WEBVTT - Seagulls 0:00:02.240 --> 0:00:04.760 Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart three D 0:00:04.840 --> 0:00:12.920 audio for full exposure listen with headphones used from time 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:16.040 to time of hiding information about UFO. What do you 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:20.960 have to say directment whose charges are absolutely untrue? Actually, 0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:24.560 the United States Air Force releases statistics on the UFO 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:28.800 phenomena through the Department of Defense Press Test periodically, and 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:32.440 we've always honored accredited media when they want to investigate 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:36.600 a given specific siting. There's nothing to hide. There's nothing 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:39.360 to hide it all. Is there anything in the files, 0:00:39.440 --> 0:00:42.559 either classified or unclassified, that would indicate that there may 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:47.720 be extra terrestrial visitors overhead? What's to all? The protect 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:51.920 is completely class and there's nothing in the record to 0:00:52.040 --> 0:00:55.160 could indicate that we have been visited by any of fantacism. 0:00:56.720 --> 0:00:59.560 How does the Air Force look upon people who make 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:02.080 full for to the UFO. They look at him as 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:06.880 qualified a. Yes, they do look on him as qualified observers. Actually, 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:12.480 most people who report a UFO sighting patreontic citizens who 0:01:12.480 --> 0:01:18.959 have been mystified by something that they've seen. I'm Toby 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:41.640 Ball and this is Strange Arrivals. A six months after 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:46.640 the assassination of President Kennedy a police officer named Lonnie 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:50.320 Zamora chased a speeding car down a desert stretch of 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:56.840 highway outside the town of Socorro, New Mexico. While in pursuit, 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:00.560 he heard a roaring sound, and looking to the sowest, 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:03.880 saw a flame in the sky, maybe a half mile 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:07.400 in the distance. He knew that there was a dynamite 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:11.040 shack somewhere in that area and figured it must have exploded. 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:15.000 He abandoned his pursuit of the speeding car and drove 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:20.040 in the direction of the flame. In a report about 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:24.240 the incident filed by Colonel Eric de Jacquier of the 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:28.040 United States Air Force, he has the more claiming that 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:33.600 the flame was quote bluish and sort of orange and color. However, 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:36.400 he could not tell the size of the flame, which 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:40.200 was slowly descending. The flame was of a narrow type 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:44.760 and streamed down into a sort of funnel shape end quote. 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:50.480 Zamora drove slowly westward on a gravel road. Here he 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:54.320 is describing what happened next in an interview with K. 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:58.840 S R. C. S. Walter Schrode, I went up the 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:05.200 road for about has a mile. Again, UH came up 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:08.680 to this a little balcon deal there on the side 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:11.600 of the old night for a glance about the of 0:03:11.720 --> 0:03:17.280 the window. Look to my lad in the white object 0:03:18.440 --> 0:03:23.080 on the ground. Far thought it might be a card 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:27.960 that turned over. Also really the real thing. Harry going 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:32.320 out there to investigate. Maybe somebody would be hurt. Uh 0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:37.920 that diamond saw his white at a jape luke an object. 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:42.200 It was a luminum white in color, though he pointed 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:46.720 out not chrome. Photos taken later of the site show 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:52.960 a desert scene, low scrub, sandy soil, rocks, distant mountains. 