Welcome to Open Minds Radio with Alejandro Roja. Open Minds Radio is the UFO
news authority presenting evidence and the latest news regarding the UFO phenomenon. Here's your
host, Alejundro Roja. Welcome to UFO News Hour with Open Minds. We've
got a lot of great step for you for the new year. Welcome to
twenty twelve. People, We've made it. I know some of you thought
you wouldn't even make it to twenty twelve, let alone make it through twenty
twelve. That's another question completely. We'll see how we're all doing in a
year from now and if we're going to be having a show. I have
a feeling, though, this is my prediction that in three hundred and sixty
five days, in one year from now, I will be here doing another
excellent show with a kick. But guest, just like we got tonight,
I think everything's gonna be all right. People, We're gonna be all right.
So there we are. It's gonna be a wonderful year, and we're
starting it up with a bang because tonight we have Bryce Zabel on the show.
And this is great because he wrote, of course, one of the
White House petitions that just ended and unfortunately did not get enough signatures to move
further. But we'll talk about why he decided to launch his petition in December,
what he thinks about in the aftermath, about how it did, why
he did it, and we'll talk about others. And it's very interesting and
fun to hear all of this because he is just a really great guy,
very insightful. We're also going to talk about the UFO Congress coming up in
February, because Bryce is going to be there speaking, And if you don't
remember, you know he's been on the show before. He's done things like
working with Spielberg on the mini series Taken, and actually Taken had taken some
of the ideas from a series that Bryce set it up called Dark Skies.
Some of you are familiar with that because it included MJ twelve and aliens and
abductions and a lot of the kind of mythology behind UFO UFOs in that television
show, so pretty cool stuff. We don't talk about this that this time
because we talked about it before, but he'll be talking about that and more
at the congress. And what's fun is that there's going to be a media
panel some of the other people on that panel are going to be Lee Spiegel,
who writes for the Huffington Posts, and also Ben Hansen, who was
the star of the TV show Fact or Faked, who's also really into UFOs.
So we're going to get some insight from some of these media people who
are working right now, you know, on big media, mainstream projects.
How flippin' exciting is that? That's very, very exciting people. So this
is going to be a lot of fun talking with Bryce today. It's always
a lot of fun to talk with Bryce. We'll talk to him in just
a minute, and of course before that, we're going to talk some news.
For those of you who have been following my tweets and UFO Daily News,
you'll know that I put up my top twenty stories for the year,
and it was hard to pare it down to just twenty because there's a lot
of stuff that happened this year. So we'll talk a little bit about those
or what was on there. But we're going to talk and we'll have some
shows coming up here this month. We'll be reflecting on last year in all
of the shows that we have, I'm sure this month, but there's also
been some news just in you know, the last couple of weeks, of
course, because we weren't on last week. And we have this news correspondent
dude who comes on the show and he's awesome. This guy is sweet.
His name is Jason McClellan, and he is here to talk some UFO news
with us. Jason, talk some news with us. Baby reading Zalajandro Win.
Hello. Everyone, this is your Open Lines News Briefer, Monday,
January twod Welcome to twenty twelve. Let's start off with a story that would
have kill and handy had I known about this when I was in college.
But a student at the National Diversity of Tainan, a city in southern Taiwan,
recently missed class for two hours. And while a student missing class isn't
that strange, the excuse he offered is the student filed an application with the
school's administration to be excused from his December fifteenth absence. According to The China
Post, the student listed on his application the reason for his absence as quote
being snatched away by aliens. Quote. He alleged that he was quote held
hostage and taken away by aliens from an unnamed planet end quote. Surprisingly,
the university approved the application the following day, words spread, quickly drawing the
attention of local media, and following the media inquiries, the student reportedly filed
an amended application, citing quote discomfort as the reason for his absence. This
new application was approved by the school immediately quote, in order to put the
whole event aside as early as possible. The student has since stated that his
original claim of an alien abduction was done for fun, but we don't know
that for sure. Alejandro, Yeah, I'm glad he brought this up because
it's kind of a funny story and it's so weird that this guy would do
this and that they would accept it, you know, as as an excuse
and so but he's kind of saying that he just made all this up.
It so he doesn't believe he's abducted, is that right, right? He
said it was just something he made up. He was being silly and was
surprised at the school actually approved it. But you know it, it's kind
of strange that he would put he would offer this excuse so the school would
approve it. That's even stranger. But then only after it drew a lot
of attention from the media and he was getting he was getting questioned and bothered
a lot, and to get everyone to leave him alone. That's when he
filed this amended application. But so who knows. He could have just been
fooling around, but somebody could have forced him the change his so slorry too.
Hm hmmm interesting, Oh here's some cool news. It's definitely cool to
me. Tom DeLong, certainly best known for his role as vocalist and guitar
player in the pop punk band Blink twenty eighty two, was on Coast to
Coast. The accomplished musician, who also plays in the band Angels and Airwaves,
is a savvy entrepreneur as well. But in addition to being a musician
and businessman, Tom DeLong is a budding ufologist. DeLong appeared on the popular
radio program Coast to Coast AM on Sunday, December eighteenth. He discussed with
host George Knapp his deep interest in UFOs and extraterrestrials, but explained that UFOs
are much more than a casual interest to him. DeLong explained that he actively
researches UFOs and is done so for many years. He described himself as a
quote armchair academic in the field of uthology and told Napp the story of how
in the mid nineties, when his band Blink twenty two signed their first record
deal, he took the very first check from the record company and bought a
computer specifically to go on the internet to research UFOs. Nappan DeLong conversed for
three of the shows four hours, and Napp lotted DeLong as a quote budding
ufologist. While it was Delong's first appearance as a guest on the show,
he explained to Napp that he is a Coast to Coast AM subscriber and listens
to the show frequently and certainly all the way back to when the show was
hosted by one of the show's founders, Art Bell. DeLong was a terrific
guest in my opinion, answering questions intelligently, and he even provided listeners with
a brief overview of stories and people who are being discussed, making sure that
the audience had appropriate background information, because in addition to Coast regular listeners,
there were a lot of Tom DeLong fans listening to the show for the first
time he appeared on the show. When he appeared on the show, that
appearance illustrated how well read he is on the subject, and just how serious
he is about researching UFOs. DeLong, in conjunction with his band Angels and
Airwaves, recently launched a website, Strange Times dot com that features UFO and
other related news not typically reported by mainstream media. The site regularly features stories
by Open Minds, by me individually and Alejandro as well, and it's worth
a visit. And I wrote a story about Tom DeLong about his interest in
UFO with last month and it is going to uppear in the February March twenty
twelve issue of Open Minds magazine that should hit shelves in well later this month.
Yeah, I mean we're always talking about this Tom DeLong and Strange Times,
and we're always very excited about his involvement. We both like to wear
his shoes and make batchhoe company. That's right. Mainly we both wear Tom
DeLong shoes. Yeah, he makes vegan shoes and wear veggies and animal dudes.
But what's really cool. I'm happy. Of course, I've been excited
because you've been pursuing an interview that hopefully you'll get here soon. But it's
great that he was on coast to coast, so people start to know that
about his interests because I think that's important, you know, one of the
things, and hopefully it'll be out tomorrow. I wrote a Huffington post on
celebrities and UFOs because this year there have been a lot of celebrities talking about
UFOs and it's kind of like last year, our last year, right,
this year hasn't happened as far as I know yet, but it'll happen.
Yeah, it'll happen. But I think that makes people more comfortable. You
know, school or the life is kind of like high school, and it's
like if the cool kids do it, then it's okay for everybody else to
do it. And you know, celebrities are the cool kids, and if
they're cool, if it's okay to talk to UFOs, and UFOs are cool,
then everybody's going to think it's cool and do it. You're exactly right.
