All language subtitles for beyond.ufos.and.the.unknown.s01e01

[man] I don't know
what the hell that is.

[woman] I don't know, man,
but no planes ride that low.

[man] What the hell is that?

[Chris Hayes] The Pentagon
has confirmed the existence

of the $22 million initiative
that studied UFOs

for at least five years,
beginning in 2007.

And they released video.

[dramatic music]

[man] Some people find what we
call UFOs terrifying.

Or they just want to dismiss it
and say it's all nonsense.

- [woman] I'm not joking.
- [man] Way up there.

Look at how it smoothers.

[static noises]

[man]
It's really not all nonsense,

but it's not what
you think it is either.

[man] They're very large.

[man] Nine feet, ten foot,
I don't know.

They look like aliens to us.

They have shiny eyes and...
and they're not human.

They're 100%, they're not human.

It turns out
there was a UFO program

in the Pentagon secretly
studying this for years.

[Adam Schiff]
There is something there.

There is something
provably there,

and at least initially,
it cannot be explained.

♪ ♪

[theme song playing]

[man] When it comes
to the UAP problem,

the rules have changed.

I mean, the best evidence
is what your government

is doing about it.

Now, just a short time ago,
Senator Reid responded to CNN

saying he's, quote,
"Proud of this program"

"and its groundbreaking
studies."

[mellow music]

[interviewer]

I'm Gary Nolan.

I'm a professor
in the department of pathology

at Stanford University
School of Medicine.

And the principal function
of my lab

is cancer research,
but subcellular cancer research.

So we look at cells
in cancer tissues.

When you're trying to understand
the basics of something,

really what you're doing is
you're tearing something apart

down to its most
foundational constituents,

and you're saying,
"How do they get put together?"

And we say, "This therapy
with this arrangement does well,

and this arrangement,
they die." Rules.

It's the basics of science.

Several years ago,
some people who are associated

with the CIA
and an aerospace company

came to my office one day,
unannounced, and they said,

"Hey, we need to talk to you,"

"because people say that
you have a blood analysis tool"

"and we're doing complete
medical workups of these people"

"who've claimed to have
interactions with something,"

"whatever it is, and it was
varied, 100 different people."

"But we have
all of this medical data,"

"including, like, MRIs of
their brains and all the rest."

"Since you have the best blood
analysis, we need your help."

And then they started
talking about UAP or UFOs,

and I thought it was a joke.
I really did.

I actually thought
there was some sort

of a candid camera moment.

I was looking around,
like, "Okay, well, there's a..."

"There's a bridgeway
over there."

"Is there a camera
that's looking at me?"

"Am I gonna...?"
You know, "Is this a big joke?"

But no, they were
very deadly serious.

[interviewer]

Well, I mean, the understanding

that we saw,
at least with the brain scans

that we had,
was that it was random.

Patches of white matter
diseases,

dead tissue in the brain.

[interviewer]

[Nolan] Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

You know,
at first glance, it looks

like multiple sclerosis.

You get these random white
matter patches in the brain,

and as those patches progress,
people lose more and more

function and control
over their body.

These look similar
at first glance,

but they were
non-progressing.

And multiple sclerosis
progresses unless you intervene.

So a few patches become ten
patches, and they get larger.

These cases were what we would
call acute, non-progressing.

I thought, "This is weird.
They all seemed to have this."

At first,
we thought it was damage,

but this was,
in fact, living tissue.

And so that's something
that needs an explanation.

How did a person
get all of these lesions

in their brain and they don't
have multiple sclerosis?

What happened to them?

[woman] I know
I'm a little slow,

but that's not an airplane.

It's not a rocket. Maybe
the dragons have been released.

Somebody pissed off Godzilla.
I don't know.

What the hell is this?

Whatever it is,
it's shaking my house.

Now, as it turned out,
the hundred events

that we had,
probably about 85 of them

actually,
were Havana syndrome patients.

- Havana syndrome.
- Havana syndrome.

- Havana syndrome.
- [reporter] Covert sonic weapon.

A mystery illness which has
affected U.S. diplomats.

[reporter] Can cause dizziness,
nausea, even brain damage.

[reporter]
Serious illness called...

What is the Havana syndrome?

[Nolan] So there were situations
around the world

where our diplomatic corps

were complaining
of noises in their head.

Headaches, rashes,
sickness, et cetera.

And it's been generally
determined that these are

some sort of energy weapon,
which is being used

to harass our diplomatic corps.

I mean, this is known
from way back in Moscow

during the Soviet Union.

It's not hard to do.

I mean, take the front mesh
off of your microwave and stick

your face in front of it,
and you'll find out

exactly what
an energy weapon is.

And it turned out
that 85 people that we had

actually were
Havana syndrome patients.

But that left 15 people
on the table.

And we said, "Well, what's
special about these people?"

Well, they were all extremely
high functioning.

They were all, in many cases,
what you would call savants.

Right?
They were 130, 140 IQ-plus.

Why?
Because these are DoD people.

They were also pilots.

And when you looked
at their stories,

they were entirely about UAP.

[man] There's a whole fleet
of them. Look on the ASA.

My gosh.