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:57.760 He's a half mile or more from town. He briefly 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:01.000 stopped his cruiser and saw two figures by the egg 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:05.720 shaped object to what appeared to be people dressed in 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:10.000 white uniforms with they have gentmts on like spaceman or anything. Low. 0:04:10.360 --> 0:04:13.520 I would say, there are people. I just I saw 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:16.760 something white, white color like he didn't. You could not 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:19.440 identify them as actually being a human being. And you 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:23.480 and I were they two of them? I would say 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:26.240 were two, because one with some fronds and the other 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:30.560 talked to him back so more a radio back to 0:04:30.640 --> 0:04:34.920 headquarters that he was going to investigate. He lost sight 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:38.720 of the figures in the white overalls. Leaving his car, 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:42.360 he began to walk towards the object, which he now 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:46.960 saw was resting on two outward slanting legs, but his 0:04:47.040 --> 0:04:51.599 approach was cut short by a sudden loud noise. When 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:55.880 it took off, it made a loud, loud, growing sound 0:04:56.320 --> 0:05:05.720 that the very low noise rower panicked. Zamora turned and 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:09.520 ran in the opposite direction. He banged his leg on 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:12.760 the bumper of the cruiser, fell to the ground, losing 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:17.719 his glasses, and scrambled to get further away. The object 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:21.840 emitted a bluish orange flame. Zamora said he was concerned 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:25.320 it might blow up, but instead it rose into the air, 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:29.279 and then after it got up near about the sound 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:33.360 seemed to disappeared. The sound was It was very very 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:39.120 quiet there with the craft in the air and silently 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:42.760 moving away from him. He noticed a marking on the side, 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:47.120 which a second report has him describing as being read 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:49.240 about a foot to a foot and a half in 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:53.799 height and shaped like a quote crescent with a vertical 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:59.440 arrow and horizontal lines underneath. Samura claimed that the object 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:02.720 then aimed in altitude and moved off to the south. 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:09.360 Later in this radio interview, Walter Schrode asked this strange question. 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:15.120 It wasn't dragging anything. We had a report that dragging 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:22.200 something as that land was dragging log n. Shrode said 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:26.479 he heard reports that the object was dragging something. Zamora 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:32.720 denied it. The interview ended abruptly when Zamora said, excuse, 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:38.240 we wanted some military people that the ones up to me. Now, 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:43.200 let pole when you have the military people are here 0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:45.520 from Ulefo to talk to you right now and ask 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:50.560 you some more questions about this. The military people who 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:52.760 had come to speak with him were from the US 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:56.680 Air Force, and we're working on Project blue Book, the 0:06:56.760 --> 0:07:02.040 effort to investigate and explain uf fositeings. While Blue Book 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:05.880 officially ended in nineteen sixty nine, it has lived on 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:11.840 in popular culture. At least three television shows, Project UFO 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:16.800 Dark Skies in the History Channels show Project blue Book 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:21.480 have centered on Bluebook investigations, and it is found in 0:07:21.560 --> 0:07:27.080 countless other shows, movies, and books. Ezekiel saw the wheel. 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:32.440 This is the wheel, he said, he saw. These are 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:36.560 unidentified flying objects that people say they are seeing. Now, 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:41.320 are they proof that we are being visited by civilizations 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:47.040 from other stars? Are just? What are they? The United 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:51.240 States Air Force began an investigation of this high strangeness 0:07:51.280 --> 0:07:54.200 in a search for the truth. What you were about 0:07:54.240 --> 0:08:01.040 to see is part of that twenty years search. The 0:08:01.160 --> 0:08:06.160 UFO era is generally considered to start in when a 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:11.160 pilot named Kenneth Arnold saw nine metallic flying discs traveling 0:08:11.160 --> 0:08:15.720 at high speeds near Mount Rainier. His story hit the newspapers. 