know, you
can only do what you can do, and that's, you know, right,
the gist of what really is going on, and just hopefully some of
that will get out there like it did. The Army paper saw that and
covered it, which is good. But all we can do, you know,
personally, all anybody can do is keep their side of the street clean
and try to make factual stories and not and be careful of the myths.
Anyone can fall into them. Right. So, two things though that I
want to mention that aren't myth are you know, we talked about this last
week. There's a UFO detector software out there. We just put this.
We featured it on our UFO Open Mind UFO report that we posted Friday,
that's up on the internet and on our page, you know, our video
thing. But also last week's guests with Robert Hastings. That's the real deal.
I mean, that is good hard information, you know, military witnesses.
Again. I've just can't express enough that how important and how great that
he's done this, and that I do implore people to go download and watch
his documentary. Have you been able to do that yet? No, I've
had I had such a busy week before I came to Russia. I can
imagine I wasn't able to do anything. But I will have some downtime here
or I can do that. Yeah, and there's Russian stories too, Russian
nukes stories about the same thing happening here. You know, accounts of military
people in Russia saying the same thing happened over there, with things like UFOs
coming over and turning off nukes and stuff. But we did that last week.
But anyway, Yeah, great great stuff. Otherwise, I did want
to mention something on another serious note, as serious as I can be.
I guess I didn't get much. I figured I want to bring awareness around
this medical condition I have and I had to spend all day last Tuesday at
the doctor's part of this trial and this drug that I have for something called
ankle licing spondylitis. So in my videos, what's up that doesn't sound good?
Well, it's yeah, well I don't know. In a way,
it's not as bad as it sounds, but it kind of is. So
in my videos, you know, or if you've seen me, a lot
of people will mention, oh, man, your neck looks like it hurts,
or you look kind of hunched down a bit. I am because I
have this thing called inkolescing spindelitis, which I wish I would have known about
earlier. And that's why I want to tell people about it, because I
think there needs to be a lot more awareness. If I would have known
that I had this condition, let's say, you know, fifteen years ago
when it first started acting up, I could have you know, saved a
lot of my back curvature from unfortunately being curved like it is now. And
what it is is it it's akin to rheumatoid arthritis. It's a it's an
immunity disease where essentially your immune system is overactive and for some reason in my
case with arthritis, it's other joints, but in my case it's the spine.
It sees the spine and attacks the spine as if it's a virus or
something. Oh my god. Yeah, So what happens is the joints in
between the spine gets start to deteriorate and in order to garbage, yeah,
the cartilage, because it attacks that, and so those begin to close.
And then it also, like your body tries to compensate, so it grows
more cartilage out from the bones essentially kind of thing, and those spine your
spine then begins to fuse, but it fuses curved and it pushes forward.
And so there's a lot of people you might have seen people who are really
bent over and through as the longer you have this, and more and more
it pushes down. So what happens is you begin to get this in your
twenties, and if you're lucky, it doesn't last very long. It can
last anywhere from twenty to or ten to years. Usually it goes away in
your forties or fifties. But if you catch it earlier enough, you can
take some drugs that get rid of that inflammation and then so you save you
know, from that fusing from happening, so you don't lose mobility. Like
I can't turn my head left or right very far, i can't bend over
very far. And I've got this kind of like you know, curve in
my neck that people can see, and that'll never go away because there's you
know a few spine spinal columns that are fused. So the unfortunate part is
when I used to tell my doctors about my back hurting, you know,
I thought it was you know, they would say, oh, you know,
it's just regular back pain, and so they never said anything. They
didn't tell me to go to a rheumatologist. So if you're in your twenties
and you have back pain, go to a roomatologist. At least get checked.
Because if I would have been checked, I could have been on the
drugs, and then I wouldn't have I only just started taking drugs about two
years ago to relieve this, and my back pain was severe. I mean
it was really bad. I had to watch how I walked and stepped.
I didn't even know how much it affected me until I got on this drug
and it alleviated that. So Luckily, my back has been fine the last
couple of years. I used to think maybe it was because I was over
eight overweight, because years ago I was, but I lost the weight and
it still didn't go away. And that's what triggered the alarm is I was
going to the gym practically every day. I'd lost sixty pounds working out.
Anything I ever tried couldn't solve the problem. I thought, I'm just gonna
have to live with this pain. My girlfriend actually just kept pushing me,
you got to go to the chiropractor. So I did, and luckily,
one of the chiropractors says, you know what, I think you may have
ink licing spondylitis. Because all the chiropractors told me your back looks like the
spine of a ninety year old. So I finally went and got diagnosed and
started to get the issue worked on. But I'll never regain any of that
mobility or be able to stand up straight. So yeah, so if you
if you have back pain, go get it checked. Don't think that you'll
just have to live with it, even though unfortunately millions of people do just
have to live with the pain. And that's why we have a huge issue
with people getting hooked on on pain does and painkillers. But luckily, so
luckily in my case, there's a drug that can alleviate the pain unlike others.
But and if you catch it early enough, you know, you don't
have these complications. So I just want people to know. And it is
large. It's like one out of ten young men have this condition in glycn
spondylitis. Wow. Now I have it worse than most, but still that's
a lot of people, it really is. That's huge. Yeah, wow,
that's really something. So I was thinking about it because I missed,
you know, and I was thinking about it yesterday that well, you know,
that affected my work and I was like, I should really start telling
people about this, you know, so because people need to know that they
need to get their backchecked if they have back pains in their twenties. So
yeah, that's that's a good message. I'm glad you're getting that out there.
You know, a lot of people have different types of back pain,
but it's you know, if it's persistent, then you're right you should get
a check. That could be a number of things. And I always here
you don't jump into back surgery right away either. You really wait it out
to see if it's something else or you can do something else. A lot
of people have regrets from getting surgery. Well, the surgery is a lot
of them. Some of them only works seventy five percent of the time.
So but my mom's going to try one of them because she's tried everything and
hasn't had really from the pain, and she doesn't want to get hooked on
the pain killers. In the US, we have such a problem with that,
and we do. There's so many people and I know a few people
who have died from it. Yeah, so you know, overdosed. So
Prince might have. There's suspicions that Prince's death may be due to that and
they're looking into it, so we'll find out soon if that's the case.
But regardless, he was someone who suffered from hip joint pain. So yeah,
it's a really difficult situation. I mean, it's the biggest health issue
is people with different sorts of pain. But just don't be stubborn, I
guess, like me, go to the doctor, get it checked out.
And unfortunately, even your general practitioner may not give you the best advice or
know what's going on, so you might just on your own go to a
specialist or tell your doctor I want to get it checked out. Or you
can go to the chiropractor if you suspect and ask them if there's any fusing
going on or what happens is these little spines will start to grow out,
starting to connect your you know, the parts of your spine, different things
that your chiropractor can identify. So go get it checked out. Good,
But there you go. Yeah, so that's it for news. There are
a couple other stories out there. Roger Marsh from moufan has written a couple
UFO sighting stories that we have on the site from last week. Also nothing
with photos or videos, which of course people like, but still people love
to hear from other people, you know, what they've seen. So and
of course a lot of the popular UFO sightings out there rely on the credibility
of the witness and they don't have pictures or videos. So so yeah,
check those out. Anything else not not from overseas, Nope. All right,
it's so cool that you sound so great. You sound like you're in
the room here, all right, Yeah, I'm loving it. Yeah,
all right, Well, thank you so much for joining us from Russia.