We saw I think we saw plenty of that in twenty eleven. You're
right, with a lot of the celebrities talking about their personal experience experiences with
UFOs and or extraterrestrials, and a lot of it came out because of the
flood of UFO related movies entering all these press conferences and public appearances talking about
the movie, you know, some of the interviewers would jokingly ask the individual
actors and actresses, well, have you ever seen a UFO? And it
would start the conversation and they would say, yeah, I certainly have,
and they say you're kidding, right, and they'd say no, not at
all, and it would open up that dialogue and people will go, oh,
wow, he's not joking about this. I guess I can say I
saw UFO too, and people won't laugh at me. Yeah. One of
the most fun when was last March when Aaron Eckert, the actor for Battle
Los Angeles Jay Leno, asked him about UFOs and he shared his UFO siding
and he didn't even ask Christy Brinkley, who was the next guest. She
just came out and she was so excited. Oh my gosh, you guys
are talking about UFOs. I've seen UFOs and she starts going off on her
UFO siding. Right. Pretty cool. And the similar things happened with Sammy
Hagar. You know, during an interview they were interviewing him about his book
He's really Cool. They talked about one part in the book and he said,
well, that was actually something that really happened. What's cool about him
is he doesn't share away. He is so brave. He's like he's not
like, oh yeah, let's talk about something else. He's like, yeah,
man, I talked to UFO, I talked to aliens, and I've
seen UFOs. UFOs are awesome. I mean, he's just boom. He
even made fun of himself to this skit with on Jimmy Kimmel On Kimmel,
Yeah, who is Jimmy Kimmel's little guy Guermo? Guermo I think with the
alien in there. So yeah, he is just really bold and brave to
just say hey, yeah man, UFOs. Yep. I have a video
of that actually from your story because Doctor Drew spoke with him about UFOs.
Yeah, that's right, and I put that on my top twenty stories on
the ufod Aliens dot com. But I do agree. I think we're going
to see a lot more of that, a lot more people, celebrities and
the like coming forward in twenty twelve with their personal experiences and opinions on the
topic. Yep, cool stuff, man, yep. Well. In other
news, in November, a team of astrobiologists proposed two new planetary rating systems
that could help widen the search for extraterrestrial life. We certainly talked about this
new proposed these two new proposed systems on open Minds radio back in November.
To refresh your memory memory. They suggested ranking planets on both an Earthly or
an Earth similarity Index an e SI and a broader planetary Habitability Index a PHI.
And according to the International Business Times, the team of researchers has used
their new rating system to develop lists of planets and moons with the highest probability
of hosting extraterrestrial life, and on both of these lists, Mars ranked very
high. On the e SI, Mars was the third or fourth planet,
just below all of the or many of the GLISA planets. Remember we talked
a lot about Gleiza five to eighty one g, a planet which many scientists
still debate whether it exists or not. But on the PHI the planetary Habitability
Index, Mars came in second right beneath the moon Titan. And based on
these list, life on Mars looks pretty favorable, and the year twenty eleven
was filled with Mars discoveries. Recent findings suggest the presidence of flowing water on
the planet's surface, at least seasonally. Scientists also recently determined that large underground
regions on Mars might be habitable. NASA's Curiosity Rover, the world's biggest extraterrestrial
explorer, will reach the planet in the middle of this year and will search
for signs of life. And while life might already exist in the favorable conditions
on the red planet, one visionary here on Earth wants to colonize Mars.
Elon Musk, co founder and CEO of SpaceX who we've talked about many times
on this show, recently stated that he quote wants to put ten thousand people
on Mars end quote and that's according to the New Scientist. He reportedly went
on to say, quote Ultimately, we don't really want ten thousand people on
Mars. We want millions, and he claims he can do it for as
little as two billion. Earlier this year, Musk announced space Xen's plan to
develop a fully reusable space launch system. He stated, quote We've not gone
beyond Earth's orbit in a generation. I want to change that. Rapid reusability
is what will take us to Mars end. Quote the SpaceX launch vehicle that
could take humans to Mars is in the company is the company's new Falcon Heavy,
which is scheduled for testing in twenty thirteen. So you can pack your
bag, Dallejandro, because trip to Mars is right around the corner. Get
your bot to Mars. Yes, my favorite movie, Not really, but
it's a good movie. It's a funny, fun one. Anything with Schwarznigga's
fun. Yeah. Well, this is a story that several people wrote on
you wrote a story about this, Alejandro, But it's a story about spaceballs,
and not the mel Brooks movie, but actual balls from space. A
mysterious spaceball was recently found in Namibia, Africa that was three point five feet
in diameter and weighed thirteen pounds, and it hit the ground hard enough to
create a whole thirteen inches deep. The country's National Forensic Science Institute was baffled
by the object, and similar objects have been seen in parts of Africa and
South America. A pair of similar objects is actually on display in a museum
in Argentina. All these mysterious space balls tend to cause a bit of frenzy
from people, assuming the objects are some sort of alien vessel. They have
been determined to be nothing more than space junk. To be more precise,
according to Discovery News, their composite over wrapped pressure vessels or COPV something that
stores gases under pressure in a space environment. Any things are used on chips
and the space station and various things we send into space. But you wrote
a story on this, Alejandro, and Antonio Juneus, our colleague, wrote
a story on this, and a lot of people were writing about the space
balls falling from space. Yeah, and that's what's great about you know,
we had written an article not too long ago on it, or Antonio did,
and so we were able to get some I put quote to my story
from him, and he put his article in there from the magazine because this
is a new occurrence. And this thing looked exactly like what had fallen in
many countries, including South America, and what appeared to be tanks from Russian
spaceships, right, and yeah, Antonio had had something about this in the
one of the Open Minds of magazines, and I'd actually Roswell on the Roswell
edition. It was other kind of UFOs, things that were thought to be
UFOs that had crashed like right, and there's one in in uh in Mexico
City. Jim Musan, the Mexican journalist, has one of these things,
and I got to see one of these in person, and they're they're strange
balls, these these weird metal balls that look like they've exploded, and they're
very hard. They can't be cut through, so they they confuse a lot
of people and certainly look foreign. But at the same time they look very
earthly with all sorts of world marks. Right, But if you've never seen
one, you'd definitely think that an alien left his ball behind. Yeah.
In other space news, scientists suggests soliciting the public's help to search for traces
of extraterrestrial life on the Moon. Seti Institute has been searching for signals of
extraterrestrial life for more than fifty years, but their search has been rather passive,
scanning the skies for alien radio signals. Astrobiologist Paul Davies and research technician
Robert Wagner think a more active search is a better method. They recently published
a scientific paper online in the journal Acta Astronautica that calls for the search of
alien artifacts on the Moon. This two Arizona State University scientists suggests that alien
life may have quote left traces on the Moon in the form of an artifact
or surface modification of lunar features, according to the Daily Mail, to search
for signs of extraterrestrial life on the Moon, the scientists suggests focusing attention on
images captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the LRO. According to the Guardian,
quote NASA has made more than three hundred and forty thousand LRO images public,
but that figure is expected to reach one million by the time the orbiting
probe has mapped the whole lunar surface end quote they issue. Scientists explain quote
from these numbers, it is obvious that a manual search by a small team
is hopeless end quote, which is why they suggest calling on quote amateur enthusiasts
to assist with the process of scanning the LRO images for potential alien artifacts.
This isn't the first time that Davies has suggested taking a different approach to searching
for extraterrestrial science. In October twenty eleven, Astrobiology Magazine reported how Davies wanted
scientists to broaden the search for extraterrestrial life by searching Earth for possible quote footprints
left behind by extraterrestrial visitors, and Alejandro, I love this quote, so
I have to throw it in here. But a recent article on the Huffington
Post accurately stated, and I think you and I have said this many times
on this show too, but quote, despite being well studied, Earth's closest
neighbor, remains an enigma. Right, Yeah, that's what's interesting. And
now we have two orbiters or two that have just gotten there in the last
couple of days, so we're checking it out some more. I think we're
you know, upping our stake on the Moon because China's getting there soon too.
But yeah, one question people have about this story is that you know,
it's disappeared Reviewed Journal, and it is. This is a scientific journal
that this paper has gotten into. It's already been vetted and everything. You
know, they've already done everything they do when they make sure it's a credible
article with good science, and it is going into the journal. So it's
pretty cool to see, Yeah, scientists talking about, hey, we need
to look for et ruins on the Moon. And I think you're right.
I think because of China, we're having a renewed interest in the moon,
which is great because we sort of abandon it for whatever reason. The Moon's
cool. Man, I like the Moon. Well all one, Hunter.
