All language subtitles for Ancient Aliens SP s02e02 Extraterrestrial Informants.eng

NARRATOR: Whistleblowers
claiming firsthand knowledge

of downed UFOs.

RICHARD DOLAN:
Roswell crash witnesses started to surface,

saying it was actually
an extraterrestrial craft.

NARRATOR:
Accusations that a U.S. Air Force facility

is holding
otherworldly technology.

BOB LAZAR:
At Area 51,

we reverse-engineered
alien spacecraft.

That's a fact.

NARRATOR:
And secret military investigations

into unidentified
aerial phenomena.

LUIS ELIZONDO:
I've seen too much.

I know it's real.

I can't, in good conscience,

just keep my head
buried in the sand.

NARRATOR:
As mounting evidence

of a long-standing government
cover-up comes to light,

is the public
finally on the brink

of learning the truth

about an extraterrestrial
presence on Earth?

GIORGIO TSOUKALOS:
The government of the United States

is now openly
investigating UFOs.

This speaks volumes how

the paradigm has shifted.

? ?

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.

...will come to order.

NARRATOR:
The recently established

All-Domain Anomaly
Resolution Office,

or AARO, holds its first hearing

in front of a Senate
Armed Services Committee.

AARO investigates
unidentified anomalous phenomena

for the Department of Defense...

Dr. Kirkpatrick, uh,
you can give your testimony.

NARRATOR:
...and during the hearing,

the head of this agency,
Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, presents

stunning footage from
a recently declassified video.

It was recorded
by a reconnaissance plane

moving over Mosul, Iraq,
in April 2016.

SEAN KIRKPATRICK:
You'll see it, uh,

come through
the top of the screen.

There it goes.

And then the camera
will slew to follow it.

You'll see it pop in and out of
the scr-- field of view there.

This is essentially
all of the data we have

associated with this event
from some years ago.

As we get more data,
we will be able to go back

and look at these
in a fuller context.

TIM BURCHETT:
I want to thank everybody

for making this happen today,
and I want to remind everybody

this is a nonpartisan issue.

NARRATOR:
Just three months later, on July 26th,

the House Oversight Committee
holds its own UFO hearing,

listening to testimony

from three former military
and intelligence witnesses

with insider information
regarding UAPs.

It's been said it's probably

the most credible
UFO sighting in history

based on all the sensors
that were tracking it.

NARRATOR:
These public hearings represent a major break

from the U.S. government's
long-standing policy

of secrecy and denial

when it comes
to the subject of UFOs.

But what can account
for such a profound change?

According to UFO researchers,

this shift
didn't happen overnight,

but is a result
of overwhelming evidence

that has been
accumulating for decades.

The FBI releases

thousands of files
as part of its online FBI Vault.

One particular file
draws the attention

of the media
and independent researchers.

The memo, dated March 22, 1950,

is a briefing to FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover

regarding informant information
about three flying saucers

that were recovered
in New Mexico.

Investigators immediately
connect the memo

to the infamous
Roswell incident--

a purported UFO crash
that many people believe

was covered up
by the military in 1947.

But this document is
just the latest

in a series of government files

that have been released
in recent years,

suggesting there may be more
to the Roswell crash

than the public was told.

As an investigative reporter,

I think what I am amazed by is

how many leaked documents
from the 1940s

have actually come out
into the world

and lay out details about
what really happened at Roswell.

? ?

On July 4th,
a rancher named Mac Brazel

finds all kinds
of strange silver debris.

He knows he doesn't understand
what he's walking through.

He decides to go into Roswell
and tell the sheriff,

"Something has crashed
on my ranch."

Intel coming out
of Roswell Army Air Field

get assigned to go
to the debris field.

And these men are told
that they are to pick up

every single thing
that is in the debris field

on the Mac Brazel ranch.

Everything is to be picked up.

NARRATOR:
On July 8, 1947,

the headline on the front page
of the Roswell Daily Record

reports that the military
had retrieved a flying saucer.

But the following day,
the official story is

suddenly changed to suggest
it was nothing more

than a failed weather balloon.

Roswell was the home
of the 509th Bomb Crew.

This was the only
atomic bomb capable squadron

anywhere in the world.

These people were
the best of the best.

The idea
that intelligence personnel

at this base would mistake
a weather balloon

for something exotic
is preposterous.

So that, arguably, is the start
of the UFO cover-up.

TSOUKALOS:
Weather balloon, swamp gas, meteorite, it doesn't matter.

It's always something else
but a UFO.

The Roswell crash
was covered up.

The fact that they retracted

the story of having
captured a flying saucer,

in my opinion, it was
quick P.R. damage control.

The world was told,

"Nope, just a weather balloon."

And for more than 30 years,

that's where it was left until
witnesses started to surface

saying, "No, it was actually
an extraterrestrial craft."

And people saw alien bodies.

NARRATOR:
In April of 2014,

ancient astronaut theorist
Giorgio Tsoukalos

traveled to
Walker Air Force Base

in Roswell, New Mexico

to meet with the city's
Mayor Del Jurney,

and to get a rare look
at the hangar

where the Roswell wreckage
and extraterrestrial bodies

were allegedly first taken.

TSOUKALOS:
Wow, this is huge.

DEL JURNEY:
So, what do you think?

TSOUKALOS: Man, I have
goose bumps right now.

I mean, we're walking
on history.

JURNEY:
It's amazing, isn't it?

Are you familiar
with where the spot is?

Where they actually put them?

Well, you know,
the information that I have

says that it's probably
right over here in the corner.

They took them over there,

did an examination
of the bodies.

- TSOUKALOS: So,
this is where it was? - JURNEY: This is it.

Yeah, come on in.

They had the debris out here

in the hangar area,
and they bring the bodies

inside this room.

TSOUKALOS:
I really don't know what to say

'cause, I mean,
if this was it...

- You're standing where...
- Yeah, yeah.

Where extraterrestrial beings

might have been.

Where did the debris go?
Where did it end up?

Well, it ended up
with the government, of course.

And they have it well-preserved

in a military installation
someplace.

NARRATOR:
Roswell researchers suggest

a government-sanctioned
bond of secrecy

has prevented witnesses
of the crash and retrieval

from coming forward publicly.

But many did choose
to come forward later in life,

including the first
military officer to arrive

at the Roswell crash site,
Major Jesse Marcel.

According to his grandson,
Marcel privately shared

many details of his experience
with the family.

JESSE MARCEL III:
My grandfather, Major Jesse Marcel,

was the head of intelligence
for the 509th bombing group.

As a kid, basically
around the dinner table,

we talked about Roswell.

And through conversations,
we learned

that my grandfather was
the lead investigator

into what has become known
as the Roswell incident.

And when he was
looking at the debris,

he couldn't make heads or tails

or any sense out of what
he was looking at.

He'd gathered some of the debris

and decided
to take it home with him.

He kind of came to this idea
that he said,

"You know,
whatever this stuff is,

"it's very significant
and it's gonna change humanity.

"And I want my family
to be part of it.

This is very important."

NARRATOR:
According to the family's story,

Major Marcel came home after
his first visit to the site

and laid the debris out
on the floor of their kitchen.

Some of the material
was a strange,

thin metal similar to foil,

except,
when crumpled up into a ball,

it would bounce back
to its flawless state.

Marcel also claims the metal
was not the same material

featured
in newspaper photographs

being held by his grandfather.

MARCEL III:
There's a pretty famous picture of him

holding a piece of debris,

which is a piece
of foil basically,

and it was
weather balloon material.

He begrudgingly went
along with the story, held it.