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:20.440 Two days later, The Chicago Sun for one ran a 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:26.480 page two story headlined supersonic flying saucers cited by Idaho 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:30.800 pilot speed estimated at twelve hundred miles an hour when 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:35.680 seeing ten thousand feet up near Mount Rainier. Two weeks later, 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:40.840 in New Mexico, the public information officer at Roswell Army 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:44.640 Air Force Base issued a press release stating that the 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:48.600 five hundred and ninth Operations Group had recovered a flying 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:58.440 disc that had crashed on ranch land. The Roswell crash 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:01.800 is probably the best snow own of all UFO stories. 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:06.040 We'll get to it later in this series. But while 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:10.439 these are the two most famous UFO incidents from ninety seven, 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:14.480 they are far from the only ones. This is Air 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:19.800 Force Captain Hector Quintinilla, speaking in nineteen sixty four. At 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:22.480 the time, he was the head of Project Blue Book. 0:09:23.760 --> 0:09:29.600 You're nine. We had a rash of unidentified flying objects 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:33.560 we recorded to the Air Force. A researcher named Ted 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:37.640 Blocher set out to document just how many UFO reports 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:43.040 there were that year. On January one, nixty seven, he 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:46.719 made public his findings in a book called Report on 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:51.240 the UFO Wave of ninety seven, published by the National 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:57.000 Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena or NIGHTCAP, a leading civilian 0:09:57.120 --> 0:10:02.720 UFO research organization. It was just the fantastic the number 0:10:02.840 --> 0:10:06.280 of cases that he found. He found eight hundred thirty cases, 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:10.480 initially found well over a thousand. When he finished, he 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:13.880 published a book on the eight cases that he had done, 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:18.760 and I got interested in what he was doing. My 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:23.320 name is jan Aldrich. I am retired from the Army 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:27.559 with twenty five years and I'm retired from the Post 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:33.160 Office twenty five years. During my army career, I worked 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:43.520 in meteorology, intelligence and security, safety and personnel, so I 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:47.040 have quite a bit of experience in all these areas, 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:52.000 and I started looking at newspapers to find more cases. 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:56.800 Bloacher only done about a hundred and seventy newspapers in 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:02.199 the United States and Canada. I continued this on, and 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:06.240 he continued on, we continue to find more and more cases. 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:12.480 There was about eleven thousand newspapers in North America in 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:19.880 just a few had been scanned, had looked for items, 0:11:20.400 --> 0:11:25.360 and it was obvious that if there's eight hundred items 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:28.199 in about two hundred newspapers, what are there going to 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:32.280 be in a thousand, two thousand, five thousand. I said, 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:35.600 my goal is doing three thousand newspapers with the help 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:39.599 of people all over the world looking through newspapers, and 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:45.000 we were able to do about five thousand total newspapers. 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:50.000 Those Some of the cases were admittedly trivial. These were, 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:54.359 after all, the earliest days of the UFO era. Aldridge, 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:58.400 Bloacher and others were able to identify about three thousand 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:11.280 sightings reported in nine three thousand. Is is interesting what Bloatcher, 0:12:11.559 --> 0:12:15.000 myself and other people that looked at what we found, 0:12:15.040 --> 0:12:19.840 Amain Michelle, Dr James McDonald at the University of Arizona 0:12:19.880 --> 0:12:25.199 and other people said, Oh, the UFO activity that we 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:32.640 know of currently existed in except maybe abductions. This is 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:39.640 kind of a revelation. The phenomenon does not