Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry
Speaker 1: over there, and this is Park du Um. Project blue
Speaker 1: Book that's right where we left off. Project blue Book
Speaker 1: has officially been launched. They're doing a pretty good job
Speaker 1: of investigating stuff at this point. The Salad Days Salad
Speaker 1: Days of official investigation. You know, every time I hear
Speaker 1: salad Days, I think of Monty Python sketch about it's
Speaker 1: just called salad Days. Great, you should look at I'll
Speaker 1: check it out. Is there is there blood? I need
Speaker 1: blood in my Monty Py A lot of blood. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm in then, So let's talk about this was a
Speaker 1: big if you want to talk to salad days of
Speaker 1: UFO sightings. Speaking of salad days, this is one of
Speaker 1: the big years. Uh. There were fifty hundred and one
Speaker 1: UFO sightings in nineteen fifty two, which there were a
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty nine. So there's a lot. Yeah, almost
Speaker 1: an increase of ten times, that's right, pretty order of magnitude,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, So that's a pretty big uptick. I
Speaker 1: guess you could say, and it just so happens that
Speaker 1: the Air Force had positioned itself already to investigate this
Speaker 1: stuff with an open mind. Yeah, And there were some
Speaker 1: big ones, like there was one where the Air Force
Speaker 1: scrambled jets to intercept what they called brilliant objects over Washington. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were on radar and seen visually in the sky.
Speaker 1: And Major General John Sandford, he was the Director of Intelligence,
Speaker 1: actually brief the FBI on this one and said, it
Speaker 1: is not entirely impossible that the object sided may possibly
Speaker 1: be ships from another planet such as Mars. You shouldn't
Speaker 1: added that last, really really suck the wind out of
Speaker 1: his credibility, Yeah, because he had to go in with
Speaker 1: a pretty good sentence there, and he could have just
Speaker 1: said from a somewhere else in the galaxy, right, He
Speaker 1: might as well have said Uranus. He might as well
Speaker 1: said martians. M So Sandford also, I got the impression
Speaker 1: he went a little bit rogue here. He held a
Speaker 1: press conference, from what I understand of his own accord, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to reassure the general public that the Air Force was
Speaker 1: on the case and that yes, it's true, we can't
Speaker 1: really explain all this stuff but we're looking into it.
Speaker 1: But he included the word however, which is very important
Speaker 1: because what followed that was, however, a certain percentage had
Speaker 1: been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things. It
Speaker 1: is this group of observations that we now are attempting
Speaker 1: to resolve. But there is no conceivable threat to the
Speaker 1: United States. I don't know if I would have felt
Speaker 1: better hearing that presser, I wouldn't have. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: have been like, I knew it. I knew at the
Speaker 1: was about to end ye Martians. Who knows who's going
Speaker 1: to replace Tom Cruise in top gun. There's this utter
Speaker 1: chaos and disorder, that's right. Um. So there was an
Speaker 1: article much the same way that the Saturday Evening Post
Speaker 1: helped put it kind of a damper on the UFO craze.
Speaker 1: The behest of the Air Force back in the forties.
Speaker 1: The UFO fever that spiked in nineteen fifty two was
Speaker 1: helped along by a Life magazine article, but not from
Speaker 1: the Air Force behest. No, No, it was like the opposite.
Speaker 1: It was called have we visitors from outer Space? It's
Speaker 1: just such a nineteen fifties headline, you know. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: they offered or they said they were offering scientific evidence
Speaker 1: that there's a real case for in a planetary saucers.
Speaker 1: And then I think about ten sightings that they kind
Speaker 1: of just went over in great detail. Right, it was
Speaker 1: a very long article. It was, um, it really made
Speaker 1: the case that yes, there was probably extraterrestrials visiting US.
Speaker 1: I bet that was a big issue of life. Sure,
Speaker 1: but they sold a lot of those, Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: I mean it landed really well and really hard among
Speaker 1: the American public because they were in the grips of
Speaker 1: UFO fever again. So while this is going on like it,
Speaker 1: it had kind of died down a little bit as
Speaker 1: crazy and in fact, the I think the Air Force
Speaker 1: was kind of surprised when it flared up again because
Speaker 1: it had a little bit died down from seven to
Speaker 1: say nifty, and then all of a sudden fifty two.
Speaker 1: I don't know where it comes back. It's like a
Speaker 1: hemorrhoid you thought you'd taken care of exactly. That's an
Speaker 1: exact analogy. It's perfect. So the c I A, um,
Speaker 1: they had been kind of keeping tabs on this stuff.
Speaker 1: I wondered about this when I was reading this, I
Speaker 1: was like where are they this whole time? That's exactly
Speaker 1: what they wanted you to wonder and then conclude they're
Speaker 1: not doing anything exactly Could that be on the news? Right? Right?
Speaker 1: So it turns out that the CIA was doing something
Speaker 1: even though it wasn't on the news. Um. There was
Speaker 1: a guy named H. H. Marshall Chadwell, where did all
Speaker 1: these people come from? Yel or something's great there? Everyone
Speaker 1: involved in this this UFO investigation came from Yale. BA
Speaker 1: sound like blue bloods. So um. He was the assistant
Speaker 1: director of Scientific Intelligence for the CIA, and he basically said, hey, um,
Speaker 1: we don't know what these are. By the way, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've been paying attention to this stuff,
Speaker 1: but we should probably investigate it. That's right. So he Um.
Speaker 1: He got a panel impaneled, there's really no other way
Speaker 1: to put it. I like that word. Um in ninety
Speaker 1: two and it was led by a physicist, a very famous,
Speaker 1: likable physicist named Howard Percy Robertson. He was likable physicists, sure,
Speaker 1: he was very very well liked in his class at Yale.
