Hello, and welcome to Open Mind UFO Radio. I am your host and
my name is Alejandro Rojas, and I am here with my news guy,
who is Martin Fancy but willis fancy. But yeah, I was going to
use the A word, but uh, you know what I put season YouTube
now and I don't want to risk you know, a rating issue, that's
true. Yeah, yeah, we can picture what you Yeah, you know
it doesn't really work that well. What's that fancy? But I know it
doesn't sound half as good. Now. Have you ever ran into an issue
with a guest, you know, using profanity or something on YouTube and then
you having any sort of rating issue. No, I've had that happen a
couple of times, and you know, I'll one time I repeated the word
I said, I don't think we could say yeah beep on this show,
and no, nothing ever happened. Huh. Yeah, I know, like
I've had like it like Chris O'Brien, I know that's it was, I
think too, really same person. Yeah that is so funny. So just
so I guess, no, you know this is actually a UFO show.
Although I might get off topic a bit, and I will in a second,
but you're gonna enjoy it because I'm going to talk about you know,
just how and why Martinez so fancy. But we will be talking UFOs,
UFO news and then our guest today, and I'm very excited about this.
I know I always say that, but there's an extra level of excitement for
my guest, Nick Pope. And the reason why is that he used to
work for the Ministry of Defense investigating UFOs for the British government. And of
course a lot of the news that we're talking about, and some of what
we'll be talking about with Nick, including some very new and interesting insight,
is you know, the US government investigation into UFOs. And I think that
you all will be intrigued by our conversation because we will. You know,
I feel we do ask. I do ask some of the tougher questions that
you know, people think that could be posed. And I think Nick's answers
are just extremely insightful and intelligent, and so this will be a lot of
fun. And you know, it helps that he has a British accent to
add to his answers even sounding more intelligent. It has that way, doesn't
it It does, quite, it quite does. So and I called you
speaking of fancy and in Europe. You know, we don't have to give
details because I know you can't talk about your clients. But this is amazing.
So you're just finishing a job, you're starting a new one, and
you sent me, you know, the picture of the mansion because you're you
know, giving I guess pricing for this really expensive historic stuff. But so
this person you just got done with, can I at least add you know
where she went and stuff? Oh yeah, oh yeah, sure, yeah,
she's she's a famous television family. That's uh, that's the best way
you can put it. Yeah, traveling in France with an open pocketbook,
purchasing amazing stuff whatever she wanted for thirty years, just for fun. And
yeah, sixth floor townhouse at downtown Boston. It's just absolutely so much fun
to go through. That is incredible. That would be I can only imagine
the type of stuff you're looking at, probably furniture and art and that sort
of thing. Oh yeah, yeah, wow, yeah, I'm really historic
pieces too. Wow. So it's a lot of fun. So, speaking
of the East Coast, I'm going to be in Baltimore in a few weeks
from November eighth to the eleventh, and so will Nick Poke my guest.
We're both going to be speaking at alien Con. And since it's kind of
that, that's probably still quite a jount for you, huh. You know,
I've I've went and visited Ray Stanford down there, and it took me
about I think about seven hours something like that drive. It is a bit
of a jaunt. So you probably won't be coming out to visit us,
maybe not but you, but but alien Con. Yeah, I mean that's
kind of a that's kind of a strange way. Alien Con. Yeah,
that's what they're calling it. This is those of you who watch Ancient Aliens
probably see the commercials for this during the program. This is kind of they're
the major sponsor or the back row of this thing, although it's a different
company that runs it. And of course Georgio and Eric von Danikin and some
of these other people who are on that program are are the speakers, and
so I've got an opportunity. We are going to have a UFO Congress booth
there. We did that at their last event in Pasadenia and sold stuff like
crazy because we have the coolest UFO and alien stuff if you ask me,
In fact, you may hear some typing here and there in the background,
and that is the famous Karen Brard actually really procuring some more Alien and UFO
products for our event and theirs and so yeah, so that ought to be
a lot of fun. Wow, And when did you say that was November?
I think the event is actually ninth to the eleventh. Ah, so
just google Alien Con and you'll find it. That's right. Wow. Nice.
Yeah, So let's go ahead and get into some UFO news. What
you got for us? Well, I think this is interesting. Uh.
This is something that Cheryl Costa wrote. She always writes in the Syracuse Times
or New Times. I guess it's called and I really like this article.
It's the Mystery of Changing UFOs. The prize is hiding in the details.
That's a subtitle. So basically she's talking about one of the most perplexing of
all UFO shapes. And she's talking about about the morphing or the changing UFO
category. I have heard a number of people talk about it. Now.
I thought it was very interesting and curious. Maybe sometimes I thought maybe something
changed an angle or something. Why people say they change, but people talk
about drastic changes in shape. So she goes on to write that, you
know, she was thinking that was perhaps the observers that were flawed, but
maybe there's really something to this because she listened to the talk show with George
Knapp on Coast to Coast and he was interviewing Shaqa Lee, who of course
is one of the deans of uphology, and so Jacques was making a point
about the changing UFOs that seemed to morph in an effort to confound observers through
cameras and other scientific equipment that researchers might be using. So I have I
know, I've heard of like people saying, well, maybe it's ball,
lightning or plasma or something like that. But it's not just we're not talking
about just lights in the sky. We're talking about actually seeing some type of
what may look like some type of craft and actually shape a change shape as
well, not just the lights. So and I have heard of a number
of stories. As a matter of fact, one of the most amazing stories
I heard is a guy that's not even interested in UFOs told me about really
he told me, I want me to tell you the story real quick.
Sure, that'd be great. This is a guy that's actually on the Antiques
road show constantly, and I used to share an office with him, and
one day admitted to him that I, you know, I did a show
on UFOs and he looked at me real serious. He goes, I saw
one, and I go, well, can you tell me about it?
