Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio. Greig Lawson is a friend of a friend,
Speaker 1: a friend of Dave Schrader, who's been on the show often.
Speaker 1: The host of the show The Holdser Files and then
Speaker 1: The Ghosts of Devil's Perch, which we had Dave on
Speaker 1: talking about a couple of times. Greg has a long
Speaker 1: history investigating and exploring and researching things which people considered
Speaker 1: to be paranormal, and he discusses these topics when he
Speaker 1: goes out in the lecture circuit. Glad he gave him
Speaker 1: some time tonight, Greg, how are you this evening. I'm
Speaker 1: doing great. Thanks for having me. Well, come on, we're
Speaker 1: the ones who are lucky. You're just kind of the
Speaker 1: perfect guy for this gig because I think that not
Speaker 1: just with your background in in your investigations with Roswell,
Speaker 1: but you've done other things. You've had other books where
Speaker 1: you've you know, like the the I saw on your website,
Speaker 1: The Haunted Hillhouse, was like totally cool. I love that
Speaker 1: um and that you can lecture on all sorts of
Speaker 1: various topics. So we may we may run the gamut
Speaker 1: with you, but let's start here. So you've been following
Speaker 1: the story of the balloons, these different shaped balloons. Some
Speaker 1: were cigar shaped, some were this shape, some were big,
Speaker 1: some were small. What were you hearing in that in
Speaker 1: though all of those different admissions or re pivots by
Speaker 1: the by the Pentagon over the last couple of weeks. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's funny because if you look back in the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, Um, they've changed some laws and
Speaker 1: they put some stuff in the National Defense Authorization Act
Speaker 1: that opens up some of these investigations and makes it
Speaker 1: very much more transparent. Before. You know, if if if
Speaker 1: a Navy flyer saw something, he would think, I really
Speaker 1: want to report this because they're going to make fun
Speaker 1: of me, right and when he would that information stayed
Speaker 1: within the Department of the Navy. It didn't it was
Speaker 1: not shared, uh, you know, in the National Defense So
Speaker 1: now the laws have changed and they have to play
Speaker 1: well with others and everybody is sharing this information also,
Speaker 1: you know, they they they've opened it up to where um,
Speaker 1: it's our responsibility as the government to look at this
Speaker 1: and to share annually our report on UAP. So you
Speaker 1: have all these government agencies that are now sharing this
Speaker 1: information working together and uh, and they're compelled to do it,
Speaker 1: which makes it fairly interesting there. Yeah, that's a very
Speaker 1: interesting observation to start with, because, as I mentioned last night,
Speaker 1: there's a Hulu series out which is a like a
Speaker 1: like a primer on the history of the subject. Didn't
Speaker 1: this country and how it developed? And there was a
Speaker 1: concerted effort made by the government, like an actual symposia
Speaker 1: that they had across the country of different thought leaders
Speaker 1: to make sure that everybody got in line with the
Speaker 1: notion that people would be stigmatized if they spoke up.
Speaker 1: And therefore anybody in the military, officers, pilots, they didn't
Speaker 1: want that permanently in their jacket. Up until that point
Speaker 1: sometime in the I think it was the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: Up until that point, people were talking openly about it.
Speaker 1: Then that shut down and they were they were basically
Speaker 1: the rule came out that said let's label them all kuks,
Speaker 1: and that will stop. That will stop everything. And then
Speaker 1: it's taken a long time for that frost thought. So
Speaker 1: now the emphasis is not prove you're not a kop.
Speaker 1: It's it's the emphasis is the government to prove that
Speaker 1: what people are reporting isn't true, right, Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: um when you're when you're talking about aerial phenomena, you're
Speaker 1: talking about a whole bunch of stuff. When I was
Speaker 1: a kid in nineteen seventy North Austin, Texas, every day
Speaker 1: I saw a flying disc every day because we lived
Speaker 1: very close to Berkstrom International or Berkstrom Air Force Base,
Speaker 1: which was the Sack Command at the time. And so
Speaker 1: they were launching weather balloons multiple times a day. And
Speaker 1: once they got very very high, those those balloons that
Speaker 1: look like an upside down tear drop to us there
Speaker 1: on the ground, get very big, right, they get very
Speaker 1: very wide. Sure, and so you see a boy around
Speaker 1: four or five, six, seven o'clock, depending on what time
Speaker 1: of the year. You get those long sun rays as
Speaker 1: the coming up and they reflect off of that balloon
Speaker 1: material and it looks like a giant, shiny silver disc
Speaker 1: up there. Right. We had a lot of those. I
Speaker 1: remember that crystal clear when I was a kid. So
Speaker 1: you have things such you know, benign as that to
Speaker 1: these other objects that apparently you know, maneuver very well
Speaker 1: and are are hard to spot, but well, you know,
Speaker 1: and that and that's well freeze that moment, because again,
Speaker 1: there seemed to be a time when this country the
Speaker 1: military needed to send up a lot more weather balloons.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that they don't do it on occasion.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying, but it's not. I mean the technology
Speaker 1: has progressed since then, The climatology and meteorology and all
Speaker 1: that has has progressed to a point where we don't
Speaker 1: need to send up a balloon. I mean that's pretty
Speaker 1: that's pretty primal in a way when you think about it, right, right, right,
Speaker 1: So I guess it would be more along the lines
Speaker 1: now as far as real test, because I mean using
Speaker 1: using models and satellites, you can't actually get you know,
Speaker 1: the real air. You can't write the real air, so
Speaker 1: you still need uh, you know, air pressure and those
Speaker 1: types of things that satellite is not going to give you. True,
Speaker 1: but they also have we have a lot of different planes.