evolve. In 0:12:39.760 --> 0:12:43.400 other words, almost anything that you think of when you 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:47.240 think about UFOs today turned up in the cases from 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:55.920 except for abductions. Again. Captain Hector Quentinilla on the seven 0:12:56.040 --> 0:13:01.720 UFO sightings. During this time, Jene Sanford directed the Air 0:13:01.840 --> 0:13:06.679 Force to establish an office to try to determine what 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:12.920 these unidentified flying objects were. The program that became Project 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:18.439 blue Book started out as Project sign. The program is 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:22.800 threefold and the Air Force interest in you FOLS is 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:27.720 first to determine if a possible threat to the security 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:34.079 of the United States exists. Second, to determine the technical 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:39.040 or scientific characteristics of any such youthfols. Third, to try 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:45.480 to explain are identified. All youthol sightings reported to the 0:13:45.600 --> 0:13:50.800 services the U FOLS as such do not pose any 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:54.079 threat to the security of the United States. I do 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:57.920 get a number of reports from people who claim that 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:04.360 they have um seeing little green men. Retired Air Force 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:11.760 pilot James mcgahey the program was started primarily out of 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:19.640 concern over security issues that possibly had nothing to do 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:23.040 with alien spacecraft. It had to do is something going 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:27.640 on in the airspace United States. Is possibly some foreign 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:33.120 country doing something, possibly the Soviet Union and that's really 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:39.440 why it started. Jan Aldredge Project site had a lot 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:46.360 of engineers and aviation experts involved with it. It involved 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:50.120 lots of people, and it probably as far as the 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:56.440 military goes, is probably the biggest project. It became fairly 0:14:56.600 --> 0:15:01.360 apparent very early on that people were seeing all kinds 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:03.400 of things in the sky, but most of them could 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:08.680 easily be explained with prosaic explanations of natural phenomena, misidentification, 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:14.480 and various auto connectic effects, various other psychological effects and 0:15:14.720 --> 0:15:18.480 visual effects. And the Air Force said, why are we 0:15:18.640 --> 0:15:23.400 doing this? We don't want to be doing this. Projects 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:29.080 Signs name changed in to Project Grudge, and with the 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:33.240 name change came a change in direction, a certainty that 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:39.600 what people were seeing we're not extraterrestrial craft. The attitude 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:42.520 was now that we can explain all these things away, 0:15:42.720 --> 0:15:48.160 either as hoaxes, hallucinations or man made objects. And that 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:52.280 was their theme song for about up till the middle 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:57.560 of fifty one. After January it changed its name to 0:15:57.640 --> 0:16:02.840 Project blue Book. They had a bunch of reserve Air 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:06.160 Force officers who were called into service because of the 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:10.240 Korean War and they were put on this so ahead 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:14.760 about eight eight or nine people that we're working on 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:20.200 UFOs in that era up to all about early nineteen 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:24.480 fifty three. Then these people started to be released from 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:29.240 active duty service. The program was never very big. Most 0:16:29.320 --> 0:16:31.920 of the time it was only five people, one officer 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:37.960 or a couple enlisted people as secretary and one consultant, 0:16:38.760 --> 0:16:43.400 j Allen Heineck. At the beginning of their interest in UFOs, 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:48.000 the Air Force contacted Jay Allan Heinek at the time 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:51.800 and astronomer at Ohio State University to see if he 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:55.720 might be interested in consulting on what was then Project sign. 0:16:56.880 --> 0:16:59.880 They understood that some percentage of the cases would be 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:05.200 traceable back to stars, meteors, and other such phenomena. He 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:07.600 liked to claim that he was like the innocent bystander 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:11.680 who got shot accidentally. This is in the late nineteen forties. 