Original subtitles

[Woods] Ellsworth Air Force Base, 1977, South Dakota.

My initial reporting of the incident that morning in 1977

we can call it November 16th:

Upon the completion of all the testing

and the medical examination and everything I went to,

and back in that commander's office

when Captain Reed gave Colonel Spraker this information,

or gave him this form, which I was to review, look at and sign

before I could leave his office.

Said I would never release the information.

As long as I was working in this career field,

I wouldn't talk to any type of media personnel,

I would not relay this information to any spouse,

to brothers, my family, or any other service member.

And there were repercussions,

as it was being so-called classified

at that moment in time.

Which I upheld my end of it and never released it

and never stated or talked about it

or didn't mention anything to anybody about it.

I was made to feel as if I had done something wrong.

I was made to feel as if,

had I done anything other than what I was told,

there would be serious repercussions.

[theme music playing]

[dramatic music playing]

[King] Once a person recognizes there's a fundamental reality to the UFO phenomenon,

they naturally find themselves faced with some pretty disturbing questions.

How could something so profound and so widespread escape our notice until now?

Why don't more people know about this?

How did we find ourselves in this position?

And what else are we being lied to about?

None of these questions have easy answers,

and they force you to completely reevaluate your basic meaning-making models

from the ground up.

If you follow this line of inquiry far enough,

you end up asking even more profound questions,

like how do I know what I know?

How do I know what is true?

And what forces exist in the world, or even beyond it,

that might have an interest in shaping how we perceive our reality?

[Chase] Humans as a species have an enormous amount of collective knowledge,

cultivated over thousands of years.

No one person could possibly know everything,

much less be able to independently verify all of that knowledge

to confirm that it's accurate.

And we don't need to.

We learn the things that we need to learn to be effective

in our daily lives and in our careers,

and we put our trust in other people who are experts in the things that we aren't.

I don't need to know how to fix my car's transmission, because my mechanic does.

I don't need to know how to fix a broken arm, because my doctor does.

And the fact that we're able to specialize in things and rely on each other in that way

is why humans are able to do things like go to the moon

and build bridges, and discover quantum mechanics.

It's a great system.

And for the most part, it works really well.

We've developed ways of managing these vast stores of information

while keeping the overall quality of that data pretty high.

And we do that by vesting our trust

in certain institutions that serve as authorities.

In our culture, the main authorities on this collective knowledge

are the government, the media and academia.

And one of the things that is so challenging,

and even disturbing, about recognizing the reality of the UFO phenomenon

is that, if it's real and we all were led to believe that it wasn't,

then it means that there has been a pretty catastrophic failure

of our legacy institutions to do the jobs that we created them to do.

[Madden] When we start to realize that maybe, in fact,

there's things that we have been deceived about very systematically,

and that our common sense,

our basic, you know, sense-making criteria that we need to operate by,

our basic sense of what's possible or impossible,

if we start to get a sense that that's not entirely innocent

and that it's indeed been the product of secrecy,

it's been the product of manipulation, etc., etc.,

what that's doing is, it's going to then make it difficult for us

to participate in anything without a kind of cynicism,

without a sense of a loss of agency.

All the things that we associate

with this sort of post-truth environment that we hear about now,

I don't think we can blame it only on secrecy, but that's one part of it,

is, as, you know, we've come through the last several decades

and we've come to see that,

"Oh, it looks like we kind of were deceived about this.

We were kind of deceived about that.

It seems that, oh, they played with us on this, they played with us on that,"

well, we human beings are social animals,

and we need to be able to trust other people as truth tellers.

We need to be able to trust an environment of information.

We can't do every inquiry on our own.

We have to stand on other people's shoulders.

But the more secrecy there is

about matters relevant to us at a fundamental level,

the harder it is for us to have that trust

that is absolutely inherent to human information-seeking,

to human knowledge.

[King] When did it start?

To answer that, we need to go back nearly a hundred years

to the dawn of the modern UFO era.

[Elizondo] So this secrecy around-- I won't even say UFOs. --around the anomalous,

I mean, it really goes back to at least as early as 1933.

It goes back right to the very beginning.

It was born secret, sort of like the atomic bomb.

In fact, one of the earliest memos comes from Canada,

where an intelligence officer said the matter

is classified higher than the H-bomb, right?

And so secrecy goes back to the very beginning.

It's baked in, just like the Manhattan Project.

[Chase] Ironically, one of the best pieces of evidence that we have

for the existence of the UFO phenomenon is the secrecy itself,

for which there exists an extensive paper trail

dating back to the very dawn of the modern UFO phenomenon in 1947.

