All language subtitles for UFO Conspiracy_ Exposing Secret UFO Reports _ Special _ Full Episode (anglais)

(deep bass humming)

(intense dramatic music)

- In 1947, Lydia Sleppy worked at KOAT Radio

in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

- She received a call from John McBoyle,

the general manager at the radio station in Roswell.

- She recalls McBoyle telling her that a flying saucer

had crashed down north of Roswell.

(intense dramatic music)

- [Jeremy] The next thing Sleppy knows,

a message comes in and it reads:

"This is the FBI.

"You will immediately cease all communication."

- [Narrator] Roswell.

Once just a sleepy city in New Mexico,

is now the epicenter of UFO conspiracy theories,

and it all started 70 years ago.

- Roswell encapsulates all of the reasons

why the UFO phenomenon has had to be secret.

- [Dwight] It pinpoints the moment it was decided

that the public cannot know the truth about UFOs.

- [Narrator] And in the decades

after America's best-known UFO incident,

allegations of alien phenomena skyrocketed,

along with reports that the government knew more

than they let on, and were covering it all up.

- If the United States Air Force did recover alien bodies,

they didn't tell me about it either, and I want to know.

- [Narrator] But if the government did ever find proof,

would they tell us?

- [Richard] Those people making national security decisions

were probably justified to say

we are not going to tell the world about this just yet.

- [Narrator] And how far might they go to conceal it?

- When you get that kind of firsthand look

at how these cover-ups work, you're going

to be hungry for the truth.

- [Narrator] Between eyewitness accounts of UFOs,

and government reports that attempt to debunk them,

where does the real truth lie?

(mysterious clicking and humming)

July 1947.

Roswell, New Mexico.

William Mac Brazel, a rancher,

contacts local authorities to report an unusual find.

He claims to have discovered the debris

of a strange aircraft scattered across the desert

near the Roswell airfield.

- The sheriff didn't know what to make of this,

so he called the Roswell Army Airfield

and asked if they knew anything about a strange aircraft

that had just crashed in Roswell.

- [Narrator] The army acts quickly

to secure the scene and remove the strange crash materials.

And there were other reports of a second crash,

where extraterrestrial bodies were allegedly found.

A nurse at the Roswell Army Base morgue

even provided illustrations of what she supposedly saw.

- The story was also picked up by the local newspaper.

And it actually said that the intelligence office

of the Roswell Army Airfield, quote,

"Announced at noon today that the field

"has come into possession of a flying saucer."

- [Narrator] The potential impact of this discovery

is far reaching and is immediately brought

to the attention of President Harry S. Truman.

- When the Roswell crash report hit Truman's desk,

Truman considered it significant enough to send

one of his top generals, General Nathan Twining,

to Roswell to do the accident investigation report.

- [Narrator] General Twining, a celebrated war hero

and head of research and development for the Air Force,

would later go on to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

- And you have to ask yourself,

"Well, why would Twining go there?"

We have leaked documents which have been disputed,

but I think are legitimate, and what they indicate

is that what Twining found was that

what crashed at Roswell was something not from us.

It was technology not made by human hands.

- General Nathan Twining made a recommendation

that a formal study of UFOs be conducted

and that it be kept secret for the well-being of the public

and, of course, national security.

- But, of course, the problem with that

is that secrecy develops its own momentum,

its own bureaucracy, its own power.

And then of course, it's gone.

There's no chance.

The longer that secret goes,

the less likely it'll ever be that you'll want to reveal it.

- [Narrator] Some believe that secret is sealed forever

when the military provides its official response

to the Roswell rumors.

- As part of President Truman's effort

to cover up the Roswell crash, he gave instructions

to top generals in Washington, who then gave instructions

to General Roger Ramey to put an end to the Roswell stories.

- The material, whatever was captured at Roswell,

was then sent off to Wright Field for analysis

at Air Materiel Command, but on its way,

they stopped off at Roger Ramey's headquarters in Texas.

And this is where, photographers took pictures

of poor Jesse Marcel standing with this like,

aluminum foil balloon, made to look like a fool,

and Ramey was in charge of that whole thing,

basically telling the press

that it was only a weather balloon.

It was a mistaken identity.

- That was the government's official explanation

for Roswell, a downed research balloon.

Perfectly logical mistake, end of story.

- [Narrator] But 30 years after the Roswell crash,

a military insider finally comes forward

and publicly confirms what many have suspected for decades.

- In 1980, Major Jesse Marcel, an intelligence officer

at Roswell Airfield, admitted that 30 years earlier

he was asked to exchange the remnants of the crashed UFO

with the remnants of a crashed research balloon

to be used for the photographs

of the story in the newspaper.

- [Jesse Recording] They had the picture made

strictly for the press.

Those photos were taken while the actual wreckage

was on its way to Wright Field.

- For the press, that was the end of the story.

For ufologists, it was the beginning

of a government UFO conspiracy.

- This kind of disinformation might seem

like par for the course these days,

but this is actually really significant.

It pinpoints the moment it was decided

that the public cannot know the truth about UFOs.

- [Narrator] But many researchers suggest

there may have been legitimate justification

for concealing the truth about Roswell.

- The Cold War was ramping up, and the mood of the nation

was one of great concern and worry.

And now you have this?

You have this whole thing?

A, you don't know who these other beings are.

You don't know what their intentions are.

You really don't know anything about them

except that they're not us,

and so it's this tremendous unknown.

Think about this.

We're talking about a topic that is of explosive,

explosive potentiality here.

A very common reaction that people are gonna have is panic.

And most of us, in our worlds, we have our little,

you know, bubble of reality.

This doesn't intrude.

But what if it does intrude?

Then, boom, there goes your whole worldview.

I think that in those early years,

those people making national security decisions

were probably justified to say,

"We are not going to tell the world about this just yet."

So Roswell encapsulates in a neat, (laughs) real package

all of the reasons why the UFO phenomenon

has had to be secret.

- [Narrator] In the wake of Roswell,

President Truman issues directives that many believe

were aimed at further concealing America's UFO secrets.

- One of the things he did was form

the National Security Act 1947,

which established the CIA.

The CIA was allowed to look into the UFO situation.

He also combined the four military forces

and put them under the new Secretary of Defense,

who was James Forrestal.

- Forrestal was an exceedingly intelligent man,

a guy who'd been around the block of life many times,

knew a lot, and dealt with incredible amounts

of pressure during World War II.

(soft slow music)

- [Narrator] Washington, D.C., 1947,

two months after the Roswell incident,

President Truman instructs his new Secretary of Defense,

James Forrestal, to create a classified group

tasked with managing the UFO secret.

This group is allegedly known as Majestic 12.

- There is one leaked document,

one of the Majestic 12 documents,

that is a memo from President Harry Truman

to Secretary Forrestal authorizing the creation

of this group, MJ-12.

- [Narrator] The memo allegedly reads, quote,

"As per our recent conversation on this matter,

"you are hereby authorized to proceed

"with all due speed and caution upon your undertaking.

"Hereafter, this matter shall be referred to

"only as Operation Majestic 12."

- Majestic 12 was a group of 12 scientists,

military people, government officials

who were given the task of accumulating the material,

controlling the UFO material, keeping the secrecy,

doing the disinformation, and everything else

that would be necessary.

