Original subtitles

ANNOUNCER: This program is rated PG, and contains

ANNOUNCER: This program is rated PG, and contains

mature subject matter.

Viewer discretion is advised.

)

- [Narrator] Tonight on Unidentified.

- Out of nowhere this object drops out from the sky,

zipped off in incredible speed.

- [Narrator] It was the sighting that stunned the world.

- We were all clamoring to get on the radio,

"What the f--- is that?"

- [Narrator] Unidentified objects captured on video

by US Navy pilots.

- Somebody has mastered aeronautical technologies

that are far superior to anything we possess.

- [Pilot]Look at that thing dude.

- [Narrator] Now a new development,

possibly more troubling than the objects themselves,

is there a conspiracy to hide the truth?

- And he comes in,

asks for the hard drives that were on that plane.

- Doesn't it seem odd to you

that the Air Force hasn't spoken up?

- [Narrator] Does the trail lead

to America's most secret base?

- [Narrator] Are these UFOs made in the USA

or are they truly unidentified?

- [Lue] If this is a flight safety issue

or a potential threat to national security

then we need to know about it.

(whooshing)

- [Narrator] Everything we know about UFOs is changing.

Thanks to a team led by former Pentagon UFO investigator,

Lue Elizando.

- That is real, whatever that is.

- [Narrator] And former top intelligence official,

Chris Mellon.

- This is a current continuing phenomenon it's happening,

it continues to happen.

(whooshing)

- [Narrator] They discovered five unique characteristics

that UFOs have in common called the five observables.

They also released groundbreaking videos

that forced the Navy to admit its pilots

were coming face to face with unidentified objects.

- [Reporter] The US Navy made a shocking admission today.

- [Reporter] Strange flying objects caught on tape

by their own fighter pilots are in fact, UFOs.

(upbeat dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Now a new wave of military witnesses

is coming out of the shadows.

- I've never seen anything move like that.

Shape, size, speed is clearly unidentified.

- [Narrator] The team is United on a new mission,

connect the dots to reveal the truth about UFOs.

- This thing had no capability like anything on earth.

- [Narrator] And warn the world

about the dangers they might represent.

- Carl Sagan once famously said,

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."

He was absolutely right,

but now we have the proof.

(whooshing)

(upbeat dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Lue Elizando and the team have been haunted

by what Navy pilots encountered over the Pacific in 2004.

And over the Atlantic in 2015.

- [Chris] US aerospace is being violated

by vehicles of unknown origin with advanced capabilities.

- [Narrator] The objects were captured on video

that Tom DeLonge was determined to show the world.

- [Tom] I was like, there's three videos coming.

The first three videos of UFOs to be declassified

in US history.

- [Narrator] The first video was taken by pilots

from the USS Nimitz

who chased down the Tic Tac shape object.

- It's white, it has no wings, it has no rotors.

- Maybe 40 feet.

Large enough to scare the s--- out of me.

- [Narrator] The other two videos

were believed to be recorded in 2015

over the Atlantic by stunned pilots

from the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

(upbeat dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Elizando and his partners are still grappling

with the implications of what these Navy pilots saw.

- [Lue] This is an evolving story.

I think we realize now that the USS Nimitz incident

may be actually far more comprehensive

than anyone of us initially thought.

There's been some whispers now for the last six months

that other individuals in the Navy, on board the vessels

and possibly other aircraft actually saw

the Tic Tac with their own eyes.

I wanna get to the bottom of it.

- [Narrator] One of those individuals is now

coming forward.

Omar Lara was an enlisted sailor

who worked on the Nimitz's aviation fuel systems.

- Jets would come in park,

we'd fuel them up.

They'll disembark.

(whooshing)

- [Narrator] In November 2004,

the Nimitz led a carrier strike group

on a training exercise off the Southern California coast

that included an attack submarine

in the advanced radar-equipped USS Princeton.

Several days after the infamous Tic Tac video was taken

Lara says he was on the Nimitz deck,

responding to what turned out to be a false alarm

of a man overboard.

