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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on

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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and welcome back to Coast to Coast. Mike Barra

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Speaker 1: is a New York Times best selling author. He is

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Speaker 1: a lecturer, television personality. His books have sold more than

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Speaker 1: seventy thousand copies worldwide. He began his writing career after

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Speaker 1: spending more than twenty five years as an engineering designer

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Speaker 1: consultant for major aerospace companies. He knows what he's talking about.

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Speaker 1: He was a card carrying member of the military industrial complex,

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Speaker 1: but he made the switch. Mike, welcome back. How are you, sir.

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Speaker 1: I'm doing great, George. It's great to be with you.

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Speaker 1: I was in Denver doing my Beyond Belief TV shows.

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Speaker 1: I was just mentioned and watching in my room Ancient

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Speaker 1: Aliens a little extravaganza, and I'm telling you it was

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Speaker 1: the Mike Barro Nite. Yeah, that was the Men and

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Speaker 1: Real Men in Black episode. Yes, he were everywhere, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I know, well, and then I was there was some

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Speaker 1: others show on Discovery about the form to Triangle that

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Speaker 1: I did. The other was on Sunday Night too, So yeah,

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Speaker 1: you just can't avoid me, George. I'm everywhere I'm on,

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Speaker 1: you know, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Sometimes I'm on the whole week,

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Speaker 1: every every night of the week. It's great. You're like

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Speaker 1: a virus, but you're a good guy. Oh, my good

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Speaker 1: virus are a bad virus. There are good viruses. Seventy

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Speaker 1: eight years ago today, the Battle of Los Angeles. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: what the heck do you think happened? Well, Um, I

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Speaker 1: can tell you what I think, and I can. I

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Speaker 1: can tell you what you know, what the facts are

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Speaker 1: around it, sure, and I can also. I mean I

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Speaker 1: had to. I had a real long conversation this morning

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Speaker 1: with our our friend or mutual friend, Sonia Grays. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Sonia and I talked about it, and I gave her

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Speaker 1: all the evidence and I said, I think it's aliens,

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Speaker 1: And what do you and your you know, your friends

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Speaker 1: up in the sky think And she said, yeah, aliens.

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Speaker 1: So you know, we can get into that aspect of

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Speaker 1: it once we kind of go through the whole thing

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Speaker 1: if you want, or we can just talk about it now. Well,

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a lot of stuff with you,

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Speaker 1: including their discovering heavy earthquakes on Mars these days. I

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Speaker 1: want to get your take on that. But yeah, let's

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Speaker 1: get right into this thing. Well, first of all, we

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Speaker 1: were at war with Japan, right people were uptight, and

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Speaker 1: we felt Japan might send some planes over. And the

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Speaker 1: closest was the West coast. Yeah, it absolutely was. And

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Speaker 1: you know, at that point there had been a few

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Speaker 1: events that had already taken place, not only, of course,

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Speaker 1: the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of nineteen forty one,

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Speaker 1: but then we also had some incidents where the Japanese

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Speaker 1: had actually invaded kind of invaded the Aleutian Islands along

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Speaker 1: the Alaskan coast, and there was supposedly rumors of an

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Speaker 1: aircraft carrier off the coast of San Francisco Bay, Oakland

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Speaker 1: around that time, and there was you know, basically a

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Speaker 1: sort of a paranoia in the air. There were plans

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Speaker 1: and actually they were carried out. There were plans to

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Speaker 1: actually you know black out the west coast Seattle, San Francisco, Land,

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Speaker 1: I guess, and Los Angeles, where they would black them

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Speaker 1: out at night so that the Japanese couldn't get a

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Speaker 1: good bearing on the cities and you know where the

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Speaker 1: military facilities were. Of course, you know up in Seattle

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Speaker 1: here we had bowing which at that time was probably

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Speaker 1: furiously working on building B seventeens and B twenty nines

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Speaker 1: and anything they could get in the air to fight

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Speaker 1: the Japanese. And of course we had an entire Pacific fleet,

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Speaker 1: you know, except for the aircraft carriers that we had

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Speaker 1: to rebuild that had been sunk at Pearl Harbor. So

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Speaker 1: there was all these reasons why the Japanese were going

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Speaker 1: to be after us, and then we'd also had there

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Speaker 1: had been a whole bunch of attacks on merchant shipping.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there were there were some ships that were damaged.