- [Narrator] Some believe that the members of Majestic 12

are the founding fathers of America's shadow government,

a top secret faction with no accountability to the public.

- The members of MJ-12, first of all, they were not elected.

Obviously they were selected, so there were no like

public politicians or anything like that.

And I think that's important

because what you really don't want

in a secret UFO control group is to have a public official

to be part of it, simply for the fact that

they're gonna have a real conflict of interest here.

First of all, they're gonna have to live a whole life

of lying to their constituency.

Not a good idea.

What you really want is plausible deniability.

- [Narrator] But from the very start, there are rumblings

of dissent among Truman's secret keepers.

- Right in the formation, the beginning of Majestic 12,

the Secretary of Defense Forrestal

was totally against the secrecy of UFOs.

- [Narrator] According to UFO research files,

James Forrestal soon clashes

with the very group he helped create.

- He believed that the people had the right to know,

which kind of put him in the path of the secret government.

- [Narrator] Reportedly, as Forrestal's disagreements

with the shadow government increase,

he also begins to display increasingly erratic behavior.

- This was a guy who really had it together,

and then suddenly, during 1947 and 1948, he unraveled.

And it was a very, very tense period of time.

- [Narrator] Many suggest that Forrestal's downward spiral

may be related to an event that occurred

shortly after the Roswell UFO crash.

1947, Fright Field.

Rumors surface that the base is in possession

of alien bodies recovered from Roswell.

- There are reports about an alien autopsy

conducted on bodies pulled from the Roswell crash,

and there are also some claims that James Forrestal

was present for this autopsy.

According to one account, Forrestal touched the alien body

on the autopsy table, and, as soon as he made contact,

he reported a severe buzzing sound in his head.

After that, he would get an intense migraine

anytime he got close to the body.

Out of the small group present in that room,

Forrestal was the only person who experienced this.

Some people believe that this encounter affected Forrestal.

- He fell apart.

He fell apart psychologically.

Something happened to James Forrestal.

People who knew him said, "What's wrong with Jim?"

- [Narrator] March 1949, less than two years

after being appointed America's first Secretary of Defense,

James Forrestal tenders his resignation.

And some believe that the remaining members of Majestic 12

are concerned that their secrets are now at risk.

- If one of your top guys is not reliable,

you've got to do something about it.

That's a security risk that was beyond

anything you can imagine, so I think

that's why he had to be taken out.

(static clicking)

Allegations surrounding the infamous Roswell UFO crash

of 1947 propose a cover up

at the highest levels of government,

and many believe that this is the catalyst

for President Harry S. Truman's creation

of secret government groups, like Majestic 12,

which were designed to investigate,

and perhaps suppress UFO sightings.

But according to reports, all is not well,

as Secretary of Defense James Forrestal

is on a collision course

with the very group he helped create.

- It has in fact been suggested that Forrestal

was kind of a renegade on MJ-12,

disagreeing with the overall secrecy policy.

- It was ironic that he set it up,

and then in the end he realized that it was something

that was completely getting out of control

and that he couldn't control it anymore.

- [Narrator] But according to witnesses,

Forrestal's strange behavior continued,

even after his resignation.

- Forrestal was feeling more and more paranoid and isolated.

He even thought that there were

foreign-looking people following him.

- He was becoming unstable, becoming unhinged,

and I think that was really the biggest problem

with Jimmy Forrestal, is that

you couldn't really rely on him.

This is a phenomenon, a topic that required

the absolute top level control.

And if one of your top guys is not reliable,

you've got to do something about it.

That's a security risk that was beyond

anything you can imagine, so I think

that's why he had to be taken out.

- [Narrator] Five days later,

the former secretary of defense is admitted

to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

Forrestal is held at the hospital for over a month.

- His brother calls and says,

"You know, you've, holding my brother in here for too long.

"I'm going to get him.

"I'm coming in tomorrow to get him."

- [Narrator] But Forrestal's brother

arrives at the hospital too late.

- That night, James Forrestal fell or leaped

or was thrown out of a 16th-floor window

at the Bethesda Naval Hospital and fell to his death.

- Since the death occurred on a naval facility,

local police didn't investigate the suicide.

Instead, the head of the Naval Board of Inquiry

immediately announced it was absolutely certain

that Forrestal's death could be nothing else than a suicide.

- [Narrator] But there are clues that may suggest

a more sinister possibility.

- What they didn't mention was that his attending physician

and the night orderly were off that night,

and scuff marks were found at the base of the window,

suggesting signs of a struggle.

- [Narrator] Is it possible that James Forrestal

was murdered for threatening to expose

the shadow government's UFO secrets?

- But keep in mind, this was 14 years

before the Kennedy assassination.

Who in America is going to question

the United States Navy investigation on this?

So whatever they were gonna say is what was gonna go

and play for the media, and that's exactly what happened.

No one questioned it.

- After that happened, everybody else in Majestic 12,

you know, kept their mouth shut.

- [Narrator] However, in the wake of Forrestal's death,

it becomes increasingly difficult

for the government to control reports of UFO sightings,

which increase dramatically in the next few years.

- In the early 1950s, the number of sightings

actually doubled every month.

- [Narrator] One such sighting allegedly occurred

at a military installation in Forest, Ohio,

the very same base where the Roswell debris

and alleged lifeforms were supposedly stored back in '47.

Wright Patterson Air Force Base, 1955.

- During the 1940s and '50s, a woman named Norma Gardner

works in the Foreign Materials Division at Wright Patterson.

- Over the course of a year, Norma Gardner catalogs

approximately 1,000 different items from UFO crashes.

Now, she photographs and tags each one.

One day, she witnesses a cart being moved

from one room to another.

And on that cart are dead aliens bodies.

- [Cassidy] They appear to be between four

and five feet tall, and their eyes are narrow and slanted.

- [Narrator] As a military employee,

Norma Gardner is sworn to secrecy,

but she eventually breaks her silence.

- It is on her deathbed that she confesses her story.

She claims, "Uncle Sam can't do anything to me

"once I'm in my grave."

About six months later she passed away.

- [Narrator] And Norma's story

about Wright Patterson Air Force Base

is not an isolated one.

In 1966, another government employee,

known only as J.K. is working there

as a computer missile specialist

on the Nike missile program with top security clearance.

- J.K. finds himself on many occasions at Wright-Patt.

One of these times, he's escorted to an

underground facility on the base

that is inaccessible without top-level security.

Inside this facility he sees nine glass cases.

The glass appears to be about an inch thick,

and each case is illuminated.

And he can see that inside the cases are nine bodies.

- [Narrator] Is Wright Patterson Air Force Base

the final resting place for aliens

recovered from crash sites?

Or at the very least,

could it be some sort of receiving station?

Rumors suggest the answers reside

in a special section of the base.

- It was always believed that all the UFOs,

the bodies, even aliens, they were all brought

to Hangar 18 for analysis.

In fact, the late Senator Barry Goldwater,

who had a secret clearance, he tried to get into

the UFO material at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

- Barry Goldwater was a United States Senator.

