Richard Golan, Nice to meet you. Thanks so much for doing this,
very glad to do it. Yeah. So, as a historian and a
researcher of the phenomenon UFOs and aliens and abductions, what is the piece of
evidence that made you believe that we are being visited by extraterrestrials. I would
say it was very early on in my own research into this as upset.
A few times. I fell into the UFO subject almost by accident. I
was at the time, in the nineteen nineties that pretty engaged graduate student in
a US Cold War history studying really US security policy of circa nineteen fifty Harry
Truman presidency, and I just walked into a store one day that had a
book on the shelf that talked about the worldwide UFO cover up that was by
Timothy Good and I bought the book because I went flipping through it, I
noticed that there were quite a few names that I had studied in my academic
research departments that I thought I knew their history, and yet here was this
man putting all of these things in a UFO context. And I guess my
first thought was, I don't like having a big unknown mystery hovering over this
area that I was trying to become an expert in. Everyone, even in
the nineties had heard claims of a UFO cover up, So I thought,
is this something that they actually were interested in? Did they resolve it that
they figure it out? Yes or no? And I just simply decided I
would take a few months out of my life to dive into it and decide
for myself. And that was my fatal rabbit hole move. What convinced me
quickly, very quickly that this was quite serious. We're simply reviewing the then
available declassified United States government documents through FOYA through freedom of information, which you
know, the FOIA era really began for UFOs in general in the late nineteen
seventies. FOYO was strengthened significantly right at the end of Richard Nixon's presidency,
and it was not long before quite a few researchers started petitioning the government for
UFO related documents, and too, I think a lot of people's shock,
many documents kind of fell out of that tree, and they didn't. There
was no single document, There is no single declassified documents that proves UFOs a
alien. There's no document that says, you know, mister President, we
have an alien incursion in such and such a location. But what I would
say is that there are many documents that proof did They do not hint,
they don't suggest, but they actually do prove that the US military had engaged
and tracked and engaged a large number of objects that can only be described as
flying saucers or UFOs, and in a way that got them to a level
of very high concern. And that's quite fasting. So and and then of
course there's a whole other number of documents where you track these officials discussing the
UFO problem in a way that's obviously very serious. All at the same time,
we're talking nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties that the official Air Force releases and
government statements all were totally dismissive of the phenomenon. Would be well, why
would they be? Are they concerned that it is a off planet intelligence or
are they concerned of people figuring out their advanced technology? Well, in fact,
I think you know. Nineteen ninety seven, the official historian of the
CIA was a man named Gerald K. Haines. Wrote an article for the
publication Studies and Intelligence nineteen ninety seven was the fiftieth anniversary of Roswells, a
lot of things going on, and he publishes this article, declassified version of
which he can read, and it said, yeah, you know, all
of those UFO sidings of the nineteen fifties, turns out we were really flying
the U two aircraft and the A twelve ox cart, all these surveillance and
high speed, high performance aircraft, and people were mistaking them for UFOs,
and we didn't really want to tell you what they were, so we allowed
the public to believe that they were UFOs. That was his argument, and
you know, mainstream media, of course, just lapped it up and repeated
it without any critical thought. That was an exercise in total disinformation. And
I really do think. I think there's a quote from Bertrand Russell to the
effect that a philosopher who used his skill for propaganda instead of truth is committing
the greatest of crimes. And I really do think that that was what was
happening there. But in reality, there was always testing of advanced aircraft,
of course, but we have to ask ourselves what is the evidence for the
kinds of breakthroughs that people were reporting, and the fact that it was being
tracked worldwide by all militaries the United States, the Soviets were tracking their own
UFOs. This would be one heck of a secret weapons testing program that would
require this much of a level of secrecy. And I'm not saying that we
haven't made such some impressive developments in the classified world. I think we have.
But when you really look through the long history of these sidings, I
think this is my estimate of the scenario. I think what happened is in
at some point in the nineteen forties, certainly by nineteen forty seven, the
President Harry Truman, was informed that we had acquired exotic technology and bodies that
did not come from here. This is what I think. And if you
are that president, you have to decide what do you What do you do
about that? How do you tell the world? And of course you're gonna
have advice is all around you telling you what you're supposed to do, which
is that there's no way you can share this information. First of all,
the nineteen forty seven that the Soviets were trying desperately to get their own version
of an atomic bomb. They had spies in the system, and they were
working in the United States certainly did not want them to get access to it.
The United Nations at that time was at least for a wildhead lobby to
have atomic or nuclear technology under the control of the United Nations. The US
answer to that was no, thank you, We're going to keep this to
ourselves. This would be the quickest way to give it to people we don't
want. So if the US was not willing to share nuclear technology, I
cannot possibly imagine they would want to share something as exotic as alien tech.