What time is it there? It is nine to forty in the evening.
Oh wow, yeah, it's eleven forty in the am here, so well
cool. Yeah, thanks buddy, and you have a great time out there.
All right, you take care. All right, let's go ahead and
hear what mister Hoffman has to say. I am very excited to welcome for
the first time to the show, Rich Hoffman. Hey, Alejandro, it's
excited to be here. I haven't been with you before, so this is
a new kind of thing for us to chat. And I'm looking well,
And it's funny because I do this sometimes and I told you that, you
know when we set this up. Oh yeah, have you back on the
show. But you're one of the guys I just talked to so regularly that
I had figured you've been on the podcast before, but you haven't. I
think we did like a Skype video interview before. But it's wonderful to be
talking to you on the podcast here. Welcome, well, thanks, looking
forward to it. It's a great program that you've got going on. I've
been enjoying it over the period time you've been doing it, so it's great.
Thank you, you know, and your Skype picture here you don't have
a bow tie. Usually I see you with a bow tie, you know,
I get it's amazing to me. But I do wear a bow tile
a lot and every day to work and stuff like that. So when I
don't wear it, or when somebody has a picture or she's a picture without
it, man, I get grief about the fact that I'm not wearing my
bow tie. Yeah, Like, who is that individual? Yeah? Who
is that's not Rich Hoffman? I mean he doesn't have a bow tie on.
Yeah. Well, I got a big kick out of sending you that
gift the other day of the doctor Who, the Matt Smith doctor Who,
because he's always saying bow ties are cool. So I don't know if you
saw that, but yes I did. Yeah, yep. I get a
lot of that doctor Who thing. It's like, yeah, where's your chartist?
Well, doctor Who is really cool. So that's a compliment. Yeah,
well, thank you so much. Thanks. I'll be wearing my bowtie
done to uphone symposium too. Yeah, so I guess we'll get in to
UFOs. I guess that's what we're going to talk about. But just gotta
switch away from bow ties. Yeah, at least for now, I'm sure
they'll come up again, all right eventually. But when did you first get
into UFOs because you've been like with Muffan since like to turn to the century
or something, right, yeah, back when the dinosaurs, I think somehow,
you know, I mean no, no, literally, I I got
well, first off, I got started with UFOs back in nineteen sixty four.
Back in fact, I just celebrated my fifty second year of ufology.
It was April twenty fourth, nineteen sixty four when well Lottie's the Moor Case
happened. As a matter of fact, I think that's really what that's what
really got me. And then I found out I was living in Dayton,
Ohio, and Project Bluebook was up the road, and that even did me
in further because it was like, wow, that's pretty neat. There's a
project that the UIR Force Base, which I hadn't even no clue about.
And then suddenly I got, you know, pulled into the whole subject.
I couldn't put a book down. I was reading everything, newspaper, clip
things, anything on the subject. And but I joined upon see, so
let me go back, because I started my own organization, and in fact
it was called Day's Cap which was Dayton, you know, Committee on Society,
Committee on Aerial phenomena similar to Nightcap. You know, so I would
guess that you were pretty young. Then if you don't want to, you
don't have to reveal the age. Well, no, I mean I was
thirteen years old. Wow, so I was only in eighth grade, you
know, that's what what got me. But you know, uh, and
then by the time I was fifteen, and I was actually on the Phil
Donahue show in Dayton, and uh, you're kidding. No, I thought
you knew that. Yeah, I didn't know that. And I love Phil
dona here. Yeah, I love Phil Donahue too. And I got home
that and this is before he went and became really famous up in Chicago.
But nevertheless, he had the same kind of show format that he had when
he went up there. And he was just right up the street actually from
where I lived. I could ride my bike to the station and stuff.
But he had heard me. I was doing presentations, as you know,
already around the city through different groups, and somebody mentioned my name, and
I guess the next thing I know is I got on the show and at
fifteen, yeah, fifteen years old, and I handled all the questions pretty
well. And then then what happened was because it played in Dayton. The
next thing I know is I was getting phone calls from everybody and their brother
that wanted to know more. And and then the next thing I know is
I'm like giving, like I said, lectures everywhere television shows. I was
pulled on Moh my god, I can't even begin to tell you how many
times I was on TV. And then, you know, and then it
got to be the point where, like you know, I was literally getting
calls from everybody and their brother, and I didn't have really enough people to
help me out. And it was like I didn't even know that many people
in the UFO subject. But suddenly I started to pull people together and we
started actually having meetings in my garage garage, and you know, I started
pulling together a group and then UH, and eventually I got UH. There
was another group down in southern Ohio UH in the Fairfield area called and we
called ourselves the Ohio UFO Investigators League, and UH I got connected with them
somehow I became their uh, their director of investigations. UH. And then
you know, then what happened was I I had heard that there was a
thing called Midwest UFO Network that was starting up and it was in sache Sageen,
Illinois, and I thought, well, I need to get connected with
them, and so I joined up. And you know, so I'm one
of those like early people that was with the Midwest UFO group. And I
got my first manual which was like, you know, I still have my
manual from that. Wow and uh. And so you know, I've been
with them for a long long time, forty some odd years and the thing
that's exciting for me is that, you know, after being with them all
this time, this is my first chance to actually now do a presentation at
a symposium. Can you believe it? This is your first the very first
time that I'm a presenter at the New Fond Symposium since I've been with them.
Wow. In nineteen seventy eight, I hosted the New Fond Symposium and
we rented out the entire Dayton Convention Center. Oh and this was during Close
Encounters. This is a big three thousand, you got it. So this
is the one where Heinik was there, Donald KiHa was there. Wow.
Leonard Springfield was talking about crash retrievals. Ted Blotcher was there all these people
that are you know, incredible, and it was a and then we actually
had the filming of our like a huge screen that we had in the Dayton
convention that are that showed the close encounters or that that mothership scene, and
that was you know, coincided with but I that I was actually up on
stage and I was a moderator for that, introducing the guests. But that's
that's it. So I'm pretty excited about actually now doing my my first presentation
with new von at a symposium. How cool. I'm excited too because I'm
doing move On for the first time and it feels like, you know,
I've been around move On for a long time, but not even a fraction
of it as long as as you have. And that's not a dig to
your age, that's all right, That is in honor of your Yeah,
of your I don't know, Uh you're an elder statesman, I guess.