On September 23rd, 1947, just three months

after the Kenneth Arnold sighting in Washington and the infamous Roswell crash,

General Nathan F. Twining, who was the head of the Air Material Command

at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base,

wrote a memo to the commanding general of the Army Air Forces

in which he states that flying saucers are, quote,

"something real and not visionary or fictitious,"

and that they posed a potential threat to national security.

And interestingly, this memo was written just five days after the passing

of the National Security Act of 1947, which created the CIA

and split off the Air Force into its own branch of the military.

So we have every indication

that the sudden appearance of UFOs in the

American airspace was being taken very seriously

at the highest levels of government

from the very first moment that they appeared in the public awareness.

And yet, at the same time that the U.S. military intelligence apparatus

was rallying resources to meet this threat,

the government was telling people that UFOs aren't real,

that what crashed at Roswell was just a weather balloon,

and basically that there's nothing to see here.

So just by looking at the government's own declassified documents,

without stretching into conspiracy theories,

it's clear that the government has been lying

to the American public about UFOs

since the very beginning.

[King] Also dating back to 1947,

we have a string of government-funded programs

that were ostensibly charged with investigating the UFO phenomenon scientifically

and reporting their findings,

starting with Project Sign, which became Project Blue Book,

and extending through to the present day

with programs like AATIP and the UAP Task Force.

A consistent theme among these programs

is that in basically every instance,

leaders of these programs were highly trained, respected scientists

and military intelligence officials who came forward

to say that they weren't given the access or the resources

that they needed to actually do their jobs.

And in many cases, they were expected to come up with prosaic explanations

for UFO reports, even when there were none.

This is where the infamous "swamp gas" explanation comes from.

So right from the very beginning, we have this indication

that not only is the government lying about the existence of UFOs,

but that major efforts have been made to influence what the public thinks about them,

something that is known as "perception management."

[Chase] And unfortunately,

as has been the case with all of the other public-facing programs

that have been tasked with investigating the UFO phenomenon,

the most recent, AARO, seems to be more invested

in managing how the public perceives the topic

than it is in doing the work to figure out what's actually going on.

For example, AARO spent $100,000 on a joint UAP study with NASA

but invested 1.9 million contracting an agency

that is commonly used by the Department of Defense

to help with things like PR, perception management,

and counterintelligence.

That says a lot about where their priorities are.

[Elizondo] I think when we're talking about secrecy, there is sort of this question of,

"How could they possibly have done it." Right?

"How is it possible that they've kept it secret?"

And the short answer is, they haven't kept it secret.

People have been talking about this since the 1950s, right?

Even high-level people.

The first head of the Central Intelligence Agency

was a member of a UFO group after he retired.

Like, from the very beginning,

people have been talking about this.

It hasn't been kept secret.

What's happened is, we don't have permission to talk about it.

[King] The role that stigma plays in the UFO cover-up really can't be overstated.

Because without the stigma, a cover-up of this scale simply wouldn't be possible.

It's just too big of a secret to be contained.

The only way to keep something like this under wraps

is to hide it in plain sight,

which is exactly what the stigma makes possible.

We have decades of declassified documents,

not just from our government but from governments around the world,

indicating that this phenomenon is real.

There have been millions of sightings around the world.

If you haven't seen one personally,

you definitely know at least one credible person who has.

And as a result, the UFO phenomenon

has become deeply enmeshed in our art, our media,

and our modern-day lore.

In a very real way, none of this is secret.

We've just been conditioned to ignore it,

to not take it seriously,

and to doubt the sanity of anyone who does.

The secrecy and stigma around the UFO phenomenon has a very real and human cost

for experiencers of all kinds.

But these impacts have been particularly felt

by groups of people who are most likely to run

into these things in the course of their work,

namely pilots, astronauts and members of our military.

What's considered to be the very first UFO sighting of the modern era

was reported by a pilot, Kenneth Arnold,

while he was flying his plane near Mount Rainier.

The first responders to the Roswell crash a few weeks later

were military pilots from the 509th Bombardment Group.

So from the very beginning, these are the people

who have been both on the front lines of contact with the phenomenon

while simultaneously being swept up in the secrecy around it.

[King] Part of the reason that the testimonies

of military pilots like Ryan Graves and David Fravor

have been so central to the UFO conversation over the last few years

is because, frankly, these are exceptional people.

A new F-18 Super Hornet costs about $65 million,

so they aren't just gonna let anyone get into that cockpit.

These pilots are highly trained observers

who've been selected for their acute senses

and their ability to function at a high level in the most extreme environments.

