Hello, and welcome to Open Mind UFO Radio. I am your host,
Alejandro Rojas, and I am joined by Jason. I don't know what a
bit of a cold McClellan. That's probably appropriate for today. It's kind of
a long kind of name type of thing, but yeah, Jason, kind
of a cold McClellan. Because you got some sniffles this morning, I guess,
yeah, just a little bit. Perhaps it has something to do with
the weather warming up here in Boise and the big weather change. We went
from the low fifties to the high seventies, actually did a quick jump.
Cool. Yeah, it's getting warmer everywhere. Because I had family in from
Colorado and they're in the seventies. They returned to some nice weather and out
here it's already in the nineties. It's been hot, like it's already like
eighty something degrees out right now in the morning, and it's really warm.
So and everything's been pollinating and growing, and yeah, had some allergies earlier,
but it seems warm. Then there's still some of the places around the
country that are getting snow. So weather's all screwed up. Yeah, weather's
all jacked. We're just jacking up this planet dude, thanks a lot.
Aliens, where are you? Yeah? A little help here, guys throw
us a freaking bone here. So speaking of aliens are well, I should
mention I should apologize to the listeners for not having a show last week,
and that was just because my family was in town, so I was busy.
I thought I was going to be able to pull something off, but
I decided to go to Sadona instead and it was beautiful. Luckily it wasn't
in the nineties yet, but we got to hike and everything and it was
really nice. So you all had to sacrifice by not having a show.
But we're back this week and our guest is Larry Holcomb. He wrote the
book The Presidents and UFOs, A Secret History from Obama or from FDR to
Obama. And what's interesting about this is, first of all, everybody kind
of thinks of Grant Cameron as the President's and UFOs guy, but he's kind
of moved on, and after all these years of him investigating, he hasn't
written a book. So this guy went ahead and did it and it got
printed by Saint Martin's Press, which is a larger publisher, and it's always
really exciting when a UFO book gets published by a larger publisher, because one
they do good, you know, like Leslie Kaynes Who's was a New York
Times bestseller, and two you know, it gets to a wider audience,
so a lot more people learn. I'm always excited about that, don't you
think they're? Jason absolutely, Yeah, and a topic like this, you
and I have talked about it. I wish Grant would have jumped on this
a while ago. But yeah, such a cool topic that definitely appeals to
the wider general public, and having it published by such a big publisher is
a great thing. Yeah. So we talked to Larry about what he did
to research and write the book. Interesting enough, as he'll tell us,
he didn't lean very much on Grant Cameron's research, which is good on his
part. Now, I got to say, there is a lot of it
covers the mythology around presidents as well, which I think is important, you
know, so it's not just the really hard credible what we know, which
I think there's a lot that we do know that is credible around presidents.
Perhaps a book with just that would be really interesting, but probably, as
you know, someone should do. He covered all of the mythology and the
surrounding, you know, alleged leaked stuff and everything that people think around presidents.
But overall, it's a good read and I think it's something that everybody
should have as a reference. A pretty good book. So we talked to
him about that, and we met him in Roswell. I don't know,
I think you were out there. Do you remember meeting him. I don't
know. He met so many people. I'm not not recalling him. No,
Yeah, he was a guy who had a table and he even wrote
about that because he wrote about how interesting enough it was meeting antone, you
know when I that helped inspire the book, especially Antonio, because Antonio got
him in touch with someone who inspired him to essentially write this book. And
we'll talk to Larry all about that. So kind of cool, kind of
very cool. Yeah, so really neat so open minds even got in the
book. We helped inspire it without even knowing, so neat stuff. So
we'll talk to Larry in just a little bit. Before we do that,
though, Jason and I will talk about some of the UFO news over the
last couple of weeks, And do you want to start off which story do
you want to cover. Sure, I'll start off. There's been, you
know, so much happening with astrobiology lately, Alejandro, and I know it
seems like the less sexy thing to talk about, but as you and I
always bring up, these things are happening at such a rapid pace, and
more research groups are doing more studies and using more tools to discover so much
more to search for extraterrestrials. And the story I want to talk that I
want to mention this week reminds me of you, Alejandro, because one of
your not one of your favorite expressions, but certainly something that I hear you
say now and again is what the heck? And that's exactly what this is.
This project is called HECK. It's the hunt for exo moons with Kepler,
and what these scientists are doing. We've talked about the Kepler Spased Telescope
so many times on this show, fantastic tool that NASA has to search for
planets outside our Solar system. And what HECK is doing is it's using data
collected by Kepler, but also using a supercomputer with that data, they're coming
up with these possibilities where exomons could exist around exoplanets, pairing that with data
from Kepler and finding out these areas that most likely host exomoons that could be
habitable themselves. And we've looked using our own solar system as an example.
We found that the places in our own solar system that are the most likely
places to harbor alien life are moons. So if that's the case in our
own solar system, why not apply that same principle to other solar systems as
well. So that's what they're doing, further enhancing or amplifying the possibility or
places in the universe where extraterrestrial life might exist. Now Alhandra, I'm excited
about that. I'm glad somebody's doing it. But there's so many places right
here in our solar system and closer to home that I wish they would all
get together, all of these scientists, and focus their efforts and money,
all the dollars on these tasks to do something closer to home that has a
better chance of success. Mm hm, I agree, it's good that somebody's
doing it. I guess yeah. I mean a lot of scientists have to
look at something, and some of these guys are just looking at telescope data
and stuff like that, so not really you know, physical wheels on the
ground as a you know, robot on the ground like we do now,
but it is I think I share in what you're talking about in the excitement
how even the moons in our own solar system are now so promising when it
comes to possible life, and it's extremely exciting. People like you and I
knew about, you know, these moons that are out there and like eu
Ropo or something like that with water under the surface, but now it's getting
more mainstream with NASA looking at it and less sci fi, and it's extremely
exciting all of the places right here in our own solar system that feel like
they're so close that show you know, high potential for extraterrestrial life. So
it is really exciting. And I think, you know, when you feel
like you're on the cusp of it, it's like, guys, focus on
this one thing, I know, make it happen, I know. But
you know, with this broad approach and you know, all of the potentially
habitable worlds, which include planets and moons, I think we're just getting closer
to the to the public realization that life is everywhere and it's important work,
because if life is discovered on a local moon like Enceladus or something, then
it just that work is going to be even more important because it's going to
be more likely that their work is going to be fruitful, that there will
be other moons with that are have life, and perhaps even ewoks. A
forest moon out there with ewoks, hopefully with ewoks. That would be amazing.
