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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight. From coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio,

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Speaker 1: we are back with Dan Wright his book The CIA

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Speaker 1: UFO Papers. Dan, you break down in a great way

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Speaker 1: years of UFOs by various categories. But nineteen fifty two

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Speaker 1: seemed to be a very interesting year. What happened then?

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Speaker 1: What made it so important? The years nineteen forty nine

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Speaker 1: fifty fifty one only had a very few UFO reports,

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Speaker 1: Then suddenly in fifty two, for no apparent reason, they

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Speaker 1: were all over the world all the time. I recorded

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Speaker 1: events in let's see in April in Roseville, Michigan, and

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Speaker 1: the same day in Yuma, Arizona. On May one, there

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Speaker 1: was one over George Air Force Base in California, and

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Speaker 1: also in early May over Keisler Air Force Base in Mississippi.

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Speaker 1: There was something on May twenty one in Barcelona. Back

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Speaker 1: to the US on the twenty ninth in San Antonio.

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Speaker 1: On June, first in a West African county or a

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Speaker 1: country called Gabone, and then in July and East German

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Speaker 1: father and daughter had quite a close encounter. There was

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Speaker 1: something also in July and the Netherlands, and this led

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Speaker 1: up to something probably your viewers have heard before about

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Speaker 1: July nineteenth and twenty. That night, and then six days later,

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Speaker 1: on the twenty sixth, radars at Andrew's Air Force Base

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Speaker 1: and at Washington National Airport, as well as on board

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Speaker 1: radars on airliners, tracked several unknowns. They were tremendous in size,

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Speaker 1: moving radically up and down and sideways. They would not

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Speaker 1: call in fighter interceptors because, as it happened, Andrew's Air

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Speaker 1: Force Base was repaving all its runways. Oh my god,

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Speaker 1: they had nothing there right, So they had sent all

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Speaker 1: their fighters to a base in Delaware while they called

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Speaker 1: over there and said, something's happening here in the skies.

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Speaker 1: You got to come over and look. While there was

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Speaker 1: a long delay, the Air Force really bungled this, but

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Speaker 1: along by three in the morning, finally a couple of

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Speaker 1: jets arrived and as they got within radar range of DC,

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Speaker 1: these unknowns boogied at great speed. The jets didn't see

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Speaker 1: anything and so left again, and as soon as they

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Speaker 1: were out of radar range, the unknowns came back. Was

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Speaker 1: there come some concern that it was Soviet There was

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Speaker 1: for a while, but the Office of Street Tegic Intelligence

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Speaker 1: of Scientific Intelligence within the CIA assured, there's superiors that

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Speaker 1: know this was not a foreign origin. Neither were they

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Speaker 1: American experimental craft. And also in fifty two, weren't their

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Speaker 1: UFOs over the Capitol that was on the July nineteen

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Speaker 1: and twenty and again at on the twenty sixth, not

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Speaker 1: necessarily over the Capitol building, but certainly over DC again,

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Speaker 1: and these were seen by people witnesses, right, Yes, there

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Speaker 1: were people on the ground as well as the radars

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Speaker 1: picking them up. It was clear to everyone that something

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Speaker 1: very odd was happening. It's just that they didn't have

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Speaker 1: any fighter interceptor support to take care of it. Did

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Speaker 1: they get much media exposure? Dan, Sorry I say that again?

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Speaker 1: Did they get much media exposure? Oh? It was all

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Speaker 1: over the newspapers the next morning. Yes. And what did

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Speaker 1: they conclude? What did they say on August first? After

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Speaker 1: these two wild nights in late July, another arm of

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Speaker 1: the CIA assured the public that this was nothing special,

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Speaker 1: that these were all sure what's the word temperature inversion?

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, the radar anomalies despite what everybody had seen. Now,

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Speaker 1: back in nineteen fifty three, there was a panel that

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Speaker 1: was put together called the Robertson Panel, named after Howard

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Speaker 1: Robertson tell me about that by late fifty two, the

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Speaker 1: Office of Strategic Intelligence as well as or Scientific Intelligence,

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Speaker 1: as well as other parts of the CIA, were growing

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Speaker 1: very frustrated that the public wasn't buying what they were selling,

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Speaker 1: that they were never going to convince the public that

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Speaker 1: this was normal stuff until they brought hard science to bear.

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Speaker 1: And so they recruited a professor named Howard Robertson, who

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Speaker 1: brought along four other physicists and they got together in

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Speaker 1: January of fifty three at the OSI offices in the CIA. Now,

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Speaker 1: the CIA was very reticent to have the public understand

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Speaker 1: that they had anything to do with this because of

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Speaker 1: the fear that they were hiding something that the public

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Speaker 1: would panic. So they always always insisted on anonymity throughout

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Speaker 1: all the decades that the Central Intelligence agents he was involved.