And he said, well, yes, he was in college and he said
they were. He said, I I admit I was drinking. We were
in a dorm and he says, but outside some of the cart our eye
outside, and he said, we saw the thing swoop in and we looked
and it was the shape of a box, like a rectangular box, with
lights all around it, and it was just floating. He was on like
the seventeenth floor and Amherst and Amherst College, and he says it was below
them, and then he saw it shoot off into the sky, and all
of a sudden he saw it burst into five lights, and then the lights
were opposing and they were like he said, they were like the signaling back
and forth. And then he heard noise and he saw a fighter jet with
its after burner going right toward it. And as soon as it got nearer,
the thing, he said, absolutely disappeared vanished, which I think is
really a great UFO the UFO completely vanished. All the lights were just gone.
It was totally gone. He never saw it take off or anything.
So I said, oh my god, I said, didn't that change your
whole life? And he goes, I could care less. I can't care
so less. I was so shocked by that answer. A funny answer,
yeah, And so I asked him, if you talk on my show,
he goes, not a chance. Wow, he sounds like a character,
definitely is how funny. Wow, that's a that's that's a great sighting though,
And you're right, this is a great story. And I'm glad that
Cheryl tackled this because the stats that she showed were also interesting in that the
reports of morphing you know, craft or UFOs is consistent throughout the years,
which kind of bolsters the point that this isn't just mistaken you know these but
you know, if if they were mistaken and people were just accidentally you know,
seeing something more, you probably wouldn't see that consistency throughout the years that
she's demonstrated there is. So yeah, I agree. I think it was
a fascinating topic for her to tackle. And she goes into like you said,
she goes into all the statistics. It's very very well written article and
there's graphs and everything, and so that's the there's even graphs. Yeah,
she even writes graphs. So if you go on to the Sarahcuse New Times
website, you can see that article right there, right, and you can
find that the front page of Open Minds that TV and yes, it's linked
right there. So you can also see moving on to a new story where
you and I are at least have a bit of an I told you so,
I think moment here is on our front page. You also see a
bunch of stories about Tom DeLong and to the Stars, and of course you
and I have talked about this, and you know, I didn't shy away
from this, even though people call me a kind of an apologist or something
for to the Stars and a bit I am, I'd admit, because I'm
very excited about what they're doing, and I think what they're doing is really
important. But this, you know, in the UFO conspiracy circles, people
were talking about them being thirty seven million dollars in debt, and I was
afraid that this was kind of and I was half expecting, I don't know
about you, that it would bleed into mainstream media, and sure enough it
did. Ours Technique wrote the first story, and then some others wrote a
story on that, and of course DeLong actually responded upset, and so did
to the Stars because they were way off base. And it has to do
with something I pointed out because people mentioned this. So I looked at the
SEC Security document and you see here that if you go down to the budget,
because it's all outlined here, those millions of dollars are on this line
called stock based compensation. People are speculating, Oh, they built a big
UFO with a thirty million dollars and they're not gonna share it with people that
are just gonna call the bankrupt and fly around in their UFO or something like
that. But no stock based compensation. So I don't know the deed.
You know, this is just as complicated as the astrophysics that some of the
guys come on and talk about. But uh or that Chris Cogswell, he
wrote a great story actually on the science of investigating materials, and it's very
high level too. You can find that out Open Minds. But this stock
based compensation line is not real money. It's not money. They spent.
It's essentially how they compensate their employees and investors and others. I guess with
stock. And I have a story on minds dot TV from Isaac Cooy that's
not his real name, but he's actually a barrister in the UK, a
lawyer in the UK who is into UFO stuff, and he explains this a
little better and although he is often critical occasionally to the stars, he says
these stories were really unfair and completely off base, that that's not real money
that they owe. Essentially, I guess in order to make good on this,
they do need money to come in. But it's kind of like,
you know, a lot of these organizations are nonprofit and the people involved don't
get paid at all, like mufon or something like that. And Uh,
However, in this case, they'll it in the hopes that the company makes
money eventually. Uh, then they will make money off of the stock that
they're compensated from. Uh. And that's kind of where this all comes down
to. So it was not they're not thirty seven million dollars in debt.
That's completely inaccurate, and everybody, including our technique and the mainstream has corrected
their stories. So they've got egg on their face. Yeah, and I'm
sure that that author and who I felt what, you know, he wrote
a sloppy story, is what I've called it, because it is, you
know, And unfortunately we've talked about this before. The mainstream media when they
write about paranormal UFOs don't seem to always adhere to the level standards that end
with others, and so they are loose with their facts and statements and kind
of tongue in cheek like this story was, and he was way off on
it. So so I just feel kind of glad that at least, you
know, we took kind of a more closer look at that than many did.
And you know, when I was pointing out, hey guys, this
is stock based competition. This isn't real dollars what you're seeing here spent or
not, like this isn't you know, they're not in debt, I got
a lot of criticism for it for oh yeah, right, you know,
and then what is it? Why would they say this? And it's like,
well, we just have to ask people. As always, when you
don't understand something, instead of making some big conspiracy, you need to talk
to an expert to explain it to you is what it comes down to,
which is what journalism is and what this is why we do these interviews and
certainly many times when you have an expert come in and explain, Hey,
guys, this is what this really means. It's not as nefarious or as
it may seem to be. Is there some type of tax implications to this
as well? I mean for the reason yeah, of this filing. I
think you're exactly. I'm pretty sure from what I understand, that's why they
have to report it in this way. It's all about tax reporting. So
I guess there's a perceived value or potential value to the stocks and they have
to report that value. And that's what this is all about. Is is
Isaac cooy puts it and you can read the details because it, like I
said, it gets over my head. He talks about like, let's say
you've got a company. You're selling books, and you know you're you're selling
a thousand books and you know you make ten thousand dollars a year, but
somebody gives you a technology and says, hey, you can have this and
you can now sell this. Well, in order to develop that technology,
you would sell stock into your company which is kind of you know, projected
with your company, and you have to guess, I think I'm going to
be able to make X amount, so I'm going to value my stock at
this and uh so then you're going to sell that stock so you can develop
your product, and so you have to report, you know, what your
potential value is when for your company. So I think that that kind of
makes sense to me, so that it's it's similar to that. Now.