So when someone like that tells you

that they saw something in the sky that they can't explain,

that testimony carries extra weight,

or at least it should.

But unfortunately, because there's been so much stigma and secrecy around the issue,

many pilots have been afraid to come forward with UFO sightings

for fear of how it might impact their careers.

[Whiteley] There is a precedent for people reporting the UAP

and then losing their job or losing the rights to fly.

So they have to process that aspect of,

"Would somebody think I'm imagining things?

And if I'm imagining, then I'm not healthy, in a way, to--

You know, my visual perception or interpretation of what it is,

imagining things might affect my flight license next year

or something like that."

So this is the realm of a problem

of where they're afraid to report it

because they've seen the precedent of other people being punished, in a way.

Some would lose jobs,

some would lose professional standing

because other people just, you know, say, "You've imagined it."

[Chase] And it's not just pilots that have to worry

about an encounter with something anomalous costing them their career.

Members of the military,

and particularly anyone who holds a security clearance,

are at risk of losing their jobs as well,

simply for telling the truth about what they saw.

[Woods] When I left the Air Force there,

I went to work for the United States Department of Energy.

My clearance took an extraordinarily long time, approximately eight months.

And it had me quite nervous, you know, when I would receive this Q clearance.

And during that time in waiting for it,

I got called in to the Pinellas area office three times.

And every time I was called in, the questioning was pretty much the same.

"Was there something that happened to you

in the United States Air Force that we don't know about?"

And I knew exactly where they were going with it.

They were always after what I saw out that window.

'Cause had I again have said what I saw out

that window of the right side of that vehicle,

I would no longer have had a clearance.

And if you lose your clearance, you lose your job.

Because if you're uncleared,

you cannot carry a weapon in a DOE facility, period.

You're done.

[King] But the problem goes beyond just the potential to lose your job

if you report a UFO sighting.

Because as any experiencer can tell you, encountering the phenomenon

isn't something that just happens in one moment and then it's over.

These experiences often have a profound impact on people.

They can cause sweeping changes to your beliefs and your worldview.

They can trigger other anomalous events,

strange dreams and even psi abilities.

These are things that can be extremely distressing and destabilizing for a person,

especially when they can't talk about it.

[Whiteley] People don't just experience it in flight.

There are other experiences that they're not even reporting

that happens outside that time frame,

the professional time frame.

Is then that phenomenon starts to appear in their life,

where synchronicities happen or coincidences happen.

And we don't see that part of the report.

[Woods] So I had to go make a phone call,

and my wife had to come get me.

And, you know, there were no cell phones back then or anything like that.

So she came to pick me up,

and she was really, really concerned

because I should have been out there another two and a half days.

See, and all of a sudden I'm back, and she just came to pick me up.

So that was really strange, and I couldn't explain, you know, what, why.

Yeah, I couldn't explain it, so...

But I did in a way, you know,

and she just looked at me like I was nuts or something.

[chuckles]

And so we went back to Hainesway Apartments, where we lived,

and then the dreams started

and the desire, or the need, to find out about pyramids.

I don't know where that came from.

I'd never really been that interested in them before,

but I had to find out every single thing I could find out about these things, you know,

and where they're located and everything about them.

And dreams of annihilation, atomic blasts,

tsunamis, you name it.

I mean, none of it would go away.

[Whiteley] What is interesting, I feel, about the UAP or the phenomena itself

is that it impacts us on internal understanding how the world works.

The people I spoke with

and the reports that you see of people talking about this,

you know, online, and pilots discussing it,

including the pilots on Ryan Graves' podcast, Merged,

they're saying that it impacted them so much

that they couldn't sleep, they couldn't rest,

they couldn't understand what is happening.

How could it be possible?

Because some of them are aeronautical engineers,

and they understand the complexity, you know,

to actually perform that function.

So then they start to wonder, you know, what that is.

And it kind of leads them in a direction of investigation.

And sometimes it becomes preoccupying line of inquiry.

[Woods] In PTSD evaluations, there is no box to check

for a UFO/UAP incident of any type.

So whatever they grant from that point forward

is just something that somebody either feels for you or doesn't feel for you.

And either they check a box that helps you

or they check a box that says "no deal."

Just that simple.

There's really nothing for the individual that's had an incident.

Granted, those that have been injured from wartime accidents or whatever,

or anything like that, I totally give that to them.

But for this type of incident, an object,

you know, on a nuclear missile site,

whether you received burns, whether you received anything

from the presence of these things,

to not be able to evaluate a person fairly,

other than standard testing of, like, hearing or joint movement

or vision or anything like that,

they have no idea...

of how the individual relates to that,

to an incident such as that.

