Original subtitles

[low whirring]

[whirring accelerates]

[static]

[beep]

pulsing, dramatic music

[man] What the hell is that thing?

[woman] I saw this huge saucer-shaped vehicle.

[woman 2] I've never seen anything like that before.

[man 2] It wasn't blinking or nothing.

Was just like a ball of light.

[man 3] Whoa.

It's got three triangular lights.

-[pilot] Well, if there's a-- -[pilot 2] Look at that thing!

[pilot] It's rotating.

[man 3] It's extremely quiet.

It's definitely not an airplane or a helicopter.

I don't know what that was.

[Leslie Kean] For decades,

UFO witnesses were laughed at.

They're just told that they can't talk about it.

"We don't want to hear about it.

Maybe you're a little crazy, if you even saw it."

[man 4] No, whatever that is, that's huge.

[Kean] But we're at a place right now

where we are beginning to realize

how strange it is and how little we really understand.

Imagine if it was acknowledged,

officially, that UFOs exist.

That would be a big paradigm shift.

[birds chirping]

[newswoman] Intelligence agencies have six months

to release all the information they have on UFOs.

It's part of a $2.3 trillion-dollar bill

signed back in December. The report needs

to contain analysis of any UFO data

as well as name any possible security threats that they pose.

slow, pulsing music

Thousands of newly declassified documents on UFOs

from the CIA

now accessible on the Internet,

and you can thank a UFO enthusiast

for that massive dump of docs now known as Black Vault.

[John Greenewald Jr.] With the passing of this bill,

a lot of people think this is it.

This is when the government and the military is gonna come out

and reveal the truth behind what these UFOs or UAP are.

[Aucoin] Seemed like they were aware of our presence,

'cause they would actively move around us.

[Greenewald] We know that there was the UFO research program.

We know they enlisted scientists,

people that could look at this information,

whether it be witness testimony,

photographs or film reels.

hypnotic, pulsing music

There is so much to dig into.

[man] What we've been doing is simply looking

for flying objects that are where

they're not supposed to be.

But on the one in a million chance that it really is E.T.,

we kind of want to know that, too.

[Greenewald] I think the media's attention

to the UFO topic absolutely fueled then

the public's response for demanding answers,

for demanding action

and to encourage senators

like Marco Rubio to say, "Hey,

this phenomena is real.

You should investigate it."

Tell them it's a threat, tell them

that it's encroaching on military installations,

all of a sudden, you got that Senate Committee on Intelligence

pretty darn interested on what intelligence can be gathered,

and they're 100% on board trying to get to it.

December of 2017,

The New York Times really put the reality

of what they called a-a UFO research program

out there into the cosmos,

and people ate this up.

That was one of the biggest stories,

if not the biggest story,

that the New York Times digital edition ever had.

[keys clacking]

[Kean] I've been writing for many years

about unconventional phenomena,

large mysteries that really intrigued me

but are not usually covered by... journalists.

It's not easy to get The New York Times

to cover a subject that's

not fully documented.

Particularly if it's an issue like this,

where politicians,

although they may be interested,

they're afraid to deal with it.

[newsman] Recent report by The New York Times

unveiled the existence of a real-life X-Files department.

It's a five-year secret government program

to investigate mysterious flying objects.

[newsman 2] The Pentagon now confirms the existence

of a secretive UFO program

tasked with investigating reports

of unidentified flying objects.

[Brian Todd] Tens of millions of dollars

for the project were pushed through

by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The New York Times says Reid acknowledged to them

that he and two other senators

did not want public debate

on the Senate floor over this program.

gentle, pulsing music

"Real UFOs? Pentagon Unit Tried to Know."

Pretty amazing.

hypnotic, pulsing music

The Department of Defense had a program

called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program,

and we all call it AATIP, which is the acronym.

They had had this program since 2007,

whose purpose was to study UFOs.

The funding was not made public,

so nobody knew about it.

This is the first time it was on the record.

What instigated the whole thing was the fact

the director of the program resigned

in October, two months before the story came out.

I was fortunate enough to have a meeting with him

literally the day he resigned or the day after.

And he wrote a powerful letter to the Secretary of Defense,

James Mattis, at the time,

explaining why he was leaving,

which had to do with the fact

that there were not enough resources provided

for what he considered to be a national security issue.

[newswoman] Do you believe

that-that life from somewhere else,

while you ran this program,

came here, visited, observed?

There is very compelling evidence that we, uh...

we m-may not be alone,

whatever that means.

