Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Coast to Coast AM. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Rich Barra, and let's talk about our first guest, Alejandro Rojas.
Speaker 2: He's published articles on science and science fiction, but is
Speaker 2: most known for his coverage and involvement in the study
Speaker 2: of unidentified and nomalist phenomena that is the UAP, otherwise
Speaker 2: known as UFOs. Alejandro is president and CEO of the
Speaker 2: nonprofit UAP Discovery and consultant for Enigma Labs. We're going
Speaker 2: to talk about that a lot tonight too, and also
Speaker 2: as the founding member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP,
Speaker 2: he has spent over twenty years researching and writing about UFOs.
Speaker 2: I believe the thing that Alejandro is studying we are
Speaker 2: starting to hear more and more about. I don't think
Speaker 2: it's you know, exploding. I think the truth is trickling out.
Speaker 2: Welcome Alejandra. Hey, it's nice to meet you. I don't
Speaker 2: think we've ever talked before. Nice to meet you, good sir.
Speaker 3: I don't think we have, so I'm excited to talk
Speaker 3: with you. Thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker 2: I got so many questions. In fact, let's start from
Speaker 2: the beginning. Let's go from take me from a novice
Speaker 2: point of view of UFOs in UIPS and you're getting
Speaker 2: involved with it. Go back to twenty plus years ago.
Speaker 2: What made you decide to start getting so involved in this?
Speaker 3: Okay, so yeah, I'm a little different than most. A
Speaker 3: lot of people come into this after they have their
Speaker 3: own signing or experience. With me, I was a journalism student.
Speaker 3: I actually entered college to become a rocket scientist. But
Speaker 3: my friend who got me into journalism started dating this
Speaker 3: guy who would just kept talking about UFOs and I,
Speaker 3: you know, was really into science and space, and I
Speaker 3: just thought, this guy's a goofball. I wish you'd cut
Speaker 3: it out, but you know, I started listening to him,
Speaker 3: and he had cluped me into some things I hadn't
Speaker 3: heard of, even though I had looked into the topic,
Speaker 3: and I quickly realized there was a lot of There
Speaker 3: were a lot of credible people taking this all very seriously,
Speaker 3: and these weren't in the documentaries or shows out at
Speaker 3: the time. But of course, the nineties was kind of
Speaker 3: a dark ages where this topic where really the media
Speaker 3: wasn't paying as much serious attention to it, so I
Speaker 3: kind of.
Speaker 2: I mean beyond the x files really, right, it was
Speaker 2: just the x files that we had. The only show
Speaker 2: we had was the x files. Everything else was so
Speaker 2: that was about it, right.
Speaker 3: I think you're right. The X Files was out, which
Speaker 3: was kind of creating this kind of mythos in the
Speaker 3: background of the smoking Man and all of that. And
Speaker 3: then meanwhile, you know, there were credible things happening at
Speaker 3: the time, and so I saw this as a beat
Speaker 3: that's not being covered. It should be taken more seriously.
Speaker 3: I'm going to take it more seriously and I'm going
Speaker 3: to write about it. And it became very popular. No
Speaker 3: one else was doing it, understandably, you know, they were
Speaker 3: afraid of hurting their credibility and their ability to write
Speaker 3: about other topics or pay by we get employed to places.
Speaker 3: But luckily for me, I get employed to write about
Speaker 3: and research this topic over time. So that's really what
Speaker 3: it was a kind of journalistic curiosity.
Speaker 2: So give me, give me a little topic. Since you've
Speaker 2: been kind of in this field for a little bit.
