All language subtitles for Ancient.Aliens.S16E09.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-T7ST_track3_[eng]

NARRATOR:
A housewife
who convinced millions

to share their sightings.

LINDA MOULTON HOWE:
Coral Lorenzen

is one of the earliest
people who said

there is something serious

about these objects in the sky.

NARRATOR:
A scientist who uncovered
shocking new evidence

about a crashed UFO.

RICHARD DOLAN:
Stanton Friedman,
more than any one other person,

opened up Roswell
for the rest of the world.

NARRATOR:
An astronomer
who documented close encounters

for the U.S. military.

PAUL HYNEK:
My father really was convinced

that there was just something
that was too legitimate

to ignore.

NARRATOR:
Ancient astronaut theorist
Giorgio Tsoukalos,

author David Childress,

and former British Ministry
of Defence

officer Nick Pope,

have come together to examine
the groundbreaking work

of pioneering researchers,

investigators,
and whistleblowers

who dared to challenge
the scientific establishment

and changed the world.

POPE:
Without Jacques Vallée,

we probably wouldn't be
having this discussion.

NARRATOR:
But does the final chapter

of their story
remain to be written?

Will it soon be revealed,
once and for all,

that Earth is being visited

by extraterrestrials?

You have to wonder
where does this all lead

and will we soon
come closer to the truth?

♪

NARRATOR:
There is a doorway
in the universe...

...beyond it
is the promise of truth.

It demands
we question everything

we have ever been taught.

The evidence is all around us.

The future is
right before our eyes.

We are not alone.

We have never been alone.

I'm excited to be here
with you guys

talking about
the modern UFO phenomenon.

The paradigm
has certainly shifted

because 20 years ago
it was always deny, deny, deny.

So, you know, I think that

we are living
in incredibly exciting times.

We are. Absolutely.
And this, of course,

is part of a wider
interconnected story.

Revelation after revelation
from the government itself.

I also would
offer that Ancient Aliens

has contributed
to this paradigm shift

where people
are now comfortable

in telling their stories,

their experiences
that they've had.

The so-called zeitgeist

has changed in our favor.

And I really think
that with whatever is going on

in the modern UFO phenomenon

is directly
connected to ancient times.

Well, the UFO phenomenon
has been going on

for thousands of years
with historical texts

talking about UFOs.

Even in the Middle Ages

you find stories
that were printed

in what they
used to call broad sheets

of UFOs, like, for example,

in Nuremberg or in Basel.

And they actually
have reproductions

of what they saw
up in the skies.

Clearly, they did not have
photographs back then

but they had drawings.

And the way these things
are being reported today

is because
we have the technology.

♪

NARRATOR:
People have reported
strange sightings in the sky

since the earliest
recorded history.

For thousands of years,
such encounters

were conveyed
through oral traditions,

texts and artwork.

But then, in 1839,

French artist Louis Daguerre
provided humankind

with a powerful new technology:

the daguerreotype.

It was the first publicly
available photographic process,

and suddenly
people were able to share

the exact images
they saw with their own eyes.

Just three decades later,

the world got its first
alleged UFO photo.

The very first photo
that we have of a UFO

is of a-a huge
cylindrical craft

over Mount Washington
in New Hampshire taken in 1870

right at the very
beginning of photography.

DOLAN: You see this cloud
formation up at Mount Washington

and you see this very
obvious cigar-shaped object.

Of course, many UFO reports

described cigar-shaped objects.

Is the photograph authentic?
And turns out it is.

NARRATOR:
As technology
evolved over the late 1800s

and early 1900s,

so did humankind's understanding
of many long-held assumptions.

Instead of linking
strange events in the sky

with the divine,
a few inquisitive minds

proposed a profound
new explanation.

That intelligent beings
from other planets,

who possess technology
far beyond our own,

were visiting our world.

One of the first
to investigate this possibility

was an American
writer and researcher

named Charles Fort.

MITCH HOROWITZ:
People have written about

strange lights
in the sky before.

But Fort was probably
the first person in modern life

who assembled the stories

into his books
in a systematic way.

Fort saw it as his job to poke
holes in the straight story

of science as it was
developing at that time,

and it demonstrated
that there was a whole world

of strange unexplained
persistent phenomena.

NARRATOR:
In 1919, Fort published
his landmark collection

of anomalous incidents
and strange sightings.

He called it
The Book of the Damned.