[reporter] The release of U.S.
Navy pilots, cockpit footage

and testimony
about possible UAPs

has caused a media frenzy.

[upbeat music]

[man] No distinct wings,
no distinct tail.

It seemed like they were aware
of our presence

'cause they would
actively move around us.

[reporter] This video,
captured by a fighter pilot

with a cell phone that shows
a metallic object

that you might miss
if you blink.

[female reporter] Three key
former military officials

set to testify.

[reporter] David Frevor,
a former Navy commander

who took video of a UAP.

[David Frevor] As we looked
around, we noticed

a white tic tac object
with a longitudinal axis

pointing north/south and moving
very abruptly over the water.

There were no rotors,
no rotor wash,

or any sign of visible
control surfaces like wings.

[reporter] Former navy pilot,
Lieutenant Ryan Graves,

calls whatever is out there
a security risk.

So you're seeing it both with
the radar and with the infrared,

and that tells you that there
is something out there.

Pretty hard to spoof that.

[mellow music]

My particular case,

a couple weeks after
finishing my training,

I found myself out
in the Middle East,

preparing for combat operations.

We conducted those operations
for about four months

and returned back to the Eastern
Seaboard of the United States.

We started upgrading some
systems and doing repairs.

We upgraded radar system,
and when we did this,

flying with
a more advanced radar,

we'd be seeing objects that were
operating in the working areas

that we hadn't seen
just that morning.

And that was really
the status quo

until we actually left
on our workup cycle to join

the USS Theodore Roosevelt
off the coast

of Jacksonville, Florida.

And it was there
that we filmed the Gimbal video.

[dramatic music]

We all fly out together,
we do our training,

and we fly back
as we run out of fuel,

essentially, one by one.

Two aircrew that I know well
were returning to the boat

when they picked up
radar contact

of four or five objects

that were flying
in a wedge or V-formation.

You can hear their excitement
in their voice as they try

to understand
what they're looking at.

- [static]
- Dude, what's going on, bro?

There's a whole fleet of them.

Look on the ASA.
My gosh.

[Graves] And then between that
formation and the aircraft was

what appeared
to be a larger object.

And that's the object
we typically call the Gimbal.

[man] That's not our L and S,
though, is it?

[man] That is L and S, dude.

[man] They're all going
against the wind.

The wind's 120 knots
to the west.

[man] Look at that thing, dude.

[man] But if there's a--

[man] Look at that thing.
It's rotating.

When Ryan Graves was flying

off the USS Theodore Roosevelt
off the east coast of the U.S.

during an exercise,
my job was safety of flight,

and I got this report
on the Navy's secret network.

It was an email,
and it was addressed

to all the subordinate
commanders of this command

called U.S. Fleet Forces
Command, a four-star command.

And it was from
the operations officer,

a two-star admiral
who I knew very well.

And the subject
of the email was,

"Urgent, safety
of flight issue."

All caps. The body,
the text was very short.

It just said, "If any of you
have seen what these are,"

"tell me ASAP."

We're having numerous
near mid-air collisions

with these,
and we're gonna have

to shut down the exercise
if we don't resolve this.

And attached was the now
very famous "go fast" video.

[indistinct radio chatter,
laughter]

[radio chatter continues]

[man] Oh, my gosh, dude.
Wow.

[Gallaudet] This was to every
subordinate commander.

So this is about 20 admirals
and senior executives

who received it.

The thing is,
the next day, that email

was wiped from my computer.

And everybody else's.
And no one talked about it.

When I went to monthly meetings
with the commander

and all the people who were...
received that email,

which I have a problem with
because this was

a safety-of-flight issue,

resulting in the pilots...
Ryan Graves,

having to mitigate
his own safety threats

with no senior officer
supporting him,

which is a big problem.

[Graves] We've seen these things
being stationary

and moving with the wind.

We've also seen them
drifting against the wind

in a very similar manner
as well,

that look like just a dark cube
inside of a clear sphere.

We've seen them maintain
complete stationary behavior

over a GPS location
for extended periods of time

in hurricane-force winds.

We don't understand
how it's able to perform

those even very basic maneuvers.

We're seeing them
in the morning.

We're seeing them
in the afternoon.

We're seeing them
in the evening.

There's no break
in all those behaviors.

And so all that combined
is confusing

and doesn't correlate
with the technology

that I'm aware of
as a fighter pilot.

This story has a way
of engulfing you

whether you want it to or not.

I called it my abduction story

because when I first started
covering this topic,

I felt like I was being lowered
into a rabbit hole.

Couldn't see the bottom,
you know, couldn't make out

the creatures that were,
you know, gonna show up.

[interviewer]

[Bender] I've covered
the Pentagon

and national security
for more than two decades,

covered the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan,

traveled the world,
and in that entire time,

I don't think UFOs
came up a single time.

All those years...

You know,
it was a subject that, you know,

was for movies
and science fiction.

Rosenberg. Oh, damn.

The Achilleans are
not gonna like this.

This guy was
one of the royal family.

I knew it. This is an alien,
and you guys are

from some government agency
trying to keep it under wraps.

And then, in 2017...
things changed.

A recent report
by The New York Times

unveiled the existence of
a real life X Files department.