Speaker 2: It seems like, in fact, we're even seeing a little
Speaker 2: bit with the drones that are over Jersey, Like I
Speaker 2: assume that those are not alien to nature. I assume
Speaker 2: that is either us or another country or we're being
Speaker 2: lied to. But what is it about journalism? When you
Speaker 2: watch any sort of news, they always like to make
Speaker 2: a little hint, in a joke, in a wink about
Speaker 2: maybe they're little green men. What is it about journalism
Speaker 2: itself that doesn't want to take that seriously? Or are
Speaker 2: we afraid of it and we don't want to that
Speaker 2: we don't want to assume that that it could be
Speaker 2: something from another planet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're exactly right. I think it's just
Speaker 3: nervousness around the possibility if there's something that UFOs posed
Speaker 3: a mystery that is more than just you know, what
Speaker 3: is dark matter? What is you know? Is there methane
Speaker 3: on Mars? The implications of some sort of advanced technology,
Speaker 3: which is scary. The people with the most advanced technology
Speaker 3: historically is in a you know, are the people in
Speaker 3: charge who use that technology to take over we harness
Speaker 3: and use technology for that purpose. So it's scary to
Speaker 3: think that there might be another society or civilization out there,
Speaker 3: I think, and I think that that really messes with people.
Speaker 3: So journalists in particular, it's easier to make fun of
Speaker 3: it and have a skeptical perspective because you're going to
Speaker 3: get hit. Everybody's going to go, oh, you're right, those goofballs,
Speaker 3: So it's a real safe space to take. But to
Speaker 3: put your you know, to really put your neck out
Speaker 3: there and say, hey, guys, I think there's something to this,
Speaker 3: then you're going to take a lot of heat. And
Speaker 3: there's been a few mainstream journalists have who have decided
Speaker 3: to do that and take the heat, but it's far
Speaker 3: and few between.
Speaker 2: When you watch the hearings or you know that when
Speaker 2: they bring this sort of stuff sort of around the
Speaker 2: Pentagon and there's a congressional thing, are you watching with
Speaker 2: great interest or is this a song and dance that
Speaker 2: you feel like, Okay, they're just letting a little bit
Speaker 2: of this out so that they can say that they
Speaker 2: covered it, but everybody knows more than they're letting on.
Speaker 2: Do you feel that way.
Speaker 3: A bit of both? You know, definitely, And that's the difficulty.
Speaker 3: So when I'm watching this, on the one hand, I
Speaker 3: am very familiar and I've covered the people who are
Speaker 3: making the more kind of wild claims, and to be honest,
Speaker 3: I don't find their claims credible. I know that they've
Speaker 3: I've always gone after and interviewed many of these people,
Speaker 3: say what is your evidence? Whatever is your evidence, and
Speaker 3: it's always here, say it's always a second third had person.
Speaker 3: So I wasn't surprised that I think came of that,
Speaker 3: But I also wasn't price and nothing came from the government.
Speaker 3: They're not in a position to or do they ever plan.
Speaker 3: I think plan to really give us a lot of
Speaker 3: information when it comes to this topic. It's around sensitive topic.
Speaker 3: There's no advantage for them to really give us more
Speaker 3: information except for to a piece of public which it brings.
Speaker 3: In Congress. Congress, they are politicians. They're going to use
Speaker 3: it as a political kind of tool to gain favor
Speaker 3: and get votes.
Speaker 2: Okay, so if you're in them, if you're if you're
Speaker 2: a Congress person and you're pushing for disclosure for UFOs,
Speaker 2: that's what people want, even though you know that there's
Speaker 2: only so much disclosure you're going to get. It's just
Speaker 2: you're you're just kind of putting it out there. So
Speaker 2: you're like, hey, I want to know the same things
Speaker 2: you do, but you're not you're not invited to that party.
Speaker 2: Nobody's invited to that party, right.
Speaker 3: And what I like to see though, and I think
Speaker 3: we've gotten a little more personally. I think we've gotten
Speaker 3: some more insight is what does the government really know?