Speaker 1: He would be H. Percy Robertson at Yale though, Oh
Speaker 1: I guess so he really would he loosened the club
Speaker 1: tie by going by Howard Percy. Yeah, so he was
Speaker 1: from cal Tech and he looked into this thing and
Speaker 1: they had this panel and they met for for days
Speaker 1: twelve hours a few hours a day. That seems a
Speaker 1: little skimpy to me, but whatever, same here, I've only
Speaker 1: got three hours a day to do. They just basically
Speaker 1: went around the room taking turns reading that Life magazine
Speaker 1: article out loud, I guess so, and then discussing what
Speaker 1: they thought about it. So Repelled is still here. He's
Speaker 1: the head of Blue Book at the time. Still Heinik
Speaker 1: was there. He's still around. Yeah, he's never he's never left, right, No,
Speaker 1: he's part of this this ongoing project that's right investigation. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then other people that were involved that you know
Speaker 1: should have been in the room and were in the room,
Speaker 1: and they were all presenting what they thought were the
Speaker 1: most interesting cases to what would be eventually known as
Speaker 1: the Robertson Panel. Right, the Robertson Panel said thank you
Speaker 1: very much, all of you will will be in touch.
Speaker 1: Don't call us, We'll call you. And they issued a
Speaker 1: final report and it said that of all UFO cases
Speaker 1: could be explained by meteorological, meteorological, astronomical, celestial, known scientific stuff.
Speaker 1: Sure technology, that that's believable. Okay, the other ten percent, though,
Speaker 1: if we spend enough time and energy investigating it, we
Speaker 1: could also explain those. Yeah, that's where the b S
Speaker 1: comes in. Their conclusion was that given enough time and effort,
Speaker 1: of all UFO sightings could be explained underknown scientific or
Speaker 1: technological explanation. And no one said, so are you saying
Speaker 1: that ten percent of these are so confounding that you
Speaker 1: can't explain them? And they went, yeah, but we could,
Speaker 1: we just don't have enough time. Exactly. It's a really
Speaker 1: passive aggressive way of saying there is no such thing
Speaker 1: as alien. Yeah, pretty much so that but that is
Speaker 1: ultimately what they said. Yeah, but here's the thing though,
Speaker 1: they did see that this was the fact that people
Speaker 1: were sighting these UFOs, and it was all over the papers. Um,
Speaker 1: the craze was a bad thing and and dangerous, even
Speaker 1: because the Cold War is heating up like we were
Speaker 1: talking about. Um, the Soviets have been known to secretly
Speaker 1: exploit the American psyche. Um, that never happens anymore. Of course,
Speaker 1: they don't do anything like that. Well, it's like you said,
Speaker 1: this was the Cold War, that's right. They were known
Speaker 1: to do this kind of thing, and they thought, this
Speaker 1: is a perfect opportunity for the Soviets to come in
Speaker 1: fake reports about UFOs, get everyone distracted, worked up into
Speaker 1: a frenzy, um and they start asking them questions about
Speaker 1: pulsating and and they said, and not only that, but
Speaker 1: the Soviets, Uh, I read their papers or I have
Speaker 1: them read to me, and uh, they don't have any
Speaker 1: reportings of UFO sidings. So they're clearly if there are any,
Speaker 1: they're keeping a lid on it. And this is our
Speaker 1: problem that they can exploit. We can't do the same
Speaker 1: back to them, right, So all the Soviets had to
Speaker 1: do would be come in and be like UFOs UFOs
Speaker 1: basically like shouting, you know, fire and a crowded theater,
Speaker 1: which is the legal of course, as everyone knows. That's right. Um, so, uh,
Speaker 1: this is a this is a problem. This is like
Speaker 1: with the way the CIA thought, you know, this is
Speaker 1: something that they need to do something about. So they
Speaker 1: decided to um basically undo that that Cold War hysteria
Speaker 1: and panic. Yeah, but they were in a pickle though,
Speaker 1: because they like they're supposed to be tamping down this
Speaker 1: thing that they don't if that they I feel like
Speaker 1: they shouldn't even be investigating to begin with. Right, they're
Speaker 1: denying that something even exists, but continuing to investigate it. Right.
Speaker 1: So what I was saying is they decided to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: we need to get rid of this Cold War hysteria,
Speaker 1: we need to kind of take the air out of
Speaker 1: this weird phenomenon in American culture. And they decided to
Speaker 1: do that by exploiting America with a public relations campaign
Speaker 1: very as you say, bern Asian. Uh. And they said, hey,
Speaker 1: call up Walt Disney. Yeah, and they really did. They thought,
Speaker 1: you know, um, we're gonna get this out in the media.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have um, we're gonna create this propaganda that's
Speaker 1: gonna sweep the nation on TV and in movies and
Speaker 1: in newspapers debunking all this stuff, showing like, hey, this
Speaker 1: is how you explain this stuff, right, saying like here's
Speaker 1: this report and here's the scientific explanation for it, and
Speaker 1: that they consider that would be very powerful. And I
Speaker 1: think they're right. Yeah, just basically priming America's pump to
Speaker 1: where if you're having a water cooler conversation and bring
Speaker 1: something up about a UFO. There are five people there
Speaker 1: to say, didn't you see that thing like that? It's
Speaker 1: weather balloons. People love doing that and if you can
Speaker 1: arm people with that, they will do it every time.