So I've got the gray hair to prove it. Yeah, well I've got
gray hair too. So you you you look talking about going back all of
these years, you don't look to be, uh that old. Well,
thank you. I guess I'm very fortunate in the gene area. So how
did you and the UFO community feel when Close Encounters came out? Oh,
well, to me, I can tell you this much, that we were
all very, very excited because here was for the very first time. It's
so hard to get movies that depict, you know, actual true to life
kind of events. You know that they keep it, they keep to the
stories as they're happening. So good example would be the you know, Royniria
in the truck and then you know, and the truck goes dead and it
starts back up on its own, and and then you had the varieties of
shapes that you'd see. Uh we we we really haven't had too many mother
ships and some other things, but we've had those like little you know,
like ball of lights that are moving around and things like that. And you
gotta you had a chance to see a lot of other different aspects like the
radar screen you see him watching something, so you high had some elements of
it that that Heinik was able to bring in and his cameo performance, and
then you know that it was cool to be able to see Jacques Vallet in
Francois Truffau's characterization of him, and so it kind of like made it,
you know, I brought it home for us, and we thought that that
would be a big, very big helpful kind of like event, if you
would, and it was to a large extent, except that you know,
it's you know, but the real problem was that, you know, when
when Bluebook decided to terminate and they get the condomn report did the nail on
the coffin, and then he had the National Academy of Scientists actually now doing
the nail on the scientist. It just put an end to a lot of
things. And then so suddenly we lost we lost the top cover over a
period of time where we had we're now doing the same kind of work.
And then people were like, oh well, the Air Force thinks it must
be pretty good, so okay, it's got some credibility to it, right,
But as you watched, and I even do presentations on this, but
over the period of time, the real UFO subject became blurred by all of
the distractions that go around it. And that's you know, I'm talking about
the fact that you know, it's it's the mythology that's been created around this
whole thing now is far different than anything that we had back in that day,
you know, And so you know that's the sad part because now we'll
spend our times with distractions versus spending our times on the real UFO or unidentified
objects that we can't explain. It's funny you say that, because I had
thought that Heinich, you know, must have really loved Close Encounters because his
involvement, and like you, it's so accurate as to what happened. And
I love the heck out of that movie. But I heard from Don Schmidt
Heinich didn't really like the movie, and I can totally see it because of
that. He felt that it was sensationalized and it wasn't real. They went
too far away departing from the actual, real, live events. And you
know, having been on television like you have and having your work be misrepresented
by entertainers, I can identify with the way Heinek would have felt. Yeah,
and he did. I mean I had conversations with him, and he
did say that I actually had a chance to go up and be in his
house with him and Meme uh huh, And in fact Mark Rudiger was there
was but I mean, yeah, I mean conversations with him was if he
was disappointed. We all have that same thing where we go in and we
provide all us wonderful information, and we want these recreations to be you know,
exact. We'd like to be able to see real cases presented, and
then Hollywood and producers and various other people turn it into something completely different,
and then you're saying, well, well, that's not what happened, you
know, And then they're out there like either creating another story and adding to
the mythology that separates us even further from the real legitimate data that you rarely
read the case up front, you'd see that it was this way, and
then you'd find out that it's portrayed, you know, they broadened the story,
and you know, I mean we see that all the time. And
even though it's recreations you see on television, which are just pure bs,
I mean, they just they basically just devastate and create. In other words,
you could see like the cash Landrum case, where there might be blue
sparks because they portray it blue sparks jumping out of the bottom of the thing.
Well there weren't any blue sparks. I mean, it's like that didn't
have that. And then so then you'd see like, well, people saying,
hey, I saw something that looks like but I had blue sparks out
of it. You know, Okay, well there you go, yeah,
and it's off. And then the world of the internet is just abysmal in
a sense of passing around truth. More untruth gets passed around every day than
any truth you can get out there, so we don't And then you know,
I'll say this right now, I'm going to be presenting. I was
asked by a visiting professor that's coming to Huntsville to speak at the University of
Alabama Huntsville in an honors college class coming up next month. And I'm excited
about it because one of the topics that we're going to be talking I'm going
to be able to use. The subject goes extremely well with it is he
wants to be able to take his psychology class and to teach critical thinking skills.
And one of the things that I know because I've also been in the
training and development field. In fact, I was with a company or an
organization called American Society for Training and Development, and I became a regional director
up in the New England area. But we started to we to study where
we found out that we started to see that critical thinking was one of the
things that we were missing in schools. And so here you see those two
and this was like you know, you know several This is like maybe thirty
years and twenty twenty five years ago or something. Anyway, the bottom line
is we see that that's out there and continuing to evolve and worsen to the
point where you don't have you have either a gullbility you know, I accept
everything because it's on the internet, or but you don't have any critical thinking,
you know, then go talk. So we're I'm going to go over
and present them, you know, the UFO information. Uh, I'm going
to talk about and we're going to walk through a case. I thought i'd
use the Iddia case since I don't be taught about it and just say,
okay, let's let's walk through a case and then to see the kinds of
things that they can come up with and to see how they think and to
try to promote that. So I'm excited about that. But I guess what
I'm trying to say is we have people that watch those lousy shows that are
on that are misproduced and not correct and people accept them and they without question
that's what I saw it. It's therefore it is, you know, hm,
and so it's very sad that we have that. Yeah, I think,
but you know, go ahead, oh, just I was gonna say
my last guess. I think, as you know, Robert Hastings expressed his
frustration and even he even used a bad word, yes, and I applaud
his bad word because because he's he's so down to earth and he expresses,
you know, with you know, kind of like this is the way it
is, you know, I'm sorry, you know, it's just horrible.
Yeah. Well, at least Close Encounters was a fiction movie, whereas a
lot of these shows, like like the ones like I think, what is
generating your frustration? My frustrations Robert hastings frustrations are these modern television shows which
port themselves, which try to say that they're documentarian or their journalistic when they're
actually largely fictional. Yes, yeah, completely agree. You know, you
don't know how many people saw the movie even fourth uh, the fourth encounter?
What was the fourth kind? The fourth yeah, the fourth kind and
believe that that whole story was actually true and argued with me about the fact
that that's that's the way it is. That that is the way it is.
And and I'm going like, I'm sorry, it was a movie.
Yeah, it was fake, people, it was faked, and you know,
and then you can tell people that and it's like they still don't want
to accept it. I have. I've had a you know, my own
experience looking and seeing the Google loon balloon take off from here in Huntsville.
It was reported for four days as it was moving up and I watched it
in CMS for the New Funds database. I watched it and tracked it every
day, and as it progressively moved up from me to Tennessee, to Kentucky
to and it it ended up in Pennsylvania and then eventually it ended up in
Canada. But this thing was reported as a UFO along the way. And
don't you know, I mean, when I explained to everybody that it was
a Google loon balloon, it was launched from Huntsville, and it was a
NASA Engineer balloon, solar balloon, they didn't accept it. I'm sorry,
it's it was a UFO. It was it was it was an alien spacecraft
and you're wrong. Yeah, It's funny because one of my first cases as
a as a UFO filled researcher with Moufin was a video case. And we
watched this video and it was amazing. It was these white objects in the
sky and none of us could figure out what it was. It wasn't birds,
it wasn't planes. They were bright objects, you know, five or
six of them, and it was shocking. Well, I took that video
and I wasn't that great with video editing at the time, not that I'm
a masterp it now. Luckily we have Michael here who is. But I
was able to zoom in and I could see the flapping of the wings and
it was birds. It was duck butts, is what I told everybody.