I wonder if they've like had people try to pull out of you know,
people that are investing or I mean, wonder if this has been a real
negative you know, has had negative implications to what they're trying to do.
You know what, That's a very good question. And at least I've heard
anecdotedly, anecdotally that some investors have been a bit taken aback by this because
they didn't understand and they're like, oh, what the heck, you know,
did I just throw away all my money? And and and they supposedly
have not gotten answers when they ask about it. I don't know that any
of that is true. Those are just some of the accusations out there,
and of course there's so much mud slinging going on. In fact, earlier,
I think today I had a I like my little saying here. What
I told someone is that the UFO community often has a bad habit of eating
its own and the bigger the fish, the more they feast. And what
I mean is bigelow all of these organizations. The bigger you are when you
get involved with this topic, the more you're criticized and just attacked. Sure,
and which is frustrating. And but unfortunately the way it is, yeah,
some you know, some actually deserve it. But uh but you know,
the yeah, yeah, because they're they're actually it is a just a
money game, right, But those aren't usually, at least to me,
the big fish in the respect of a mainstream. Often those are people in
certain niches who are taking advance, taking advantage of and they become big as
far as followings and dollars. I think that they pull in some of these
people even though they're charlatan. It's like you're saying, but what can you
do? Huh? Right, can only keep our side of the street clean,
as they say, yeah, and doing that, you know, I
think that Chris Cogs will and he is a bit of a critic when it
comes to to the Stars. He of course I've had him on fairly recently.
He's a PhD in chemical engineering. But he did it the right way.
He submitted and I'm so happy he did. He submitted this paper to
me for Open Minds about the science of proving if an object is created by
an extraterrestrial civilization. And his intent is that, you know, if to
the Stars is claiming that they're going to be doing this sort of analysis,
here's the sort of analysis that needs to be done, and I think that's
the right way to do it. It's a professional way to say that,
hey, public, you know, here is what they are up against.
And he's kind of saying, as a scientist in this field, this is
the bar that I'm going to hold them to when they come out with their
information, which is the appropriate way to do it. That's how science is
done, is that you know, science check each other's work, and so
that's what he's going to be doing. He's going to say, it's kind
of like, hey, guys, you know, I think really you or
anybody else doing this, this is what you need to do if we're going
to prove this to the mainstream scientific community. That's right. That's what makes
sense. So it's a great article. It's highly technical. I don't know
if you read it. The first few paragraphs the introduction I get, and
that's the most important part. He outlines, you know, the steps and
everything, and then it gets really technical into the actual test that need to
be done X ray diffraction, isotopic research and atoms and isotopic racial map spectraumetry.
I don't even know if I'm saying it right. All this really complicated
stuff. So, especially for you science nerds out there who do know what
all this stuff is, I think you really love this article. You'll find
it out open Minds. I was just scanning through it. Wow. It
is very thorough, it is, isn't it. Yeah, really makes a
lot of sense to a lot of big words. Are there words that you
don't know? Or are you kind of a physics genius? The words I
don't know? Yeah, Well, that's good that you're honest, because if
you would have said you are a physics genius, I would have called you
on it. Oh no, I'm so glad I almost did right here in
public, in front of everybody. I would have said, you're full of
it. My friend but no, you're honest, dude. Well, yeah,
I'm not really up on what energy disperseif X ray spectrocrosipy is either very
complicated stuff, but it makes a lot of sense. It's essentially he's saying,
it's threefold. You have to prove that something is made in space.
But if it's made in space, that doesn't necessarily mean it it's of an
extra terrestrial intelligence, because a meteor, for example, would come from space.
So it also needs to demonstrate it's engineered. It's a manufactured thing,
but even if it's manufactured in space, that doesn't necessarily mean it's from an
extraterrestrial civilization. So the one more thing that you need is that the technology
used to produce this engineered material needs to be of a nature that is foreign
to us or more advanced that we don't understand. So those three things,
and it does sound like to the stars in what they're looking at is trying
to do just that. So it'll be interesting, of course, it'll be
groundbreaking if they're able to prove such a thing in the future, right,
I mean, you know they're with the elements that are available in the universe.
We who knows. I mean something could be exactly like something we could
make and still be alien technology. Yeah, that's entirely possible. At the
point is that in order to prove it to the mainstream that it is extraterrestural,
it'll have to go beyond. But you're right, and that is even
the case with extraterrestrial life. So there are instances, and we have this
video with you know, a NASA scientist talking about it, where there's life
found on a meteorit or potential signs of life. But the next step of
proving that it came from elsewhere, not the planet, that's the hard part.
Even though it may have we haven't. We're not necessarily able to prove
that. But we're out right we are already. Wow. Yeah, lies.
Well, thank you so much for joining us with the news. Martin
Willis check him out on podcast UFO. We will be right back after this
short break with Nick Pope, so stay tuned. I am very happy to
welcome back to the show Nick Pope. Now, I know you're a busy
guy, and thank you so much for coming back to the show. Thank
you, it's great to be back on now. It's great to have you
too, because it wasn't so long ago where I think you said you were
going to kind of slow down your involvement in the field of UFOs, But
that didn't really happen, did it. Well, as the classic quote goes,
just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.