- All the jets had left

except for the personnel who take care of maintenance

and the work centers on board the aircraft carrier,

and a sailor had a falling overboard.

And at that time a man overboard was called

and everyone needs to report in person.

So we ended up on the fantail starboard side,

looking towards out to the vest ocean's

beautiful panoramic view.

And out of nowhere,

this object drops out from the sky

at incredible speed.

It just plants itself right above the ocean.

The object itself was this white luminescent object.

This thing did not stop

or slow down up until maybe a hundred feet

above the waterline.

And it stopped on a dime.

Then it zipped off to our right

at incredible speed with no Sonic boom.

You had to literally move your torso,

a slight turn to your right to follow it.

The speed and the maneuverability of this object

is nothing I've ever seen

in my 10 years in the United States Navy.

(upbeat suspenseful music)

- Mr. Lara's testimony is very important

because Mr. Lara is reporting the same type of maneuvering

that was described by the pilots.

You have, Mr. Lara, substantiating,

instantaneous acceleration.

You also have hypersonic velocities

and this ability to seemingly defy gravity,

you don't have wings

and you don't have any obvious means of propulsion.

- I do not believe that what I saw was made on this planet.

If it wasn't made by us

and you can count us off as the number one superpower.

This thing just basically made you feel smaller.

It's a paradigm changer.

- [Narrator] But perhaps what's most striking

about Lara's alleged sighting,

is that it was unknown until the videos were made public.

(upbeat suspenseful music)

16 years after the Nimitz incident,

the team investigates evidence of a coverup.

- Gentleman, great to see all again.

- [Narrator] The team is following a trail

that could lead to the US militaries own black projects.

- This last year and a half,

two years has been pretty monumental

in what we've been able to collectively achieve

regarding the topic.

You have an acknowledgement by the Department of Defense

that the videos were authentic.

And you also have an acknowledgement now

from the Navy

that these things that are depicted

in these videos are truly unidentified aerial phenomenon.

- And we have to figure out what that is, all of us.

- [Narrator] Jim Semivan spent 25 years

working as an Operations Officer for the CIA.

- It's a fundamental issue for the intelligence community.

It's a fundamental issue for the FBI for heaven's sakes

and for DIA, for CIA.

- For them to have that level of ignorance is astonishing.

- We have irrefutable evidence

of an intelligently controlled vehicle defying science,

something operating beyond

what we even thought was possible.

- The Pentagon officially said that

there was nothing else involving the USS Nimitz incident,

nothing to see here,

but there is indeed more information

involving the Nimitz.

I think that's a big deal.

- [Narrator] The Pentagon says it has more evidence

from the Nimitz encounter video and other data,

but won't release it because of national security concerns.

- You still have the Department of Defense

to some degree dragging their feet.

Just recently they acknowledged the fact that there were

more videos in their possession,

and they also had some classified briefings

that they were not going to release them to the public.

- It might be something like,

"Okay, we have another picture of that same Tic Tac

"at the same location, but from a different system,

"there was a classified system."

- I think it's interesting because it shows

that there's still segment within the US government

that is for some reason,

hesitant or resistant to have the conversation.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] The team is especially interested

in one branch of the armed forces.

- Does it didn't seem odd to you

that the Air Force hasn't spoken up?

I'm quite puzzled.

- Chris has voiced that concern as well.

Where the hell is the Air Force in this entire conversation?

I mean, we can only speculate why they're being quiet.

- [Narrator] Coming up on Unidentified.

For the first time a Navy eye witness

claims Air Force officers dropped in on the Nimitz

and took with them key evidence.

- He asked for the hard drives that were on that plane

and he stops me.

He's like, "Just give him to me."

- He brings this vision of Men In Black, showing up.

- [Narrator] And the trail leads to a secretive location.

- [Patrick] I mean, somebody out there

knows a lot more than we do.

(upbeat dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Lue Elizando has just her testimony

from a new eye witness to the 2004 Nimitz UFO encounter.

Now he's digging deeper into allegations

of a military coverup.