It's because they had just flown through some rain and they were then the sun
was hitting on him and they were just really brightly lit. And when I
sent the email to everybody, hey, these are duck butts, they didn't
want to believe me. And then I showed them, well, look look
at this particular one. This is a duck. Well that may be a
duck, but the others weren't, so I don't know. I guess sometimes
we get so invested that this had an idea that it's hard to step back
and say, oh man, we were wrong about that one. Yep.
And to this day, I mean it's like, you know, you got
people out there, like a good example, I was, I was doing
some reading backup some old literature that I had the dealt with. I actually
got the meat Major Hector Quinella when he was sold as wow at the blue
Book. It was the last guy to run blue Book. You got it.
He closed the doors and uh and I you know, of course the
other thing was for me it was I got to know a number of them
well enough that uh, in fact, I got they also sit on some
cases that I was on where I had a blue Book officer next to me.
Wow, so I had I've had one of those like rare experiences that
before they closed the project. But uh yeah, but anyway, uh,
in fact, to me it was exciting was that they let me use the
radar approach control to be able to contact them if I had an object that
I was like looking in really wow. Yeah. So I mean it sounds
like, you know, this isn't some good insight because a lot of people
feel, you know, blue Book was a cover up. It was just
a cover. I mean, what what didn't feel to do was its whole
thing was to go out and to just like almost like in the context of
MUFON, go out, get data, fill out a form, make sure
that the form is filled out completely, bring it back, stick it in
hypothetically and their own like database, whether it be files or whatever like that.
But they were never really there to go and to take the material and
look look at it and do the research on it. Which is why Quinella
was like saying, you know, if you can find somebody that would actually
do something with this data, I'd be happy to provide it. And so
when he got when he got the University of Colorado project underway, he was
extremely you know, wanting to pass it along. And of course, oh
by that time, I mean, you know, he's so, you know,
I want to get out of this thing. I mean I want to
you know, it's not going anywhere. We don't need to do this anymore.
And in the public, I mean they were he wasn't even getting all
the good sightings. I mean it's like, you know, if you took
a look at him, they were small office with a secretary at a clerk
or this and that you know, as it's already been pointed out, you
know, even by the ball Underman memo that that all the legitimate you know
stuff will be passed off to others, you know, and he didn't even
get those cases because even in the classified world he wouldn't even get him His
staff wasn't even able to get the real classified stuff. So so hypothetically,
I mean, he's just getting this stuff that's low visibility and it wasn't going
anywhere, nobody was studying it. He was able to get a you know,
the Condon thing was probably put in and help being fostered by the CIA,
which by the way that they were doing that since the Robertson panel and
and so you had the CIA helping to put the squelch on it, you
had and they just you know, eventually were able to get out of it
because it was costing taxpayers money, not going anywhere, nobody was doing anything
with it, and they weren't exactly coming up with anything that was you know,
proved that we were being visited. And uh and so with that being
said, you know, I'm and them had you know, constant you know
run ins. You know, he was trying to Nightcap would be out there
trying to say, well, the Air Force isn't doing this or not doing
that, and sure they weren't. But but at the same time, you
know, it's like there was this lack of really truly interest in this subject
because it was really looked at as big. And that's true even today.
By the way I worked in the military world. I've been in it since,
you know, for God's sakes, I started when I went to as
I'm in a contractor for with the US Army Material Command, which is the
corollary to the Air Force Material Command up in Dayton that actually had the Project
ULBO. So on those on those signs. Like, first of all,
I guess, because I want to get into this is did your work your
early interest in UFOs influence uh your career choices? And uh yeah, if
you could share what you do and have to an as a career. Yeah,
So I mean, I guess I was always interested in the military.
I mean I wasn't you know. I actually tried to go into the military
when I got to college, and I think that, you know, I
think on some level I was interested in knowing what they knew, and I
thought, well, maybe I can become and so I was in the Air
Force ROTC and when I was in college, and I was in it for
a very short time because guess what, they basically said that I've got a
heart murmur romatic fever. You're not allowed to go into the service. Okay,
great, So that thus ended my career there. And then I kind
of like, you know, just dropped the ball, let it go.
And and you know, of course, everybody in this field, you know,
you can't make a living off of being a ufologist unless you're going to
go out around, you know, even you know, writing a whole bunch
of books and maybe the Nick Redfern method or something like that, you know,
or whatever. But you know, I do, even then you have
to compliment your your income. And I just couldn't make it. So I
had to go up and get career and I couldn't be UFOs. And so
eventually I got into the it world because I have a strong interest in the
IT world. And then well and behold, when I was in the DC
area, I was asked to go and to do some training or something like
that. It was with a company that was a training company. In fact,
I was head of the training and I went over and the next thing
I know is that they wanted me to come and be a trainer there and
that turned out to be the ar the Army Material Command. I thought,
wow, that's pretty interesting. So here I am. I'm an IT kind
of guy that's working with a whole variety of companies depending upon which contract wins.
And I've been a defense contractor. I'm working in the IT world.
I was working with even the Boozel and Hamilton, which is the same company
that Edward Snowden was in, and you know, and I've and I've earned
the trust of the government, you know, from the standpoint of all these
years doing my IT work, and they value them the work that I do,
and I helped them out in a lot of different way. We're doing
cloud computing where we're actually doing data center consolidation, and I helped play in
on that. So I'm at the IT strategical level for the Army Material Command
and I've become a you know, pretty much known there. But you know,
they also know, and I don't hide it that I'm into have an
interest in UFOs. I mean, Mike Cube is decorated with UFO paraphernalia.
Pole you know, people know that that's where I'm at. You know,
I've I've had a number of other people that I worked around. I had
a friend of mine who that his job was to monitor conversations that were possibly
coming out of Area fifty one. Really yeah, I mean he was His
job was to go out there and to see if he could pick up any
conversations he was out there. And they do that to be able to ensure
that there's no leaks coming from off the post and stuff like that, and
that's what his job was. And so I've had conversations like that. I've
talked to other people in the military there. Most of them are very curious,
but there's absolutely nothing that I see in the entire command that shows any
remote connection or involvement in anything that looks like smells like UFO. So I
have kind of like the same experience that John Alexander has when he's you know,
if you listen to or read his books, he says, well,
you know, I used to work in the Army of Material Command in the
R and D world, and he worked in inscom and other places, and
you look around you don't see any interest in that subject at all. And
so I can you know, nobody's bothered to ask me what I know what
I do that, And I'm going like, Okay, they really don't have
a care in the world about it, and it really hasn't done anything for
them, and certainly if there is any remote interest, it's like, you
know, my god, I don't know where they're hiding because I've been all
over the command and I can't see anything that looks like or you know,
addresses that. That's why, you know, I've always maintained that if there's
any body that really cares about this subject at all, it's going to be
you know, a maybe some sort of a very close, old, highly
secret, compartmentalized group of people. And then you know, if there's any
R and D work, it's not in the government world, it's out in
the in the commercial world. It's it's like the Northrops and all that stuff
like that, who are in the Black Project world, and none of that
gets conveyed or translated over to the uh the people, like, for example,
the propulsion you might come up with in the in the in the black
world is not going to be shared over in the commercial world. And that's
sad. So NASA can't benefit if we came up with anti gravity devices in
the one world with the other one. So uh, you know, so
that's that's the problem that you see, and and and some of the stuff
that I'm aware of. But it's been a great career. I've enjoyed working
there. Uh. Like I said that they tolerated upologists within them, and
I'm that's okay. I mean, I'm uh, I've seen too much an
experience too much that I'm not gonna start now. And you know, I've
got the security clearances and all that stuff like that, but I can't possibly
even begin to tell you that anything that shows anything that looks like smells like
a UFO m hm. And on that note, I mean, just with
your years of experience, you mentioned the bowl under memo where it was like
essentially anything that was a national security concern was sent somewhere else other than blue
Book. Yes. So but the problem is, and I don't know that
anybody knows for sure, uh where those went. Yeah, well you have,
you know exactly I think that, you know, it's it's hard to
find out, you know, I've seen I've seen speculation that it went to
the Navy. Uh, and that might have been in you know, the
the intelligence world of the Navy, And I mean there's parts of that that
can make sense and stuff like that, because as it's you know, but
you can't really seem to trap down things. It's not like that there's an
easy paper trail to find that tells you where those little nuggets would be.