Speaker 3: And to be honest, I think they know less than
Speaker 3: than people assume that they do. I think that you know,
Speaker 3: during your commercial there is that there's someone who says
Speaker 3: something similar, and I think he is right. I think
Speaker 3: that the secret is I think there's lots of secrets
Speaker 3: the government has around this topic, but one of the
Speaker 3: big ones, and perhaps the biggest, is we don't know
Speaker 3: we're in a position where we can't protect you. And
Speaker 3: some of the philosophers that have been kind of examining
Speaker 3: this topic recently say, you know, that's kind of a
Speaker 3: big deal because it's part of our social contract with
Speaker 3: the government that they're here to protect us, and if
Speaker 3: they can't do that, it undermines their credibility and their authority,
Speaker 3: and that's what they're afraid of. I can see that
Speaker 3: being an issue. I think there's also been and the
Speaker 3: CIA has a long paper on this disinformation and misinformation
Speaker 3: that they put out on this topic, mostly to cover
Speaker 3: up like top secret projects and things like that, but
Speaker 3: I think they've also used it to screw with the Russians,
Speaker 3: and you know, see what they know and this sort
Speaker 3: of thing, And I don't think they want to admit
Speaker 3: to that, let alone. What's theirs you know that we're
Speaker 3: seeing out there. They don't want to let us know that,
Speaker 3: So their hands are tied on a lot of the
Speaker 3: types of information they can give us on this topic.
Speaker 3: So really we're not going to learn much from them either.
Speaker 3: I think what I do like to see is Congress
Speaker 3: pushing the government to give us more information and to
Speaker 3: look at this further. I think that's great, but I
Speaker 3: really think there has to be some sort of more open,
Speaker 3: transparent sort of research, something like I think NASA could
Speaker 3: participate in. That needs to happen. But there just doesn't
Speaker 3: seem to be that motivation in the scientific community.
Speaker 2: I know, it seems like the Internet starting to take
Speaker 2: over with things, you know, where where the regular news
Speaker 2: doesn't have as much in depth as the Internet, and
Speaker 2: we're starting to discover stuff. In fact, I think this
Speaker 2: is kind of interesting. I know we talked about taking calls.
Speaker 2: In fact, I want to go to one early because
Speaker 2: I mentioned tonight as we were coming on the air.
Speaker 2: I saw Newsweek. This is from Newsweek online. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: there are reports of some orbs over Minnesota. Let's go
Speaker 2: to the east of the Rockies line where Suzanne is on.
Speaker 2: She's right near Lake Superior, Minnesota, and she saw them
Speaker 2: over the neighborhood tonight, right, Suzanne.
Speaker 4: Yes, I was. I had stepped out on my porch.
Speaker 4: It was exactly midnight because the news was just coming on,
Speaker 4: and I'm looking north. The lake is to the south
Speaker 4: of me, about a mile and a half, and all
Speaker 4: of a sudden, there's this blue and blue green, greenish blue,
Speaker 4: I should say, very bright, and from my vantage point,
Speaker 4: it looked like the size of a softball, and it
Speaker 4: just kind of, you know, went over the houses and
Speaker 4: continued north. So that was kind of cool. Wow, especially
Speaker 4: because it was this greenish color.
Speaker 2: I wonder about I wonder about that stuff. Over water, Alejandro,
Speaker 2: tell me about what that might be.
Speaker 3: It's difficult to stay over water. I mean, overwater isn't
Speaker 3: necessarily indicative of anything. I know, lots of people talk
Speaker 3: about us, so we really don't have enough data to
Speaker 3: say water has a relation to it. However, why water
Speaker 3: is important is we're inch into drones. You know, we're
Speaker 3: talking about drones so much. Of course, I'm more interested
Speaker 3: in something more mysterious than drones, the true anomalous type
Speaker 3: of stuff.
Speaker 2: But let's get into that just a second. Let's let's
Speaker 2: back up, let's get a let's get a beginner's guide here.
Speaker 2: Tell me, I think we've got a unique position with you.
Speaker 2: Where you went to school to be a rocket scientist.