And the problem is to acknowledge that this is a real thing. I just
think that that is way too easy to open the door to all of these
other problems, Like you don't want to just let the world know you've got
bodies, you've got technology. And I think that's where they were at for
the longest time. So I think the problem went deeply classified pretty early on,
and we've been in that world ever since. You know, you start,
you start down the road of lies and secrecy, then the question becomes,
how, if ever do you end it. It's like a man who's
cheated on his wife for a month, that's one thing. He cheats on
his wife for ten years. It's a big thing if chets on his wife
for twenty five years, how do you unwind that? That's essentially what the
US government has been doing. I say government loosely, the National security Apparatus,
national Security State, and the privatized sectors within that now participate in this.
This secret has gone to an extent where unraveling it is going to be
difficult, and fessing up to the truth I think is it's a political problem
of culpability, and this is the problem we're into this day. You know,
we're in an era where we're supposedly talking more openly about UFOs or UAP,
and yes, to some extent we are. But there's a couple of
red lines in this conversation, and to me, the biggest red line is
the conspiracy slash cover up red line, where the US government just cannot allow
itself to be culpable in an eighty year old massive lie to the world on
something of this magnitude. I just don't think that they're prepared for that.
We are in an era where you are not supposed to believe in conspiracy theories
of all at all, and you know, can one imagine the United States
President saying, well, don't believe in conspiracy theories, except this one,
the UFO one's true. Yeah, but none of the author ones Like that's
just not a policy that's going to work. So they've they've gotten themselves into
a very difficult situation, and I don't know how they're really going to extract
themselves. Yeah, it's just really interesting how if it is indeed a cover
up and if aliens crashing roles well in nineteen forty seven, all these years
later, they're finally saying that UFOs are real. Now, mind you,
they haven't said that extraterrestrials are real. They're just saying that UFOs are real,
that they're really unidentified objects. And the Pentagon's kind of classified anything as
an unidentified object. Now, it's a smart move, it's a very smart
move. You know. We not long ago, as of this recording,
the Chinese were accused of having some spy balloons to go across the United States
and and the media, of course, we're glad to characterize these as UFOs
or UAP. That was really kind of disingenuous, but it was smart because
it and the US government was happy to characterize these as UAP. And indeed,
in the Arrow the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, thank you. Those
hearings with doctor Sean Kirkpatrick. They referred to these Chinese balloons as UAP also,
and that's kind of smart from the point of view of just wanting to
bury any kind of anomalous nature of UFOs for real. By doing that,
you're just throwing in balloons and you're calling them UFOs or UAP, And I
think there's a real psychological effect of that. When you do that often enough
in the public, you really just tend taking the flying saucers out of the
UAP phenomen Yeah, I just won't understand why anybody would believe what the government
is saying, if indeed they have been covering up extraterrestrial life for all of
these years, do they not remember like what they've been doing. Like,
I just don't get in, And it feels like we're in the sloop of
a bunch of regurgitated information and people are just talking about the same things over
and over and over again, and it's not really get in anywhere, and
we're still on the exact same topic. If there's something really deep that's missing
from this UFO and alien subject that I haven't quite put my finger on.
I mean, I think that I know, but I want to get your
opinion on this on what you think is actually missing from this, Like we
can come to these conferences, conferences year after year after year, and it
seems like the same questions are being asked and mostly for the most part,
the same types of presentations are being done, and we're no closer to anything
actually happening. Yeah, that's a great question. I want to answer in
two ways. The first thing that you got me thinking of is why does
the government continually get away with this? Like do they think we're stupid?
And my feeling on this is there are not everyone's of the same level of
doing analysis of things, and in fact, most people are just not in
a position where they can really actively question the government and you know, fight
the power and spend their lives as an independent researcher getting to the bottom of
things. Most people don't have that time. Most people have jobs at families,
they have responsibilities, and they don't desire to fight the system. In
fact, they want to believe in the system. It's easier for them.
So there's a huge portion of the population that's yeah, they'll say on one
level, yeah, they're all crooks. We can't believe them, but then
they do believe them anyway, And I think that's the vast, vast majority
of people. Then there's another group of let's say, very intelligent people,
but they are ensconced within the system. And what I mean by that is
if you're if you're an intelligent person and you want to make money in this
world, you want to have a successful career, this is what happens you.
The amount of pressure on you to conform to an ideological belief system is
overwhelming in your profession, in your job. And I mean, unless you
have some kind of career death wish or you are an absolute, fanatical,
independently minded intellectual, you're going to conform with that. Even though you're a
very smart person. You will you'll allow your intellect to go in this direction,
in that direction. But on the UFO issue, you're you're gonna tell
the line because you just know it's the third rail for your career. There's
a very small percentage of like self educated, smart, motivated people who just
want to devote themselves into this to get behind the scene. So those people,
yeah, you talk to them and they're like, yes, it's obvious.