To me, what I've always believed is that, you know, the DARPA
world. DARPA is one of those things that came about in the like nineteen
sixty time frame. In uh, before that it was ARPA, you know,
and anyway, so but anyway, so it would have done things like
you know, encouraging uh, you know, corporations and things like that go
off to go off in a certain direction. So in other words, I
get it. Let's say I've got a crash and I got material from the
crash. I would be able to take that material and probably you know,
I say, hey, look, DARPA, I look at this here,
and that DARPA would go out and create a contact or contract or put it
out a request for investigation or an information and stuff like that, and you
would have had a whole bunch of people providing new papers that would have been
collecting the R and D stuff, you know that type of information. Plus
you've got you know, like Foreign Technology Division at right PAT and you've got
like you know here, you've got in Huntsville, you've got missil and Space
Intelligence Center MISSIC. You have another of these places. This is where they
collect the debris and stuff like that and they re engineer it. And that's
what their job is, to re engineer stuff to see if they can tear
it apart, figure out how it runs. And that's what we do.
So and every government on the planet does the same kind of thing, so
it's no surprise. And so people know though who are listening, they're talking
about like a Russian uh maybe satellite or missile or something. Taking that and
back engineering that correct. Yeah, we get another words, a missile that
came down might have been a scud or something like that. The scud gets
brought back, We tear it apart and we look at it. So the
nature of what we do with debris and and all that stuff like that has
passed along. If we collected a new kind of gun, for example,
and that would go over to the R and D people that would be working
with it, and the would get passed off to them. And uh,
and then you know that a lot of those R and D shops or contract
companies their contract sheds, so they go off and they do their whatever they're
they're doing, they're going to do with it to re engineer it. So
now people see that as being the mysterious government and all this other wonderful stuff.
But you know, the bottom line is that every day you've got these
people that are out there that they're helping to do something to protect us,
and that's their purpose is to defend us. And and so I have to
applaud them and support everything that they do because the things that they come up
with are only there to help protect this country and the people in it,
you know, and so more power to them, and I applaud that kind
of level of concern. Just like even you know, if you go back
to Roswell Alejandro, I mean it's like, you know, was it right
that they came in with a cover story? Your dog gone right? It
was with the right thing. I mean, it's it's too bad that they
came up with multiple stories. But but the bottom line was that you know,
we already had soviets that have had already penetrated a lot of our even
our defense areas and and our government. And don't you know that the moment
you had this thing where there was a disc clot every government around the planet
was already asking their spies to get the information. Right, so put it
to rest, stop it and deflect that kind of thing and create a cover
story. And that's exactly what happened there. Was it a nice thing to
do, well, not to upologists, but to the government. Yeah,
maybe you needed to do that because every spy out there is collecting the debris
and going to do the same thing to you that you want to do to
them. And so you have a feeling that what do you think did crash
in in Roswell? Well? I mean I think that legitimately, if you
you know, if you take a look at all the collected you know,
evidence or testimony, let me put it that way, the testimony that you
heard, and the sheer volume of the monitoring that went on of people,
and the you know, the threats that were made and everything else that that
you know, of course that Kerrie and Schmidt had collected in terms of their
work as well as others. You know, I mean that something unknown legitimately
came down there and there were beings of some sort that it didn't match anything
from this earth, and so I really believe that there is something to it.
You don't see that level of monitoring of conversations and threats and everything else,
which go way beyond anything that you and I would experience even even today.
I mean, at least as we believe that went on for you know,
years, you know, and so there was something there, and I
believe that there was a real event. I think that it was the materials
that were collected were confiscated. I think it was taken much like I told
you before, I said that it goes to an R and D shop,
And guess where an R and D shop is, well up in Dayton,
Ohio at right Pad Airfield, and take it up there. It collect as
much as you can, and probably there it got filtered out to other places.
But tell Memorial Institute was under contract with the Air Force at the time,
and that's a think tank, and so quite logically, since they played
a heavy role in shape memory alloy development, which happens to be similar to
the memory metal that was found in Roswell, that we suddenly see that in
nineteen sixties that kind of shape memory alloys and these other kinds of things coming
out that are bendable and metal. It bends and folds back and comes back
to the original shape. We start to see that happening. Knittin all nickel
titanium alloy is is an example of that right now, All that nittan al,
I mean, it's it's part of our R and D work. So
it's a lot of stuff that might have been found and collected was passed off
to again to defense contractors. Whether it was through Philip Corso or not,
I don't know, but I mean I still think that it was passed around
and and it would have been used or leveraged in some capacity. And that's
what we do. That's what the government, that's what the military does.
Right So, and for people who might not remember or know that Philip Corso
was a guy who worked at R and D, worked at the Pentagon,
he claimed that that's what he did. He was given the Risewell material and
gave it off to various contractors. And it would seem an advantage to contractors
is they're not set check to FOIA and they can have people sign gag orders
and you could be sued for lots of money if you talked about something.
Yeah, exactly, and you know, and now all this is trust me,
it's all speculation because you can't you won't find a written transfer of we
haven't found it yet. Yeah, the handbill that shipped this roswell debris to
this place to this place to this place. It's it's it's only on the
basis of you know, repeatable stories that somewhat you can look at and you
can say, okay, well that makes sense, that makes sense, that
doesn't make sense, and you call that out and you and and that's the
way we have all had to work. It's occasionally that you know, That's
the nice thing about Robert Hastings is he's been able to find a document,
paper trail that helps him out, which is great. You know Len Screenfield,
for example, when he was doing all his collection on crash retrievals,
had a lot of testimonials with a lot of different people, but short on
documents. And that's where again it's the frustration. And so if you don't
have a paper trail, it's like hard to get it, and then you
have to rely on getting additional credible sources to validate that you might have heard
from that, because again, if I go talk to five people, I'll
get different five different stories, right, yeah, which is kind of the
same problem with Roswell. You have a lot of witnesses, but then skeptics
point out you have a lot of discrepancies between the testimony. Well, and
you know, I would love them to do. You know, ever,
a UFO investigation or a criminal investigation, you're always going to get discrepancies between
people. So so you use the two people that did have a different story
as the means to debate and just credit the rest of the stuff. I'm
sorry, that doesn't work for me. You know, that's not how it
works, and so, you know, too bad. But legitimately we could
just drop the whole thing because everybody's got an opinion about UFOs. I mean,
that's okay, there's nothing to it, you know. Well, I
do want to move on to the Puerto Rico case because you were part of
that, and of course we've talked a lot about it on the show.