DOLAN:
Now what he meant by that
is all of the data

that he incorporated and
put into that book was damned

by the scientific
world of-of his time.

That's the whole point. This was
data that no one would look at.

NARRATOR:
Today the term "Fortean"
continues to be used

to describe events
that cannot be explained

by conventional science.

But it would take
25 years and a world war

for researchers to examine
Fort's accounts more closely.

So a lot of the modern
UFO phenomenon really started

during the second World War.

We had a couple of-of things,
aspects to this.

The Battle of Los Angeles--
an amazing event

where upwards of 1,400, uh,

anti-aircraft shells
were fired into the air

at something that had been
hovering over Los Angeles.

And there's a photo as well.
There's a classic photo...

-CHILDRESS: It was on the front
page of the L.A. Times.
-POPE: Yeah.

Then you have
these pilots who see

strange balls of light
called foo fighters,

and I couldn't talk about UFOs

without, of course,
mentioning one word:

-Roswell.
-Mm-hmm.

POPE:
The military
issues a press release

which says we've recovered
a flying disc.

So you have these events
coming thick and fast,

but who's collating it all?

We should never forget

that, uh,
maybe we have it easy now.

We have this vast body of work
that we can build on,

and one of the great pioneers
of this subject,

who did so much to bring it
into the mainstream,

was Coral Lorenzen.

NARRATOR:
By the 1950s,

thousands of UFO sightings

were being reported
around the country.

But while most
dismissed these accounts

as little more than curiosity,

one woman in Arizona
took them seriously:

a 35-year-old housewife
named Coral Lorenzen.

When Coral Lorenzen
was nine years old,

she had her first UFO sighting
in a playground

with two friends.

She stated that
the craft reminded her

of a parachute without strings.

After her experiences,

what she wanted to do
was kind of nail this down

on a scientific basis
not just woo-woo stuff.

NARRATOR:
Working out of their home,

Coral and
her husband Jim founded

the Aerial Phenomenon
Research Organization, or APRO,

the world's first
public investigation of UFOs.

Using little more
than her wits and a telephone,

Coral collected thousands
of unpublished reports

from witnesses
around the country.

To rule out planes
and unusual weather

as the cause
of the sightings,

Coral judiciously
cross-referenced these accounts

by contacting local airfields
and military bases.

BILL BIRNES:
What she was able to do was
show there were commonalities

among UFO sightings,
there were things that UFOs did

and that observers saw
that stretched across

different cultures and different
parts of the United States.

NARRATOR:
Eventually, Coral's organization

grew to have
thousands of members

and collected reports
from around the world.

MARDEN:
The organization
started out small,

but as its reputation grew,

she was able to attract
many scientists

and also people
in the Air Force

from other countries.

NARRATOR:
Considered one of the
best civilian research groups

of its time,
Coral Lorenzen oversaw

the Aerial Phenomena
Research Organization

for more than three decades

until her death in 1988.

She set up this group

with thousands of members,

and she was really
pulling all this together.

They had representatives
in different states in the U.S.,

in different countries, too.

Of course,
APRO as a group,

uh, wound up in 1988,
I think it was,

but, of course, MUFON--
the Mutual UFO Network--

is a spinoff of APRO.

So she was really cataloging

a wide variety
of UFO activity

all over the world.

What was
the reaction back then

when she would call
the Air Force bases?

Would they readily talk to her
or would they stonewall her?

She hit some brick walls,
and people were probably saying

in the military,
"Who the heck is this?"

But she was tenacious.
She was-- look.

Here's this woman
blazing this trail.

Starting almost
this whole field of study

which-which
we now see today.

Nick, can you tell us
about your work

at the British
Ministry of Defence?

Sure. I worked there
for 21 years.

And from
1991 through to 1994,

I ran their
small UFO program.

My job was to research
and investigate the phenomenon,

to determine whether
there was anything

of any defense significance,
uh, any threat,

anything of more general
scientific interest.

Were you the first person
to have that position

or was there
somebody before you?

Oh, many,
many people before me.

Uh, we-we had been
looking at this,

um, on an ad hoc basis
since the second World War,

And what were some
of the challenges

that you were faced with
in order to determine

what was
a valid sighting?

I mean, was there a certain
protocol to the work you did?

Well, there were
many challenges,

but the-the protocols

were actually quite set.

We had
a standard methodology

very closely modeled
on the United States

methodologies developed,
in part,

by Dr. J. Allen Hynek.