Speaker 2: So you've got the science behind you. I'm sure you're
Speaker 2: you're a good engineer student. And then you've also got
Speaker 2: the journalistic approach. So if I'm just turning into the
Speaker 2: show and I'm like, yeah, I mean, I want to
Speaker 2: know about UFOs, tell me the difference. I'm kind of
Speaker 2: an open thinker here, a little bit of a skeptic,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to see if you can you can
Speaker 2: pull me into your world a little. Tell me the
Speaker 2: difference between what a UFO and a UAP might be.
Speaker 3: Okay, my answer to this, and I think this is
Speaker 3: significant for not right now is nothing and a lot.
Speaker 3: And the reason I say nothing is UFOs is unidentified
Speaker 3: flying objects. It was coined by the US Air Force
Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty two when they were beginning to do
Speaker 3: more public UFO research, but people referring to them as
Speaker 3: flying saucers alien spacecraft. They wanted to say, no, these
Speaker 3: are unidentified, we don't know what they are. We're going
Speaker 3: to research them to try to figure that out. So
Speaker 3: we're coming up with this term unidentified flying object. Of course,
Speaker 3: over the time, the public started to view UFOs as
Speaker 3: alien spacecraft, and that's what it meant to them. So
Speaker 3: we get into twenty seventeen and everybody's taking my steriously again,
Speaker 3: and so scientists are like, Okay, we don't want anything
Speaker 3: to do with UFOs, but we'll study UAP unidentified anomalist phenomena.
Speaker 3: The problem I had with that, because I'm more work
Speaker 3: more closely with the scientists and the scientific community, is
Speaker 3: that how do you explain what is a UAP. You're
Speaker 3: going to have to say it's a UFO, and the
Speaker 3: public doesn't get what is a UAP versus a UFO.
Speaker 3: So the public is thinking, okay, so they're saying aliens
Speaker 3: are here, cool, that's wild. And then you know the
Speaker 3: government's like, there is an aliens. Well, you said UFOs
Speaker 3: were real and uapr UFOs and that's aliens. So I
Speaker 3: think there's a ton of confusion created in that, and
Speaker 3: so people don't know what to believe or understand. And
Speaker 3: I get these phone calls where they say the government
Speaker 3: just said this, and I'm like, well, that's not what
Speaker 3: necessarily the thing meant. I know, that's what you understand
Speaker 3: that UFOs to be. So UAP is kind of today
Speaker 3: represents the scientific really investigation of UFOs, but it's just
Speaker 3: really confusing with the public. And then you also have
Speaker 3: the public thinking, oh, you guys are trying to change
Speaker 3: things up, bond and trick us and use this new term,
Speaker 3: and we don't like it, and it just has created
Speaker 3: more distrust and kind of separation between the general public
Speaker 3: and the scientists and the government research.
Speaker 2: Well, you were talking about in twenty seventeen, everybody got
Speaker 2: interested in the UAP aspect of UFOs. Why do you
Speaker 2: think they're being taken seriously just over the last ten
Speaker 2: years or so, Well, this.
Speaker 3: Is what's interesting, and I think where it's kind of
Speaker 3: slingshot in a way. So, and what I mean by
Speaker 3: that is that all of a sudden, you know, muel Asano,
Speaker 3: this intelligence guy comes out and says, hey, we've been
Speaker 3: investigating UFOs for the last few years and the government
Speaker 3: does take them seriously, and here's these great cases from
Speaker 3: these Navy pilots. It makes a huge splash in the
Speaker 3: New York Times. These Navy pilot cases especially got a
Speaker 3: lot of attention, and people were like, Wow, there's something
Speaker 3: is there is something to this. The Navy then comes
Speaker 3: out and says, yes, we do take UAP seriously. We
Speaker 3: do take these reports that from these Navy guys you're
Speaker 3: hearing in the news very seriously, and we're telling everybody,
Speaker 3: you know, give us reports on UFOs and take them seriously.
