All right, Hello everybody. This is Alejandro rojac with the Rojak Report.
Do you happen to have any headphones, Brian or maybe so? I?
Well I do, but they're actually kind of not working, which is why
they or not. Okay, that's all right, because there's just a bit
of new here. We okay, fine, Yeah, I can hear you.
Fine, I can hear me. Fine, I can put it on.
But yeah, that'd be great, But that would be great. Yeah,
that would help. Thank you. So I'm gonna meet the mike,
but just for a sec while I do this, so I'll explain to you
what we're doing here. This is Brian Bender of Politico, a senior correspondent
also the former editor of the Space and Defense Areas for Politico, and he's
been the OFO topic since December twenty seventeen. In fact, I don't know
who came out first. We'll see what he thinks either. Here's New York
Times whole Pentagon UFO project. So we're going to talk to him about Let's
see me there. How's it going? Can you hear me? I'm unfrozen?
Can you hear me? Yeah? I can hear you? Hello,
Hello, Hello, can you all hear me. Now you look frozen.
I'm good. Yeah, they can hear me. Uh oh, that's what
we get for trying to mess with Steph. They can hear you too.
I can hear you, so we can all hear Brian can't hear me,
So let's see, well he gets this reconfigured here. So of course the
news is at the Senate Intelligence Committee in their appropriations bill that's asking for information
about U A p U UFOs and uh, Brian essentially broke the mainstream media
story on that. Ask the second how he caught this wave you hear I
can hear you. Yes. If Brian and I seem a bit familiar,
it's because we are. Fortunately we were able to connect a couple of years
ago, uh to talk about UFO stuff, and we've been kind of meeting
and talking ever since. H Oh, he's calling, so this will be
fun. Hey, Hey, I don't know you're I just see you.
You're frozen, and I don't hear anything. I try to join again,
because we could hear you. You you were just finding everybody could hear me
too, Ah, i'd see now we can here you go? Can you
hear me? Here we go? Oh? Hey, thank for your patience
and sorry, no problem. Okay, so let's get into it. That
gave me some time to kind of catch people up a bit. They're already
aware. But so you were the first, kind of pretty much in the
mainstream media to break this story. How did you come to this information?
Well, you know, actually I had been hearing sort of some rumors that
there was going to be some sort of reference to the UAP issue in the
Senate Intelligence Bill, and that's something I've been hearing actually for a couple of
months, and so I've kind of been checking in from time to time.
And then, to be quite honest, I don't claim to have broken the
story. I think it was Dan Silva on Twitter and it listed first the
actual report from the committee, and so once I saw that that they had
actually published the committee's report, and this is a report on the bill,
so it's not the actual bill itself, but all of these pieces of legislation
usually have an accompanying report that kind of goes into more detail and explains some
of the provisions and why the committee's voting for this or voting for that or
not voting for something else. And so once I was able to just make
sure that was the real thing. We obviously posted a story, but this
was something that I think was in the works really for a couple of years.
Yeah. Interesting. Steve McDaniels, he's the other guy who broke this
on Twitter. He's actually I think in the chat here too, so he
asked some questions. But that's kind of interesting that it came kind of from
the UFO world then to you even you had heard some rumors. Why do
you think that's purposeful? Do you think it was a bit hidden away,
like they didn't want attention to that particular part. No. I mean my
sense is just those guys are on top of things and just you know,
got a hold of it or got word of it before I did. And
you know a lot of times these things, these committee reports will get sent
to the government printing office, and you know, sometimes it takes a couple
of weeks till it actually gets public posted. I think in this case,
the committee actually approved the bill two or three weeks ago, so you know,
it was just sort of the lag time until they actually printed printed the
report. But you know, there's obviously a lot of people interested in this
issue, and I've been one who's come at it, as you know,
Alejandra pretty late. In other words, I've covered the Pentagon, I've covered
the military, but I haven't necessarily covered this issue all that long. And
so you know, those those guys who are obviously researchers who focus on this
a lot more, it's not surprising that they would be on top of it.
Now you say that you've kind of heard rumors for the last couple of
years. Where did these rumors? Are these like inside rumors? Are these
rumors you know in Washington where you're hearing this sort of thing? Yeah,
I mean this was from so horses on Capitol Hill and also quite frankly to
the Stars Academy that Chris Mellons of the world, the Elssando's of the world,
who you know, it's no secret, have been advocating that the government
do more, pay more attention, throw more resources at this issue. And
so I think where they interest really began in Congress was with some of these
briefings that members of Congress were getting on the sightings by the Navy pilots over
recent years. And I think it's about a year ago that we reported that
the Senate Intelligence Committee or several members of the committee had been briefed about some
of those reports in a closed session, and that included Senator Mark Order of
Virginia, who's the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the leading Democrat.
I believe Senator Jean Shaheen I had spoken to her about some of the
briefings that she had received. And I'm pretty sure that Marco Rubio, who
now chairs that committee, was also among those who got briefed, and I
had heard that he was among those that was most interested in it. That
alarmed him. I think he comes at it more from a national security perspective.
You know, what are these things? If they're violating military airspace,
shouldn't we be a little more alarmed about them? And so from what I'm
told, it was his staff, obviously with his direction, that really took
the lead on putting this provision in the bill that would require this report this
public. Interesting now, I think you know some of the questions I've heard
and you'd probably get this is that the president, of course, was asked
by his son about UFOs recently and he mentioned Roswell. And so some people
are speculating that this is kind of a new campaign ambit on the Republican side
to get Trump, you know, re elected, which it may be true
as far as Trump mentioning it. But I think people are suspecting that maybe
Marco Rubio is trying to kind of back them up on this and it's a
whole campaign thing. But that doesn't seem to be the case in that as
you just said, Uh, Marco Rubio seems to be actually concerned about the
you know, the threat issues. Threat issues. Yeah, it's hard to
know. I mean, I don't get a sense from my reporting that it's
it's as coordinated or connected. I mean, obviously, the issue itself has
you know, I think you would probably agree, has broken through in in
sort of in the mainstream media in the public conversation over the last couple of
years in a way that it hasn't at least in a long time. And
you know, I think that's driven more questions to the president, you know,
who's been asked a couple times in interviews about this issue. He hasn't
said much quite frankly. I mean, there you know, there there's a
lot of headlines when they ask Trump about it, but when you look at
what he actually says, doesn't usually say anything at all. And so,
you know, I think there's this genuine interest and less of a stigma for
the political leadership to talk about this and raise questions about this. And so
I don't know that there's you know, any coordinated plan here. I mean,
I may be wrong, but I'm not sure there's you know, the
political uh sort of class thinks of a UFO vote. Is there a UFO
vote out there like that we could get if we talk about this more or
reveal more or you know, be more transparent. I mean, I know
it's it's an intense public interest, but you know, I'd like to see
a poll that would rank where UFOs sit or you know, where this issue
sits on you know, the economy, education, foreign policy. You know,
I'm not sure that it's it's up there, But maybe I'm wrong.
I mean, maybe maybe there is, Maybe there is a you know,
a level of support you could get politically by by talking about this more.
Yeah, it's interesting because I had those same questions from John Podesta's kind of
pushing for Hillary Clinton to address the UFO issue way back when. If they
had done some sort of analysis, because they do so much number crunching on
those campaigns, if they had found some sort of uh, you know,
numbers that supported the idea to push this issue as into the campaign as far
as openness, but who knows. So then when it comes to Rubio and
then asking the questions, it seems as though they were very influenced by Chris
Mellon. I would guess by firsthand discussions with him, and you can I'm
wondering if you have some insight on that. But also because he wrote that
op ed in the Hill where he kind of suggested that the Senate Intelligence Committee
do just this. Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt that Chris Mellon
has had a huge role in this. He's a creature of Washington. He
worked on the Senate Intelligence Committee, as you know, he was the Minority
staff director a number of years ago. He obviously had his perch in the
Pentagon. He's been writing op eds, he's been doing interviews. You mentioned
the hill Op ed, which is probably I bet it's maybe a year ago
by now. Maybe it's not that long ago, but you know, if
you look at that hill Op ed and you look at the language that's in
the Senate Intelligence spill, it's, you know, pretty similar. He's calling
for at least as a first step, let's figure out who knows what and
you know, what data is being collected, not just in the military,
but in intelligence agencies. And let's centralize this somewhere, because I think,
you know, the point he's always made is that there's no real uniform process
at least that exists today that he knows of that pulls the common picture together.
What do we know what reports are coming in from, where who's collecting
them? Are they, you know, being put into some single place.
And I think the answer to that is no, they're not. And so
I think he's been pushing this as a first step. Let's pull it together
somewhere, make these agencies talk to each other, share information, and put
it in one place so Congress can see. And I think what's most interesting
about this language is making it public, or at least there being a public
version of it, which I think is not necessarily something that I expected.