Yeah, they are adorable. I would love to be friends with ewoks.
E works are cool. They know how to party too. And I'm
glad you brought this up because you know, one of the stories that I
wrote that did terrible that nobody looked at well, actually I shouldn't that there
are over a thousands people who looked at it but didn't do as well as
others. I think it's so exciting, and that is that the Library of
Congress and everything they're doing to get scientists together to talk about astrobiology. In
this case, they're doing something called the Blumberg Dialogues, and this is just
the first of many meetings they're going to have throughout the year where they're talking
about, you know, the discovery of extraterrestrial life and its effects on religion.
And I think it's really smart of them to get with these scholars to
talk about the theology and the philosophy so that when I think that a lot
of scientists are agreeing that we're on the cusp of discovering, you know,
some microorganisms, some kind of official announcement of life elsewhere and what affects that
will have, and being prepared for that so it can be easily accepted even
amongst you know, religions, because certainly there can be friction in philosophy and
theology when it comes to that sort of thing. And then the more we've
worked that out, you know, the less I think then combative then religious
organizations may be to the science that's being done. The discussions are definitely starting.
We're seeing more and more of these these public forums gathering, gathering scientists
and officials in a public forum in an official setting and starting to explore these
these issues that will arise, and perhaps already have arisen. But we're seeing
multiple events like this every year happening with prominent scientists discussing the extraterrestrial issues.
And I love it. The Library of Congress is doing a lot of this.
So if you live in Washington, d C. You've got to attend
these. We'll post more about them. But we've got links on our story
about this too, And if you've went, let us know how that went
and you know what the discussions were like and what you thought. That would
be really cool if you could share that with us. So, yeah,
exciting stuff when it comes to astrobiology, very very exciting. Well, do
you have a story to talk about? Yeah, isn't astrobiology? Yeah?
I want to talk about UFOs baby. And this is actually a follow up
to a story that you wrote. So you had written about this lady who
had seen, you know, a couple orbs and she videotaped them for about
twenty seconds. Really what she videotape was interesting, but hard to really make
anything out of it. She said the two orbs combined and moved apart several
times before shooting off into the distance. And this is near Leicester, I
believe, is how it said in the town of Hinckley, and it happened
in some of the towns around the Barwell and Earl Shilton where these people had
seen it. Now what's exciting is that the Hinckley Times wrote about it and
other witnesses have come forward to say, hey, I saw that thing too,
so it's really cool, including a police officer who was off duty who
says he watched these things hover silently over the town of Barwell for about a
minute. He said they did not resemble normal aircraft. And all of them
say about the same thing that they saw these two lights that were floating around
and then took off, and none of them feel as though they were Chinese
lanterns or anything, so kind of a cool story. Really, it's great,
you know, to get this corroborating witness testimony that possibly, you know,
something really weird happened. It's always really exciting when we get follow ups
to sighting reports. It's even more exciting when we have additional witnesses who substantiate
the sighting. So that is really cool. And I want to point out
that one of these witnesses who came forward says he was walking his dog when
he saw the UFOs, So we see this so many times with UFO sightings.
So people, what does this tell you walk your dogs more and when
you walk your dogs, watch the sky. Yeah, I mean anything that
gets people outside, so we always have people. I was out having a
smoke, but it's much healthier on many many levels psychologically, you know,
physiologically to walk a dog than to smoke. So yeah, walk your dog,
go jogging, but watch the sky and you'll probably see a UFO eventually.
Yep, that is good advice. Mm hmm. Now there's one more
story I want. I'm gonna start recommending that to people actually when they say
where can I go to see a UFO or how do I see a UFO?
Good point, walk your dog because we get asked that a lot.
That's right, and I usually say go to places where people see UFOs a
lot. But walking a dog is another good, healthy alternative. I like
it. Dogs are cool too. Anyway, I want to ask you about
this one real quick before we're done. And this is kind of an exciting
one that I think is really strange. That's why I want to get your
opinion on it. We talked about it a bit on spacing out, But
this one with the mod chase helicopters allegedly chasing four UFOs in England. Now,
the witness actually got a picture of this UFO and it looks strange.
Although the picture they got only shows one object, it doesn't show four,
and the one picture it shows with the helicopter. It's kind of dubious.
I mean, the helicopter's way off in the distance and it's a tiny little
helicopter, so I'm not so sure about that. But what is in that
picture is weird. It's this ring shaped thing. Yeah, it's really weird
because it's a very finally defined I don't know, it's a perfect, perfect
ring. Some people have suggested that it's a smoke ring, and you know,
we've seen that before in photos, and they can stay tightly formed rings
in the sky for long periods of time. I'm not sure that's what we're
seeing in this photo, but it's a possibility. But I agree with you.
I mean, for people who are out on a picnic or whatever and
seeing these objects that obviously surprise them, they took the time to go in
and grab the camera and take photos. Photos aren't that great. And for
being confident that it was an mod helicopter chasing these UFOs. Really based on
the photos, we don't get a good enough look at it to determine if
it's an MD helicopter or not. But you're right, I mean for saying
there were four UFOs. We never see a photo showing four UFOs together.