[Hayes] The former head
of that program, Luis Elizondo,

told the Times the UF program
collected video

and audio recordings of reported
UFO incidents, including footage

from a Navy F/A-18
Super Hornet showing an aircraft

surrounded by some kind
of glowing aura.

[Kean] As a journalist,
I'd spent 17 years

reporting on UFOs in a climate
in which nobody official

would acknowledge anything
about them.

Before 2017, of course,
it was just ridicule.

It was just non-engagement,
just disinterest, 100%.

[playful music]

And that's why it was
so shocking for me to learn

this program existed,
because I've been out

in the world campaigning
for the government to set up

an agency to study these things.

But actually, there was one.

I got a tip that, "Hey,
you know, the Pentagon has"

"this UFO research effort."
And it was created,

you know, by then
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada.

[dramatic music]

Here's a senior senator who
believes the truth is out there

and, you know,
is inserting money

into the Pentagon budget,
very quietly,

very secretively, to go
do more research on this.

I mean, that only happens
in the movies.

But this was a real story.

Our story actually ran the same
day as The New York Times.

I think they beat us by, like,
an hour or something like that.

It all began when I went
to this meeting,

and I sat opposite a table,
opposite Lou Elizondo,

and talked to him
for about three hours,

all about the program.

I was shown all these documents.

I was shown, you know,
performance reviews that he had.

And then the big moment
was when I was shown

these three videos that have
since become very well known.

[reporter]
These haunting images,

part of a bombshell
first admission

by the military
of a government program

investigating sightings
of UFOs.

[man] Look at that thing.

It wasn't until
The New York Times article

came out in 2017 and I saw
the video that they released.

Obviously,
a strange moment of déjà vu,

until I realized
that those were, you know,

my friends' voices.

[indistinct radio chatter
and laughter]

That's when I realized
that this was a problem

that clearly
wasn't being resolved.

[Bender] Pilots who come
forward, you know, not just

somebody off the street,
but, you know, 20-year veterans

flying F18s, trusted
with millions of dollars

of taxpayer money
and high performance aircraft

coming back and saying,
"Listen, we were"

"on this training mission,
and we were stalked"

"by these orbs for days."

And it wasn't just the pilots,

but it was the radar operators
on warships

that were also part
of this flotilla.

So you can't just dismiss it.

[Kean] The videos were not shown
to me by Lou in that meeting,

but they were shown to me
on a laptop by Chris Mellon.

[dramatic music]

[reporter] Christopher Mellon
served as deputy assistant

secretary of defense
for intelligence

for Presidents
Clinton and George W. Bush,

and had access to top secret
government programs.

So it's not us.
That's one thing we know.

[reporter]
In 2017, as a private citizen,

he surreptitiously acquired
the three Navy videos

and leaked them
to The New York Times.

It's bizarre
that someone like myself

has to do something
like that to get

a national security issue
like this on the agenda.

[upbeat music]

[Bender]

No. [clears throat]

Actually, this...
People don't realize

is she was kind
of auditioning for me.

I had The Washington Post
and Politico

and The New York Times
competing for this story.

I didn't want to spend months
and months and then find out

that, "Oh, her editors
are not going to run it."

Competition is usually
a good thing.

The New York Times seemed
to be the best opportunity,

but it wasn't as though
they found me.

I reached out to them.

[mellow music]

[Kean] Chris Mellon became
involved with Luis Elizondo

while he was still at AATIP,

which was this Pentagon group
that had been studying UAP.

[Mellon] I got invited
to a Pentagon meeting

because I was
an unpaid consultant

to the Office
of Naval Intelligence.

So I still had
my security clearances

and found out
that we were having incursions

over restricted military
airspace on an ongoing,

recurring basis for years.

Dozens and dozens and dozens
of incidents

that were not being reported.

NORAD didn't even know
this was happening.

North American Aerospace Command

didn't know this was happening,
or so they say.

I was blown away.
How can this be?

Why do we have
an intelligence community

if we're going to let people
fly over our country

with strange vehicles and we're
not even going to report it?

It was partly
like Pearl Harbor,

only absent the consequences.

But they're seeing it
on radar, and they're

not reporting it
up the chain of command,

which is what happened
at Pearl Harbor.

And it was kind of like 9/11,
because all these different

government agencies
had pertinent information

on this topic
that they weren't sharing,

and there was no one place
that came together.

I was ashamed, in a sense,

as a member
of the intelligence community,

as someone who's part of that,
to see the system paralyzed.

Natural reaction was to go
through the chain of command.

I had two friends who,
by chance, were

direct reports to defense sec
James Mattis.

But the bureaucracy...
Nobody wanted to touch it.

It was a hot potato.
Nobody would take ownership.

[Bender] Christopher Mellon,
he's not...

somebody who's
gone off the deep end.

He's somebody who worked,
you know, at the highest levels

of the Pentagon.

One thing that might drive Chris
is that he was among

the most senior intelligence
officials in the country,

and he suspects they were
hiding things from him.

[dramatic music]

[Mellon] When I was
in the government,

this was an issue
that you just didn't talk about.

There was always
the risk that you were

going to damage
your reputation and,

you know,
might affect opportunities

for promotion or jobs
and so forth.