We've had Robert on you weren't going to come to the symposium to talk about
it, but you were off vacationing in Mexico or something shaping around the beach.
So Robert came to talk about it, Robert Powell. But so that's
unique too because that you have a video and now it's been confirmed that it
was a homeland security video. Indeed, yeah, we were you know the
whole thing about this video. And you know as well as I do.
You get some you see videos all the time. Uh, people pass you
like YouTube links or they pass you this or that and you take a look
at it and there's of course no, there's no nothing that validates the video
is done by the photographer. There's nothing that that's out there that that helps
you to legitimates, uh, create legitimacy around that that that that that video
well, I mean much the same to us as we had. Uh you
know, we got the video passed to us very early on, and it's
like, well, okay, well is this really a homeland security whatever?
You know? And what how do we know that? You know? And
uh, and so we were extremely you know, while we thought that it
was like a very compelling video and it still is a compelling video, it's
just a matter of like, well, how do you validate that this isn't
something that's contrived? And so for us, it was a very critical thing
too to make sure that we could validate that. And that's why when you
see when we when we looked at and got the radar data, the radar
data was able to confirm the fact that indeed a custom UH and Border Protection
plane did take off at that time and did fly two circles around the airport
UH and and the times matched up with with the case. And then you
look at the the codes that come in for the that and you find out
that the codes that the I D codes that that come up match what's been
handed over to Customs and Border Protection, so these are that that was able
to be helpful. Then we then later through thankfully a freedom of information at
UH done by Billy Cox, he was able to get an actual piece of
information in fact that again validated the fact that it was one of theirs.
So that was an important piece that we had to do, is to confirm
that that was the case. And of course then from there, you know,
it was the we spent you know, two years analyzing the video that
was that was really the whole thing we were We were really not doing a
case investigation as much as a video investigation. So we were tackling the video.
What can this be? Can it's infra red? You know? Wow?
What did all these numbers on the screen mean? You know? And
there were a lot of numbers around the screen, and people if they want
to go there, you just go to explore e x P l O r
E s c U dot org. Uh, explore s U dot org and
they can you know, you can see the video. We've got the video
posted up there. We got our paper posted up there. You got to
see the radar animation that's going on. And so, you know, you
began one of those things where it's like what is this thing? And and
then can you even determine that? And you know, and then we how
does the video? What can we deduce from the video? And so let's
take it and break it into seven twenty seven frames and look at every single
frame. Let's compute the the We know that the frame rate was one thirty
a second, so there's gonna be thirty of these frames it's going to leap
to one second. What does that give us? And then we had to
go out and learn about the camera. You know, we got to hold
with third. First, we thought it was a Fleaer camera and then I
went and did some checking on the the installation and found out that it was
not a fleaar camera and they told me it was a Westcam L three camera.
And then I went and contacted Westcam and spoke with them and they confirmed
that it was one of theirs. And we started to go off there in
terms of getting camera information, and we got some camera information, and then
over period time, we you know, we we finally were able to make
contacts with different like IR technicians, different people that were doing things. Hey,
the story keeps evolving and we keep learning more and more about infrared that
all of us, as the team of basically five me and five others,
we learned about infrared more so than anything else. And we learned about what
the object was. We did a lot of obviously a lot of math and
a lot of calculations on the different things in terms of speed and it's maneuvering
into the water and all this other stuff, and what the temperature might be,
and we did some a lot of investigation on that. The bottom line
was that we put together what we could based upon the information that we had,
and then we said, hey, what could this conceivably be? And
then when you. You know, typically in upology and this is the way
we do things. It's like in Heine called it the the escalation of hypotheses.
You start off with the known and you work to the unknown. Right,
and so we, uh we did what he did, which was basically,
well, it's not a bird, it's not a plane, it's not
a kite, it's not this, it's not that you know, do we
know anything that can look like that move like that? No? No,
no, no no. And then you come down with where you and hey,
look, you know, unless this is something that is a classified project,
then you took the risk of flying a classified project over the and stopped
an aircraft from taking off. And you're you're you're you're flying over an airbord
for guy's sake. Uh, you know, then why would you do that?
You know? And and but that's the only thing you're left with other
than it being something completely unknown that we just don't know about. And and
I mean you do not. There's a couple there's still a few out there
who are believe it could be a bird or a balloon. Surem but you
know, I mean that that's where you know, we asked them to put
their paper together like we did, do their homework, show us and make
sure that they can make that claim stick. Now, I mean, you
know, great, when we see that, then you know we're ready to
assume that something else. Now, let me also clarify that that I'm excited
because I've now made contact here with the University of Alabama, Huntsville, the
Applied Optics Department, and I've actually got one of the professors who in research
who is now joined hands to look at this thing with us, and he
may be able to help us to learn more about the infrared than we thought
that we could possibly even know. Well, that's cool, and what's great
about this is the people who have come come about with alternate theories. They
haven't done the work, like you said, to put together a paper.
However, you know, being part of some of the conversations with the group,
you and your group you are still take their their input seriously and have
looked at it carefully to to see what their points are. And at least
so far I believe, and you can correct me if I'm wrong. You
still haven't found an answer however, as to what this was correct. It
just you know, you advanced the balloon idea, right, so you know,
say great, So they're using a line of sight to show that the
maybe the movement of the object was not at the same speed that we thought
that it was, or maybe in the different direction, or it didn't didn't
do this, or didn't do that. Okay, did you go and check
that that and indeed a balloon what it looks like in infrared? Okay,
we did that. I've actually got video clip using the same camera of a
balloon. Okay, it doesn't the emissivity that's reflected from the ground in the
sky, I don't look anything like this object whatsoever. Then they're not accounting
for the fact that it also had it was first seen at night. It
was first seen by the tower as well as the aircraft as being a white
and a pinky or kind of a white or pinkish light if you would,
that came in and basically went dark. It went dark, And they're saying,
okay, well, and they're not even accounting for that. Okay,
they don't even mention that that's the case. Okay, well, then you
know, and then it went dark, So what what turned out the light
on the balloon? You know, the other thing would be like you know,
if it was a balloon or something of that nature, how do you
explain the fact that it goes and it disappears at times what appears to be
behind a pole, a telephone pole, or it appears to move along the
ground and in between trees, or that it seems to go in the water,
and it appears to look like it goes in the water and then comes
back up and then splits into two. Okay, so tell me how your
balloon splits in the two how it does this kind of moving And their papers
don't get that far along, so they haven't done their homework. They need
to spend you know, more time doing that. Do the calculations make the
case. And that's when we didn't really even want to get into the UFO
community. But it's the UFO if you would, the skeptics or or whatever
you want to call them, I mean critics if you would, or debunkers,
whatever the term you want to use for that those group. And it's
just because they want to be able to prove and they've already come up with
it's a balloon, or it's this, or it's that, it's not this,
So they're biased from the beginning and they go off and they try to
prove that it's can't be a UFO or can't be unidentified. We have to
find something else for it. And then they can't come up with an answer
and even tell us what it is. And so that Yet, but they
want to point their finger at us, They want to stick fingers in our
face, they want to call us names as a group. And yet all
we are a bunch of skeptical kind of like you know, I mean,
people don't think that I'm not skeptic. Excuse me, wait a minute,
I'm very skeptical of most UFO cases. So I too am a skeptic,
and you know, and I and I but I also have a feeling that
there's legitimacy to the case that needs to be explored and it needs to be
investigated. And so but yet you know, we're you know, we're criticized
by that group, and it's just to become actually a carnival with them.