He once ran for President back in 1964

and he was a very good personal friend

of Air Force legend General Curtis LeMay.

One time he asked General LeMay about it,

and as Goldwater said several times,

it was the only time in their friendship

that LeMay cussed him out and said,

"Don't ever ask me about that again."

Hangar 18 has never really been confirmed.

Most people now I would say think

that it's probably a symbolic location.

- [Narrator] But there is report after report

of eyewitnesses who either worked at Wright Patterson

or who were visiting the base and witnessed

some sort of similar evidence.

- It makes you wonder how many aliens

the government has actually recovered,

and have they ever come across live aliens?

- [Narrator] August 1980.

A civilian named Martin claims that his friend,

an Air Force Colonel, has information

about live aliens in custody

at none other than Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

- Martin and this Colonel would get together

on several occasions and speculate about UFOs and aliens.

This conversation was always very casual,

but Martin suspected that this man

knew more than he was saying.

- The last time the Colonel would speak with Martin,

he informs Martin that he is dying of cancer,

and there is something he wants to get off his chest first.

That's when the Colonel tells Martin

that there are two live aliens

at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

The Colonel dies three weeks

after his conversation with Martin.

- [Narrator] Decades after Roswell,

countless stories from government and

collectively report similar findings

that living breathing aliens have been held

at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

(static clicking)

After Roswell, a pattern of alien eyewitness reports

begins to emerge.

The most notable case involving the government's

own secretary of defense, James Forrestal,

resulted in his swift resignation

and mysterious death.

Could this have been the first instance

of a witness being forcibly silenced?

Stories of the Men in Black have been part of UFO lore

since the early 1950s; unidentified men

who use fear and intimidation to threaten UFO witnesses.

Their identity remains a mystery.

- Everyone's heard of the Men in Black

because the concept's become so ingrained

in our pop culture.

But if you look into their history,

the Men in Black are a lot more mysterious

and frightening than what you might see on the movie screen.

- The whole idea about the Men in Black is,

who are they, who they're working for,

why would they show up just to tell people

to keep quiet about their UFO experience?

- [Narrator] Though their identity is still unknown,

reports of their appearance after alleged UFO encounters

go back for decades.

One such report illustrates just how far

they may be willing to go.

- It doesn't matter if you're a four-star general

or an average Joe on the street, anyone can become a target.

- [Narrator] Louisiana, 1983.

Shortly after moving to a new town,

Mike Reynolds strikes up a conversation

that will change his life forever.

- One of the first people Mike meets

is a retired Air Force Major.

They hit it off right away.

Eventually the Major reveals that he had spent

his entire military career working

at the infamous Area 51 in Nevada.

- [Narrator] At the time, Area 51 is believed by many

to be a hub of extraterrestrial reverse engineering.

- Of course, the Major was sworn to secrecy

about Area 51 when he was in the military,

but now that he's getting older, he's starting

to have mixed feelings about his work out there.

Well, Mike is very interested in this,

and the Major takes him aside and starts

to spill the beans on everything.

- Suddenly, Mike is getting an earful

of highly classified secrets.

The Major tells Mike that Area 51

houses recovered alien UFOs, and that the military

has been reverse-engineering this technology for years.

- And then he tells Mike that he's written

a manuscript that is going to reveal everything.

- It hits Mike, this is his calling.

He is going to help the Major publish his expose,

and tell the world the truth about UFOs.

- Mike offers to buy the publishing rights on the spot.

- [Narrator] With the major's rights secured,

Mike schedules a series of media appearances.

- [Melissa] Mike books a local radio interview.

(phone rings)

- [Narrator] But the night before the interview,

the station manager calls to tell Mike

about a disturbing encounter

with a group of men in black suits.

- These Men in Black showed up at the ra

and told the manager to cancel the interview.

They didn't identify themselves

as representing any specific agency.

They simply told the manager to cancel the interview,

and they did it in a very threatening way.

- [Narrator] The intimidation works

and the interview is canceled.

- Mike is unsettled by the station manager's story,

but not enough to quit.

He's still going to get this book published.

And a few days later Mike heads off to Houston

to meet with a friend in publishing.

- [Narrator] While driving to Houston,

Mike soon notices two black cars

that appear to be following him.

- The drive is almost 300 miles,

but every time Mike looks in his rear view mirror,

those same two cars are on his tail.

- [Narrator] That evening, Mike arrives

at his Houston hotel, but before he can even check in,

he is stopped.

- He's heading into the hotel.

He's got to get ready for his big meeting the next day

when two men wearing black business suits

appear out of nowhere.

- [Narrator] The men do not identify themselves.

They stare into Mike's eyes, and coldly declare

that he is not to publish the book.

- In many of these encounters, Men in Black

are described as having an almost robotic way of speaking.

Stoic, to the point, and repetitive.

Now, does this mean there is something inhuman about them?

Or are these mannerisms another tool

of psychological intimidation?

- After a few minutes of this weird encounter,

the men leave.

Mike feels slightly dazed.

He doesn't seem to remember actually seeing them

walk or drive away; they're just, sort of, gone.

- He checks into his room and a few hours later,

he remembers that he left the Major's manuscript

in the trunk of his car.

- Mike walks out to the parking lot to grab the manuscript.

He opens his trunk, and it's gone.

But when he turns around,

that's when he gets the real surprise.

- The Men in Black are right there,

almost pinning Mike against his car.

And this time they tell Mike in no uncertain terms,

"Stop your actions, or your family will suffer."

- And that's when Mike decides to take their advice.

He abandons the project and heads home.

- The Major must have been paid a visit too,

because when Mike returns home,

the Major won't speak to him about anything

and his manuscript is never published by anyone.

- We see this time and time again,

and they know how to expertly target witnesses.

They will continue to escalate, and in this case

threatening a man's family until they get what they want.

In the end it's all the same.

There is an ultimate authority that is very invested

in denying the public our right

to know the truth about UFOs.

- I can only imagine how deep this goes

and how big these secrets are that they're protecting.

(static clicking)

- [Narrator] But what happens when one

of the largest states in the country

becomes a hotbed for UFO activity?

Is it possible to silence the entire Lone Star State?

- [Narrator] In the wake of Roswell,

there are countless reports which suggest

that the ultimate truth about UFOs

may not be that they don't exist,

but rather that they are a tightly guarded secret,

aggressively controlled by an elite inner circle

of bureaucrats, scientists, and military experts

who answer to no one but themselves.

But throughout the 1950s,

these reports become increasingly difficult

to control as the number of sightings continues to rise.

- There was a huge upswing in UFO reports

across the United States.

Starting in May of 1952, the number of sightings

actually doubled every month.

It went from 79 official UFO reports in May

to over 700 in August.

- [Narrator] In 1952 another government organization,

called Project Blue Book, is created

to conduct studies on cases

involving unidentified flying objects.

- General Nathan Twining authorizes a program

that became known as Project Blue Book.

That was really the first Air Force study

of the flying saucer phenomenon.

- [Narrator] But some charge that Project Blue Book

is actually a cover, a creation of Majestic 12

with a secret mandate

to discredit credible UFO sightings.

If this is true, that strategy is put to its biggest test

when a slew of UFO sightings begin to crop up

all over the state of Texas.