So there are some suspect things with this whole case, but the photos that
were captured are interesting. Mm hmm, yeah, ring shaped object. When
I look at that, I cannot, you know, certainly not immediately say
this is that or the other. And I haven't seen much good speculation either
on what that they might be. Yeah, we had the incidents with the
ring circles, but those were close to the ground and near an event where
they were shooting off cannons or something that would create that circle. So yeah,
pretty weird. Pretty interesting. So yeah, and one other thing,
I mean with the with the witness testimony, you know, with this photo
seeing a smoke ring, that could be confusing to people. It looks weird
in the sky. They would take a picture of it, so that's weird,
that's a a UFO. But in this case, the witnesses do say
that they saw the UFOs zoom off. So that's their testimony. You can
believe it if you want. If you know this is a smoke ring,
then the witnesses are fabricating evidence and they're just creating a hoax. But we
don't know that that's the case here. I'm just pointing that out. M
M. Yeah, although it is completely possible it is a smoke ring,
So I don't know. Hopefully, you know what helped with the last case
where you know kind of definitive that it was a smoke ring, was other
people came forward and said, wow, I was in the area, you
know, this was what was going on here. It was a smoke ring,
and so that case was solved. So hopefully people will come forward.
I know we have a lot of lead listeners in England, so go check
out the story, see what you think, and then watch our latest edition
of spacing out where we talk more about it and you could see that,
see more of the pictures and stuff, and then I see what you think
and let us know if you know something about this, right yes, please?
So Otherwise, there's a lot of great UFO sightings from mof on that
we posted in the last week as well that Roger Marsh has written about,
so go check those out. None of them had any pictures or videos or
else we probably would have talked about them, but they're still very interesting accounts
nonetheless, so check that out. And was there any other news is that
you wanted to mention my friend No, sir, that is it for me.
All right, We'll go take some vitamin C, maybe try to channel
a healing extraterrestrial to help you with your cold, and I hope you feel
better, buddy, Thank you so much. Yep, all right, we'll
talk to you next week then, Jason, I hope so h yeah,
unless something comes up we go on vacation again or something, right, but
I'll be healthy, good, good. So let's go ahead and talk to
Larry Holcombe. I am very happy to welcome to the show Larry Holcomb.
Hello, Larry. Hello Eleandro. And you'll have to excuse me for the
stumbling there a bit. My family name on my mother's side was Alexander.
Oh, every time, every time I say Aleandro, I want to say
Alexander. So it's yeah, it's pardon. If you notice that that hesitation,
you'll know what's going on. No problem. If you want to use
Alexander, you can, especially like people from Greece or or even I think
yeah, especially from other countries who Eastern europe Pean countries who are used to
Alexander often will call me that. So so that's not a problem. No,
No, I think I think I can have Eleandro Okay, yeah,
here, you're doing just fine with it. So well, thank you for
coming on the show. We've talked occasionally in the past, and uh,
and we'll get to it. But you even mentioned that in the book,
so I was very flattered to see that. But we'll talk more in detail
there, but before we do, I want to talk about how you know
your background and how you got interested in the topic of UFOs. Well,
it goes back to when I was a junior high school and which was in
the late fifties. Unfortunately, I guess it's fortunately I'm still around. But
I read a couple of major Donald Keyhole's books, Flying Sauces from ot Space
and Flying Sorces were Real, I believe, with the two books, and
I became hooked with his passion and believability and the fact that the Air Force
was not telling what they knew and so forth. And then I saw him
on the Armstrong Circle Theater and I saw his sound cut off, and I
knew from that point on that you know, I was a youngster, and
I thought he was going to be on the Armstrong Circle Theater and you'd see
banner headlines around the world, and as it turned out that the Air Force
since the show. So from then on I knew that there was something to
it, that the the phenomenon was real, and I became uh infatuated with
it. And it really became a silent application with me, because back in
those days, if you believed in flying saucress as they were called, or
later UFOs, you looked at as a somewhat of a nut. So I
did it silently. I was only interested in the mainline research by people such
such as Stan Friedman, Uh the great atmospheric physicist, doctor James E.
McDonald and of course UH doctor j Allen Heine. These these folks jack lay
and I was not interested in the in the fringe and in really my my
basic throat trust in research has been with has been in flying sauces slash UFOs.
When I retired, took early retirement a few years ago, I wanted
to write, and I wrote a novel. Looking for a plot for the
novel, I decided, you've been that I've been studying the UFOs and government
cover o for years, when I'd use that as a plot for the the
book called Great River Disclosure. And from that, of course, the story
goes on that the Ufo Museum in Roswell saw the book, they liked it,
invited me to speak as an author, and I've been coming every year
since. So and when I met Staying and dun Semant and you and Antonio,
and I mentioned bib emenager Or the the documentary UFO's Past, Present in
the Future that I thought was was a outstanding, unique, unique documentary from
the standpoint that it seemed to have the approval of the government. There was
no counterpoint in the documentary and it and it having what seemed to be government
approval and also stating that UFOs uh some UFOs are conceivably extraterrestrial in nature.
So I contacted bib Emenagor. The idea for the for this book came a
vote. I started doing research, spending time in presidential libraries, which people
may not enjoy a great deal. But anyway, that's a that's a quick
summary of where we are and how the book came about. What about your
professional career. You mostly worked in sales and you owned your own company for
a period of time. Yeah, I went to I was in enlisted in
the in the the Army, the Army National Guard after high school. After
I finished my duty with them. I enrolled in the Richmond Professional Institute which
is now Virginia Commonwealth University of ECU, and it took journalism for two years.
But I had unfortunately established some some debt that I thought that I finally
I had to get away and go and get a job and bring in some
income. So yeah, I did that. I started in commercial in sales.
I was in sales of commercial construction products. Later started my own manufacturing
rep agency, and about nineteen ninety nine I got an offer from one of
the manufacturers that I represented, one of the so called offers that you can't
refuse to go to work for them and start a military sales division. And
that's what I did, because I was the only one of their sales reps,
the independent reps around the country that was selling to the military and understood
the military. So I started a military sales division for them and stayed with
that until two thousand and six and spent about one hundred thousand air miles a
year sitting in airplanes going at the other military basis. But it was a
fun chibt M. So you retired and became a writer, and you must
have done pretty well for this book to get published by Saint Martin's. I
liked the emmenager story very well, and I liked the documentary very well.
And as you, I'm sure you know, in the publishing world of an
unknown writer, to get an agent, a literary agent is about as easy
as flying flying to the moon by batting your arms. It's it's almost impossible.
