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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Norri with you.

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Speaker 2: Nick Cook with us. Author of at least twenty books

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Speaker 2: on fiction and nonfiction titles in the US and the UK,

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Speaker 2: including several ghosts written Sunday Times bestsellers. A former technology journalist,

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Speaker 2: he's well known for his groundbreaking best selling nonfiction book,

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Speaker 2: The Hunt for Zero Point. He also has written, produced,

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Speaker 2: and presented two feature length documentaries for the History and

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Speaker 2: Discovery channels, and as a speaker, Nick imparts his wealth

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Speaker 2: of experience passionately on issues such as global challenges, sustainability,

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Speaker 2: defense and security, the future of technology, and the power

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Speaker 2: of story and the tapping to the theme of his

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Speaker 2: latest fact based thriller, The Grid, the Human Mind his

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Speaker 2: latest book, The Light Beyond the Mountains, Nick, welcome back.

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Speaker 2: How have you been.

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Speaker 3: I've been extremely well, Thanks George. Good morning from the UK.

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Speaker 2: How are you all is good? Thanks? Calming down after

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Speaker 2: this weekend. I hope we had a rough weekend here

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Speaker 2: in the United States.

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Speaker 3: Neck we saw you know, we may be two great

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Speaker 3: nations often divided by a common language, but it was

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Speaker 3: extremely concerning to see all of that. I think, you know,

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Speaker 3: whatever your political affiliations, that was just a terrible, terrible

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Speaker 3: thing that we saw here and I don't think many

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Speaker 3: people here in the UK would disagree with that.

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Speaker 2: Watch to talk with you about tonight, Nick, including you

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Speaker 2: were the eurospace editor for James Defense Weekly for what

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Speaker 2: twenty years?

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Speaker 3: Yeah? Almost twenty years, George. For part of that time

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Speaker 3: I left the sort of freelancer and I became their

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Speaker 3: aerospace consultant for a few years, but all in all

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Speaker 3: it was about twenty years. Yeah, they were great years

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Speaker 3: for me. I really really enjoyed that beat, went to

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Speaker 3: some fantastic places, learned some incredible things. Yeah, it was

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Speaker 3: a very good, good time.

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Speaker 2: What were your favorite topics that you handled for them?

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Speaker 3: Oh, without a doubt, it was being on the trail

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Speaker 3: of classified aircraft programs in the US. My colleague and I,

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Speaker 3: the North America editor of Jane's Defense Weekly at the time,

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Speaker 3: was a guy called Bill Sweetman, and Bill Bill and

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Speaker 3: I went on the trail of stealth and hypersonic programs

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Speaker 3: at a time when they were deeply secret. So this

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Speaker 3: was in the sort of latter stages of the Reagan administration,

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Speaker 3: and no one was acknowledging in officialdom that these programs existed.

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Speaker 3: Yet there were sightings all over the desert southwest of

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Speaker 3: strange shapes in the sky. Bill did this fantastic bit

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Speaker 3: of sort of Sherlock holmesy and investigation following up all

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Speaker 3: of these technology clues that show that these programs were

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Speaker 3: in existence, and I sort of came along as his

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Speaker 3: then apprentice, and we had a lot of fun just

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Speaker 3: building the evidence to show that these programs, these black programs,

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Speaker 3: really existed.

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Speaker 2: Now, how many of these stealth type aircraft got confused

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Speaker 2: for UFO sidings.

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Speaker 3: Oh a great many did, so, you know, it was

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Speaker 3: very telling to us that I did an interview once

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Speaker 3: with the head of the skunk Works and I was

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Speaker 3: ushered into the skunt Works building. This was in about

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Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six. For the interview, and during the course

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Speaker 3: of this interview, the guy said I worked on. His

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Speaker 3: name was Jack Gordon. I worked on fifteen real flying aircraft.