Levelland, Texas.

November 2nd, 1957.

- Two immigrant farm workers, Pedro Saucedo and Joe Salaz,

call the Levelland Police Department

regarding a UFO sighting.

- Pedro and Joe are driving four miles west of Levelland

when they see a blue flash of light near the road.

Suddenly, their engine dies,

and their vehicle rolls to a stop.

At that moment, a strange object approaches them.

- [Narrator] When the object moves away from the vehicle,

the engine restarts.

Saucedo immediately calls the police

and Officer A.J. Fowler answers.

- Officer Fowler thinks he's dealing with a crank call.

So he ignores it.

But an hour later, he gets another call.

- [Narrator] A man named Jim Wheeler

is driving four miles east of Levelland

when he reports a brilliantly lit, egg-shaped object

sitting in the road, blocking his path.

Like Pedro, Wheeler claims his vehicle dies.

As he gets out of the car, the object takes off

and its lights disappear.

Once again, the car restarts after the object is gone.

- First, Pedro and Joe, then, Jim Wheeler.

Then the calls just start rolling in.

A married couple driving northeast of Levelland.

A motorist 11 miles north of town.

A Texas Tech College student 10 miles east of town.

Boom, boom, boom.

The calls keep coming.

- All of these motorists have similar stories.

A strange object in the road, their engines cut out.

When the object flies off, their engines start up again.

- Officer Fowler alerts on-duty officers of the situation.

The local sheriff and one of his deputies

begin monitoring Officer Fowler's reports

and tracking the object.

Around 1:30 a.m., they have their own encounter.

A large, glowing object passes

across the highway in front of them.

The officers claim the entire highway

is lit up below the sun-like object.

- The Levelland Police Department received

a total of 15 calls that night,

and reports would continue to trickle in

for the next several days.

- This sounds like an EMP to me,

an electro magnetic pulse weapon.

It shuts down motors; it doesn't kill the people.

They're showing us that they're here.

They want us to know that they're here.

- [Narrator] The local newspaper runs the story,

which is then picked up nation wide.

Project Blue Book then dispatches

an Air Force sergeant to investigate.

- The Air Force Sergeant heard

that there had been thunderstorms

in the surrounding area earlier that morning.

He decided to focus on this and announced

that a phenomenon called ball lightning had occurred.

- It basically is what it sounds like.

It's a glowing ball of light

and electrical discharge and energy.

If you've ever seen a plasma ball in a store,

that's sort of like a good image for what it is.

- [Narrator] But not everyone is convinced

of the Air Force's official findings.

- Dr. J. Allen Hynek was an astronomer

at Northwestern University and one

of the top scientific consultants to project bluebook.

After doing his own investigation,

he claimed that the sightings could not

be attributed to ball lightning.

First of all, ball lightning is not very large,

but in each of the sightings the object was big enough

to block the road.

Second, ball lightning is not known

to have the ability to shut off car engines.

Despite what the Air Force Sergeant heard,

there was no rain or lightning in the vicinity

of Levelland at the time of the sightings.

- [Narrator] It appears the military's report

does not reflect all the facts of the case.

Despite these omissions, the case is closed.

And this famed Texas story takes on even greater importance

in light of an event that happened just six years earlier.

(soft slow music)

Lubbock, Texas.

August 25th, 1951.

Three scientists from Texas Tech University

gather together one hot summer evening.

- The men have actually gotten together to study meteors.

So their eyes are trained on the sky.

Suddenly they see 20 to 30 bright lights,

roughly the size of dinner plates, flying in a U formation.

The objects are moving fast across the sky.

The men immediately rule out the objects as meteors.

And as they're discussing what the lights might be,

another group of lights,

similar to the first, flies overhead.

- [Narrator] The professors reach out

to the Air Force for answers,

but receive word that no traffic,

to their knowledge, was in the air that night.

The men then report their findings to the local newspaper.

- Once their story is published in the newspaper,

multiple witnesses start coming forward

with similar stories; very bright, very big lights

arranged in a boomerang formation flying

across the sky and never making a sound.

- [Narrator] Numerous public sightings of the lights

continue from August to November of 1951.

The professors decide to investigate further

by creating a schedule to watch the skies.

Hundreds observe the lights,

and at one point there are as many

as three flights in one night.

Then, on the night of August 30th,

new evidence is captured of the Lubbock lights.

- A Texas Tech student by the name of Carl Hart, Jr.

attempts to photograph the lights.

He witnesses two different flights that night.

One at 5:30 p.m. and the other around 10:30 p.m..

He takes photos both times with his 35 millimeter camera.

(camera clicking)

- [Narrator] The photos show anywhere

from 18 to 20 lights arranged in a boomerang formation.

The local newspaper publishes the photos,

and they begin circulating throughout the country.

- When I was a kid, one of the first images

of UFOs that I ever saw were the Lubbock Lights.

And I thought this was amazing.

- Eventually, the Air Force gets their hands on the photos.

They're actually given to Captain Edward Ruppelt.

- Edward J. Ruppelt was a U.S. Air Force captain.

He's most famous as being the head of Project Blue Book.

The Air Force had had several investigative bodies

that investigated UFOs, going back to 1947.

First one being Project Sign,

which went up until 1949, which was then succeeded

by Project Grudge, and then 1952

that became Project Blue Book.

- [Narrator] Captain Ruppelt,

now working under Project Grudge,

travels to Lubbock to investigate further.

- He finds a local man who mentions seeing one night,

the reflection of the newly installed city streetlights

bouncing off the white bellies

of a few plover birds flying by.

This gives Ruppelt and the Air Force a natural phenomenon

to explain away the sightings, and they jump on it.

(deep bass boom)

They issue a statement that the newly installed

vapor streetlights were bouncing off the undersides

of the birds as they flew overhead.

Case closed.

- [Narrator] In an effort to test this theory,

a photographer at the local paper attempts

to recreate hart's photos using plover birds

flying over the city at night, (camera clicks)

but the photos are nowhere close to those taken by Hart

as the reflections off the birds are far too dim.

- A Federal Wild Life Game Warden also

as cause of the sightings.

He notes that the birds can only fly

around 50 miles per hour, much slower

than the movements of the lights.

Not to mention the fact that you can hear

the birds when they fly.

- [Narrator] The residents of Lubbock are also not satisfied

by the Air Force's findings and demand answers,

but they hit a dead end.

To this day, no one can truly explain

what the lights were or where they came from.

(static clicking)

there is a 70 year history of allegations

involving UFO reports and their subsequent coverups.

But nearly 20 years after the Roswell crash

and almost 1,700 miles away, another UFO crash,

this time involving an entire town of eyewitnesses,

pushes the envelope of factuality when the government

supposedly tries to rewrite history, once again.

December 5, 1965.

Kecksburg, Pennsylvania.

Dozens of eyewitnesses report a UFO

streaking across the sky over Canada, Michigan, and Ohio.

The FAA logs sightings from 23 pilots

along the UFO's flight path.

Finally, the residents of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania

observe a fiery object plummeting

from the sky and into the woods.

- People in town describe seeing

this fireball-shaped object, and it suddenly changes course

and crashes in the wood line.