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:15.920 He was teaching astronomy at Ohio State and one day 0:17:15.960 --> 0:17:19.960 a couple of Air Force people from right Field It's 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:24.639 not right Patterson Dayton came to visit him at the university. Hi, 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:27.800 I'm Mark O'Connell. I am the author of The Close 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:31.760 Encounters Man. How one man made the world believe in UFOs. 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:34.560 It's a biography of Dr J. Allen Heineck, who is 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:37.200 one of the best known, if not the best known 0:17:37.560 --> 0:17:41.920 UFO experts of all time. After making small talk for 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:44.080 a while, they said, hey, so what do you know 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:46.960 about these UFOs. Well, UFOs were a new thing in 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:52.639 that time period, and Heineck, being a serious scientists, just 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:54.320 kind of shrugged it off and said, well, you know, 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:56.200 I think the whole thing is kind of stupid. I 0:17:56.280 --> 0:17:58.000 think it's just a phase. People are still kind of 0:17:58.080 --> 0:18:01.560 jumpy after Pearl Harbor, are worried about sneak attacks and 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:03.760 these are of force. People said, well, we have a 0:18:03.840 --> 0:18:05.480 job for you if you're interested, because we have a 0:18:05.520 --> 0:18:07.560 whole pile of these UFO reports and we don't know 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:09.440 what to do with them, and we'd like to have 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:12.960 an astronomer look at them and tell us if these 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:18.480 people are really just seeing ordinary astronomical objects that they're 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:24.119 just misinterpreting somehow. And heine said sure. I mean, basically 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:27.679 to him, it was easy money. He Nick is an 0:18:27.720 --> 0:18:31.840 interesting and important figure in UFO lore, and we will 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:34.919 spend more time looking at his life and career as 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:39.920 a UFO investigator, but for now, what's important is that 0:18:40.040 --> 0:18:42.240 he was involved in an effort to look at the 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:46.920 information that had been collected during Projects Sign Project Grudge 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:50.840 in the early days of Project Blue Book. This effort 0:18:51.000 --> 0:18:58.000 was known informally as the Robertson Panel. In the CIA 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:02.160 put together a panel, a Committee on the the Scientific 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:05.240 Study of UFOs something like that was the official title. 0:19:05.760 --> 0:19:08.359 And it's one of those things where the report was 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:11.639 classified for a long time. It wasn't until you know, 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:14.320 decades later that the public got to see the report. 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:19.920 But the Robertson Panel was dedicated to looking at whether 0:19:20.080 --> 0:19:25.320 or not the UFO phenomenon might be a threat. I 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:29.000 am Aaron Gullias. I'm a history teacher and writer and 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:33.639 the host of the Saucer Life podcast. Like most defense 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:37.880 and intelligence establishment efforts to investigate UFOs in the nineteen fifties, 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:41.560 this was mostly concerned about not about determining what the 0:19:41.640 --> 0:19:43.800 things in the sky are, but determining whether or not 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:48.159 the things in the sky are a danger to national 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:52.120 security or something that needs to be dealt with immediately. 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:59.920 James mcgahey. At that time, they were again concerned about 0:20:00.160 --> 0:20:04.640 Soviet disinformation because the Soviet unions since in Brown nine, 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:10.000 has spent a huge amount of time trying to see disinformation, 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:15.000 trying to disrupt society in the United States. The KJB 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:20.320 at various other organizations just trying to make trouble inside 0:20:20.320 --> 0:20:26.240 the United States, whether physical trouble or psychological trouble, and 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:31.720 the CIA was very concerned that the Soviet Union might 0:20:32.000 --> 0:20:35.879 use UFOs as a way to spread panic in the 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:41.359 United States. The Robertson Panel was so named because it 