I mean, I certainly was not that surprised that they took this step,
but the fact that they wanted to be public, now that is an interesting
part because in Mellon's article he said he suggested it would be fine if the
report was classified at whatever level they felt it should be. However, this
is asking for a public part. Do you have any suspicion or any ideas
of why they included this? What Adam Kehoe is called and he mentioned this
in his article and he just mentioned it and the chat kind of stronger language
than Melon's in other words, that they are calling for this public portion.
You know, it's hard to know, I mean unless you know we could
sit here and talk to because name is Brian Walsh is the staff person for
Rubio, who I'm told has sort of taken the lead on this, I
mean without talking to him and knowing exactly what they're thinking is. You can
look at it two ways. You could look at it as, oh,
this is stronger, it's forcing it, you know, a public report,
where you know you can't just put it in some secret document and bury it.
But you can also look at it the other way, where it's weaker
in some ways, because if you're an overseer in Congress, you can see
everything, presumably if the agencies are willing to tell you and share with you
what they know. But a public report, what I worry about is that
it becomes a three page nothing burger that you know is not much more than
we already know. I think it's going to be difficult to do it that
way because of the way the language is written. It's very specific about what
you need to look at and the questions you need to answer, but around
long enough to know. Some of these public reports end up being answering the
mail by writing something, but the something doesn't really give you a whole lot.
So I think it, you know, whether this is stronger weaker,
I think is to be determined Number one, whether this thing gets adopted by
the full Senate. Because it's just in the committee's bill right now. I
think it'll be very difficult for the Senate to strip it out because it's you
know, when it goes to the floor, because it's, uh, you
know, it's very public. Now we know this is in there, which
is not always the case. In fact, it's rarely the case of the
Intelligence bill that we know it's the public version of it is usually you know,
not very exciting. So if they pull it out, people will wonder
why are they pulling it out. They're going to have to explain that.
And I think, quite frankly that you know, it's not that kind.
I mean, the issue is controversial, but the process is not that controversial.
All they're asking for is a report. They're not allocating money to go
research UFOs. They're you know, they're they're they're they're doing the bear the
bare minimum. But in this case, the bare minimum happens to be a
big step because of the issue. So here are some other ideas on the
public side that I was thinking of it. I'd like to hear your thoughts.
Could it be possible that A they might be gauging the UH I guess,
all of these agencies and how much they're willing to share publicly or end
or B they're also gauging the their constituents temperature on all of this to make
sure they're kind of hedging their bets as far as you know, politically,
Yeah, I think it's there's no doubt it's a test of the agencies on
a couple fronts. I mean, one, are they just simply willing to
share information even with the committee, let alone the public, And so I
think on that score, you know, it'll be hard to know exactly what
goes on behind the scenes, but I can imagine there will be pushback.
I mean, there will be agencies that don't want to share information, you
know, the CIA, the Pentagon, variety of other agencies they are notorious
for sort of you know, sitting on their own turf and not wanting to
share things. And so that'll be a test just how much are they willing
to cough up. I think the other you know, I think the other
tests they're doing in this process is and this gets back to what I said
earlier about Chris Mellon's sort of campaign here to centralize what we know is just
simply answer that question, what do we know? I mean, what do
these agencies actually have readily available, you know, in terms of recent intelligence
data that has to do with this issue. And I don't think we really
know the answer to that. I mean, I know there's sort of deep
suspicion and good reason to be suspicious that the government does know a lot more
than they're telling us. That there's files somewhere, there's radar images, there's
videos, there's testimony, and I'm not saying I doubt that. I just
we really don't know because this world is so secretive, and you know that
that could end up being a real problem here because I envisioned that it's quite
possible some of these agencies, because of the stigma of the issue, because
nobody wants to be the UFO guy, that at least in recent years they
haven't collected much. Doesn't mean that there haven't been reports. It doesn't mean
there haven't been sightings or unexplained phenomenon that you know, people scratch their heads
about. But I don't know that we have any real confidence that there's been
a reporting process for it to actually retain that stuff in some place, and
so it may end up being very haphazard, which of course will immediately lead
a lot of people to be well, they're hiding things, they're covering up,
they're not telling us what they know. And I think all can be
true. In other words, they can be resistant, the agencies can be
resistant in coughing up what they do have. But I also think there's a
possibility that at least in recent years, you know, the last ten or
twenty years, they might not have much data at all because they simply didn't
keep it or you know, nobody was tasked with being the UFO person.
Maybe I'm naive. I mean, maybe every one of these agencies has a
UFO person and they're sitting on piles of stuff that they don't want to share.
But you know this, this is this is at least a way that
we could start pushing that issue and seeing what's really there or what isn't there?
Right as it isn't there? Why isn't it there? I mean,
if all reports and that's the second step here is maybe you know, in
the bill actually touches on this is tell us what is the process for centralizing
this stuff? Who's in charge? They want to know that too as part
of this report, not just what do you have, but how do you
gather it? Who gathers it, where does it go? Do you need
more resources? I think there's a question in there that asks, you know,
do you need more resources or research dollars to get at this issue?
So somebody Adam raised a good point here, and I guess what I'm going
to get at is similar in that it does seem like to your point,
you know, not all these agencies are on the same page with all of
this. For instance, the Navy has said essentially they're they've recently beefed up
their reporting process regarding uapiece and story that you broke actually in Politico just recently,
I think as recent as yesterday or the day before, John Greenwald got
a response from a Foyer that had indicated that the Air Force had said,
we don't have a particular UAP reporting process, but it is included in our
op REP reporting, which is kind of how you flag the importance of different
intelligence reports that you're sending up the wire. So there's a big difference thereon
kind of like what you're saying is that, you know, it seems like
the Navy might have been a little more coordinated about it, whereas the Air
Force wasn't. Kind of surprisingly, so we may see vast differences throughout these
agencies because they are asking for all of these agencies to report, and they
even kind of called out the FBI, which is interesting. Yeah, I
thought that was interesting too, the reference to the FBI. I mean,
I assume they're they're they're ah, you know, they're they're trying to be
comprehensive. In other words, if there are reports, you know, additional
reports that we don't know of of UAPs. And again, and I use
the word the term UAPs very broadly. I mean, you know, as
the military does, it could be something that looks like a flying saucer,
or it could be a drone that doesn't have permission to be flying over our
navy base. But in a case like that, if there was a sighting
of some unauthorized intrusion because it's domestic US territory or in the in the case
of domestic military base, you would call in the FBI potentially to come in
and figure out who's screwing around with their drone. And so I think that's
why they want that's one of the reasons why they want the FBI to be
part of this too. How many times have they been called in for,
you know, investigating these things. I also thing, I'm just looking at
some of the questions here. I think the reason why the Committee keys in
on the Navy's task force is that, you know, that's been the organization
that has been briefing the committee about the Navy pilot sightings. It's you know,
it's out in the public. I mean, we know the Navy's been
talking about the new guidelines that they've issued for people to report these sightings.
Clearly, you know they have at least some formal operation that's looking into this.
I I'm I'm one who doesn't believe it's very formal. I think it's
it's you know, you can put three people in a room in the Pentagon
and call it a task force and have no budget and know nothing but a
bunch of paper shuffling, and I have a few feling that this task force
is more that. I don't think the Navy has opened up the budget and
said go, you know, go task force and find the answers. So,
you know, the mention of the Navy task force, I think is
just simply because that's the real thing. They know it exists. They've interacted
with that task force or the few people that are that are on it,
and you know, and even the Air Force. You know, my sense
is the Air Force has been deferring to the Navy on this. You guys
already have your task force. You know, if we can help, let
us know. But you know, I don't get the sense the Air Force,
and you know, as a lot of people have pointed out, and
a lot of people have wondered, why is the Air Force, which in
some ways has a hell of a lot more responsibility for protecting the airspace of
the United States and the Navy does. Why are they not more involved in
this or more public about it, and you know, there's this sort of
narrative out there a little bit that the Air Force doesn't want to touch this
because acknowledging that there are unidentified aircraft semi regularly interfering in American airspace and there's
virtually nothing we can do about it. Basically is the Air Force acknowledging that
they have failed on the primary mission they've been given, which is to defend
the airspace of the United States, and so they kind of don't want to
go there bureaucratically because it opens up a can of worms that you know,
they don't know how to close. But you know, but again, this
report is going to presumably this report that the committee is asking for, is
going to change that because all of these agencies are going to have to contribute
to this thing somehow unless they try to kill it, which is not inconceivable
that these agencies are not going to want this, and but it would be
very hard if it's in the bill for the President of Veto, given what
he said. So it's kind of interesting, uh, you know, it
makes me kind of chuckle that now we have this, we have this Space
Force, and now we have the unidentified aerial phenomena task force which seems to
be a sort of an extension from a TIP and uh, I would like
to hear your thoughts on that. I think Chris mellan or not Chris Millan,
but others have said, you know it just and Luise Alessando has even
said that it's become this multi agency kind of task force. Uh. You
know, some researchers, Roger Gassel I think, got a response from the
d D that said, yes, it is a multi agency task force now
all confirming that it still continues. But like you said, probably a small
group. I mean, Aleizando seemed to be the same. He didn't have
a budget, so you know, he's just grabbing materials and trying to do
analysis as he can, kind of like a portfolio as you put it,
which I feel seems very accurate. So, but does this seem to be
you know, the organization that el Zando's been referring to that's kind of evolved,
I believe, So, I mean, you know, I think this
task force is kind of the outgrowth of what was a TIP as we know,
a TIP officially you know, hasn't actually existed in almost a decade.