And I'm sad to say, but and with the true experts, the ones
with the most expertise that are legitimate esque experts, people who work with these
systems are agreeing that they do not believe this object to be be a balloon
or a bird, correct, And for me that's what's most important because these
are the experts. Everybody can have an opinion, but when it comes down
to like even me writing it as a journalist, the expert opinion is what's
most important. And it's unique that we even have this expert opinion because often
in these UFO cases you can't get experts to put in their two cents because
they're afraid of ridicule. And even in this case, they only identified themselves
to myself and you all, but otherwise don't want us to release their their
personal information. Yeah, which you know, I'll be perfectized with you.
The vast majority of UFA UFO witnesses don't want their names mentioned. Okay,
that's just the way it is. And oh, by the way, I
mean, do you think that I'm gonna, like, you know, go
through the humiliation that I'm gonna get if I tell my put my name out
there? No, I mean the media is out there like a carnival and
a joke that turns it into a circus. So I'm sorry, I'm gonna
keep my name quiet. But that doesn't mean that their testimony is not valid
or nor that we don't think that it's not. I talk to the IR
people that do the maintenance work on those cameras, you know, they're the
ones that out there knowing all about the camera. I mean, and they're
literally their whole office is sitting there looking at this entire video clip and saying,
what the heck do you make out of that? That's nothing like anything
I've ever seen, you know. I mean, that counts for something,
you know, And so I mean, legitimately, there might be something.
And again I go back to the fact that I'm hoping that this IR professor,
he's the assistant research director. My god, he's put together so many
books on in for red that it's amazing, and it's just a very knowledgeable
guy. And I sat with him for like, you know, over an
hour, and he was telling me things that we're like, you know,
okay, well, this could be, this could be this would be,
this could be this, but great, can you help us out because to
me, my opinion is if this has a prosaic explanation to it, I
want to know it and I will be the first publish it, Okay,
I mean, I'll make sure that that gets out there. And I've got
nothing to hide, you know, but until then, it's an extremely compelling
video, Okay, And I'm I think I you know, we owe it
to the witnesses who came forward, took the risk to do that, to
treat it seriously. That's what they wanted, that's what they got. We
treated it seriously. And you know, I'm proud of the work that we
did. Most UFO cases most excellent. When you it's first off, it's
extremely rare for us to even begin have a military grade piece of equipment,
uh pass, and we get that that video. Okay, show me a
case where we've had anything taken infra red. Show me anything where we've had
anything that was provided to us by the military that where we can actually go
look at it and see an object of some sort. So on. From
me to me, it's like, that's a rare event in and of itself,
and it deserves a credible attention to it. And that's what I was
proud of our group at least attempting to do that. So we're pretty much
out of time. I mean, that flew by. You are the state
director for Alabama and Mississippi. Movefon. By the way, we haven't mentioned
that and I believe you have more titles with Movefon right. Yeah, now,
the you find director of Strategic Projects, And what that basically means is
I'm looking to help out and getting technology implemented out there to be able to
help us to tackle this thing. And that's one of the projects Out've got.
I'm also helping to document the life cycle of the UFO case so that
we can deploy that into the r CMS design. So I'm doing a lot
of that type of stuff, applying my IT skills and stuff like that in
that capacity. Did you see that cool UFO I d UFO detector software?
Yes, I did, In fact that I think that's really neat. In
fact, I've told my team that I've got to go out and let's get
it and let's let's try it out and see what it's like and and and
check it out. Yeah, that's cool stuff. So, and people can
go to mof on al dot org to find out more about Alabama move On.
You're going to be speaking at the move On Symposium in August, which
is very cool. Uh, that'll be an Orlando, Florida. And what
are you going to be talking about? Well, the title of my program
is going to be target uh the h it's about the Aguada Puerto Rico case
and it's called Target Unknown, and so we'll talk about that U I P.
Case and that goes along with the theme of the entire thing, which
is basically UFOs and uh from the oceans to the skies to out in space
and stuff, and so it'll be one of those things I'll be talking on
Saturday. I'm kind of like in the Prime Times spot after people come back
from dinner, So I'm excited about it. I'll also be doing the moderating
one of the panels on the second day, and I'm looking forward to doing
that as well. Cool. Well, that's exciting. Well, anything else
you wanted to add before we leave, No other than the fact that you're
a great guy. I'm looking forward to being back on with you, Alejandro.
I always appreciate your rationality to the subject, and thank you for having
me on, and I hope it won't be another fifty two years before I'm
back on with you. Yeah. Well, you know what, thank you
so much for coming on, and we'll definitely have you on again because I
had a lot more questions I wanted to talk to you about, but this
is great to get to know you better, and so the listeners get to
know you. I even found out new stuff about you because I didn't know
you were just a teenager when you started all of this. That's really cool.
Yeah, I was one of those kids that was in influence a lot
of people. There's a magic thing about age thirteen or something like that.
I run across it all the time where people were enhanced by this subject arout
that age, you know, And so I was like, Wow, that's
pretty cool. So I'm yep, thirteen years old. Well, you know
what, I'm going to ask this question hopefully you have time anyway, because
I didn't ask have you had a sighting of your own? Well, you
know, no, I have not seen anything that I would class as a
UFO that I've witnessed. And I you know, I tend to be walking
around with my head up in the air. I'm always out, I do
sky watches, I'm outlooking and and I haven't and but you know, let
me let me clarify. When you've investigated cases where you've seen circular areas that
are baked two feet in the ground seventy foot in diameter like I did,
and I'm standing in the middle of it. I'm going like, whoa,
this is incredible. You see that, and you see other kinds of things
when you do case investigations. I don't have any reason to not believe.