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:46.240 was chaired by Howard Robertson, a highly respected physicist and 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:50.000 mathematician at cal Tech who also worked on a number 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:54.080 of government and military programs. He was asked by the 0:20:54.200 --> 0:20:58.240 CIA to assemble a team of experts to evaluate the 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:03.480 UFO evidence to date. The panel comprised mostly other physicists, 0:21:03.920 --> 0:21:07.159 along with a CIA officer who was also a missile 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:12.240 expert and served as the panel secretary. And it was 0:21:12.359 --> 0:21:14.440 very disappointed right off the bat with the Robertson panel 0:21:14.440 --> 0:21:17.240 because he was invited in a sort of a guest speaker, 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:20.760 but he wasn't part of the panel, and he legitimately 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:23.439 felt that he probably should have been part of that panel. 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:29.560 So it was handled very very informally without much serious intent, 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:32.639 and iin it just basically felt like when he went 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:36.760 into interview with them, when he gave testimony to this panel, 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:40.080 that he was just sort of dismissed, and you know, 0:21:40.400 --> 0:21:44.520 they didn't really take anything he said very seriously. In all, 0:21:45.040 --> 0:21:48.440 the panel met for twelve hours over four days and 0:21:48.560 --> 0:21:52.200 examined twenty three cases, or about one percent of the 0:21:52.240 --> 0:21:57.359 total number that were available. At one point, they watched 0:21:57.400 --> 0:22:00.200 a movie of some UFOs taken by an air worse 0:22:00.280 --> 0:22:04.840 photographer military photographer that's actually, even today is still pretty 0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:08.159 remarkable film to watch. They've projected the film on a 0:22:08.240 --> 0:22:11.080 wall in the conference room where you couldn't make out 0:22:11.160 --> 0:22:13.159 much detail, and all the members of the panel said, oh, well, 0:22:13.160 --> 0:22:16.399 those are obviously seagulls. Well, this took place in Utah, 0:22:17.000 --> 0:22:19.200 very far from any oceans, so I don't know where 0:22:19.240 --> 0:22:22.320 they thought seagulls were coming from. So that was the 0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:26.600 Robertson panel. Heinek was pretty disappointed in how that worked out. 0:22:27.600 --> 0:22:33.800 Aaron Gullies. The Robertson panel concluded that you know, physically, 0:22:34.320 --> 0:22:39.720 sort of operationally, there was no real danger from the UFOs, 0:22:40.240 --> 0:22:44.960 but the concept of the UFOs, the concept of invaders 0:22:45.040 --> 0:22:48.399 from outer space, the concerns about people not knowing what 0:22:48.560 --> 0:22:50.800 these things might be. In the government not knowing or 0:22:50.880 --> 0:22:53.560 not sharing what these things might be, that there might 0:22:53.640 --> 0:22:57.639 be some negative effects on the public with regard to 0:22:57.880 --> 0:23:01.639 keeping them focused on the Soviet Union, as you know, 0:23:01.840 --> 0:23:05.880 geopolitical enemy number one. They worried that that the UFOs 0:23:06.040 --> 0:23:08.560 might be a distraction if if, sort of the popular 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:14.520 conception of UFOs as alien craft continued to to be 0:23:14.600 --> 0:23:18.240 on the rise. So among the recommendations the Robertson panel 0:23:18.320 --> 0:23:22.760 made was to work on the educational side of things 0:23:22.920 --> 0:23:27.399 to encourage media outlets to present their news stories and 0:23:27.560 --> 0:23:31.159 documentaries on on the UFOs as being essentially harmless, not 0:23:31.320 --> 0:23:33.399 a danger, not anything to worry about, to sort of 0:23:33.600 --> 0:23:39.080 defang and devenomize the UFOs as an existential threat. The 0:23:39.200 --> 0:23:43.280 recommendations weren't just to discourage the view that UFOs were 0:23:43.359 --> 0:23:46.760 something to be concerned about, but also to encourage the 0:23:46.840 --> 0:23:50.879 development of skills to help people evaluate any information they 0:23:50.920 --> 0:23:56.360 were provided with. The CIA actually said in that report 0:23:56.960 --> 0:24:01.919 that we should create a program to teach critical thinking 0:24:02.040 --> 0:24:05.800 to the American public such that they will not be 0:24:06.119 --> 0:24:11.520 easily swayed by disinformation and panic. The things that are real. 0:24:13.000 --> 0:24:17.280 It's probably the best thing. The CIA ever said un 0:24:17.320 --> 0:24:23.240 virtually it was instituted. So the Robertson panel ended up 0:24:23.359 --> 0:24:27.639 disregarding UFOs as physical entities. Might there have been a 0:24:27.720 --> 0:24:31.159 thumb on the scale. In reply to a letter from 0:24:31.320 --> 0:24:35.480 James Klotts that was posted to the computer UFO network 0:24:35.560 --> 0:24:41.520 on the Worldwide Web or Coupon, Robertson panel member Thornton 0:24:41.720 --> 0:24:46.440 Page wrote, quote, HP Robertson told us in the first 0:24:46.560 --> 0:24:51.960 private No Outsiders session that our job was to reduce 0:24:52.200 --> 0:24:56.359 public concern and show that UFO reports could be explained 0:24:56.440 --> 0:25:02.240 by conventional reasoning. End quote. There's no corroboration for this story, 0:25:03.040 --> 0:25:05.639 but it is interesting in what it implies about the 0:25:05.720 --> 0:25:10.480 goals