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Speaker 1: The USS Camden was sunk, the Larry Dohaney was sunk.

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Speaker 1: So there was about I think, oh almost a dozen

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Speaker 1: different episodes of Japanese submarines and Japanese warships attacking American

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Speaker 1: merchant ships in the Pacific up to that point. So

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Speaker 1: you know, by the time, by the time the weekend

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Speaker 1: or the week rolled around of February twenty third, twenty four,

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Speaker 1: things were pretty crazy. And the fact, it turns out

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Speaker 1: that on the twenty third, the day before this famous incident,

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Speaker 1: at about seven fifteen, at the same time that Franklin

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Speaker 1: Roosevelt was given a fireside chat a Japanese submarine surfaced

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Speaker 1: right off the coast of Santa Barbara and a Sheldon

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Speaker 1: oilfield there near town called Goaltta. So there wasn't a

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Speaker 1: lot of damage, but it was pretty unnerving to people.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think we felt probably more vulnerable as

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Speaker 1: a country than we had felt at maybe any time

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Speaker 1: in our history in this Battle of Los Angeles as

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Speaker 1: they were shooting at something. Did anybody die during this episode?

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, actually there were There were more than there

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Speaker 1: were five deaths at least that are attributed to the shelling,

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Speaker 1: and most of it is because you know, they think

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Speaker 1: that things people were There was just anti aircraft artillery

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Speaker 1: firing all over the place, so it was just falling

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Speaker 1: on people and stuff like that. Fire. Yeah, there's actually one, Um,

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Speaker 1: there's actually, you know, I'm the news. The newspapers are

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Speaker 1: really hard to come by. They're not very high resolution.

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Speaker 1: But there was one case where I was able to

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Speaker 1: look at some of the captions of the photographs of

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Speaker 1: the La Times from the period of a couple of

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Speaker 1: days there, and there was one that actually, um, somebody

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Speaker 1: had a shell come right through the roof of their

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Speaker 1: house way up near Crenshaw between the ten and the one,

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Speaker 1: ten and the four or five. So that's the way

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Speaker 1: inland that's over by Englewood and um, you know where downtown.

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Speaker 1: So that was that was an incident where there were

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Speaker 1: shells coming down there. And the interesting thing about that

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Speaker 1: is it indicates that, you know, traditionally we tend to

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Speaker 1: think of this thing is taking place kind of off

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Speaker 1: the coast, but there were there was anti aircraft stuff

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Speaker 1: being fired in towards downtown LA at the same time,

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Speaker 1: which is pretty extraordinary. And apparently naval intelligence on the

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Speaker 1: twenty fourth of February talked about an attack could be

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Speaker 1: expected within hours. Yeah, so everybody was uptight exactly. They

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Speaker 1: did issue that event after some other things had happened,

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Speaker 1: especially I think was the submarine that had shelled the

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Speaker 1: oil field the day before, so everybody was very, very tense.

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Speaker 1: I want to issue something to our listeners. This of

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Speaker 1: course was seventy eight years ago, but if anybody was

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Speaker 1: around then and you remember this episode, call us. Now,

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Speaker 1: get on the show. I want to pop you on

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Speaker 1: with Mike Barra and just explain to us what's going on.

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Speaker 1: That would have made you eighty or ninety maybe even

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Speaker 1: a hundred years old. Yeah, pretty close to one hundred.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure there are many people left there, Mike,

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Speaker 1: but my gosh, if we can dig up one or two,

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Speaker 1: what a story that would be. Yeah, that would be

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Speaker 1: a great show. Let's do that now. Weren't they pinging

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Speaker 1: when they were shooting the artillery? People could hear things

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Speaker 1: being hit? Yeah, that's actually true. Also, there were multiple

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Speaker 1: reports of the sound of like metallic, like the shells

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Speaker 1: hitting something metallic. And again it appears that as you

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Speaker 1: go through the sequence of events that there were multiple

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Speaker 1: different incidents, like there were planes sided over the city,

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Speaker 1: or what people thought were planes but basically are just

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Speaker 1: described as as bright lights and so. And then there

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Speaker 1: was the main object which seemed to sort of crawl

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Speaker 1: down the coast there, right off right off the Pacific,

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Speaker 1: right off the coast, that was hit multiple times. And

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Speaker 1: when the people talk about the shells hitting that object,

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Speaker 1: that's where you get these reports of just kind of

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Speaker 1: a ping, ping, bouncing sound of being hit. And I

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Speaker 1: mean some of these shells, George, they were they were

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Speaker 1: not small. I mean there were fifty caliber machine guns.

