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Speaker 2: When I opened your book and saw its your start,
Speaker 2: it started with the swamp gas case and that incident.
Speaker 2: I thought it was perfect timing because I don't know
Speaker 2: if you had noticed. In the months leading up to
Speaker 2: these drone swarms of recent weeks, the Pentagon, the spokesperson
Speaker 2: for the DoD who deals with these issues, kept using
Speaker 2: drones as sort of an all purpose dismissal of whatever
Speaker 2: UFO case was prominent at the time. Oh yeah, that's
Speaker 2: probably drones. And it occurred to me they're using it
Speaker 2: sort of. We were being swamp gassed all over again
Speaker 2: in a sense or weather balloon, which was previously the
Speaker 2: all purpose explanation to dismiss these things. And when I
Speaker 2: saw you experiencing that same thing as a youngster, it
Speaker 2: seemed to me that you're saying that doctor j Alen
Speaker 2: Heinik was treated by the news media the same way
Speaker 2: the Air Force had treated the media and the public
Speaker 2: for so long, snide dismissal, using a broad brushed term
Speaker 2: like swamp gas, when that isn't exactly what was that correct?
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. Heinich came to town. He was at
Speaker 3: that time the consultant of the Air Force project, and
Speaker 3: he in retrospect, he would say he naively believed he
Speaker 3: was hired as a consultant to help the Air Force
Speaker 3: actually take a factual approach to this. As you know,
Speaker 3: that's not why the Air Force hired him, But they
Speaker 3: didn't tell him that. They wanted to use his respect
Speaker 3: respectability as a leading astronomer from Ohio State University to
Speaker 3: get his inprimature, his sign off on explaining away as
Speaker 3: many of these cases as possible. Now, it happened that
Speaker 3: Heinich was able to explain many cases as mundane or prosaic,
Speaker 3: but he was not committed to doing that for ideological reasons.
Speaker 3: And so when he went to the Michigan siding, and
Speaker 3: he toured around and talked to people all throughout the area,
Speaker 3: including near the swamp. And yeah, there was one particular area.
Speaker 3: Gas is a real phenomenon that leads to luminous discharges
Speaker 3: light due to you know, various outgassing around a swamp.
Speaker 3: But they're nothing like the standard non ordinary phenomena called UFOs.
Speaker 3: But he was he simply said, well, maybe the one
Speaker 3: siding over at the edsure town there. The swamp might
Speaker 3: be might have been swamp gas. It was remarkable what happened.
Speaker 1: Georgia's you.
Speaker 3: You should probably know. He did not get that phrase
Speaker 3: out of his mouth before every reporter in the auditorium
Speaker 3: who had gathered from around the nation, because this was
Speaker 3: a big case. Walter Crownkit on the CBS Evening News
Speaker 3: led the news three or four nights in a row
Speaker 3: with his story. As soon as he used the phrase
Speaker 3: swamp gas, they ran out to their payphones in those days,
Speaker 3: no cell phones, and they called the news bureaus and said,
Speaker 3: the Pentagon explains it all a swamp gas. Heinich was
Speaker 3: mortified because he hadn't done that, but you're wreck exactly right.
Speaker 3: He was. He was cajoled into an impression of having
Speaker 3: done that. And that, by the way, is what captivated
Speaker 3: me as a young cub reporter, if you will, as
Speaker 3: a twelfth grade a twelfth twelve year old, sixth grade student.
Speaker 3: That was the piece that got my attention, the closing
Speaker 3: down instead of science, the official agents of culture, science, news, media,
Speaker 3: academia showing interest in this phenomenon, in the fact that
Speaker 3: something unordinary was happening, non ordinary that was not explained.
Speaker 3: Rather than that being something of interest, it was it
Speaker 3: was an opportunity to close down discussion. Even at that age,
Speaker 3: I knew that's not how science and not how inquiry worked.
Speaker 3: And you know, my teacher actually complimented me for bringing
Speaker 3: that out. She said, keep great job with your report.
Speaker 3: You've got the makings of a reporter, maybe a scientist
Speaker 3: who knows, maybe even a detective. And I have to
Speaker 3: say I was very lucky at that stage of my
Speaker 3: life to have that kind of afrom a teacher to
Speaker 3: celebrate my inquiry. And so I went on doing what
Speaker 3: she said to follow the clues wherever they lead, mister Thompson,
Speaker 3: follow the evidence wherever it points. So as the phenomenon
Speaker 3: began revealing more of itself to me as an observer,
Speaker 3: including the paranormal dimensions, I said, well, I can't dismiss
Speaker 3: the paranormal simply because I could prefer that the paranormal
Speaker 3: not exist, or that I don't quote believe in the paranormal.