It may be a good thing because as soon as you said, you know,
you might reduce your involvement, then exciting things happened to pull you back
in. So it worked absolutely so. And the exciting things that happened were
related to the government, the United States government, because all of a sudden,
the United States had a secret program, and you have kind of a
counterpart in Loue Alexander or Alessando, someone who was involved with investigating UFOs for
the US. However, as you've written in The Guardian, and this is
what's really exciting about your recent article is that you kind of highlight the impact
that is happening behind the scenes that people don't know so much about. So
I guess my question my first question would be you talk about in this article
how the Congress essentially is starting to take notice and ask questions and how did
you come about that information? From a number of sources, but including some
currently serving internal governmental sources and to clarify what's going on. It's a complex
situation. There are three different strands to the current congressional interest and I'll just
take them one by one if I can. First, Yeah, the first
is the Senate Armed Services Committee. Now they are looking specifically at the two
thousand and four Nimits incident, which, of course we've all seen the videos
of the Navy jets chasing the UFOs. This was a big part of the
New York Times story when they ran it in December last year. So Senate
Armed Services Committee has interviewed at least two of the pilots involved in that incident,
reached out too, and I'm not sure whether they have or haven't yet
interviewed one of the radar operators. But so there is that strand of interest.
Separately, in parallel, the House Armed Services Committee is has looked more
generally at a tip what is it, what was it doing, how was
taxpayers money spent? What did they conclude? And there is a congressional record
which I linked to in my Guardian article, and it specifically says there that
the Defense Intelligence Agency, and of course this was a DIA program, supplied
the House Armed Services Committee with essentially a briefing answering those questions. So Senate
Armed Services Committee, House Armed Services Committee, and just when you think it
couldn't get more complex, the Space Technology pardon me, the Science, Technology
and Space Committee have have taken a look at this and the Space Subcommittee and
Representative Amy Barr raised this in a roundtable discussion hosted by Politiko some months ago,
and Amy Bearer said, yeah, I've had discussions with the chair of
the Space Subcommittee and the full Science, Technology and Space Committee. So there's
arguably three strands of congressional interest in this in specifically the Nimitz incident, specifically
in a tip and I think segueing from that into the wider question of UAP
itself, what is the phenomena? What are we dealing with here? So
there is undisput indisputably this multi stranded congressional interest. The real question is is
any of that going to transition into formal hearings and if so, who's going
to lead on that? I mean, for example, what the Space Subcommittee
decided, Yeah, we want to get into this, but there was pushback
from say the Armed Services Committee saying, wait a minute, a tip was
a military an intelligence community program hands off, so that I suspect is the
sort of discussion that's going on behind the scenes at the moment. Firstly,
will there be formal hearings and secondly, who's who's going to be managing them.
What's interesting too, especially when it comes to this Space Committee, is
that it's Bigelow Aerospace because they are and I don't think I make a pointer
to call this out every time I can, but I don't think people realize
what a big player they are on the space scene. They're one of the
big guys you know that the Space Committee is considering when they're when they're working
on their policies and future around working with private corporation. And of course Robert
Bigelow is also in the mix, and that he received funding from the Defense
Intelligence Agency for these paranormal investigations. Well, yes, indeed, And of
course people are still trying to untangle the thorny inter relationship between all these different
acronyms that are flying around a TIP and or SAP and Bigelow Aerospace and specifically
the BASS and NEDS and trying to figure out and now of course to the
Stars Academy all these players, all these complicated inter relationships, and I don't.
I don't profess to have all the answers on this, and I should,
I should say, because this came up actually yesterday. I am not
a member of any of these organizations. I tend not to be a joiner.
I'm a bit of a lone wolf. So I had no official despite
my back government background in the UK, I had no official involvement with or
SAP or a TIP. I'd left the British government by then anyway, and
it's not clear that the UK government even had a role in these programs.
And I'm certainly not a member. I have never worked for any any Robert
Bigelow company or entity, and neither am I a member of the To the
Stars Academy. So I don't. I don't hold a brief for any of
these people, which in one sense is good. I can take a step
back, I can hopefully look at the big strategic picture. And while I'm
bound, of course by the British Government secrecy oath, I have no sort
of non disclosure agreements here in the UK in the US, so I can
call it how I see it, mm hmm. And that's what makes it
interesting too as we all try to figure this out, is how all of
these groups relate. And I guess just to as an example of unanswered questions,
you referred to ASAP, which was the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program,
And from reporting from George Knapp we at KLAS in Las Vegas, we
we know the existence of this program and they're the ones who worked with Bigelow
and received the funding. But at the same time, then this other organization,
Alizondo, was part of a TIP. UH, it was created.
We don't know when or how that kind of took over at least the UFO
portion, but there's so many answered questions inside of that that we who knows
when we'll get the answers to that one? And one of those is and
this is interesting, is this kind of terminology We hear a TIP referred to
as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identify Program, the DoD IS referred to it as
the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, and then in this document you're talking about,
it's kind of funny because they referred to it as he Advanced Aerospace Threat
and Identification Program. Yes, and one wonders with all of this whether and
I Obviously, when I was in the UK government, I received Freedom of
Information Act requests and dealt with them, so I didn't make them. But
one wonders what effect, for example, leaving out and would would have on
something like this, as you say, if you look at the Congressional record,
the House Congressional Record dated April ninth one sees in as you say,
paragraph four three eight one this reference to Advanced Aerospace Threat and Identification Program.
And one wonders, you know, if people are making FOI requests and they
leave out an end, or if they ask for aerospace and Pentagon is right
and actually it's aviation, whether whether these these FOI requests are going to fall
because of a missing and or or whether in the spirit of the act people
will respond and say, well, this is clearly what you meant. Here's
the paperwork. But of course it's it's staggering actually how little we we have
from from the government at the moment. Another interesting aspect is that the government,
our government is so interested. I mean, as you mentioned, you
know there's there's three different committees that have decided since the New York Times article
in December to actively investigate or inquire about the topics raised in the ATIP program
that Alexander and The New York Times and to the Staris have brought to the
light. This is pretty shocking really in that what's interesting, and I love
your input. At least in the UK and in the United States in the
past, Congress really hasn't gotten involved until there was public pressure. But in
this case it's not really due so much to public pressure, it doesn't seem,
but it's more like they're taking their own active interest. Do you feel
like that's accurate. Yes, I think it is. And one reason,
of course, is that the New York Times story. You know, even
though this is small change in the defense budget, once you mentioned that twenty
two million dollars of taxpayers money was spent, all sorts of antennae start twitching.