Speaker 1: And that that actually is a pretty good plan for
Speaker 1: tamping down. It's a great plan. They also decided, maybe
Speaker 1: one of the less great parts of the plan, to
Speaker 1: surveil and keep tabs on UFO groups for anti American
Speaker 1: stuff because this was during the McCarthy era. Of course. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so everybody was doing anti America and stuff if they
Speaker 1: weren't painting their white picket fence. Yeah, and I was.
Speaker 1: You know, I mentioned Disney and we both laugh, But
Speaker 1: that was not a joke. They actually did think about
Speaker 1: um and who knows, maybe they got in touch with
Speaker 1: Disney about making some propaganda pieces to help them out
Speaker 1: because they had done that before. Chip and Dale originally
Speaker 1: started out as UFOO investigators. But it's just kind of
Speaker 1: one thing led to another. Uh. They worked on propaganda
Speaker 1: pieces before that was one called Donald gets drafted, uh
Speaker 1: Donald Duck propaganda film UM And they said it never
Speaker 1: came to fruition, but it would not surprise me if
Speaker 1: they didn't poke around a little bit, right, like in
Speaker 1: Earnest Donald gets drafted. Did Yeah that was a one
Speaker 1: that got released. Oh you mean like the UFO one. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't surprise me if they really did have an
Speaker 1: official meeting and Disney just said no, like we're not
Speaker 1: going to get involved. They're like, but we have this
Speaker 1: idea about psychic children. But I guess it's kind of
Speaker 1: pro psychic. Really, I wonder what the messages an Escape
Speaker 1: from which Mountain. I haven't seen it in so long.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's some very clear message that as an adult,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, this is what I was taught. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I saw both of those. Didn't the rock
Speaker 1: recreate that remake it? I think so? But I did
Speaker 1: not recreate. Makes it sound like he just did it
Speaker 1: in his head in his living room or something here.
Speaker 1: He recreated that after dinner one night. I really think
Speaker 1: he was in that a remake. No, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I never I never bothered. Oh I didn't. I like
Speaker 1: that guy though. Oh The Rocky is great. I mean
Speaker 1: I don't go see his movies much, but he seems
Speaker 1: like a good dude, right, he does seem like a
Speaker 1: good dude. You have a sense for these kind of things.
Speaker 1: There was one TV show, There was a CBS show
Speaker 1: called UFOs colon Friend, Foe or Fantasy? And is this
Speaker 1: the one that Cronkite Okay, I didn't know if that
Speaker 1: was a separate one. Did I write this that poorly?
Speaker 1: It's part of the same sentence? No, I know, I
Speaker 1: just I couldn't tell if it was me it was
Speaker 1: my because it says isn't the same sentence narrated by
Speaker 1: Walter Cronkite? Yes, okay, No, you are heated, grace, thank
Speaker 1: you for rest. This is the nineteen sixty six uh.
Speaker 1: And this was um largely over the Michigan sightings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about those in a little bit. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: stick a pin in that. But it was big enough
Speaker 1: that they brought concrete or cron Kite out concrete, you
Speaker 1: know how I'm talking about, Sure Walter concrete. That's he's
Speaker 1: a legend. You turn them upside down and shake him
Speaker 1: and we'll come out of the cup. So but in
Speaker 1: that in that documentary is very much a pro skeptic
Speaker 1: anti UFO documentary where it's they followed this um the
Speaker 1: Robertson Panel recommendations of saying, here's this amazing report of
Speaker 1: the sighting. Here's how it's explained. Here's another study. Here's
Speaker 1: how it's explained. Don't you see now that UFOs are
Speaker 1: actually really just kind of something. They're they're not alien.
Speaker 1: It's fantasy. They called it friend forward fantasy. They should
Speaker 1: have just called it UFOs fantasy, right, because that was
Speaker 1: the upshot of it all. So UM, that Robertson panel report,
Speaker 1: there's something else that was really interesting about it. UM
Speaker 1: had a very surprising knock on effect years later. So
Speaker 1: this the panel was was impaneled in ninety two, i
Speaker 1: think the year of that, that UFO fever outbreak, and
Speaker 1: it's um it's proceedings and its recommendations stayed classified until
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, and after a blue book was gone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: years after it was gone. So I'm sure they figured like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's fine, whatever, just release it. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Up to that point, up to nineteen seventy five, as
Speaker 1: far as anyone in the American public was concerned, the
Speaker 1: CIA had just remained quiet on the whole thing. It
Speaker 1: was all you. US Air Force CEA had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with it, And so all of a sudden, this
Speaker 1: Robertson panel comes out, and it's not only their own report,
Speaker 1: but they also mentioned an earlier CIA panel that had
Speaker 1: basically the same conclusions um that showed that very much
Speaker 1: the I was involved in this and that they covered
Speaker 1: it up and two people in nine it gave the
Speaker 1: the alien conspiracy theory a real shot in the arm
Speaker 1: because it showed no, the CIA was definitely investigating this
Speaker 1: and they covered it up. So how can we trust
Speaker 1: anything that anybody says about this? Yeah, covering, covering it
Speaker 1: up to begin with just made the cover up. It
Speaker 1: was a cover up. It made a it made something
Speaker 1: that wasn't a cover up a cover up. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: by covering and fueled all sorts of conspiracy theories. That's
Speaker 1: how it works. That's just how it works. The US government,
Speaker 1: probably any government, will never ever learn, but that is
Speaker 1: just how it works. That's right. There was another report
Speaker 1: declassified in nine, uh, where the CIA set around the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen fifties, they started observing planes that could flat
Speaker 1: high altitudes, they started creating them. Yeah, well it said observing,
Speaker 1: So I guess they were just observing what they create.