A lot of people went out to the woods to investigate,

and they got there first before anybody else did.

A couple of the guys described it as a acorn shape

that was embedded into the dirt, and there was

a outside circumference, what they described

resembled Egyptian hieroglyphics.

(soft mystical music)

- [Narrator] In the middle of the scene,

a local reporter, John Murphy,

is capturing the events with his camera.

- John Murphy was a reporter and news director for WHJB,

a radio station in nearby Greensburg, Pennsylvania.

So, while this is going on,

he's snapping pictures of everything.

- John Murphy was just snapping away,

taking pictures of the object.

The military shows up and tells him,

"This is now a restricted area.

"You guys are ordered out of here."

They confiscated his camera,

and they told everybody to get the hell off the property.

They were all pushed back,

and all the military trucks pulled in.

- This is a small town a few miles from where I live.

There were dozens of witnesses on the street.

The Army brought in a flatbed and did a crash

and retrieval, and then they left.

- [Narrator] The official government report

on this incedent

states that only three members of the military

were sent to investigate the scene.

- The Kecksburg crash of 1965,

that's a perfect example of this disparate nature

between what officially happened

and then what really happened.

A team of three individuals go investigate it,

and that's all she wrote.

What everyone in the town of Kecksburg knows

is that an enormous number of people,

military, different types of branches of the military,

probably over 100 outside people came in,

combed the woods, sealed off the woods from the public.

And yet, what's interesting is that

there's no official acknowledgment

by the military services that they did this type of thing.

- Think about it.

You see something happen with your own eyes.

You know hundreds of military personnel

swarmed this small town.

Yet this is outright denied by the government.

When you get that kind of firsthand look

at how these cover-ups work,

you're going to be hungry for the truth.

- So now the town was just sitting around

with all these rumors of what the heck is going on.

- [Narrator] Kecksburg buzzes with stories

about the mysterious object in the woods,

and John Murphy, the reporter at the scene,

decides to investigate.

But the official story ends here,

with authorities denying that any UFO was involved.

The fallen object is reported to the press as a meteorite,

but no meteorites or fragments

were recovered from the scene.

- The Kecksburg case is important, I think,

because it involved the landing or crashing

of a physical object.

So it means that there is a physical object.

It was taken away by the military and put somewhere.

And there aren't that many UFO cases

that involve something physical like that.

- [Narrator] Leaving John Murphy and other witnesses

to wonder what became of the evidence.

- So the fact that all these people witnessed

a physical object come down, some saw it in the woods

on the ground, others saw it on the flatbed truck

being taken away, means that there is a huge

evidential thing that the U.S. Government has somewhere.

So you have this very black and white contradiction

between what the official line was

and what actually happened.

(static clicking)

- [Narrator] However, the journalist at the scene,

John Murphy, is determined to uncover the truth.

But what happens when one man's search for answers

challenges the government's own findings

as he attempts to unveil the suspected cover up?

(deep bass booms)

Behind the story of a 1965 UFO crash

in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, reports describe a UFO seized

by the military and the subsequent suppression

of all evidence, until a local reporter

threatens the government cover-up.

1965.

John Murphy begins gathering evidence

on the Kecksburg crash.

- John Murphy decided to do a radio documentary,

but what he needed to do was go around

and talk to all the witnesses

to get all the pieces of the story together.

- [Narrator] The reporter believes

that the government's account is in contradiction

to actual eyewitness reports.

- Right away, Murphy notices something.

There are many witnesses, yet their descriptions

of the UFO are consistently similar.

And this wasn't a typical flying saucer.

This was a very specific kind of craft with unusual details.

- John Murphy actually feels like he's

on the verge of something here,

and he's pouring all his energy and effort

into this radio broadcast, and he's telling all his friends

that he's uncovered something huge.

- He conducts this thorough investigation,

and is about to reveal his findings to the world,

and this is when things take a dark turn.

- [Narrator] Reportedly on the evening

before the radio documentary is to air,

John Murphy receives some unannounced visitors.

- So, two men show up at the radio station.

They don't identify themselves as military

or police or any type of investigator.

- John Murphy never disclosed

what the men actually told him,

but they clearly convinced him

that it was in his best interest

to keep quiet about the whole thing.

Then they confiscated his recordings

and other evidence he'd obtained.

- Murphy was forced to re-cut his documentary

at the 11th hour, and the version that aired

was a chilling testament to how badly

these visitors had intimidated him.

- [Narrator] The documentary that airs

is simply an account of a possible meteor strike.

It contains no new evidence, makes no reference

to the military, and does not mention a UFO.

- This guy is absolutely devastated.

After pouring his heart and soul

into a potentially world-changing investigation,

it gets snatched away at the last minute.

He loses his job and spends the next three years

completely beaten down and dejected,

until he decides to do something about it.

- [Narrator] In 1967, Murphy reportedly confides to a friend

that he wants to reopen his original investigation.

- John Murphy eventually convinced himself

that this story had to be told, and apparently,

he no longer believed he was in any danger.

But he was wrong.

- [Narrator] Two days after reportedly reopening

his investigation into the Kecksburg crash,

John Murphy crosses the street and is killed

(tires screeching) by a hit-and-run driver.

The driver is never found.

(slow soft piano music)

- It's impossible to categorically state

that he was killed because of what he knew

about Kecksburg and to prevent him

from disclosing his information,

but it's certainly cause for alarm.

- John Murphy is far from being the only UFO whistleblower

to die under mysterious circumstances.

- Fast-acting cancers, car accidents, suicides,

all way before their normal lifespan should've ended.

James E. McDonald, he testified before congress twice.

He ends up dying of a suicide.

John Mack, he gets hit by a car.

John Murphy of the Kecksburg case, he gets hit by a car.

It goes on and on, UFO investigators

all meeting an early death.

- [Narrator] These mysterious

and sometimes deadly circumstances lead many

to wonder if there truly is a program in place

to suppress information regarding UFOs.

Countless reports on file point to the existence

of a clandestine authority determined

to control the country's UFO secrets.

After Roswell and continued sightings by the public,

the government establishes Project Blue Book,

the Air Force's official investigation into UFOs.

But some believe Project Blue Book's mission

is actually to suppress UFO information.

- Air Force Officer Edward Ruppelt

was running Project Blue Book at the time.

It was a big debate.

Do we clamp down and just tell the public

there's nothing to it?

Or do we actually just fess up and say,

"Look, there's this phenomenon going on here,

"and we're doing our best to deal with it."

And it absolutely was clear that the decision was

we're clamping down.

- [Narrator] In one of Project Blue Book's

most famous cases, an entire town reports

a mass UFO sighting, only to experience

a rapid cover-up firsthand.

(crickets chirping)

March 14, 1966,

the Sheriff's Department in Washtenaw County, Michigan

begins to log reports of unusual activity in the skies.

- Files from these sightings in Michigan in 1966

are filled with incredible eyewitness accounts.

- [Narrator] Police officers Buford Bushroe and John Foster

receive reports of disc-like objects over the town.

The officers respond to the calls

and soon encounter the UFOs firsthand.

- [Buford Recording] These objects could move

at fantastic speeds.

We have no idea what these objects were

or were they could've come from.