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Speaker 1: In January of fifty three, this group of five scientists

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Speaker 1: got together at the OSI offices for about twelve hours

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Speaker 1: over four days. They looked at a couple of films,

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Speaker 1: a couple of photos, and gave scant look at about

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Speaker 1: fifteen other just accounts from around the country. The one

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Speaker 1: of the films was taken by as it happened a

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Speaker 1: US Navy photographer, a career photographer, and he said he

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Speaker 1: saw ten discs in the high sky and filmed them

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Speaker 1: for a couple of minutes. After coming up with no

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Speaker 1: real solution, the CIA proclaimed that he had been filming

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Speaker 1: either balloons, It would be curious that you'd have ten

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Speaker 1: or a dozen balloons all floating together, or seagulls. And

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Speaker 1: they did the same kind of treatment on one other

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Speaker 1: short film that was taken at a minor league ballpark

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Speaker 1: in Oregon and a few photos. These were all normal

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Speaker 1: things that were grossly misidentified, and that was their report.

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Speaker 1: The Robertson report just put the kaibash on all things

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Speaker 1: UFO related, almost like the Project Bluebook, were they just

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Speaker 1: collected info and then pooh pooed it later, Yes, and

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Speaker 1: how they wrapped it up with the report from nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty nine that again said all of this stuff is nonsense.

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Speaker 1: The public is disillusioned and delusional, forget it. What did

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Speaker 1: they say about groups that started to pop up that

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Speaker 1: was very scientific, like Nightcap. I was a member of

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Speaker 1: that when I was as a kid. But that was

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Speaker 1: put together by Donald Kehoe who was in the military

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Speaker 1: right and he had attracted some very staunch researchers. What

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Speaker 1: did they say about groups like that? Yeah, well this

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Speaker 1: APRRO the Aerial Phenomena Research Organism CORAL and Jim Lorenzen.

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Speaker 1: They group drew great suspicion from the Robertson group. They

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Speaker 1: saw this group as potentially subversive and to keep it

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Speaker 1: more than arm's length. They had a grudging respect for NIGHTCAP,

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Speaker 1: the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, which was headed

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Speaker 1: by Donald Keyhoe, who was a retired Marines major, so

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Speaker 1: he had some cred for that, and they grudgingly said, Okay,

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Speaker 1: he's got a fine organization here. It's it's loosely structured,

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Speaker 1: but they do have investigators, they have a manual of procedures,

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Speaker 1: they have thirty five hundred members. Okay, they may have

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Speaker 1: something going, but they still have the potential to be subversive.

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Speaker 1: So both of these groups and any others along the

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Speaker 1: way were to be not just kept at arm's length,

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Speaker 1: but to be monitored, to be surveiled. And we don't

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Speaker 1: know anything about the particulars of that, just that the

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Speaker 1: order came down surveiled these organizations. Now we have talked

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Speaker 1: a lot on this program. Dan about the Bentwaters case

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Speaker 1: in Britain. Incredible UFO case, But you kind of allude

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Speaker 1: that there was a much earlier incident at that same location.

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Speaker 1: Can you tell us about that? Sure? It was nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty six and the Bentwater, which was an American airbase,

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Speaker 1: saw a number of unknowns in the sky at the

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Speaker 1: same time, up to a dozen, and as they're watching

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Speaker 1: them on radar, not visually see all of these blips

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Speaker 1: coalesced into one huge blip which then traveled several thousand

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Speaker 1: miles an hour in literally the wink of an eye.

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Speaker 1: They were off the radar. Then they came back and

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Speaker 1: disappeared while they were central to the radar screens, So

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Speaker 1: that set a lot of hair standing up on the

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Speaker 1: necks of the analysts. Might they have been the same

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Speaker 1: craft that eventually became the ben Waters case. May have

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Speaker 1: been at this time in fifty six, it was just

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Speaker 1: the repeated appearances of something on radar. There were a

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Speaker 1: scattered few airmen on the grounds and maybe one pilot

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Speaker 1: who saw something in the distance, but still to them

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Speaker 1: it was just a bright light. So I can't tell

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Speaker 1: you really what it was, just that it was really there.

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Speaker 1: And then they tried their best to say no, it

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Speaker 1: never really happened the fact that the CIA did this

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Speaker 1: back fifty years ago and now we're hearing reports of

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Speaker 1: what the government spent twenty two million dollars for more

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Speaker 1: types of reports. It's never stopped, has it. No, it

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Speaker 1: never really has. In all of my experience as an investigator.

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Speaker 1: And then on the MOUF on board, I always found

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Speaker 1: that locally, state police and airports gave great cooperation. I

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Speaker 1: never had any kind of problem with them at all.

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Speaker 1: But you get up to the national level and that's

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Speaker 1: where you ran into the resistance where the policy was

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Speaker 1: coming down and UFOs were not going to be the policy.

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Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at

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Speaker 1: one am Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am

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