They wouldn't know how to relate to it.

But yet they're the people judging you, which is wrong.

[Chase] It's clear that there is a human cost

to the stigma and the secrecy that's associated with the UFO phenomenon.

But there's an even darker and more insidious harm

that can come to people as a result of this secrecy.

Because so little is known about UFOs,

and because there's so much lore built up around them,

intelligence officials have been known to exploit people's belief in UFOs

to cover up other things that they're also trying to keep secret,

while simultaneously sowing disinformation

among researchers in the community.

One of the most notorious examples of this

comes from the tragic case of a man named Paul Bennewitz.

And most of what we know about the Bennewitz

case comes from the researcher Greg Bishop,

who wrote a book about this incident called Project Beta.

[Bishop] In Project Beta,

I wanted to find out what happened

to electrical physicist Paul Bennewitz

in the late 1970s, early '80s, when he saw some experiments going on

at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque

and came to believe that it was some kind of alien invasion.

[King] Kirtland Air Force Base is well known to be a place

where some of our most cutting-edge technology is tested.

During the time period discussed in Project Beta,

that probably included things like early drones, EMPs and laser technology.

Paul Bennewitz lived next door to the base,

and at night, he'd go out on his porch.

He'd see strange lights rising up off the ground,

flying over behind a mountain, then dropping down behind it.

He became fascinated with this and started filming it.

Bennewitz had a longtime interest in UFOs.

He was a member of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization

and began to suspect that what he was seeing were alien spacecraft.

Being a good citizen, he called up the Air Force base to tell them what he was seeing.

[Bishop] But instead of saying

kind of cease and desist, they said,

"Why don't you keep in touch with us and tell us what you're seeing?

Why don't you report back to us what's going on?

We're very interested."

And they weren't interested because it was aliens.

They were interested because they wanted to know what he saw

and what he was thinking about what it was, and what--

Who else could see it, and who was communicating with him.

Like somebody could write from somewhere and say,

"I'm a UFO researcher. What are you seeing?"

And if he's seeing something secret

or something they don't want out,

he could communicate that inadvertently to Russians or Chinese or whoever.

And that's what they were worried about, so they kept in touch with him.

[Chase] What's so shocking about the Bennewitz case

is that these military intelligence officials

didn't just keep in touch with Bennewitz to

monitor what he was seeing or what he was up to.

They went to some pretty bizarre lengths to encourage him in believing

that what he was witnessing was part of some kind of an alien invasion.

[Bishop] One of the intelligence agencies, I think it was the NSA,

set up a facility across the street

from Bennewitz's house or very near in the neighborhood

and beamed information into a receiving antenna that he had built

and into a computer that the Air Force had given him.

But it started decoding messages about,

"We need," you know, "resources from the planet." "We need to find a new home."

Just various scenarios.

And he believed these things

because it fit in with his preconceptions.

So his ideas about it got more and more paranoid,

more and more delusional.

The Air Force security people and other people on the base

did not care that was going on.

As long as he didn't reveal anything that was going on

on the base, they really didn't care.

They didn't care about his mental state.

They didn't care about what was going on in his life.

And it got to the point where he--

His family got so worried for his mental health,

they actually had him put in a mental-health facility for a couple of months.

[Elizondo] I think it's really important to look at these cases,

and there are many beyond just the Bennewitz case,

to highlight the fact that there are people who work for the government,

who, seemingly, their entire job is to ruin people for a living.

And that's a problem.

[Bishop] I wrote the book Project Beta not to debunk things

or to shore up the government's point of view

or anything like that, all these things I've been accused of.

It was basically: "This is what happened.

This is what can happen.

This is what happens when you don't verify information

or believe things that you want to believe rather than something that's verifiable,

and it can turn into a vicious circle and make you crazy.

And it has done this to various people

at various times since Bennewitz

and I think probably a little before him too."

That case eventually became famous

because it illustrated how the military was involved with the UFO subject

in a way that most people hadn't thought of before.

They just thought it was this weird cover-up.

"We don't want people to know about UFOs."

It's, you know: "We know about it and you don't,

and we don't want you to know about it."

This was something completely different.

It had to do with national security

and intelligence and related subjects,

weapons development, things like that.

And I think people have to realize

that when the government is involved with the UFO subject,

it's not often to let people in on or cover up any kind of UFO reality.

It's because they're using it as a tool.

They're using it as a tool to do other things

that have nothing to do with the UFO subject whatsoever.

As a friend of mine said,

when UFO researchers get excited about something from the government,

they don't realize that every time that happens, they think it's about them.