Speaker 1: Come on. You can't take everything I say, literally. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about remember earlier I kind of teased
Speaker 1: about the fact that the Soviets might have these spy
Speaker 1: planes because we had spy planes, the U two spy
Speaker 1: plane very much top secret at the time. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's like the old adage when you point in the
Speaker 1: sky at the Rusha's spy plane, you've got three fingers
Speaker 1: pointing back at your spy plane. Right. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: very much top secret, like I said, and it was.
Speaker 1: It could go up to sixty thousand feet, which is
Speaker 1: three to five times higher than any commercial plane could
Speaker 1: fly at the time. And they were commercial pilots are
Speaker 1: seeing these things and reporting on them. Well, yeah, because
Speaker 1: they were silver at first, they weren't painted the cooler
Speaker 1: black color until later on. I guess with the touring
Speaker 1: models that they started to pump out there and they
Speaker 1: you know, were very reflective, so at sunrise and at sunset,
Speaker 1: these things would cast these weird lights and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: commercial pilots, because they didn't know this was a thing,
Speaker 1: would say, hey, there's something going on a way up
Speaker 1: above me, or people would see them from the ground. Yeah,
Speaker 1: flying really fast, really high, and looking like fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because this started I think testerones in the mid nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: so that coincides with a lot of these sightings. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this this c I a memo for that was
Speaker 1: declassified in basically said, by our estimate of that seven
Speaker 1: one unidentified UM report of the reports that were remain unidentified,
Speaker 1: Project bluebooks files, UM are you two and SR seventy
Speaker 1: one test flights can probably account for about half of those, right,
Speaker 1: which whittles that number down dramatically. Should we take another break?
Speaker 1: All right, We'll take a break and come back and
Speaker 1: talk about the return of Heineck right after this, Chuck,
Speaker 1: this is going so well. Thanks, I'm really impressed. Good
Speaker 1: so Heinich, He said he returned, but really he never
Speaker 1: went anywhere. He's still plodding along doing his thing. He
Speaker 1: started out at Project sign. By this time it's blue book.
Speaker 1: It's like us with this place. How many times has
Speaker 1: it changed hands? A million? We're still here. We're like
Speaker 1: the Heinecks here of how stuff works. So um with
Speaker 1: with the years, however, Heinek himself seems to have changed,
Speaker 1: and he changed probably earlier than he made it public
Speaker 1: that he had changed. But he later said, you know what, everybody,
Speaker 1: I actually think that these UFOs are a thing at
Speaker 1: the very least some stuff we can't explain, and we
Speaker 1: should be investigating them way more scientifically than we are.
Speaker 1: And that really flew in the face of the public
Speaker 1: face that he had, which by the by the time
Speaker 1: he he came out and said that had become something
Speaker 1: of a laughing stock at the behest of the Air Force. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like what the change was is Repelled left in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three and he was the dude that kind of
Speaker 1: had it running like a legit investigatory body. He left,
Speaker 1: and then Heineck says it basically just became a pr
Speaker 1: device um and the stats prove it out. It was
Speaker 1: the unexplained case rate of up to that we talked
Speaker 1: about after Repelled left that went down to one, which
Speaker 1: is just an insult. Even if you're a skeptic, that's
Speaker 1: an insult, right, because again they would use anything that
Speaker 1: they could think of, including planets that weren't even visible
Speaker 1: in the sky at the time. There was very famously
Speaker 1: one UM where I think there was a sighting in Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: I believe, Yeah, yeah, there was a the Oklahoma State
Speaker 1: Police Tinker Air Force Base and a meteorologist in Oklahoma
Speaker 1: who was using weather radar at the time, all independently
Speaker 1: tracked four objects, one of them on radar, and Heinek
Speaker 1: in the Air Force of who were doing UM Project
Speaker 1: blue Book representing Project Blue Books, said it was Jupiter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is not a good explanation for four objects that
Speaker 1: are both visually cited and show up on radar, because
Speaker 1: Jupiter doesn't show up on radar, and it certainly doesn't
Speaker 1: show up as four fast moving objects. Yes, and Jupiter
Speaker 1: wasn't even visible in the night sky on that date, right,
Speaker 1: So this definitely kind of like is a really good
Speaker 1: example of what what Heinech was having to come out
Speaker 1: and say to the public, you know, towards the end
Speaker 1: of his UM his Camel's backbreaking. Yeah. And here's the
Speaker 1: thing is, he was still slightly skept I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know about slightly skeptical. He was still a skeptic,
Speaker 1: I guess. But his whole beef was uh. And he says,
Speaker 1: this is a direct quote, he said, everything was negative
Speaker 1: and unyielding in their attitude. Everything had to have an explanation.