And the ultimate irony of this would be if the push for certainly Congress
to take a look at this, maybe to have hearings. Actually, the
irony would be if it came from skeptics who might argue, what the heck
are we doing spending twenty two million dollars of taxpayers money on this nonsense?
For so it might be one of those rare occasions where it's the skeptics who've
managed to really kick this one over the line. But what's interesting also when
you refer to that political article where the space members of the Space Committee were
discussing I wrote an article on that too, because it's fascinating news. They
were discussing this topic in a very positive light. One of the members,
a House member who was part of the committee I remember, had mentioned how
he thought the topic was really interesting, and it was a political host who
actually asked the question, but he said, yeah, this is a really
interesting question. I've brought this up in our committee. And then the others
confirmed that, you know, Amy, she had brought up that she had
brought it up, and the other gentleman who's part of the committee just said
he was willing to talk about it. He found it interesting as well.
It seemed like, at least in that environment, it was about genuine curiosity
on the topic. Yes, I think so. And of course it's no
coincidence perhaps that literally in the last what month, we had NASA's Techno Signature
workshop taking place, I think, down in Houston, and of course now
the news that NASA is going to be perhaps focusing a little bit more on
the search for life. Well, the fact that all these things are happening
at the same time can only help, I think. But having said that,
I go back to the point that there may be pushback from the Armed
Services Committee on this and a certain kind of what's the expression, get your
tanks off our lawn? And this is more our business. I mean,
if you ask the question, should the Space Committee be getting into the nuts
and bolts of what an intelligence program embedded in DIA did, the answer might
be no. So it might be that a more appropriate home for inquiries and
hearings about a TIP is the Emerging Threats and Capability Subcommittee. And if you
look at the if you look at the terms of reference, it specifically mentions
unconventional threats and isn't isn't that almost exactly what we're dealing with here? And
going back, of course to Harry Reid's June twenty fourth, two thousand and
nine letter to William Lynn the third I mean, I think the language is
almost identical m the other. And that's kind of where you came from as
well. You were working for the Ministry of Defense, so you were looking
into this similar to a TIP, which is part of U d as a
potential threat, Yes, very much so. In fact, the final two
Ministry of Defense UFO files, which have actually yet to be sent to the
National Archives, but I have an advanced copy which I pulled out of my
bookshelf just before this interview, and they at quite high levels of classification,
get into this very debate. And I'm reading from a document here. It
says, the second and critical question is do UAPs represent a possible threat to
the of the realm? And then it gets into a sort of almost philosophical
argument about Russian aircraft penetrating our air defenses in the Cold War, and it
says, well, they didn't have any hostile intent, but they certainly represented
a threat. And then the paragraph concludes, thus, the only logical conclusion
we can come to is that we do not know if UAPs represent a threat
to the defense of the realm. And interesting enough, you know, that
reminds me of Chile, which is a government who actually investigates and they came
to the conclusion, interesting that the phenomena is benign, which I think is
the only government aided you know to ever do that. Well, it's a
nice piece of wish for thinking. No, I mean one of we'll probably
get onto this, but my new documentary film Aliens in the Pentagon, Aliens
at the Pentegon. Pardon me. I can't even get the name of my
own movie right now. But the tagline for that, or one of the
taglines is the T in a tip stands for threat, and there's a reason
for that. Now. I don't know what discussions and intelligence analysis the Chilean
government and Air Force have had on that, but I am surprised. I
am surprised that they have concluded this is benign. I don't see. I
don't see without a proper intelligence assessment, and maybe they've done one, but
I have yet to see one. I don't see how they could have made
that conclusion because there is an equation. I know this sounds bizarre. There's
an equation for whether a threat exists, and a threat is said to be
a construct of capability and intent. Well, we have some idea of the
capability, we have no idea, frankly, of of the intent. And
I'm surprised that Chileans would attempt an assessment based on that. That's really interesting
to know that there is that formula which makes sense and from what I understand
that Chileans used historical data in saying that. You know, I think there
there is even some sort of quote to this effect, which was that historically,
you know that our interactions have not caused, have not exhibited a malevolence.
Well, yeah, I get that, but I totally disagree. It's
like, Okay, Hitler came to power in nineteen thirty three and not Nazi
Germany and things. It's kind of a little bit like Stalin saying, well,
the Nazi regime hasn't attacked us so far, so there's no threat.
Well we all know what happened next. You know, just because something has
not displayed overt hostility does not mean that in intelligence terms, does not mean
you can say there is no threat. And in fact, in the last
two Ministry of Defense files, when they are released, you will see basically
a split developing between different parts of the mod with the intelligence staff frankly saying
some pretty disparaging things about my former colleagues and saying, who are these people
to say there's no threat? What made them suddenly experts on intelligence and analysts?
That's really interesting. The second part of the Chilean quote was around the
biggest threat is distraction from our pilots when they see one, and they figured
they needed to have some training essentially to if there's a UFO around, don't
worry about it, pay attention to flying the plane. Well, I agree
with that. I have to say that seems to have been lifted directly from
the declassified mod Intelligence study Project Condine, which which very famously quoted almost that,
and Project Condine was dated the final report was dated two thousand and there
was a recommendation on that point and it said air crew encountering UAP should take
no action aside from trying to keep the object astern. In other words,
whatever these things are, I don't mess with them. So that's where the
Chileans got that one from. They got it from the UK Menstry of Defense.
Mm hmm. I'm sure they did, because I know they rely heavily
on US and Britain and other countries and their reports. Yes, indeed,
and Project Condine is clearly something that a TIP we're aware of as well.
And again if you look at the different studies that some parts of a TIP
were doing and the different technologies, quite a lot of them clearly have have
I won't say their roots because I don't want to claim that the Ministry of
Defense was absolutely first into this business, but there is clearly some cross fertilization
between some of what a TIP was doing and some of what's in Project Condine.