This is the strangest thing that we have ever witnessed.

- The Sheriff's Department was getting calls

from police in three neighboring counties.

Everybody saw this activity, but nobody knew what it was.

- These accounts stretch over a period of six to seven days.

- [Narrator] The reports culminate

with multiple sightings of a UFO landing in a nearby swamp.

- On March 20th, Frank Mannor, his family, and friends,

they saw a dome-shaped object with a quilted pattern to it,

with a light in the center and lights around the ends,

land in a swamp.

- [Narrator] Mannor and his son

enter the swamp in search of the UFO.

They are joined by sheriff's deputies.

- There's an incident where a guy named Mannor

and his son were walking through a bog, chasing after a UFO.

And this UFO slowly rose above their heads

and then shot off into the night sky.

- The officers were also witness to the UFO over the swamp.

They were amazed at the maneuverability of the UFO.

- [Narrator] Local authorities report the sighting

to the Air Force.

- So what did the Air Force do?

They sent their primary scientific consultant,

the Astronomer J. Allen Hynek, to Michigan

to give a press conference.

- [Narrator] Dr. Hynek conducts an investigation

and presents a controversial conclusion to the public.

- Hynek's on camera.

He's got the microphones in front of him,

and he said, "Well, what it appears to be

"is decaying vegetable matter

"from the swampy area

"creating a kind of optical illusory effect."

I.e. swamp gas, (laughs) swamp gas.

- Keep in mind, these sightings were witnessed

by many people across multiple counties on multiple days,

and here's the government expert saying with a straight face

that this was all just a shared hallucination.

- Now, this was too much even for the American media,

and swamp gas became this big joke.

- [Narrator] Dr. Hynek's work under Project Blue Book,

results in many reasonable, and to some,

unreasonable conclusions.

But it's the public outcry from the Michigan case

that causes many to begin questioning the truth

behind this research.

- What it really looks like to me actually

is that in the aftermath of this Hynek started to wonder,

"Am I on the right side of this argument?"

Because really, he had been really doing

the Air Force's work in a debunking type

of capacity for years.

And now suddenly his debunking really made him look foolish.

- [Narrator] The official explanation is not acceptable

to Michigan's local congressman

and future President Gerald R. Ford.

- Following the Michigan sightings, Gerald Ford,

who was the congressman in Michigan,

was very adamant that the explanation

that was given by the U.S. Air force was insufficient.

He went as far as to actually state

that he wanted a congressional investigation,

he wanted people to be subpoenaed,

and he wanted people to testify under oath.

For the first time, we had a high-level government official

who was saying that there should be UFO disclosure.

- [Narrator] In response to Ford's demands,

an official committee is formed

to evaluate the effectiveness of Project Blue Book

and the government's UFO investigations.

- It was at that point that Edward Condon was brought in,

at the University Of Colorado,

to do what would appear to be an evaluation

of US Project Blue Book.

But in fact, it was just a way to shut the program down.

(deep bass booms)

- The problem with the Condon Report

was that Edward Condon was biased from the beginning.

Just look at what he said

to a scientific fraternity on January 25th.

Quote, "Unidentified flying objects

"are not the business of the Air Force.

"It's my inclination right now to recommend

"that the government get out of the business.

"My attitude right now is that there's nothing to it,

"but I'm not supposed to reach a conclusion

"for another year."

(deep bass booms)

- [Narrator] But closing the chapter

on Project Blue Book does not put an end

to the government's involvement in UFO matters.

Many believe that its agenda to conceal the truth

about the alien phenomena remains fully intact.

- [Investigator] The federal government

is going to give you exactly what they want you to hear.

I don't think they're afraid of anything.

They just want to control things,

because the government does not want

this information to get out.

- [Narrator] There is a history of remarkable encounters

involving the military and UFO sightings.

And, as seen in the Roswell case,

once the military get involved

in an alleged alien encounter,

it can be difficult to weed out the truth.

- In 1978 I was working at McGuire Air Force Base

at 21st Air Force as a Deputy Director of Intelligence.

On January 18, 1978

I drove onto the base and noticed that off to my right

was a number of crash trucks and lights out on the runway.

And the sergeant in charge of the command post

came up to me and said that an alien

had been found at the end of the runway,

and he was shot by a military policeman.

- [Narrator] January 18, 1978.

Between Fort Dix and Mcguire Air Force Base.

- Radar from Fort Dix picks up an unidentified object

between Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base.

- The Military Police officer on duty

is patrolling the outside of the base

when he sees a large object hovering above the road.

He stops his car and radios in what he sees.

- He's looking up through his windshield

through the falling snow and explaining to the dispatcher

what the craft looks like.

Right in the middle of his sentence, the radio goes dead.

- The officer looks up and that's when he sees

the unimaginable;

a small figure in the shadows

that he later describes as having an unusually large head,

long arms and a slender body.

And this creature is standing

right in front of his police car.

The officer panics.

(gun firing)

- Here's a man who is told to protect the base.

He's an armed guard and he's seeing a monster run around.

He does what probably a lot of guys would do.

He shoots at the thing.

- He runs back to his car,

and his radio is now working again.

He tells the dispatcher that he just shot a strange creature

and it's now heading for McGuire Air Force Base.

- [Narrator] The police officer drives to the gates

of McGuire Air Force Base where he is told to wait.

- Sergeant Jeffrey Morse from McGuire Air Force Base

is called to the front gate to meet

with the officer from Fort Dix to discuss the incident.

The officer is really shaken up.

He tells Morse that he shot at the strange entity,

but it escaped and climbed over the fence

into McGuire Air Force Base.

Sergeant Morse says that he'll handle it from here.

- Sergeant Morse has to be thinking

this other police officer is crazy.

But he was about to get a big surprise.

(car doors shut)

- Morse and several other MPs head to the area

where the entity reportedly climbed over the fence.

At the end of the runway they see a dead creature

with a large head and a slender body.

- Sergeant Morse can't believe his eyes.

He reports that the smell is so bad

they have to stand back several feet

just to be able to breathe. (officers coughing)

He calls in a report and within hours,

the Air Force OSI takes control of the situation.

- AFOSI is the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations

and they report directly

to the Office of Security to the Air Force.

Technically, this means they provide

independent investigations outside

the traditional military chain of command.

- Sergeant Morse reports that he is surprised to see

a military team responding to the incident

in a way that suggested this wasn't

the first encounter like this they had dealt with.

- [Narrator] Sergeant Morse is not only

brought in for questioning, but threatened.

- Morse went through several days

of intimidating interrogations where he was told

to keep his mouth shut or else.

- [Narrator] As incredible as this story sounds,

it is corroborated by George Filer,

who was brought in to investigate the incident.

- When I was investigating the case

I did interview Sergeant Jeff Morse

who claims to have been out

at the place where they found the ET.

Within a couple days after he was out there,

he was transferred to Okinawa.

They more or less arrested him and held him for awhile

and essentially gave him a hard time.

- Now what happened to Jeffrey Morse

in the aftermath of all of this

is kind of symptomatic of how military personnel

were held to different standards of accountability,

than say, civilian police officers had been.