So after months of trying
to get some kind

of favorable action,
it became clear that we either

had to give up
and just allowed us to continue,

or we had to go to Capitol Hill
and the press.

[reporter] Tonight, CNN has
learned the Pentagon

had a secretive program
to research UFOs,

like the one Frevor spotted.

The project was called

the Advanced Aviation Threat
Identification program.

[Kean] All of this was
on the record.

All of this was documented.

And because Senator Harry Reid
was involved,

it also gave
the story credibility.

It was pretty explosive.

I mean, it was picked up
a lot in our media, I think,

maybe even more
in the international media.

It was just like this firestorm.

The military spent
millions of dollars

to look into UFO sightings.

[reporter] Millions of dollars
for the project

were pushed through

by former Senate
majority Leader Harry Reid,

but the funding
for the project

was so-called "Black Money,"

meaning that was secret money
for classified programs.

They just didn't
want it talked about.

[Bender] That could be
a military threat.

We should be looking at it.

But on the one-in-a-million,
billion chance

that it really is ET,

we kind of want
to know that, too.

[Mellon] It was a thrilling
moment for them.

It was a breakthrough.
It was unprecedented.

It was significant.

But I would like to correct
the record a little bit.

The New York Times
had virtually no impact

on the legislative or executive
branches of government.

[interviewer]

I thought Congress
would be seized with this.

They'll be demanding briefings,

demanding to know
what's going on.

That's not what happened,
to my great surprise.

Marks a turning point
in the history of this issue.

But had it been
that story alone,

we wouldn't be having
this conversation.

[Mace] If you believe
we have crashed craft,

as stated earlier,
do we have the bodies

of the pilots who piloted
this craft?

As I've stated publicly already,

biologics came
with some of these recoveries.

Were they, I guess,
human or non-human biologics?

Non-human.
And that was the assessment

of people with direct knowledge
on the program I talked to

that are currently
still on the program.

[Schwartz] Now, the committee
says this could be the first

of several hearings,
with some lawmakers saying next

they would like to hear
directly from some of the pilots

who have encountered
those objects firsthand.

[interviewer]

[Mellon] Pilots.

That's what really
made the difference.

It was face-to-face
with the naval aviators

describing their experiences.

[Graves] When I pursued this,
my personal logic was that,

"Hey, I'm representing myself."

"I'm gonna talk. I'm not gonna
be wearing uniform."

"I'm not gonna say
I'm Lieutenant Graves,"

"and I'm saying X, Y, or Z."

I just wanted to speak as
someone that had experiences,

that was talking about them
in my own time.

[dramatic music]

From my perspective,
I knew that what I was doing

was well outside the bounds

of what would be considered
acceptable behavior

from my command instructor
or anything like that.

But I really didn't see
any other way

that this was going to resolve
itself through the status quo.

[dramatic music]

Ryan was initially,
understandably,

very reluctant to come
and speak to members

of the Congress,

and it was a bit
of soul searching on his part.

[Schiff] What to me is
so intriguing about it is,

in the past,
if a pilot saw something,

there wasn't any way
of really corroborating.

Was this human error? Was this
fatigue on the pilot's behalf?

Was this a problem
with the instrumentation?

But now there are any number
of documented incidences

where there are
multiple instruments

recording something out there.

So it's not just the pilot.
It's not just one tool.

There is something there.

There is something
provably there,

and at least initially,
it cannot be explained.

♪ ♪

[Graves] I just knew that I had
a responsibility to talk

about what I knew
and describe what I knew

and what I didn't know
as clearly as possible.

[dramatic music]

I ended up going
to the Pentagon

to kind of start
the conversation.

We've transitioned
from the Pentagon

up to the Central Armed
Service Committee.

We had a closed-door meeting.

[serene music]

I mean, honestly,
I was pretty terrified.

Frankly, did not want
to go there, if you will.

I did not want to go there.

[Mellon] Ryan was one
of the first pilots,

maybe the first pilot
to come forward

and brief members
of the Armed Services

and Intelligence Committees
behind closed doors.

♪ ♪

It was pretty clear
that this was not

necessarily going to be
well received by his colleagues

in his squadron
and by other Navy officials,

and yet he decided to do so.

At least I can say
at some point in my life

I really, truly
pursued something

that I felt I believed in.

You've also, I believe,
discussed and know

of many more pilots.

This is just those that you're
currently working with.

Is that correct?
Can you expand on that?

When we were first experiencing
these objects

off the Eastern Seaboard
in the 2014 to 2015 time period,

anyone that had upgraded
their radar systems

were seeing these objects.

I didn't have a massive, massive
interest in UFOs growing up.

Kind of a standard interest
that I guess most young people

do with X Files and ET
and things in movies.

It was only in 2017
when The New York Times

article came out,
that I really...

My interest was really piqued.

And I think at that point,
I was hooked, absolutely hooked.

And so I wanted
to kind of document

where my mind was
going on the subject.

And so I created an Instagram
account in early 2023.

I kind of came in
at the right time,

where the congressional hearing
was happening.

And I think
I was one of the only,

if not the only person putting
content out in real time.

Mr. Frevor, the Tic Tac
incident that you were

engaged occurred in 2004.