NARRATOR:
In 1948, Dr. J. Allen Hynek

was working as the professor
of physics and astronomy

at Ohio State University

when he received
an unusual job offer.

The U.S. Air Force
approached him

to investigate UFO sightings.

Reluctantly,
he joined the special operation

which would become known as
Project Blue Book.

At the beginning, I think my
father thought this would be

a few weekends'
worth of work

just to pooh-pooh
some flying saucer reports

from, you know,
Mrs. Jones out in Poughkeepsie.

NARRATOR:
Despite his skepticism,

Dr. Hynek approached the
assignment with an open mind.

As part of
his investigations,

he pioneered new ways
of studying aerial phenomena.

Rather than
combing through reports,

Dr. Hynek personally
investigated sightings

and interviewed eyewitnesses
across the country.

Based on his research,
he developed a new system

to categorize UFO sightings.

He came up with
a classification system

of close encounters of the
first, second and third kind.

A close encounter
of the first kind

is when you see an object
within, say, 500 feet.

A close encounter
of the second kind

is when there's some kind
of physical trace,

maybe some irradiated dirt.

A close encounter
of the third kind

is where you
actually have contact

with some type of entity.

NARRATOR:
Dr. Hynek's
meticulous application

of the scientific method
in his investigations

enabled him to dismiss
many alleged sightings

as aircraft,
meteors or even stars.

But, curiously, of the more
than 12,000 UFO sightings

Dr. Hynek's
office investigated,

701 remained categorized
as "unidentified."

HYNEK:
What my father
was fascinated by

were this irreducible core

of five percent of cases
that could not be explained.

There was
just something that was

too legitimate to ignore.

For many, many years,
Hynek really just

played the Air Force's
party line on UFOs.

But, finally, as you're really
getting into the 1960s,

1966 and '67,

Hynek makes
his public position clear

that this
is a serious phenomenon.

HYNEK:
That set up a really difficult
tension because the Air Force

was getting more sort of
stonewalling in their attitude,

and my father really
was convinced that there was

a phenomena, but really
wanted the word to get out.

NARRATOR:
But rather than expand
the investigation,

in 1969, the Air Force
abruptly shut down

Project Blue Book.

In the years that followed,

Hynek became an outspoken
supporter of UFO research,

publishing numerous
books on the subject

until his death in 1986.

Hynek became
increasingly disillusioned

with the Air Force
policy on this,

and, yes,
he was frustrated.

These people have no interest
in going public

-and saying there might
be extraterrestrials.
-CHILDRESS: Right.

And he's privy,
as you were,

to classified documents

and, you know, you have
to have a security clearance.

He must have had that, too.

So there were things
that he could not talk about.

-Wouldn't you think?
-I'm sure that's the case.

He was someone
on the inside,

and he probably
had a deeper understanding

of this phenomenon

than almost anyone else
involved at the time.

And, uh, Jacques Vallée is
another fascinating character,

a colleague, of course,
of Dr. J. Allen Hynek

and two of the early, uh,
giants in this field.

Without Jacques Vallée,
Dr. J. Allen Hynek,

we probably wouldn't be
sitting around this table

-having this discussion.
-Right.

Jacques Vallée
went back into folklore.

He was one of the first
to see and certainly the first

to popularize
that-that parallel

between these
folkloric accounts

and the more modern
accounts of UFOs

and, specifically,
alien abduction.

Half of my family
comes from Austria

and there are many
folkloric tales

of fairy folk, where
a shepherd either disappears

or a shepherd
goes to sleep

and doesn't wake up
for a week

even though, in his mind,

only two hours
have elapsed.

So I think
it's wonderful that Vallée

looked at those stories

and put them
into the context

of potential
extraterrestrial encounters.

Jacques is probably
our greatest

living scientist
and scholar of UFO studies.

He wrote one of
the most influential books

that figures
into the UFO field,

which is called
Passport to Magonia,

where he ventured
the theory that folklore

all throughout the ages,
matches up extraordinarily well

with contemporary
UFO accounts.

NARRATOR:
In 1961, Dr. Jacques Vallée

was working as an astronomer
with the French Space Committee

when he noticed a mysterious
object orbiting the Earth.

This event sparked
a lifelong-interest

in the UFO phenomenon

which he continues
to investigate

more than six decades later.

Vallée started
out in the mid-1960s,

working closely
with Allen Hynek,

doing what you might call
standard UFO analysis back then,

looking at various sightings.