It's one thing for a small town cop to be ridiculed,

but when you are a military person

and you start talking privately to investigators about this,

they are going to come after you.

- It's almost as if the military learned

from previous reports that if you remove the witness,

the media and investigators don't have any leads.

- [Narrator] If this is the military's new protocol,

how far will they go to keep the public in the dark?

And does that protocol change

when lives hang in the balance?

(static clicking)

- [Narrator] When soldiers on the front lines

are up against enemy fire, there is little time

for anything but action.

But no amount of training can prepare

even the most skilled soldier

for an aggressive alien attack.

June 15, 1968.

The demilitarized zone between north and south Vietnam.

- This incident happened at the height of the Vietnam War.

On this night, Lieutenant Pete Snyder

and the American crew of the patrol boat PCF-12

are starting their routine patrol near Cua Viet.

- At approximately 12:30 a.m.,

Snyder gets a frantic message

from another patrol boat in the vicinity, PCF-19,

which is commanded by Lieutenant Davis.

Lieutenant Davis reports that they are under attack

by unidentified objects, possibly enemy helicopters.

- [Narrator] At the time, the Vietnamese

did not have helicopters.

The term enemy helicopters is the military's code for UFOs.

- Lieutenant Snyder's boat proceeds

at max speed towards Lieutenant Davis's location.

And as they get closer, Snyder and his crew see two UFOs

covered in a strange glow

hovering above Davis's patrol boat.

(energy pulsating)

All of a sudden there is a flash of light and an explosion,

and the boat is completely destroyed, blown to bits.

(intense dramatic music)

In an instant, the UFOs zip out to sea and disappear.

- Can you imagine?

You're in the middle of a war zone,

worried about enemy fire, and then something

as unbelievable as a UFO comes in

and destroys one of your patrol boats.

Now everyone on Snyder's boat is on high alert,

aware the UFOs could return at any minute.

The Navy instructs them to continue their patrol up river,

heading deeper into the DMZ.

- It is completely dark except for a partial moon.

The patrol boat is observing radio silence.

Suddenly, Jeff Steffes, the second engine man,

sees two aircraft hovering off both the port

and starboard sides of their boat.

- Lieutenant Snyder realizes these are the same UFOs

that he spotted hovering over Davis's boat

before the fateful attack.

- With the UFOs now closing in, Snyder is determined

to protect his patrol boat and crew.

So, he orders all hands on deck to engage with the UFOs.

(machine gun firing)

The crew fires at the UFOs,

but the objects aren't slowing down

and they keep coming closer.

- Snyder's boat is sprayed with ammunition from the UFOs.

(boat motor roars)

Lieutenant Snyder accelerates

and whips the boat back and forth,

in an attempt to dodge the return fire

(rapid gun firing)

- The crew continues to shoot the UFOs

while their patrol boat is now trying

to escape at full speed.

(machine gun firing) (boat motor roaring)

- Steffes, the second engine man,

now gets a good look at the UFOs in the moonlight.

He describes them as having a rounded front

like an observation halo with what looks

like two crewmen sitting side-by-side,

but oddly, he can't see any weapons on the craft.

- [Narrator] Lieutenant Snyder,

fearing what might happen next,

turns his patrol boat back around towards the China Sea,

where the US naval fleet is stationed.

(machine gun firing)

- The UFOs are still in pursuit and Snyder's boat

is now running low on ammo and fuel.

The radio is crackling with a flood

of activity reporting engagements

with unidentified objects.

- [Narrator] Could these strange aircraft

be a new secret weapon provided by the Chinese

or Soviet Union to aid the north Vietnamese?

- The military was interested in them

because they had capabilities far above

anything that we had, and they wanted to find out

what the technology was, and frankly, who they belonged to.

- [Narrator] Unclear about what they are facing,

the U.S. military takes action.

- At about 3:20 a.m., Phantom F-4 fighter jets are deployed

from Da Nang to provide air support to Snyder's patrol boat.

- [Narrator] Soon the Phantom F-4s

are in hot pursuit of the UFOs.

- The two UFOs attacking Snyder's boat

veer away at an amazing speed and head down river

toward the China Sea.

- [Narrator] Meanwhile, an allied ship

of the Royal Australian Navy, HMAS Hobart,

is also in the china sea and it, too,

reports seeing 30 strange lights

hovering close to their ship.

- The Hobart's commander radios in that two UFOs

are rapidly approaching their boat.

These may have been the same UFOs

that had been attacking Snyder's boat.

- [Narrator] The U.S. Navy jets from Da Nang

are still in hot pursuit of the two UFOs.

- The Phantom F-4s fire several missiles directly

at the UFOs hovering over the Hobart.

- As soon as the jets fire the missiles,

the objects just simply vanish into thin air.

Just like that, they're gone.

- [Narrator] The threat to the Hobart

and the U.S. fleet seems to be over.

The jets return to Da Nang and the DMZ is quiet.

With the UFOs gone, the navy assesses the damage.

- This wasn't a normal battle.

In fact, the artillery rounds that the UFO shot

at Snyder's boat turned out to be

the exact same rounds that Snyder was shooting at the UFOs.

(distant machine guns firing)

- It's mind-boggling.

This patrol boat discovers that it's being hit

by the very same artillery that they are firing.

This makes no sense.

- [Narrator] Could this simply be a case

of friendly fire brought on

by faulty radar or battle fatigue?

Or is this incident an example of UFOs

turning our own weapons against us?

- I was in the Air Force from 1958 to 1978.

When I was in Vietnam,

I used to brief General George S. Brown every morning.

We would get reports of unidentified aircraft.

I've heard many reports concerning some kind

of a force field around the UFOs,

that they had the capability of returning fire.

- [Narrator] If this is true, how are soldiers expected

to defend themselves against UFOs?

And what happens when the same UFOs return for more?

(crickets chirping)

The China Sea, Vietnam.

Hobart continues its patrol near Tiger Island.

- The sky and water are eerily quiet.

There were no signs of any UFOs

or any enemy aircraft for that matter.

(powerful exploding)

- Just before daybreak, a missile comes in

from out of nowhere, no warning at all

and hits the Hobart's starboard side,

killing Australian seaman, R.J. Buttersworth

and wounding two additional seamen.

- The Hobart crew runs up to their battle stations

and now they see two UFOs off their starboard side,

but before they can respond, two more missiles

are fired at their ship, killing their chief electrician.

- [Narrator] The missiles penetrate

the ship's superstructure, causing extensive damage.

- The surviving crew from the Hobart gets a quick glance

at the UFOs before they disappear

and they match the same description of the UFOs

that had attacked Lieutenant Snyder's boat

earlier that evening.

- This is just insanity.

In the middle of the Vietnam War,

two boats got destroyed by UFOs

and another patrol boat barely escapes disaster.

For whatever reason, these UFOs appear

to be on an unrelenting mission.

- And these UFO incidents continue.

About a week after the Hobart incident,

an Australian newspaper reported

that radar men five miles south of the DMZ

were continuing to report UFOs.

In fact, this was the sixth one

since the Hobart attack that they had reported.

Patrol boats continue to monitor UFOs

well into September of that year.

- [Narrator] The U.S. Navy

and the Royal Australian Navy launch a formal investigation.