Speaker 3: I didn't grow up believing in the paranormal. But when
Speaker 3: people report a phenomena that I understood, oh, telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition,
Speaker 3: these tend to be part of contact experiences. So I
Speaker 3: found myself opening to that.
Speaker 1: Not.
Speaker 3: At a belief level, but is there evidence for those qualities? Yeah,
Speaker 3: there is pretty good evidence now for psychic phenomenon. So
Speaker 3: I'm basically a fact oriented guy as I approached this.
Speaker 2: So as a youngster, you start reading about this, you
Speaker 2: delve deeper and deeper into the topic. You learn of
Speaker 2: the importance of words in terminology. Unidentified flying object UFO,
Speaker 2: that term which, as you tell in your book, it
Speaker 2: becomes synonymous with ETS, and it is still used that
Speaker 2: way by our government in a derisive sort of way.
Speaker 2: When they want to dismiss something, they'll ask for evidence
Speaker 2: of the little Green men kind of a thing, equating
Speaker 2: all UFOs with ET phenomena. That's not an accident that
Speaker 2: it's evolved that way, correct, that's right.
Speaker 3: And the government claims to want to want it to
Speaker 3: get beyond. UFO was supposed to be neutral, but over
Speaker 3: time it became non neutral. It became associated, as you say,
Speaker 3: with little Green men. So ostensibly, the Pentagon's reasoning for
Speaker 3: shifting to UAP unidentified aerial phenomena was to get back
Speaker 3: to clarity or to get away from the connotations. I
Speaker 3: actually think UAP was chosen because it is such a colorless,
Speaker 3: bland term, and I think it's a subtle way of
Speaker 3: taking attention away from the complex challenge that this phenomenon poses.
Speaker 3: As you know from my book, I'm not whatever is
Speaker 3: revealed in the hangars of McDonald, Douglas and Lockheed Martin,
Speaker 3: and I think there's something to be looked at there
Speaker 3: amen to that, it's not my primary focus. My primary
Speaker 3: focus is the disclosure of the phenomenon as a whole.
Speaker 3: And I'm convinced no matter what is revealed in those hangars,
Speaker 3: there are still aspects of this phenomenon that are demanding
Speaker 3: a fundamental paradigm shift. And that is having to do
Speaker 3: with it with our not having reckoned fully with consciousness
Speaker 3: as a and as you know, the Skinwalker ranch is
Speaker 3: just one example of the anomalies of consciousness that are
Speaker 3: associated with the UFO phenomenon.
Speaker 2: I wonder, do you have a sort of sympathy for
Speaker 2: the devil here in this sense, for the government if
Speaker 2: they true do not know what these drones are, at
Speaker 2: least there's some of them, a small number of them
Speaker 2: that are genuinely unidentified. If they don't know. What do
Speaker 2: they say? You know, what could they say that would
Speaker 2: not raise suspicions and eyebrows and leave us perplexed and angry? Well,
Speaker 2: is there a better way to handle it than they're
Speaker 2: doing now?
Speaker 3: Well, I've often thought that's I mean, this week, I've
Speaker 3: been thinking that there's an analogy with the government's tendency
Speaker 3: to respond to this. I haven't think there are many
Speaker 3: people who are nate stayers in the government about the
Speaker 3: UFO phenomenon who don't actually probably know what's in the
Speaker 3: hangars and McDonnell douglas. I think that whatever that level
Speaker 3: of this phenomenon is is so highly compartmentalized and so
Speaker 3: limited in a need to know that the average press
Speaker 3: secretary of press spokesman at the White House or at
Speaker 3: the Pentagon who comes out is really constrained to say, well,
Speaker 3: there's really nothing going on, But what else could they
Speaker 3: Let's say, let's say they do know. Are they going
Speaker 3: to acknowledge whether it's the drones or before the drones.
Speaker 3: Are they going to come out and say there is
Speaker 3: something that is transversing our skies conducting maneuvers beyond anything
Speaker 3: we can account for. Enormous speeds and trajectories and sudden
Speaker 3: changes on a dime. We don't know what it is
Speaker 3: or where it's from. We'll get back to you when
Speaker 3: we do. No, they're not going to do that, and
Speaker 3: so I think frankly, a large part of what they
Speaker 3: don't understand now that there may be back engineering and
Speaker 3: may be successful. I don't I don't have a vote
Speaker 3: on that. I don't have knowledge of that, and I'm
Speaker 3: really good at saying what I don't know. By the way,
Speaker 3: that's phenomenous. I don't know is a complete sentence, and
Speaker 3: there's a lot I don't know. But in any case,
Speaker 3: I think there is there are aspects of this that
Speaker 3: they don't know that the average government official, let alone
Speaker 3: the members of Congress, do not know. And they also
Speaker 3: know that there's been a laughter curtain down around this topic,
Speaker 3: like an iron curtain, and so being on the wrong
Speaker 3: side of the laughter curtain can be just deadly for
Speaker 3: a politician's career.