But I was very fortunate I had an idea for the book. I
sent it to several literary agents. When got back to me and said,
if you would like to take the time to write up a proposal for a
work of nonfiction on this, I'll send you an outline and you work on
it and get back to me. And I did, and I worked on
the outline, which I think ended up being about eighteen thousand words. I
sent it to him and he, after two three months emailed me and said,
I've got a sale for your book. He said, as as a
matter of fact, I've got four publishers in Wow, and Saint Martin's was
gave me the best offer, and that's who we went with. And they've
been great. I mean, it's working with a name, big time publishing
host and having all of our support and having a publicist to work with,
and they're marketing people, and I'm working with Mark Resnick, who's executive editor
at Saint Martin's. Has been great. I mean, it's it's a whole
different world. And and I can't say enough about having an agent who who
has been marvelous in getting these things done for me. As a matter of
fact, he just sent me an email yesterday telling me that we have received
an offer from a Japanese publisher to to buy the to buy the rights of
the book, to publish it in Japan. And we also the book is
also has been sold to an Italian publisher. So it's it's we we have
not only here in in the States, but we will be published in Italy
and Japan. Wow. Great, So you had this interest in this topic
for decades. Why now, why did you decide this is a time where
I'm kind of coming out of my UFO it uh to do this? Uh?
Why now? Why? Why coming out of the closet? Uh?
I didn't really feel like I was coming out of the closet now because I
think now people are very savvy. I'm talking a little bit back in the
fifties and sixties. If you talked about UFOs you were frowned on or even
the seventies. But I think we've become far more savvy. You know,
we've lived through the nuclear age, We've we've we've lived through. We are
much more tuned to uh uh what's going on in space and and and what
you know, with with all of the uh space telescopes that we have and
new there's almost weekly we're we're we're finding a new wonders in space and things
that we believed as a positive or no longer positive that there's they're new theories
and and so I think that overall people if they found out, if it
was if it became public, if it was disclosed, if disclosure came about,
I think people would simply shrug their shoulders and say, gee, that's
interesting, move along with life. I think we've become that sophisticated. So
it wasn't too hard for me to write a book. I be sure people
laughed a little bit still and snicker, but I don't care. I believe.
I believe in the extraterrestrial hypothesis. I've studied a long time. I
believe in it. I mustang believer in it. And if people want to
laugh at my belief, so be it. I don't care. So I'm
happy, you know, to have found out that, you know, the
you had mentioned it was when you got to meet Antonio and I. Antonio,
of course, you used to work with Open Minds, a colleague of
mine, still a friend. He's kind of become a hermit. In fact,
I think I'm the only one who actually talks to him occasionally because he's
just kind of hit it out and his apartment nearby out here. But we
were at Roswell. I've been there every year. Antonio used to come as
well, and we got to meet you, and that meeting, especially with
Antonio, for you became important, very important, and it was kind of
the impetus to this book. Yeah, yeah, it really the book.
When I sent the as I said before, when I sent my idea for
a book to this agent, the agent got back to me and said,
you know, I think this is a great idea, but I don't think
you've got enough information here to make a book out of what you What you
have that is the Emmenager story, the story of the documentary, and the
story of making the documentary and all the background. Uh, he said,
I think if you could, and this had to do with the next administration.
Of course, if you included all the presidents modern presidents from fd R
forward, then I think you could you could have something and and uh and
and I'll send you an ode line on on on how to do that if
you're interested. Well, my initial thought was, Gee, to try to
uh get information on presidents, it's next to impossible. I mean it's it's
you get bits and pieces of stuff, but uh, you go into presidential
library, into the archive. I was in presidential libraries, and if you
get a file that should have some really good information in it in redacted,
it's taken out of the file. So to find the smoking gun in the
presidential library is next to impossible. And to get solid information on presidents is
I knew would be very difficult. But the more I thought of it,
the more I thought, you know, here's an opportunity. When I looked
at it, and I could see that even though the presidents, some of
the presidents were not real fond of each other, there was still a common
bond, a thread that I saw running through all the presidential administrations, especially
the shift and power from what the Truman administration had set up in as far
as this study of the UFO also issue, I saw that eroding in the
Eisenhower administration, where presidents where the power or the control of UFO information was
being taken away from the executive branch and going into the intelligence community and the
military industrial complex. And I became fascinated with that, and I could see
a story starting to weave from that. And that's that's hand. Although many
of the facts, many of the sightings and events that I listened in the
book are known by you and other euthologists, what I wanted to do was
write a book that would address the people that I call the the people that
have an interest but little background knowledge of the subject, and that this would
give them an overall picture using presidential administrations. The casual observer is what I
call them, and this would be a book that would It's a very complicated
subject that goes in so many different directions that to try to compress it into
one book was difficult. But I thought that I could give a general overview
and people would recognize that the Air Force was deeply involved, even though they
claimed they weren't, they were deeply involved in this subject and the discourse within
the air force between those that had researched the subject and those that hadn't,
and all of this was fascinating to me. So I hope I've achieved my
goal in writing a book that will be somewhat of a textbook to the casual
observer to get a better understanding of the basic UFO phenomenon. I was curious
at the time when you started writing the book, were you familiar with Grant
Cameron's work. Yes. And the reason I ask is because I think a
lot of people assume that you would rely on his work, but you actually
didn't. You went out and did your own work. You visited these libraries
yourself. I read a lot of grand Cameron's work. I often wondered why
he had never written a book on the subject. I've read, I've read
his articles on his website, and I did contact him and ask him a
couple of questions, and he said he'd have to dig into his archives and
he'd get back to me, and he never did, so I just sort
of let it drop at that. I know he's he's a hard worker.
He's certainly done a lot and work with the history of presidents and UFOs.
But I didn't want to push the issue. I guess Aleandro I just didn't
because maybe he thought I was walking on his side of the street. I
don't know. Well, I think it was probably more along the lines of
from knowing him very well, that's an old chapter of his life and he's
just moved on to other things. And the way he is, he's so
focused on right here and right now that he's all about what he's doing now.