[Kean] After our story came out,

there started to be briefings

for various committees in Washington.

The New York Times has a huge impact.

It opens the door

for things to happen.

[reporter] I wondered if the president will show his...

degree of transparency on, uh, this issue.

Uh, I'm not aware of any plans the president has to, uh...

uh, make public any information about this.

I would be interested in knowing

if there's some other people here.

[newsman] I don't believe it. Dan?

-I believe it. -[Dan] Listen...

UFOs? Any UFOs?

Did you ask about that?

I've certainly asked about it.

And?

Can't tell you.

-Sorry. -Okay.

All right, I'll take that as a yes.

-[chuckling] Why not? -'Cause if there were none,

you'd say there was none, right?

Feel-feel free to think that.

I do.

-[horns honking in distance] -[jackhammering]

[Diana Walsh Pasulka] I remember when I woke up

the day it came out.

It was a bombshell, right? That's what it was.

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I'm a research professor.

And I research the connections

between technology and religious belief,

among other things.

That article just electrified

the whole environment of the study.

I got phone calls from Harvard.

I got phone calls from Princeton,

from academics everywhere.

[man] What is that?

[Pasulka] These are things that academics don't want to touch.

[pilot] My gosh.

They're all going against the wind.

[Pasulka] We have scientists

who studied the phenomena anonymously

to keep their careers intact, frankly.

[Avi Loeb] Scientists have a problem

discussing the possibility

of extraterrestrial intelligence.

They-- It's out of the mainstream,

and it should not be.

[Pasulka] It's almost like the Invisible College.

Back in the 1500s, the Invisible College

was a word for the scientists,

like Francis Bacon,

who were kind of making headway,

but the church would kill them

if they knew what they were doing, right?

[man] There it is.

[Pasulka] People who study the phenomena

won't talk to each other about it.

They just won't. And so I thought, "What is that?"

And I thought, "You know, it's really like Fight Club,

that movie from the 1990s

with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton."

You've got this guy who starts this cult movement.

Right?

And they don't talk about it.

First rule of Fight Club:

don't talk about Fight Club.

And with UFO events,

I found it again and again

and again and again.

And it was pervasive.

So there's no longer an Invisible College.

It's a Fight Club.

[Kean] I think it's important for people to understand

that most sightings of what people call UFOs

can be explained.

I mean, if you have people out at night

and they see something weird in the sky

and they might report it,

well, the authorities can find out.

Was there a weather balloon in the sky that day

at that location?

Only a small percentage of sightings can't be explained.

We need to do proper investigations.

I think

it's irresponsible, it's dangerous

to just ignore it.

It's really disrespectful to the witnesses.

The best example of this is

the Phoenix Lights case.

soft, haunting music

[newsman] It is very rare for thousands of people to call

and report seeing the same lights in the same spot

at the same time.

[Kean] Unlike a lot of the cases that we take very seriously,

this one was about people,

massive numbers of people.

And a lot of people were calling

the National UFO Reporting Center.

[newswoman] UFO watchers are calling it a dramatic event.

-[woman] Another one, too! -[woman 2] Where? Whoa!

-Look at that. Wait. -[man] I got that one on video.

-Can't see how this works. -[man] Whoa.

-[man 2] Shit. -[man 3] Aliens,

first thing that I thought.

It scared the heck out of me.

[man 4] It was a UFO.

[woman 3] We saw five lights in a row.

[man 5] It looked like some kind of, uh,

geometric drawing.

[child] It was big as a football field,

-at least. -As I was coming up the hill,

I didn't know what it was.

You heard nothing.

[newsman] What do you think it is?

[woman 4] I think it was a spaceship

of some sort.

[Greenewald] There's a lot of mystery behind us

and a lot of unanswered questions

that no one wants to talk about.

-[woman 5] What? -What is it? Can you see it?

[Pasulka] We're still talking about it because

of the aftereffects that the people who experienced it

are still having.

loud, ominous music

Interview, Fife Symington. Camera A, B, C, D. Mark.

[Symington] I remember I'd been listening to the news,

and people were reporting lights over Phoenix.

And turned to my wife and said, "You know,

I'm gonna go take my car and I'm gonna go drive to Squaw Peak

to see if I can see what all the hullabaloo is about."

gentle, haunting music

There were a whole bunch of people in the park,

and everybody's looking for the lights.

Then somebody said, "Holy cow. Look at that."

And so I turned around, and this great big

delta-shaped thing came out of the northwest

and headed down into the Southeast Valley.