I have so many more stories, but I think I'd better call it quits
because we have a wonderfully or a wonderful interview that is a little longer than
usual, so I will cut it short at that. And this has been
your open Minds news brief. Remember to check out all these stories and so
many more at openminds dot tv or source for UFO related news. And you
can always follow me on Twitter at Acentric that's ace C E N t r
I C. And you can also friend me on Facebook. Jason open Minds
edited for the news. I have Jason McClellan, your open Mind's news correspondent,
and you have been briefed. Yeah, some people got confused because Jason
has that open mind Facebook called Jason open Mind. Marine has been called Marine
open Mind and people had asked if they were married, if they their were
last names were open Minds, and that is not the case. They just
made special Spacebook facebooks for open mind, so you are aware of how that
came about. But like Jason said, We've got a great interview with Bryce
Dabele, so let's go ahead and get that rawing all right as usual,
I'm very happy to be speaking with Bryce Zabel, one of our speakers at
the upcoming UFO Congress. Hello. Bryce, Hey, it's good to be
on your program. Alejandro. Good to hear from you, and I'm really
looking forward to coming to the the UFO Congress. Yeah, that's going to
be a lot of fun. I don't think were you able to make it
at least be there last year. I was not. I had a family
commitment. So this time I get a two for it to speak and I
get to attend, So that's really going to be great. Yeah, you
have a great program there, and everyone after last year's everybody was talking about
what a great success it was, so you're obviously doing something right there.
Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun. And what I think
is going to be especially fun is that we have, you know, a
few people from the media and entertainment, and so it's going to be unique
to have a handle with you and some of these other guys to talk about
the media, some insiders like you know, we're going to have Ben Hansen
from Factor Fake. So it's going to be great for people to get some
insight and some Q and A to talk to you guys about media. I
look forward to that. I think it's one of the most misunderstood elements in
the whole UFO and paranormal puzzle because so many different agendas exist in media coverage,
not all of them favorable, some of them very favorable. So I
think it's becoming a worthy topic of discussion in ufology for the simple reason that
that's how people are spreading these ideas, and they're spreading truth, and they're
spreading untruth through the media. So it's time for us to understand it even
better. Yeah. Yeah, So that'll be a lot of fun, partially
because they're speaking to the media. I think that's something that people are going
to need to understand when they're speaking the panel. We're definitely going to have
you up there, Ben Hansen, and will have least bigel with the Huffington
Post. You are media and you guys are doing your best to get information
out. Of course, there's other aspects, like you were talking about,
there's people in the media doing a poor job. Well that's just it.
There are people who are using the media to try to tell their truth or
their story. And then there's the media itself, which is a whole second
angle to it, which is what do they actually think is going on?
What are they willing to open their minds up to as a reasonable hypothesis for
some of these things, And the two do not often meet in the middle,
to be honest with you, Yeah, but then you have people like
you being able to create your own vision, or Ben Hanson or at least
Bigele They well, they get to share their experience about how much, if
any, if they're held back at all, which so I'm really excited about
that panel. You should be on that panel. We'll all probably moderated.
Oh that's fantastic, Yeah, because I think you have one of the best
takes on how it all, all the pieces work together, and I hope
that that will happen. But that sounds excellent. Yeah, So that'll be
a lot of fun. That's going to be Sunday for people. Otherwise,
lately, of course, you've been real busy in the last month promoting your
We the People petition, the one that you and Richard Dolan had fashioned together
and a lot of people supported, and what inspired you to do that.
Well. In October and November, Steve Bassett of the Paradigm Research Group had
a lot of success with an initial petition when the We the People site went
up on the White House, where he put out a petition that received the
sufficient number of signatures to actually force a White House response, and actually caused
the White House to raise the number of signatures that were needed to get a
RIC spons fivefold from five thousand to twenty five thousand. But I felt that
Steve's first petition was fundamentally flawed in that it gave them a dodge. It
said, we need to acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race. Well,
I'm not sure that all my all theories lead to extraterrestrial And at the
same time, it gave the Whitehouse a dodge for them to answer by simply
saying, well, yeah, we are looking for extraterrestrials with SETI, and
you know, with the Hubble telescope, we're discovering new planets, et cetera.
And they completely dodged the issue that there might be actually UFO is engaging
us here on Earth. So I talked to my ad after disclosure. Co
author Richard Dolan and we've become fairly close friends over the last period of time
since we've written the book, and we talked about his petition and his success
with it, but felt that possibly the mistake was it went too far,
and we need a baseline petition that would not allow the White House to wiggle
out of a basic explanation of what seems to be going on here. So
we created a different petition and put it out there, and it turned out
that we had to put it out on December first because Bassett was going with
his petition at that time. We didn't want to confuse people. We thought
we'd put a couple of them out. If you don't mind, I'd like
to. It's only eight hundred characters. May I read the petition so that
people know what we're talking about? Yeah, that's great. Okay. This
is the petition that Richard Doldan and I crafted and put out on December first.
It says we petitioned the Obama administration to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena as reported
by citizens, police, astronauts, pilots, and the military. So that's
the main petition thing. Here's the eight hundred characters that came underneath it,
and it said searching for microbes on Mars and radio signals from space is not
enough. We must explain unidentified aerial phenomena or UAP right here on Earth.
For six decades, worldwide, credible witnesses, including Presidents Carter and Reagan,
have consistently described objects with flight capabilities beyond our technology. UAP are often verified
by radar and even seen at nuclear sites by military officers. Given the national
security implications, the United States should conduct an independent investigation. This inquiry must
transparently review the key unsolved UAP reports with access to classified documents. It must
have the power to call witnesses and grant immunity. The findings should be publicly
presented. So that was what we called the need to know petition and went
up December first, or actually November thirtieth, and closed down on December thirtieth.
Yeah, I think, like you said it, that's a much harder
petition to answer than asking for an extraterrestrial communication. Because astrobiology is a big
deal right now. You hear that in the news. There's Chetty, there's
NASA with Kepler, there's all this astrobiological stuff. They're looking for extraterrestrials,
and of course if they felt that they had evidence that they had found it,
they would well, who knows what they would do. But of course
above board they would say, oh, yeah, you know, we would
tell people about it. So it's easy just to say, well, there's
all this astrobiological research going on, there aren't any EPs, but it's harder
to address the UAPs or the UFOs like you had talked about. Well,
I think Richard and I simply felt we would hold their feet to the fire
on this unexplained phenomenon and just say, look, it's not crazy UFO people
that want to know about this. These are average citizens who had no knowledge
of UFOs. These are police officers, they're your own astronauts from NASA.
There's they're your own Air Force and Navy pilots, and there are commercial av
people who have seen all these things. So you know, don't make it
about little green men and play the X files. Tune here, go tell
us what you intend to do in the name of national security, particularly when
military officers have testified publicly about their experiences with UFO's near nuclear sites. I
mean, if we trust these people to keep their fingers on the nuclear trigger,
so to speak. Why would we not trust them if they say there
are unidentified objects hovering near our nuclear facilities. To me, that's a national
security issue, and I want my government to tell me what they think about
that and look into it. Well. And that's the other great thing about
the wording on the petition that you guys wrote is that you're asking not for
them to come clean, you know, assuming that they know what's going on,
you're asking them to investigate. Well. I think, you know,
makes a lot more central telling them to look into that because as we know
from you know, Grant Cameron to work and other people. You know that
the White House people in the White House Clinton certainly tried to get information.
Doesn't seem like he was able to even that's what he says. That's right,
and that's what Stephen Bassett's second disclosure petition addressed the Clinton White House.
We felt that one and that was the impetus to doing this again. I
have greatest respect for Steve Bassett and understand what he's doing, but I felt
the second petition was actually more difficult for the average person to understand than even
the first one, and that it dragged in a lot of you know,
it referred to OSTT, which is the Office of Science and Technology Policy at
the White House, without ever identifying what it was. It just had a
lot of insider baseball in it, and we didn't think it could be become
what it needed to be. So that's why, you know, sometimes I
guess you have to be confident enough to say, well, I don't like
that, so I'll put my money where my mouth is and try to do
something else. Interestingly enough, though, and this is just recently out there,
Cameron has received a Freedom of information request denial of some of his requests,
and one of the emails he got is from the person Phil Larson,
who wrote the first response to Stephen Bassett's first petition, and that email basically
shows that Phil Larson, a low level guy at the Office of Science and
Technology Policy, catches the assignment of having to respond to the first basket petition
and he's given less than a day to come up with a final answer for
legal clearance. Well how serious is that? I mean, come on here,
the guy doesn't really have any real knowledge of the UFO issue, and
he's not even given a week to look into it. He's given less than
a day to write the answer, so of course he writes the most mealy
mouthed, irresponsible and silly response, and that's what we have out there.