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Speaker 3: There are fifteen real flying aircraft programs in the course

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Speaker 3: of my career that I can only talk about twelve

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Speaker 3: of them. Now I've done a sort of audit since

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Speaker 3: then of what those missing three aircraft could have been,

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Speaker 3: and even to this day they have not appeared. I mean,

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Speaker 3: there are some programs which could fall into that bracket,

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Speaker 3: but there are so many classified aircraft projects still that

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Speaker 3: have flown that have not been acknowledged and for reasons

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Speaker 3: we can maybe go into later, George, but it is

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Speaker 3: all of those, I mean, a lot of those unfamiliar

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Speaker 3: shapes in the sky at the time got lumped into

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Speaker 3: a kind of UFO category, and of course that suited

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Speaker 3: the powers that be because there is advantage for them

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Speaker 3: in having classified aircraft programs confused as UFOs. It just

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Speaker 3: obscures the whole, the whole picture, and keeps things to

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Speaker 3: meant to be secret secret. And it has precedent. You'll recall,

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Speaker 3: I'm sure that during the nineteen fifties and early nineteen

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Speaker 3: sixties the CIA deliberately obfiscated it's two big spyplane programs,

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Speaker 3: the U two spyplane and the A twelve, which was

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Speaker 3: later to become the SR seventy one Blackbird. You know,

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Speaker 3: both of those were flying in the sky, but both

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Speaker 3: needed to be hushed up, and the UFO sort of

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Speaker 3: curtain to hide them behind was perfect. And so with

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Speaker 3: that precedent in mind, they've gone on to do that

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Speaker 3: in spades subsequently, and you know it's even going on,

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Speaker 3: especially going on today.

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Speaker 2: And they of course still continue to deny, deny, deny too, Nick,

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Speaker 2: don't they.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean that's all part of the game plan.

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Speaker 3: And there is a big sort of you know, toolkit,

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Speaker 3: as you know, of deniability and disinformation that keeps these

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Speaker 3: projects secret or is supposed to. And they've become actually

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Speaker 3: much harder to investigate in the modern era because they're

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Speaker 3: they're they're obscured even more by social media and you

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Speaker 3: know the sort of binary kind of slanging matches that

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Speaker 3: go on on forums like Twitter and elsewhere, and all

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Speaker 3: of the signal gets lost in a lot of noise,

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Speaker 3: and you know that again is advantageous. I'm just I'm

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Speaker 3: very glad I'm not investigating these things anymore because they

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Speaker 3: would be they would be pretty challenging to do. So

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Speaker 3: there are people, of course out there who do that

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Speaker 3: and I think are doing a good job. But that's

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Speaker 3: that's not my bag anymore. But I had a lot

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Speaker 3: of fun doing it while I was at Janine's Defense Weekly.

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Speaker 2: What do you think the percent Nick of sightings were

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Speaker 2: UFOs compared to stealth airplanes.

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Speaker 3: Well, that takes us into some quite interesting territory, because

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Speaker 3: I think you can safely say, you know, there are

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Speaker 3: sort of known unknowns, there are unknown unknowns to coin

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Speaker 3: that famous Rumsfeldian expression. But within the sort of known

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Speaker 3: unknown category, I think quite a high percentage of sightings

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Speaker 3: during the nineteen eighties and the nineteen nineties even could

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Speaker 3: be put down to classified aircraft sightings, you know, particularly

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Speaker 3: in places like the desert southwest of America. And it

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Speaker 3: wasn't just self, you know, there was this rather wonderful

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Speaker 3: mythical beast that Bill Sweetman and I chased called Aurora,

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Speaker 3: and was meant to be a very high flying, very

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Speaker 3: fast replacement for the SR seventy one Blackbird. There were

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Speaker 3: plenty of fightings of this thing, both actually over America

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Speaker 3: and over other parts of the world, including the UK,

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Speaker 3: where this mythical beast was meant to be based for

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Speaker 3: a while in the wilds of the western Highlands of

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Speaker 3: Scotland at a remote base there. And I think there's

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Speaker 3: very good evidence now to say that that aircraft program

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Speaker 3: Aurora existed. I've spoken to plenty of people in officialdom

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Speaker 3: who have given nods and winks over the years to

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Speaker 3: say it did. Of course, there are sort of political

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Speaker 3: implications of owning up to this stuff as well, because

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Speaker 3: during the stealth era, politicians were able to get away

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Speaker 3: with denials that there was any stealth fighter program because

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Speaker 3: in the end it wasn't a stealth fighter, it was

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Speaker 3: actually a stealth attack aircraft. So semantics played a really

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Speaker 3: big part in the denial the denial game. But you know,

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Speaker 3: journalists wiped up to that after the sealth fighter was

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Speaker 3: revealed in nineteen eighty eight and then began to ask

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Speaker 3: all the right questions and didn't give politicians any room

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Speaker 3: to wiggle or wriggle their way out of out of it.