[man] They're lined up in-in a pattern, man.

-There's geometry behind this. -[man 2] Yeah.

[Symington] It was really eerie. It had embedded lights.

I always refer to it as otherworldly.

I've never seen anything like it.

-There's one behind a chimney. -[man] Major sighting here.

[Kevin Watson] Couldn't hear it. Not being able to hear it...

[woman] Yeah, it was eerie.

-...was-was eerie to me. -Mm-hmm.

That-- Something in the air

-moving at that size... -Yeah.

...completely still, freaked me out.

[man] And then did it just disappear, like it was gone?

-[Watson] Lights flicker and-- -And people saw it in Tucson

-minutes later. -Yeah.

-So that's how fast it was. -Minutes later.

-[woman] Yeah. -[newsman] Some believe

the lights were flares.

Some believe they were

a secret military aircraft.

And others believe they were spaceships.

[newswoman] City Councilwoman Francis Emma Barwood

is the only city official to look for answers.

[Barwood] I had assumed that this event

was already being investigated,

and I was told that nobody would touch it.

Come on.

Good, good, good.

I have a hard time letting things drop

that aren't finished.

I always want answers.

slow, gentle music

I was going to a city council meeting

May 6th of 1997.

I was stopped by a reporter,

and she asked me if I knew about this object

that flew over Phoenix on March 13th.

And she said, "Could you ask at the council meeting?"

When it came my turn for a council request,

I told them about the reporter and...

could we find out whatever this object was.

Kind of curious. Especially since people are starting

to ask more questions.

Everybody turned around, looked at me.

And it was like,

"Did I say something wrong?"

[chuckles]

-[woman] Thank you. -Thanks.

Councilman Siebert.

[Barwood] How can this be swept under the rug?

What are they all afraid of?

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[Symington] It was a fairly

tumultuous time for me politically,

and I certainly didn't want

to pour any kerosene on the fire.

So, the next day,

I'd kept my mouth shut.

[chuckles]

I just decided to lock it away and not-not talk about it.

It just seemed to be the prudent thing to do.

I didn't, I didn't need to stand up and say,

"Hey, I-I've seen it."

Uh, you have thousands of other people who stood up

and said they've seen it.

The story was out there.

[Tom Brokaw] Are we alone?

No, I don't mean just you and me.

I mean this Earth.

Have we had some visitors recently?

The buzz is very big in the desert southwest,

where it's really never gone away after some...

weird happenings in the skies

over Phoenix recently.

[newsman] Phoenix Councilwoman Frances Emma Barwood

says she now gets stacks of mail

from across the country detailing similar sightings.

There's no doubt in my mind

that they saw something really phenomenal.

Why isn't anybody else curious?

I mean, why am I the only elected official that...

wanted to find out about it?

[newswoman] Strange dots of light that were the talk

-of the town. -[newsman] A mass,

statewide UFO sighting.

[Kean] As a result of the kind

of uproar that occurred,

it was sort of like all the citizens suddenly woke up.

And so there was all this pressure

on Governor Fife Symington to do something.

[newsman] Today, in a very surprising move,

Governor Symington said he was going to do something

to find out what was going on.

[Symington] You're governor--

your highest duty is to the citizens

who elected you to office

and to protect them if there's some danger

and demand answers.

Many of our citizens have been

very disturbed by this.

In response, I suggested that it was time

to end months of speculation on the question

and investigate the matter once and for all to clear it up.

[man] If the authorities don't know what it is,

they should say. And if they do know, they are accountable

to the public and they'd better cough up an answer.

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[Symington] We made serious inquiries,

asking the Air Force, "Well, what did you find?"

And we never got a satisfactory explanation.

The most interesting one was

the Warthogs, the A-10s,

that they said had dropped flares.

[newswoman] The National Guard says it was

conducting flare exercises outside Phoenix that night.

[man] Our A-10 Thunderbolts that are right behind me

were on a night illumination exercise.

[Symington] I mean, I'm a pilot.

I knew they weren't flares.

Flares don't do what those lights were doing.

Plus, the problem with that was the timing.

The Air Force said that the A-10s

were out there at about ten o'clock,

but the lights were at around 8:30 or something.

[newswoman] What took place here was far different than what

the Air National Guard says took place.

This happened over a period of hours

all over the state.

So, the official response

was completely bogus.

But a governor has no power

over the Air Force or Luke Air Force Base

to do anything more than ask a lot of questions.

That's all you...

all you could do, you know?