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Speaker 1: Some of the anti aircraft shells were these twelve point

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Speaker 1: eight pound shells. Imagine getting hit with that at you know,

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Speaker 1: hundreds of feet per second or thousands of feet per

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Speaker 1: second velocity. For it not to take something down, it

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Speaker 1: had to be dang there and destructible. In the daytime

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Speaker 1: when the sun came out, where was the object? It

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Speaker 1: was gone by then. The firing actually ended about four

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Speaker 1: or fourteen, four fifteen in the morning, when they kind

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Speaker 1: of decided that the whole thing was over with and

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Speaker 1: they stopped firing all the different weapons and stuff, all

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Speaker 1: the different aircraft batteries up into the sky. So it

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Speaker 1: had stopped by then, but you know everything the blackout

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Speaker 1: order was listed at seven twenty one, and the sun

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Speaker 1: would have been coming up right around that time. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: could anybody at night with the lights that they were

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Speaker 1: beaming up there see anything? Yeah, there were multiple reports

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Speaker 1: again of different objects. There were people who described clusters

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Speaker 1: of small objects flying around. They were described as airplanes,

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Speaker 1: at least they're characterized as airplanes, but the descriptions don't

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Speaker 1: really sound like airplanes. They were these small sort of

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Speaker 1: fireflies that were zipping around the skies over la. Now,

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Speaker 1: the descriptions on the speed of these objects was, you know,

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Speaker 1: anywhere from like basically very slowly like a crawl, which

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Speaker 1: could be some sort of balloon or you know, over

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Speaker 1: two hundred miles an hour, so they weren't going super fast.

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Speaker 1: And then of course there was the big main object

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Speaker 1: which ran all the way down the coast, and these

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Speaker 1: things could be seen in the searchlights. And there's the

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Speaker 1: very famous picture from the La Times of the disc

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Speaker 1: shaped object with the dome on top of it. You know,

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Speaker 1: there's about nine spotlights on it. Then there's any aircraft

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Speaker 1: flak going off all around it, and it looks like

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Speaker 1: a flying saucer sitting in those spotlight beings. I mean,

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Speaker 1: clearly there's something up there. Yeah, absolutely, Well. The thing

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Speaker 1: is too if you say, if you look at that picture,

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Speaker 1: people say, okay, there's there's you know, people have try

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Speaker 1: to argue about that photograph, but the fact is is

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Speaker 1: that looked there was something physical there that all nine

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Speaker 1: searchlights spotlights had spotted. Zach followed. There's no way around it.

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Speaker 1: There had to be something there. And what could possibly

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Speaker 1: survive that kind of shelling for an extended period of time,

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Speaker 1: I mean for three or four hours. It's just it's crazy. Well,

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Speaker 1: and if this happened to be a weather balloon, it

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Speaker 1: would have got blown to smithereens. Yeah, there's no way

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Speaker 1: that that object. The main object was a weather balloon.

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Speaker 1: You know, George, it's really interesting when you look at

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Speaker 1: this case, it's almost like a parallel of the Phoenix lights,

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Speaker 1: and that you have these multiple different objects, one of

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Speaker 1: them which kind of flies over the city, and then

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Speaker 1: you've got the objects that were over the mountains that

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Speaker 1: some people think are flares, and you've got the scrambled aircraft.

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Speaker 1: So you've got different sightings taking place at different parts

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Speaker 1: of the city, one of which some of which could

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Speaker 1: have been balloons, but that one the main object absolutely

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Speaker 1: was not a balloon. Who was the celebrity Mike who

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Speaker 1: eventually saw this thing, Well, actually there were, there were

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Speaker 1: a couple who experienced it that there's really really interesting.

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Speaker 1: One of the more interesting ones is DeForrest Kelly, who

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Speaker 1: later went on to play doctor McCoy in the original

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Speaker 1: stock Okay, sure he was not in the military yet.

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Speaker 1: He was a young man, but you know, he lived

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Speaker 1: in Los Angeles trying to make a career as an actor,

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Speaker 1: and he said that he saw the incident from Long Beach.

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Speaker 1: Now again people have argued and said okay, Well, the

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Speaker 1: main object didn't make it all the way down to

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Speaker 1: Long Beach. But Kelly was in Long Beach and what

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Speaker 1: he said he saw was tiny white lights way up

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Speaker 1: in the sky that looked like the formation of some sort.