And if you take a look at that,

you'll notice that he's not
looking at the camera.

He's looking up at
somebody barking him orders.

He fell in line begrudgingly

and did what he was
supposed to do.

NARRATOR:
Is it possible that an alien craft

really did crash in Roswell?

If so, might there be
a larger conspiracy

that goes beyond New Mexico?

Ancient astronaut
theorists say yes,

but they also believe
that Roswell was not

the first or only
extraterrestrial crash on Earth.

NARRATOR:
Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

April 12, 1941.

9:30 p.m.

(phone rings)

Reverend William Huffman

gets a call from local police

informing him
that there has been a crash

and he is needed at the site

to offer spiritual comfort
to the victims.

HENRY:
He probably thought it was gonna be an automobile crash.

But to his surprise,
when he arrived,

there is a disc-shaped craft...

...and there are three alien
looking bodies on the ground--

tiny, big heads,
big eyes, small mouths.

DAVID CHILDRESS:
The military was there,

the FBI was there.

And he was astonished to find

that this was a crash
of some kind of UFO,

and that the being
was an extraterrestrial.

WILCOCK: He had the chance
to look inside the disc,

and found that there were
hieroglyphic-type inscriptions

on the walls inside.

The government told him,

"You're not to say a word
about this to anyone.

This is totally classified."

NARRATOR:
Huffman's account would remain a secret

until after his passing

when his wife,
on her deathbed in 1984,

divulged the details
to the rest of the family.

Witnesses have since
come forward

to corroborate the account,

including the sheriff's brother

and members
of the fire department.

Further details about
the military response

have since been leaked

and the incident
has become known

as "the Bombshell
before Roswell."

The story is
that a military unit

from Sikeston, Missouri--

only about 30 miles away
from the crash site--

comes in, with orders
to gather up these bodies,

gather up this disc
and fly it to Washington, D.C.

So Cape Girardeau, Missouri

from 1941, appears to be where

our retrieval, as a government,
of things that were described

as "from another world" began.

The Cape Girardeau crash
was a preparation

for the military's response
to the Roswell crash.

And the military
learned an awful lot

about how to handle these events
and how to make sure

that they put
a blanket of secrecy

over future crash events.

NARRATOR:
While the Roswell crash is now infamous,

what is lesser known

is that similar incidents
were reported

all across America
around the same time.

These incidents include crashes
in San Antonio, New Mexico,

Twin Falls, Idaho,

Hebgen Lake, Montana,

Braxton County, West Virginia,

and many others.

But why were so many mysterious
crashes suddenly being reported?

Many believe the defining event
of the 20th century

was World War II.

It was a conflict

that would involve
nearly every nation on Earth

and cost the lives
of over 60 million people.

The war gave rise to weaponry
far more advanced and deadly

than modern man had ever known,

including the atomic bomb.

It also gave rise

to a tremendous surge
in UFO reports.

But why?

CHILDRESS:
A large portion of these alleged UFO sightings

have occurred in the decades
during World War II

and immediately afterwards.

And part of the theory there
is that because

the United States had
developed atomic weapons

and used them on Japan...

...and then continued
to test them in Nevada,

New Mexico and other areas,

that the extraterrestrials
themselves

were concerned about this.

TSOUKALOS:
Some have suggested that the moment

that we developed
nuclear capabilities,

that this somehow signaled
the extraterrestrials

that we have reached
a level of technology

because one thing
can be said for sure--

that worldwide,

the eyewitness accounts
or reports for UFO sightings

have gone up ever since
the deployment

of our first hydrogen bomb.

So, is it possible that we,

by doing that, signaled
extraterrestrial life out there?

CHILDRESS:
You have to wonder what was going on,

because various UFO crashes
were allegedly happening

throughout North America

in the late '40s, '50s and '60s.

NARRATOR:
Did the dawning of the nuclear age

really usher in a new era
of extraterrestrial encounters?

And if the U.S. military was

actively retrieving
UFO wreckage,

just where were they taking it?

Just 900 miles
from Roswell, New Mexico.

Perhaps the most well-known site

rumored to be hiding
alien debris

is the secret engineering base
known as Area 51.

After years
of denying its existence,

on August 16, 2013,
the United States government

officially
acknowledged the base.

It was one of the single
most sensitive

hidden military bases.

Everybody who worked there
was sworn to secrecy to death.

And it was not until 2013

that there was a confirmation
that Area 51 is real

and had been real
for a very long time.

NARRATOR:
Believed by many to hold the wreckage

from the infamous
Roswell crash of 1947,

the U.S. government still claims
the secret engineering base

has never housed
any extraterrestrial remains.

STANTON FRIEDMAN:
The announcement seems to have been tossing the public a bone.

That we indeed have an area

of advanced research
and development,

and what we refer to as Area 51.

Who knows what's
really going on there?

Just because they said this,
that, or the other thing

doesn't mean it's true.

Would anybody trust the CIA
to tell the truth,

the whole truth
and nothing but the truth?

When you listen to people
who have left Area 51,

they claim that it's got

extraterrestrial craft
that we have tested

and reverse-engineered.

There's no question in my mind

that Area 51 has been
a very secretive government base

for all kinds of things.

NARRATOR:
Is it possible that Area 51

actually houses
otherworldly artifacts?

Artifacts that were retrieved
from extraterrestrial crashes?

Perhaps further clues
can be found

at the very entrance
of the secret base.

An entrance that has been
strictly off-limits for decades.

NARRATOR:
College student Matty Roberts creates a post on Facebook.

In it, Roberts calls
on his friends to storm

the top secret U.S.
military base called Area 51--

a place that has long
been rumored

to be housing crashed
extraterrestrial spacecraft.

As part of the post,
Roberts invites his readers

to click to indicate
if they're attending.

I had shared it to my own
personal Facebook page

and I think it amassed
probably about 40 RSVPs,

the people were interested or
had tagged themselves as going.

NARRATOR:
Roberts has no idea whether the post will simply reach

his own circle of friends
and acquaintances on Facebook,

or if it will spread
further into cyberspace.

He gets his answer
two days later

when his phone begins buzzing
with RSVP notifications.

First a few hundred,

then, a few thousand.

ROBERTS:
It just kept kind of snowballing.

It took about three days
for it to really take off

and it just took off
like wildfire and then,

that's when
it got posted on Reddit,

and when it got posted
on Reddit it really took off.

NARRATOR:
Within a week,

the number of RSVPs soars
to over a million.

And then, on July 11th,
the news got ahold of it.

Now a new Facebook event
talks about organizing

a large mob to raid the base.

They were trying to organize
a big mob to storm Area 51

- where all the aliens are.
- All right.

Officials are saying,

"Stay away, this is not
something you want to go to."

NEWSCASTER:
There are even signs that warn it's a restricted area.

That it is unlawful to enter
the area without permission

and that use of deadly force
is authorized.

In short, don't go.

NARRATOR:
News commentators point out

that if even a small fraction
of those who responded show up,

the proposed storming
could quickly turn violent.

Alarmed at the overwhelming
response to Roberts' post,

U.S. military officials
issue a warning.

In ominous language, it states

that "The U.S. Air Force
always stands ready

to protect America
and its assets."

POPE:
Now they cleverly didn't exactly say what would happen,

but there was a palpable threat
left hanging in the air.

NARRATOR:
Faced with the military's willingness to defend Area 51

at all costs,

many potential attendees
change their plans

and decide not to attend.

But while the government
warnings are largely effective,

on the night of September 20th,

nearly 100 people refuse
to be intimidated,

and gather at the gates.

KYLE KALLMAN:
People are prepared for a bloodbath,

but I have seen nothing.