Sometimes very difficult dealing with the federal government.

[Kean] Senator John McCain was asked about this.

People would write him letters and call his office.

[man] Why don't they come clean and say,

"We don't know" or "We do know"?

That's all we want to know.

[Kean] John McCain asked the Air Force

if they would conduct an investigation

and was told that they don't investigate UFOs,

which was about as far as he could go

as a public official.

[Symington] Yes. McCain

was very open to it being a... an unidentified flying object.

So, I asked the Air Force, "Well, what did you find?"

And they said they didn't find anything, so...

There have been reports that several aircraft

took off from Luke Air Force base

in hot pursuit with afterburner

and tried to intercept whatever the lights were.

[man] Almost blew over me.

And as soon as the jets got

to the object, this thing, like, shot straight up

and vanished right in front of my eyes.

And that's... that was really

what put me over the edge there

when I... when I saw that.

[thunder rumbling]

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[Siavelis] It's hard to believe that something

can be in our airspace that the government

is not aware of.

No matter what level it is in the Air Force.

The government is supposed to be in charge.

[host] Let me, uh, start the tape, and I'll start a timer.

For the record, it's Friday, the 14th of March, '97.

I'm talking with a gentleman which is calling from Phoenix.

Okay, sir, go ahead.

[Siavelis] The jets that were taking off

from Luke Air Force Base...

You don't scramble jets just from somebody calling in

to the police station.

And they weren't flares.

Those two pilots get out of their aircraft,

and they're shaken,

because their gun-ready camera

was filming

something they've never saw before.

[Greenewald] With UFOs, nothing is ever black-and-white.

There's always mud in the water

of trying to figure out some of these stories.

There's half a century of secrecy relating to this,

and so I started

researching the United States government connection

to what UFOs were.

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[man] On flying saucers,

do you yourself believe that they exist?

Well, I'm positive they exist.

The weight of the evidence makes it impossible

to arrive at any other conclusion.

[Greenewald] It started way back in 1947.

There were UFO fleets that were

being seen above the skies of Washington.

People were scared.

[Mike Wallace] Tonight, we go after a fantastic story.

The story that flying saucers

from other worlds are visiting our planet.

[Kean] There were so many sightings,

and the Air Force just didn't know what to do about it.

[John Samford] Air Force interest in this problem

has been due to our feeling of an obligation

to identify and analyze

to the best of our ability,

anything in the air

that may have the possibility of threat

or menace to the United States.

[Greenewald] There was this aim

to truly investigate UFOs.

[Samford] There have been reports

that have been made

by credible observers

of relatively incredible things.

[Greenewald] The Air Force Office of Special Investigations

created a Project Grudge,

Project Sign,

and then later Project Blue Book in 1952

to investigate

and ultimately explain them.

[Kean] Project Blue Book was set up

with a public office

where citizens could contribute reports of sightings.

So, you had all these witnesses.

[Thomas Hanchett] I looked up,

and to my right, I saw a large ball of fire.

The object, uh, very rapidly disappeared...

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[Pasulka] You have

people experiencing something

that they don't quite understand.

These experiences impact these people.

Impacts the way that they

live their lives.

[John Foster] Two small lights appeared to me

at the outer edges of the object

glowing in a bluish green light and...

[Pasulka] Lots and lots and lots of people,

lot of very, you know, intelligent

and successful people

believe and see UFOs.

Researchers in contact

with some of the people still today decide to look

at the effects.

What if thousands of people saw it?

You know, what kind of effects would they have?

What would that do to our culture?

UFO, for want of a better word,

this phenomenon becomes, somehow, a new form

of religiosity.

It created true believers.

[newswoman] It was 1:40 a.m.

Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson was on patrol

in rural Marshall County when, suddenly,

he saw a bright light

a few feet above ground level two miles down the road.

I traveled about a mile,

and the light seemed to, uh, intercept me,

so to speak, and, uh, came right up on me.

It was painful. The light was extremely brilliant and painful.

I closed my eyes, and I heard the sound of breaking glass,

and that's the last I remember.

[newswoman] Johnson was unconscious for 40 minutes

before he radioed for help and was taken to the hospital.

A doctor and later an eye specialist

confirmed that Johnson had suffered mild welder

or flash burns to his eyes.

Even stranger, both Johnson's wristwatch

and the electric clock in his patrol car

had mysteriously stopped for 14 minutes.

It's truly unexplainable to me or, uh, un-unknown to me.

[Greenewald] UFO sightings

blew up in a way that no one truly expected.