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Speaker 1: But they were at extremely high altitude, and people did

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Speaker 1: describe some of these small objects up over around you know,

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Speaker 1: twelve to twenty thousand feet. So he saw those objects

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Speaker 1: down around Long Beach near the end of this whole process.

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Speaker 1: And then John Wayne reportedly, you know the film nineteen

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Speaker 1: forty one that Steven Spielberg made back in the in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, was that Belushi. John Belushi was the

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Speaker 1: star that he actually he had created the character. Spielberg

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Speaker 1: had created the character for the movie called General Still Stillwell,

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Speaker 1: and he wanted John Wayne to play it. And he

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Speaker 1: gave the script to John Wayne, and Wayne said, forget it.

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Speaker 1: I'm not doing this. It was nothing like that. Its

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Speaker 1: field work, said, what do you mean, because well, I

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Speaker 1: saw the whole thing. Wow, And I was around when

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Speaker 1: those he said, fake bombs fell out of the sky.

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Speaker 1: At least that's the quote. There was no panic in

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Speaker 1: Los Angeles. There were some news reports on the radio

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Speaker 1: and that was about it. So according to John Wayne,

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Speaker 1: it was not a big deal at all. But you know,

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Speaker 1: he was way up in Hollywood as opposed to being

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Speaker 1: down you know, Santa Monica, Long Beach for Dondo Hermosa

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Speaker 1: down along the beaches there. He wasn't in that area.

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Speaker 1: So Kelly apparently saw something pretty different down in Long

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Speaker 1: Beach than John Wayne saw it in Hollywood. How would

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Speaker 1: you rate this, Mike with War the Worlds that orson

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Speaker 1: Wells played on CBS. Well, I guess you know, look,

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Speaker 1: if he listened to War of the Worlds, I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's terrifying. If you don't get right away that it's

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Speaker 1: a play, it's terrifying to listen to. I can imagine

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Speaker 1: and that this probably was just as terrifying when it

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Speaker 1: was going on, because imagine this, George, You're you've got

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Speaker 1: the war jitters. You're under pressure there, You've been warned

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Speaker 1: an attack is imminent. You've been warned that there is

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Speaker 1: an attack coming within the next ten hours. A few

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Speaker 1: hours later, the sirens go off, the city goes dark,

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Speaker 1: all the power is cut off, the entire city goes dark,

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Speaker 1: and all hell breaks loose over your head. With every

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Speaker 1: anti aircraft, battery, cannon going off, and machine gun fire

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Speaker 1: fifty calibers, small arms fire. I'm sure at at these objects,

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Speaker 1: these small objects that are darting all over the place,

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Speaker 1: possibly some balloons, which you don't know what those are.

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Speaker 1: You don't know if those are our Japanese balloons or

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Speaker 1: American balloons or you know whose are they? That's right.

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Speaker 1: And then you've got this big object which is described

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Speaker 1: as like a blimp. And that's the interesting thing about

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Speaker 1: the photograph, is it it does look like a flying

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Speaker 1: saucer shaped blimp, but there's no way it could survive

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Speaker 1: that bombardment. So imagine all this stuff going up. I

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Speaker 1: think it would be be like the War of the World.

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Speaker 1: It would be just as terrifying as that. Thinking probably

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Speaker 1: thinking you're getting invaded at that moment by the Japanese.

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Speaker 1: Did we send well, of course, we were firing a

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Speaker 1: lot of artillery. I'm not sure if we send any

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Speaker 1: planes up there at the time. Did we Well, we

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Speaker 1: know we had planes on alert, but none of them

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Speaker 1: actually went up in the air, and thank god they

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Speaker 1: didn't because they would have got shocked out. Well, they

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Speaker 1: would have got blown up. Yeah, by our own weapons.

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Speaker 1: I mean, we were firing off all the anti aircraft

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Speaker 1: batteries plus you know, fifty calibers and everybody with their

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Speaker 1: with their machine guns and stuff. So any planes that

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Speaker 1: were up in the sky probably would have been knocked

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Speaker 1: out because again some of these shells and things and

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Speaker 1: the people that were killed, they were all in the

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Speaker 1: downtown area or Culver City or that area there, and

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Speaker 1: so there was there was stuff being fired off all

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Speaker 1: over the place. Think back about those you know, those

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Speaker 1: to those videos from the Gulf War, the First Gulf

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Speaker 1: War and the Second Gulf War where all the anti

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Speaker 1: aircraft stuff is going off over Bagdad. It's the same

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Speaker 1: kind of thing. And imagine if you were a plane

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Speaker 1: trying to fly through that at low altitude, you would

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Speaker 1: have gotten cream shock and awe. Yeah, exactly, shock and all.