The cops have been out
in a show of force,

and they are gonna make it
very unpleasant

for anybody who crosses.

NARRATOR:
Both sides show restraint,

and a potentially
deadly confrontation is averted.

Only two people are
detained by authorities

for minor offenses.

Over the next three days,
approximately 3,000 more people

make the journey to Area 51
in a show of solidarity

and in protest
of government secrecy.

There's a huge alien community
around the world.

It was a matter of time before
this was gonna happen.

I don't think the government's
being honest

'cause I think
they would freak us out

if they told us what was inside
that big old mountain there.

NARRATOR:
Could Area 51 truly harbor extraterrestrial secrets?

And if so, how did it all begin?

Perhaps answers can be found

in the murky history
of the mysterious desert base.

We actually have to go back
to the attack on Pearl Harbor

in December 1941.

The government said,

"We can never allow

"something like this
to happen again.

"So let's move or create
some of these installations

and facilities
further into the country."

NARRATOR:
Area 51 was built around a salt flat known as Groom Lake.

A runway now slices
across the dry lake bed.

The reason why Groom Lake
was chosen was very simple--

Groom Lake itself was a dry bed,

but it was extremely long,

and it could double
as a huge runway.

Some of these aircraft
required long runways.

For many years,
Area 51 enthusiasts were able

to watch with high-powered
binocular lenses

and see base activity.

None of that
is possible anymore.

They've gone to great lengths
to keep whatever's happening

at Area 51 a secret.

NARRATOR:
For the better part of a century,

the U.S. government denied
the very existence of Area 51.

But why?

The official Area 51--
now admitted by the government--

is this facility where aircraft
were developed and test-flown.

The U-2 spy plane,

the SR-71 Blackbird

and of course, more recently,
stealth technology.

So that's the official Area 51,

highly secret, secure, remote.

But then there's
the unofficial Area 51

where people say that there was
an even bigger secret there.

And that was
extraterrestrial technology.

NARRATOR: To further
investigate what might be hidden

at the secret Area 51 base,

former British Ministry
of Defense officer Nick Pope

and filmmaker Jeremy Corbell
have enlisted

the help of local resident
Joerg Arnu.

Joerg, who has lived in nearby
Rachel, Nevada for 15 years,

has been a firsthand witness

to Area 51's recent history.

What's the strangest
interaction you've seen

of people coming in
or out of the base?

Heavy construction equipment
going into the base

when they were doing
construction.

And also, sometimes you see

military vehicles
being dragged into the base.

They set them up
inside the bombing ranges

for shooting targets.

Just pull over here.

There's a sheriff's
vehicle coming our way.

We don't want any trouble.
We don't want to block them.

We don't want to go any further.

POPE:
This is extra security.

I don't think we've ever seen
quite this much.

NARRATOR:
In light of the tension

surrounding
the Storm Area 51 event,

the military has implemented
a zero-tolerance lockdown

at the gate of the secret base.

POPE:
So here we are.

I think this is about
as far as we can go.

The point of no return, right?

Yes. We cannot go any further.

POPE:
All this barbed wire here,

all the security measures,

this is the point at which

if you take one step further,

the full force of security
will come down on us, right?

Make no mistake--
we step one step

into that territory
and everything is gonna change.

If I came up here,

is anybody gonna talk to me?

Are they gonna say
anything to me?

No. These are signs

that spell out in plain English,

"Bad things
are gonna happen to you

if you cross this line."

- POPE: Right.
- ARNU: It's very clear.

So now look,
if we walked past that barrier

up that road, what would we see?

What would we find?

We would be walking down
about 20 miles of paved road

into the valley
that Area 51 is located in.

In between here and the base

there's more
security checkpoints,

there's more road sensors.

If you were to get to Area 51,

you're standing there
and you look around

and it looks like any other
military Air Force base.

But the good stuff
is all in hangars.

It is not out in the open.

It's not like, you know,

they got the saucer
right there on the runway.

- So there are hangars obviously.
- Yeah.

But there are even rumors
of huge underground facilities,

facilities carved
into the sides of the mountains.

There are people that talk
about underground facilities.

They keep tabs on people
that watch the base.

They know exactly when
somebody's up on Tikaboo Peak,

for instance, one of the view
spots of the base.

NARRATOR:
Located 26 miles from the Area 51 base,

Tikaboo Peak
is the only public land

where people can actually see

the Groom Lake runway
and hangars.

And they know exactly,
okay, right now is a good moment

to fly our good stuff,
and that's when

they bring out the good stuff.

I've actually been on

Tikaboo Peak when
they did a test-flight,

and it was
the most amazing thing.

We look at the base,
and all of a sudden

in the middle of the night
all the runway lights come on.

I mean, it's the most
amazing thing to watch.

All of a sudden, the desert
in front of you,

below you, becomes alive.

You see a light
taxiing to the runway,

the light takes off,
the runway lights go out,

the light goes out,
and that was the end of that.

I mean, literally,
feet above the runway

the lights just went out.

That's ultra-high security.

And whatever that thing was,
clearly, they were really

trying to protect it

and minimizing that anyone
could get eyes on it.

Correct.

NARRATOR:
Could claims that the U.S. military discovered

otherworldly spacecraft be true?

Might some of
post-war America's greatest

technological accomplishments
have been the result

of reverse-engineering
alien vehicles?

Ancient astronaut theorists say
yes, and insist that the truth

about Area 51 was actually
revealed decades ago,

not by UFO enthusiasts
or whistleblowers,

but by two of the men
most responsible for

maintaining the government's
most vital secrets.

NARRATOR:
Burbank, California.

June, 1943.

In the midst of World War II,
the government

presses the Lockheed
Aircraft Corporation

to develop the next
generation of military planes.

Jet fighters designed
to outflank propeller aircraft,

and help turn the tide of war.

A team headed by
Lockheed engineer

Clarence "Kelly" Johnson

delivers the first production
model in just 143 days.

Their P-80 Shooting Star

initiates the jet age
for the U.S. military.

Kelly Johnson's secret
research and development team

ultimately becomes known...
as "Skunk Works."

Clarence Kelly Johnson
was the first head of

Lockheed's Skunk Works division
back in the '50s and '60s,

up until 1975.

He's the developer of the U-2
spy plane, which was able to fly

at the incredible altitude
of 80,000 feet, equipped with

photographic capabilities
that were astonishing,

and he is a great legend in the
aviation community, for sure.

NARRATOR:
Despite his mainstream credentials,

Johnson becomes
the primary witness to

a now-famous UFO sighting
in Agoura, California,

on December 16, 1953.

His report of the encounter,
and his personal sketches

of the craft, were
preserved by Project Bluebook,

the U.S. government's
official account of

the UFO phenomenon at the time.

DOLAN:
He was with some of his colleagues at the time

when he saw a very,
very unusual object

that he could not explain
in any kind of technology

that was familiar
to him at the time.

NARRATOR:
During an era of official skepticism about UFOs,

Johnson risks his career

by reporting the sighting
to his superiors.

But instead of
being penalized or demoted,

Johnson is seemingly
rewarded two years later,

when he played a pivotal role
in founding America's

most secret military base:
Area 51.

Kelly Johnson was the person
that identified

the location where Area 51 is
as a good strategic location.

It is fundamentally
located in the right part

of the world
without prying eyes.

NARRATOR:
But was Area 51 founded merely to test

experimental aircraft,
as the military insists?

Or did Kelly Johnson choose
the location as the best place

to reverse-engineer
the very alien spacecraft

he believed he saw
with his own eyes?