Speaker 2: Sure, I mean, I suspect sometimes I feel a little
Speaker 2: bit of sympathy because they've they've painted themselves into a corner.
Speaker 2: Might have had legitimate reasons in the beginning, and now
Speaker 2: they're kind of stuck, and more and more people these
Speaker 2: days in our country anyway, are interested in the topic,
Speaker 2: are asking questions. They have mainstream media that finally got
Speaker 2: on board and did some work. You've got politicians who
Speaker 2: would never be caught dead talking about UFOs holding hearings,
Speaker 2: public hearings and closed door hearings with the whistleblowers and
Speaker 2: witnesses insiders. It's an amazing transformation a short period of time,
Speaker 2: and I imagine the pressure grows on folks who certainly
Speaker 2: know way more than we do. The general public probably
Speaker 2: have bodies and craft and materials that they've stashed and
Speaker 2: analyzed for a long time. But even if they have,
Speaker 2: that doesn't necessarily mean they know where these things are
Speaker 2: from or what the agenda is. They just know it's
Speaker 2: not us. I see that with these the drones. They've
Speaker 2: been all over the map and the responses to what's
Speaker 2: going on, But they've they've said a lot without addressing
Speaker 2: the really big question. I mean, they've said they're not
Speaker 2: a threat. Presumably you haven't seen any bombs drop, their
Speaker 2: building's vaporized, they're not from foreign adversaries, they're not ours,
Speaker 2: but we can't say whose they are. That one gets me.
Speaker 2: That kind of gets me, is, isn't it you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does me too. And we have had a
Speaker 3: couple of occasions now with presidents who said they're going
Speaker 3: to get in, you know, they're going to explore and
Speaker 3: they're going to reveal. Jimmy Carter saw a UFO in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty nine, I believe, and said he would reveal
Speaker 3: the truth when he came to office. Apparently he told
Speaker 3: NASA to do so, and they came back and said no, no,
Speaker 3: thank you, and we don't urge that you go there.
Speaker 3: Mister President Bill Clinton also tried to penetrate it or
Speaker 3: wanted to. Now what's interesting is is Donald Trump has
Speaker 3: indicated that he is going to and his son Don
Speaker 3: Junior has said we're going to take a real serious
Speaker 3: look and we're not going to be stopped where they've
Speaker 3: been stopped before. And Bobby Kennedy has said the same thing.
Speaker 3: He's playing a unique role. And I noticed Daniel Shehan
Speaker 3: was at the Thanksgiving dinner at the Kennedy house. So
Speaker 3: I don't know if that means there's really a shift
Speaker 3: in that paradigm. But what's Donald Trump going to do?
Speaker 3: Is he really going to push is he what does
Speaker 3: he know and what is he willing to help get revealed.
Speaker 2: I know that there's some people around him, as you
Speaker 2: mentioned some of the ones that are known. I know
Speaker 2: that there's some other people around him who helped in
Speaker 2: his campaign and are working on that transition, who are
Speaker 2: deeply interested in this topic and they want to be
Speaker 2: able to say something. But I would imagine it is
Speaker 2: pretty hard for any president to draw the line on
Speaker 2: how far can you go once you open that door? Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's real, but we can't tell you very much more.
Speaker 2: The questions are going to be endless.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I have to say say too. I don't
Speaker 3: like to be macab, but he has had two assassination
Speaker 3: attempts in one year, and how far can he go?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: Again, I don't want to be macab and hyperbolic here,
Speaker 3: but you know what level would he begin to release
Speaker 3: information about? I don't know. You can imagine that there
Speaker 3: is a scenario, there's scenario planning going on in the transition.
Speaker 3: It's certainly not issue number one, probably a lot of
Speaker 3: other issues ahead, but it's probably it's probably on some
Speaker 3: front burners in the transition.
Speaker 2: So I'll tell you what if they were to make
Speaker 2: an announcement. If they were to make an announcement of
Speaker 2: some sort, it would become issue number one. Even if
Speaker 2: there were some dire threat that somewhere else. I mean,
Speaker 2: good gosh, that would be gigantic.
Speaker 3: It would be, especially depending on how limited it was.
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe they'll say, here's what happened at Roswell
Speaker 3: all these years ago. But if what happened at Roswell
Speaker 3: was an alien craft, then that is that's the fact
Speaker 3: that it's old is not going to change the significant
Speaker 3: its significance is anything. Is going to be probably a
Speaker 3: lot of questioning about why this was kept from the
Speaker 3: American public.