Going back to the Space Race of the '60s,

the astronauts that were going up for the first time,

they were seeing stuff that they just couldn't explain.

[Greenewald] It didn't stop in the 1960s either.

Today there are many NASA videos

that have these mysterious and unknown objects.

There are a growing number of cases

that don't have a logical explanation.

And from the beginning, the government

had to squash it.

tense, dramatic music

In the early 1950s, the CIA was starting to see

that there was a much bigger national security implication

behind what UFOs were.

Whether or not they were alien

at this point really was irrelevant.

They knew that the excitement

that the general public had,

that in itself could create a risk.

A group of scientists put together by the CIA

analyzed all of the UFO data

that the United States Air Force collected, and they said,

"Are we looking at a phenomena that's real?

Is this something that we should worry about,

and what should we do about it?"

The committee concluded that in the 19 years

since the first UFO was sighted, there has been no evidence

that unidentified flying objects

are a threat to our national security.

[Greenewald] Project Blue Book,

which lasted all the way through 1969,

was not to investigate anything.

It was rather to explain it.

To say, "Look, you guys think you don't understand this,

but we do. We're the all-powerful government.

We're the all-powerful CIA. We can explain this."

[Kean] Some of the explanations they gave were so ludicrous

that it was essentially like ridicule.

I cannot prove in a court of law

that marsh gas is the full explanation

of these sightings,

but it does appear, to me, extremely likely.

[newsman] Are you saying, Doctor, that Michigan

is now producing nonexistent saucers?

[chuckles] Well, it's one way of putting it, I suppose.

[Kean] It just became part of the cultural way

of dealing with this, unfortunately.

[newswoman] The National Guard says it was conducting

flare exercises outside Phoenix that night.

[Kean] You were considered to be crazy

just for reporting something that was actually happening.

It was completely irrational.

[Harris] Tales of aliens

have been our first conspiracy tales.

They were our first way of questioning

whether the government

was, in fact, lying to us on a mass scale.

Not just the Roswell story,

which is obviously the most famous one,

but you have a number of other incidents like that

in the 1950s.

Just as the Cold War is starting,

we start to see more an increasing prevalence

not just of UFO narratives

but of spy narratives, of the sense

that the government is acting with duplicity.

This is absolutely untrue.

We are not hiding anything.

We have nothing to hide.

intense, dramatic music

[Harris] The rise

of lack of faith in the government to tell us

the truth coincides with the expansion of mass media

in a way where we're suddenly receiving

our information about the world

through the television, through the radio.

[man] One thing is clear.

You could not keep a spaceship a secret.

Too many journalists could not be restrained

from trumpeting one of the greatest news stories

of all time.

[Harris] And, so, whatever authority

the mainstream that has long denied the existence

of these beings had

slowly began

to slip away.

Eventually, that authority

breaks down completely with the Internet.

-[man] I got it. -[woman] Oh, my gosh.

-[man] Whoa. -[woman] What the hell?

[Harris] I think that we are,

as a people, willing to believe

almost anything.

Conspiracy theories or myth can take hold

using the possibility of UFOs existing

as a way of doubting

almost everything in our culture.

The fact that our government

is now slowly doling out information

concerning potential evidence of alien existence,

I think, only feeds into those narratives.

[newsman] United Airlines employees who swear

it was something otherworldly in the skies

above Chicago's O'Hare Airport on November 7th,

but neither the FAA nor indeed their own employer

appear to be taking them seriously.

[indistinct chatter]

[Kean] The O'Hare incident

is a really important case.

[Olbermann] Our number one story in the countdown,

unidentified flying objects

from outer space.

[Kean] The story broke

in the Chicago Tribune in January,

so it was about two months later.

[Olbermann] Chicago Tribune, interviewing

several people anonymously, including maintenance workers,

baggage handlers and pilots

who each and all describe a dark gray saucer-like object

that hovered low over Concourse

before shooting off into the sky.

[Kean] Most UFO sightings

are fairly quick. Something flies by, right?

This was at least five minutes

in the middle of the afternoon rush hour in the daylight.

Pilots on the ground in their planes

who were just taxiing in or out

were looking, leaning out and looking at it.

There was a lot of radio chatter about it.

One of the managers from United Airlines

called the tower and said,

"Do you see that there's this disc-shaped object up there?"

And it's a very interesting conversation.

At one point, he says,

"No, I don't see it, and if I did,

I wouldn't report it anyway."

The woman who called up called a second time,

and she had to explain, "I'm not high.