Really interesting Jesus, time flies. So another fascinating aspect of all of
this, And I want to say for the listener, Nick and I have
a whole other interview that we've done here on Open Mind GFO Radio on Condine
in particular, where we talked about that completely the whole time, so you
could look that up. But when we're getting back to what you were mentioning
about, you know, the threats and this possible jogging with the Space Council.
Hey, you know this is your wheelhouse, this is ours. As
you know, more and more of our space programs go into the commercial space.
What's interesting about this, and it probably even gives Robert Bigelow even more
importance, is that if they decide in you know, the public arena too
or the private corporations, that they need to assess whether there are threats and
how this phenomenon may affect their programs. It's interesting to I guess speculate on
I wonder if there are you know these conversations happening inside of these corporations.
We certainly know it's happening with Bigelow, but I wonder if you know he's
gotten called from Elon Musk and said, hey, we need to sit down
and talk about this. Well, you would hope so, particularly because of
course space tourism and literally taking people, paying passengers into space is going to
be arguably the next step of where this is going, and indeed a big
source of potential income for the private sector, which is, as you correctly
say, moving into this ground increasingly. So sure, if there are threats
out there, whatever, whether we're dealing with other intelligences or whether we're just
dealing with natural phenomena, people like Robert Bigelow, Elon Mask, Richard Branson,
they need to know about it. H Well, it's time to take
our first break, So we'll take a short break and then we will be
right back for the podcast listeners, you will hear a short musical interlude.
But we are here with Nick Pope, who used to work for the Ministry
of Defense, investigating UFOs, much like we have recently found Loue Elizondo did
and others. Although we don't know who those others are, and there's much
more transparent actually with your program then there was with a tip. But we'll
get into that after the break, So we'll be right back. You're listening
to over Mind you O Radio. Welcome back to Open Mind UFO Radio.
I am here with Nick Pope, formerly of the Ministry of Defense, currently
out there sharing his knowledge and thoughts on the UFO topic, claiming to be
the expert, the biggest UFO expert in the world. Although I would say
that, you know, I might agree with that. I certainly hold you
in very high regard when it comes to this topic. Oh well, thank
you. Do you get a little embarrassed when people say that that you're the
foremost UFO expert. I'm sure my agent would be pleased with those sorts of
statements, but I will let I will let the people decide. I mean,
clearly, I'm one of a very small number of people, lou Alizondo
being another one who's done this, who's looked at this from the inside.
And whether that makes us more expert or not, I don't know, but
it certainly gives us a different perspective and an inside view onto all of this.
What that reminds me of something else. Lou always tells me, you
know, I'm not an expert. I'm not an expert. I don't know
anything about this field. And because he did not look into the historic information
when it came to this topic, which I can see actually makes sense at
least for civilian research. Was that the case with you and your program,
or did you look more into the civilian research in this topic. It's a
really tricky one. I get Lou's point that he wanted to come into this
with an open mind and he didn't want to be, you know, kind
of dragged down by the baggage of history. So coming to this clean is
good. And indeed that's exactly what happened to me in the Ministry of Defense.
I was simply posted into the UFO program as just part of the regular
cycle of career postings in the Ministry of Defense. I had no prior interest
or involvement in this subject, no knowledge, no belief particularly either way.
I was just given this as a job to do. On the other hand,
once I had my feet under the table, and no disrespect to Lew's
point, but I did feel that to contextualize the newly reported sightings and data
that we were getting. It was incumbent on me to do a little bit
of digging into what has happened before, not least for example, so that
I could try to do some trend analysis. I mean, in one sense,
it's yes, you want to go into each and every sighting with a
no in mind. On the other hand, one of the biggest things in
the intelligence community is you look for patterns and trends, and to do that,
to spot those trends, you need access to historical data. And in
fact, one of the big discussions in the last two yet to be officially
released Ministure Defense files is about how can we do a proper intelligence assessment if
we don't have a big database look for patterns. You know, for example,
are there clusters of sightings around particular sites? If there are, that
might tell us something about intent. But if I can just briefly go back,
just quote something again, it's a better quote about this whole threat issue.
And it's from a document that was classified secret Uki's B and it encapsulates
this whole thing perfectly. It says, lack of evidence of hostile acts does
not mean there is no threat, which does make a lot of sense.