Kelly Johnson died in 1990
without ever disclosing

the secrets of Area 51.

But a key person
in his inner circle

openly expressed his belief

that extraterrestrials
are present on Earth.

Aviation designer
Benjamin Robert Rich

succeeds Kelly Johnson as the
second director of Skunk Works.

He will eventually become known
as the "Father of Stealth."

Ben Rich was one of
the real legends of

the history of American
aviation,

and the classified
world in general.

And he's famously known
as the man who's really behind

the design
of the F-117A Nighthawk--

that's the stealth fighter

which would revolutionize
aviation in the 1980s and '90s.

NARRATOR:
Another aviation expert and colleague, Jim Goodall,

heard rumors that Ben Rich
had information

confirming the existence
of UFOs.

So he decided to ask,
point blank, what this

legendary head of
Skunk Works really believed.

GOODALL:
Mr. Ben Rich was a friend of mine.

And just before he passed away,
I asked him, I said,

"Do you believe in UFOs?"

He said, "Jim, we have
things out in the desert

"that are 50 years beyond
what you can comprehend.

"Not what you think
you can build in 50 years,

"but what you can comprehend.

"And if you've seen movies
like Star Trek and Star Wars,

we've been there, done that."

To me, I think it was
a deathbed confession.

CORBELL:
This is a man that would know

what technologies we have

in our inventory as humans
and what we don't.

Ben Rich was a believer in UFOs.
I think beyond believer.

I think he knew.

NARRATOR:
But of all the people who worked at Area 51,

perhaps the most famous,
or infamous, is Bob Lazar.

No one has been more
inflammatory or controversial.

Who among us has not heard
about an alleged UFO cover-up?

NARRATOR:
On local TV station KLAS,

investigative reporter
George Knapp

interviews a man
going by the name Dennis

and shot in silhouette
to hide his identity.

The man claims to work at
the secret military installation

that the U.S. government
still maintains does not exist.

And according to him,
the base does,

in fact, hold
extraterrestrial spacecraft.

KNAPP: Exactly what's
going on up there?

DENNIS: Well, there are several,
actually nine, flying saucers,

flying discs, that are out there
of extraterrestrial origin.

POPE:
Here was someone who claimed to have worked at Area 51,

back-engineering alien
technology.

UFOs that had crashed,
possibly at Roswell,

and trying to figure out
how they worked.

And then maybe
building one ourselves.

NARRATOR:
Frightened that the government might try to harm him

if he remains anonymous,
the whistleblower

and reporter George Knapp

wrestle with the idea
of revealing his name.

The day that we unveiled
his identity to the world,

he's in the station and
he grabs the tape, he said,

"I've changed my mind,
I'm not going to do it."

Right up to the end,
he was fighting it

and arguing with himself
about whether it's a good idea,

even though his life
had been threatened, his life

had been turned upside down.

NARRATOR: In the end,
the whistleblower decided

to come out of the shadows
and reveal his name: Bob Lazar.

The one good thing
Bob Lazar did was came forward

with George Knapp
in 1989 on May 15th,

and by doing that,
he protected himself.

He was scared for his life,
and he protected himself

by telling you what happened
to him in one shot,

straight up.

NARRATOR: From that day onward,
Bob Lazar has remained the most

controversial UFO
whistleblower in history,

and going public came
at a heavy price.

A price many believe
was exacted by a government

determined to hide
the truth about Area 51.

Not only was Bob's house
broken into,

and they'd move stuff around,
they'd write things on the wall.

He's got an Uzi,
peeking out the window.

The fear was real.

The threats that were
made against him were real.

The surveillance was real.

NARRATOR:
Faced with such harassment,

Lazar retreated from
public view for decades.

I don't like being
in the public eye.

I don't have money for doing
this, and quite frankly I could

make up a better lie,
but I have no motivation to lie.

NARRATOR:
But if Bob Lazar's claims are true, just how much

could he expose about what's
really going on at Area 51?

On December 4, 2018,
Lazar finally decided to end

years of silence
and tell his full story

to filmmaker Jeremy Corbell,

in an explosive documentary
entitled

Bob Lazar:
Area 51 and Flying Saucers.

LAZAR:
In the late 1980s, the U.S. government had recovered

alien spacecraft,
several of them,

and the technology,
in the Nevada desert

that they were
keeping quiet and analyzing.

That's a fact.

That's all my story was,
was that I was just

one of the people
working on these craft.

There probably wouldn't be
this awareness

of Area 51 without Bob Lazar.

And now we have the film,

and suddenly he's back in
the media and the public eye.

NARRATOR: The most
extraordinary technology

that Lazar claims to
have encountered at Area 51

was an alien reactor,
one that he believes has

the potential to change
the world.

LAZAR:
The first time they showed me the reactor in operation,

just seeing something
like that immediately starts

that whole chain reaction
in your mind going, wow, wait,

if you can do this,

you don't need jet
and rocket engines anymore.

That means, wait,
there's no use for cars.

I mean, boom,
the whole thing changes.

The entire world economy,

everything, would go end-on-end,

just if we had an answer to
how that machine worked

that I was sitting there,
touching.

NARRATOR:
Is the U.S. government still operating

a longstanding campaign
to suppress the truth

about Area 51?

Perhaps further clues
can be found in information

exposed by other whistleblowers.

Whistleblowers who claim that
Bob Lazar isn't the only one

who has discovered the truth,

and then been harassed
and discredited

by the U.S. government.

NARRATOR: Critics of Bob Lazar
and his audacious claims

about alien craft
being studied at Area 51

insist that there is
no proof of him ever having

worked at the top secret
military facility.

They suggest that his stories
are simply made up.

But a powerful new witness
had come forward to corroborate

Lazar's story: former Air Force
pilot David Fruehauf.

FRUEHAUF:
It's only been for me personally

in the last few years,

all of a sudden,
Bob Lazar's statements

and all the things
he had said have gelled now,

to the point where
I think he's very credible.

NARRATOR:
While critics routinely claim that Lazar's supporters

lack any credibility,

they can hardly make that claim
about Fruehauf.

U.S. Air Force Captain
David Fruehauf

joins an elite group of pilots

flying America's most
sophisticated spy plane:

the SR-71.

FRUEHAUF:
I was an SR-71 pilot for four and a half years.

The aircraft,
as far as performance went,

it was an hour from
coast to coast.

It would warp your mind,
with that kind of performance.

And you just felt so proud
that you had

an opportunity to fly
that airplane, and to be

a part of that unit
and those people.

It was family.

NARRATOR:
No one is surprised when the military assigns

such an elite pilot to
duties at America's

most top secret Air Force base.

I worked at Area 51
for six years,

from 1979 till 1985.

You had to have a special
clearance, a top secret SBI--

special background
investigation.

Fortunately, I had gotten that
while I was flying the SR,

so it was an easy transition
for me to move from the SR-71,

and my clearances and all,
over into Area 51.

NARRATOR:
Along with his colleagues,

Fruehauf commuted each day
from McCarran Airport

in Las Vegas to Area 51, using
a mysterious government carrier

named Janet Airlines.

BILL BIRNES:
One of the great stories about Area 51 comes from

engineer T.D. Barnes.
Here's what he said.

If there were UFOs being

reversed-engineered at this
base, I wouldn't know about it.

Because you flew out
in an airline,

Janet Airlines, and
the windows were blacked out,

so you didn't know where
you were going.

NARRATOR: Fruehauf noticed
that on his daily commutes,

a select group of scientists
and military personnel

also boarded
the Janet 737 in Las Vegas.

When the plane landed
at Area 51,

this group boarded a bus
and headed to

an even more secretive facility
code-named Site Four, or S-4.