- [Patrick] Howdy.

- [Lue] Hey sir, how are you?

- Good, how are you? - Good.

- [Lue] I'm Lue. - Nice to meet you.

- [Lue] Thank you for allowing me

to invade your house here.

- [Patrick] Anytime.

- [Lue] I'd love to know a little bit about yourself.

You were in the Navy?

- Yes, sir, it was just under 11 years,

I was Navy Avionics Technician.

Primarily on the E2 Hawkeye.

- [Narrator] On November 14th, 2004,

F-18s from the USS Nimitz took off

on a routine training exercise.

- It was a workup cycle for our 2005 deployment.

They were doing air defense exercises that day.

The planes go out

and basically play laser tag with each other,

a good guy versus bad guy enough

to get their training back out.

- [Narrator] Patrick Hughes' job

power up in launching E2 Hawkeye

the exercises airborne quarterback,

which will direct the jets maneuvers.

- We control the missions.

We control pretty much everything that goes on

once those planes leave the carrier deck.

(whooshing)

(upbeat dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Shortly after the exercise began,

radar technicians start tracking a strange object

prompting the now-famous sequence of events,

Commander Fravor, and his wing man intercept the object,

but then it flies off appearing to travel hundreds of miles

in the blink of an eye.

While they E2 Hawkeye monitors, the action from a far.

Another FA team captures the incredible Tic Tac video.

(whooshing)

After the Hawkeye lands,

Hughes could tell something wasn't right.

- Normally when the crew walked out of the airplane,

whoever the mission commander was will stop

and let you know how the mission was,

but they didn't stop to talk to anybody this time.

They just bolted down below.

And no, thanks to talking to a crew like that

the actual Tic Tac object formed top of the Hawkeye

and the five guys in that crew all saw real close.

Wasn't for very long, but they all saw it.

- I was not aware that people in the Hawkeye

actually had eyes down on the Tic Tac.

It begs a question that at the time

when I was at AATIP,

why wasn't that little bit of information shared with us?

Maybe it was a trust issue.

- [Narrator] The Hawkeye's alleged Tic Tac sighting

might also have been kept secret

because of the data captured by its sensors.

- That plane, when it left the deck

was recording everything they saw on the screens,

all the information, all the button touches,

basically, everything they do.

And there's been some contention about that,

but I know for a fact it was recording

'cause I hit the button

and I turned it off when it got back.

- You specifically remember turning on

that piece of equipment that day,

and then again, upon recovery, turning it off?

- Correct.

- That is interesting.

- [Narrator] The plane's recordings

could contain key evidence of the Tic Tac's capabilities.

- It sees what the Princeton saw.

It saw what the Nimitz saw.

It saw some other stuff saw.

So it's recording a big picture

of everything that's going on that day.

- Okay, interesting.

- I do our post-flight checks on the airplane.

Make sure everything's turned off,

take all our classified hard drives out.

We keep them in our safe.

We don't leave those in the airplane.

And normally that's the end of it.

(upbeat dramatic music)

After I'd gotten back downstairs,

my commanding officer comes to our workspace door.

- [Narrator] But his commanding officer wasn't alone.

- With them are two guys in the Air Force flight suits.

I don't remember their ranks but there's a

very big difference between a Navy flight suit

and the insignia in an Air Force flight suit.

- So you were confident

these were Air Force representatives.

- Yes, sir.

- [Narrator] It seemed unusual to Hughes,

to encounter Air Force personnel

who didn't identify themselves.

What happened next was even stranger.

- [Patrick] He comes in,

asks for the hard drives that were on that plane.

So we go get them out

and start logging them out in our little log book

and he stops me.

Just he's like, "Give them to me."

No-- - No hand receipt?

- [Patrick] Nope, nothing.

- How much time transpired

from the time you retrieve those hard drives of the Hawkeye

till the time that the CEO's knocking on your door

with two Air Force people?

- All in all, I'd say probably about a half-hour.

- [Narrator] The Nimitz wasn't the only ship that day

from which data was taken.