And that's interesting. Yeah, because his new book, The Name which
escaped me early fifty one and the government to cover up, and you know,
it really doesn't go into the president, right, which is what he's
known for. So yeah, I did want to get into Emmenager because,
like you said, Antonio got you in touch with Emmenager and what he told
you, I mean, really had had an impact on you. And it
seems like even really shaped kind of in a way your understanding of at least
how you felt what was going on in the background with presidents. What was
it. Maybe if you could share with us what Emmenager told you and how
it related to well. Emmenager was called by Richard Nixon. Let me start
this way. Richard Nixon, who is looked as a villain now by many,
many people. When he was president in his first term, he was
extremely popular, extremely popular. As a matter of fact, he was elected
re elected by an almost historic Lands South landslide, So that means he was
very powerful. And I think that of the presidents after Eisenhower, Nixon probably
did have a pretty good end a pretty good background knowledge of the UFO issue
because he was vice president for eight years under Eisenhower and had a great deal
of respect I think, within the intelligence community. So I think that Nixon
may be the exception to the rule of later presidents that were kept out of
the loop of knowledge. Anyway, Emmenager was a fraternity brother of HR Bob
Harleman, Nixon's chief of staff, and Emmenager was very successful in the advertising
business in Los Angeles with Gray Advertising. Bank of America was one of his
clients. Well, Harliman knew of this success. The committee to re elect
the president wanted to make a documentary. Now, what I don't know is
if Nixon told them he wanted a documentary made on UFOs and he wanted some
level of disclosure to be made. That's entirely possible when you think of his
connection with Jackie Gleeson, who was a close friend and who was deeply involved
in the UFO issue and was upset because the government was not disclosing what they
knew, and so had he had Nixon with Gleeson. Nixon had also been
very successful in opening relations with China, which was a absolutely closed country,
so he broke that idice. He started to taunt with the Soviet Union.
And in a lot of respects, I know that a lot of people hate
Nixon, and he certainly had a lot of flaws, but in a lot
of respects, or in some respects, he conceivably made this a safer world
to live in for a period of time. Anyway, he had a great
deal of power and to with all of his accomplishments. If he were to
come out and and make disclosure of an extraterrestrial presence known to the public in
some way, in some manner or to some level, it would really have
added to his historical presidency. And Immenager was brought in as a consultant to
make a documentary. Now he was told that it was just to be some
scientific documentary and he and his partner Alan Sandler will run all over the United
States looking at at secret projects that the military were involved in. I know
it was a laser research at Wright Patterson and research with the demolition using dolphins
and such things. But Bob was then taken and his partner Alan Sandler was
taken to Northern Air Force Base in a very secure facility and told would they
consider making a documentary on UFOs? And they were stunned, and they were
told by the official the rand the facility, whose name was Paul Chardle,
that if they agreed to do so, they would be given something like six
hundred feet of sixteen millimeter film that showed an actual landing at Holland Air Force
Base of a extraterrestrial UFO flying saucer. And obviously they were stunned and taken
back as them nagger. As Bob told me, he said, you know,
I didn't know anything about flying sausage, and then the only thing I
knew was what my wife Margaret brought home from the tabloids from the supermarket.
And so anyway, they said, yes, they would, they would do
it. They were flown to Washington to the where they went to the Pentagon
and were met by several people that told them the smart thing for them to
do would be to get on clean flyback and lost ashes, keep had those
out of this stuff. And the Sandler, according to Bob Sandler, had
enough of being browbeat and he said, give me a phone. I'm gonna
call the White House and get this straight and date right now. The White
As is the one that told us to come here. Well, at that
point the mood changed. They were taking upstairs to see to the office of
Colonel William Coleman, who was head of public relations Air Force public Relations,
and Colvin sort of gave him the same sort of speech. Then he took
him into the office, set him down and told him about his own UFO
sighting that he had made as a pilot flying a B twenty five. I
think. Later they were sent to write Patterson, where they met Colonel George
Wyan Brenner, who was head of Air Force of the name escaped Me Foreign
Technology Division and Wine Brunner. Emenager said he walked up to Winebrenner's desk and
said, Colonel Winebrenner, is it true that a UFO landed at Holloman Air
Force Base and you're going to give us film money? And he said at
that one Wine Brenner looked at him, got up from his desk, walked
over to a chalkboard and drew a picture of a jet fighter. He said,
this is a meg gentleman, and we don't know a damn thing about
it, but the Russians know all about all of our aircraft. And he
said he went on like that, Bob Emmenager said, winem Bunner went on
like that, and went on like that, And while he was talking,
he went over to a bookshelf and pulled a book down and handed it to
Emmanator and opened it to the front cover and in it was addressed to my
good friend George Winebrenner from Jay Allen Heiney, and it was a book on
flying saucers. He gave the book back to wine Bronner. Winem Bunner talked
on a few minutes, put the book up, thank him for coming,
and I should have mate the door without saying a word about UFOs. And
they were baffled. But what it told them was why Brunner was telling them
that yes, everything everything you've heard is true. We have the film.
But he didn't want to say anything in his office because they felt that the
office all the offices there were bugged and people were listening to conversations. So
that's a that's a brief. They made the they made the documentary. They
got funding from John D. MacArthur I think it was President of Banker's Life
and Trust. They got funding to make the documentary. Everything was set to
go. They hired they'd hired Rod Serling of The Twilight Zone to do is
the narrator of the documentary. Everything was set to go, and they got
a call from Bill Crothers so I think it was at the Whitas and said
the use of the film has been withdrawn. And Emmenager was stunned, and
he said why and he was only told hes that the president in this Watergate
matter has been the president has been consumed with this Watergate matter. He thinks
that this would not be helpful now but would be detrimental. Go ahead and
make the documentary. We'll open doors for you, will do whatever we can.