FRUEHAUF:
When I was there, we knew about S-4,

but we didn't know
what they did.

All we knew was there was

certain people that got
on the 737 in the morning,

and we got to Area 51,
they would take and go off

in a different direction
in a bus,

and then we went on
to the north,

going up towards the hangars.

NARRATOR:
Fruehauf never knew exactly what was going on at Site Four

during his time at Area 51.

But when he heard
Bob Lazar's story years later,

he found that Lazar's
description of flying

to Area 51 on a Janet 737,
and traveling to S-4,

rang true in every detail.

FRUEHAUF:
When I heard Bob Lazar describe getting on the 737

and fly to Area 51 and get off

and go through the terminal
and go to S-4...

And everything he talked about
and the way he put it,

he sounded totally believable
to me.

NARRATOR:
Critics contend that no actual eyewitnesses have ever

come forward to confirm
that Lazar worked at Area 51,

much less at Site Four.
But Fruehauf claims otherwise.

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.

I know that his critics
piled on because, obviously,

they did not want the word
to come out

that there were, in fact,
UFOs in our possession,

and that he was revealing
a capability to perhaps

our enemies that we, in fact,
were alien technologies.

NARRATOR:
But Dave Fruehauf is not the only highly regarded

aviation expert to corroborate
Bob Lazar's explosive story.

Jim Goodall is
a U.S. Air Force veteran,

military historian,

and investigative author
who befriended Bob Lazar

before Lazar was hired
to work at Area 51.

Back then, Lazar worked
at the Sandia nuclear lab

in Albuquerque,
and was a vocal UFO skeptic.

I have the distinction of
knowing him for quite a while.

He had been working in
developing

nuclear weapons for Sandia.

You couldn't put a gun
to his head to convince him

that UFOs were real.

NARRATOR: But Bob Lazar's
skepticism about the existence

of UFOs was about to change.

A year later or so,
there's a silhouetted guy

talking about doing
reverse-engineering

on alien spacecraft, and that,
that silhouette was Bob Lazar.

NARRATOR:
In an effort to help his friend prove he worked

at Area 51 and Site Four,
then-Sergeant Goodall

took Lazar's military tax form

to the Office
of Naval Investigations

at the Pentagon.

What happened when
he got there was chilling.

GOODALL:
There's a young lieutenant commander behind the desk.

I handed him Bob Lazar's W-2.

He looks at it, said,
"Excuse me for a minute."

And he says,
"The admiral will see you now."

I mean, an admiral to go talk
to an Air Force tech sergeant is

really below his level
of interrogation.

And he's looking at Lazar's W-2,

and he said, "Sergeant,
I don't know where in the hell

"you got this,
but if I ever see your face

"cross my threshold again,
you'll be the most sorry

son of a bitch NCO in
the United States Air Force,"

as he gets Bob's W-2 and
he puts it in the shredder.

He says, "You are dismissed."

CORBELL:
So he was warned to stop

asking questions about
Bob Lazar.

Anybody trying to seek
the truth about Bob Lazar,

there was pressure applied
on them.

And that's just the way it works

when you want to try to
silence somebody.

NARRATOR:
Have the kinds of pressures exerted against Bob Lazar

continued to conceal the truth

about the military's interest
in UFOs?

Ancient astronaut theorists
say yes, and they suggest

that recently exposed
insider information

may make it much harder
for the military

to keep secrets from
the American public.

NARRATOR: Washington, D.C.
The Oval Office.

December 27, 2020.

All right. Thank you all.

NARRATOR:
President Donald Trump signs a massive $2.3 trillion

spending and relief package
to stimulate

economic recovery from
the ravages of COVID-19.

But the bill serves another
highly unexpected purpose,

detailed in its "committee
comment" section,

beneath the heading,
"Advanced Aerial Threats."

The stipulation mandates

that the Director of National
Intelligence work with

the Secretary of Defense
on a report revealing

everything the government knows

about "unidentified aerial
phenomena," or UAP.

Because of public pressure,
public scrutiny,

members of Congress
specifically on

the Senate Intelligence
Committee,

inserted language
that the government

release a report
to the public on UFOs.

And they had 180 days to do it.
This was jaw-dropping.

POPE: And a lot of people said,
what, UFOs and COVID?

What's going on?

The original requirement
for a UFO report

had come from the Senate
Intelligence Committee,

and they'd articulated it in

the Intelligence Authorization
Act for fiscal year 2021.

But for a number of reasons,
that bill wasn't

going to get through.

So, what they did is
they attached that part of

the bill to something they knew
that would get through,

and that was
the COVID-19 relief bill.

NARRATOR:
To researchers of UFOs, or UAPs,

as government agencies
now call them,

it is a watershed moment.

It is even applauded
by many in Washington,

who believe the Pentagon
has been overly secretive

about this phenomenon.

I'm comforted in
knowing that we have good folks

in the intelligence
community who are

protecting our national
security.

At the same time,
I think that not just

the American people,
but the global community

really want to know
what's going on up in our skies.

PODESTA:
I was prompted to ask myself, where have you been?

Why did it take so much
prodding by the public,

by members of Congress

over decades, really,

before you took
this threat seriously?

RALPH BLUMENTHAL:
There are people in the government who are very

hostile to UFO information.

The government had plenty of
time and reason to investigate

these things, but only seriously
started compiling data in 2019,

which is totally insane.

I mean, this information was
available for decades before.

POPE:
The UFO community went into overdrive.

Some of them were
actively predicting disclosure.

The mainstream media as well
were fully engaged on this.

And there was
intense speculation.

HOWE: I remember
after Trump had signed

the COVID relief bill,

and I had to see it.

So, I called up somebody
and I got a link,

and I went down through
all of that bill.

And, of course,
there was tremendous amounts

of speculation.

Well, are they now going
to tell us that

we're not alone in the universe?

TSOUKALOS:
The government of the United States

is openly investigating UFOs.

And I think that
this speaks volumes

how the paradigm has shifted.

NARRATOR:
But how did the U.S. government go from decades of denying

any interest in UFOs to
passing a bipartisan bill

demanding an official report on
unidentified aerial phenomena?

It's a sea change in policy
with roots that trace back to

a series of secret meetings
more than two decades earlier.

Local TV news reporter
George Knapp, famous in Nevada

for his investigation of

the top secret
Air Force facility Area 51,

has spent years discussing UFOs
with Nevada's powerful senator,

Harry Reid.

KNAPP:
Senator Reid has a lot

of interest in national
security issues.

Nellis. Area 51.

So I told him I think there's
a legitimate issue here.

This is real.
And so we had a secret

conversation that lasted
30 years, about UFOs.

NARRATOR:
In 1995, Knapp invited Reid

to attend a meeting hosted
by another

powerful Nevada resident

with a longtime interest
in the topic.

Hotel magnate and aerospace
billionaire, Robert Bigelow.

Bigelow had recently founded
the National Institute for

Discovery Science, a privately
financed research organization

created to investigate fringe
science and UFO phenomenon.

I told Reid I think
you should go check this out.

He goes to
the next board meeting

later in the year and
is blown away. He's hooked.

But the bond that he formed
with Bigelow at that point

became critical to everything
that would unfold later.

NARRATOR:
In 2007, with Reid's help, Bigelow secured $22 million

from the Department of Defense
to fund the Advanced

Aerial Threat Identification
Program, or AATIP.

An initiative
that would investigate

reports of
"anomalous aerial vehicles."

They managed to create
this program in the Pentagon,

which was a classified program.

A sort of black program,
as they say.