of the meetings. So the Robertson panel dismissed the 0:25:10.560 --> 0:25:15.200 notion that UFOs were real, physical objects or anything that 0:25:15.280 --> 0:25:19.560 the public should be concerned about. And yet people continued 0:25:19.680 --> 0:25:22.879 to see things that they couldn't explain, and the Air 0:25:22.960 --> 0:25:27.719 Force kept investigating, And one of these investigations drew Alan 0:25:27.760 --> 0:25:31.359 Heinik to the small town of Socorro, New Mexico, to 0:25:31.520 --> 0:25:34.240 try to determine what a local policeman had seen in 0:25:34.320 --> 0:25:40.560 the desert after the break strange arrivals will return in 0:25:40.640 --> 0:25:57.800 a moment. So back to Lonnie Zamora and his sighting 0:25:57.840 --> 0:26:03.240 in Socorro, New Mexico in ninety sixty four. Remember, Zamora 0:26:03.359 --> 0:26:07.200 had been chasing a speeding car on when he heard 0:26:07.200 --> 0:26:10.440 a roaring sound and saw flames descending from the sky. 0:26:11.640 --> 0:26:14.840 He turned off the highway and came upon two white 0:26:14.920 --> 0:26:19.520 clad figures outside an egg shaped craft. With another loud roar, 0:26:20.040 --> 0:26:23.760 the craft took off again, flying low over the desert 0:26:23.880 --> 0:26:28.280 before rising into the sky. The Air Force clearly felt 0:26:28.320 --> 0:26:31.760 a sense of urgency to deal with this sighting. The 0:26:31.880 --> 0:26:34.920 first report on the case was filed two days after 0:26:35.000 --> 0:26:41.560 the encounter on April. On April, a second report was 0:26:41.640 --> 0:26:47.960 submitted on four days after the encounter. Alan Heinik was 0:26:48.000 --> 0:26:52.920 summoned to New Mexico to assist with the investigation. This 0:26:53.119 --> 0:26:57.920 is Heinik speaking with k s r C radio's Walter Schrode. 0:27:00.480 --> 0:27:03.720 If you don't mind like to a here here so 0:27:03.840 --> 0:27:07.200 I see um whether you're common province might be on 0:27:07.359 --> 0:27:10.000 this and I might ask any direct questions because I 0:27:10.080 --> 0:27:12.399 don't know why the questions you can cannot answer you 0:27:12.560 --> 0:27:17.600 this opinion and and an honor to appreciate it very much. Well, yeah, 0:27:17.720 --> 0:27:20.920 first off, I should say there's no question of my 0:27:21.080 --> 0:27:25.240 not being able to answer anything because I'm acting as 0:27:25.440 --> 0:27:30.640 u uh independent investigating might say. Um. But the fact 0:27:30.720 --> 0:27:33.280 that I don't have anything to say the things that's 0:27:33.480 --> 0:27:36.480 puggling to me is I'm sure it must be to 0:27:36.520 --> 0:27:43.600 the folks around here. UM. I certainly believe that Zama 0:27:43.800 --> 0:27:50.159 had a most interesting and significant experience, and I'm particularly 0:27:50.200 --> 0:27:53.480 interested in the tracks that were left and the analysis 0:27:53.520 --> 0:27:57.399 of the samples of material from those tracks. And until 0:27:57.760 --> 0:28:00.920 you know more about it, thus, all I can say, 0:28:01.600 --> 0:28:05.160 disappointing to you perhaps is something that right, I'm apposed 0:28:05.160 --> 0:28:10.479 as you are. From the beginning there was confusion as 0:28:10.560 --> 0:28:14.640 public statements by Heinich and the Air Force investigators were 0:28:14.680 --> 0:28:18.840 at odds with those of Zamora and other locals. This 0:28:19.080 --> 0:28:23.920 is Lonnie Zamora with the ever President Walter Schrode. Schrode 0:28:23.960 --> 0:28:29.160 had asked Samora if the craft he saw bore any markings, Yes, 0:28:29.280 --> 0:28:34.919 they did not from them all, I didn't see the market. Well, 0:28:35.000 --> 0:28:38.000 I went up closer to it. I did to the market, 0:28:38.760 --> 0:28:42.120 and someone said that the markings that you saw it 0:28:42.240 --> 0:28:45.440 was an upside down be with three lines running through 0:28:45.480 --> 0:28:50.560 its group that goes They feel though the one who 0:28:50.640 --> 0:28:52.960 say doesn't marketing, and they don't want to say anything 0:28:52.960 --> 0:28:55.720 about the markets or every more question you on, Matt, 0:28:56.080 --> 0:28:58.000 and we run into an area that they don't want 0:28:58.080 --> 0:29:01.960 to to talk about when you just say so. But 0:29:02.080 --> 0:29:06.240 when Schrod interviewed Heinek, Heineck disputed that the Air Force 0:29:06.320 --> 0:29:11.000 had put any restrictions on what Zamora could say. I 0:29:11.120 --> 0:29:15.080 was called by the Pentagon this morning, and there's an 0:29:15.080 --> 0:29:18.800 Associated Press's report out to the effect that some Air 0:29:18.920 --> 0:29:25.160 Force person had told Mr Zamara not to say anything 0:29:25.280 --> 0:29:31.160 about the lettering, and I was asked specifically to find 0:29:31.240 --> 0:29:34.080 out whether this statement had been made, who made it 0:29:34.600 --> 0:29:36.920 and all that sort of thing. Zamara tells me that 0:29:37.120 --> 0:29:40.400 no one Air Force or no one else told him 0:29:40.480 --> 0:29:42.400 not to say anything about it. But this is how 0:29:42.480 --> 0:29:46.480 these rumors get started. To emphasize the point that the 0:29:46.560 --> 0:29:50.520 Pentagon had nothing to hide. Heinick described the marking as 0:29:50.600 --> 0:29:56.040 related to him by Zamora. He said, Zamora quote described 0:29:56.080 --> 0:29:59.080 it to me as an inverted V. Was sort of 0:29:59.160 --> 0:30:03.920 a bar Across said earlier we heard that Samora described 0:30:03.960 --> 0:30:07.320 it as a quote crescent with a vertical arrow and 0:30:07.440 --> 0:30:11.560 horizontal lines underneath, which isn't exactly the same as what 0:30:11.720 --> 0:30:15.280 Heineck says, but close enough that I don't think Heinek 0:30:15.480 --> 0:30:21.560 is being intentionally misleading. Later in the interview, Schrode asked 0:30:21.640 --> 0:30:24.600