So I just feel like the whole thing is obviously has some issues, and
in fact that you know here we are talking like the petition is still active,
it's not. It failed. Both of them did. That's a second
one and as did ours, although there are some reasons for its failure that
we probably will discuss in the next few minutes. Yeah, I want to
talk about that. But getting back to this email that Grant Cameron got about
the Philip from Philip Larson, it is interesting because, like you say,
this is definitely telling. I think the whole thing is just some emails back
and forth, and I think there's two pieces. This is a statement that
I think is most telling. We got tagged with drumming up a response to
please acknowledge aliens, and then he goes on to say, please look at
this tonight because I need to submit it tomorrow. Like you said, you
know, one day to roll this out. So obviously they weren't taking it
too seriously, and unfortunately the other petitions they answered that day. They group
three of them together were the same thing. They just came up with an
answer within a day to get that out. So it showed that this whole
wee the people thing didn't seem to be taken too seriously. Well it's not,
and that's sad, although it's still a useful tool. And again that's
something I want to talk about. But I do think that what that proved
is just how can you expect a serious response and to give a guy less
than a day for a final pass. The truth of the matter is Phil
Larson should have at least been given a week if that was the case.
And I just sat him down with Richard Dolan's to Find Books and Leslie Kane's
Fine Book and locked him in a room for a week and said, why
don't you read these first, right, and then after you have read those,
write your response. But instead he just had one day to do it.
And by the way, his boss, who probably should have written the
response and should have taken and it's seriously and should have been directed by the
White House to take it seriously, obviously pond it off onto his underling,
which is ironic because the guy that runs the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
If you look on their website, actually says hey, kids in school,
if you want to answer to a question, send an email to us
and we'll have the boss write you an answer. Okay, So the boss
has the time to write an answer to school kids, which I think is
fine. But to say that the boss doesn't have time to look into something
that affects national security and all of humanity and could be the biggest story never
told, that seems silly. It's just silly. Yeah, there's no other
way to look at it. You can make excuses for them, and we
know there's budget issues, etc. But it's just silly to take on a
topic of this magnitude in the way that they did. Yeah. Although another
problem is and again, like you, I think it's great that Bascet jumped
on this and got it rolling. He got a lot of attention, and
that's great what he did. But a little bit of a missed opportunity here
and the wording of his because they never had to address UFOs. Unfortunately it
was all aliens. So if they would have had to have addressed UFOs,
I would think that it would be a harder one to address and then hopefully
they would have had to have done some research like looking at or Richard Dorton.
I completely agree with you, and again I listen as I've said,
and I'll say it again. I have the greatest respect for Stephen Bassett.
I just didn't think he wrote the world's best petitions given the political climate.
And you know, and that's trust me. When Dolan and I did our
petition, we fussed over every letter. I mean we used every single letter
in every word, and we went through draft after draft to try to make
it the single clearest call to action that you can possibly have without dragging in
all the the stuff that is used to marginalize ufology. And I think we
did a really good job with it. But as I'm sure we're going to
get into more, the White House site was probably inadvertently, probably through in
competence, plagued with problems, and both petitions fell short. I think there's
a couple numerous reasons for that. One of them was I never wanted to
go on December first. I felt these petitions should have been put out on
January first, but Steve felt like forcing the issues, so we felt like
we had to go. They were miss timed during the holiday, in my
opinion, But worse than that. Worse than that was the fact that the
site didn't work. And for the entire thirty days that our petition was up
there, we had dozens of people writing us every day saying I can't sign
your petition, I can't get onto the site, and more often than not,
when people came onto the site, they got a site under maintenance screen.
When they actually got in and tried to sign on, they kept getting
thrown out. It was extremely confusing. The site did not work and they
never fixed it, so I think that's really telling about their commitment. And
then at the end of creating a site that doesn't work and people can't use
to sign in on, they simply said, well, these petitions fell short.
They've been archived. And I went to the archive today just before our
phone call because I wanted to refresh my memory on our you know, the
exact wording of our petition. And guess what, even when I press archive,
I can't read the petition. It just says this petition has been archived.
Well, they don't want people to read the old petitions? What's up
with that? In order to read the petition to you that I just read.
I had to go to my own files and read it because I can't
get it on the White House side anymore. The whole thing is just sad.
Yeah, you know their response was silly and the execution was sad.
That's how I look at it. Yeah, and just for the listeners,
So you know, I'll put this up at ufodailynews dot com. The I'll
link to this Philip Larson email Grant Cameron received, so anybody can read it,
and I'll put some more links out there, And of course I've sent
it to you Bryce and Grant is. Yes. Another great thing about Grant
Cameron is he sends out his information when he does these boyas to everybody,
and he doesn't hoard the information at all. So I think you'd be more
than happy if you posted that as well. So he's a terrific researcher and
we're very lucky to have his hard work all these years. Yeah, but
I'm obviously a big fan of my buddy Grant Cameron. He's just a great
guy. He does so much great work. Well, listen, and then
somebody has to be doing that. It's not the easy, glamorous stuff.
San Friedman's a friend of mine as well, and Stanton would not have achieved
what he's achieved if he didn't have the ability to. You know, people
think everyone in yourfology is trying to hog the limelight and all that. That's
all nonsense. It's in my view, and none of it makes any sense
because people really don't know how hard these things are. When San Friedman,
for example, this spend far more time sitting going through documents and sitting in
archives than he ever has attending UFO conferences, right, I mean, the
hard work of this research is unbelievable because most academics get to go to libraries
where the only all they have to do is look through existing material for their
academic research. You follow just have to fight to even see the research,
and most of the time they can't. I think this touches on another important
fact and another benefit to the petition you guys put together is the team work.
And sometimes that doesn't happen. And I think that's so important that I
know, like you said, you know, I know how you and rich
are you guys you know bust over the wording and worked on every word of
your petition and also reach out to other people to get opinions. I think
that's another important aspect, is the teamwork, and I think that that has
to happen more. There are some people like Stanton, like you mentioned,
he's always willing to work with people. Yes, and he's another guy who
I think is great, And I think that teamwork part has to happen.
And you've got sponsorship from a lot of people too. We did, and
you know, one of the first things we did. Look, I come
from Hollywood, where you know, in Hollywood, you write a first script
and it's not done. Then you get notes from people and you incorporate their
notes and you do revisions and so forth. So I'm quite used to collaborating
with people, hearing their good ideas and trying to get them into the project.
So I've approached the petition the same way. After rich and I had
a first draft of it, we shared it with you and probably about a
half a dozen other people and said, look, help us make it better.
What what's missing for you here, what doesn't ring quite true? What
would you like to see Differently, We've got good feedback from everybody. We
put it all together, and then we tried to create something that would have
a odd spectrum appeal, because, as you point out, if if we
don't hang together, we all hang separately. On this one one question I
have, and in hindsight, I should have said something. At the time
that you showed me the draft. I was as busy and I thought it
was worded great. I loved it. But it's one of these things that
comes up, and I would love to hear your thoughts. Sure, maybe
what your response would have been had I suggested this. I always think it
is important to include the word UFO. I don't know that it's hurt here,
but if I would have said, you know, I think you should
at least throw the term in there, just to make sure that people are
clear what you're talking about. Would you probable? Sure? Sure we would
have I'll tell you though there was a debate on that. Oh, I'm
sure because one of the reasons we didn't is we and we used UAP was
to try to force the responder do not fall upon the old usual canards of
UFOs, and for the very reason uap look like they're UFOs, there's no
question, but they're also UAPs, and we were just very cognizant of the
response that Bassett first got, which was to try to group things together and
try to not respond to them. So the argument that prevailed, and by
the way, it could have gone the other way, and had U weighed
in, you might have pushed it the other direction. But the argument that
prevailed was don't give them that ability, and that those of us in uphology
certainly know what a what UAP is and and but you know, I think
it's a it's a valid point, and I think if we were ever to
resubmit this petition, we would probably make that change. I wrote an opinion
piece actually, just like a week ago or two. I don't know if
you got to see it, but I'd love to have you look at it
at some point, and ifinitely think it's between Christmas, you know, that's
what you just illustrate the problem. I read almost everything you ever read or
set right, but during Christmas time it's pretty hard to read things, and
so at the same time, it was pretty hard to sign things. So
we've been all damned by the holidays. But hopefully now that we're in twenty
twelve and looking forward to the new year, we can all get back to
work. Yeah, exactly. And actually I've been more prolific in the last
few weeks because at work, you know, everybody's out on vacation. So
yes, it's been really slow. So I've been able to do a lot
of writing. But I wrote, yeah, kind of my perspective on the
UFO versus UAP, and I see that the purpose of the UAP and the
argument there. But they could respond to your request and throw in UFO,
and that would be a legitimate thing for them to do, of course,
and that would have been fine. It's so hard to get rid of that
baggage, and I think just changing the term isn't gonna Yeah, Unfortunately it's
not. It's not, and it's a good point in fact, now you
mention it. I did read that article of yours and I thought it was
I did, and I thought it was well well taken. And uh again,
you know anytime you well, let me put it this way, as
I said, when you're used to collaborating you The way I've put it this
way is people say, well, when when is the movie done? The
movie is done when it's in the theaters, and even then it's not done
because the director's going to come in and do his own cut later or something.