And so they were
able to get the funds.

The Pentagon was
able to get up and running

with that, and I think
that was a game changer.

NARRATOR:
Pentagon officials select former U.S. Army

Counterintelligence
Special Agent Luis Elizondo

to run the secret AATIP program.

Lou Elizondo was put in charge
of that.

He was overseeing
his little group of people

in different parts
of the Pentagon.

They would exchange information,
do what they could,

and try to keep
a very low profile.

Some people in the Pentagon
knew what they were doing,

but others did not.

HOWE:
Elizondo ran AATIP

for those approximately
seven years

with funding from
Senator Harry Reid in Nevada.

And none of us knew anything
about it.

NARRATOR:
As Elizondo delved into the government's secret files,

he became convinced
that UFOs could pose

a major national security
threat.

But, to his growing frustration,

he struggled to get anyone
to listen to him.

Lou figured out that
forces within the Pentagon

weren't taking this seriously

and were perhaps dismissing
and covering up

and suppressing UFO information
for various reasons.

And Lou couldn't stand
the fact that

within the halls of the Pentagon
it wasn't being taken seriously.

NARRATOR:
In October 2017,

Luis Elizondo resigned
from AATIP

after Pentagon officials
refused to present his findings

to Defense Secretary
James Mattis.

ELIZONDO:
I've seen too much. I've talked to too many people.

I have too many reports.

I-I know it's real.

I can't, I can't
in good conscience

keep my head buried in the sand.

I had to leave
the very job that I love

to get my point across.

NARRATOR:
Just as Elizondo was leaving his position at the Pentagon,

Tom DeLonge, co-founder
of the rock band Blink-182,

was forming a group called
"To the Stars Academy"

to collect and study information

on unidentified
aerial phenomena.

POPE:
Tom DeLonge gathered around him

an extraordinary team
of insiders

with backgrounds
in the government,

intelligence community,
the aerospace community,

particularly
cutting-edge technologies.

RYAN SPRAGUE:
Elizondo almost immediately went to work for Tom DeLonge,

and his new company
To the Stars,

a company that was dedicated

to working to try
to uncover the answers

about the UFO phenomena,

which just seemed like
a perfect stroke of luck.

NARRATOR:
With the addition of Elizondo,

To the Stars Academy
now had unprecedented access

to government intel on
unidentified aerial phenomena.

And unbeknownst to Elizondo's
former bosses in the military,

he hadn't left
government service empty-handed.

He brought with him
extraordinary

video evidence of UFOs.

NARRATOR:
After Luis Elizondo resigns from his position with AATIP

and leaves the Pentagon,
he shares

three declassified videos
recorded by Navy pilots

with his new colleagues
at To the Stars Academy.

The first object,
known as "Tic Tac,"

was caught on radar in 2004

off the USS Nimitz
at an altitude of 80,000 feet.

As Navy F-18s
approached the object,

it descended to within one foot
of the water in seconds.

We don't have this capability
of dropping 80,000 feet

within a matter of seconds,

hitting a velocity of Mach 20.

So we now know that there's
some kind of propulsion system

that exceeds the capability
of our own rockets.

NARRATOR:
Retired naval aviator, Lieutenant Chad Underwood

was ordered to pursue the object
in an F-18

equipped with a sophisticated
FLIR video system.

UNDERWOOD:
The object looked featureless,

and that's why
I called it the Tic Tac.

It looked like a Tic Tac.
It had no wings.

No method of propulsion.

And on your forward-looking
infrared pod,

all it is, is tracking heat.

So you would typically see
engine exhaust

coming out of one of
the ends of the aircraft.

Not seeing any of it.

The object was
changing altitude, air speed,

things that my FLIR and my radar
were having difficulty tracking,

and then at the end
of the encounter

is when you see it dart off
to my left on the FLIR pod.

And that's when I was like,
"Whoa.

What just happened?"

NARRATOR:
The other two videos Elizondo brought to his colleagues

at To the Stars Academy
were equally groundbreaking.

Known as "Gimbal" and "GoFast,"

both videos were taken
by Navy jets

from the USS Theodore Roosevelt
near the Florida coast in 2015.

All three videos
show objects moving

in ways that defy
the known laws of physics.

KAKU:
These objects can zigzag effortlessly,

defying the known laws
of aerodynamics.

These objects can
effortlessly accelerate

up to 20 times
the speed of sound.

They have no visible
means of propulsion.

So, what could it be?

Well, the short answer is,
we don't know.

The phenomena had
unusual flight characteristics.

Unusual vectors, speed,
being able to hover and move.

The fact that the Chinese
or the Russians or anyone else

would have
that kind of capability

and we wouldn't know about it
is pretty slim.

NARRATOR:
As head of AATIP,

Elizondo was able to have
the videos declassified,

but they had never been
made public.

His involvement
in To the Stars Academy

offered a new opportunity

to share
the remarkable information

collected at the Pentagon.

To the Stars,
their goal was

that they were gonna
crack it all open,

and they were going
to open up the truth

that the government knows

about these unidentified
aerial phenomena

that have a technology
that does not exist

in terms of human production.

HENRY:
To the Stars Academy, to their credit,

brought Lou Elizondo
together with Chris Mellon.

Department of Defense official,
Senate intelligence insider.

And then they go
to The New York Times

with this blockbuster story

about the U.S. government's
interest in investigating UFOs.

NARRATOR:
Chris Mellon arranged a meeting with Leslie Kean,

a best-selling author
who had spent years

trying to draw mainstream
media attention to UFOs.

Mellon and Elizondo revealed to
Kean the existence of

the secret AATIP program

and promised her
access to the videos

if she could place the story
with The New York Times.

Leslie Kean is very
well-connected politically.

Her uncle, Thomas Kean,

was the former governor
of New Jersey

and headed up
the 9/11 Commission.

This gives you an idea
of just how plugged in

to the political network
Leslie is.

So when Leslie was contacted

by Lou Elizondo
and Chris Mellon,

she then teamed up
with Ralph Blumenthal,

veteran New York Times reporter,

and Helene Cooper,
again from The Times.

NARRATOR:
Ralph Blumenthal came to know Leslie Kean

while working on his book
The Believer,

a biography about
alien abductions researcher

Dr. John Mack.

When Blumenthal heard about
the government's AATIP program,

he was eager
to help break the story.

Well, it was clearly a great
story for The New York Times.

A secret Pentagon unit
investigating UFOs

after, uh, the government was
supposed to be out of

the UFO business, but,
of course, never really was.

NARRATOR:
Blumenthal pitched the story directly

to the former New York Times
Managing Editor, Dean Baquet.

And on December 16, 2017,
Leslie Kean,

Ralph Blumenthal
and Helene Cooper's

groundbreaking report about
the Pentagon's

mysterious UFO program
made the front page

of The New York Times
online edition.

We had it nailed down
chapter and verse,

the people involved it in,
on there, everything

on the record, the documents.

So, this hit all the benchmarks.

We had the Navy videos.

Which we were able to put
on the Times website

and they garnered
more views than

almost anything
in Times history.

CHILDRESS:
This was a real turning point in the United States

because The New York Times
has always said that

they're the guardians
of the truth.

Suddenly, The New York Times
is actually reporting on UFOs.

This really shows that UFOs,
and the study of UFOs

and the investigation,
has entered the mainstream.

TSOUKALOS:
All of a sudden, since 2017,

these stories have become
front-page news

on worldwide newspapers.

And it clearly shows
that there was a type of

a paradigm shift that's happened
over the past 25 years.

And for someone like me,
it's-it's incredible.