Speaker 1: And I began to resent that even though I basically
Speaker 1: felt the same way. I thought they weren't going about
Speaker 1: it in the right way. So that was the deal
Speaker 1: is the Air Force was just sort of an obligatory
Speaker 1: stamp of not true. It was this, and he was like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily think it's a alien saucer either, but like,
Speaker 1: can we investigate it and get like a real explanation
Speaker 1: at least? Yeah, that was definitely his thing. And then
Speaker 1: the other thing was that one through line that has
Speaker 1: kept skeptics interested in this is credible observers reporting incredible,
Speaker 1: unexplainable things. That's right. So those two things, the Air
Speaker 1: Force jurking him in the way that they were carrying
Speaker 1: out the investigation, and these credible observers actually caused him
Speaker 1: to undergo a conversion. There's a debate, oh, for whether
Speaker 1: it was a slow conversion or a quick conversion. Some
Speaker 1: people suspect that he was actually a lifelong believer and
Speaker 1: that he just kind of kept it under wraps. But
Speaker 1: even after you underwent this conversion, which has been estimated
Speaker 1: to have happened around nineteen sixty, he kept it. He
Speaker 1: kept quiet, as a matter of fact, for years, and
Speaker 1: he didn't want to stake his personal reputation, his professional career,
Speaker 1: all that stuff on just coming out and being like, hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: the Air Force is lying to you, especially considering that
Speaker 1: the general public by this time had had completely bought
Speaker 1: into the idea that the Air Force was just blatantly
Speaker 1: and clumsily trying to cover up knowledge of UFOs and
Speaker 1: their reality. Yeah, he said he was kind of waiting
Speaker 1: for the big one, right, like something so irrefutable that
Speaker 1: he could actually really go public with it. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the swamp gas in Michigan. This is
Speaker 1: in March nineteen sixty six, very famous case. Uh, there
Speaker 1: was a sighting over several days or hundreds of people
Speaker 1: that reported glowing objects hovering and flying around an arbor Michigan,
Speaker 1: and then a bunch of towns along the countryside between
Speaker 1: Toledo and Detroit. Same thing. Eight seven students at Hillsdale
Speaker 1: College in Michigan, and they all said the same stuff
Speaker 1: as that we've seen these objects with red, white and
Speaker 1: blue lights. Um one family instead of UFO landed on
Speaker 1: their farm. I don't know about that one, sure, but
Speaker 1: you never know. Yeah, the college students might stretch credibility
Speaker 1: a little bit, but it was a big national story.
Speaker 1: Heinek went there and it was basically a frenzy, so
Speaker 1: much so that he had trouble getting interviews with the
Speaker 1: witnesses as the official like representative, because the press was
Speaker 1: all over it. Right, Yeah, the press were eating up
Speaker 1: all of their time. He couldn't he couldn't interview them,
Speaker 1: but he finally did, and he held a press conference,
Speaker 1: and um at the press conference, he said, it's possible
Speaker 1: some some of the sightings may have mistaken swamp gas
Speaker 1: for UFOs. And in this guy's defense, he had he
Speaker 1: said some. He didn't say all. He wasn't dismissive about it.
Speaker 1: It was just something he said, but the press took
Speaker 1: it and and it converted it into all. Basically, the
Speaker 1: headlines read Heineck dismissed his sightings as swamp gas and
Speaker 1: that that was that. Like he had basically said, it
Speaker 1: was all swamp gas. Everybody knew that scores and dozens
Speaker 1: and possibly hundreds of people across Ohio and Michigan hadn't
Speaker 1: all seen swamp gas, and that was a preposterous explanation,
Speaker 1: especially if you laid it on the whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Johnny Carson even had an astronomer on to basically refute
Speaker 1: the swamp gas theory. There. Yeah, there's a headline air
Speaker 1: Force insults public with swamp gas theory. That wasn't like
Speaker 1: a legitimate newspaper. So it was a ridiculous thing that
Speaker 1: got It was a dumb thing to say, but I
Speaker 1: think he said it not not realizing that it was
Speaker 1: going to become the explanation and it was going to
Speaker 1: make him a further laughing stock. It just so happened
Speaker 1: that that swamp gas thing was the last straw that
Speaker 1: that broke Heine's back. Yeah, it broke his back. And
Speaker 1: there was a senator out of Michigan named Gerald Ford,
Speaker 1: and he said, I want to I demand a congressional hearing.
Speaker 1: And they said who are you? He said, I'm Senator
Speaker 1: Gerald Ford. I'm gonna be president one day. Yeah, you'll see.
Speaker 1: I'll fix you good when i'm president. They said, how
Speaker 1: are you gonna be president? Your senator? He said, well,
Speaker 1: it's complicated, you'll see, right. Uh So he demands this
Speaker 1: hearing and they, uh they held a hearing the following month,
Speaker 1: and this is when Heinek really got a chance to
Speaker 1: to kind of publicly out himself as a convert and
Speaker 1: said my recommendation, Senator Ford, watch your step is UFO
Speaker 1: sighting should be investigated by scientists and not the military.
Speaker 1: And this was music to the ears of the military
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. Yeah, they said, he said
Speaker 1: it finally. Yeah, great, They said, yes, you're absolutely right,
Speaker 1: we should have somebody scientifically investigate this. And the Air Force,
Speaker 1: for its part, saw an out of being in this
Speaker 1: UFO investigating business that it didn't want to be in
Speaker 1: the first place, that that in some way Heinek had
Speaker 1: just opened the door for them. So they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: we agree with Heinek. You guys should totally get some
Speaker 1: sort of scientific study going. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was Congress that hired them or if the Air
Speaker 1: Force did, but either way, a committee led by a
Speaker 1: physicist named Edward Condon, University of Colorado, UM Buffalo. They yeah,
Speaker 1: they took up the I they took up the task
Speaker 1: of figuring out whether um UFOs actually were a thing
Speaker 1: or not in deserve scientific study. Right. So this is
Speaker 1: a three year study in the end, and the objective
Speaker 1: was to really take it seriously as an academic and
Speaker 1: they did that, right. No, they didn't it was really
Speaker 1: just a smoke screen um to get the Air Force
Speaker 1: out of this business once and for all, because Condon basically,
Speaker 1: and there was a bit of a drumbeat in the
Speaker 1: public of like your wastinger taxpayer money. There were some
Speaker 1: people that shot this was super worthwhile, but most people
Speaker 1: saw it as like, why is the Air Force wasting
Speaker 1: their time with this stuff? I would guess that would
Speaker 1: have been William F. Buckley's position probably, so so, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were some people, especially people in the Air Force tour,
Speaker 1: like this is this is a dumb thing to do,
Speaker 1: where this is a dumb waste of time. So Condon said, Okay,
Speaker 1: I am possibly the only person on the planet who's
Speaker 1: in a position to get the Air Force out of
Speaker 1: UFO investigations. I'll do a little wink wink, nudge nudge,
Speaker 1: ask a few people if it pulsated or throbbed, and
Speaker 1: then we'll just release a report that says no. And
Speaker 1: that's exactly what they did. In January of nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: they released the Condom Report, which was respectably four and
Speaker 1: thirty nine pages long. Yeah, but this quote from Condon
Speaker 1: though in sixty seven, uh, it is my inclination right
Speaker 1: now to recommend that the government get out of this business.