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Speaker 3: So that's sort of political embarrassment attached to owning up

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Speaker 3: to these programs, even if some of them are now

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Speaker 3: forty years old, because some of those same politicians are

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Speaker 3: still alive, and you know, to have them admitted to

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Speaker 3: now would again be politically embarrassing. So I think a

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Speaker 3: lot of those programs, or those aircraft projects, perhaps even

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Speaker 3: Aurora itself, were literally he dropped into a hole in

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Speaker 3: the desert, the sand buried over them, and you know,

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Speaker 3: they were left there or would be left there for

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Speaker 3: somebody else to figure out politically how to deal with it,

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Speaker 3: you know, maybe decades down the track.

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Speaker 2: Oh, Nickcock, Come they didn't continue with Aurora. I mean,

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Speaker 2: why bury it like that?

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Speaker 3: I did have really had a really fascinating interview once

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Speaker 3: George with a guy called another George, General George Malner.

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Speaker 3: General Malner was the USF Forces head of R and

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Speaker 3: D programs during the late the late nineteen nineties, and

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Speaker 3: on the day that he retired from office in I

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Speaker 3: think it was in nineteen ninety eight, I went to

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Speaker 3: interview him on the agenda was officially with black programs.

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Speaker 3: I could talk with him about classified aircraft development programs,

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Speaker 3: And in the course of that he said to me,

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Speaker 3: I asked him the question about Aurora, And I said,

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Speaker 3: come on, it's your last day in office. You can

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Speaker 3: tell me. Was it real? Is it real? And he said, well,

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Speaker 3: let me put it this way. He said, we had

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Speaker 3: a retirement issue with the Blackbird aircraft in nineteen ninety

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Speaker 3: We had an old generation of satellites up there, spy

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Speaker 3: satellites that couldn't quite do the job. We had a

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Speaker 3: new generation that was coming online but wouldn't be online

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Speaker 3: for a while. So how do you think we filled

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Speaker 3: the gap? And I went, okay, you'd need a very fast, flying,

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Speaker 3: quick reaction spyplane that could get up there and monitor

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Speaker 3: developments on the ground in the case of some you know,

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Speaker 3: a political crisis, some regional crisis. And you know, I

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Speaker 3: think that was a really good and strong hint that

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Speaker 3: what a raw did was fill a gap. It filled

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Speaker 3: a sort of surveillance gap between an old generation of

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Speaker 3: spy satellites that couldn't do the job, a new generation

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Speaker 3: of digital real time satellites that weren't yet in place,

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Speaker 3: and this retired aircraft, the SR seventy one that was

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Speaker 3: no longer there to fill that gap. So you know,

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Speaker 3: for me, that was kind of cake plots. Aurora was real.

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Speaker 3: They built a few what they call deployable prototypes. The

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Speaker 3: prototypes were seen. I know RAF pilots who've seen it,

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Speaker 3: who've talked to me about it. So yeah, I call

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Speaker 3: it a mythical beast, but it's not really quite as

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Speaker 3: mythical as I make up.

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Speaker 2: But you don't think it's secretly in process right now?

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Speaker 3: No, I don't, because actually it along with that sort

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Speaker 3: of semi confession of general Molners to me was something

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Speaker 3: else that he said, which was that it was I

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Speaker 3: think he kept couch to it this way. It would

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Speaker 3: be a very expensive shortfall gap solution to put this

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Speaker 3: thing up there. You can imagine this was an aeroplane

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Speaker 3: that absolutely pushed all of the limits in terms of

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Speaker 3: engine technology, in terms of materials. To build it. It

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Speaker 3: cost an absolute fortune, and it cost a fortune to

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Speaker 3: run because it probably ran on some kind of exotic

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Speaker 3: fuel which was hard to maintain and keep in service.

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Speaker 3: So all in all, you know, it was a great

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Speaker 3: breakthrough technologically, but expensive to maintain and keep in service.

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Speaker 3: And I think it's legacy though, continues in that. You know,

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Speaker 3: we've seen for some decades now, companies like Lockie Martin,

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Speaker 3: you know, the skunk work saying we're going to build

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Speaker 3: an SR seventy one replacement. Well, a lot of people

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Speaker 3: would say you've already built one, but you can't admit

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Speaker 3: to it. So it's you know, it's a fascinating piece

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Speaker 3: of the sort of classified aircraft puzzle.

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Speaker 2: Oh it's Nick Cook. Nick tell us about the History

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Speaker 2: Channel and Discovery Channel's documentaries you produced.