Speaker 2: So you have been involved in that level of a
Speaker 2: political intrigue on the UFO issue, and there's a chapter
Speaker 2: of it in your book, the UFO Paradox, that we'll
Speaker 2: get into in the next hour. Before we go there,
Speaker 2: I want to just go back to the idea that
Speaker 2: UFOs equal ets and how limiting that kind of a
Speaker 2: framework is. As you learn more about the topic, you
Speaker 2: realize that that really is not a very all encompassing
Speaker 2: explanation for a variety of phenomena that people don't equate
Speaker 2: with UFOs but are somehow related at a basic level,
Speaker 2: right right, Well, you touched on.
Speaker 3: This earlier and I didn't pick up on it. Namely,
Speaker 3: UFO means unidentified flying object, so I means something in
Speaker 3: the sky is unidentified and appears to have mass. It
Speaker 3: appears to be an object. So people say, well, is
Speaker 3: this a real UFO? Sometimes I'll say, well, if it's
Speaker 3: unidentified and flying it appears to be an object, it's
Speaker 3: a UFO. But how it is eventually explained is yet
Speaker 3: to be determined. But you're right, We now know that
Speaker 3: these are preferential to bodies of water, they are seen
Speaker 3: on land, They are clearly atmospheric in the sky. So
Speaker 3: the attempts to try to find a single acronym really tough.
Speaker 3: Unidentified anomalous phenomenon is a common one, but the word
Speaker 3: anomalist doesn't roll off the tongue really well. So the
Speaker 3: acronyms don't really help us out here very much. But
Speaker 3: this is so much broader and deeper than a set
Speaker 3: of initials can convey, and it's part of how the
Speaker 3: linguistics of it make it easy to push this away
Speaker 3: off the front table.
Speaker 2: The deeper you dig into it, the wider the discussion
Speaker 2: gets I mean, you know, my entry point to this
Speaker 2: weird world was UFOs and the dominant paradigm when I started,
Speaker 2: as when you started, is these things are spaceships from
Speaker 2: other worlds. But really that is not accurate for what
Speaker 2: was really going on. The cases that kicked it off.
Speaker 2: Kenneth Arnold, for example, his story and you go into
Speaker 2: it in great detail in your book. His story was
Speaker 2: mischaracterized from the beginning, and some of the most dramatic
Speaker 2: and weirdest and most important things that happened to Kenneth
Speaker 2: Arnold were never reported at all, not for decades later.
Speaker 3: Correct, that's correct. Maybe we have to go into this
Speaker 3: in the next hour. I don't know how close we
Speaker 3: are to the commercial, but yeah, to the break. It's
Speaker 3: absolutely true. His daughter Kim Arnold, came forward later and said,
Speaker 3: my dad had a whole different experience that day, and
Speaker 3: he kept it quiet for the rest of his life
Speaker 3: because he was already the weird guy who was associated
Speaker 3: with flying saucers. So I'd be glad to go into
Speaker 3: how the opening case in the creation myth of ufology,
Speaker 3: blind saucer sighting over Mountaineer involves something far different than
Speaker 3: we have come to believe.
Speaker 2: I just think for both of us we had the
Speaker 2: same sort of experience in that our entry point to
Speaker 2: this general unified theory of weirdness was UFOs and maybe
Speaker 2: it's ets. It's like a spoke on a wheel that
Speaker 2: leads to a hub that's way stranger than just ets
Speaker 2: or UFOs craft in the sky. It's connected to a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of other things, and it makes people everywhere uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: You know, people who investigate UFOs, they don't want to
Speaker 2: hear about bigfoot standing extra flying saucer, do they?
Speaker 3: No, they don't. And when you say that they've been
Speaker 3: happening through time immemorial, and we have petroglyphs with alien
Speaker 3: figures going back centuries and cultures, and when you bring
Speaker 3: in shamanism and the near death experience and the fairy faith,
Speaker 3: as our great friend Jacques Bela did by broadening the framework,
Speaker 3: he simply said when he wrote his book Passport to Magonia,
Speaker 3: he said, this didn't start in nineteen forty seven. We
Speaker 3: need to look at our myths and our folklore, and
Speaker 3: the mainstream of uthology said, oh no, Jacques is now
Speaker 3: reducing the et hypothesis to mere myth he said, no,
Speaker 3: I'm broadening. It's not mear myth. Don't dismiss mythology because
Speaker 3: they may be reports of real phenomena in their time,
Speaker 3: in their culture. So I give Jacques bel A continuing
Speaker 3: great credit over the many years of his remarkable work
Speaker 3: in broadening our framework for this phenomenon.
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