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Speaker 1: That's what it would have been like. It would have

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Speaker 1: been unbelievable. Now, there were rumors we had five hundred

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Speaker 1: military troops at Walt Disney studios in Hollywood and Burbank.

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Speaker 1: Is that true? That is categorically true. Yeah, In fact,

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Speaker 1: they were stationed there because there was a lot of

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Speaker 1: concern about the possibility that we would have you know,

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Speaker 1: the Japanese would try to damage the studio, destroy it,

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Speaker 1: kind of strike at the cultural heart of America and

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Speaker 1: you know, create some damage. So yeah, there were five

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Speaker 1: hundred troops there stationed, not just because it was a

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Speaker 1: good place to garrison some troops, but they were there

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Speaker 1: to actually protect the studios. So these five people that

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Speaker 1: were killed, they're minding their own business and all of

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Speaker 1: a sudden, what trapnel and pieces of the debris of

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Speaker 1: the artillery falls right on them and crushes them. It

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Speaker 1: would be shells, you know, what goes up must come

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Speaker 1: down and ultimately ballistic and so yeah, just stuff fired

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Speaker 1: into the air. I mean, imagine you're sitting there in

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Speaker 1: your comfortable house, you know, in mar Vista or something,

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Speaker 1: in a twelve point eight pounds shell traveling several hundred

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Speaker 1: miles an hour crashes down into your house and stuff.

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Speaker 1: So there was a lot of that, and I mean

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Speaker 1: five people, actually, I think is a pretty high number.

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Speaker 1: You know, it is, given the circumstances. It's pretty crazy

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Speaker 1: that five people lost their lives. And that's that's what

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Speaker 1: we know about it. That's what was reported at the time.

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Speaker 1: And remember, we didn't have social media, we didn't have

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Speaker 1: the Internet, so it's probable that the reports are actually

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Speaker 1: fairly conservative in terms of how many people actually lost

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Speaker 1: their lives in the whole thing. After the war, the

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Speaker 1: Japanese government said, we have flown no planes over Los

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Speaker 1: Angeles during the war. Yep. They categorically said that we

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Speaker 1: did not have anything to do with this. It was

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Speaker 1: not our aircraft. You know, whatever you guys were shooting out,

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Speaker 1: We're not Japanese planes or any other kind of experimental

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Speaker 1: aircraft or balloons or dridgibles or anything. So the question

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Speaker 1: then becomes, you know, what was this big heavy object

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Speaker 1: that basically and Georgia thing is. It was first spotted

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Speaker 1: on radar one hundred and twenty miles out really slowly, yeah,

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Speaker 1: slowly moving towards Santa Monica. And then there were updates

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Speaker 1: and the alerts actually went off. Everything went why didn't

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Speaker 1: we try to intercept it? Then? Well, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: that's a good question. You know, at the time, you

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Speaker 1: have to remember we were very unprepared, and we were

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Speaker 1: very inexperienced, and so and in shock too probably, and

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Speaker 1: in shock right, we'd just been sneak attacked. I mean,

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Speaker 1: think about think about the shock that we were all

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Speaker 1: in after nine to eleven, I think most of us

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Speaker 1: that are alive today can remember that, at least those

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Speaker 1: of us that are over thirty. And and imagine, you know,

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Speaker 1: translate that back into an even bigger threat, which is

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Speaker 1: not just a threat of terrorism, but actually a complete invasion.

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Speaker 1: And I just think we were again stumbling around, trying

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Speaker 1: to get our feet and not really very sharp. And

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Speaker 1: then this thing about two fifteen, this thing is now

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Speaker 1: only three or four miles off of Santa Monica, and

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Speaker 1: that's when the green alert goes up, which is basically,

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Speaker 1: you know, prepared a fire, and then the city goes

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Speaker 1: black and everything, you know, goes crazy right after that.

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Speaker 1: Listen to More Coast to Coast a m every weeknight

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Speaker 1: Coast am dot com for more