I haven't been drinking.

There's this disc-shaped object. It's actually there."

But that conversation is very interesting

because it shows the attitude of this.

I mean, this was a safety hazard.

The explanation that was provided by the FAA...

First, they said it was a-a weather phenomenon.

By "a weather phenomenon," they were probably referring

to what's called a hole punch cloud.

And this is a picture of a hole punch cloud.

Ice crystals that fall from one cloud

to a cloud below, like a cloud bank below.

And then they melt a hole in the ice.

I mean, it's an absurd notion to think

that these aviation people

would look up at something like that and think that was

a metallic disc hovering

over the airport, you know?

The pilots from United Airlines,

the employees, they were...

clear that they were not supposed to talk about this.

Literally not one witness

to this event would put their name on the record.

Not one.

[newsman] The FAA is still

pinning this to some kind of weather phenomenon,

that some lights from the airport in the overcast sky

somehow got together and created this image,

but, uh, weather experts,

uh, astronomy experts, others that I've talked to

said that that's, uh, that's bunk.

[Kean] Somebody has an obligation

within the government. If it's not the FAA,

it's got to be someone else to deal with that,

to protect the-the aircraft that are around it,

to find out what it is.

[Olbermann] It seems to me that the likeliest conclusion

here is that

the aliens have landed many years ago in this cou...

in this country, in this world with one goal in mind--

to create conspiracy theories

and then just sit back and enjoy them.

whimsical music

[Kean] The acronym "UFO"

has come to be a real loaded term.

Unidentified flying object.

That's all it means.

The question "Do you believe in UFOs?"

really doesn't make any sense.

There's no issue of belief there.

The question is maybe, "What do you believe they are?"

But whether they exist

is not even a matter of belief. It's a fact.

[newsman] On the record,

the Arizona National Guard, who would know

about military exercises and stuff,

says it has no explanation at all for those lights.

Doesn't look like anything that I've seen.

Yeah. I haven't seen anything either.

-Strange. -Not picking anything up

-in the weather center either. -Yeah.

They say the craft was moving

very slowly and without any sound at all.

The people that saw that believe

what they saw was an alien spacecraft.

Now Governor Symington himself has launched

an official investigation.

The video that I saw a quick glimpse of was intriguing.

Um, so I'm going to order a, uh, full,

you know, investigation of this through DPS.

We're going to make all the necessary inquiries,

and we're going to get to the bottom of it.

We're going to find out if was a UFO.

Uh, you can sit down. Gonna put a little bit of the deshine

-on you if that's okay. -Okey doke.

[James Heiler] You know, one of the things

that you notice about media is they have some favorite foods.

One of those is sex scandal, and another one is UFOs.

We had phone calls

coming in from all over the world.

[man] It was huge across,

and there were bright lights.

[man 2] It was just so bright.

I, uh, saw five bright luminous objects,

a straight line heading south.

[Heiler] We realized we weren't really gonna be able

to satisfy people's longings for answers.

We didn't really hold adequate means of investigating it

as a state government apparat.

[Barwood] Yeah. We had so many people

that we sat with and talked to, and they all described

exactly the same thing.

That I talked to? And, well...

I talked... It was around 700, you know, total.

She had interviewed 700 people?

That, that sounds like an overwhelming task.

Did you remember her investigating it?

No, I'm not sure how she would have the wherewithal...

How would she have the wherewithal?

...to interview 700 people, or

what, if any, real value you would...

you would glean from that.

That's probably what he would have to say.

What else is he going to say?

Is he going to say, "Oh, yeah, I should have looked into it"?

-When he didn't. -He really couldn't step up.

Probably, he feels bad that she did and was taking the grief.

[newsman] The ridicule started almost immediately.

This cartoon was published by The Arizona Republic.

[Barwood] They saw how much

ridicule I got.

[laughing] Maybe that's why they didn't want to do that.

[Siavelis] And so, therefore,

the best thing to do is to put it to bed.

[horns honking]

And how do you put things to bed?

You ridicule anybody that's involved

so you try to kill the story.

That's what happened to so-called "Phoenix Lights."

[newsman] That's right.

Now the governor is holding a press conference

at this very moment.

In fact, at the state capitol.

Reportedly, he says that the DPS has already

turned up startling new information about this case.

[Barwood] The governor had called

an emergency news conference.

The only time you do an emergency news conference is

when it's a threat to life, health and all that stuff.

Yes, definitely. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, you'd have to remind me. I'm...