Chris Mellon previously heard a similar account

from a radar technician on the nearby USS Princeton,

which had been tracking strange objects for days

before the encounter.

- A helicopter arrived, people got off the helicopter,

they came in and they requested all the data recording.

And right after that,

I was requested to hand over the data recording tapes

and anything that wasn't recorded on during the event,

I was to erase.

- How unusual was this request to destroy it,

erase this data?

- It was completely unprecedented.

- [Narrator] While both accounts suggest a possible coverup,

Hughes story is a firsthand account

of possible Air Force involvement.

But why would the Air Force confiscate Navy flight data

of a UFO?

- It brings this vision of the "men In black" showing up.

- There was obviously data and information

that was recorded on those E2 Hawkeyes that somebody wanted.

- [Narrator] Tim McMillan is a journalist

who spent months investigating the Nimitz incident.

- We can assume that it was taken somewhere to be analyzed.

That's the big key,

because there's a significant amount of data there

that should give us a lot more definitive conclusions

about what this is.

Now, if you consider that

with the aspect that 15 years later,

they say, "It's unidentified,"

that makes it even more intriguing.

- [Narrator] Did the Air Force remove the data

because they wanted to study the unidentified object

or were they collecting information

on their own top-secret creation?

- It's equally possible that the Navy has no clue

what it is.

And it's an Air Force project

that they didn't tell the Navy about.

The left-hand does not always know

what the right hand is doing.

- [Narrator] Hughes also believes there's a good reason

why they would test a top-secret craft on the Navy.

- I have this new super technology I wanna test it out.

I'm gonna throw it at the best we have.

And the Nimitz strike group was pretty much the best we had.

I mean, somebody out there knows a lot more than we do.

They may have very, very good reason for not sharing it.

(whooshing)

- [Narrator] Coming up on Unidentified,

pulling the curtain back on a top-secret project.

- So I just kind monitor that, I watching them.

And I was wondering,

"How come no one's seen these darn things?"

(whooshing)

- When I was in the Pentagon,

we only had a small shot in time

of what we referred to as the Nimitz incident.

But now more and more people are feeling enjoined

to come forward and say, "It wasn't just the four pilots

"or a blip on a screen.

"And I saw something strange."

(whooshing)

- [Narrator] Lue Elizando has just heard

from a former US Navy crewman

who says two mysterious Air Force officers showed up

on the USS Nimitz after its famous Tic Tac UFO encounter

and confiscated flight data that could prove its existence.

The explosive theory,

Air Force officers wanted to see how the Tic Tac performed

because the Tic Tac

was actually a top-secret Air Force craft.

Following that lead Elizando speaks with man

who worked at the most secretive Air Force facility of all.

- Hello, sir, Mr. Barnes.

- Yes, how're you doing today?

- [Narrator] T.D. Barnes is a former CIA engineer

who spent most of his career working

on classified technology often at area 51.

60 years later,

Barnes is willing to speak for the first time on camera,

about the electronic warfare systems he created

and their possible connection to the Nimitz event.

- I think Nimitz is interesting

because so many people saw the same thing

that whether or not it was a real event,

I think that's beyond question.

The question is what was it?

And if it was some sort of electronic warfare capability,

fine, but then that information didn't get

to the right people.

You know that's, that's something...

(whooshing)

- [Narrator] One of the programs Barnes worked on

was called project Palladium.

The cold war technology used electronic signals

to trick the Soviets into seeing whole squadrons

that weren't there.

- [Narrator] To Elizando, this sounds eerily familiar.

Radar operator, Kevin Day previously told Elizando

he tracked a group of strange aircraft

in the days leading up to the Nimitz event.

- I started noticing these anomalous contacts on our radar.

There was like 10 or 12 objects

and it was kind of watching them on display.

It was like watching the snowfall in the sky.

- [Narrator] The objects were seen on Day's radar,

but seemingly nowhere else.

- So I just kind of monitor that, watching them.

And I was wondering,

"How come no one's seeing these darn things?"

