Original subtitles

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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