It's been so long ago.

You have the advantage of having

the record in front of you. I don't...

I just remember kind of the highlights

and the impetus for the, um...

the what I call "the alien caper," and, uh--

Sure.

I issued a call for an investigation

by the Arizona Department of Public Safety,

and I'm happy to report we already are getting results.

Let me just say that I believe it's a serious offense

for anyone-- human, space alien, or otherwise--

to engage in mysterious activity in our nighttime skies.

[Barwood] I thought,

"Oh, good, he's going to investigate."

We may all look upon the guilty party.

[laughter]

Hey, don't get him too close to me, please. It's...

-[laughter] -You know. [clears throat]

[laughter]

This just goes to show that you guys are entirely too serious.

[laughter]

[applause]

[laughter]

-[applause] -Thank you. Thank you.

[Barwood] Everybody was so angry.

And-and I said, "I don't know what to tell you.

You know, it's...

it's over."

-Mocked everybody. -Mocked us, yeah.

You got to understand... you got to understand that

when it's your own state's governor

that's coming out and with a fake alien on the podium.

-Yeah. -That totally discredits any...

See, even he didn't want to admit it right away.

That totally discredits anything

-that anybody saw. -Yeah.

We weren't trying to ridicule people's concerns,

but there was that element of building hysteria,

which really needed to be dealt with.

I was 12, so imagine that age, too, is, "You...

-Mm-hmm. -I saw... I saw a UFO, guys."

I mean, that's a different conversation

when you're that age.

All right, our own governor,

who many people supported at the time...

-Mm-hmm. -...is going out

and mocking what I saw.

I kept to myself. I-I didn't... [stammers]

Absolutely a stigma and I don't know why.

I don't know why it's there.

But we're gonna not talk about this right now,

because clearly it's just a joke to everybody.

I'm sorry if it offended some people,

but it was a lot of fun.

There you go. This is your trophy,

-and you give it to Joe, okay? -Okay.

I'll see you all later. Thank you very much.

[laughter]

[Kean] When you're in a position of authority,

and you can't explain something

to your constituents, it could panic people,

it could frighten people.

So one of the tools in the toolbox, when

they're forced to talk about it, is to ridicule it.

It's a way of minimizing its significance, you know?

"These are little green men. Ha, ha, ha."

That's the problem with the term "UFO."

It's sort of

been contaminated.

[newsman] If the Air Force

had nothing to hide,

Frank Mannor, the Michigan farmer,

who had brought in the first report,

was caught in the middle.

He was mad.

Are you sorry now that you did tell people what you saw?

Yes, I am. I am... I'm sorry because it...

Not that it's not the truth, but it's just the idea,

the-the reaction of the people.

They think you're a... a nut.

Tell you the truth. That's just what they figure you are.

[Kean] Once Project Blue Book

shut down in 1970, the whole thing kind of went quiet.

[military official] The conclusions

of Project Blue Book were: no UFO reported

has ever given any indication

of threat to our national security.

There is no evidence submitted

that sightings represent technological developments

beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge, and

there is no evidence indicating

that these unidentified objects are extraterrestrial.

[Greenewald] That report that they produced was known

infamously as the Condon Report.

Now why is this important?

Because they literally shot down the topic of UFOs,

said it was a waste of time and money,

and said, "Shut the investigations down.

It's useless."

[Kean] Think about the opportunities that were lost

for taking it seriously and for investigating it.

[newswoman] The Air Force says

it doesn't investigate unknown objects anymore.

NORAD told UPN News 13 that it only tracks objects

that originate in our atmosphere.

The CIA, some other intelligence agency,

well, if they're investigating,

we don't know about it, and chances are, we never will.

[Greenewald] The U.S. government always maintained to me

that they had no interest in UFOs.

But back in 2008,

I had discovered a United States Air Force manual.

And there was a whole section

about unidentified flying objects.

On not only how to report 'em, but where to report 'em to,

and the two places that are not subject

to the Freedom of Information Act--

one being the White House,

the second being the NORAD installation--

is on the receiving end of whatever these UFO reports are.

And I tried to access the documents,

but of course they said, "Nope, sorry.

We're not subject to the Freedom of Information Act."

How convenient that they send the UFO records

to that one place.

[newsman] Believers have always maintained

the government knows more than it claims about UFOs

and doesn't always tell the truth.

The latest government admissions concede both points

and do little, if anything, to settle the UFO debate.

[Barwood] About the Phoenix Lights,

I'm extremely disappointed that nobody's taken this on.