Right, so nothing's ever really done in the business I'm in, and
so I look at it the same way. This happens to be the first
draft that went up, and the next one, if there is another one,
will be the director's cut. If you will, you know that we
continue to evolve the language so that it gets to be as perfect as we
can possibly make it and leaves as little wiggle room as possible. Right,
And it's, you know, the teamwork thing. It is wonderful these days
to have this sort of team and to have this collaboration because I certainly take
onus in that I didn't mention in the UFO thing before, and I feel
like I should have. But like you said, there's a part too that
could come out. And I know who you talk to because me and Leslie
Kane talk about this all the time. I know you know some of the
other researchers out there. It's a discussion that happens. But it's wonderful that
we have at least this group of people we can call upon and have these
civil debates about things and be comfortable with what the results are because we know
that people like you and Richard, Leslie and some of the other least Peagle,
who I work with and talk with a lot. We all are working
towards the same thing, and all of us have our hearts in the right
in a similar place, and so it's wonderful to have these people you can
trust and call upon. What's interesting also about Leslie Kay, she was a
strong voice for UAP, which is odd because they're books as UFOs and the
title but there are just just there. You know, this is an issue
I think in retrospect I probably lean more to the UFO now that I give
it more thought, for the simple reason that when you work again in the
entertainment business, you're not about changing behavior as much as you're trying to give
people something that they can understand and enjoy and participate in. So therefore,
having terms that are obscure don't help you. So, for example, when
you title a movie, it doesn't usually do you any good to title it
obscurely. The better thing to do is to title it as exactly as it
is, or look at to get search engine optimization. On a web post,
it's better to put the web to say exactly what you want to say
in the web post, rather than a bunch of obscure comments in I'm talking
about the headline. If you want the search engines do it, so I
think probably that would be a change that would be made in the future.
Yeah, it's funny because I know if I put UFO in a headline and
I try to always fit it in if there's anything to do with UFOs,
it's going to get a lot more hits. Yes, I'm sure that was
a was a mistake, although I want to just point out it makes no
difference in this case. I think I don't think it was an effect.
Anybody in the world couldn't have gotten twenty five thousand with the site that doesn't
work. I maintained both of these petitions would have crossed the twenty five thousand
thresholder at least had the ability to do it if a they had not gone
on on December first, and b if they had had a site that people
could effortlessly register at and sign But even with those two things going on,
the reason I'm confident that it's possible to get twenty five thousand signatures is that
there's you know, tens and tens of millions of people worldwide to have computers
and Internet access who also believed that the UFO phenomenon is a real one and
needs to be investigated. So I think the base to sign it was there.
But there were two other institutional reasons why people don't sign these things,
and I think it's important for us to recognize that for the future. The
first argument is that people that don't trust the government already are very leery about
the opportunity to register their name and email with the government. So there's a
lot of people that just say, I'm taking a pass. I don't care
if I believe in this petition. I'm not giving the government my my name
and I'm not tying my name and email to a UFO petition. So there's
that. And number two is people that don't think that a UFO petition,
even if successful, will cause anyone to create an investigation. But if I
could just take those on for second, I think they're both relevant feelings.
But let's take the last one first. That people don't think it will cause
the government to do an investigation, so why bother That's not the issue.
I never thought that we would file a petition, get twenty five thousand signatures
and the US government say, well, thank you for that. Now we're
in investigating. No, that's never going to happen. But what we're trying
to do is move the ball down the field, if you will, so
that the mere act of this very well written petition, getting twenty five thousand
signatures and requiring a response forces the issue into the public domain a little bit
further, and it causes our own government to say, well, people are
starting to wake up to this reality, and we're you know, at some
point we need to be given some thought to this. It's just a marker
on the road to success as opposed to the end result. And then as
for people who don't trust the government, I can't really say much about that
other than if you believe in UFOs and you think, I don't think you
have to worry that the government is going to hunt you down because you signed
a petition about UFOs. They're probably more worried about a lot of other things
like that, so I don't worry to And besides which, let's face it,
if the governm or anybody wants to target you in today's technology area,
the fact that you signed or don't sign a petition about UFOs is irrelevant.
If you're on Facebook or you have an email address, right else, we
know, we know what the investigatory capabilities of various institutions are, so I
sort of felt like that's not as big a deal. I know it is
to some people and they didn't they didn't have to sign but for most people,
it's not the biggest deal, right, Yeah, I agree, And
that's going to be my next question on some of the factors, because I
certainly, you know, saw responses on your Facebook and other places, and
I received them whenever I would send out my tweets and facebooks. Is that
yeah, that they wouldn't do anything even if you got your signatures, or
you know, they're just going to lie to us. But I think it
was really exciting. I was not sure if the signatures would come just because
of a couple of things. But I think it's is important to try to
seek a response because it would be interesting too. A petition worded more like
yours that's around thea UFOTH or the UPS. They may even open up the
door a little. I think we sometimes we're too skeptical and that there are
scientists who aren't interested in this, and they may say, I mean,
it's an unknown but we don't have the resources to research it or something.
All andre the very brevity of these petitions is the success of them. Like,
for example, let's just take one sentence out of this that said,
UAP are often or that could be UFOs up are often verified by radar and
even seeing at nuclear sites by military officers. That's one sentence sentence, right,
Okay, I'm the guy at the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
It is not relevant to cite setting to that objection, right, It is
not relevant to talk about how we've discovered planets fourteen light years in a way
that's not relevant. You can't respond to that sentence that way. So if
you're going to have to respond, you're going to have to respond to the
fact that UFOs are often verified by radar and seen at nuclear sites by witnesses
who are military officers with their fingers on nuclear triggers. Okay, what would
they say to that. I'd like to hear our government talk about it.
And even if they even if they say, I don't know what they would
say. That's why I was most interested in saying it, not that not
that I necessarily thought that, you know, twenty billion dollars was going to
be devoted to an investigation. I just thought it would be interesting to see
what the guys who currently exist in power have to say on that topic.
Yeah, exactly, it just would have been more food. Look, it's
information we are We are trying to gather information that leads to solutions and understanding,
and you it's an incremental thing, you know. So for people who
say it won't cause them to investigate, well no, not by itself,
it won't. And in fact, maybe the biggest usefulness of the petition isn't
to the government, but it's to our understanding of what it is that we're
trying to say and collaborating to figure that out and trying to understand where the
government comes from. Because to simply dismiss the government or anybody in charge of
this management of this secret which is being bad people who are out to you
know, conn the world, and you know, I suppose there is some
evidence for that, and I'm not going to get into that. But on
the other hand, I personally look around here and see more ignorance than I
see malfeasance on at least the surface level of our government. So the people
who are ignorant, I'd like to see how, you know, Phil Larson
at the Office of Science and Technology Policy probably has not ever considered that UFOs
that are verified by radar have been seen at nuclear sites by military officers.
He's never given five seconds of thought to that. Well, guess what he
should and if he had to and had to write a response, anything he
said would be pretty damn interesting. And for example, this is the thing
that I just I mourn about the law, the technical obstacles, and the
timing of the petition so that it did not require a response from the White
House. Is that? Imagine if we'd succeeded and today, in twenty twelve,
our petition had succeeded, in Bassett's petition had succeeded, and the Office
of Science and Technology Policy was busy crafting a response, and we're about to
have primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, et cetera. This would be in
the news. And if I was a journalist, you know, the most
journalists but I am a journalist, by the way, But if I were
a journalist covering this campaign, most of them are arrogant and don't believe about
anything about UFOs. But they also most journalists are liberal and don't like Republicans,
So what would they do. They'd want to embarrass somebody by asking them
about UFOs. So yeah, so, in fact, the whole UFO topic
could have been injected into the presidential campaign and would have at least that would
have been interesting in itself. You know, what, what does Mitt Romney
think about UFOs? Yep? I mean I really don't know. And for
him not to be asked, He's asked about everything else. What's new?