The government's been lying and how could we possibly believe them? But they're
not dominating the media, they're not dominating, uh, you know, any
of the public discourse by and large. So I think that's that's actually our
situation now. What you're asking in terms of what's not being said. This
is a very strong interest of mine because I am convinced that the UFO research
community is missing most of the important questions relating to this incredible, astonishing topic
of UFOs aliens UAP. We're at the point here in our public discourse where
you see this community of ours is I think really being guided by the Pentagon
nowadays, And the Pentagon's attitude is, well, we're yeah, but there
may be something that's unusual out there. Wow, it really could be.
We're going to look into this and when we get answers, we're going to
get back to you on that. That's sort of where they are at right
now, which is absurd, It's ridiculous. Anyone who's looked at their interaction
with this over the last eighty years knows that they have dramatically, just vastly
more information than that. But but there's just what's not being asked. Well,
it's being removed from our conversation. One thing that's removed from our conversation
is the entire history of the UFO subject. Anything really through the twentieth century
is I think, is almost being exponge or is siphoned out of our conversation.
It's as if there was no UFO subject in the twentieth century. I
mean, it's incredible to me. And when you hear anyone discuss it,
for example, doctor Sean Kirkpatrick of the Arrow Group, he is essentially dismisses
it because, well, we don't have good data from those cases. I
don't agree with that whatsoever. I think there has been excellent data. But
the twentieth century has just been removed. So now once again UFO r UAP
and it's a new thing and there's no cover up. It takes the cover
up, takes the conspiracy out of the whole phenomenon. Another thing that's not
being discussed that is every bit as important as the history, is the scale
of activity of this phenomenon, which is worldwide and dense, dense, dense
population of activity. We don't we are so on the back foot here in
our our poor ability to track these sightings worldwide. We really have. I
think there's no excuse we should be doing much better now. We're well into
the twenty first century. We are well into the age of the web and
en intuconnectivity and everything else, and there is no excuse. We've got instant
translators, different languages. It's really not a big deal anymore. We need
data from around the world. But what the data that we do have looks
like is that, by my best guess estimation, tens of thousands of good
UFO sightings are probably happening around the world every year. So what are they
doing? And you know, for every UFO sighting, how many objects are
there that are not even being seen because we're clearly not seeing them all.
So there's I think a great deal of activity going on in all regions of
the world, over cities, over deserts, over mountains, in oceans,
in space. There is no area where these things can't be. So they've
got a global capacity and a global presence of and they're extremely advanced. So
I mean, you just stop and think we're in an era right now of
a global revolution going on all around us. Anyone with eyes can see that.
And at the same time, something we're not talking about is where I
would say, blanketed by a phenomenon that is of utterly awesome implications and we're
just not appreciating that. Okay, So I guess my the problem with the
government coming on and seeing that the wheeled out an extra trestur this is under
the assumption that extra tresturals are real physical beings, which is debatable. Let's
see, they just rolled one out right now in front of the White Eyes
trying to the Pentagon. All the news people were there because of their supposed
cover up. That's going to create more chaos from the world, right,
that's going to create so much distrust within the institutions, as if there isn't
enough distrust already there. I mean, there's people saying now that there's so
much distrust within these three letter organizations and within the government, within the Pentagon
that they have to hire outside people to go to these events and talk to
people that are paid by the government to put out information. Right, yeah,
several of them. So I think that they've really screwed themselves. If
extra trestrials are real and their actual real physical beings, they've screwed themselves because
if there were just a roll out in extra trestrial right now, be like,
oh, yeah, I guess what. We've been lying to you guys
for eighty years now since Roswell, or even before Roswell, because apparently as
a trustial craft has been crashing for hundreds of years now. So I think
that that is the actual problem. If it was an extraterrestrial that crash and
roll as well, they should have just came out and been like, hey,
it's an extra strestrial. Then they wouldn't have had this problem because then
people would have been aware. But since they think that there's been a cover
up and then they roll out an extra trestrial and everyone sees it, that's
going to create more turmoil. And that's why I don't think that they're ever
going to do it. I tend to agree with that. I read a
book on this thirteen years ago called an After Disclosure, and back then I
said, disclosure is a paradox. It's impossible, but it's inevitable. And
there's definitely an impossibility because there's absolutely no motivation for the powers that be to
want to give this up. It's just a can of worms, absolute god
awful mess for them. There may be certain inevitabilities about it, though.
I mean, I just don't think it's possible to keep something secret forever forever.
Maybe it is, maybe maybe certain things can be kept seeking forever,
but I don't think so. And so the question is how does that get
resolved and when. What I think has turned out since I wrote that book
is that we've seen a very significant centralization and control over the flow of information
in our world to an extent that I didn't exceed in twenty ten as where
we are now, so I think it is actually possible for very dominant narrative
control to exist on this So it kind of controlled rollout of information on a
limited basis might actually be possible in a way that I didn't think was possible
a decade ago. Thanks so much, pleasure, appreciate you, bet