I mean, I think it was twenty twelve that the budget for that the
original funding stream ran out, and so I don't get the impression that there's
been any dedicated funding, at least in that case of you know, the
what was a TIP which was originally in the Defense Intelligence Agency but then was
moved underneath the Undersecretary for Intelligence. I don't get the sense that there's been
any new budget stream for that mission or that portfolio. I think it was
one of Alessando's jobs, among a lot of jobs. You know, intelligence
officers often have a bunch of things that they're tasked with doing, and you
know, there's no doubt that this was a mission that he took very seriously
and to the point where he was very frustrated that nobody else seemed to care
about it. And so fast forward to where we are now. I think
the Navy Task Force grows out of that in the sense that some of the
juiciest reports that a TIP had pulled together obviously were originally the NIMTS case in
two thousand and four. And then you know, the Roosevelt doesn't come until
much later. It comes after ATIP is gone, but it does happen when
Aleizondo is still in the Pentagon, still spending some of his time on this
and so and I think when the Congress wanted a point of contact in the
Pentagon, it sort of logically fell to the Navy because the most well known
cases involved Navy pilots. And so the Navy, I think, in some
ways has taken this on just by inertia. But I also think they've been
pressured a little bit by some members of Congress to show us that you're doing
something. You know, we still don't really have answers for what these reports
going back a number of years were all about. And so, you know,
so again I wouldn't look at the Navy Task Force system, you know,
big well financed group of people that are digging into all these reports.
I think it's it's as much a bureaucratic way to answer the mail and the
public demand as it is a true blue interest in getting to the bottom of
this. Now, this is a good question who would likely be the responsible
official. It seems as though the request from the Senate Intelligence Committee is putting
laying this in O and I's lap. But you know, Chris Mellen had
suggested it be the Defense the d n I. Where do you think that
will end up, because it does seem like they are asking for a more
coordinated effort of central you know, repository. Yeah, well, I think
I think the reference to the opposite naval intelligence is connected to the task force.
I think the task force sits in O n I. You know,
whoever's kind of been tasked with overseeing this issue? Is it the opposite naval
intelligence? And so that's why they're sort of called out specifically. But to
your point, I mean, the language is very clear that it asks the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense to sort of
oversee this, sort of figure out how to best do this. And so
I'm interested at some point, particularly if this bill gets adopted or this language
and the bill gets adopted, asking John Radcliffe about this. John Radcliffe is
the new Director of National Intelligence who was just put in there. He's a
former member of Congress or Republican. I mean, I'd be curious to know
was he ever briefed on this when he was in the House, what does
he think about it? Because ultimately he's going to be the guy who either
you know, stalls this or runs with it. So I think that's that's
one person who I would at some point like to hear more from. And
then the Secretary Defense Mark Esper, I mean, you know, I don't
think he's ever been asked about this issue, at least publicly, so I
think, and that's another benefit of this. No matter what this bill looks
like in the end, and no matter what this report, if they actually
do do this report looks like, and what the public version looks like,
I mean, this is another in a pretty significant way to force the issue.
I mean, you now have a real requirement potentially in the law for
these agencies to address this, and which means we in the media can ask
them about it, and we're not asking some esoteric question about do you believe
in UFOs, what do you think about this language, what are you going
to do about it? How are you going to do it? And so,
you know, I think that's exciting in some ways because it for someone
like me who covers Congress, who covers the policy world, this is you
know, a huge piece of meat that's just been thrown into the arena on
this issue, which has a lot of interest, and you know, is
obviously intriguing because anything that's got a big question mark over it, especially when
it comes to the intelligence agencies, is by definition newsworthy kind of getting into
the background of the growing momentum. It seems as though that this has kind
of been a Chris Mellen strategy that you've been aware of longer than most I
think, to make exactly what's happened happened in that you know, he seems
to be definitely an apolitical type of person. His main interest is the task
at hand in this case, to get more visibility and interest and information out
about this topic. And it seems like you know, from this plan from
the get go, you being involved with one of their kind of targets as
opposed meaning they wanted they put together a package of material with the Alizondo initially
trying to get this up the ladder to Mattis and others. That didn't work,
so that it became kind of a media strategy to package together some sexy
videos and some information to entice the media to cover this. They hit it
with New York Times yourself, I think Washington Post came out with a story
of the same day, which created this fervor, which then made the DoD
Navy respond and then finally kind of the Navy perhaps accident. Well, it
seems purposely opening Pandora's box by admitting that we do take these seriously and we
do take these reports, at which point there was kind of this tool now
for the politicians or even public citizens to request information. Okay, you're looking
into UAPs. First of all, oh, I think this is a pertinent
question that hasn't been asked. Why you've been laying to the public for all
these years? But second of all, what have you got? What have
you gotten? And now there seems to be this sense and Chris mellen has
even tweeted this that the Senate Intelligence Agency is like, why haven't you told
us about this? You're supposed to brief us on these things, and you
haven't given us any information, and now we want information. It does seem
like a very savvy kind of plan that was put into place that has been
successful. Yeah. I mean, for first of all, I don't know
that I have any unique insight into Chris Mellon's role. I mean, obviously
I've interviewed Chris a number of times, you know, going back to the
beginning of this saga in twenty seventeen, and the revelations about a tip.
But you know, it's not rockets when you have someone like him, who's
a former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer, a former Pentagon official, who's the most
public probably at least of this sort of establishment class about this issue and hammering
on this issue. You know through op eds, through interviews on Fox News
that you know that he's had a big role in sort of shepherding this thing
through. And he's been pretty clear about that. I mean, just don't
hide that, right right, that he you know that he thinks this is
an important issue and it's not getting enough attention. And you know, like
we said earlier, I mean, he's the one who wrote the op ed
that basically laid out what this report that the Committee is now asking for should
look like. And so I think, you know, when the history is
written about this issue, and obviously we don't know the ending yet, I
think Chris Mellen will have played a very instrumental role in this because he is
the rare, not completely rare, but relatively rare person who has the connections
within the intelligence community. He's you know, taken seriously, has a reputation
who's taken on this issue, and he's been able to move the ball,
I think down the field in a way that no one has at least in
a very long time. And I give him a lot of credit for that.
I mean he I think he's genuinely I got the impression that there was
a time over the last couple of years where he was getting pretty frustrated and
about to throw in the towel. Like in other words, there's been some
revelations, there's been some discussion at the highest levels about this issue and why
it. You know, it should get more attention, but then it sort
of kind of fell off the radar. But I think this will only embolden
him, probably this victory of sorts to keep pushing. I don't know if
that answers your question, but does it does? Definitely, But I'm trying
to how strong is this momentum, how strong is Marco Rubio's intent to get
information? And this is just one tool. I would imagine, let's say
this doesn't work, they have other tools in the toolbox that they can utilize.
Now, there have been other people in Congress who have asked questions and
haven't gotten a lot of answers, But of course they're not coming from the
Senate Intelligence Committee. So do you think they there is momentum that, even
if this doesn't work, that they're going to keep pursuing this issue? You
know, I think that's a good question. You know, how how deep
business reservoir of interest, particularly among policymakers who can make a difference, who
can force the issue. You know, I'm not sure I have a good
answer there. I mean, I feel like, I mean, number one,
we're in the middle of a pandemic, an economic meltdown, lots of
other problems that are on the you know, the agenda. This is not
one that a lot of members of Congress are running around thinking about every day.
They're just simply not And it's really, really, really hard to get
Congress's attention on anything. And so just prefacing that I think is important.
Number Two, I don't I think there is momentum, but I think it's
probably among a very select few members of Congress that really care about the issue,
who have been briefed about it or on their own got out of their
way to educate themselves and feel like it does need to be addressed. I
think they tend to be hawkish members of Congress, and by hawkish, I
mean, they're focused on national security. They're big supporters of defense budgets.
Marco Rubio is a hawk. I think he comes at this issue with an
open mind, clearly, but he's also thinking, these are aircraft or spacecraft
or something that are potentially threatening to our military, and why are we not
more alarmed about it. I think the same goes for Congressman Mark Walsh in
the House, who's retiring this year. But you know, he's come up
because he wrote a few letters to the Navy he was demanding more answers.