- [Narrator] Could, what Day saw be phantoms

caused by radar spoofing technology

and what accounts for the Tic Tac object

seen by Nimitz pilots up close?

(whooshing)

- [Narrator] Palladium used metallic balloons

to reflect radar signals.

- I'm kind of curious from your perspective,

going back to the Tic Tac

and these balloons that were part of Palladium,

if, is it possible that the balloons,

not only were you testing different size balloons,

but maybe even different shapes of balloons?

- That's fascinating.

So from your perspective,

the incident that occurred here in 2004

may be some sort of US technology.

- [Narrator] This raises a troubling question,

would the Air Force test top-secret technology

on Navy pilots without their knowledge?

- Right.

- [Narrator] One theory, is what the Nimitz pilots saw

was related to a 21st-century version

of what T.D. Barnes developed for the Air Force.

Tim McMillan spent months investigating

if any known technologies might explain the Tic Tac.

- Early 2004-ish, funding has jumped up.

Technologies are being boosted.

A lot of the older subs were being retrofitted

whether, some of the missile tubes are being altered

for it to launch drones.

- [Narrator] A submarine launch drone

could potentially explain another detail

from the Nimitz sighting.

- One of the fascinating things with the 2004 incident

was this frothy whitewash.

- [Narrator] The pilots who first encountered the Tic Tac

reported seeing it hovering over disturbance in the ocean.

(indistinct chatter)

- We all very quickly realized

that there was something in the water,

churning like boiling.

One of my theories was that a submarine

that surfaced launched something and was re-submerging.

- [Narrator] McMillan believes he found enticing clues

to the Tic Tacs possible origins,

but nothing that can explain

its incredible flight characteristics.

And what about the objects caught on tape by pilots

from a USS Roosevelt 10 years later?

- [Narrator] McMillan thinks those sightings

could be related to a more recent program known as Nemesis.

- Nemesis is a fascinating technology we know exist.

Very similar to Palladium.

They're injecting multiple false targets

and the idea is that you've got one plane,

we wanna make it look like 50

in hopes that they're not gonna pick out the right one.

- [Narrator] Nemesis was originally developed

by the Navy and use the swarms of drones

that emit signals to fool enemy radar.

- [Pilot] Look at that thing dude!

- There's some very close timeframes

in terms of when the Nemesis system was being tested.

And when these pilots during the Roosevelt encounter

said that they observed the objects.

- [Narrator] Could this technology

or a similar system account for what F-18 pilots

from the USS Roosevelt say they witnessed

on their target tracking screens?

- [Second Pilot] My gosh.

- [Narrator] But what about the objects

other pilots reported seeing up close?

- It was basically a cube inside of sphere

where the points of the cube were touching outside

of the sphere.

- [Narrator] McMillan believes the cubes

might have a simple explanation.

- In the few visual observations,

at least that at I'm aware of,

with the cubes inside of spheres type thing

that sounds consistent with a radar reflectors.

- [Narrator] But Chris Mellon believes few,

if any of these sightings can be explained

by current US technology.

- I've been out of the Defense Department for quite a while,

electronic warfare was old then, it's even older now.

It's a never-ending game of cat and mouse.

However, it's not an explanation

for what happened in the Nimitz incident

or what was happening in 2015 off the East coast.

That's what we need to remind people.

It has very little to do with the UAP phenomenon.

- [Narrator] And for Mellon, the Navy's public statement

that pilots are encountering unidentified aerial phenomenon

is proof positive that what they're seeing

is not US technology from the Air Force or anyone else.

- [Chris] It's really a stretch for people

to try to suggest these incidents

it could be explained by some secret program.

It was being used against our own people

behind the backs of Congress

who are briefed for all these programs,

the military wouldn't be going up to Capitol Hill

saying publicly, these are not ours

if in fact, it was electronic warfare program

that wouldn't be happening.

- [Narrator] But even if Navy personnel were guinea pigs

in the top-secret test,

what can explain this next sight?

Coming up on Unidentified.

- [Narrator] A confidential source

describes a terrifying UFO encounter.