Speaker 3: Then the Congress felt the same, and that kind of
Speaker 3: created the snowball everybody taking it seriously. Then these Senate
Speaker 3: commit things, you know, hearings come and these intel people
Speaker 3: start making these really kind of more loocky claims, and
Speaker 3: everybody's like, whoa wait a second here. And as time
Speaker 3: progressed up until this last Senate hearing, you know, we
Speaker 3: heard a lot of Hey, we looked into those, we
Speaker 3: didn't find any We weren't able to verify any of
Speaker 3: that information. You know, the head of the committee in
Speaker 3: the Senate House hearing even said, I hope you guys
Speaker 3: have some more information that we can actually work with.
Speaker 3: But then afterwards a lot of those House representatives were like,
Speaker 3: they didn't give us nothing to work with, so we
Speaker 3: still don't have anything to work with on that end
Speaker 3: of things, and it kind of a lot of that
Speaker 3: trust and faith in the topic kind of melted at
Speaker 3: that point. The other thing that hurt was NATA trying
Speaker 3: to get involved in this and just getting pummeled on
Speaker 3: the internet and social media. Like you mentioned before, social
Speaker 3: media has taken over, and not in a nice way. Well, no,
Speaker 3: because I don't think it's in a positive way.
Speaker 2: I think we don't believe anything.
Speaker 3: You don't want anything to do with this anymore.
Speaker 2: Then, Yeah, it's like I think it's like it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter what truth you tell us, we don't necessarily believe
Speaker 2: it because if you say, yeah, it's just kind of
Speaker 2: like when I'm looking at the drones, doesn't it seem
Speaker 2: insulting that there's something that's been flying around that are drones.
Speaker 2: You can see that they're drones. Is if they have lights,
Speaker 2: they're huge drones. But they've been up there for a
Speaker 2: month and they're like, you know what, we really don't
Speaker 2: know what they are. Doesn't that seem like that just
Speaker 2: can't be the truth or unless we are, just why
Speaker 2: not put a helicopter up there, like you don't know what, idiot,
Speaker 2: you can't preace the serial number.
Speaker 3: Yes and no, actually and I and even yes, as
Speaker 3: far as even worse than you're saying, because in the
Speaker 3: UK there are US bases where the Dods said, yes,
Speaker 3: we've had drone incursions over our UK basis. In Germany
Speaker 3: today today I'm just reading that we had drones over
Speaker 3: incursions over basis. So around the world they're having these incursions.
Speaker 3: New Jersey, to be honest, in my opinion, is a mess.
Speaker 3: They aren't drones.
Speaker 1: For the most part.
Speaker 3: What we're seeing in the news, what we're seeing from
Speaker 3: a lot of those witnesses aren't airplanes. People are posting
Speaker 3: videos of airplanes. The the FAA and Homeland Security. We're right,
Speaker 3: and you can look online at UFO researchers and even
Speaker 3: you know, very hard in UFO researchers are like, guys,
Speaker 3: I'm into the drones, into the UFOs, but all I
Speaker 3: see a videos and pictures of airplanes here. Do you
Speaker 3: have anything to this point, we don't have a lot
Speaker 3: of good videos. That's what we're doing at Enigma. I
Speaker 3: think we do have some better ones to just come
Speaker 3: to analyze this and album Enigma Labs, And if you
Speaker 3: go to Enigma Labs and social media, you're going to
Speaker 3: find an article we just put up. Well, we've got
Speaker 3: ninety different reports from the area. A lot of those
Speaker 3: have videos, and some of those videos are more mysterious.
Speaker 3: And what do those videos look like? They look more
Speaker 3: like what your caller said where they look more like
Speaker 3: what those pilots reported, and what those pilots reported that
Speaker 3: you mentioned. That's a fascinating case where people are seeing
Speaker 3: things moving at incredible speeds.
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