And he could see why. Emma Nagger still was distressed, and he
said, you can see at the end of it that this is what may
happen or may have already happened, and you can show it from Alvin Air
Force Base and have an animation of you of old landing, and that's exactly
what happened at the end of the documentary. But it's clear that the government
gave them support because you had a Colonel Coleman walk in the halls of the
Pentagon and standing under the picture of what Vandenberg talking about, the very famous
estimate of the situation, which has never been found. And as you well
know, you don't take film crews into the Pentagon and have a military even
though Coleman was newly retired at that time, you don't have them do that.
You're not able to do that if you don't have government the support.
And so, as I said in the book, this whole documentary, there
was no looking through chain link fences with telephone old lenses and trying to find
stand up on a mountaintop looking down at area fifty one. This was had
the support of the government. This had Bob Friend, who ran a blue
book, as you know, for for a while interviewing the flight clue of
the captain of Major Captain. I think Cohen and his helicopter flight crew that
had a UFO encounter over Mansfield, Ohio all done with military personnel, and
I think it's I think it's a remarkable documentary that just had fallen through the
cracks, and that I wanted it revived or I wanted people to know about
it. Mm hmm. It's a I agree with you. That story is
so incredibly fascinating and mysterious, and it's one of that I think is kind
of I consider one of the lower hanging through in that you do have Emmenager
who was apparently approached and we're you know, they cooperated with him. You
know, I've never heard of the military ever saying anybody representing the military saying
Emmenegger's lying about this story. And he's told it many, many, many
times. So it is fascinating, and I could see how that connection with
Nixon would then drive your fascination around. I'll tell you a very quick story.
I don't know how much time we have left, but very quick.
I was talking to Stan Freedman about it, and Stan said, yeah,
he had. He said, I met him Naga in Sandler in Los Angeles,
because and I had lunch with him. He said, I was offered
my service. I wanted to be in the documentary, but they turned me
down. And he laughed and he said they turned me down because they wanted
all military people and that was fine. But he said, at the time,
I had a Russian document that had been given to me on UFOs,
but it was all in Russian. And I told him about it, and
either Emenag or Sandler I think it was sund said give it to me and
I'll have it. I don't have it translated for you, and so stan
said he did give it to and thought that you know you hear from him
in two or three months. He said about two or three days later he
had the translation back. They'd sent it back to him. At that point,
he said, I knew they had high level government contracts. It wasn't
any bologna about it, he said, because obviously the government had equipment that
could translate Russian into English that was still highly classified. That they used to
do this and did it very quickly computer equipment. So he said it was
already dug in my mind that that that Bob and Sandlah had had high level
and still do. I don't know what Stanlon is Sandler, but I talked
with Bob not long ago and he's he's doing well in his retirement home and
say a Bill Arkansas. So one of the things I find interesting and I
think good you know, uh, that people I think will be interested in
is that you do cover kind of the outstanding mythology in the UFO arena around
what presidents may or may not know, and you give your own estimation as
to whether you think something is credible or not. And I think you have
some great analysis on these various reports or anecdotal information, uh, and and
research as to why you think it may or may not be true. But
what I think I love that you here too is how, in especially the
fifties and the sixties, there was this ongoing battle that is well documented within
the military as to what the nature of UFOs were and how it was a
topic that was taken very seriously and debated as to whether they were extraterrestrial or
not right such as and I call that mean to me, that's the golden
years from the late forties up until really up until the Kindon report, what
I call the very flawed Condon Report of nineteen sixty nine, those years were
really the golden years for us that will to study euthiology, because there are
some paper trails there. After going into the seventies, things changed and of
course, you know, blue Book was closed, and the Air Force was
extremely happy that the University of Colorado took the five hundred thousand dollars carrot and
got Condon, who thought the whole thing was, as he said, damn
foolishness. And his report, of course, as you know, is is
really nothing like what the Colorado Project, the rest of the Colorado Project report
actually was. He even fired a few people. But anyway, that's that's
another subject some times. But in the fifties, I mean, what were
for example, you know, you referred to the estimate of the situation,
which was the Project SIGN essentially estimate of the UFO situation after they had done
years of UFO research where they entertained that the extraterrestrial hypothesis, right, yeah,
they they wrestle with it. The members of the Project Sign wrestle with
writing the estimate. And I think that what pushed him over the edge,
so to speak, is the Charles Witted Eastern Airlines encounter with the UFO over
Alabama. I believe it was, and that incident sort of pushed the SIGN
group on to write the estimate of the situation that ended up by saying in
essence, well, I mean, I don't know what it ended up saying,
because nobody Jay Allen Heinix said he had seen it, but it apparently
was destroyed, but acknowledged by Air Force personnel that it existed and that the
estimate in essence said that when you look at everything and you strip everything away,
the only answer that we can come up with is that we're dealing with
extraterrestrial craft. Well, that report was handled like a hot potato from one
command to another as it went up the chain of command to General Hoard Vandenberg,
and when it hit Vandenberg's desk, he apparently went ballistic and said,
this doesn't this is not going to stand. We're not going over this report.
Redo it, take this extraterrestrial hypothesis out of it, or what have
you. But anyway, it was the death bell for Project Sign. They
closed Project Signed down and sent everybody to work on Project Signed, probably to
Antarctica somewhere. And and of course then Project Grudge came along, which was
nothing but a propaganda They didn't do any research. It wasn't anything but a
propaganda tool, as was Blue Book, which followed Grudge to some degree except
for the years when Rupelt was running blue Book, and I think that that
Rupelt did a did a very good job. But after that by a print
came in at some point, and I think that he wanted to do a
good job, and I think he was really he was handcuffed by the Air
Force. So it's a it's a long and involved that. You know.