He sits on the Homeland Security Committee, and you know, I think he's
very animated about it. He's not a committee chairman, so he doesn't really
have a whole lot of you know, a ton of influence in this issue.
But you know, and then some of the other members of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, clearly, Mark Order as the vice chairman, must have supported
this provision that Rubio got into the bill. And so I don't feel like
there's some groundswell here. You know, it's sort of like it's in many
ways it's a rear guard action. It's a very plotting step by step two
steps forward, one step back, then just standing in place for nine months
with nothing happening, and then you take a step forward. You know,
I think that's a lot of things get done quite frankly in Congress, you
know, unless it's a bill that is responding to something like police reform and
needs to be dealt with. Now, you don't really get momentum on anything
unless there's a crisis. And right now there's no crisis in UAPs that we
know of, and so you know, I think the rear guard action has
been launched. I think there's no doubt about that. But how many troops
are involved, how many members of Congress they are going to push for this
and not just push to get this bill passed, but ry roughshot over the
agencies to actually get a real report done, because it's one thing to say,
give me the report, but they could sit on it. They could
land, they could like like I said earlier, they could deliver some public
version of it that doesn't really tell as much of anything. You know.
They could also just write a report saying we went back in our files and
like you and I when we foia things, they could say, well we
didn't find anything. Sorry. But again, at least that's something at least
it's forcing them to address the issue. And maybe the ultimate answer here is
that if there are reports, even if they're not collected in some centralized way,
reports of these ufps and more recent reports, maybe the next step is
to actually put some money towards it. You know, the Congress could step
up and say, well, you need dedicated resources to do this. And
so I think we're in the beginning of a very long process that could also
completely die in the next Congress. I mean, a whole new Congress comes
in, potentially new committee chairs, the Democrats could take over, and Marco
Rubio is basically powerless if they win the Senate. So there's a lot of
unknowns here. But I wouldn't I wouldn't count our chickens yet. It is
an interesting question because let's say, of course Trump has made a couple of
comments around UFOs, but not a lot, not a lot. If Joe
Biden becomes president, Potesta may have a role in his presidency, and Poedessa
certainly is very interested in the topic, so maybe he would push something forward.
But what about the House? How interested? Do you have any sense
at all? How the House and their reception to the bill has been that's
interesting. I mean, you know, I don't I asked Adam Schiff about
this issue. Last summer, I was in an event, the Aspen Security
Forum. It they're not doing it this summer, but every summer the Aspen
Institute invites all the muckety MUCKs from national security circles out to Aspen and they
have a couple of day conference and Adam Schiff was one of the speakers,
and I was moderating a panel, and after one of the sessions, I
was chatting with him about a bunch of things and I said, hey,
you know, this issue has been bubbling up. And you know, he
didn't say much, but he did say that there's no doubt there are members
of my committee that are interested in this. You know, I have not
personally been briefed. He said he had not gotten a briefing about the Navy
sightings. And again this is a year ago, this is July of twenty
nineteen. But he said that several members had and that he had hoped to
or he had planned to. And you know, he said, I don't
know what to make of it. It's kind of interesting. It's it's certainly,
you know, something that would fall under our purview we should look into
and so he didn't dismiss it, but he also didn't give me the impression
that he was like paying much attention to it. Quite frankly, maybe that's
changed, you know, but he did clearly suggest that there were members on
the House Intelligence Committee that that were interested. So the way this will work
is the Senate will pass its Intelligence Authorization Bill, and again this is a
massive bill that is, you know, supposed to set policy for all the
intelligence agencies on everything you can think of under the sun. It's a mostly
classified bill. The House will pass its version, and then they'll have to
have a conference committee. So the House and the Senate will pick a number
of members that will then go in a room and look at the Senate version
of the bill and the House version of the bill and basically try to marry
it sort of come up with a common version. And so if there are
provisions like this one that are in the Setate bill but not in the House
bill, they have to discuss that do we leave it in, do we
take it out? Do we change They can also change it, not in
the conference committee, but they can change it on the floor. So you
know, Senate votes for the Senate Intelligence bill. House votes for its own
version, they then marry it together. Then they both have to vote on
the final bill again. And so there's a bunch of steps here that have
to take place. But you know, if there are members of the House
Intelligence Committee that care about this issue, as Adam Schiff mentioned, some of
those members could be part of that potentially part of that conference committee that has
to come up with a final bill for both houses of Congress and the past.
So you know, again I said earlier, I think it'd be very
difficult to take this out. It's not impossible to take this language out.
But you know, the Senate, the full Senate, still has a chance
to take it out on its own without even worrying about what the House thing.
I mean, when they debate the bill on the floor, they could
change it. They could make it a completely classified report. I could see
that being a possibility where somebody might say, well, since we don't know
exactly what we know, you know, don't we want to make this secret
so that we're not revealing any you know. And the committee sort of references
alludes to that challenge a little bit in the language. If you remember,
they make some reference. Do we know that this is sensitive stuff potentially,
but yet we still want a public report. And so you could see some
people raising questions about how public it should be because usually in these cases the
report is secret and then they have an unclassified annex to the report. This
is flipped where the report is public and oh, you can have a classified
annex if you want or if you need it, which is very interesting.
I mean, it's it's it's definitely unusual the way they've done this. So
I guess advocates the best thing they can not just contact Marco Rubio, which
Chris mellen has kind of put out there on Twitter, but also their own
representatives in the House and the Senate to let them know they're interested, to
hopefully influence when they come across it, to leave it in Oh you mean
like the public role. Yeah, the public I mean, I think,
like anything else. I mean, constituents can right their congress person. I
think at this stage, you know, you'd probably want to write to not
just members of the intelligence committees, but the leadership of the House and Senate.
So mis McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, if you feel strongly about this,
they're going to be the the gatekeepers on what eventually gets debated by you know,
the Senate in the full House. But it certainly can't hurt I mean,
if people think this, feel strongly about this issue, it can't hurt
to badgery. You remember of Congress about it, or ask them in a
town hall or a virtual town hall or whatever they're doing these days. Right,
Adam is asking again, do you know that Melon has any advocates or
people he's working with in the House that I don't know? I know,
I mean, I mentioned Congressman Mark Walsh of North Carolina. I think he's
an ally. I mean, and I say that not because I know specifically,
but just because he's been very public about this issue, more public than
others. So it's possible that he's working behind the scenes. He told me
that he was. Mark Walsh told me a number of months ago that he
was also enlisting. At least the interest of his name is escaping me.
Now, is it Andrew or Anthony Rose? A young congressman from New York
State. He's a former military guy. Let me look look him up here,
Andy Rose, who's apparently a military veteran. He's young, he's in
his thirties, he apparently cares about this issue, and so you know there
there are ah, there are definitely you know, yeah, no Andy Rose,
am I not find him. I'm sorry, Max Rose, Max Max
Rose of New York, who is a I think he's just got elected in
twenty eighteen. Yeah, he's thirty three from Brooklyn. He apparently is quite
interested in this issue. So I just I don't know what he's doing about
it, but Wall should mention that he was an ally and I think they
serve on the same subcommittee as part of the Homeland Security Committee. And so
I just throw that out there because, like I said earlier, I think
there are you know, let's call them the true believers, and by that
I mean true believers that this is a real issue. It's not a conspiracy
theory. It's not something to be dismissed, laughed at and joked at.
It's a real policy issue that we need to figure out what to do about.
And so you know there are members. But again, you know,
as it gotten to the level where you know, there's huge blocks in the
Democratic and Republican Party that are thinking about this, I don't think we're close
to that. Yeah, So have you been vindicated it all. I mean,
I had a controversial topic. I'm sure you got some raised eyebrows when
you started covering all of this. I was surprised when you started covering it
with your Space emposium that you guys have put together. But now that it's
gotten far this, do you have some of your colleagues coming to you and
saying, wow, Bender, I guess you were onto something a little bit.
I mean, I don't I always got buy in for my editor as
a politico. I mean I never really I mean obviously at first when I
came to a couple of them and said, you know, I think the
Pentagon's been doing some research on this issue, and you know, they got
some money from Congress, and there was a little bit of the sort of
eye rolling. And I think you and I have talked about this before.
But I think once it became clear that this was a real project, it
had a real budget, and this is the A tip program, there was
never any real pushback like, oh, this sounds like a good story,
let's pursue it. But yeah, clearly, you know, over the course
the last few years, there's a few comments here and there, but you
know, I've had this discussion I've been thinking about writing a piece about it.
I don't know how familiar you are with the Overton window, but I
only recently came across it. Overton was a scholar, professor fairly recent.
He actually died quite young. I think he died in the early nineties.
But he came up with this theory and they became known as the Overton window.