It's not about them.

It's about things that have nothing to do with their interest in UFOs.

But it's a really nice tool because it's so ambiguous

and it's so full of belief

and so full of people that are very easily led into other directions.

So it's a very sticky subject.

And I think the warning was,

"Beware of people from the government bearing gifts,"

because it often means that they want to direct your attention.

They don't want to tell you what's going on with UFOs

or reveal anything to you.

By design, it's all smoke and mirrors

when you're looking to these projects.

If you're confused and you're lost,

it's because the people who do this are great at their jobs.

These are not unintelligent people.

They have unlimited amounts of money,

sometimes six to seven times the budget for the project

is how much they can spend on security.

They've been perfecting this for decades.

They're not craftsmen of disinformation, they're artists.

[King] There's another, even more perplexing, side to the secrecy

that goes beyond the nuts and bolts of things like nonhuman craft

and secret weapons technology.

Strangely, that secret seems to be very closely tied to human consciousness,

to who we are and what we are capable of doing.

[Elizondo] So there's this incredible secrecy that's been around UAP technologies

and potentially even, you know, these flesh-and-blood entities

that are associated with them right from the very beginning.

And at the same time,

there's something else that's been associated with the phenomenon

right from the get-go, right?

And that's human potential,

and specifically ESP, telekinesis,

and all sorts of other "psycho-energetic phenomena," we'll call them.

These things that are supposed to be comic-book things, right?

[Chase] There are many people who are completely resistant

to the idea that UFOs could have anything to do with consciousness

or the paranormal, what people often call "woo."

But the reality is that it's impossible to separate UFOs from the woo.

If you eliminate the woo from the conversation, in a very real way,

you aren't really talking about the UFO phenomenon anymore.

We know this not just because of the way that these encounters with these things

impact and interact with human consciousness

on both the individual and cultural levels,

but because the very history of ufology itself

is inextricably linked to the mysteries of consciousness.

If you do a little digging, you quickly realize

that many, if not most, of the people

who have been at the very heart of ufology for decades,

and who are still prominent names in the field today,

aren't just interested in UFOs.

In fact, that seems to be just one piece of the puzzle.

They're also deeply involved in the study of things like psi phenomena,

near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences,

and what one might call "the soul."

And yet these are things that are very rarely spoken about

and are often ridiculed within the current disclosure discourse.

You have to ask yourself, "Why?"

[Pasulka] So early in my experience of, you know, shifting my research

from Catholic ascent narratives

to modern reports of UFO encounters,

there were a lot of people that reached out to me.

And one of the people that reached out to me was Tyler,

in my book American Cosmic.

And he's a mission controller,

and he works for the Space Force.

And he had some really interesting hobbies,

which was, how he told me, looking at UFO parts and things like that.

Honestly, I didn't believe him.

I thought it was kind of crazy, right? I was like, "Okay."

But I'm trained to understand, right,

people have differing beliefs. And this was his belief.

[King] Two of the central figures of Diana's book American Cosmic

are Tyler and James.

These aren't their real names.

They're aliases she assigned to them to protect their identities,

because both Tyler and James are essentially members

of what Jacques Vallee has referred to as the Invisible College,

which is a loosely associated group of scientists and researchers

who study the UFO phenomenon but often do so in secrecy,

mostly to protect their reputations and careers.

Since the book was released,

Dr. Garry Nolan, who's the chair of the Pathology Department at Stanford University

and one of the world's preeminent scientists in his field,

has come forward to acknowledge that he is James.

Tyler still has not publicly identified himself,

but he's a longtime high-level member of the space program,

as well as a wildly successful biotech entrepreneur.

Diana gave him the name Tyler after Tyler Durden from Fight Club

because she sees the world that he lives in

as existing by the same primary rule of Fight Club,

which is that you don't talk about it.

[Pasulka] He said he was interested in talking to me

because the next frontier

or the next breakthrough in his field

would come from my field.

And I was very confused when he first told me that.

Now I understand why he said that,

now that I see what's going on, right?

But that was early on, and I thought,

"How can something that has to do with nuts-and-bolts rocket technology

come from my field, religious studies?"

[Chase] Through Tyler, we get a glimpse into a very strange world

where bleeding-edge science, human potential,

and communication with nonhuman intelligences seems to collide.

After the trauma of witnessing his friend and mentor, astronaut Judy Resnick,

die in the Challenger explosion in 1986,

Tyler went through a profound personal transformation.

As a result of this, he found that he suddenly

had ideas for complex scientific experiments

that needed to be conducted in the zero-gravity environment in space.