I hate to talk about the Air Force because I really am very proud of
our Air Force and I think I have great friends in the Air Force,
and I think it's a wonderful branch of the service. That's all the military
is. But when it comes to the issue of UFOs, they stumbled around
and bumbled around and lied, and I think did great disrespect and have done
great disrespect to themselves. And I you know, and I wonder Leandro if
the reason that disclosure is so difficult now is because so many things were done
back then that would refined in such a negative way on the government that that
people are. It's one reason that whoever the wolders of the secrets are are
afraid to get into. And you know, there's no question in my mind
there were laws broken. It could be serious laws broken. And well Rupelt,
you know, in his book. Uh. His book is certainly a
less conspiratorial angle, but he's very critical himself, saying exactly what you said,
they stumbled and bumbled. He acknowledges that the estimation of the situation existed,
and it did have the extraterrestrial hypothesis, which did upset Vandenberg. But
when you look at it, and I read that part, you know where
you wrote in your book how you're sympathetic to the Air Force at least you
appreciate the arm served versus all of them and what they've done, and you
have great respect. But I wonder, you know, having written this book
and seen all the decisions that were made, would you have done it differently?
What should they have done? Because I always kind of struggle with that
in that I can see how they've got a real hot potato in their hands
and it would be a difficult thing to deal with. Let's be addressed like
this. I think that what Truman did in concealing UFOs and even asenhow was
perfectly reasonable, and in my if I had been in their position, it's
what I would have done. Also, because we were dealing with a very
fragile population of the world, and to know that there were craft that could
fly, especially in our country, you know, after we were victorious,
and to know that after this terrible war that killed what fifty million people and
destroyed fifteen sixteen hundred cities, that after this terrible war and the psyche of
the population was so fragile to come out and say that their mystery aircraft,
mystery vehicles that can enter air airspace at will and fly anywhere they want to
and do anything. As time went on and we got into the nuclear age
and people became more sophisticated that I think the lit of secrecy should have been
lifted. The problem probably lies in the area that and this is where I
get very cynical. The military industrial complex ow great wealth in the technology,
the technology that was being turned over to them, and there were probably and
there was great power amassed. You know, whether there's where there's money,
there's power and and and this is what happened in the eyesenhow administration when the
military industrial complex got so involved in and I think that things were done then
started to or were done then that really were broke the law seriously in a
number of ways. So I think that you kind of had catch twenty two
things had been done that shouldn't have been done, that prevented the release of
information after the end of the war, and we started our great industrial comeback
in the fifties and sixties. So if you get the picture of what I'm
saying, I think that we did the right thing to conceal it at first,
But then when we should have started divulging these secrets, it would have
put a bad light on so many people for things that had been done that
it couldn't be revealed. So I hope I'm getting a polled across here.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, in the book, you do
include the m J twelve papers, and and you're a subscriber to the idea
that they probably you feel. I think some of them are many of them
are kind of revealing the secret, nefarious history. Yeah, so a few,
A very few, A very few. I'm not real comfortable with the
Tim Cooper documents, kind of along the lines of Stanton Friedman, who feels
similarly stand and I pretty much share. And I've read Stance research and I
think it's I think it's good, solid research, And you know, I
pretty much go along with stand not because he's a friend, which he is,
but because I think that I think it's it's pretty solid. I know
that that most people don't, mostly in uphology don't. But you know that's
okay. We all have our differences. Yeah. Well, and but I
mean in that and and I think so the audience knows people listening that when
they get your book, which I think many will appreciate because it's better to
have more information than less. I think that you do share, you know,
those alleged leaked secret histories that are out there regarding presidents, including ideas
about possible Kennedy's death being attached to the UFO topic and some other things,
although you do, you know, balance those ideas, but that it is
complete. I want people to make their own decision, right right. I'm
not all that comfortable with with you know, Bob Wood and the doctor Bob
Wood, who who's Who's a great fellaw they they are, they really are
very soul on the burn memo, I'm not, but I put it in
the book because it's there. Yeah, you know, I've got to cover
it. It's it's whether it's true, whether it's a factual document or not,
the fact remains that it is there, it exists. So I had
to put it in the book, and all I'm saying is let the reader
hear the facts, let the reader make a decision. One I agree,
I mean I certainly don't. Well, and that's what this is interesting about
this field. We don't all agree with each other over different things. However,
what's important is that we work together and get along. I mean,
I think people of the show know that, and that you know, Stanton
and I have had had our debates or but I love Stanton, I love
the Woods. These are good friends I've known for years. And that's why
I want people to know that you're inclusive in this book of all of these
different ideas, so that it's a good book for people to be able to
get a full understanding of what's out there in ufology. Regarding presidents, well,
I appreciate that. That's that's their very nice words, and I hope
I did a decent job with the book, and it's it's the book is
truly how I feel and how I view the subject. And you know,
I focus on one thing. I have focused on one thing, and that's
flying sauces and UFOs. I don't focus on who's inside of or what's inside
of them. I think, for instance, abductions are important part of the
UF Post story, but I don't I'm no expert at all. That's why
I got Kathy Martin too, you know, I thought it should be included
in the book, and I got Kathy too to to put her thoughts into
the chapter on abductions. So, you know, I hope I've I hope
I've come with things properly. And I'm sure they'll you know, there'll be
folks that find things negative about it. Every everybody's work. That happens to
everybody's work. But you know, I've done the best I could on this,
and I hope people like it. Yeah, I think what you've done
is, you know, the book isn't out there, Grant hasn't done it.
You took a stab at it, and you did a lot of your
own research. And for me, as someone who you know, loves this
topic and looks into all of that, I learned things from your book.
I definitely appreciated it, and and I think you did a great job at,
you know, giving people an overall perspective there. So I encourage people
to definitely get it and take a look. And I think everybody's going to
learn something from it, and I definitely appreciate the original investigative work you've done
it because a lot of times people will just pick up other people's stuff for
search for everything online, but you didn't do that, and I think it's
important that people know you didn't just you know, comb Grant Cameron's website and
pull stuff out of that. For your book, you did a lot of
original work in here and first hand research that I think people will really appreciate.