But think of a window, which is the space where it's acceptable in
academia, policy circles, think tank, congressional committees, any organization that talks
about public policy. There's kind of a window of what you can talk about,
what's sort of in the window, what's acceptable. And I think in
a number of ways the Overton windows has shifted in recent years or it's expanded,
and not just on this issue where the Senate and TODs Committee chairman can
feel like it's okay to put out a public report, you know, not
talking about UFOs, not talking about aliens. There's no words like that in
there, but clearly confronting very head on an issue of you know, unidentified
objects that seem to defy any technology that we know of the fact that he
feels comfortable shows that that window maybe of what's acceptable to talk about has expanded
or shifted, and I think other examples of it are, you know,
all over the place free college. I think five or ten years ago,
if a presidential Canada talked about free college, they would be laughs, off
the stage, what are you talking about. We don't do that. That's
not acceptable. You know, the sort of establishment education experts would say,
oh, that's crazy. Well that's not crazy anymore. I mean Bernie Sanders
talked about it, Elizabeth Warren has talked about it. People are proposing actual
ways to do it, and so I think the Overton window is moved on
this issue. I think it's a combination of just access to so much information
it's out there. I think the younger generation is more open minded about a
lot of things, and that includes younger generation members of Congress. I mean
I just mentioned Max Rose. He's thirty three years old. He doesn't necessarily
have the baggage or the scar tissue on an issue like this that maybe you
know, members of Congress from our generation or when we were growing up do,
and so you know, that presents an opportunity where you can talk about
things that were sort of written off before or at least written off in recent
memory. I mean, as you know better than I, and I find
it fascinating when I read some of the history of the UFO issue. There
were actually members of Congress that actually cared about this issue even years ago and
wrote memos about it. And I forget where I saw. I think he
was the Speaker of the House. John McCormick in the nineteen sixties was on
the record talking about this issue, like there was a lot of reports,
and he said, we should be doing more about this, and of course,
as far as we know, nothing really happened. But so you know,
I think we're in a new era, but it's it's not completely new.
If we need to keep in mind that there has been public officials that
have you mentioned John Podesta, there have been public officials of note that have
been willing to talk about this issue. I just think we're in there and
now we're more willing and they don't see it as political suicide, you know,
to be the UFO person or the UAP person. But I think John
Podesta, I mean, in a Biden administration, if Biden wants a national
commission to get to the bottom of this, John Podesta would be the perfect
person to run it, no doubt. He's worked with him very closely,
and he was around during a lot of testa Washington UFO hygienks type of stuff
that was going on when some people think he's an alien himself. Yeah,
I think too. So I have a a couple of questions from the chat
and when was along the lines of your last It's kind of along the lines
of what were the Senate briefed on? You know, what information they get?
Steve asked, do you think that the Senate Intelligence Committee was shown incredible
evidence to justify including that verbiage in the report? Especially if you consider the
stigma involved with the UFO UAP topic. It seems they were willing to include
it at the risk of public and political scrutiny. So I'm trying to find
the you cut out there for a second. Can you sort of repeat that
or I'm trying to find the actual Oh, it was different, but I'll
post it here so you could read it too. It's from Steve. But
yeah, do you think that I have another question tool here they can use?
So, I mean, I think they were manly. The short answer
is, I don't know. I mean, you know, I don't know
what exactly the Senate and Totals Committee, you know, learned what they were
brief But you know, I think trying to think of it this way,
I mean, if you were a member of the Senate Telenis Committee where I
was, and I was sitting there and a bunch of Navy guys came in
including it sounds like in one of the briefings, at least one of the
pilots who had actually made one of the reports, came in and gave you
this very detailed, credible sounding report about what we're seeing. You know,
why we can't explain it? You might and then you saw the three videos
that the Navy put out. I mean, it's just human nature. I
mean they might be like, wow, what the hell is that? Like,
why do we not know what those are? And so, you know,
I'm not ready to assume that they know anything a whole lot more than
we do. I mean, as I said earlier, you know, oftentimes,
even though they're not supposed to be the last to know, the oversight
committees in Congress are the last to know. In other words, especially when
you're dealing with intelligence agencies, they don't necessarily, you know, give up
the goods on their own unless they need to. And so I don't get
the impression that the Senate Intel Committee knows anything more than we do. I
mean they probably they do no more than we do in the sense that they
have a clearance and they can see classified documents that we can't get. Maybe
they saw the actual reports which we've been trying to get through Foye, Like
what did the pilots actually see? What did they say? Where the interview
transcripts I've asked for the more recent reports since last year when the Navy came
up with these new guidelines for reporting these Well, what have they gotten if
people actually reported them and haven't really gotten anywhere. So maybe know it's possible
they could have seen those or some version of that stuff that we in the
public haven't seen. But I think there's enough out there in the public that
if you're open minded about this. An open mind doesn't mean that you believe
in aliens. It just means that you believe that there's credible people that are
reporting things that we can't explain. There's enough already out there to take the
next step, which is, well, what else do we know? Should
we be doing more? Should we be asking more questions, Should we,
you know, be interfacing more with our allies about this issue, because you
know, that's something that comes up a lot. Which is interesting to me
is that we seem to be behind the ball on this, like in other
words, a lot of other countries have gotten over their Overton window has been
opened a long time ago, where they talk about this more openly. But
what's interesting is I don't get the sense that they have a whole lot more
answers than we do. I mean, you would know more than me,
But no, they got the code on this. I don't think they have
I agree. I mean we have the UK. I mean we have quite
a bit of inight into what they were examining, which is very similar to
us. And they didn't really take a stance. The only real government that's
taken a stance is Chili. But Chile analyzed cases that they had that are
familiar to ours, similar that you find in Blue Book, are similar to
the Knimt situation where essentially an object is tracked, jets are scrambled, the
object flies off, the jets come home, and essentially they've determined that they're
not They don't seem malicious, like they want to hurt us, but that
there's something there. So I think you're right about that personally, at least
from what we've seen of what the other governments know. And I also think
that that drives some of the what I sense, at least from where I
sit, is a not really a lack of interest in this by the military,
but a sort of a sense of resignation that you know, it's just
really worth looking into. I mean, you know, if I had a
dime for every time somebody told me the Air Force looked at this for forty
years and they found nothing, why would we do that again? Which you
know is sort of a lame answer, because you know, there's always new
information, there's always fresh evidence data that you could look at. But I
get the sense that there's a resignation that we're never going to figure this out,
so like, why waste our time? And they're not threatening, they
don't seem to be. You know, they're not shooting down our aircraft,
they're not blowing up our nuclear power plants, and so I think that's a
big part of it. You know, I had a conversation. I think
I've shared this with you. This was not something that I was able to
use on the record. But I've talked to enough senior people in the Air
Force and the Navy to get a pretty good sense. They don't think these
aircraft for foreign adversaries, and they don't think that there's some secret US government
plane. And you know, some of these people I've talked to who don't
want to go public, they have access to a lot of the deep dark
black programs. They can go in their super users as they're called. They
can go into the systems and have a pretty wide access view of what are
the secret programs we've got going on. And I don't get the impression that
they think it's one of ours. They don't think it's one of theirs,
because I think if they did think it was one of theirs, they would
take it more seriously, right, I mean, if they thought it was
Russian or Chinese. I mean they'd be running around and kicking out their head.
I mean asking for a trillion more dollars for more hypersonic missiles and more
defenses and more. And they're not doing that. And I think it's because
they don't know what the hell they are and they don't really have a ton
of confidence that they're going to figure it out, and maybe some of them
don't want to know because it's sort of like I don't want to go there
because it will up and potentially eving we're all about, We'll have to go
back to basics you've ran across as similar to what you just said, even
you know, a lot of people think there's some kind of deep, dark,
hidden reservoir of secrets. Even if that is the case, the majority
of the military, and this is my experience from interviews and similar to what
you're talking about, the majority even of leadership in the military, are kind
of like, well, there's something out there, we don't know what it
is, but we have no ability to even figure it out. Nothing I'm
going to worry about. But at the same time, they have an attitude
that, even though that's my attitude about this topic, I don't want to
share that with the public. I don't want the public to know I'm taking
this seriously and I'm just resigned to the idea that I'm never going to find
out right. And you know, we've talked about this before too, but
but I do think I think it's quite possible that there is information to be
known that the government has, and if at all possible, it would be
nice for you know, assuming it doesn't, you know, risk national security,
it would be nice for us the public to be able to know that.