But these didn't feel like regular ideas.

They came to him fully formed,

in a way that felt more like a memory.

And when these experiments were done in space,

they went the way that he knew that they would go,

and they led to major breakthroughs.

So Tyler started to work on this new ability that he had

to access information that he calls "downloads,"

information that he believes comes to him from off-world intelligences.

He started a biotech company,

and the types of technology and innovation that he claims to have downloaded

have made him a very rich man.

[Pasulka] So one of the things that I learned

early on was that a lot of the people in the--

Related to the space program, but also a lot of the people that I was interacting with

who were experiencers and were super high-functioning,

like Dr. Garry Nolan and people like that,

they would be utilizing things like the--

I call them the "protocols" because that's what they appeared to be to me.

So-- And I'm very familiar with them because, in religious traditions,

some of the high-functioning people in a church

would also have these kinds of protocols.

They were monks or they were nuns, and they lived a certain way,

and they ate a certain way, you know, and it was--

It was a way of living

that allowed them to be very creative and high-functioning.

And I noticed that Tyler had his own set of

these protocols that he lived by and utilized.

And so I focused on that,

and I actually asked him about it.

And he didn't know, really--

He didn't see any connection between how he was living

and the really amazing technologies that he was creating

until I pointed it out to him.

I said, "Well, you're not the only one who does this.

Actually, there's a long tradition,

especially in the space program, by the way."

[Chase] The protocols have become a major part of Diana's research,

and she occasionally offers classes on them.

And I was lucky enough to take one.

And what's really striking to me about these protocols

is that, first of all, they work.

If you follow these protocols, it does seem to unlock a deep well of creativity

and a profound sense of purpose for people.

And many people report experiencing

a kind of synchronistic orchestration in their work,

where people and ideas and resources come to them

at exactly the right moment to propel them forward.

And second is that, at least on their surface,

these protocols are really simple.

Things like getting a lot of sleep,

drinking a lot of water, getting a lot of sun,

meditating, doing intense exercise,

and abstaining from alcohol, drugs and caffeine.

But as easy as those things sound,

when you try to follow them all,

you quickly realize that every aspect of our modern lives

seems to be set up to incentivize us to not do those things.

It's actually really hard.

And it makes you wonder:

What might humans be capable of doing

if our lives weren't seemingly set up to cut us off

from this source of creativity and innovation?

[King] It's not just scientists and members of the space program

who are interested in these types of abilities and these protocols.

Intelligence agencies have been aware of

and have been investing considerable resources into these areas for decades.

And what's fascinating is that many of the people

who were involved in the creation of these secret programs

focused on psi phenomena

were founded by people whose names are very familiar to those in the UFO community.

People like Hal Puthoff, Russell Targ, Ingo Swann and many more

were involved in these programs from the very beginning.

Hi, I'm Paul H. Smith. I'm a retired Army major.

Was in the remote viewing program for seven years

and associated with remote viewing ever since then.

[Chase] Most people are very surprised to learn that, for decades,

the U.S. government invested in the development and use of psychic abilities

to aid in their intelligence efforts.

But it's true.

That program went by a lot of different names over the years,

but the most commonly used is the Stargate Project.

The Stargate Project was a secret Army unit

that was established at Fort Meade in the 1970s

by the DIA and SRI International.

And one of their main functions was the use of remote viewing

to obtain intelligence information that they were having trouble getting

through more traditional means.

[Smith] People often wonder what remote viewing is.

It's a skill based off of extrasensory perception.

So commonly, being psychic.

But remote viewing is actually a specific skill

as to how to access that underlying

consciousness-based psychic ability

that, in fact, every human has.

They just don't realize it all the time.

And it allows a remote viewer to perceive, describe, experience

distant locations to which they have no-- Otherwise no sensory access.

It allows them to perceive objects or things that are shielded.

I mean, for example, inside a bank vault,

inside an opaque envelope or whatever.

And interestingly enough, it also gives remote viewers, us, access to time as well.

A remote viewer can describe events that were in the past

and, to a limited degree, events that are going to happen in the future.

People are often surprised that the U.S. government would spend any time or money

on something as farfetched as remote viewing.

But people don't understand how the military looks at things.

One thing about national defense

is you have to be very pragmatic about how you approach it.

If something looks like it might help,

generally speaking, you wanna give it a try and see if it does or not.

And since the Soviets were very heavily engaged in paranormal research

and, presumably, at the time had a paranormal program,

what we would call a "remote viewing program,"

the U.S. intelligence community

felt like it had to investigate that.

And it turned out it worked.