I think that the governor was interested in all of it.

When you look at the press conference that he did,

you can see he was truly uncomfortable, and

I think it was because he was not comfortable with that.

I think he really did want to look into it.

There is no way

that he orchestrated that.

And I said, "There's something else going on here."

My speculation is, a deal had to be made.

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[newsman] We are now less than 12 hours away

from Governor Symington's criminal trial.

The governor is on trial for 22 fraud counts.

20 of those counts involve falsifying financial statements

to federally insured banks.

[Heiler] The trial was the culmination

of seven and a half years of investigation

of Fife Symington's private life before becoming governor.

Then it morphed into a criminal investigation.

[Barwood] He had been in court.

People that were in court, watching this whole thing, said,

he was called out to go into a private meeting.

And then, the next thing is

this emergency press conference.

So somebody else said,

in my opinion, okay,

not-not fact but my opinion,

"If you make this a joke, we'll dismiss the charges."

Yeah, I don't... I wonder where that came from.

Well, if I understand your question correctly,

you're, you're suggesting some people believe

that we somehow did this

in league with government authorities...

-Oh. -to mock the idea

of those lights being extraterrestrial.

No, there was no conspiracy behind it at all. No.

We-we weren't trying to cover up anything.

We were... we were just trying to make light of it.

ominous music

[Barwood] He was serious

that he was going to do an investigation,

and then it turned into a joke.

Somebody somewhere has got to be afraid of the truth coming out.

That's it.

And why?

[Heiler] Neither then or now do I have any

plausible explanation more than

anyone might speculate about as to what those lights were.

I felt then as I do now that what

really caused a lot of the "hullabaloo,"

to use the governor's word, and the speculation is that

the only information provided

by the authorities was implausible

to anybody who saw the-the lights.

So I think government makes things worse

when it operates that way.

And why they do that, I don't know.

I don't know if it's just bureaucratic obtuseness

or if it's some part of a-a larger attempt

to deflect attention from things that are meant to remain secret.

My best guess at it was it was some sort

of high-altitude stealth technology

that we didn't want known.

You and I will always disagree on this,

but there's no way that that was a B-2...

a B-2 bomber or a stealth bomber.

This object was big and close.

And you think it was a single object for sure?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[Watson] There's no way

that something like that's man-made that we know of.

[woman] Right. That's right.

Now I don't know if it could have been

extraterrestrial, whatever.

Regardless, it is what it is.

We saw what we saw. It was giant, quiet.

Moved extremely fast, and was amazing.

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[Pasulka] There's a creation of discourse

around these events.

Pop culture today is gonna represent

these "UFO events," for want of a better word,

as something quite different

than how the people experience them.

[man] Wow. Look at this here. These three things.

-[man 2] Really? -[woman] What is it?

[Pasulka] Remember, I'm a historian of Catholicism.

So, in the 1980s,

Pope John Paul II wrote a very interesting teaching

on the angels

to his bishops. It's called

"The Catechesis on the Angels."

And he basically says, these were invisible beings,

and people don't believe in them anymore,

and they even denied them during Jesus's time, Jesus's era.

He said, "But they exist." And he said,

"And they intervene in human history."

He was kind of reinscribing this idea

that what we see today is not what we think we're seeing.

Our perceptions see objects, but what are really there?

We're coming upon a new way

of understanding the transcendent,

and it's no longer an angel.

[Harris] What would it mean for our humanity

for us to discover that, in fact,

there are other sentient beings

that are capable of traveling here?

The things that we think are important

in the midst of the ongoing pandemic

or the uprising for racial justice...

-[explosive pops] -[crowd yelling]

[Harris] In the specter of being visited

by those from another planet, our own divisions would

suddenly feel so much smaller.

Would feel less insurmountable, one would hope.

I don't know what that would look like,

but I do know that it would

be the biggest change that we ever witnessed, any of us,

in the way that human beings saw themselves

and saw each other.

[Kevin Day] I was a top ten graduate,

a senior air controller,

had 18 years sea time.

We were gonna do a big, huge air defense exercise.

A mock air battle for-for training purposes.

This encounter profoundly affected me.

[Day] Oh, yeah. The entire crew

was talking about it. You bet.

-[man] Oh, my gosh, dude. -[man 2] Wow.

[Day] They certainly didn't behave

like anything from this Earth.

I'm pretty convinced they had to be quantum-based.

If that's true, then what are the possibilities?

It's a pretty short list, isn't it?

Uh, aliens.

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