What kind of reporting
took place after that incident?

None. We had a standard debrief
where the backseaters went down

to our carrier intel center
and briefed what had happened,

and that was it.

In the UK,
they're a lot more reserved,

I think, about the subject,

and we haven't seen much talk
from the government at all.

The congressional hearings
were just groundbreaking,

because we'd never had anybody,
ever in history,

on oath, saying,
"These things are real,"

"and these are my experiences"
in front of Congress

with the hand up,
passing off their experiences

for the world to see live on TV,
was just incredible.

We would see these objects
being at 0.0 Mach,

that's zero airspeed.

These objects were staying
completely stationary

in Category 4
hurricane winds.

These same objects would then
accelerate to supersonic speeds,

1.1, 1.2 Mach, and they
would do so in very erratic

and quick behaviors that
I don't have an explanation for.

Stories are anecdotes,
and that's not a bad thing.

I mean, in medical literature,
you can write

about a case report,
which is an anecdote

of a single individual story,

and that goes
into the literature.

♪ ♪

There are traditional
and standard ways

to get stories as long as
there's data associated with it.

♪ ♪

Now, let's talk
about the science of it.

If you have 100 people
who've got the same internal

scarring looking
at the brain scans, that's data.

So that's something
that needs an explanation.

How did a person get all
of these lesions in their brain

and they don't have
multiple sclerosis?

Is there a commonality
that we can observe?

And there was a couple
of reports in the literature

that I found that linked
this area of the brain

to intuition,
and that was interesting

because I thought,
"Well, wait a second."

"Intuition in an area
of the brain"

"that has to do
with body movement?"

[dramatic music]

Let's say that you're at a party

and you're walking
around the room.

You need to predict
where people are moving,

but that moment when somebody
does something unexpected,

you have to react to it quickly.

So...

those are life and death
moments, as it turns out,

because let's say
you're in a forest

and a wolf or a cheetah
is jumping out.

You need to be able to know

to make the intuitively
correct move.

All the studies that have come
since then have said

that intuition, whatever it is
that you want to call intuition,

resides in this part
of the brain.

I've looked at the data,
and I say that there's something

worth studying here.

I'm only here
to give you the data.

You guys can argue
till the cows come home

what it is.

I'm just telling you
what's there.

I'm not coming
to any conclusions.

[serene music]

A lot of these pilots don't
know what they're seeing.

They don't know
if they're from our government,

above their pay grade.

They don't know
if they're from adversaries,

state actors, non-state actors,
private entities.

So we have to talk
about these things and create

an environment where
other people are comfortable

and feel safe enough to discuss
this very serious issue.

♪ ♪

[interviewer]

Yeah, that was one
of the things that was striking

in having a chance,

over the course
of a couple years,

to get to know
Senator Harry Reid.

You know, learning from him,
number one,

why he was interested
in this issue

and why he, some would say,
risked his political hide

by creating a UFO program.

I mean, all of his staffers
at the time

were like, "Don't do this."
Even if it's secret.

"If it leaks out,
you're gonna look like a kook."

But he didn't really care.

He talked to some
of these fellow senators,

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska,
Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii,

both World War II veterans,

who were like,
almost immediately, "Oh, yeah."

"We should totally
look into this."

Ted Stevens said
he saw foo fighters

off his wing as an Army Air
Corps pilot over Europe.

You know, people would come back
and they'd be like,

"We saw those things again,
no idea what they are,"

"but they didn't attack us."

"So I guess...
I guess we're okay."

And didn't talk about it
for 40 years.

[reporter] Democratic Senator

from Ohio John Glenn,
who's 62,

is very much a hero
in a country that loves

to love a national figure.

[Bender] John Glenn, he said,
was another one who was like,

"We absolutely should be
doing more research into this."

But again, these were not guys
who said this publicly,

because in the, you know,
in that era,

you just didn't do that.

Now I think
the stigma is changing.

We've managed to get
the attention of the government,

both the legislative
and executive branches,

and we now have
the real prospect

within the next 24 months, say,
of finding out possibly

where the origin
of some of these things are

or where some of them
might be extraterrestrial.

[man] Just random lights
in the sky moving.

Like, I'm not
the only one seeing--

[man] There are three... There
are other people here. [bleep]

What the [bleep] is this?

[Conway] There's a massive sense
of responsibility now.

And I think when I first
started posting videos,

it was just
whatever I found interesting.

[man] It just keeps on going
in circles

and circles and circles.

[Conway] And so now,
as I go further along,

every time I see new bits
of footage or people

send things to me,
I put out less and less and less

and less and less, because
I have that responsibility.

So I'm really careful
in what I put out.

And now somebody will send me
something and I'll ask them,

"Where's this come from?
Have you got the original?"

"Do you know where
the original came from?"

"Who took the footage?"

There's other footage
out there that's better,

that's more compelling,
but we don't know who took it.

We can't follow back that chain
of custody to somebody

that's super credible
on a platform that we can trust.

- [man] Boom. All three.
- [woman] What is that?

[man] We are all out here

in the middle
of this parking lot...

[interviewer]]

So, AATIP was

the Advanced Aerospace Threat
Identification Program...