NARRATOR:
While working with Hynek,

Vallée boldly proposed
a profound new theory

to explain UFO sightings

and other
paranormal experiences.

He argued that many UFOs
seem to be manipulating

the space-time continuum

and suggested they may not have
come from another planet

but from another dimension.

Dr. Jacques Vallée
was years ahead

of his time.

When everyone else was looking
at the nuts and bolts

of UFOs and their occupants,

Jacques Vallée was interested

in the interdimensional
phenomena

related to UFO reports.

HYNEK:
Jacques really helped
the field accept the idea

of truly exotic solutions.

Once you really dig
into the UFO phenomena,

it's very hard
to find one solution

that fits all of the cases
that have been reported.

J. Allen Hynek,
Jacques Vallée,

were pioneers in this field

and, interesting piece
of film trivia,

the classic sci-fi movie Close
Encounters of the Third Kind,

it's an homage
to J. Allen Hynek

and Spielberg gave him

a little cameo in the movie.

In that wonderful scene

where the mothership
comes down at the end,

he's the guy
with the pipe.

CHILDRESS:
And, actually,
Jacques Vallée is depicted

in that movie, too,
in a sense.

Isn't he the-the French
UFO expert

in the movie who then uses music
and tones to communicate

-with the extraterrestrials?
-POPE: Yes, indeed.

And a lot
of people don't know this,

Close Encounters
of the Third Kind,

it's based on the story

of one of the great
pioneers in this field.

Another pioneer in this field
was Robert Emenegger

who wrote the book UFOs: Past,
Present & Future.

Well, there's a fascinating
story about him.

He was basically promised

that he would get film footage

of a UFO landing
at an Air Force Base.

Really?

NARRATOR:
In 1972,
filmmaker Robert Emenegger

was hired by President
Richard Nixon's Chief of Staff,

H.R. Haldeman,
to produce a documentary film.

The Committee to Re-elect
the President

wanted to make
a scientific documentary

that would support Nixon.

A documentary about
some secret project

that the government's been
working on

that can be declassified.

NARRATOR:
But as soon as Emenegger
started on the project,

it took an unexpected turn.

HOLCOMBE:
Bob Emenegger was asked,

"How would you like to make
a documentary on UFOs?"

And Bob Emenegger was stunned.

He told me at his home,

"I didn't know anything
about UFOs. I was shocked."

They said if we would make
the documentary,

we would be given

600 feet
of 16-millimeter film

shot at Holloman
Air Force Base

of a UFO landing there.

So Emenegger agreed to do it.

NARRATOR:
Emenegger set about
producing a documentary

that would present the public

with authentic footage of a UFO.

But when it came time to receive
the sensational materials

he'd been promised,

the government
had a change of heart.

HOLCOMBE:
Their White House contact said,

"Bob, I hate to tell you,
but the film

has been withdrawn."

Bob Emenegger
was crushed. He said,

"Why? With everything
we've done,

with everything that's in place,
why would you do this?"

And he said, "Watergate."

GRANT CAMERON:
They said, "We can't allow
you to use the film.

"You have to do
your own version of it.

"Something that might've
happened in the past

may happen in the future."
So they did that.

It was a documentary called
UFOs: Past, Present & Future.

And they also had
a book by the same name.

NARRATOR:
Even without
the military's footage,

the 1974 release
of Emenegger's documentary

caused a stir
among the UFO community.

And many believe
the alleged encounter

at Holloman Air Force Base

influenced a much more
famous film.

The documentary
is done in 1975.

Steven Spielberg's Close
Encounters of the Third Kind

came out in 1977.

So when you see Close
Encounters of the Third Kind,

it's the Holloman
Air Force Base story.

Just changed the location.

It's exactly
what the story was.

NARRATOR:
On December 14, 1977,

Close Encounters
of the Third Kind

opens in wide release
across America,

grossing over $10 million
its first week.

But could it have been
based on an actual event?

This is a fascinating story

of a UFO landing
at an Air Force base.

And, look,
the military themselves

maybe can't just come out
and say this

because, uh,
implicit in that admission

would be an admission that

they lied about this
for decades.

But I think, also, that we can
handle this, this truth.

A long time ago,
people would say,

"Well, how do you deal
with the skeptics?"

One of the pioneers
who, unfortunately,

is no longer
with us 'cause he passed away

only a few years ago,
is Dr. Stanton Friedman

the nuclear physicist.