But at the same time, while I think there might be things in
there hidden, I'm not convinced that the people who run these agencies know the
stuff is there. I mean, you have to remember, these agencies are
massive. Oftentimes, even within the agencies, they're not talking to each other,
let alone sharing information with another agency and so, and then there's the
whole question of what records are retained by law. These agencies are not required
to keep a lot of things. They're just not so small percentage that they
actually have to keep. So imagine now in the electronic age, as opposed
to the paper age, where you just clean off a hard drive because it's
a need more space, or you know, as opposed to writing up a
report and sending it to some functionary who then sends it to the National Archives
or it gets filed away. I feel like we also live in an era
where we're even with all the information we have, our government's not doing a
very good job of retaining it. I mean, they're getting better I think
the National Archives has put out a lot of new guidance in recent years about
how to maintain electronic archives. But I always tell the story about an Army
historian who I once talked to, who said, this goes back five or
ten years, but he said, I can tell you where every American soldier
was during World War Two, virtually every day, where they were within five
miles of where they were standing. But if you want me to do a
recounting of the Battle of Solder City in Baghdad in two thousand and four,
I can't tell you anything because all the hard drives of those units wiped out
when another unit came in and replaced them. Now, granted, I could
go interview the kids who were there, who fought the Battle of Souturn City
in two thousand and four, and interview them in a way I can interview
World War two people. But I don't have a paper trail the way I
do for things that happened a lifetime ago. And so I just throw that
out there because I think there's this misimpression, and I sometimes fall trapped to
it too, that somehow the government just has miles and miles of filing cabinets
of stuff they're hiding, and no doubt they are, but it's not miles
and miles. It's like you know, your living room full. And they're
in places that a lot of the senior people don't even know that they're there.
They've never read them, they've never looked at them. They aren't even
they wouldn't even be able to tell you what's in there. And so that's
one of the things that's beneficial about this. Getting back to the report that
the Senate want the Senate Committee wants is least it's a first start. And
Okay, we haven't really had a government wide investigation of any of this stuff,
at least in almost fifty years. Right when did Project Blue Book end?
At least that we know of. Yeah, but I got to think
the CIA has got stuff. I've got to think the Air Force has stuff,
even if it's just random, haphazard here, there, everywhere, And
it would just be nice to pull all that together and see is there a
picture, more common picture or is it completely blurry and we have no idea
But we don't even know that. But again, I to get back to
your question. I'm growning on, but I think there are people in the
military that that really have just looked at this issue and said, there's no
winning there. We're not going to figure out the mystery of the universe.
And as long as we don't think that they're threatening and you know they're about
to blow us up, you know, we can focus on a whole lot
of other things. And you know, that's kind of disappointing when you think
about it. But as I've said before, the military is an institution that
has a box for everything. You take this and you file it in that
box, or you follow that directive that you're given by your commander, and
it lays out in painstaking detail how you do it. And then you throw
them something that is a big question mark. We don't know who belongs to,
we don't know how it works, we don't know if it's real or
not. You know, is it is it fake? Is it a spoof?
Is it? What is it? And you know their head spinds like,
well, what do I do with that? You know, there are
most people in the military are right side of the brain people, not left
side of the brain people. And I think it's the left side of the
brain people that tend to be more Well, what is this we should figure
this out. And I think some people are just wired, and the military
tends to have a lot of these people wired to tell me the answer,
tell me where it fits, tell me whose job it is. And that's
another thing. It's nobody's job to do this, not really. I mean
it was a tip's job, but a tip was like this big m so
this kind of you know, kind of going down this road a little bit.
I've been getting harassed. I know you've been getting harassed by a lot
of the the UFO community. I guess on Twitter about some of these kind
of fringe conspiracies that have been coming out, but you know, they're attached
no better than to tweet about Roswell, but you know they're attaching some of
the names of people into the stars, including you know, some of the
scientists, but also even Ela Zondo has gone on Tucker Carlson and said,
I think you know there's a piece of a uofone material that the government has.
Do you think, you know, with these guys kind of entertaining these
kind of more fringe ideas, could that be jeopard could that jeopardize their efforts
with the Senate or with the you know, in Washington. I mean,
I think there is a risk that, uh, there's certainly a risk that.
I mean, just because the Overton window is moved doesn't mean that there's
still isn't the chance that people could get spooked, you know what I mean,
if there's you know, a feeling I think up there that somehow they
are roaming into territory where they're going to be vilified or made fun of,
or there's a political cost to doing this, then they could get scared and
run away and say I don't want to deal with that anymore. And so,
you know, I think the more I think, the more the unproven
theories and I know I'm treading on sort of ice here, but like the
more the whether they're true or not, the more things like Roswell start getting
people to think cookie things, whether that's justified or not, I think probably
doesn't help move the ball in Congress. In other words, if you start,
you know, throwing around a lot of conspiracies and interjecting that into the
debate, I think it probably reduces the chances that something will change. And
you know, I think that's a risk of to the Star's Academy, and
we've talked about this before. Tom Delongs has some pretty you know, provocative
things, which you know, I'm not in a position to say they're true
or they're not true, but they don't always garner the best headlines in terms
of like being credible among the people that's sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee,
who you know are presumably gonna, you know, try to get more answers
and at least in theory, have the authority to get more answers. Whether
they'll actually succeed is the whole other issue. But so, you know,
it's it's it's sort of a tough balance, I guess, but I have
learned my lesson not to tweet about Roswell because the truth is, like I
have, you know, I have a sort of viewpoints of it that are
not really based on real knowledge. I mean, I'm not a UFO expert,
I'm not a historian, and you know, I've probably watched way too
many History Channel programs. But I think you know, what about for professional
journalists to get involved in to tackle all of this is that there are research,
uh standards, there's a rigor to the work that a journalist does.
Professional journalists journalists in approaching this topic and to me, that's been great because,
uh, the information is more pure, it's more well researched in a
lot of cases such as yours, and so if you are documenting it,
it's something that you've researched and vetted much more carefully than your average UFO.
Well yeah, I mean I think that's true to a point. But like,
but in defense of the UFO research community, I mean, it's it's
in many ways, it is a different universe. It's a different playing field
with different sort of rules, I guess. And I've really tried and covering
this story to sort of stick to what we know in terms of the government
paper trail, the money trail. And that's why a Tip was such a
good story. It was Congress throwing money effectively to Bob Bigelow to go research
this stuff through an earmark, which in most cases would have been you know,
one hundred percent smelly, but because of the topic and the issue was
like, oh wow, that's interesting. Maybe it's Congress actually forcing the Pentagon
to do something that it's not willing to do in a good way. And
so you know, I've tried to focus on it from a very sort of
government policy. What is the government doing what is it saying, trying to
figure out what the Navy knows. But you know, quite frankly, the
UFO community has done, I think, overall, a whole better better job
than I have in actually browbeating the Navy into coffee things up, which is
which is all to the positive. But I think my approach, by definition,
is also going to be criticized by some people in the UFO community.
And that's totally understandable, and it's it's totally fine. I mean, I'm
operating in sort of a narrower field of view consciously then they are. And
so I often get accused of covering up to the Stars Academy, or covering
up for the government, or you know, I'm part of some grand conspiracy
to slowly open up the vault, you know, and and they're feeding me
little things and I'm just upawn in their big game. And and you know,
if I am, I totally am not aware of it. I'm an
idiot because they've been taking advantage of me for twenty five years. And so
you know, I think if you just understand that Brian Bender Politico is coming
at this issue in many ways a more narrow way it's a big question.
We don't know the answer, or at least we don't have enough critical mass
of evidence and testimony to say, here's the explanation irrefutably. But the government's
trying to figure it out. At least some elements in the government's trying to
figure it out. They're spending tax perier dollars to do it. Like that's
worth covering. And like I've said from the beginning, whether you believe these
instances are made up, whether you believe they're you know, some high tech
spoofing job, you know, the UFO equivalent of driving the cat nuts with
the laser pointer, if you believe it's a secret Russian aircraft, you believe
it's a secret US government program, or you believe in none of the above,
which could be you know, some crafts from another planet, from another
dimension. I mean, every single one of those is one of the biggest
news stories of the era. No matter what the explanation, even if it's
just fake, they've driven the Navy crazy. Whoever has pulled this off has
driven them nuts. If it's a secret US government program, and even the
most senior people in the intelligence community you appear not to know about it.
That's a huge story because that's a government within a government. I mean,
that's that's that would be proof that there's something going on deep, deep,
deep dark inside our intelligence community or are military that even the people that are
supposed to know these things go about. I mean, that to me is
a great story. If it's a breakthrough by the Russians of the Chinese or
these Rayleis or the French or whoever, you know, we probably want that
stuff too. So like that's a huge story. And so that's how I
go about it. Is like I personally don't know what it is, but
I feel like whatever it is, it's newsworthy. Yeah, And that is
there concern you think with the Senate or do they care at all that The
Air Force especially, but all of the agencies have been denying researchers or people
like me who have written about this information for decades and essentially telling us there
has been no UFO interest anywhere. They send us the fact sheet that says
Nope, we haven't been interested in UFO since nineteen sixty nine. Even if
we're coming at them with a document that is from nineteen eighty, do you
think they're concerned at all that that denial has been going on for so long,
despite that there was really something, there were real investigations, and they
really did actually take it seriously. I think I'm pretty sure, and I
said this before, I mean, I'm pretty sure that there's been a number
of government agencies. I can't prove this, but the Pentagon, the CIA,
the FBI, others who have no doubt since nineteen sixty nine look into
this issue and have followed reports, and there's got to be some paper trail
from that, something left over from that. I just I don't It's just
it's impossible for me to believe that there's nothing. There's got to be stuff
where it is. Who has it, who's aware of it? Is another
question. I think it's also very convenient for them to just deny these floyas
on grounds of risking national security or revealing sensitive information. And you know,
the trick there is they will often deny things, and it's not because the
information itself is necessarily all that sensitive. It's this blanket fear that they have,
which I think a lot of judges tend to defer to the government on,
which is, the sources and methods if we tell you what we know
you could learn how we got it. Did we use a satellite, did
we use some guy with a camera standing across the street. And so that
is their excuse all the time. It's sort of like, oh, this
is a nothing burger. But if we tell you that we have nothing or
you know, we found something that seems immaterial, might you bad guy might
figure out how we go about gathering this stuff in the first place. And
so it's very easy on this issue for them to you know, if it's
something interfering in protected airspace, you know, they can just say it's secret.