He says the military tried to bury.

(dramatic music)

(ocean breeze blows)

- [Narrator] Lue Elizando has uncovered information

that the UFO seen by the Nimitz pilots could be related

to U.S. Air Force tests, but not everyone believes it.

He's been contacted by a new witness

about an incident involving a military helicopter.

- [Narrator] This Defense Department Investigator

asked to have his identity protected.

He says he personally investigated the UFO encounter.

- [Narrator] He won't reveal

the exact location of the incident.

(helicopter chuffing)

- [Narrator] The pilots we're testing

brand new attack helicopters

when one witnessed something unexplained.

- [Lue] He associated those lights as being somehow

correlated to the event that occurred

and then only when those things were gone,

did the helicopter behave normally, is that correct?

- [Narrator] Elizando says it's also not the first time

he's heard of unidentified objects

exhibiting this behavior.

- [Lue] From personal experience I'm aware of the relevance

that some of these UAP have

regarding our national security assets and equities.

Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to go

into a whole lot of detail on that

but what I can say is that this is nothing new

and I'm not surprised at all to hear that there was

you know, three points of light that seemed to be flying

in a consistent formation and pattern.

(helicopter chuffing)

- [Narrator] The investigator says

he reported it to his superiors

and the committee was formed to dig further.

He says they uncovered at least seven other

similar incidents involving helicopters and orbs,

but he was shocked at their conclusion.

- After this event occurred you learn that

there was actually other reports of similar type activity

occurring perhaps seven or eight other times

to the point where they actually established a committee,

an internal committee to try to figure this out

and only when they didn't have any answers

did they wind up scratching their head, closing the books

and say, well, nothing to see here folks.

- [Narrator] Why wouldn't the military keep probing?

Were they hiding another test of a top secret

electronic countermeasure?

Or is it evidence of an unknown technology

the government doesn't want to acknowledge

because it doesn't understand it.

- [Lue] You now have pilots flying helicopters

and now coming into contact with these,

we'll call them orbs, if you will

and all of a sudden now there's a correlation

between these orbs and equipment failure.

You could have an issue

where you potentially could collide with one of the things

- There is something occurring, there are transgressions

of restricted military airspace

and of U.S. borders that are going on

that our own military has acknowledged publicly.

They wouldn't be saying that if they own the very programs

that were causing those sightings.

- [Narrator] Coming up, Elizando searches for answers

from one of the original UFO insiders.

- We're moving away from the allegory of tinfoil hats

and Elvis on the mothership to no kidding

there's something there.

- Well, there's absolutely no doubt on the physical reality

of some UFOs.

(electronic logo music)

sic)

- [Narrator] In the wake of reports

that the Pentagon may have covered up UFO sightings

by the U.S. Navy and didn't pursue reports of orbs

seen from a U.S. army helicopter,

Lue Elizando gets guidance from a man he trusts,

a man who has been seeking the truth

about what the government knows about UFOs for years.

- Colonel John Alexander was a godfather

of everything spooky and weird at the Pentagon.

- Lue.

- Great to see you my friend, how are you?

- Good, good.

- [Lue] John Alexander ran a lot of the programs

at the U.S. government pretended like we didn't have.

John, thank you very much

for allowing me to come into your home,

this is for me a great honor and privilege.

First and foremost, you're a legend,

I knew about you, whether you knew it or not

- Mmm-hmm.

a long time ago, I knew a little bit about your,

how shall we say, adventures.

- Adventures yes.

- [Narrator] In the 1980s, Alexander studied

the paranormal for the U.S. military.

- What was the name of your program at the time?

Did you have a name for it?

- We called it "Intentionally Advanced Theoretical Physics"

and we did that because UFOer at that time

was just becoming a hot issue

and we figured that, people may ask for UFO data

but they're not likely to ask for data

on Advanced Theoretical Physics.

- So John, is there any advice you can give me

as to where I should go from here?

What I should do?

And potentially what I need to watch out for?

- Well, I think you've probably

stepped on many of the mines already.