And so that sparked, essentially, a 23-year program

during the height of the Cold War.

And it didn't work all the time. I'll be totally honest,

there were times when it failed.

But there were times when it absolutely worked, and it made a difference,

despite what a lot of more skeptical people wanna say.

[King] The fact that the U.S. government

was utilizing what are essentially psychic spies during the Cold War

can be hard to swallow, but it happened.

We first heard about these programs in an exposé

on the original Stanford Research Institute program back in the '70s.

And in the mid-'90s, we got confirmation

of the existence of these programs

when the CIA declassified some of the records.

The original founder of the remote viewing program,

Hal Puthoff, published a paper in 1995, shortly after the release of these records,

in which he stated that was the first time

that he'd been able to use the terms "CIA,"

"Stanford Research Institute," and "remote viewing" in the same sentence

since the program first began back in 1972.

What's perhaps even more shocking

than the fact that the U.S. government invested in remote viewing

is the fact that these techniques actually work.

It sounds like science fiction,

but the thing about remote viewing

is that you don't have to take anyone's word for it.

You can try it yourself.

And the vast majority of people find that, with a little bit of patience and effort,

they can have some real success with it.

Remote viewing seems to be an ability that most people have to some degree or another.

It's like basketball.

There's only a handful of people on the planet

who can hang in a game of one-on-one with LeBron James,

but just about anyone can at least get a ball through a hoop with a little practice.

And once you realize that this is something that you can do,

it completely changes the way that you look at the world.

[muted]

[Smith] One of the really valuable things to me

is when I'm there working with a student,

a remote viewing student, and they know what they know

and they know what they don't know when they start about the target.

And if, towards the end or even partway through,

they start describing and perceiving the target, and then they get their feedback

and they realize that they actually succeeded,

it's like an epiphany for some of these folks.

Their eyes get big. They go, "Oh, wow."

And they're so excited. I mean, you can even--

You can almost feel their heart racing, you know,

'cause they're so thrilled by actually accomplishing that

because they've now proved something to themselves, right?

They've proved that they really can do it,

that something society says is impossible isn't impossible.

And they get really excited.

And I'm down at the other end of the table going,

"Oh man, this is awesome. This is awesome."

You know, 'cause I just-- I love seeing that,

that transformation that people go through

when they actually successfully accomplished something

that they only had thought was, hm, hypothetically possible.

All of a sudden, it becomes reality.

[Chase] The reality of remote viewing is so startling

because it upends everything that we think we know

about the nature of our reality and what a human being is capable of doing.

When you begin to really consider the larger implications of what all of that means,

suddenly it becomes obvious why this is something that's not just been hidden from us,

but has been actively made into a laughingstock and stigmatized.

Of course the powers that be wouldn't want us to know about this.

[Elizondo] You know, the reason for secrecy around psi phenomena

is the fact that it is a threat to overall secrecy.

You can have no secrets when the average person,

with the right training and the right background,

can pull information that you want kept secret from anywhere.

It explodes any notion of privacy and secrecy,

which is obviously a big deal in the national security state.

You also have this issue of human potential

and the idea that knowledge of that might change the way people relate to authority.

The very notion that people might have these abilities inherent

is threatening to the status quo.

[Chase] Journalist and UFO researcher Linda Moulton Howe

once described the environment of secrecy and disinformation

that exists around the UFO phenomenon

as "a fractured hall of mirrors with a quicksand floor."

Over the decades, many who have sought to understand the phenomenon

have found themselves in that place,

often at the cost of their careers, their families and their mental health.

So how do we forge a way forward

in a field where the waters have been so intentionally muddied,

where the intelligence community continues to sow disinformation,

and where so much of the relevant data

is classified at the highest levels?

[King] There's no question that the disclosure movement

is of historical importance and ethical importance as well,

not just to those of us living in the U.S.,

but to the entire human race.

If there are such things as inalienable rights,

certainly one of the most important would be our right to science itself.

Understanding the nature of our reality,

the truth about the world that we live in.

We absolutely should be demanding greater transparency

around this issue from our government,

and we owe a debt of gratitude to the people

who have risked their careers and even their lives to do so.

But at the same time as we're supporting disclosure, we also need to be mindful

not to let the narratives around disclosure define the entire conversation.

It'd be naive to think that the decades of secrets, lies and obfuscation

are something that we're going to be able to dismantle overnight.

And the very real national security concerns that arise

when we're talking about potentially paradigm-shattering technology

mean that, realistically,

we're probably never going to get the full truth from the government.

As this movement gains momentum, we should actually expect

that the environment of disinformation may get much worse

before it gets better.