NARRATOR: Astonished
by the AATIP revelations

and leaked videos,

Congress demanded briefings,

forcing the intelligence
communities to respond.

Suddenly, UFO briefings become

the hottest ticket
on Capitol Hill.

Briefings for
the Armed Services Committee,

the Intelligence Committee,
everybody wants in.

Congress takes it serious.

The media give them
political coverage

by saying this is
a legitimate story.

So you have people
like Marco Rubio

and Senator Warner
who can tell reporters,

"Yeah, we're looking into this.
This is a legitimate mystery."

We have things flying
over military installations,

over military exercises

and other places,
and we don't know what it is.

If there are objects flying
over military installations,

that could pose
a security threat.

CARSON:
I think we're gonna have more hearings.

And I think that we're seeing

we can have these conversations
publicly

in a way that doesn't warrant
mockery or scorn or ridicule.

I think
it's critically important.

NARRATOR:
After 70 years of taboo going back to the 1947 incident

at Roswell, New Mexico,

the study of UFOs had finally
gained mainstream acceptance.

But is the U.S. military
ready to share all it knows?

Or are there still forces
within the Pentagon

that will go to any length
to protect its secrets?

NARRATOR: In the wake of
The New York Times' revelations

about AATIP
and the explosive Navy videos,

the House and Senate
Armed Services Committees

begin interviewing Navy pilots

who claim to have witnessed UAPs
while on training missions.

KNAPP:
It started with closed-door briefings

of senior staff members.

These pilots-- David Fravor

and Alex Dietrich
and, uh, people like that,

Chad Underwood,
uh, Ryan Graves--

start being led up
to Capitol Hill.

They tell their stories.

This thing would go
instantaneous

from one way to another.

It just rapidly accelerates
beyond anything

that I've ever seen.

KNAPP:
They are incredibly believable.

They have gravitas.
They're not UFO nuts.

We were able to
then visually pick up

what we described as a Tic Tac
that was moving very fast.

They're telling stories about
encounters with strange craft

that are way beyond
any technology we have.

We do workups
along the Eastern seaboard,

and these objects
kind of came with us.

The fact that he would just
get himself on his wingtip

with no turn
isn't how aircraft work.

KNAPP:
The senior staff members are impressed.

They tell the elected
members of Congress.

It changed everything.

I never thought
I would see it in my lifetime.

And here it is,
unfolding right before our eyes.

Still unfolding.

DOLAN:
The Pentagon has had to respond.

It might just be difficult
for the Pentagon to completely

do a blanket denial
the way they used to.

NARRATOR:
In August 2020,

in a rare instance of
transparency,

the U.S. Department of Defense
announces that

the work Luis Elizondo oversaw
with AATIP--

analyzing and cataloging UAPs--

is still being carried on
under a new program

called the Unidentified Aerial
Phenomena Task Force.

That same summer,

Senator Marco Rubio's
Intelligence Committee

drafts legislation
giving the Pentagon

180 days to publicly report

what government agencies
know about UAPs.

The Senate Intelligence
Committee

puts in a bill for 2021,

we want a report on UAP.

And so the whole,
the whole momentum of this

is this, is this theme of
we need to do something,

we need to get serious about it.

NARRATOR:
The legislation is passed and signed by the president,

and the 180-day countdown
begins.

But curiously,
even as this was happening,

top Pentagon officials
were attacking

Luis Elizondo's credibility,

and claiming that
he had nothing to do with AATIP.

HENRY:
The Pentagon launched a smear campaign

against Elizondo
calling him crazy.

On May 3, 2021,
Lou Elizondo filed

a 64-page complaint
with the Inspector General.

These are like the top cops
in the Department of Justice.

ELIZONDO:
There is still pockets of resistance in the Pentagon

that is trying to muzzle
or, if you will,

stifle this conversation.

That must be corrected,
and yes, I'd love it

if they also corrected
the record about me,

but that is less important

than not fixing the record
about this overall conversation.

DOLAN:
So now you have a movement after all these years

to begin to crack that secrecy
even by a little bit.

You're clearly going to have
a very powerful faction

of individuals who are going
to do everything possible

to thwart that effort.

And if that means
smearing good people

with good reputations,
well, so be it, this is war.

NARRATOR:
Researchers suggest efforts to deny whistleblower testimony

about the existence of UFOs
have persisted

since World War II,
citing government reactions

to numerous
bombshell revelations.

Whistleblowers in many ways are
the most courageous heroes

of the 20th
to the 21st century,

because they were
decent human beings

who get hired to do science.

And then what they find
themselves in are straitjackets.

Straitjackets
of political policies,

of Defense Department policies.

Each of the different intel
agencies and military groups,

they want to control
whatever is being let out.

It's been going on
since World War II to today.

NARRATOR:
In 1958,

after conducting research
on UFOs

with the help of
his contacts at the Pentagon,

retired Marine Corps pilot,
Major Donald Keyhoe,

went on
a live television program

called The Armstrong
Circle Theatre,

to report his conclusion

that extraterrestrials were,
in fact, visiting Earth.

But mysteriously, just as
he was about to make this point,

the sound cut out.

If the hearings are held,
open hearings,

I feel it will prove beyond
a doubt flying saucers are...

(muted dialogue)

NARRATOR: In 1989,
when physicist Bob Lazar

claimed that he was hired
to reverse-engineer

an alien spacecraft

at a top secret military base
called Area 51,

government officials denied that
the base even existed at all,

a falsehood that would be
exposed 14 years later.

CORBELL:
You can hear Bob Lazar's story,

and it sounds so outlandish.

Until you have people
within the Pentagon saying,

"We do have recovered
materials and craft."

And then you have to
look back at Bob Lazar's story

and you see
he's telling you the truth.

NARRATOR:
In 1997, retired U.S. Army Colonel Philip J. Corso

published The Day After Roswell,

in which he confirms that
an extraterrestrial craft

did indeed crash
in the New Mexico desert.

It was met with similar
denials from the Pentagon.

Colonel Corso's entire book
is about the physical evidence,

where it went,
the fact that

there were policies of denial.

All of it was off-limits.

NARRATOR:
When the Pentagon tries to discredit Elizondo in 2020,

many fear
it indicates business as usual,

and that the government
UAP report will once again

prove to be an effort to debunk
rather than disclose.

But, to the surprise of many,

the Inspector General
immediately agrees

to investigate
Elizondo's complaint.

Ancient astronaut theorists
are hopeful

this could lead to
an official reexamination

of the high-profile
UFO incidents

that have been dismissed before.

It's possible the Inspector
General could get in

and find evidence about
what happened with Roswell,

what happened with Major Keyhoe,
what happened with Bob Lazar.

All of these questions
under oath would be asked

of Pentagon officials

and the public would get to know
about it as well.

NARRATOR:
While the Inspector General's investigation

was just getting started,

the release of the government's
UAP report was only weeks away.

The speculation reached
a fever pitch.

Would the final report be
yet another cover-up

as many in the UFO community
predicted?

Or might it contain
shocking revelations?

NARRATOR:
The Pentagon's UAP Task Force, along with the Office

of the Director
of National Intelligence,

submits to Congress
its long-awaited report.

Entitled
"Preliminary Assessment:

Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,"

the simple nine-page report
represents the most direct

and substantive
U.S. government account

of UAPs ever made public.

The headline is that
out of 144 reported encounters,

only one UAP was identified
as a large, deflating balloon.

The other reported UAPs
remain unexplained.

I thought
that report was tremendous.

A tremendously important
step forward.

To me, it says two things:

UFOs are real,
and two, they're not ours.

I thought that was
an astonishing report.