In fact, the reason that you're in the civilian sector

is part of that.

- (laughing) Very true.

- The biggest thing that has to happen and is happening

and I think your T-piece of this is getting information

and making it acceptable in the civilian sector,

that's what they're really afraid of.

I do suspect you're gonna get blow back

there are gonna be people who come in and say, you know,

these are just aerial phenomena that are explainable,

but when you get done with all of the cases,

you end up with a core set that simply cannot be explained

by any traditional means.

- We're moving away from the allegory of tinfoil hats

and you know, Elvis on the mothership to no kidding,

there's something there, these things are real.

(jet engine roars)

- [Narrator] Elizando questions why

the military still won't release everything it knows.

- We don't like things we can't explain

and that's one of the reasons for classifying

some of the stuff

you just don't wanna be potentially embarrassed.

We have, as you know, hundreds of thousands

of these kinds of incidents that have been recorded,

it's much easier to just discard the data

and unfortunately, terrible thing

that we have done that for decades.

- [Narrator] Some experts claim

that the military isn't covering up information about UFOs,

but is actually feeding the UFO myth

to hide secret programs.

- If you've got an aerial platform that is highly advanced

and the public who happens to get, you know,

get a glimpse of the thing from time to time,

if they're convinced that it's from Venus

and there's no way it could be our military

well, hey, you know, that's awesome, hell yes.

- [Narrator] Walter Boseley was an agent with the Air Forces

Secretive Office of Special Investigations.

- [Walter] If I'm the agent or running the protection

for that particular program

and that's helping me cover something for years,

I might even feed the fire.

- [Narrator] Bill Scott is a former

Air Force Flight Test Engineer and editor

at Aviation Week magazine.

He claims a high ranking officer at area 51 admitted to him

how the military used the media

to spread disinformation about UFOs.

- Some of the people that I would approach

would give me clues,

one of the more intriguing responses that I got was,

"well, if you really wanna know what's going on,

read the rags at the supermarket checkout".

Now like the Enquirer and The Globe and all these things.

I said, you gotta be kidding me,

he said "when you see a picture of Bill Clinton

standing there in front of one of these black airplanes

with his arm around the alien being"

he said, "forget what's in front

and look what's behind", I said, come on.

So what you're really telling me

is that in order to hide real highly classified stuff

is that you basically paint it with the UFO brush

and I said why would you do that?

And he said "to keep people like you

from looking any farther".

I said, come on, does it really work?

he said "it worked for 50 years why would we change now?"

- [Narrator] For decades, the National Enquirer

and Weekly World News were published by Generoso Pope Jr.

Who pushed the papers sensational stories

about UFOs and aliens.

Pope's job just before taking over,

Psychological Warfare Officer for the CIA.

Author, Mark Pilkington

believes the Nimitz and Roosevelt cases

are part of this long history of media manipulation.

- It's about perception management,

the technologies exist,

that may not explain precisely what was seen

but our analogist to the things that are seen.

Nemesis combines, swarms of drones

with complex multi-system countermeasures

that are simultaneously operating against aircraft,

satellite systems, ship based systems.

Certainly these would have been something that was outside

the sphere of familiarity for the pilots involved

and could certainly have led to you know, confusion,

- [Narrator] Elizando doubts evidence of the Tic Tac

is part of a disinformation campaign

meant to cover up a classified program.

- Could the Nimitz incident and other UAP related incidents

possibly involve some sort of super secret U.S. technology?

Is it possible?

It's absolutely possible, is a plausible?

No, it's not plausible and the reason why I say that

is because at the time I had one of the highest levels

of security clearance in the U.S. government

and I was briefing people who were read onto

just about anything and everything

in the U.S. government.

- [Chris] There's no reason to believe that the Air Force

is today seeking to promote confusion between UAPs

and classified Air Force programs,

or using the UAP phenomenon as a cover

for Air Force programs.

- [Narrator] Coming up on unidentified.

- [ Chris] There is a profound mystery here,

are we alone in the universe?