So the question we need to be asking ourselves is

how can we as a community make progress in our understanding of the phenomenon,

knowing that all these things are true?

[Elizondo] There have been very good researchers over the years

who have become too tied to

and too dependent on the intelligence community, right?

They keep on going to these people, and they stop doing research,

and it just becomes a question-and-answer session

with someone whose job it is to lie,

and not just to lie but to ruin people.

And so that's the danger here.

That's the danger that the UFO community,

especially now, in this very important inflection point, right?

We've gotta be careful.

[Madden] There's also other problems, that if you do think

you've been systematically deceived

and then someone says, "Oh, but now I'm telling the truth,"

there is the question of, "Why would I believe that?"

Right?

So even if people got what they wanted in this disclosure,

I'm not sure that it really solves the epistemic question

because we're in this sort of very, very sullied information environment already.

And so I'm not sure--

I think people are overestimating what disclosure would even bring them, okay?

Unless you're prepared to trust the very people

that many people have claimed we shouldn't trust.

[Cutchin] I think that ufology needs to ask better questions.

I think it also could spare placing less of an emphasis on answers.

I think that, while it is important to the future of humanity

that we have authority structures tell us all that they know about the phenomenon,

it's also important to realize that the truest form of disclosure that you can obtain

will come from you.

You need to convince yourself.

You need to convince yourself that these phenomena are real and they exist.

And once you've accomplished that,

you don't need anyone to tell you what it is and what's not real.

[Iandoli] We don't need their permission

to investigate the UFO phenomenon.

We don't need the U.S. government's permission to investigate reality.

We don't need anybody's permission to tell us

that we're allowed to know the truth about something

when there's plenty of people who have had firsthand experience

with the UFO phenomenon.

It's not up to them. It's not their decision.

And also, you don't need them to.

We as people can do it ourselves.

[King] UFOs and other related anomalous phenomena aren't just a part of our reality.

They're an integral and important part of human experience,

which means that they're accessible to everyone.

If we seek these things out, they can't be hidden from us.

[Whiteley] So far, we don't see this big craft, you know, landing in Central Park,

or, you know, they don't come to our leaders.

They come-- This phenomenon appears to us individually.

And that's interesting

that we are being affected one by one.

But once we've got a medium to discuss, you know,

such as the work that you are doing,

then people feel accepted

and they feel that they could share and explore

the transitions they're going through.

[Madden] For me,

it's about finding out where the human place in things is.

Okay? It's about recovering a kind of human humility that I think is necessary

for us to live in an enchanted world again.

And I really can't imagine something more important for us right now than that.

Okay?

And I don't think I need the government to tell me that,

hey, it turns out that man is not the measure of things after all, right?

And that we are-- We are in a relationship

to something operating at scales that maybe we can't fathom.

And maybe it's time for us to listen again.

[Chase] Since it's clear that real disclosure likely isn't going to come

from the top down,

then it's on us to build it from the ground up through grassroots initiatives

fueled by the collective curiosity and ingenuity of humanity.

The reality of the UFO phenomenon

challenges nearly every facet of human understanding,

from science and technology to philosophy and religion,

to the history and origins of humanity itself.

To unravel this mystery, we'll need experts from a wide variety of fields

working together in an unprecedented spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration.

But this endeavor will require more than just the expertise of specialists.

It calls for the participation of people from all walks of life,

each bringing their unique perspectives and skills to the table.

Artists, writers, citizen scientists,

hobbyists, organizers, enthusiasts and more

all have a vital role to play in facilitating the conversations

and innovation necessary to drive this movement forward.

This is a team sport, a truly human project

the likes of which the world has never seen.

And in that lies incredible potential

to discover and occupy a new paradigm

that integrates the full spectrum

of human knowledge and experience.

[King] The path of human progress has always been driven

by those who have been willing to gaze into the heart of our deepest mysteries

and to take on the challenges that seem impossible.

From the discovery of the principles of mathematics in antiquity

to landing on the moon,

our greatest achievements have always required us

to push ourselves beyond the world of the everyday

and into the shadowy realms of the unknown.

This moment in history presents us

with just such an opportunity for discovery and transcendence.

If we rise to meet this challenge together,

we have the potential to reveal what amounts to nothing less than a new reality

and to, perhaps for the first time,

begin to truly understand our place in the cosmos.

[man] We're living in a little corner of the world,

just a little corner of it, that we call reality.

But hey, there's a lot more out there.

We need to turn off the lights, open the door,

and walk out of this little house we live in.

And then we're gonna start to see something real.

[dramatic music playing]