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Speaker 3: Well, the first one I did was called Billion Dollar

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Speaker 3: Secret and that was for Discovery, and we filmed it

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Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety eight. In fact, that General Mulna interview

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Speaker 3: was part of that, and that for me was it

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Speaker 3: was quite an edgy departure from what I normally did,

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Speaker 3: because you know, it's quite hard to remember now, but

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Speaker 3: back in the day, you didn't talk about UFOs. I mean,

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Speaker 3: in my certainly in my line of work, you'd be

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Speaker 3: sort of drummed out of the business pretty quick if

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Speaker 3: you had. But I wanted to explore this hinterland between

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Speaker 3: FID aircraft's development and sightings thereof and what people commonly

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Speaker 3: reported as UFOs. So Billion Dollar Secret explored that hinterland,

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Speaker 3: and that came out in nineteen ninety nine, and then

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Speaker 3: I did another one called UFO's Secret Evidence, which sort

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Speaker 3: of did the same thing, but it went into it

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Speaker 3: in a bit more detail and took the disinformation angle

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Speaker 3: as its sort of main compass bearing And that also

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Speaker 3: was two hours. We did that for the History Channel,

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Speaker 3: and that also was a fascinating departure for me as well.

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Speaker 3: By when you know, we were still in this very

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Speaker 3: heretical zone of you just don't talk about UFOs in

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Speaker 3: my line of business. Things of course have eased up

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Speaker 3: a bit now, but hard to remember back then that

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Speaker 3: this was a really taboo subject.

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Speaker 2: When you were with Changed Defense Weekly. Did you ever

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Speaker 2: do any kind of UFO stories?

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Speaker 3: Well, Uh, I didn't. I kind of. I sort of

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Speaker 3: dropped the odd hint every now and again in my writing.

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Speaker 3: But maybe we could come onto this in a minute,

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Speaker 3: because it's a sort of topic in its own right

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Speaker 3: in a way. But I, in the course of my

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Speaker 3: job at Jane's, I decided to write The Hunter zero Point,

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Speaker 3: which was my sort of investigation of anti gravity, and

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Speaker 3: that did emerge out of the work that I was

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Speaker 3: doing at Jane's, but I did it on my own,

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Speaker 3: if you like. It was the sort of sub radar

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Speaker 3: activity for me that I didn't know it was going

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Speaker 3: to morph into a book. But I started doing that

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Speaker 3: investigating this in the sort of early mid nineteen nineties period,

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Speaker 3: and by the end of the nineteen nineties I realized

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Speaker 3: I had enough material for a book, and that went

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Speaker 3: into The Hunter zero Point.

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Speaker 2: What other places did the Hunt take you?

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Speaker 3: Oh? The Hunt took me everywhere, and it really sort

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Speaker 3: of itched this scratch, this itch that I'd had. The

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Speaker 3: question being to myself was Okay, Nick, you have all

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Speaker 3: of this amazing access to all of these people through

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Speaker 3: your Jane's job. What is it that you personally would

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Speaker 3: really like to investigate? And I thought, well, actually, an

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Speaker 3: undiscussed technological breakthrough on the order of the atomic bomb

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Speaker 3: from the Second World War. What would that breakthrough be?

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Speaker 3: I thought, well, I think it would be in the

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Speaker 3: propulsion arena. And that said, I think it would therefore

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Speaker 3: be in the kind of anti gravity field. And I

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Speaker 3: think that would be a secret you really wanted to

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Speaker 3: hush up, and it would of course make it very

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Speaker 3: UFO like, which would make it incredibly hard to talk about.

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Speaker 3: But that was the question I set myself, and I

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Speaker 3: just went on this massive road trip, a physical road trip,

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Speaker 3: but a road trip mind as well, which took me

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Speaker 3: to all kinds of places, predominantly of course, all across

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Speaker 3: the United States where everything was going on at the time,

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Speaker 3: but also back in time. I had to go into what,

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Speaker 3: for example, Nazi Germany was ding doing during the Second

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Speaker 3: World War to try and eliminate some of the legends

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Speaker 3: that had come out of the Ufology law to do

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Speaker 3: with the Nazis and UFOs and stuff. So I had

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Speaker 3: to address all of these things, and a lot of

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Speaker 3: it was deeply unfamiliar territory for me, but a fascinating

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Speaker 3: hinterland to explore.

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