[upbeat music]

...which was set up in 2007
at the direction of Congress,

mainly to look
into these reports

from military pilots.

AATIP was a very small operation
within the Pentagon.

[Bender]
It didn't get very far either.

The senior leadership
in the Pentagon

doesn't wanna hear about it.

They don't wanna spend
resources on it.

[Kean] It didn't have funding
in the later years.

It was just a group
of dedicated people

who kept on doing
what they were doing before

when they did have some funding.

That entity was kind
of transformed numerous times.

It became the UAP Task Force,

and a couple of years there,
and that was acknowledged

by the office of the director
of naval intelligence

that that entity existed.

And that evolved.
It kept changing its name,

you know,
and then it became this...

This All-Domain, uh...
What is it?

The All-Domain, um...

Advanced... Wait.

[Kean] No, I know what it is.
All-Domain...

- What's the R?
- The All-Domain...

Anomalous Resolution Office.
It's a horrible name.

Acronym is AARO.

Leave it to the Pentagon
to come up

with something like that.

[Kean] It's great
that it has an easy acronym

because some of the previous
names were absolutely insane.

You couldn't even say them
and let alone

say an acronym for them.

Fuck the Pentagon
with these acronyms.

It's called the UFO office.
I mean, come on.

A Pentagon official
confirmed this week

that the U.S. government
is investigating

more than 650 potential
UFO sightings.

A team is examining
the 650 cases.

This office is up and running.

I'm working with colleagues
to make sure it's fully funded.

So clearly, the Pentagon
is taking UFOs seriously.

[Bender] And really, they're
supposed to be the focal point

that is researching,
not just sightings

made by military personnel
that come in,

but also trying
to dig into the bureaucracy

and figure out
what else do we know,

or what did we know
and when did we know it?

This is altogether different,
fundamentally different.

Now you've got an organization

that's out in the open
with AARO,

enjoys very strong support
from Congress.

It has a very wide mandate
and a lot of latitude.

It's got a large staff.
It's growing.

And you have the support
from the intelligence community.

You have direct access

to the deputy secretary
of defense

and the director
of national intelligence.

Now all the national
security agencies,

all the intelligence agencies
have to share information

on this topic
with this AARO office.

All the puzzle pieces
are now on one table,

and you can start fitting them
together instead of being

in different buckets
spread all over the place.

I'd first like to thank
our witness,

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick,
for testifying here

and in today's earlier
closed session

and for his long
and distinguished career,

both in the intelligence
community

and in
the Department of Defense.

Dr. Kirkpatrick,
you can give your testimony.

It's a privilege
to be here today

to testify on the defense...

defense's efforts to address

unidentified anomalous
phenomena.

[Mellon] So Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick
is a physicist by training.

In his last assignment,
he worked for the space command,

and he worked
in their intelligence shop.

He's very well suited
and qualified

by dint of his training
and background

to lead this effort.

But it's early days,
so it remains to be seen

how this is gonna come out
and where it's going.

[Burchett] This is an issue
of government transparency.

We can't trust a government
that does not trust its people.

We're not bringing
little green men

or flying saucers
into the hearing.

Sorry to disappoint
about half y'all.

We're just gonna get
to the facts.

We're gonna
uncover the cover-up.

And I hope this is
just the beginning

of many more hearings
and more people

coming forward about this.

[dramatic music]

[interviewer]

Yeah.

I get a little ribbing,

but I don't give a rip,
mind you.

I go out to take my dogs
out to go to the bathroom

every night in the backyard,
and I look at those stars,

and literally, like,
the concept of light-years

that comes into play,
I always think...

I look at some of those stars,

and the light from those stars
literally left that star

before the time of Christ.

♪ ♪

So you think in God's
vast universe

that there could
not be something else?

And to think also,
I mean, it's kind of arrogant

on our part to think that we're
the best that God can do.

I mean, come on.

Since 1947, the Pentagon's
been lying to us about UFOs.

They've covered this thing up
from day one.

You look at Roswell in 1947,
the military comes out and says,

"We've recovered a saucer."

And then the next day they trot
that poor colonel out

holding a hot-air balloon.

And there's no way
in hell that they would

have messed that up.

You know, military intelligence

is a whole lot
like congressional ethics.

It really just doesn't exist.

[dramatic music]

What's going to have to happen
is somebody's going to have

to walk out
with some information

of one of these craft,
either on the ground

or flying before they,
you know,

commit suicide
by shooting themselves

in the back of the head
five times.

♪ ♪

[Gillibrand] I have legislation
for this year's defense bill

to guarantee that AARO,
they have access

to special access programs
which are typically

compartmentalized
and highly classified

to make sure they're actually
getting to see

all the previous data,
all the previous information.

So all of those SAPs
are opened to Dr. Kirkpatrick

and the AARO team to review,
to analyze, to understand.

And so hopefully, whatever doors
are still closed

will be opened
in the next year.

[interviewer]

[Gillibrand] This is
the first time anyone's seen

an unidentified
aerial phenomenon

and reported it
to the federal government.

So we want that data
so that it can be used

as a holistic review
of what is the history.

All of that should be co-located
and reviewed scientifically.

The military is not
comfortable with bad data,

bad facts or things that they
don't know the answer to.