And it spoke volumes.

We got 144 cases.

We can't figure out 143 of them.

It's monumental. I mean,
it is a watershed moment.

We're giving cover and relief
for folks who are

in the intelligence community
now and work for our government

and folks who have served

and pilots who can now
talk about this thing.

It's only
a preliminary assessment.

Some people
in the UFO community were

a bit disappointed
because it wasn't disclosure.

But what it did say was,
I think,

very encouraging and important.

It essentially said that
whatever UFOs are,

some of these sightings

demonstrate advanced technology

and this, in one sense,
is a form of disclosure.

It's certainly taking this

further than it's ever been
taken before within government.

It's quite an admission.

NARRATOR:
Of the 144 reports that the UAP Task Force reviewed,

the bulk of the sightings
had occurred

between 2019 and 2021,

after the Navy reporting
protocol was put into effect.

But perhaps
what is most compelling is

the revelation that out of
the 144 reported UAP sightings,

only one sighting
has been explained.

Only one out of them
has been shown to be spurious.

That indicates to me that
we're sitting on a gold mine,

a gold mine of incidences

that cannot be explained
using the normal metrics.

KAKU:
We're talking about incidences that are

beyond the stretch
of our imagination,

that indicate
new laws of physics opening up.

And we physicists are just dying
to get access to it.

NARRATOR:
The report established

five potential
explanatory categories:

airborne clutter,

natural atmospheric phenomena,

U.S. government or American
industry developmental programs,

foreign adversary systems,

and a category for UAP reports

that require
additional analysis,

simply called "Other."

"Other" simply means beyond
the known technologies of today,

which could be extraterrestrial
or who knows?

But I think
the military is now admitting

"other" could mean
extraterrestrial.

NARRATOR:
Although the word "extraterrestrial" never appears

in the report,
many observers believe

it contains
one very profound statement.

There's a bombshell quote
in the report

that a lot of people
have missed,

and it says, essentially,

that we may have to
fundamentally change

our understanding of
the laws of physics

to figure out
what's going on here.

"We may require additional
scientific knowledge

"to successfully collect on,

"analyze and characterize
some of them.

"Pending scientific advances
that allowed us

to better understand them."

This is not a sci-fi novel.
This is a government report.

That was the thing that most
stuck out to me as jaw-dropping.

Our current science,
our current tech,

can't understand some of these.

The government said that. Wow.

Additional scientific knowledge
could mean

knowledge beyond
the known laws of physics.

In other words, the technology

thousands of years
more advanced than ours.

NARRATOR:
The UAP report received mixed reactions from the public.

Some were stunned by
the government's admission

that it couldn't explain so many
of the unidentified objects

seen in the sky,

while others felt it contained
nothing of substance.

But for UFO investigators,

the report represented
validation

that was long overdue.

The UAP report
that came out in June 2021

was revolutionary

for the world of UFOs

because for the first time

in the history
of the United States,

the government
of the United States

has released a statement

in which the whole
UFO question is addressed.

And the bottom line is that
the U.S. government knows

what our adversaries
are capable of.

And in this report,
it says it's not them.

HOWE:
I have more hope.

It doesn't change
the dangerous relationship

that I have
with several whistleblowers

who have, I am telling you,
substantial information

not about just one type
of nonhuman.

There are a lot.

That's the part
that keeps astonishing me.

NARRATOR:
Now that the United States government has confirmed

that there are, in fact,
unidentified flying objects

in our skies
that our top scientists

and military personnel
cannot explain,

many are hopeful that
these objects will soon

be revealed to be of
extraterrestrial origin.

NARRATOR:
June 5, 2023.

The news website The Debrief
reports that

former intelligence official
David Grusch

has given Congress
classified information

about deeply covert
military programs

that possess craft
of nonhuman origin.

The sensational report
captures the attention

of people at the highest
levels of government.

By law we're required
to take that seriously,

the Inspector General has
referred it to the committee

as an urgent concern
and one with

some credibility to it,
so we'll do our job.

NARRATOR:
David Grusch is just the latest in a number

of high-level whistleblowers
who have come forward

in recent years with claims
that the U.S. government

knows much more
about the UFO phenomenon

than they have disclosed
to the public.

I think
this new report is interesting

because it continues to show

that we really
have to talk about this.

Now, I suspect that there's
an undercurrent of

"we'd really rather
not talk about it."

But there are people
within the military

who really wouldn't mind
talking about this a little more

because they're curious, too.

Now, on the official end
at least,

you can report these things
without fear of retribution,

and that wasn't always the case.

NARRATOR:
For the first time in history,

members of Congress,
senators,

and even former presidents

are openly talking about
the possibility

of an extraterrestrial presence
on Earth.

And it was David Grusch's
sensational claims

that prompted
the House Oversight Committee

to hold a special hearing
on UAPs in July of 2023.

BURCHETT: This is an issue of
government transparency.

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

We're not bringing little
green men or flying saucers

into the hearing-- sorry to
disappoint about half of y'all.

We're just gonna get
to the facts.

We're gonna uncover
the cover-up.

NARRATOR:
To get a better understanding

of what is being kept

from the American public,

lawmakers heard testimony
from Grusch,

as well as former Navy pilot
Ryan Graves

and retired Naval officer
David Fravor.

Based on, uh, conventional
advanced tech...

NARRATOR:
Under oath, Grusch offered his insight into the alleged

above-top-secret
military program

that he claims has been going on
for decades.

Do you have knowledge,
or do you have reason to believe

that there are programs
in the advanced tech space

that are unsanctioned?

- Yes, I do. Yeah.
- Okay.

And-and when you say
that they are

"above congressional oversight,"
what do you mean?

How does a program like that
get funded?

I will give you generalities,
I can get very specific

in a closed session, uh...

But, uh, mis-- misappropriation
of funds, and...

Does that mean that
there is money in the budget

that is set to go to a program,
but it doesn't,

and it goes to something else?

Yes, I have specific knowledge
of that, yep.

NARRATOR:
Grusch's testimony extended

beyond secret military programs

to include assertions
that the government is

not only in possession
of possible E.T. technology

but also nonhuman entities.

If you believe
we have crashed craft,

stated earlier, do we have
the bodies of the pilots

who piloted this craft?

Biologics came with
some of these recoveries, yeah.

Um... Were they, I guess,
human or nonhuman biologics?

Nonhuman, and that was
the assessment of

people with direct knowledge
on the program I talked to,

that are currently
still on the program.

NARRATOR:
Also brought to light in the hearing

was the orchestrated effort
to silence Grusch

and others like him

who dare to come forward
with information regarding

the military's UFO retrieval
and reverse-engineering program.

I do have knowledge of, um,
active planned reprisal activity

against myself
and other colleagues.

And it's very,
very upsetting to me.

Coming from where?

Uh, certain senior leadership

at previous agencies
I was associated with.

There were
certain colleagues of mine

that were brutally
administratively attacked.

RASKIN:
How do you account for that response?

It seems like
a bizarre response.

Uh, I call it
administrative terrorism.

That's their-their quiver,

their tool in the toolbox, uh,
to silence people.

NARRATOR:
From speculations about the Roswell incident

to the enduring rumors
surrounding Area 51,

allegations of a government
UFO cover-up have persisted

alongside claims
of a coordinated campaign

to silence whistleblowers.

Now, as more military insiders
come forward,

are we finally receiving
confirmation

of an alien presence on Earth?

Perhaps the mounting evidence
will soon provide

undeniable proof that
ancient astronaut theorists

have been right all along.

And that extraterrestrials
not only visited our planet

in the distant past

but are among us even today.

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