POPE:
Stanton Friedman was an absolute
powerhouse in this field.

Over the course
of that career,

he gave, I-I--
goodness, I don't have a figure.

I-it's hundreds--
I think it's thousands

of individual presentations

at schools, colleges,

um, a-all sorts
of different places,

and he was a-a crusader,

an evangelist
for this subject,

and I-I couldn't talk
about Stanton

without, of course,
mentioning Roswell.

NARRATOR:
As interest
in the UFO phenomenon grew,

some of the nation's
top scientists

began their own investigations,

including nuclear physicist
Dr. Stanton Friedman.

One of Dr. Friedman's most
significant contributions

to the study of UFOs

was his research
into an incident

in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947

when a flying saucer
allegedly crashed

and was swiftly covered up
by the U.S. military.

Stanton Friedman's the man who
interviewed Jesse Marcel Sr.

who was the most important
of the Roswell witnesses.

NARRATOR:
Major Jesse Marcel

was the head
intelligence officer

at Roswell Army Airfield.

He and Brigadier General
Roger Ramey,

head of the Eighth Air Force,

were the officers tasked
with transporting the debris

recovered from the Roswell crash
site to Fort Worth, Texas

to present to the media.

In his interview
with Stanton Friedman,

Major Marcel
made a shocking admission.

He claimed that General Ramey

replaced the real
Roswell debris.

BIRNES: Major Marcel explained
how they swapped

the Roswell debris with radar
material from a radar balloon.

And he had to swear
that's what he saw.

So the point
is that Stanton

unearthed a lot
of this material

and was the first person
to make it public.

NARRATOR:
Stanton alleged that the
military was engaged

in a widespread coverup
of the existence

of extraterrestrial life,

a scandal so big he called
it the "cosmic Watergate."

If you pick up
a UFO book written in the '50s

and if it's got an index,

and you think,
"Oh, I'll look up Roswell,"

you won't find it.
It's not there.

The rediscovery of Roswell
is really credited

-to Stanton Friedman.
-Interesting.

You know, we've actually
been working

all these years
with one of the earliest

modern UFO researchers

and pioneers that exist.

She's a specialist
in cattle mutilations.

She's a specialist in
UFOs and Roswell,

our own Linda Moulton Howe.

NARRATOR:
For more than four decades,

investigative reporter
Linda Moulton Howe

has been
researching a potential

extraterrestrial
presence on Earth.

She has received numerous awards
for journalistic excellence

including an Emmy
for her 1980 documentary

on cattle mutilations titled,

A Strange Harvest.

Today she is the reporter
and editor of the website

Earthfiles.com,
which contains an archive

of nearly 3,000
in-depth UFO reports.

She's actually
waiting to speak with us

with a video call.

TSOUKALOS:
Hi, Linda. Good to see you.

Hi, guys.
It's great to see you.

So tell us, please,

what got you
started in this field?

I am a professional TV producer

and an investigative reporter.

In September of 1979,

I was director
of special projects

at the CBS station
in Denver, Colorado.

And late in that summer,
there were headlines

in The Denver Post
and The Rocky Mountain News

about bloodless, trackless
animal mutilations

in Colorado
and surrounding states.

I wanted to find out what

did this mean, "a bloodless,
trackless animal mutilation"?

This gets me involved,
and we do this

for my film
A Strange Harvest.

There was
a classic pattern

from case to case to case

where these animals
have the same tissue taken:

ear, eye, tongue, jaw,
genitals and rectum.

And those were excisions

that really baffled the sheriffs
and the veterinarians

because the bone
where the cut was made

glistened like somebody
had melted and then polished.

Right. This would imply

some type
of external technology.

POPE:
I'm wondering
in your research with

the hundreds
of people you've spoken to,

not just the ranchers,
but fellow journalists,

broadcasters,
the veterinarians,

what is your
bottom line conclusions?

Who's doing this and why?

Well, Nick,
there is no evidence beyond

the bodies of these animals.

But one of the ranchers

told me
that one night he saw

a round, glowing disc--
is all he could see--

put a beam right down
into one of his pastures

where they had been
having mutilations

around in a large area.

And in that beam of light,

he saw
one of his animals.

The sheriff
told me this himself.

He said,
"I know that the perpetrators

"of these bloodless
animal mutilations

are creatures
from outer space."