And so that's why
Senator Rubio and I and others

teamed up to begin to look
at this much more intensely.

♪ ♪

[interviewer]

[dramatic music]

[Bender] If you look
at the Air Force budget,

a significant share of it
actually isn't theirs.

It's the intelligence
community's.

And it's for all
the secret programs,

but it's sort of budgeted
through the Air Force budget.

The Air Force complains
that, like,

you look at the Air Force
budget and you think,

"Oh, we get the same
as the Army and the Navy."

We don't really,
because there's this huge chunk

that's the pass-through budget.

It's actually not our stuff.

It's the CIA drone program

and, you know,
God knows what else.

We do know
that the government spends

billions every year
on secret aircraft, drones.

[Bender] I wonder if they
don't want to play in this.

Not because
they're hiding aliens,

but if AARO is picking around
and wants to know

where's all the SAPs,
the special access programs

that might shed light
on advanced technologies,

and you're the Air Force,
you don't want to open that up.

♪ ♪

The SR-71 Blackbird
Cold War spy plane.

The F-117 stealth fighter.
The B-2 bomber.

Those things were secret
for 30 or 40 years,

so imagine what they have now.

♪ ♪

[Gillibrand] My goal is
to make sure that the parts

that are appropriate to be
made public are made public.

And that's why we need
the public reporting every year.

And that's why we created
the office,

'cause we wanted to have
a thorough scientific review

of everything that's classified,
unclassified,

and publicly available so that
we just have more information

and that we have more clarity.

The way the issue came to me was
how those pilots were treated,

that they weren't necessarily
being believed

or they were being disregarded
in some way.

It became
a very important issue for me.

♪ ♪

[reporter]
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand

of New York is leading an effort
to change the way

the military handles the problem
of sexual assault

in the Armed Forces.

Gillibrand points to victims
who complain

that too often commanders
ignore their allegations.

[interviewer]

There's always a correlation.

Military sexual assault
has been covered up.

Sexual harassment's
been covered up.

These cases often don't see
the light of day.

And on the UAP side,
it's something the military

didn't want
to talk about publicly.

They were addressing it,
from my perspective,

in a very paternalistic way
that's not validating

that something
actually happened to them.

I think it's...

duplicitous and inappropriate.

♪ ♪

Ryan, you say that...
you know, you wanna get

to a point where people feel
comfortable reporting them.

- Do they not?
- It's a big risk

to go out publicly
on this topic.

At the end of the day,

if you're gonna
highlight yourself,

at least in the military
aviation communities,

for something like this,

there's very little
upside for you.

In the Navy,
we deal with problems

after the fact
and not before the fact.

We fix things after people die
and we write our procedures

and our lessons in blood.

And, you know, I think
there's opportunity,

perhaps, to avoid that
in this scenario.

[Gillibrand] I've heard many
reports that service members

who witnessed unidentified
aerial phenomenon

and recorded it
on the instruments

that they had available to them

were often disregarded
or disbelieved

or retaliated against
for coming forward

with information
about these sightings.

Those individuals
are whistleblowers,

and they should be heard.

[dramatic music]

[Bender] One of the biggest
moves Congress has taken

is to enact
this law that includes

a process for people
within the military,

within the spy agencies,
to come forward to Congress,

but also to the Pentagon AARO
office with their testimony.

In other words, if, you know,

they signed a non-disclosure
agreement and were told

never talk about
this secret program,

you sort of get
a get-out-of-jail free card,

you can come forward.

There's supposed to be
a process for that

to help Congress unearth

some of these programs
that might exist that,

you know,
have not seen the light of day.

The UAP task force
was refused access

to a broad crash
retrieval program.

When you say "crash retrieval,"
what do you mean?

These are retrieving
non-human origin

technical vehicles,
you know, call it spacecraft,

if you will,
non-human, exotic origin

vehicles that have
either landed or crashed.

We have spacecraft
from another species?

We do. Yeah.

David Grusch is undoubtedly
the biggest whistleblower

that we've ever had in history.

I mean, he's the first
official whistleblower

that came forward
with the legislation

that came out in the NDAA,
and he's saying that,

"I've interviewed
all of these people."

"It was my job to interview
all of these people."

"I was sent out to do it.
I had the clearances."

These people were telling him
that they had

firsthand experience
with craft and with biologics.

[dramatic music]

[Mellon] So right now,
there are whistleblower cases

happening around this issue.

So anybody out there
who may have been involved

in a program-related UAP,

you know, black programs
related to this topic,

particularly if they think
it may not have been

appropriated by Congress
and authorized,

they can now come forward
and share that information

in a secure environment
without violating the law

or their obligations.

[dramatic music]

[Bender]
We now have a number

of very senior
government officials

with very high
security clearances

that are coming forward
and basically saying,

"We believe there are
secret programs buried deep"

"in the bureaucracy
that are hiding"

"either UFO crash materials"

"or, you know, some other
sort of exotic technology"

"that we don't think
is human made."

And just the simple fact
that that's happening,

it's not just people
from the fringe.

It's not, you know,
people just claiming

that they believe this or that.

These are the people
that are entrusted

with the nation's secrets.