Speaker 1: They have the a wax, we have a lot of
Speaker 1: other we have other things that we can also do
Speaker 1: other than weather balloons, at least if the pentagons to
Speaker 1: be believed, and they said, and I believe them when
Speaker 1: they say, we don't really fly balloons over other countries.
Speaker 1: So that let's just go with the balloon theory for
Speaker 1: a second, but that all of this is just balloons,
Speaker 1: so like makes me wonder, what is it then that
Speaker 1: China doesn't have that we have that a weather balloon
Speaker 1: or a balloon of some sort, whether it's for weather
Speaker 1: or not, I don't know. But if whatever a balloon
Speaker 1: is that they feel like they have to float it
Speaker 1: over the jet stream over the United States and Canada,
Speaker 1: what is it that they could that they're gathering with
Speaker 1: those balloons that they couldn't gather using other data Because
Speaker 1: our country says, our satellites are so good, balloons are
Speaker 1: kind of we don't we just wouldn't bother, right, So
Speaker 1: where are you with that? Well? And so it depends
Speaker 1: on how you look at it depends on the technology
Speaker 1: we're talking about. You remember a few years ago we
Speaker 1: were we were watching North Korea pretty close, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, they're burning everything and there's nothing but smoke,
Speaker 1: right right right, Yeah, they were moving surface to air
Speaker 1: missiles from one launch area to another. So the best
Speaker 1: way to do that is to create smoke, because it's
Speaker 1: really hard for us to see through smoke, and and
Speaker 1: so that sort of archaic warfare kind of stuff was
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, Yeah, And here's the thing is, we're
Speaker 1: assuming that this balloon was gathering data of some sort,
Speaker 1: possibly espionaged kind of stuff, right, well, what if it
Speaker 1: wasn't What if it was doing something else? And that
Speaker 1: was one of the things that kind of perturbed me
Speaker 1: a little bit is we can fabricate things pretty quick,
Speaker 1: and we can control things in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 1: And to bring a balloon down with a very high
Speaker 1: dollar missile was just right. I'm just sitting at home.
Speaker 1: Four hundred thousand dollars missile to knock down a balloon?
Speaker 1: What are we doing? Who is in charge of this? Right?
Speaker 1: If I was, if I had the authority and I
Speaker 1: had the responsibility to for somebody to say, hey, I
Speaker 1: need you to go get that balloon, that's not how
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it. No, And I want to protect
Speaker 1: the payload of that balloon and keep it pristine so
Speaker 1: I can get people that's a lot smarter than me
Speaker 1: to take a look at it and figure out what
Speaker 1: it's doing. But instead they shoot a missile at it
Speaker 1: over the ocean and it's going to drop into salt water.
Speaker 1: Whatever electronics is on it's done instantly done. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then how are you going to find it? And
Speaker 1: how are you going to recover it? I don't know
Speaker 1: how they're they're they're doing with that part of them.
Speaker 1: I think it's it was all theater, I think at
Speaker 1: some point, and it became, you know, it obviously became
Speaker 1: very politicized, like we don't have the guts to to
Speaker 1: shoot down a balloon, and then after we shot down
Speaker 1: the balloon, they go, oh, what a stupid waste of
Speaker 1: money to shoot down a balloon. It's like, pick up
Speaker 1: your mind, you know what I mean, Like, what what
Speaker 1: do you want? The government's gonna do whatever it thinks
Speaker 1: the people think will make them look good. They're not
Speaker 1: necessarily going to think it through. And you're a guy
Speaker 1: who knows a little bit about this, because I mean,
Speaker 1: you served about a decade in the Army, the Navy,
Speaker 1: and the Air Force. Were those in successive events or
Speaker 1: were you at the same time in all three of those?