I mean, I know, a lot of people get frustrated. There's a
lot of feedback. You've probably heard that feedback also, because there is a
contingency of people who and I kind of get it, really, who refuse
to believe that there is any threat. But oh completely I get. I
won't say hate mail, but I get when I talk about this and when
I talk about threats and things, the whole if I can call it,
the new Age wing of the UFO community get up in arms about this,
and I get accused of pushing a kind of cabalist agenda. And you've heard
all the nonsense about false flag alien invasions. I've been accused of whipping up
climate of fear and hysteria about this so that the New World Order can play
what allegedly von Brown called the last card, the alien threat, and that
we're going to get some sort of space Patriot Act and the New World Order
and the Illuminati sweep away the last vestiges of our freedoms. I mean,
you know, that's the sort of territory you get into if you talk too
much about a threat, and you know, you get into something interesting,
though, which is where, okay, if there's this renewed interest in our
government in this topic. Where do they go with it? So, for
example, we have a blue Book and the other projects which just kind of
they looked, they looked, and they ended. Of course, I can
you can argue what their intentions were, not necessarily discovery. But if you
get with these newer projects or your projects, they there doesn't seem to be
much of an endgame there. So even with this renewed interest, where would
you recommend if they were to ask you, where would the government go with
this? Well? I think you would have to have a better filter than
Blue Book and the British government's UFA project ever had, because it's quite clear
if you weighed through the sixty thousand pages of documents that the MOD has declassified
in the last ten years, that ninety nine percent of it is garbage or
not garbage, but frankly of little value in undertaking a proper intelligence assessment of
what we're dealing with. I mean, it's literally, it's it's clearly,
it's it's ninety nine percent aircraft lights and weather balloons and fire lanterns and things
like that. You need a way of filtering out that at the very very
early stages and focusing in on your really good hard data cases. I touched
on this in my Guardian article recently, and I said, let's not get
obsessed with with the numbers game here. Let's let's look at quality and not
quantity. And of course everyone, all the skeptics and debunkers love it when
the numbers of sighting reports go down and we get bogged down and let's you
know, irrelevant. Let's let's look at the good quality information we have,
the pilot sightings, the radar data, the photos and videos that government imagery
analysts might look at and say, yeah, this this, whatever it is,
this is real solid object. Let's find out something about it, which
takes us back to the whole Pentagon video saga. But yeah, we've we've
got to we've got to get over this this quantity argument and start talking about
quality. So I think the first answer to your question is we need a
much more focused inquiry than blue Book and the mods program ever were. Now,
if a TIP was that focused program, then great, and maybe Congress
will get to the bottom of that. That is a great point too,
because it seems like if at the model that a TIP took was, which
was to focus on military cases, would be more along the lines of what
you're talking about, and seems like it would be a better model. However,
we have really practically no insight into the results. The only real document
we have is again one that George Knapp was able to release, which was
a leak document where our knowledge is somewhat limited about it, but it was
a report regarding the limit situation in two thousand and four. Yes, I've
seen that. That's interesting. We do have to be fair. I go
back to the fact that we have Harry Reid's June twenty fourth, two thousand
and nine, letter to William Lynn the third That's an important piece of the
puzzle I think. I mean this is again it's a dilemma. It's like
this question of do you go into citings fresh or do you look at the
history. And you can argue it both way. And as much as I
have just argued for a focused inquiry concentrating on military cases, the counter argument
to that is that it's patronizing and just plain wrong to assume that no good
data can ever come from the public. So I don't necessarily say that I've
got the answers to this, but I think these are the sorts of questions
we should be asking. One other big factor that I think we can bring
into the the debate about this is the role particularly if we can get historical
data digitized and searchable. One big factor is the role that artificial intelligence and
algorithms could play in historical analysis. You hear a lot these days about big
data and AI, and I think that might just be a very fruitful if
Congress is going to look into this and how can we get past some of
these roadblocks that we've hit with this, you know, over the last seventy
years, Big data and AI might be an answer to that question. M
hm. That makes a lot of sense as well. The other question I
would have for you, I guess getting to your documentary Aliens at the Pentagon.
Yes, do you use the term alien? Was that your idea?
Yes, but not as a statement that this is definitively extraterrestrial, just as
a provocative title that's going to make people think about the situation. And of
course alien can have a double meaning in that sense. What I've done with
Alien's Pentagon is I've tried to tell the best story I can of some of
the very complicated things that we've just discussed about a tip and Bigelow Aerospace or
SAP and how it all fits together. But I've tried to contextualize it and
bring in the wider story of how it fits in with the US government's efforts
over the last seventy years to try and make sense of this infuriatingly contradictory phenomenon
that we're all struggling to deal with. Aliens at the Pentagon is is I
think the most complete telling yet of this story. But I don't try and
push an answer on people. I do. I put the data and the
information out there and say to people, at the end of the day,
you make up your own minds about it. M hm. And it's the
other thing is it's and we've had you and I have had this discussion before
about how to bring young people into this subject. I made a very deliberate
decision that this was going to be something that we pushed out on all the
platforms that these days young people get their information from when they stream, So
Aliens at the Pentagon is on you know, Google Play and iTunes and Vimeo
and Voodoo and those sorts of places. Mm hm. That makes a lot
of sense as well. Absolutely, it's a deliberate way of trying to get
this to a new audience. But what I'm what I'm doing is trying to
reignite I feel that the debate has kind of stagnated a little bit. We
had to the Stars Academy announcement a year ago, then we had the New
York Times article in December last year, and we've had the occasional nugget like
Harry Reid's letter, like the Nimitz report that you mentioned, but frankly,
we've not had a whole bunch of other things. We've had a lot of
speculation in the blogger sphere and on various forums and websites, very little from
the government. So Aliens at the Pentagon tries to do two things, three
things. Tried to tell the story, tries to reignite the debate about this,
and it tries to reach a different audience. Another question I have,
which is great, Thank you so much for that, because that's that was
you always guess what my next question is going to be, and that's exactly
where I wanted to go with it. But that's okay because I always have
so many questions. That helps get into more information such as this. Uh,
this is an interesting kind of phenomena or a result. The way this
all happened is so haphazard. Uh, it's interesting and your perspective, I
think would be especially interesting at this point in that lou Elizondo leaves the DODH
because they're not paying enough attention to his project on UFOs, they're not taking
UFO seriously. He then is asked to join to the stars and these other
very credible people, and and in that announcement, you know says hey,
I used to work for the d O D looking at UFOs. A few
people paid attention, and this New York Times article came out and it blew
up, and all of a sudden, now we have arguably certainly more attention
to this topic that by the government than we've had in decades, and perhaps
more serious attention than we've had in a very very long time. So by
leaving and talking about the program, it seemed to have generated the interest inside
the government he was hoping it would generate while he was in the government.
I was wondering about your thoughts on that unique kind of situation. Well,
Low is clearly a highly principled individual and he's used the phrase, I think
he would like to see kickstarted a conversation with the American people and through that
a conversation with their elected leaders about how to take this forward. And he
and his colleagues to the Stars Academy. I know they have a lot of
critics. I'm I'm not sitting in judgment on any of that. There's no
getting away from the fact that they have played a crucial role in getting this
information out and in doing just what lou said he wanted to do. I
have this conversation with the American people. Now where it goes from here,
I don't know. We've talked about the congressional hearings, but yeah, it's
I talk about this. The way I characterize this in Aliens at the Pentagon
is I use the phrase a believer faction, and I talk about a believer
faction in government making its move. But I think in a sense, yeah,
you're right to make their move fully, they had to then take it
outside of government, because obviously in government there are the roadblocks they hit skepticism,
the fact that finances is limited for this sort of research, and the
fact that the comes a point where certain people's worldview and in some case,
and this is a controversial point, it's a religious worldview, causes senior Pentagon
managers to say, let's you know, let's not be getting into this.