Some of them are
coming forward and saying,

"Hey, there's more
to learn here,"

"and we wanna help you
find out."

I think that's remarkable.

[Nolan] Because I helped those
people from the government

and the aerospace corporation
that showed up in my office

and gave them advice
on how to do

the kinds of analysis
they wanted to do,

they started coming back
to me for more.

A case in point
is the Atacama mummy,

which many people know about.

[adventurous music]

I was brought to help study it

'cause somebody thought
it was an alien.

In fact, I have to be honest.
I mean, I reached out to them

and said, "You're claiming
it's an alien"?

"I can prove or disprove it,"
at least looking at its DNA,

if it has DNA.

♪ ♪

I had two
other Stanford professors,

specialists in genetics,
a bunch of graduate students,

and I had the world's expert

in pediatric bone disorders
on the paper.

That, of course, went worldwide.

And you know what the title was?

"Stanford professor
sequences DNA of alien baby."

It was all over the world.

I eventually proved
that it was a human stillbirth

with multiple mutations
and bone dysmorphias.

My entrée to the UFO community
was, you know,

the hated one, you know,
the guy who disproved

that it was an alien.

[Conway]
It's one of those weird ones,

but Gary Nolan's
a significant character

because the subject has lacked
that scientific connection.

So we rely on people
like Gary Nolan to say,

"I've seen the evidence,"

"and this is how
I've assessed the evidence."

And we need people like Gary
to do that for us.

[Nolan] Because I'd gotten
a Department of Defense award

for doing ovarian cancer
that came about

the same time
that I was doing the work,

I was accused
of being bought off.

These kinds of conspiracy things
that you never live down.

People still...
I still see it in Reddit forums

every once in a while.

You know, science can be done
on these things

because there's a whole bunch
of data on the table.

But once you start looking
amongst all the puzzle pieces,

interesting stuff
starts to show up.

[dramatic music]

[Mellon] I was always driven
by curiosity.

I was at a boarding school.
I was seven years old.

And the headmaster
of the school,

one of his neighbors,
had taken a home movie

of a UFO from his backyard.

And the headmaster of the school
was so excited about this,

he felt we all needed
to see this movie.

[upbeat music]

We all saw a three
to five-minute segment

of a massive,
golden, disc-shaped object.

And one of the things
that was interesting

was clouds look opaque,

generally big cumulus clouds,
you know, white.

But when something
goes into it,

you see it's actually
not very dense. It's wispy.

This is way before
computer-generated imagery.

This is Kodak reel-to-reel
kind of stuff.

So I don't know
how that could have been faked.

And it went into the cloud,
eventually disappeared,

and then came out
the other side.

I was thunderstruck,
and a bunch of us

went running outside looking
at the night sky that night

to see
if we could see something.

And I started reading
every book

I could get my hands on.

It gave me a lifelong interest.

♪ ♪

For years, there was
virtually no discussion

in mainstream-leading
news outlets,

and yet, meanwhile,
local papers,

there were thousands
and thousands

of reports from small
communities all over the world

where people
in their community

had had experiences
and seen things,

you know, the local doctor
or the mayor or...

So there was a huge disconnect
between the national media

and the regional media.

And why is there such a paradox?

♪ ♪

In 1950, I believe,
it was May of 1950,

Enrico Fermi was
a nuclear physicist,

one of the fathers
of the atom bomb.

He was one of the seminal
physicists involved

in advancing research
and our understanding

of quantum mechanics
and subatomic particles

and so forth.

He continued to visit Los Alamos

after the atom bomb
was developed,

during the summers.

He was in the cafeteria

lunching
with some other scientists,

and the issue
of alien life came up,

and he made this wisecrack,
"Well, where is everybody?"

And everybody had
a good chuckle about that.

But that has become known
as Fermi's Paradox.

If there's life
in the universe

and life in our...
Elsewhere in our galaxy,

how come we don't see
any evidence?

We don't detect
any radio signals, et cetera.

The ironic thing is
that even as he was saying that,

the director of security
at Los Alamos

had his hair on fire
because there were

so many UFO sightings
right around Los Alamos

at the very same time
he's saying it.

I mean, everybody
around Los Alamos,

the security people,
pilots, scientists,

everybody was seeing
these things.

Just a few months before,

there was an overflight
of about 100 UAP

over the town
of Farmington, New Mexico.

You know, front page news
across the states.

And so there's
this huge disconnect

with people
in the scientific community

saying, "How come
there's no evidence?"

And meanwhile,
there's these things that could

be alien probes
that are swarming all around

the very facility
where they're saying this.

♪ ♪

[woman] Oh, my God.
What is that?

[man] Quick, quick. Like, are
you recording that right now?

[woman] Yeah, I'm recording.
I'm recording.

What the f... is that?

[Strieber]
The cabin was our place

and our little country place.

And we certainly didn't expect
anything peculiar

to happen there.

But after that night,
I became scared.

I bought a shotgun.
I bought a pistol.

I was really strung out.

I hurt. I had been assaulted.
And that was obvious to me.

I mean, I had a mark
on the side of my head.

I had been rectally injured.

I was obviously the victim
of an assault of some sort.

But when? Who?

[theme song playing]