Gingrich think? Duke Gngrish is unafraid to say unpopular things, as we all
know. I mean, he and one of the debates started talking and they
said, what are the two things you fear the most international security? And
he said a Iran with a nuclear weapon and be an electromagnetic pulse detonated over
the United States. How many people are talking about EMPs. Okay, that's
very brave of him. I mean, I don't care what you think about
his politics or whatever, and but that's very brave to talk that way and
still be a credible candidate. So you ask a freethinker like this guy what
he thinks about UFOs. He's liable to say something really interesting. But the
problem is he will never be asked right, And I think that's exactly what's
so why the whole point is that asking is important because we don't know.
We assume, oh, these guys aren't going to pay us any attention.
They're the enemy the mainstream science that, but we don't know what they're going
to say. And what's great about reading the first sentence that you have here
again, searching for microbes on Mars and radio signals from space is not enough?
Is that? Mainstream scientists, you know, just recently, and I
wrote this on Huffington Post practically said the exact same thing just recently, saying
this isn't enough. We need to look at photographs of the Moon to see
if extraterrestrials have left any ruins there or indications that they visited. We're not
so far apart, No, we're not. And by the way, that
sentence, thank you for quoting that sentence. I remember sitting up one night
about three in the morning, you know, working on this thing and saying,
I wanted it to strike an economical pre emptive strike, if you will,
on the banal approach that was used in the response to the first petition,
and I needed to swat aside the easy answer, so by telling them,
don't tell us about microbes on Mars, don't tell us about radio signals.
We're not interested in you telling us about that. We know about that.
What we want you to respond to is this. And I think that's
again, the petition process allows you to narrow it. Now, whether the
petition process is you know, the White House made obviously, as you point
out, isn't, isn't giving it a lot of credibility. It's more like
a public relations ploy right now than a true anything else. But on the
other hand, that doesn't. That's okay, that's okay. I accept that,
and I accept that they probably wish they had not put this into place
because it's probably a big headache. And I accept that I am part of
their headache. Right, Well, let's let the games begin, That's what
I say. Well, and it is a bit disingenuous, unfortunately, to
put this site up. I know this wasn't. I read the history behind
putting up the weed of people, and it was one person's idea that everybody
thought was a bad idea. He wanted to do it prior to I think
Obama even coming into office. And then eventually they finally just kind of humored
him and let him put it up, and now they're kind of regretting it,
it seems, but it is disingenuous. But then there was another disingenuous
kind of effort that the Obama White House put forward. And I'm not afraid
to admit and I'm gonna do this right now on the show. I don't
know if I should, but I'm going to say I'm an Obama fan so
when I criticize them, you know when and Bassett jumped on this too.
They put forth like this little book, signed the signature book, and tell
us what's important to you, and the president, the new incoming president will
address these things. And a lot of the top topics were similar to here.
Marijuana was a big one, you know, some student loans. There's
also a big push. Actually one of the big ones was for mass transit
across the country, which makes sense to save on power and echological reasons.
But UFOs got up there and they kind of cherry picked, you know,
and just address the ones they wanted to. So it's unfortunate and it is
disingenuous and just looks like more political rhetoric to put this up and then not
pay much attention to it. Well, I think part of the problem is,
Look, I'm an Obama fan too. I know that's you know,
people are domaining for your neck out there with me. I tend to think
that the President Obama knows he doesn't believe in UFOs and he doesn't think it's
worth his time to think about him my take on it. And I think
he feels like I've got a lot of other problems and there's nothing I can
do about this. And I don't think he thinks it's real. But I
would love to have raised his you know, his knowledge of that. And
I think a successful a couple of successful petitions being covered in the news,
that would begin to start. Yeah, and I think he does respect Clinton.
I mean there are similarities. Of course, he's got Hillary as is
number one when it comes to which is a big deal of the foreign affairs
and so yeah, like you, you know, it'd be great to pose
the question. One of the issues that also I think kind of hurt this
round of petitions is, as you know, every story has I kind of
think of it as an energy and media story. You get some momentum and
it doesn't last very long. It's a short window it may spike and get
really big, but once a couple few days have passed, it's over.
That's why Rich and I argue passionately with Steve Bassett. We said, please
don't go December first, because for that very reason, we just felt like
there are ebbs and flows and it was too soon during the wrong time of
year. But he was adamant. We even reached out by the way to
Steve Bassett and said, we know you want to do another petition. We're
not wild about the one you're circulating. Would you work with us to create
a new one, And he didn't want to do that either, So you
know, listen, that's totally his choice, and he's an activist of great
Merit, so he has his own image of how it needs to go.
But it would have been nice if a we would have postponed till January first,
twenty twelve, b the White House site would have worked, and see
the UFO community would have come together with one single petition. That made sense
because you know now what's happened, and it's taken kind of the wind out
of my sales. I'm seeing people that really have no chance to get these
signatures just writing petitions because it's fun, right, and you know they're going
to get a couple hundred of their friends signing them, and they're not written
well, you know, and that's the problem. Richard Dolan is an excellent
writer, and I like to think I'm an okay writer because I've at least
made a living doing it all these years. And we just felt like,
look, we got to take this level up. This has to be so
artfully crafted that the people who want to dismiss it can't dismiss it as easily.
And I still think that that's still how I believe. Yeah, I
agree with you one hundred percent. I think that teamwork aspect is so incredibly
important, and I hope I know some people kind of felt it was and
us are as them, and I never framed it that way. I framed
it like you. I told people, Hey, you know, sign both.
If you love what Bassett's doing, you know, does you can sign
both? Go well, I totally agree with you. I never, you
know, my arguments were with Steve Bassett were behind the scenes and among colleagues,
you know, but we never a publicly disparaged him, nor did he
us. We I always felt like a rising tide raises all both, so
I thought I actually, once Steve made it clear he was going to go
ahead with his and he was going on the date that he was going,
I talked to Rich and Rich really had you know, he wanted to go
later, and I did too, but I just said, let's let's go
now because maybe the controversy or the competition, if you will angle between two
petitions, we'll get more people talking about it. So that's kind of how
we went. But again it turned out in retrospect to be the wrong time
with the wrong technical website. So we'll it's down time for planning B or
C now, right, yeah, yeah, so which might be I mean,
like you said, because you are media savvy, of course you've got
lots of stuff going on during the holidays, but you do always have that,
you know, as businesses call it, that first quarter kind of lull
where things slow down I mean all over the place, even with sales and
everything. It's the worst quarter for for retail. Usually things slow down in
January and February, so there's definitely some room for we'll see what becomes big
stories, but there's some room for something like that. So hopefully from my
own my own personal thing, though, Alejandro is I'm a little bit I'm
a little worn out by the petition. In other words, I gave it
my all. I mean, right, oh yeah, yeah. We have
considerable resources, and I did everything I could to allow it to become viral,
and it didn't. So I don't know that I have the stomach to
immediately go with that over again. I know that Steve Bassett's going to go
with his again exactly as he had it worded before, and again I think
that's a mistake. I think if it would be better to join forces and
definitely confirmed that the White House site works again and can go later and right
now, I'm retraining my firepower, if you will. The other in other
areas, your Twitter campaign was like nothing I've ever seen before. You're tweeting
your your are out there. Well, you know, I just I just
said, look, we well, first of all, Richard Dolan had set
up our infrastructure to promote our book a d after disclosure, which there's news
on and we'll get to in a second. That infrastructure of the website and
the Facebook page and the Twitter account, we're all in existence with a lot
of support and traffic. So the day that we filed it, we in
essence rented out the ad disclosure real estate if you will, to the petition,
and we changed everything from promoting the book to promoting the petition on all
three sites. Immediately. They've kind of reverted back now that the site,
now that the petition is not live. But we said that we thought that
was a real benefit that we had that we already had. We weren't trying
to build something from the ground up. We already had a lot. Like
we know, we have thirty five hundred or whatever likes on our Facebook page.
So that's nice that if those people would have each gone out and got
five people, we'd have a different conversation right now. It's just hard to
get people to do something, and it's double hard or quadruple hard when they're
trying to do something that technically is incredibly challenging, which is what the White
House website turned out to be. Yeah, speaking of your site, getting
out a light subject and I want to go over these because they are so
funny and they're so smart that I think they they deserve some attention before they
get lost and Okay, and obscurity here, but the kind of cartoons that
you guys put together. They were so funny. We I hope people can
visit the site and see them for themselves. You can get to the site
two ways. It's of course it's afterdisclosure dot com all run together, but
it's also Disclosure petition dot com. Either one, I'll get you to the
site. And what we did is this is this really is I guess this
goes more to my you know, commercial entertainment, Hollywood slash thoughts. But
I just thought, look, when people do you a bad turn, you
don't necessarily attack them. Sometimes you make fun of them. So we thought,
let's try to turn humor into this thing. And so we took a
lot of news photos of the from the campaign and put cartoon balloons with them
to show what the campaign would look like if people actually passed this petition.