And we may be the first generation

in the history of our species that can answer this question.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Lue Elizando has been investigating

what the military might be hiding

about recent UFO encounters.

Could the objects be Air Force top secret craft

tested unwittingly on other branches of the military

or is the truth more fantastic?

- This is something that we need to figure out

if this is a flight safety issue

or a potential that I will reiterate potential threat

to national security, then we need to know about it.

- [Narrator] The team reconvenes in hopes of putting

together the pieces of the puzzle.

- So, gents I appreciate you guys taking a few moments

to sit with me this afternoon.

- [Narrator] They begin by discussing

whether these unidentified objects could be explained

by radar spoofing technology.

- There's always been efforts since time began

and man has been at war to deceive the enemy

and you know, there are all sorts of ways

to deceive the enemy, you know, back in world war II,

we had light deception, so you know...

- You had something called Window

which we now know is chaff to screw up radars

you know what I mean?

It just filled radars with images.

- But I think when we come up with programs

to deceive the enemy

and they come up with programs to deceive us,

it's usually in one particular domain.

So it's to spoof radar or is to trick this or to trick that.

- Since we attack, you know, sensors kind of one at a time

when you have a multispectral confirmation,

radar, infrared, visual,

the odds of something spoofing the same in all those domains

is pretty low.

- Radar spoofing doesn't give you a visual.

- And radar just displays on your console

it doesn't create anything out of the cockpit.

You wouldn't see that.

- You wouldn't see that.

- There wouldn't be a Tic Tac out there flying around.

- [Tom] It's decption.

- [Narrator] The team doesn't believe the objects

are related to radar spoofing,

but could they be some other advanced technology

being tested by the Air Force on Navy pilots?

- If you're talking about conducting tests

with a carrier battle group, you're not blindsiding

the commander of the carrier battle group.

There's multimillion dollar aircraft

and safety and lives at stake,

you're not using these people like guinnea pigs.

- You don't wanna test something super classified

and in front of a bunch of people

that are not read onto a program

and all of a sudden are now talking about this thing

in the open saying, what the hell is that?

I mean, that's not a great way to keep up secret.

- Correct, all those radar operators

going talking about what happened

that's not what you want

if you were trying to protect that capability.

- [Narrator] If the objects aren't top secret technology

the government wants to keep hidden, then what are they?

- If we ask ourselves, if someone else has made

a fundamental, radical technological breakthrough,

how would that appear to us?

What might that look like? - [Lue] Right.

It would look like magic.

- It would be magic, witchcraft - It would look like magic.

- [Chris] It is baffling to a degree that is almost magical,

how could you possibly have a sphere safe object

with a cubic side that goes at supersonic speeds

could loiter all day or a Tic Tac

that could descend from 80,000 feet to 50 feet

and then shoot off at insane speeds

that would tear apart anything that ever built by man,

and then come to a complete hover, right?

It's so what we're seeing really looks a lot like

what you might expect to see

if somebody had had a fundamental breakthrough

that leapfrog, it's far far ahead of anything

that we've devised,

- [Narrator] The team believes the mounting evidence

proves these incidents are not U.S. military tests

and are possibly something all together extraordinary.

- I don't (mumbling)

- We're very confident these are not

some form of experimental U.S. aircraft

because of the position the Navy's taken

but also the fact that these vehicles

are operating in such close proximity to Navy fighters

and carrier battle groups.

There is a profound mystery here,

are we alone in the universe?

And we may be the first generation

in the history of our species that can answer this question

and do so definitively

and getting the answer to this mystery

motivates me to no end, whatever it takes,

to try to answer that question.

- We always wanna have a nice, neat little bow on things

and say, well, it's gotta be then extraterrestrial,

but you know, there's a lot of other options.

It could actually be a combination of both U.S.

and adversarial, it could be that it's extraterrestrial.

There's an entire universe of physics

that we're just now beginning to unlock

and understand, maybe there's options

that we've never even considered before.

Simply because we don't have the technology

or the science yet, or the understanding

to even ask the right question.