We can't we can't reveal it, we can't share it with the public.
And so that's what's going to be interesting about where this Senate report goes,
because it's very specific, like they want signals intelligence, and so you
know, anything you gathered through technical means from satellites, from radars, video,
et cetera, you got to throw that in there too. And you
know that's that's going to clearly run up against some of these concerns about revealing
classified information and revealing sensitive methods. So you know, it'll be see it'll
be interesting to see how they respond to that and how much of it they
really provide mm hmmm. One question was from the have you reached out to
the n ro O yea, and not recently. I mean over the years
I've dealt with the n ro O, not not specifically on this issue.
I don't think though on other issues, and and maybe I haven't done my
due diligence, but that's always in a black hole for me. I mean,
I don't ever remember I interviewed the head of the nro once, but
that was a very sort of you know, budget related here's the kinds of
things we want to do, and here's why the agency is so critical to
the military. And you know, the nro as people don't know, I'm
sure they do is basically builds and operates spy satellites and it's a very it's
one of the most secret. But you know, you would think that's a
logical place for this report to go for information. I mean, if they're
looking at the Earth all the time from spy satellites from up in space,
presumably they're picking up some of this stuff too, and so you know,
do they keep that, do they report on those? Do they put them
somewhere yep? So, and then there are there's no more question for the
chat, and I think unless there's more come up, this will be the
last question. But you know, the last time we talked was I guess
a while ago that we did an interview like this. And there's been a
big evolution in the DoD's public responses regarding all of this. There's been it's
been somewhat schizophrenic in that, you know, at the beginning, they were
essentially denying all of the points that you or New York Times were making about
all this project. Since then, other information has come out, they've kind
of corrected themselves. They've gone, you know, they really denied everything,
Alessandro said. Now they've kind of backpedaled on some things but not any others,
and backpedaled on their back pedals. It's been very strange, and everybody
who's interacted with them, in particular Tyler Rogaway wrote a very strong article because
he works with these guys every day and he's like, you know, I've
never ran across this sort of thing. Have you found that strange? And
what is your take on that? I mean, it is strange. Some
of the things that the Pentagon put out publicly that just didn't ring right.
And as you said, they've they've backtracked on I don't. I mean,
the only theory that I have, and this is again not not really having
any direct information, but just having covered the Pentagon for a long time.
I feel like one of the major complicating factors in this whole saga was that
the eight tip program, which the Pentagon did acknowledge existed. They couldn't deny
it. I mean, it was there was proof that it existed, or
at least that the budget item existed, that there was money set aside for
this ended in twenty twelve, and Lou Alexondo left the Pentagon in twenty seventeen
saying he was head of the UFO office and there was no UFO office.
And so I think in retrospect Alessando probably was a little oversimplistic in describing what
his role was. And you know, all of us in the media fell
into the trap of Lou Alezondo, the former head of the Pentagon UFO office,
or you know, that was sort of the layman's way of describing a
tip, but a tip technically he was had been dead for five years,
and so I think that I guess I theorized that that led to a whole
series of sort of Keystone cop kind of response from the Pentagon when they went
back and said, what did mister Elexando do? Where did he work?
And if you look at his actual fitness reporters, they would call it,
like, you know, his kind of work history in the Pentagon, there's
no reference to him being UFO guy on that paperwork because he works to the
under Secretary Intelligence. He was doing interrogation stuff involving Guantanamo detainees. He had
you know, he had other jobs and so if you're just sticking to the
facts, you say, well, you know, Alexander didn't have that role
in these years. And so it started, I think, to sort of
unravel his story. Even though his story was basically true. I think it
was sort of a little opening there where it sort of fell apart for a
while where you have the Pentagon officials saying, well, we don't have evidence
that he was doing what he was saying he was doing. I mean,
we do know that he was read into a tip. We've seen the memo
from Harry Reid from whatever that was two thousand and nine, and you know,
I think what all said and done, his story has held up what
he was doing and why he was doing it has held up. I just
I don't really have a good explanation. That's my best explanation. Incident.
Again, I think there was this miss, this uh kind of false sense
that a TIP was sort of this distinct office for the staff and people worked
there and somebody came in every morning and said, Hi, boss, what
are we doing today? And it blies the way a lot of the intelligence
business works. It's a portfolio, it's a mission, and so you know,
and I think quite frankly, Elizondo kept on this issue, probably with
some wink in a nod from some superiors like Okay, you're going to still
be looking into that, that's fine, just make sure it doesn't, you
know, take away from all your other responsibilities. And then I think there
were some people who were like Loue, el Zondo's the nut job in the
office. He's still obsessed with the UFOs. And so I also think that
depending on press office and trying to figure out what the story was like any
place where there's factions, I think they were also getting two different stories.
There were probably people who thought Alizondo was too obsessed with this, and it
was you know, it's all he talked about and it's all he wanted to
do. And then there were probably other people who said, yeah, you
know, he sort of had permission from his superiors to you know, keep
pulling this string and to see where it led. So I think that could
have explained it too, that you know, he had friends and enemies on
the inside after he was gone, and some threw him under the bus and
others didn't. And I think in the end though, they came to the
inclusion like the rest of us, that his story generally is true. He
was part of that original A Tip Office. I don't think he ran it
necessarily. I mean, I guess maybe he was the only guy doing it,
so that therefore he's running it. And then there was those five years
from twenty twelve to twenty seventeen where he was doing this mission or doing this
intelligence gathering job, but there wasn't really any sort of formal thing that existed
like it did when it was quote unquote the A Tip Office. You make
a really good point there, and I think in his want people to think
that it was just him as a hobbyist doing as a hobby there at the
Pentagon, but at the same time. You're right, it wasn't this big
department, though in his description he's trying to say, well, no,
no, this tiny I had other people that I was coordinating with, even
if they weren't staffers on this pridect checked or something like that. So yeah,
I think you're it makes sense that a lot would get last in translation,
right. You know, and if if you know anything about working in
the federal government, I mean you can you could probably show up to work
and play crossword puzzles every day for five years and that's how long it would
take for them to remove you, because the process of removing a federal employee
is so onerous that you know it would you know, you probably could get
away with just not doing your job for a long time before it would And
I'm not suggesting that that's what lou was doing, but I'm just saying that,
uh uh. I think he had a keen interest in this issue,
and he clearly must have had some buy in from other people that was okay
to do this MH with your time or some of your time. But I
think there's and maybe some of us in the mainstream media are partially to blame
for this perception that there was like this big, you know, secret office
that the Pentagon eventually said, oh well, Aleson had nothing to do with
that. I mean, it just wasn't that simple mm hm. But the
results, I mean, for you's got to be kind of a bit shocking
too. Because there's the Melon story, which is pretty impressive that he made
this all come about. You know, there's a whole team of the big
Oelo lot who were able to make this come about. But the Alexando story
is really interesting too, and that he left his job to get the word
out and he did, and you know, he the the DoD jumped on
him, you know, denied everything he had said. Eventually what he had
said came out to be the fact. And now not only does the world
know about it, and it's a big story. Now the Senate Intelligence Committee
is asking for a report on UAPs, which is essentially his whole task.
And we know that the whole department or project he was working on has expanded
into this multi agency sort of group headed up by the ONI. So,
I mean, the results of all of this is kind of staggering. I
feel, yeah. I mean, if you believe as I do, that
Elizondo left the government frustrated that this was an issue that was not getting enough
attention, and he was going to go public to try and get some attention,
and ally himself with people like Chris Mellon and Tom DeLong and others who
were you know, clearly trying to get traction as well. I think by
all accounts, he's been very successful so far. I mean, I think
what your definition of success is probably determined you know where you sit in this.