Speaker 1: My attitude right now is there's nothing to it. But
Speaker 1: I'm not supposed to reach that conclusion for another year,
Speaker 1: So that that really it really undermines that really frankly
Speaker 1: whittles it down to about fifty just with that one quote.
Speaker 1: You know, so, Um, the kind of report basically says, hey, everybody, Um,
Speaker 1: our general conclusion is that nothing has come from the
Speaker 1: study of UFOs in the past twenty one years that
Speaker 1: has added to scientific knowledge. Careful consideration of the record
Speaker 1: as it is available to us leads us to conclude
Speaker 1: that further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified
Speaker 1: in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby. And
Speaker 1: the weird thing is, Chuck is I agree with him wholeheartedly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we didn't learn anything except about ourselves from investigating UFOs
Speaker 1: all these years that we know about. Okay, I'll give
Speaker 1: you that, except for toasters, and um, did that come
Speaker 1: from the UFO tech. That's something what some people say, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like if you're a UFO believer, Um, one of
Speaker 1: the big things people point to is this boom in
Speaker 1: technology that came after World War Two. We're on about
Speaker 1: the time the ros Ball crash happened, and they point
Speaker 1: to right Patterson and say, well, we learned a lot
Speaker 1: from this, and we started making microwaves and tang and
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff ended up on the moon. Um,
Speaker 1: those aliens were touched in their bread, and right, we
Speaker 1: gotta get in on this. I like the real version
Speaker 1: of it where that guy had a chocolate bar, Percy,
Speaker 1: I can't remember his last name. He had a chocolate
Speaker 1: bar in his in his pocket and melted when he
Speaker 1: got too close to a microwave. He's like, let's start
Speaker 1: making popcorn with this thing. Man, I forgot about that
Speaker 1: guy Percy something. We're gonna call him Percy Sledge. Okay,
Speaker 1: I was just about to say that. I was so uh.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. Let's take a break here and
Speaker 1: we'll tell you about what happened with Project blue Book
Speaker 1: right after this. Alright, Project blue Book closed was killing
Speaker 1: December seventeenth nine. It was officially closed the Airport sonatifact
Speaker 1: sheet and said, no UFO has ever been a threat
Speaker 1: to our national security. UM, they don't recognize any technological developments. Um,
Speaker 1: there are no extraterrestrial vehicles. UM. And if you're a ufologist,
Speaker 1: is that what it's called, you followed upologists? Then um,
Speaker 1: you think it's just all one big lie. Still, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's another documented sighting. Here's the thing with all
Speaker 1: these documented sightings, it's like, yes, people did say this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's it's really tough to kind of like as
Speaker 1: coming from like the stuff you should know way to
Speaker 1: be like, well to contradict this official report. Here's this other,
Speaker 1: you know, thing that we should be skeptical of. But
Speaker 1: there is there was something that happened at UM a
Speaker 1: Malmstrom Air Force based in Montana in ninety seven where
Speaker 1: allegedly ten of our nuclear warheads were suddenly taken offline
Speaker 1: while this unidentified object was hovering overhead, and that the
Speaker 1: people who were tasked with UM watching the warheads all
Speaker 1: reported on this and it was documented supposedly, and that
Speaker 1: the Air Forces fact sheet thus that this was never
Speaker 1: a threat to our national security was a flat lie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in the end, they Project Bluebook and all of
Speaker 1: the other projects came before it investigated over twelve thousand sightings,
Speaker 1: UM seven hundred and one remained unidentified. If you go
Speaker 1: by that number if you listen to the military, like
Speaker 1: you said, half of those were you two's or blackbirds,
Speaker 1: which is like what three fifty or so? But even
Speaker 1: still okay, So there's three d and fifty that's a lot, okay,
Speaker 1: But other people say, no, it's even more than that,
Speaker 1: right exactly because these were official investigations and you didn't
Speaker 1: even investigate the one that I saw, buddy. A lot
Speaker 1: of that stuff goes on. That's one. Um. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's actually evidenced in the number of sightings that increased
Speaker 1: after Project Blue Books. So um, in nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: I believe there was eight hundred and eighty six reported
Speaker 1: sightings as part of Project Blue Book. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen, there were eighty six hundred nineteen. In two
Speaker 1: thou eighteen there were thirty two d and thirty six.
Speaker 1: That was a slow year. So a lot of people
Speaker 1: say the Air Force wasn't actually investigating all these Yeah,
Speaker 1: and granted this is you should know, this comes from
Speaker 1: private UH groups and citizens who have developed these groups
Speaker 1: for reporting, like the National UFO Reporting Center, because it's
Speaker 1: not codified now by the military, so citizens have done this.