I've talked to too many credible Air force people, military people. There's something
there. And I really don't even think that I have to see one,
because to me, it's like, you know, it's just too much common
sense that the planet, every part of the planet's been touched by these things,
and all people describe them the same way. So I don't need to
see one. But if I do, great, I love it. Like
the closest I came was I saw that Google loon balloon, and man,
I thought that that was pretty wild. I thought that maybe that was gonna
be my first one until I found out that it was the balloon that was
launched from Huntsville. So and I guess finally for reals to this time,
But you do believe the most likely answer for the phenomena is that there are
extraterrestrial civilizations visiting. I'm gonna put to you this way. I mean,
there's the multiple hypotheses as to where they originate. I mean, you know,
and I think that all of them still are on the table. In
other words, if you look at the Bentwater's case, you could probably argue
that they would tell you that it's something from the future, you know,
And that's pretty much the way that that one went. If you look at
the fact, if you read Jacques Vallet's work, and especially since he's done
the new re editing of his book Wanders in the Sky, I mean,
you're documenting the fact that we've had a relationship with some pretty unusual objects and
things like that that go throughout recorded history. So then there's the philosophy or
the hypothesis that suggests that they've always been here, they might have they might
have been here before us. And then you you also look at Jacques Belai's
work and you'd say, well, well, maybe there's an alternative, alternative
hypothesis, you know, and maybe it's like inter dimensional in nature that can
pop in and pop out, and so that's just as much on the table.
Uh. Then you know, it goes on and on and on to
where that there's all these different and it doesn't have to be that they're extra
trest necessarily coming from here. Let me put it through this way. They
might not be from here, but they've been here for a very very long
time. Is a very very strong possibility. Their ability to move through space
and time, you know, might be that they're from you know, not
even in this time element that we live in and what we work in.
So we don't know where they originate from. But I believe that they've there's
been a relationship between everybody on this planet with some unknown something that we really
don't know that has been recorded, tracked, seen, observed. Maybe we've
been influenced by it. And I believe that that's also the case. But
I don't necessarily jump to the fact that they're flying here in spacecraft from another
galactic place or something like that. On a day to day basis, I
believe that the oceans come into play. I believe that there might be conceivably
bases underneath the ocean, because it's we shouldn't even be called Earth, you
know, three quarters of the planet is water. We should be called probably
the planet water and nukes and nukes, well, yeah, I go along
with Hastings to me think about about that. I mean, it's like,
you know, we've started detonating all these things in the atolls underwater and stuff
like that. If you were water based, you know, wouldn't you be
a little bit concerned about that and want to pop out and try to stop
all that stuff, you know. So the bottom line is that they've probably
got shaken up quite a bit from all the rattling we did with the nukes
that we've done, and we're affecting our own planet that they might be sharing
with us, and so hey, by the way, let me do something
about that. So I believe very strongly that those interactions that Hastings has put
together in his great work called UFOs Nukes and his new documentary is legit,
and it's basically, you know, it says that you know, they're wanting
to stop us from either annihilating ourselves or or something of that. M h.
And finally, do they, whoever they are, have anything to do
with the bow tie? No, I'm sorry to say. I go back
and I look at my photographs that I've got, even of me as a
kid, and I've found a few of them where I'm wearing a bow tie.
And I had uncles who were bow ties. And then it seemed like
when I got working in Army Material Command, there was this one gentleman by
the name of Forrest Chilton that I that I remember working with me, and
he always wore a bow tie. I thought that was really cool, so
he kind of convinced me to go that way, and in fact, I
went up and said, can you teach me how to bow and tie this
thing? And so there you go and and there you go, and I
just now I've got my my wonderful cups and my drawings made by Dennis Reino
of me wearing a you know, a bow tie and I'm my coffee mug
and stuff like that. So it's pretty cool. All right, You're pretty
cool, dude. Hey, thanks, thank you, and again I appreciate
just being on with you. Yeah, thank you so much for taking the
time to talk to us. And we'll talk to you soon, all right.
Thank you so much to Richard Hoffman for being on the show. What
a great guest. Like I said, you know, I interact with him
so much at shocking that I haven't had him on the show before. And
now you know why I should have had him on the show earlier, and
why I should have him on frequently, which will I definitely will attempt to
do because he's got a lot of great information. He's been in this for
decades and he's done a lot of great stuff and has some incredible insights.
So I always love working with rich He's very professional, very down to earth
and what a background, huh, I mean, an amazing asset to this
field. So thank you so much. You can check him out at Alabama
Moofon. They've got a website and a Facebook also you could check him out
out on Facebook. And he'll also be speaking at the Mofon Symposium, like
you said, actually both of us will be so and Morgan Beale, who
is a State director for Florida. Actually the move On Symposium will be in
late August in Orlando, and Morgan being the state director, is taking a
big role in this year's symposium. And he's also put together these really cool
videos that highlight the different speakers. So he's got a video of yours truly,
but he's got some of the other speakers and you can find out about
the speaker's backgrounds and what they're into and all about. And they're really cool,
fun videos. So they're on the move On YouTube and actually I've been
posting them on my Facebook and on our Facebook group, So don't forget.
The Open minds UFO News Facebook group is out there. It's a closed group,
but all you have to do is ask to join and we will let
you join. And we just want to keep out the real negative people and
the people who are just name calling and saying just disgusting things, as as
we see so much out there on the internet by these anonymous boneheads. So
yeah, so join the Facebook group and you can see these videos. They're
really cool and hopefully you can make it to the symposium to see us talk
and to say hello. It's going to be a lot of fun. So
really excited about that. I'm also really excited about our video portal, and
of course you're hearing about it every time now on the radio show, but
you'll see it more in our emails and on our website. But our video
portal we've really beefed up. So we have all of the twenty sixteen International
UFO Congress lectures up on our on demand video portals. So essentially you can
go there and you'll be able to watch all the lectures right there. They're
all streaming, and for one low monthly price, you can watch all of
these hundreds of videos of your favorite lectures, I mean, Bob Lazar,
Jacques Valet, George Nap, all of the big guys you know out there.
I mean, we've got tons of people on there, and so that's
a lot of fun. But it's really cheap and if you want, you
can watch one video at a time. However, it's much more cost effective
just to do the low month to month on that one, So go check
that out when you have a chance. It's well well worth it. You
could go to our website openminds dot tv and you'll see the video portal link
and you'll see it there. We also have been talking about it in our
emails, So on the website on the upper right you'll see a box where
you can join our email newsletter. We only send that out bi weekly,
so we don't really spam you, but we let you know what's going on
on the radio show with the UFO Congress, with our UFO reports and the
latest news and headlines and stuff, so you can keep up to date.
So if you get busy with other things, you know, we can always
give you tabs on what's going on in the UFO world with this handy email
that we send out on a bi weekly basis. All of the news that
we talked about you can find at Openminds dot tv, so be sure to
check their regularly. And thank you all so much for listening. Thank you
to Caleb Hanks for the opening and close music. And you know, no
vacations or nothing in the way. We should have shows over the next few
weeks. Actually, I've got interviews scheduled for the next few weeks already,
so we'll be going on strong into the summer, into the Arizona desert heat.
It's going to be like ninety five tomorrow, so we are quickly,
unfortunately, on our way to those one hundred and ten degree days. But
right now, if if you were at the Congress, you remember the weather
was spectacular. It was so great, and we've had this amazing weather all
the way up until now, so I can't complain because it's been really nice,
and hopefully it will be for a few days. But pretty soon here
we'll be in the blazing sun. But regardless of that blazing sun beating down,
we will be bringing you the UFO news at Openminds dot TV. So
thank you all so much for listening. Thank you to Martin for joining us
with the news and we will talk to you all next week. Adio smooth
tattoos your emotionless