And there's no getting away from the fact that some of these people have said
that UFOs and the paranormal is something they regard as demonic. Well, we
don't want we don't want research into this phenomenon halted because somebody in government thinks
it's demons. That's crazy. So yeah, let's take it out of there
and take it forward now in the private sector. And just as the space
program is slipping out of the hands of government into the hands of the tech
billionaires and the venture capitalists and the privates based companies, so the same is
happening in parallel with with UFOs and about time too, maybe mm hmm.
And and here's a follow up question. In fact, somebody accused me yesterday.
Oh, people aren't asking the hard questions, and in this question in
particular, and I actually did ask Lou this question. I don't think you'd
mind me sharing the information is if you've got the attention you wanted in the
first place, what if the government says, okay, we're you've proven your
point, come back and let's take a harder look at this. Would you
go back? He said no. He said that for the reasons you just
outlined that he feels that this needs to be a public forum and what he
was at and if he were to go back, it wouldn't be a public
forum. Now, if the government threw a lot of money at to the
stars, who knows what would happen. I mean, if you're faced and
that's my question to you, if you're faced with a lucrative opportunity to do
some you know, freelance work for our government or your government to look into
this topic a serious look where you get to guide you know, you your
efforts and your research. But you couldn't share that publicly. You'd have to
go through your normal channels of getting that you're findings declassified or shared. Would
you do it? Well, it's it's a difficult hypothetical. You've just thrown
my way. I think my cop out answer to you is, I don't
know. I would have to look at any offer on a case by case
basis. I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. I don't know whether lou
did. I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. And the reason I wouldn't
is that with the best will in the world, government still has access to
resources and capabilities that the private sector doesn't, right, and that would be
attractive to have access to that and do it on the inside. But it
depends. It depends how much freedom I was given in terms of shaping the
terms and references in terms of reference of any inquiry and the resources and capabilities
that I would then have access to. But I don't rule it out because
I think even if the balance of power is shifting to the private sector,
and it is, I think you can there are still things the government can
do that the private sector can't, So I'm undecided about that. On the
other hand, I have already done it for the government, so I get
loose point. Well, we tried that and it didn't work. Let's try
something different. Well, thank you so much. We are out of time.
Of course, people can go to Nick Pope dot net to find out
more about you. They can also watch your new documentary. It just came
out Alien To at the Pentagon. How long has it been out now and
how has the reaction ben It's been out for about a week reaction is really
good. And I shouldn't say this, but I will. It's kind of
segued, for whatever reason, out of the UFO and alternative belief community into
as well the sci fi and even horror fans, and I think that's just
a consequence of the ways it's available on all these streaming platforms. But the
benefit is of that, which I appreciate because it's kind of similar with me
writing for Den of Geek. It's the entertainment industry, but it's bringing this
topic to new audiences and that's so critical. It's such an important side of
this. Yeah, well, thank you so much for being on the show
again. Thank you very much. Thank you so much to Nick Pope for
joining us again. He is one of my absolute favorite guests, and right
now is an even more important time to have him. So this is such
an incredible conversation, I think right now, because you know, we're truly
seeing the vastly, you know, the super important results of this Pentagon UFO
program being revealed, and it's shocking. I mean, we're in a place
that we've never been before. Just like Nick and I talked about, we're
both by the way, going to be speaking at Alien Con in Baltimore November
ninth to the eleventh. You can go to Alien theliencn dot com is the
website for that to find out more. But check it out come say hi.
It'll be a lot of fun. I think we might be on at
least one panel together, but otherwise we'll be having it out and it'll be
really cool to be out there. I haven't been to Baltimore. I hear
that it is gorgeous, but a couple other things. Be sure to check
me out on UFO seriously live, where I just babble on about stuff.
Actually what I do is I talk about the UFO news, so we go
over every story and I go over some of the other stuff that we've posted
for the week, including that story that I talked about earlier, from Chris
Cogswell to PhD and chemical engineering. Of course he's been on the show before.
Excellent article. Highly recommend that people go check that out at Openminds dot
tv. Also check out the conversation on Facebook if you're on Facebook at the
open Minds UFO group, lots more conversation and it's really growing a lot lately,
which is fun because I think it's one of the rare groups out there
where you get a lot of information about UFO stories in the mainstream, and
there's a lot of great people in there, so they're sharing their insight and
their knowledge as well. Also check me out on Patreon, that would be
wonderful. On my Patreon, you'll be able to follow all of the different
things I'm doing besides UFO as well, so such as my den of geek
stories, or I've got an allojandro advantage a different YouTube site where I'm doing
different YouTube stuff, so you could check that out. You can click on
the button that's there on the front page of Openminds dot tv, and then
of course be sure to go to Ufocongress dot com to check out updates.
Really there you're gonna find links too, so you'll find links to the video
portal. You got all of the twenty eighteen UFO Congress lectures that you can
watch up there on video on demand. And then of course check out our
YouTube because we're on a regular basis. There are older lectures being posted there
for free, so that's a great YouTube. Go there and subscribe if you
haven't yet, so you can check out lots of free content that's getting posted
stuff that you're not gonna find anywhere else that's getting posted there on a regular
basis. And then of course, all of the news and information that Martin
and I talked about at the beginning of the show you can find out at
Openminds dot tv. So thank you so much to Martin for joining us at
the beginning of the show. Check him out on podcast UFO. Thank you
to Caleb Hanks for the opening and close music. If you go to the
Openminds dot tv radio page, you'll be able to find out more about him
and the awesome stuff that he does. And then thank you to Systematics for
the bumper music. And of course, as always, thank you the listeners
for being here. We'll talk to you next week. Until then, Audio
Smooth Churches, you were motionless