Well, well, I appreciate that, I really do, Elliot Andro,
and I hope people enjoy the book. Yep. Well, I guess
I'll probably see you in Roswell, right. Are you going to do Roswell
again? You've been there the last few years. I'll be there. Just
just sent all my information off to Karen at the at the museum, and
so I'll be there and look forward to seeing you. Yeah, so we'll
see you there. That's the July fourth weekend in a well in New Mexico
where they have their festival every year. And what else are you doing going
forward? Are you going to work on another book? I know this one
just came out March seventeenth, so you're probably really excited and in the middle
of promoting this one, Yeah, there's a lot going on, and I'm
getting a lot of emails. I'm getting some very interesting emails, as I
think I said earlier, from people that have had their own experience. One
was pre med student in Oklahoma that wrote me of a sighting that she had
in nineteen sixty five that she's never told anyone about, and it's a fascinating
Her story is fascinating, and she never told anyone about it for the reason
that we all know that she was afraid of being ridiculed. But in the
book, if you remember, I related the story by a young woman that
I called Sandy which is not her real name, of a sighting that she
had in California one night, and and this this lady read that and she
said he was so similar to the sighting that I had. After reading it
in the book, I just had to had to contact you and and and
relieve my sighting. She said, it makes me feel better to get it
off my chest because I just never talked to anybody about it. And she
did have a twin sister that was with her in the car at the time,
and so it also but you know, getting that that sort of information
from Pete and getting nice notes and emails that sing from people to sing that
they are enjoying the book and and you know what have you. It's it's
very gratifying and uh has has been a fun project. Yeah. I will
uh, I will probably start working on another book as soon as things level
out and we see where we are with this book. Uh. It's it's
fun to know and it's exciting to know that it's going as of now,
and and perhaps it's more in the future that it will at least be reprinted
in two different foreign languages. I haven't I haven't heard from the u K.
I I saw a thought that there would be some interest in the UK.
Of course, Nick Ope contributed to the book, but you know,
there may be more coming coming down the line. But it's uh, it's
it's been fun and it is it is fun now and it's it's so nice
to hear from people that that are interested in the subject and uh and and
have enjoyed the book. Mm hmm. So uh, I know it's on
Amazon. Is that the best place for people to go in and get it?
Well, it's it's best. I can tell. It's in be course,
I've had a number of Kathy Martin uh emailed me yesterday and said that
she had just seen it in Barnes and Noble, the Barnes and Noble store
in where she lives in Florida, and uh, several other people. I'm
speaking at a couple of Move On local meetings in Maryland and Virginia, one
next month and one large meeting in the fall. And someone wrote that they
had seen the book in the Barnes and Noble store in DC. So it's
in all the Barnes and Noble stores. Obviously, it's on Amazon. Looks
like it's pretty well. It's out there, it's pretty well available, all
right. Great, Well, thank you so much for being on the show.
I hope everything goes well with the book, and I guess we'll be
talking to you soon. I appreciate it, and Aleandro, thank you so
much to Larry for coming on the show. Like I said, his book
is really interesting, the President's and at UFOs. It's got a lot of
information in there. It is. Like I said earlier, I think one
of those books you got to have because you can run for referenced some material
he's done, some original you know, investigation. He's gone to a lot
of libraries to get some information, so it's good to reference when you're putting
together and I think he also does some really good analysis of some of the
more dubious cases as well. So it's a great book. I definitely recommend
it. And it's got a really pretty cool cover of like some presidents standing
there looking at a UFO or something like that. It reminds me of one
of our covers where we all kind of a lot of the guys in the
office were took pictures and we put him in the magazine as if they were
looking at a UFO in the renderschrom forest. So it's similar to that.
They copied our magazine covers those goofballs. But anyway, check it out.
Like you said, you can go to Amazon to get that printed by Saint
Martin's Press. So very exciting. Thank you all so much for joining us
this week. Don't forget to check out our YouTube site. We've got new
spacing out episodes. Don't forget to check out Openminds dot tv for more information
about all of those stories that Jason and I talked about, as well as
getting to the YouTube and our video portal we're gonna be posting some more videos
up on the portal. In fact, some of you who can't get the
DVD or maybe you're in another country have been asking about Bob Lazaar and getting
access to watch that video. We're going to be putting that up in our
video portal, so just for a few bucks, you'll be able to watch
that and a ton of other videos. So our video portal is a great
deal. You can watch lots of videos for a cheap monthly price, and
then we put more and more videos. It's like a UFO Netflix and it's
definitely worth it, so go check that out. You can see that at
Openminds dot tv as well. And I also want to thank Travis Walton.
He's announced his fortieth anniversary event. It's at skyfiresummit dot com and in fact,
we were there, some of us with open Minds last year where they
kind of did a smaller trial run event and we did a lot of cool
videotaping. So if you go to skyfiresummit dot com you'll be able to watch
our open Minds video that's on our YouTube channel about our interview with Travis and
about that event. And this is going to be bigger and better as similar,
So go to skyfiresummit dot com to check this out. It's going to
be in November, so he's going to be taking people to the place that
his UFO event happened at the same time it happened, on the same day
it happened. So we'll be able to be out there in the forest and
open Minds will be out there, we'll do some filming and it's going to
be a lot of fun. And I'm gonna mc because the next couple of
days he's going to have some speakers talking about UFOs and stuff, people like
David Hatcher, childress Tracy Tormet, who wrote and produced the movie Fire in
the Sky. Some people are really upset that they changed what happened on the
craft and the movie Fire in the Sky. Tracy, to me will tell
you how that came about and why that happened and for better or worse,
you know what was going on there. Really interesting stuff he has to share.
And James Fox will be there because he's doing a new movie, The
seven oh one with James Fox. So a lot of other people check out
skyfiresummit dot com to check that out. Otherwise, thank you to Caleb Hanks
for the opening and close music. On the radio page, you can get
to the link to the The Something Chronicles. I forget right now what it's
called, but anyways, you'll see a link to Caleb Hanks and his music
that he puts online for free. I love his music. It's awesome,
so go check it out and download it. And then I also want to
thank you all as usual for listening. We should be back next week.
By anything crazy happening, Uh, you never know in this field, we
might have to go run and then recover down extra treasural spacecraft. That'd be
really cool. We haven't gotten a chance to do that, but we probably
would skip a show if we did get that opportunity, So you never know
what may happen. But we'll talk to you next week. You guys have
a wonderful week. Audios muchachos your motionless sound. The glass t Suffering