Speaker 1: So out of high school, Army then I became a
Speaker 1: cop when I got out of the Army, and I
Speaker 1: was doing that for a little while, and I thought,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna go do. The Navy a
Speaker 1: buddy of mine called me up, said hey, let's go
Speaker 1: do the Navy. So we went into the Navy. I
Speaker 1: got out and went, I'm gonna be a cop again.
Speaker 1: And then I was there for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and the Bosnia thing came up, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go do the Air Force and sod Yeah.
Speaker 1: When were your jobs in each of those stints? So
Speaker 1: when I was in the Army, I was an infantry parachutist.
Speaker 1: I was a paratrooper with the eighty second Airborne Division.
Speaker 1: I was in Alaska and the Middle East and North Africa,
Speaker 1: and I had I had a really good, really good
Speaker 1: tour with them. They traveled around right a lot, and
Speaker 1: then the Navy, and then the Navy. I was an
Speaker 1: operation specialist, And that's one of the things that makes
Speaker 1: me more interested in these UAPs, UFOs and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, because as an operation specialist, it's one of
Speaker 1: the very few jobs in the Navy that you don't
Speaker 1: you're not a technician, you don't fix anything. Most jobs
Speaker 1: in the Navy to fix something. Operations specialists don't fix anything.
Speaker 1: We use a whole bunch of electronic means to gather information.
Speaker 1: We analyze that information and disseminate it to the people
Speaker 1: that have a need to know for the information. And
Speaker 1: so that was one of the things. You know, I
Speaker 1: worked air detection and tracking in one of the one
Speaker 1: of the modules on mimits Air Detection and Tracking. This
Speaker 1: was way before the UAP incident. I'm using air quotes
Speaker 1: here on limits. But the equipment that we use there people,
Speaker 1: I think people have a very basic and rudimentary idea
Speaker 1: of how those things work. But let's say the electronic
Speaker 1: counter measures and electronic counter counter measures and the radars
Speaker 1: and things that we use our f energy for to
Speaker 1: do things without having to touch things, those are frequencies,
Speaker 1: and those frequencies can be adjusted. So for me and
Speaker 1: for anybody that's work in air detection and tracking, as
Speaker 1: we're going someplace and doing something, we're looking for objects
Speaker 1: that are of interest to us, in other words, a
Speaker 1: hazard and navigation or a direct threat. Right, And when
Speaker 1: you run into flocks of birds, you adjust your frequency,
Speaker 1: you tune your radar right so that they'll go away
Speaker 1: on your radar screen so you don't see them and
Speaker 1: you don't get distracted by them. Well, the same thing
Speaker 1: would happen with a non rigid inflatable balloon type object.
Speaker 1: You could pick that up if the payload was big enough,
Speaker 1: like this particular payload on this Chinese balloon was apparently
Speaker 1: a couple of school bus sizes. I mean that that's
Speaker 1: a lot of equipment. I can't imagine how big this
Speaker 1: thing was, but apparently it was pretty large. And you know,
Speaker 1: something like that, you wouldn't necessarily tune it out. You
Speaker 1: would automatically see that. Some of these others that they've
Speaker 1: been talking about, the smaller ones, you would probably if
Speaker 1: you couldn't get a signature off of that flying object,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. In other words, you're you're looking for it,
Speaker 1: and is it in a commercial air corridor? Is it
Speaker 1: move at a certain speed at a certain altitude? Is
Speaker 1: it squawking some sort of radar also or any other
Speaker 1: RF energy for you know, transmitting whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: You can identify that as a commercial aircraft or military aircraft.
Speaker 1: But if something's moving very slow and it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be doing anything, a lot of times you won't
Speaker 1: even assign a tracking number to it, just because you
Speaker 1: know it could be it could be some sort of
Speaker 1: weather anomaly, squall, It could be you know, so when
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to be a threat to you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just don't pay that much attention to it. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting after this, after these new laws came in
Speaker 1: and they basically tapped on everybody's, you know, a military's
Speaker 1: foreheads and said, hey, boys, start paying attention to this stuff.
Speaker 1: Start logging this stuff. So everybody's tuning in the radars different.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh man, these things from popping up everywhere. Right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, well, and then so the Air Force just
Speaker 1: a round it out. I mean, which one was your
Speaker 1: favorite branch that you served in? So I was indoctrinated
Speaker 1: in the United States Army and that's the way I feel.
Speaker 1: That's that's who tattooed on your soul. Yeah, it still
Speaker 1: is right, exactly right. Yeah, I was a I was
Speaker 1: actually a combat arms training and maintenance instructor for the
Speaker 1: Air Force, So I was I was a rainmaster. I
Speaker 1: did all the small arms stuff up to a Mark
Speaker 1: nineteen and like eighty one millimeter mortars and stuff like that.
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