And it became something that was happening in the in the daily news and was
in the campaign. So we the I guess. So we have, for
example, uh, you know, Bill Clinton making a speech in one of
them. We have a Barack Obama talking to the guy from Science and Technology
Policy. We have New Gingrich talking about aliens, and it's a very it's
A. It's a it's a new thing. I don't think I've ever seen
anybody do it quite like this, So I thank you for bringing that up.
And maybe, uh, while you're putting your links up, there's a
maybe put the permol up to just that post so people can see those cartoons
themselves. Well, and I'll do that. And the other thing is that
I think was brilliant because I'm I'm a real newshound and I'm following politics and
the news closely, and you got you guys did a good job of getting
the voices of these characters. I mean, it's as if like this this
one with Herman Kane, I love it. It's I may not be able
to find Libya on a map, but I sure as hell I have heard
of Roswell Arizona. And someone off to the site says mister Kane. Roswell's
in New Mexico. No SII, young man, I'm pretty damn sure that's
Arizona. That's one of my favorite ones. It's called fact check. And
we just thought, you know, Pete, that this is what rich and
I have always said about disclosure, which is, you know, you think
yes on one level, it's the biggest story of all time, but it
will still be It will still be processed by politicians and media and average people
in ways that are very recognizable. So if suddenly UFOs and aliens became a
part of a presidential campaign, you'd still have people getting their facts wrong right
and making up things and being and talking about it in debates. And so
we just tried to capture that. And but the nice thing about it,
each cartoon by itself and then in totality kind of tells a story and paints
a picture of the world that could be right and that world that could be
Alejandro that I think why you're responding to it is we know that you don't
immediately go from where we are now to a world where everyone knows everything.
There will be a disclosure day, as we point out in our book,
but that disclosure day will be preceded by in all likelihood, I mean,
we don't have a crystal ball, but in all likelihood it will seep into
the public conversation in a bigger and bigger and bigger way until then there's a
disclosure day. So we were trying to create that interim world, if you
will, where people could see how it begins to seep into public dialogue right
before disclosure, and I think we probably we probably did nail that. Yeah,
well, you know, this campaign is bunny enough these days. I
mean, there's lots of comedy that's generated from what these guys are saying.
But that's what's great. Like you said with your book, you guys are
taking you know, a scenario what would happen, and trying to put the
real world and match it up to what may happen and give plausible ideas.
And that's what I think another reason why I love these these comics because they
they mirror what, just like you said, if this story had blown up
and these guys were to be making comments or discussing this topic, it's probably
Yes, I'm alert to real life what might be happening, and there would
be money scenarios like this. We hope so, And thank you for giving
it a little push, because this is I just feel like it's time for
us to you know, these are all professionally produced. They look really good
and they're not. And by the way, they're all protected by fair use,
so in other words, nobody can you know, force them to be
taken down. They are they are the expression of political opinion and they're protected
by the fair use done so, so it's all kind of good and hopefully
as we begin to use these tools, that's really helpful to the process.
And when I said, I'm I may be dialing back my direct activism as
a sponsor to petitions in favor of, you know, going back to my
what I think I do best, which is I'm a creator of things,
and I think I need to do more of that and leave the active,
the hardcore activism maybe up to others and give them the material if you will,
to take it forward. And that's kind of what this was trying to
do. Yeah, I want to read one more too, and I wish
I could do impressions. I can do Reagan, I think a little bit.
But that's about it. Yes, very nice. But I also love
this Obama one because it's Obama. It's a dream scenario. Obama talking to
doctor John Holdren, who is the Office of Science and Technology Policy Director,
right, and Obama saying this UFO petition got over twenty five thousand signatures in
the month with a broken website. I gotta say something, or Newt will
And then of course John Holdron's thinking how about saying you're firing the genius who
came up with the the people, and you got to think that's probably what
they'd be thinking. And then you know the types of discussions that would be
going on if if is what we thought. And here's the other thing.
This is the kind of thing. Okay, the petition in success would get
on a few people's desks, But we know people are trolling the internet and
passing around funny things. It's not impossible that that cartoon that you just read
out loud gets sent by one of John Holdron's friends to himself, right,
and he reads it and he goes, that's pretty funny, and then he
thinks, wow, but that's also pretty professional looking, and that's interesting,
and it's not impossible. Like like the you know, maybe it wouldn't get
on Obama's desk, but I could see the new Ingrich one being circulated around
his campaign. I know, the herm Caine one. Sadly he's not in
the campaign anymore for us to have fun with. But like you know,
the one we did about the debates with Rick Perry and Mitt Romney in it,
that could easily be sent to either of those guys campaigns and make the
rounds and they probably have a good time with it. Yeah. Well,
and talking with Grant, you know, because Grant when he does these boys,
he's spoken with some of these people and he says that sometimes, you
know, he's come across where some of especially AIDS, have taken some of
these things and posted them or put them around or printed them out and putting
them at their desk, you know, because they're funny. So I think
that, yeah, it's another great way and that's where I love and I
think it's important with interfacing with these people that right. I think, by
the way, I want to just point one thing out to your listeners.
If all of these cartoons are available for them to download and send to anybody
they want. In other words, were they We're not protecting them. They're
not protected, so you can right click them, download them to your computer
and send them to your friends. They're also all collected on our Facebook site
under the photo section and you can download them there. In other words,
we're not being precious about them. They're meant to be seen and people are
free to send them to whoever they want. Mm hmm, yeah, really
cool. Were a lot of fun. Well, thank you for recognizing that
that's that's great, and uh, we do. Those They were created the
first I run another site called moviesmackdown dot com and we we sort of innovated
these with publicity skills that the studios put out for their movies and they work
so well over at movie SmackDown that we thought, well, let's let's adapt
them for the whole you know, the whole petition thing. And we put
those on and they seem to be doing very well, and it clearly here's
how we look at them. The ones on SmackDown and the ones here on
the disclosure site are both editorial cartoons. They're in the same lineage as the
old editorial cartoons that you might have found in the New York Times in the
eighteen hundreds. You know, it's protected free speech done about people who you
know, speaking truth to power. It's speaking humor to power. Basically.
Yeah, I've seen the SmackDown ones too. Those are really funny. Well
yeah, I mean, that's just the thing trying to find and I guess
we perfected it enough we had SmackDown that we felt like, okay, we
get it. So instead of using publicity stills, which we do at SmackDown.
Maybe we'll just grab the most recognizable photos from the campaign and see what
we could do with those. And boy, it just thank you again.
It worked like a charm and hopefully they will have as much trash and over
time. I may keep doing those because I think they're just so fun.
And I'll tell you what, I maybe we'll do a couple of new ones
for your own side. That would be cool if you want. Oh,
that would be great. I mean I love these. That would be so
thrilled. In fact, I'm thinking about that now. I need to put
some links and stuff for my site because these these can't get lost people.
Well, i'll tell you what we'll do. Well, you know, right
now they have the petition, you r l on them. I'll pull that
stuff off and just leave the titles on them. We'll send you a fresh
copy, and we'll leaven do a couple of new ones for you that only
you can have, and then that'll be our gift to you for the new
year. That would be amazing, Thank you so much. I mean,
you're welcome. I love these. These are great, so and before I
guess we've talked the heck out of this petition thing. So let's talk about
because you're you're doing a lot of others. Well, first of all,
I have a piece of breaking news that I could not have told you yesterday
on December thirty, first, perfect, but that I can tell you today.
Richard Dolan and I, as you know, are the authors of ad
After Disclosure, which came out from Keyhole Publishing in late twenty ten in a
hardcover edition. That edition has received enough interest that Career Press, which is
a major publisher in New York, has picked it up and is issuing a
new national edition in May of twenty twelve. It will be in all the
Barns and Nobles and everywhere, and it's been revised and updated and there are
new there's new references to things that happen in twenty eleven, and so it's
all coming out and that will be hitting the stores in May of twenty twelve.
And we're very excited by it because it gave us a chance to dive
back in kind of as we said, you know, do some editing,
fix a few things, straighten out some of the chronologies, and just basically
make it better. And they've been very cooperative. We've added photos to it
and the photos are not your normal photos. They tell the story of disclosure
in these photos. And we've also, as you know, between afters,
we had these faux documents from the future, if you will. Those documents
have all been word processed to look authentic by the Career Press people. So
as a visual thing, it's quite a new edition and I hope people will
like it and enjoy it. And you can see the cover of the new
edition on the after Disclosure Facebook page. It's up there right now. Right.