Speaker 1: So take it. Take that number with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it's not necessarily that these
Speaker 1: groups are drumming up sightings. There may even be more
Speaker 1: because at the time, in the forties, fifties, and sixties,
Speaker 1: the American public generally knew if you saw something, you
Speaker 1: would contact your local Air Force base. I wonder how
Speaker 1: many people know who to contact if they think they
Speaker 1: see something, have no idea. I don't either. I would
Speaker 1: just drive up to Dobbins and like knock on the
Speaker 1: front gate. They'd be like, come inside, forever um. One
Speaker 1: of the other things. One of the other reasons that
Speaker 1: people say now the unidentified number is actually way higher
Speaker 1: than seven hundred is because if you take those cases
Speaker 1: where you say it was Jupiter, it was a weather balloon,
Speaker 1: it was some stupid thing we just came up with.
Speaker 1: Those cases go from identified to actually unidentified, and so
Speaker 1: that number increases even further. Project Blue Book Will Never
Speaker 1: Die Friend, No, well not and something else won't ever
Speaker 1: die is Heinik is the person who who developed the
Speaker 1: very famous Close Encounters rating scale. Uh. If you've seen
Speaker 1: the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, highly recommended.
Speaker 1: First of all, great Great Steven Spielberg film with the
Speaker 1: great great Richard Dreyfuss, Terry gar for God's sakes, but
Speaker 1: using that man, she's so good. I miss her. So
Speaker 1: the first kind is and you get one point. It's
Speaker 1: a rating scale for the believability of a sighting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just love the point thing, right, I got two points.
Speaker 1: So you get one point if you uh see a
Speaker 1: UFO within five feet not bad. Set kind is two points.
Speaker 1: Of course, that is a physical effect um happens, which
Speaker 1: is like in Close Encounters when he's on the railroad tracks,
Speaker 1: his headlights start going bersark and his truck shakes, and
Speaker 1: the crossing gate on the on the railroad track goes
Speaker 1: up and down. That would be I wonder if there'd
Speaker 1: be two points for each of those things. Are two
Speaker 1: points for the experience? I don't know, because I mean
Speaker 1: you're just running those numbers, two for each point. It
Speaker 1: blinked again, It blinked again, right. And then finally the
Speaker 1: third kind, the old three point line, that is when
Speaker 1: you see an alien or interact with an alien, and
Speaker 1: obviously in the film, that is when Richard Dreyfuss at
Speaker 1: the end walks up into that spaceship and takes the
Speaker 1: hand the aliens and probably like the most unbelivable. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty old movie. And then it's called the Third Kind. Sure,
Speaker 1: so the most unbelievable part of this whole thing is
Speaker 1: that Heinik went from the guy who was saying it
Speaker 1: was a weather balloon, it was this train pilot saw
Speaker 1: Jupiter even though Jupiter wasn't even the sky right then
Speaker 1: to the guy who literally wrote the book that founded uphology,
Speaker 1: it was the UFO experience calling a scientific inquiry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he just completely basically switched sides and said, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that we can't explain. Here's all these
Speaker 1: you know, all this experience that I have investigating these things.
Speaker 1: Let's go forward and figure this out. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be a cynic, but I wonder what salary he
Speaker 1: had as a private citizen for years and years doing
Speaker 1: this being the face of this. Do you think he
Speaker 1: was like, that's pretty good money. Maybe, And then when
Speaker 1: the time was up, he said, you know what writes
Speaker 1: some books? Maybe, um As from what I can tell,
Speaker 1: he's a respected person in the field and in a
Speaker 1: lot of fields. Actually I didn't get anything because whenever,
Speaker 1: you know, when we research something, if somebody's like that
Speaker 1: somebody's out there sniping them. I don't remember this really
Speaker 1: coming up. The only thing I saw that was that
Speaker 1: was somebody throwing shade. Was the idea that he had
Speaker 1: been a believer all along, right, and then it was
Speaker 1: actually faking as a skeptic. But he was a pretty
Speaker 1: pretty believable fake skeptic. That's right. And here's the deal
Speaker 1: though things did not stop. UM. That was a classified
Speaker 1: memo that's not classified any longer from October nine, just
Speaker 1: before blue Book was terminated, that basically revealed that like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna still investigate stuff. It's not part of blue
Speaker 1: Book anymore, but here's how we're gonna do it and
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do, like, here's the process, and that astounding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean not really, but I mean there was a
Speaker 1: memo that was sent out after blue Book, right before
Speaker 1: blue Book was shut down, saying, don't worry, we're still
Speaker 1: going to have procedure for reporting this stuff and investigating it.
Speaker 1: It's just not going to be public, right, and uh,
Speaker 1: Harry Reid sent a majority leader at the time, UM,
Speaker 1: he had his program. It was all over the news,
Speaker 1: UM where what was it called the Advanced Aerospace Threat
Speaker 1: Identification Program because I guess Harry Reid thought there's something
Speaker 1: out there and we need to look. It was a
Speaker 1: pet project of his. That's right. You know, both Carter
Speaker 1: and Reagan claimed to have seen UFOs. I think I
Speaker 1: did know that a new Carter. Of course Carter. I
Speaker 1: didn't know about Reagan. I don't think really. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about that. I think we did, uh live
Speaker 1: at at Comic Con, didn't we do Ufoh this was better?
Speaker 1: I agree? I think I agree. This feels more like real. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: if there's anything unreal, it's being at actually south By
Speaker 1: Southwest that wasn't Yes, okay, no comment. But this stuff
Speaker 1: still goes on. Even though that project from Harry Reid
Speaker 1: was shut down supposedly or shut down in twelve people
Speaker 1: involved say, no, we're still doing it. We're still doing
Speaker 1: that stuff. And here's the thing. When that came out,
Speaker 1: this is two thousand seventeen. The guy who ran that
Speaker 1: that program um came out and told everybody about it.