In other words, like, you know, ultimately success would be the
government costs up everything it knows and we have the answers we want. But
to me, the success has been forcing the issue, getting people to pay
attention, not just you know, more of the public, but policymakers to
pay attention. And I think this latest thing is it's probably the clearest,
not even probably, I think it's undoubtedly the clearest piece of evidence that their
strategies is succeeding. It's it's it's accomplishing one of the main goals that they
had, which was to get this on the agenda in a public way that
it hasn't been for a long long time. And it'll be interesting. I
mean, you know, I I've sort of been covering a lot of other
things. And I've been sort of keeping tabs on this and like I said,
you know, filing some floyers, trying to see what more we could
learn. But but you know, for us at political I think there's now
you know, a real there's a real storyline to follow now again kind of
in a way that there was in twenty seventeen when we found out about a
ten What is the Senate going to do? What is the House going to
do? Does this get in the bill? If it does, what does
the president do? And then if it becomes law? The bigger question what
are the actual agencies do? How do they answer the mail on this?
Do they? And you know, and this is you know, and what's
great about the language is that you know, it's not just still a report
and get back to us. It's like one hundred and eighty days. There's
a timeline. So we in the press can you know, sort of burned
on it and say, okay, well where is that? Where's that public
reportment? Who's writing it? Are there agencies and this you know will take
some source reporting, but other agencies that are more resistant resistant than others.
Is this plays out? And why is that well, you know, the
Air Force gave you this and it was two pages long, and that's it.
The Navy gave you four thousand pages. See how he gave you nothing?
Well, why and so? And that's obviously not just my job.
It's the job of people in your community too. I mean, who's,
like I said, done a better job I think than a lot of the
media in getting them to cough up, even just incremental stuff that you know,
adds another paint brush stroke to the painting. I hope that's helpful.
It is, it's very helpful, little talking to you. So let's see,
Adam says, add the d n I and how they're going to manage
all the different prayers. It's a great question, and I think that it
will be interesting to see all the different responses, some more helpful than others,
no doubt. I wonder if they're going to ask Space Commander, Well,
it's interesting. One thing I would keep an eye on is I don't
think they've scheduled it yet, but the Senate Intelligence Committee every year, at
least once a year, has this one of their few public hearings. They
don't do a lot of public hearings, but it's called the Worldwide Threats Hearing,
and it's the d n I, I think some of the other heads
of intelligence agencies, maybe the CIA, the DA, the Defense Intelligence Agency,
and others. They come from a public session where they sort of do
around the world the state of the globe and what does the threat environment look
like. And that's a hearing that normally is never controversial, but it's become
controversial because Dan Coates, who was the DNI in the first bunch of years,
the first couple of years of the Trump administration, he got in trouble
with the boss because he said some things in there that you know, basically
went against what the President was saying about. For example, the strength of
ISIS. Trump was saying, we have defeated ISIS. His DNI was saying,
well, not so fast. You know, here's why we think there's
still a threat, et cetera. So since then, the committee hasn't held
that hearing, and Republicans control the Senate, so you know, they're in
charge. I think the Democrats were in charge, they would have held it
again, but there's been talked just in the last forty eight hours about doing
that before doing that hearing again before the August recess because you know, obviously
the Corona virus pandemic, all of these other things that are going on in
terms of this global crist The committee wants to hear from the leaders of the
intelligence community, and they now have a new leader, John Radcliffe, the
former congressman who I mentioned, who's the d n I And so I'm going
to watch that, not just because it's worthwhile watching in and of itself,
but Marco Rubio chairs that committee. So he's shairing that hearing. And it's
John Rodcliffe that would do this report. So, you know, does he
have the you know, the ball so to speak to ask this question about
this in public? I don't know, it'd be something that you know,
I wouldn't be surprised if Chris Mellen, you know, his dream is that
Marco Rubio in a couple of weeks when they have this hearing, brings it
up and you know, gets him on the record, Radcliffe on the record
at least pledging to do this and you know, to do what the committee
wants, which gets to the last question here, which is like how does
he corral all these other agencies into participating in that's because you know, the
DN I basically is overseas seven seventeen intelligence agencies. So you know, again,
I'm just throwing that out there because you never know that No. Seven
to look out for. And that's what's great, because you look able to
capture some really interesting comments here in that conventions or or feather gatherings. Yeah,
I mean, it's definitely if nothing else, this keeps this on the
agenda, and you know, keep the George Stephanopolis's and the Tucker Carlson's and
whoever else, asking senior people including the President who led I said, I
mean, I don't know what to make of what Trump thinks, because the
truth is he never says anything. He never says anything. Oh that's interesting.
Oh I saw the reports. Oh you know, when his son asked
him, you know, are you're going to release all that stuff? He
just sort of kind of lapped it off. I don't you know, I
personally think he knows much at all. That's my sense is if he had
a briefing, it was like every other briefing he gets, which if you
believe the reports from people who work for him, he doesn't really pay attention.
And you know, you know, unless you're unless he's really interested in
this issue. I don't know, you know, how much data he's really
getting. Yeah, he certainly could get it if you wanted it. A
purely political animal, really, and his probably his first response was that,
you know, they told me something about it, but I don't think much
of it, and I'm letting the Navy look into it. Was probably his
most honest answer. So it doesn't seem like he thinks much of the reason
he would pick it up, as if he found some sort of political reason
to do that that might help us and pain. He's much more into earth
bound conspiracy theories, right, And not that that's necessarily of course, I'll
get criticized for saying that, but but it's true. So I think that
is it. I guess the last question, where does melon go from here?
I don't know. I mean, I mean, I assume, like
I said earlier, this will just embolden him to be to continue to be
a public voice on this, advocating for more research, more information, and
you know, and he I think he walks that line between could this be
a national security threat and could this, you know, explain the mystery of
the universe. I mean, he sort of talks about both and I think
he does it pretty effectively. And he again, he's got at least the
credibility within that you know, establishment community where I think at least so far
that they take him seriously. And and you know, I'm pretty sure I
don't know this one hundred percent, but I'm pretty sure without Chris Mellan,
this provision doesn't exist mm hmm, because you know, he was He's the
one who's really pushed this idea of Step one is to just pull together what
we know or what we think we know and what we're doing about this government
wide. And it's you know, it's not inconceivable that that would have happened
anyway, but doubtful I think. Yeah. So season two have unidentified.
I think one of the things that's coming up, which Chris Mellan I know,
plays a bigger role. I've prayed something about the production. I was
supposed to actually potentially be in reviewed in it, but that they had to
cut it short from the pandemic, and somebody asked, are you in it
because you were in the first season. I am not in it. I'm
not in it. They asked me to be in it a while back,
and basically my position was I think for the first season, which was a
lot about the revelations of the Office and Hulu was and how this sort of
interesting cast of characters came together. You know, that was reporting that I
had done and spend quite a bit of time on. So I felt like,
as a journalist, you know, okay, this is something I'm knowledgeable
of. And when I when they came to me for season two, I
was like, well, what am I going to talk about? What do
you want me to talk about? I'm not a UFO expert. I mean
I can certainly talk about a little bit of you know, what I'd like
to learn, what more I'd like to do on this subject as a beat
reporter who covers the Pentagon. But I just didn't feel like there was a
whole lot that I could add. I also, you know, the first
season, quite frankly, you know, I was as surprised as anybody.
I mean, they interviewed me for you know, two or three hours one
day. It came to the Politico newsroom in Washington, and I think I
was in every episode, So I was like amazed that they were able to
slice and dice well was effectively one lengthy conversation to make it appear like I
was sort of, you know, on a set all the time. I
wasn't at all. But but you know, but I haven't given up on
the issue. I mean, I certainly want to cover it, and like
I said, there's more reason to cover it now, especially for Politico,
for our publication, which tries to own Congress and you know how screwed up
that place is and what they're doing and not doing, and you know this
is obviously in the mix now again in a formal way, which it really
wasn't. I mean, the last time that we know of Congress did anything
like this was in two thousand and seven or eight when Harry Reid created an
a tip And so now there's like, you know, something potentially on the
books that, like I said, we can start covering and see where it
goes. It's really it's a great story. I mean, Melon's storyline is
great, Lows is great. Tom DeLong this rock star. How did he
get in the midst of all these intelligence guys and helping to make this all
happen. It's an incredible story. So it's definitely worth covering for sure.
Well, thank you so much, thank you for your coverage. And breaking
all of this great news that you do break, and paying attention to all
of this from your perspective, which especially now is an important one since really
the balls in kind of your wheelhouse in the Senate there. So we'll keep
an eye on this. And thank you so much for making the time to
talk to me and answer all of these questions. I think these are really
important questions right now? Sounds good? All right, all right, thanks,
we'll be in touch. Oh quick question, is there any way,
since I haven't been able to scroll through every question that came in while we
were talking, is there a way to capture that so I can, like
if I log out while I lose all that, because it would nice to
just read through all the comments. I'll do my best. I'll see.
I think there is okay, I actually when you log out, you'll be
able to come back in and read all of them, so you can read
them when you come back in. Good now, I remember that. All
right? Okay, thanks calculator, Thank you wellver and out