And I felt like
I had been hit

with an electrical shock.

NARRATOR:
Creatures from outer space?

Could extraterrestrials
be responsible

for the bizarre
animal mutilations

that have been reported by
ranchers all over the country?

But, if so, to what end?

HOWE:
I have literally
interviewed thousands now.

You hear,

"I saw this kind of light."

"I saw this beam lowering
an animal to the pasture,

and it was mutilated."

Somebody else saw
this animal coming up

in a beam of light, and later
it was found mutilated.

And what people
were describing

in the 20th century

are what people were describing
in the third century

or 500 BC

or going back in time.

And it's not just
the United States.

It's Canada,
Mexico, Central America,

South America,
Australia, New Zealand,

all of Western Europe

and going
into Eastern Europe.

NARRATOR:
According to the FBI,
thousands of cattle mutilations

have been reported across
the U.S. since the 1970s.

Linda's
pioneering investigations

forced those who study
the UFO phenomenon

to consider
a chilling proposition:

that extraterrestrial
beings aren't just here

to observe us.

They may have
an agenda for our planet.

HOWE:
I think it's important
to get across that

there are real people
who have been afraid

to come forward and describe

what they actually saw
with their own eyes

because they didn't have
video proof

and they don't want
to be criticized.

TSOUKALOS:
Well, Linda, this has been
absolutely invaluable,

and we are all so lucky
to have you on board with us.

So we thank you
very much for your time.

Thank you, Giorgio.

-That was incredible.
-Wow. That was pretty
interesting.

She was like
the first dogged reporter,

investigative reporter,
you know, phoning up people,

going to those sites,
interviewing people.

Yeah, it-it brings it home

that these UFOs have real

tangible, physical effects

and that means it's not just
imagination. It's real.

By the way,
the U.S. government

is one of
the last governments to admit

there is a UFO phenomenon.

But now we all actually
know that the U.S. government

has been investigating
this since the '40s.

Absolutely. And records,
files, documents,

are being declassified
and released in record numbers.

In the United Kingdom,
for example,

we've declassified and released

about 60,000 pages

of UFO documents, some of which
were very highly classified.

And so we get

this fuller picture
of what's going on.

And now, you know, uh,
almost everybody who has had

an experience feels

compelled to come forward
to tell their story.

I mean, this reminds me
of one influential person

and modern pioneer,
Bob Lazar.

Yes, uh, he was somebody

who first spoke out in 1989.

DOLAN: Bob Lazar is someone who
became famous back in 1989

as a result of a very
specific claim that he made.

And that claim
is that he worked

at a place
just south of Area 51.

He called it S4.

He was interviewed
by a Las Vegas journalist,

George Knapp in a series
of very detailed interviews.

We put him on the air,
blacked out his face,

and he told
this incredible story.

KNAPP: Exactly what's
going on up there?

BOB LAZAR: Well, there's
several, uh, actually nine,

uh, flying saucers,
flying discs,

uh, that are out there
of extraterrestrial origin.

He said it's a secret that
needed to be told to the world,

that his life was in danger,

and that he was coming forward
and, uh, and wanted to tell it.

I could feel my jaw dropping.
Is this real?

We left there thinking,
"Wow. If this is real,

this is a really big story."

So we decided, well,
let's take the time

and get this right.

NARRATOR:
Over the next eight months,

Knapp conducted
a thorough investigation

of Lazar's sensational claims.

According to Lazar,
before he worked at S4,

he as a physicist at the
Los Alamos National Laboratory--

the facility
that developed the atomic bomb.

The central
question for me was,

"Did he work at Los Alamos?"

Because if he did,

it would at least be plausible
that if he worked there

in a technical or scientific
position, that he could also

be hired at a place like S4.

So that's where
we focused our attention.

I started calling Los Alamos.

At first, "No. We have no record
of a guy named Bob Lazar."

I got the phone book
from the Los Alamos Lab.

There's his name in the phone
book. I call them back and said,

"Hey, he's in the phone book."

They finally sort of
exasperatingly told me,

"Yeah, we've got a record
of him being here."

We found Bob Lazar
to be credible, um,

about his background, his, uh,
his scientific training,

where he had worked.

NARRATOR:
For more than two decades,

Bob Lazar's critics claimed

there was no evidence
of any secret military base

in the Nevada desert.

But then, in 2013,

a Freedom
of Information Act request

forced the CIA
to finally acknowledge

that Area 51 is real.