I was looking at that and I was thinking that that looks really cool.
That looks different. I'm like, yeah, how did I miss that?
This will graph? You know, you didn't see it for a month
because we had the petition up there, And now that the petition is gone
and it's January first, we were able to put that back up. Now.
The bad news is we can't sell the old hardcovers through Keyhole for another
five months. Were kind of going dark and then people but people can already
on Amazon and other places if they choose to pre order the new version,
and it's obviously cheaper, it's not hardcover, and we think it's going to
get a lot of traction. We're very much enthused by the chance to get
in there and roll up our sleeves and make it better. I mean,
that's my thing. You can always make it better. We made it a
little better. We did some editing. We actually took words out of it,
which may seem counterintuitive, but the words that are in there count a
little bit more now and they're just a little it's just a little cleaner read
than it used to be. And I'm excited about the graphics because one great
thing about the book, of course, you're a master of fiction and bringing
and entertainment and so creating. That's what's great about the book. You have
this based on facts, based on what may happen from fact, from the
real pat creating this possible future, and those pieces, those mignettes like you
were talking about you put in with these documents and fo documents really brought you
into it. It made it so fun. It really brought you into this
futuristic world of a after disclosure. And so to see those even you know,
perfected, that's really exciting. It is exciting. And hopefully it won't
end there. When I said I'm kind of I want to kind of return
to my core business. There's a lot of ways to tell the truth.
You can file petitions, and certainly we did, and that's that's run its
course. I'm kind of trying to get back to my you know, in
my own wheelhouse again and do the things that I think have the same game
changing capabilities as a successful petition might have had, and maybe even more so.
But the things that I've done historically, which is right, movies and
television series and and and now I guess even this, you know, this
cartoon format, and so this next year, you just there's two things on
the horizon, but one of them is very big, and it's the Magic
Menu screenplay. And we talked about it last time we talked, but for
the people who haven't heard of it, it is Magic Men. M a
j C. Is based on the life rights of both Stanton Friedman and Don
Schmidt, two men who have both independently and together investigated the Roswell case.
And it also is based on the options to their two books, Stanton Friedman's
Top Secret Magic and Don Schmidt's Witness to Roswell. So we're taking the two
pieces of research that they've done and their two life stories and blending them into
a film that if it is made. The script is very good and getting
better. If it's made, it will be a groundbreaking and game changing kind
of screenplay. And I don't think I've been as excited creatively about something that
just works as a screenplay in a long time. So this is really exciting
to me. And we're moving ahead on that. And also this I hope
to make some progress in setting a d up in a television or feature arena
as well, because, as you point out, the thinking about that future
is very visual, and there's only so much you can do in the book
form. I kind of think it needs to go into the next form,
the next expression, which would be TV or film. Cool. Yeah,
that's exciting the Magic Men because really one thing I was even just thinking about
this the other day, how enormous the Roswell meme is. You know,
out of all of the concepts and ideas that we think about, Roswell's huge.
It's one of the biggest around the world. People get an idea when
they think of Roswell, and so it would be great for people to see
how it came about. You know, this thing is it's that's why it's
a game changer, because it's sort of like watching JFK the Oliver Stone film.
It's got more humor than JFK in it because Stanton and donn are very
interesting guys, right, wonderful characters to play with and so forth. It's
a little bit like All the President's Men meets JFK with a little more humor
in it and UFOs science and science. But by the end of it,
you get to it and you go, well, heech, why was it
that this, this giant story wasn't investigated by Woodward and Bernstein? Why did
it come down to Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist, and Don Schmidt,
who was a postal clerk at the time. Why did it come down to
these two guys that had to go investigate this story, especially when as you
see through the movie just how major this story is and how much evidence exists
to prove the the euphological version of it. So I think it will be
a major thing, and we we have certainly big plans, and this will
be the year when they, you know, I hope to be able to
make some kind of announcement about who are you know, what our plan will
be about taking it to film? Awesome? Yeah, And like you said,
I mean President start talking about it. Hagar Matel is out there,
you know, that's right, very vocal about the whole thing. So it's
a big, big deal. And one other thing that I'm wrapping up right
now is I've also optioned Stan Friedman and Kathleen Martin's book Captured about the Betty
and Barney Hill case, because I think that's another story that was so important
and yet obviously it got made as a TV movie in nineteen seventy five based
on not the full information. And also, look, it was just a
it was TV movie fine for its time, but it's not what we can
do now. And I think it's very interesting to tell the story of Betty
and Barney Hill, and to tell it in a way that we would tell
a movie these days. I'm certainly compelled by the fact that in nineteen sixty
one, when Betty and Barney Hill were abducted in New Hampshire, they were
an interracial couple, a black man and a white woman. The only people
in nineteen sixty one who probably didn't notice that they were a black man and
a white woman were the people who abducted them. Yeah, well find that
pretty compelling. Yeah, and it's another case I just posted yesterday my top
twenty stories for the year, and one of them was the plaque that the
state of New Hampshire put up for Betty and Barney Hill. I think it
shows how credible they were as people and how respected they were as people.
And also Kathleen Martin is the perfect champion for this subject to see herself is
so down to earth incredible, you can relate to her and the story.
So I agree, it's another An's been very helpful and she's allowing me to
review all the family photos and all her files, and I think we're going
to be able to bring a new spin to it that obviously it could really
benefit from. I mean, it's a very documented case, but it have
been documented in film other than that one attempt in seventy five, which was
low budget television, and right you know, if you watch it right now,
it just doesn't really hold up that well. And I think I think
there's just a new way to take this material on and and I look forward
to doing that as well. Awesome, Well, yeah, Kathleen, it's
a great treasure. And you know what, how lucky we aren't really thinking
about you and your involvement and this whole subject and how lucky we are that
you know, you're you're moving forward and moving and shaking things and you're here
and making things happen, and that's great. So I want to thank you
for everything that you're doing. You're doing all some great stuff and we're we're
running out of time. So was there anything else you needed to mention?
Well, no, I just wanted to say that. I well, first
of all, I appreciate what you just said, and and you know,
in terms of making things happen, I just want everyone to understand there's always
setbacks, just as the petition was a setback, and maybe some maybe Basket
will pick up that standard and carry it forward. The same is true in
television and film. It's just it's because it's a collaborative medium, and because
it's expensive to make TV and film, and because of all these issues.
It's it's never as simple as saying, well, we're shooting on June twelfth.
You know you can't quite You got to you got to put the coalition
together to make a film or a television series. In the same way that
the people who are listening uh and want to be activists in the whole area
need to also build coalition. So I guess that's the message of the whole
of the whole hour that we've been talking. Mm hmm. So thank you
much, and I look forward to sending you a few of our of our
disclosure cartoons for your site. And I thank you for awesome well, thank
you, and I'm so excited to see you again in February at the Congress.
I'll beat there. I'm working on a new speech I've been giving one
over the years called or for the last year rather called life after Contact.
And even though that's my topic or the title, I'm trying to add some
new material that brings into play all these things we've been discussing. Yeah.
Yeah, it's always fun to be at the conference to have you know,
your group of people around and to be networking. And yes, and I'm
always busy running around like a chicken with my head cut, but I could
usually carve out some pieces of time there, so it's going to be cool.
I have one other thing about your conference then, Okay, even though
we can't sell our book through Keyhole, I do have a number of the
hardcover collector's editions, if you will, then I'm going to bring with me
because I can sell them at the conference and we'll try to make a good
deal for everybody to get those in the hands of people who want a collector's
edition. Sweet. All right, well, thank you so much for being
on the show. You have a wonderful week ahead of you and we'll talk
soon. Thanks very much, see you. Yeah, all right, thank
you Bryce for being on the show. That document we talked about with the
emails from the White House and mister Larson talking about putting together the answer for
the et petition. I will have that up on a link to that on
UFO Daily News in just an hour or two, so you can go to
Ufodailynews dot com and find that it's written bry Grant Cameron and I'll have that
link up soon. Also join us next week. We have a great show.
We've got Reuben Juriarte and Noe Torres of Roswell Books dot com and they
have a new book called Aliens in the Forest and this is a really crazy
California et experience that happened in sixty four and we've got clips from the witness
and just a real crazy thing. So you're definitely gonna want to check this
out. So I will talk to you next week. People don't forget to
check openminds dot tv for the latest in UFO news. Audios mouchatos do