Speaker 1: The New York Times reported on it, used all this
Speaker 1: breathless stuff like really jumped to conclusions with the facts,
Speaker 1: and then other people started reporting on that and exactly
Speaker 1: the kind of reporting that was going on in the
Speaker 1: forties and the fifties and the sixties and the seventies
Speaker 1: about UFOs just continued again in two thousand seventeen. And
Speaker 1: this is just probably how it's always going to be. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of the big things was this two thousand
Speaker 1: four sighting in San Diego from to I think Navy pilots.
Speaker 1: And then they released the footage just a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago in two thousand seventeen, as part of this
Speaker 1: New York Times article. Yeah, they released the video footage
Speaker 1: and you can go watch it on YouTube. I was
Speaker 1: released in December of Uh. It is just I mean,
Speaker 1: you can see this flying saucer, and you can hear
Speaker 1: these pilots, these trained navy pilots. What the heck? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like, look at it. Bro um. He actually said
Speaker 1: bro uh did he? I must party calls him bro.
Speaker 1: They described it as a forty ft long tic tac uh,
Speaker 1: and then afterward, in subsequent interviews, one of them said
Speaker 1: it it accelerated like nothing I've ever seen before. And
Speaker 1: I have no idea what I saw that day, saw
Speaker 1: the newest by plane from the future. Who knows, Well,
Speaker 1: that's it for Project Bluebook. Everybody, I'm sure we um
Speaker 1: less some stuff out. If we did, let us know,
Speaker 1: especially if you're U followedists. We want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Um And since I said we want to hear from you,
Speaker 1: that means, of course it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1: This is just a little shout out about a couple
Speaker 1: of references that that Brad and Sacramento likes. Thanks for
Speaker 1: everything over the years, guys. I had to write in
Speaker 1: too acknowledge Chuck's Striper reference in the Nuclear Semiotics episode.
Speaker 1: It had me laughing. It took me back. I discovered
Speaker 1: Striper in the late nineties, which is pretty late for
Speaker 1: Striper really, and they were kind of a joke in
Speaker 1: my circle of friends, most of them who had grown
Speaker 1: up involved in the church. To Hell with the Devil
Speaker 1: has been my favorite. Was it the name of their album?
Speaker 1: I think so, or maybe it was just a song.
Speaker 1: It's another an album called The Yellow and Black Attack.
Speaker 1: I had these in my record collections. I don't anymore,
Speaker 1: you lie, I wish I did. I'm surprised you haven't
Speaker 1: gone back. Might it would be a fun party joke
Speaker 1: to see how long it up on? I would love
Speaker 1: to hear about Chuck's experience seeing them live. Well, I'll
Speaker 1: go ahead and tell you I was into it when
Speaker 1: I saw them live, like black and Yellow, spandex Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the drummer played. He was set up sideways. I remember
Speaker 1: that was interesting, Like he was turned perpendicular to the
Speaker 1: stage to the crowd. Yeah, like the drum set was
Speaker 1: facing the side of the stage. Well, I guess because
Speaker 1: he would sing and the microphone was to his left
Speaker 1: facing the audience. But I don't It still doesn't make sense,
Speaker 1: So I don't know why they did it. There's a
Speaker 1: million ways you can put that microphone that's easier than
Speaker 1: turning the whole drum kid, I totally that guy liked
Speaker 1: his abs is what it was, and he wanted you
Speaker 1: to like. I don't know if I'm not mistaken. The
Speaker 1: drummer was the brother of the singer. Uh, Michael, Sweet,
Speaker 1: I'm pulling this all out of behind in your so, Josh.
Speaker 1: My favorite reference of yours was a while ago. I
Speaker 1: don't remember all the details, but I had something to
Speaker 1: do with a scene from Harry and the Henderson's when
Speaker 1: Lithgow was trying to get Harry to go back into
Speaker 1: the wild do you remember what you said? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was just describing how he like punches them in the face.
Speaker 1: He says, yeah, but I don't remember what that was
Speaker 1: in reference to it wasn't that long ago. I do.
Speaker 1: I do remember that. Remember, you guys have a way
Speaker 1: of making personal connection with your listeners, and I can
Speaker 1: really appreciate that. Thanks for keeping things PG because I
Speaker 1: love to listen with my kids and that is Brad
Speaker 1: and Sacramento. Yeah. Man, it's kind of the point now
Speaker 1: where I feel your cursing. I had to get used
Speaker 1: to it on movie Crush cursing, and then it's now
Speaker 1: it's his second nature. Has it become weird on stuff?
Speaker 1: You should know to not curse an adult? I can.
Speaker 1: There's a dividing line. Oh b camera, huh, yep. Nice.
Speaker 1: I'm just a big dumb animal. No, no, no, It
Speaker 1: takes a It takes a lot of verve and grit
Speaker 1: and to be able to curse here and not curse there.
Speaker 1: I've always been really good at it because of nieces
Speaker 1: and nephews and just I was always hyper aware and
Speaker 1: still am about being in public and like people being
Speaker 1: around that I might offend. I don't. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be that guy. Yeah. Well, if you want to
Speaker 1: congratulate Chuck on this amazing sentiment of his, you should
Speaker 1: follow us on social media. You can go to stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com and check out all of
Speaker 1: our social links there, or you can send your congratulations
Speaker 1: directly to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows. H