CORBELL:
The story of Area 51--

it exploded
around the world.

The reason
you know about Area 51

is because Bob Lazar
and George Knapp

on the news, 1989,
made it a household name.

That's the reason.

All of that
came from Bob Lazar.

NARRATOR:
To many researchers,

the government's
acknowledgement of Area 51

established Lazar
as more than a UFO pioneer.

His inside access
made him a whistleblower.

My name's Bob Lazar.

I'm known for working
at a classified base

known as S4
out in the Nevada desert

near Area 51,

and there
we reverse-engineered

alien spacecraft.

NARRATOR:
But could Lazar's
sensational claims be true?

Former Air Force pilot
Captain David Fruehauf

worked at Area 51

from 1979 until 1985.

And while he was never shown
any alien technology,

he attests
that Bob Lazar's account

of the facility
is entirely accurate.

When I was there,
we knew about S4,

but we didn't know
what they did.

And I know people
that had worked for me

that after I left there,
they had seen Bob Lazar there,

and they admitted that
to me recently.

Bob Lazar's statements
and all the things he had said

have gelled now to the point

where I think
he's very credible.

It doesn't
necessarily prove

every aspect
of Bob Lazar's story,

but Bob Lazar said
there was an Area 51

and the government then said,
"Yeah, okay there is."

-So it makes one wonder.
-Right.

I mean, look,
if Roswell was real, uh,

they had to take
the wreckage somewhere,

and, of course, it stands
to reason we'd want to know,

uh, can we build
these things ourselves?

Can we develop this technology?
You'd do it somewhere.

What better place
than Area 51?

And Area 51 today
is part of our pop culture.

-I mean, everyone
knows about Area 51.
-TSOUKALOS: Right.

I think that
anyone who genuinely

looks into
the UFO phenomenon--

you have to come away
with some belief in it.

There's no getting away
from the fact

that we are
in a stronger position

now, in terms of evidence,
than we've ever been.

And, actually,
when this is accepted,

we are going to have
to fundamentally rethink

our place
in the wider cosmos.

Right. Yes.

Well, gentlemen, this has been
a fascinating conversation.

So with everything
that we have so far,

cattle mutilations,
UFO sightings,

and also ancient stories
that pretty much speak

of the same thing,

you have to wonder

where does this all lead
and will we soon come closer

to the truth?

CHILDRESS:
There's an amazing consistency

to all of these reports.

And when you put
them all in totality,

it's just not something
you can dismiss.

-Something's going on.
-POPE: It is.

And we're building up
to something.

PILOT:
My gosh.

POPE:
We have military pilots,

and radar operators,
going on the record with this,

government officials
who have been involved

in these sorts of programs,

we have declassification
of documents.

CHILDRESS:
It seems to be

the beginning
of disclosure, in a sense.

NARRATOR:
Could disclosure, in fact,
already be happening

with evidence coming
from many sources?

In December 2020,

former CIA Director
John Brennan

made a surprising statement
about UFOs

on the Conversations
with Tylerpodcast.

I think some of the phenomena
we're going to be seeing

continues to be,
uh, unexplained

and might, in fact,

be a different form of life.

We are living through
a remarkable turning point

right now in UFO studies.

We don't know
what these objects are,

but the fact that these
objects are documented,

backed by evidence,

backed by a long record
of credible testimony

is no longer in dispute.

It's been over 70 years
since these early pioneers

began collecting data
and releasing it

to the public
and we've really

-come a long way since then.
-We should never forget

that all these people,

whether it's Jacques Vallée,

Dr. J. Allen Hynek,

Coral Lorenzen,

Linda Moulton Howe--
without them we probably

wouldn't be in the fortunate
position that we are in today.

All of these people
went down a path

that was, at the time,
unheard of,

and, in a way,
we are standing on

the shoulders of giants

because through the work
of the pioneers

and through
shows like Ancient Aliens,

and now almost everybody
who has had an experience

feels compelled
to tell their story

because it has become
more accepted,

and the so-called zeitgeist

has changed in our favor.

Well, I think you're right.

It's been a great conversation
with you guys.

It's just-just a
fascinating subject, of course.

Yeah, thank you very much
for the information, Nick.

And everything that
we've talked about today

illustrates this disclosure
that has been going on

for a very long time,
and I can't wait to see

what the future holds,
and I thank you for your time.

-Thank you.
-Thanks, Nick.

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