- An investigation on the Hobart incident revealed

that a fragment of one of the missiles fired

on the patrol boat had a serial number

that they were able to trace.

- And that number was traced back to missiles fired

at the UFOs by the U.S. Phantom F-4,

the same jet that was deployed

from Da Nang Air Base the night before.

- [Narrator] The official report of proceedings

filed on the Hobart incident concludes

that it is a case of friendly fire.

- So you're thinking okay, case closed;

a Phantom F-4 accidentally hit the wrong target.

Except that the facts aren't so cut and dry.

The Phantom F-4s had returned to their airbase in Da Nang

immediately after their encounter with the UFOs,

well before a missile hit the Hobart.

- [Narrator] Years later, a military general comes forward

with a surprising statement.

- General Brown said, "UFOs were seen up around the DMZ

"in 1968 and this resulted in quite a battle.

"An Australian boat took a hit

"and there was no enemy in sight."

I think, consistent with General Brown's statement,

this 1968 encounter in the DMZ

was probably the most significant UFO encounter

of the Vietnam war.

- In two separate incidents in this encounter in Vietnam,

we see UFOs that seem to have the capability

to turn our own weapons against us.

Those patrol boats were hit with our own weapons.

How do you defend against that?

- It's a chilling thought

that they are studying our warfare,

much like we might study the Egyptian charioteers.

It doesn't surprise me one bit that they

would be interested in such things.

- [Narrator] The UFO incident in Vietnam

forces the US military to reassess their policy

of engaging with UFOs.

- So, here's what's interesting about this encounter.

After it occurred, U.S. Command ordered their fighter pilots

and naval ships, not to fire on UFOs.

They did not want a repeat of that deadly incident.

- The situation now is that we do not engage UFOs

and try to bring them down.

As a matter of fact, I've talked to a number

of air traffic controllers who told me that they're told

that whenever one of our aircraft sees a UFO

to divert it away, in other words,

to avoid any kind of a confrontation,

that they feel that it's important

to stay away from them as much as possible.

- When you consider that the most powerful military power

in the world has been humbled by these events,

it really makes you wonder what's going on

behind the scenes and how they're viewing them.

- [Narrator] If the government creates actual protocols

for dealing with UFOs, why go to such great lengths

to cover up their very existence?

- You would think that they couldn't put the genie

back in the bottle at this point,

but that's exactly what they tried to do.

(static clicking)

Since Roswell, there have been many UFO conspiracy theorists

who believe that the lid on the government's UFO reports

has been kept firmly shut.

But over half a century later,

one man decides to shine a light on the truths

that he claims the government is hiding.

London, 2001.

Systems Administrator Gary McKinnon is at home

attempting to hack into NASA computers.

He believes these files hold secrets,

secrets he's not supposed to have access to.

- Gary McKinnon was fascinated by UFOs,

convinced that there was a cover-up of UFOs

and, in all of his available time,

tried to find his way into various US Military websites

and databases to look for information pertaining to this.

- [Narrator] McKinnon begins to investigate,

motivated by testimony attributed to a

- McKinnon claimed that he was looking

for information that corroborated testimony given

by former NASA employee Donna Hare.

While working at the Johnson Space Center,

she claims she saw photos processed by the NASA photo lab

that include UFOs.

(deep bass booms)

And according to her, NASA had a protocol in place

where they would airbrush out UFOs

before releasing these photos to the public.

- [Narrator] Thousands of miles away,

McKinnon uses his computer to hunt

for evidence of these UFO photos.

(digital beeping)

- One day he hit pay dirt at the website

of U.S. Space Command and got in there.

- One of the, maybe the key things Gary McKinnon claimed

that he saw were a series of folders

of filtered and unfiltered NASA images.

So the unfiltered images, he said,

contained space-based images from NASA missions

of really extraordinary types of UFOs.

The filtered versions of those were of the same images

with those craft scrubbed out, clean,

nothing in there. (deep bass booms)

(intense dramatic music)

- [Narrator] But Gary McKinnon's findings don't end there.

- When Gary McKinnon hacked NASA

he found this high-definition picture

of a cigar-shaped craft hovering

above the northern hemisphere.

- [Narrator] As McKinnon continues to scour the files,

he makes an even more shocking discovery.

- He claims to have seen a roster on military data boards

indicating space-based assets

that we currently have in space now.

- Gary McKinnon found evidence

of United States spaceships and non-terrestrial officers.

- There was an excel spreadsheet.

The title was Non-Terrestrial Officers

that had names, ranks.

And these ships weren't U.S. Navy ships.

- [Narrator] Is it possible that Gary McKinnon

stumbled upon evidence of a fleet

of top-secret space crafts that were part

of a covert space-weapons program?

- Rumors of a secret military program

have been floating around UFO circles for a while.

Suddenly, here's Gary McKinnon claiming

he's found proof of its existence.

- [Narrator] The space fleet McKinnon reportedly discovers

is believed by many to be part of a top-secret program

named Solar Warden.

- Solar Warden is supposedly a highly classified fleet

that operates in space and uses antigravity technology.

- [Narrator] If true, McKinnon's apparent discovery

of a highly advanced U.S. space fleet

would challenge the public's knowledge of UFOs

and the U.S. space program.

- There are reports that Solar Warden

has eight cigar-shaped UFOs that are larger

than two football fields end to end.

It also reportedly has 43 small scout ships.

- So what he saw is suggestive,

at least in the opinion of some people,

that this is another piece of evidence

for a secret space program.

- [Narrator] Could the United States

really have a secret space fleet hidden in orbit?

And if so, could Solar Warden be part

of a larger top-secret space-weapons program?

One that could patrol space

and protect us against otherworldly threats?

Whatever the case may be, there are consequences

when such a massive breach of security occurs.

- In March 2002, Gary McKinnon was arrested

on charges of hacking into NASA and Pentagon computers

in what they referred to as the biggest

military hack of all time.

- The 46-year-old admits actually hacking the computers.

He doesn't deny that at all, but he wasn't trying

to breach national security.

He was simply looking for information about UFOs.

- [Narrator] For 10 years, Gary McKinnon

faced extradition and prosecution in the United States

for his national security breach.

(camera clicks)

The charges were eventually dropped,

but what McKinnon uncovered might provide evidence

that in addition to NASA actively concealing UFOs,

there may also be indications

of a secret sophisticated space-weapons program.

But without government confirmation,

McKinnon's findings are far from proven.

(static clicking)

(intense dramatic music)

Secrecy, deception, masterful cover ups;

in the world of UFO phenomena,

many believe that a secret government operation

is in place to silence the believers and witnesses.

(shrill trilling)

- These are just the cases we know about

from those who were brave enough to come forward.

But what about the ones we never get to hear?

How many others are out there with similar experiences

but too afraid to report them.

- [Narrator] With all roads leading back to Roswell,

this supposed pattern of denial.

- Its mandate was not to explain UFO sightings.

It was to explain them away.

- [Narrator] And sometimes intimidation.

- What they want is for the public to keep going

about their business and not ask any questions about UFOs.

- [Narrator] All begs the question,

do we have more secrets than answers,

and when will the truth finally be uncovered?