All language subtitles for Alien.Files.Reopened.S01E01.1080p.WEB.h264-FREQUENCY[EZTVx.to]

Ever since humankind
first looked to the heavens,

we have asked the
question, are we alone?

Tales of otherworldly beings,

ancient prophecies
and predictions,

and sightings here on Earth,

have heightened our
sense of anticipation.

But in recent years,

these claims have
become more frequent.

Do you believe our government has
made contact with intelligence?

Extraterrestrials?

Something I can't discuss
in public setting.

More insistent...

Biologics came with some
of these recoveries, yeah.

...and
ever more dramatic.

In one of the most remarkable
historic incidents,

in July 1952,

the United States Air Force
scrambled fighter jets

to intercept UFO's flying
over The White House.

...that the recent sightings
are in no way connected

with any secret developments.

Top secret
investigations were long,

explanations given,

but the truth remained elusive.

And whatever it was,

it appears to have returned
several times since.

Do you believe you UAPs

pose a potential threat
to our national security?

Yes.

- Yes.
- Yes.

What are
we not being told?

Our team of experts
reopen the files.

They'll analyze
the intelligence,

investigate the science...

and reveal the truth.

July 19, 1952. Washington DC.

A clear, hot and humid evening.

The skies are quiet.

In the control tower at
Washington National Airport,

air traffic
controller Ed Nugent,

is enjoying an uneventful night.

When suddenly,

seven contacts appear
on his radar screen

just 15 miles outside
the nation's capital.

It's a problem. No
flights were scheduled.

There have been no
radar communications.

These contacts
shouldn't be there.

Well, the Cold War
was just getting started.

So, seven uncorrelated
targets on the radar

could've caused
an absolute panic.

But according to
all the reports,

everyone was really calm.

In fact, when Nugent
calls his boss Harry Barnes over,

his first instinct
is to make a joke.

His first comment is, "Here's a
fleet of flying saucers for you."

Upstairs in the glass
lookout section of the tower,

another controller, Joe Zacko,

was experiencing
a similar anomaly.

A single unidentified contact

streaking across
his radar screen.

When he sought
visual confirmation,

he couldn't believe his eyes.

There was a single bright light

just hovering in the sky.

Just sitting there.

He turned to his colleague
Howard Cocklin and said,

"If you believe
in flying saucers,

that could be one for sure."

As they watched,

the light zoomed off
at incredible speed.

This was just the start

of what would become an
international sensation.

With
the stakes so high,

air traffic controllers
first needed to confirm

their equipment had
not malfunctioned.

A radar works in a
pretty simple manner.

You have a massive antenna,

and this sends out a
beam of radio waves

into the surrounding space.

Now, if these radio
waves hit a solid object,

you get a reflection, a
return of the radio waves

and they're picked
up by the antenna.

So, radio waves travel
at the speed of light.

So, if you get a reflection
of a solid object,

you get that return
very, very quickly.

Now, this return
appears as a blip

on the radar screen.

What an experienced
radar operator can do

is see that blip

and interpret a lot about
the object that reflected it.

Its size, its shape and
also its trajectory.

Commercial planes
generally maintain

the same speed and trajectory.

So, the blip does the same

and moves smoothly
across the screen.

But in Washington in 1952,

these contacts were
not doing that.

The speeds the objects
were traveling at were unprecedented.

Some showing bursts of up
to 2200 kilometers per hour.

And one was tracked traveling at
close to 11,000 kilometers per hour.

The area around Washington

was home to two of the biggest Air
Force bases in the United States.

And with unidentified
craft in US airspace,

Harry Barnes followed
protocol and contacted them.

All the
bases in the area,

commercial and military,

were seeing the same contacts
on their radar screens.

One controller, William Brady,

also reported a direct
line of sight contact.

He said it was an orange
ball trailing a fire,

unlike anything
he'd seen before.

This wasn't a civilian.

This was someone
from the Air Force.

So, if this isn't a UFO,

then the alternative
is unthinkable.

At the dawn of the nuclear age,

the possibility
that the Russians

had developed an aircraft

that could penetrate
our airspace undetected

would've been considered
an enormous threat.

Unbelievably,
despite multiple radar contacts

and two visual confirmations,

fighter planes were not
scrambled immediately.

As nights turned
to early morning,

finally, there are
eyes in the sky.

As capital Air Flight 807

departs Washington
National for Detroit,

the control tower asked
pilot S.C. Pierman

to report any unusual sightings.

He said, "There's one,
and there it goes."

Just like that,

you got visual
confirmation from the air

from a pilot with almost
two decades of experience.

He saw the same orange
ball that Brady saw,

and then it zoomed off.

Captain Pierman reported
that for the next 14 minutes,

he witnessed the incredible
sight of six bright lights,

streaking across the
sky at tremendous speed,

describing them as "falling
stars without tails."

Barnes has finally had enough.

He's got multiple radar contacts

directly over The White House.

This is now a national
security issue.

So, he calls the Air Force
as a matter of urgency

and he says, "We have unidentified
craft in restricted airspace."

At the closest
Air Force base, Andrews,

the runways were
closed for repairs.

Instead, F-94 interceptor
jets are dispatched

from Newcastle Air
Force Base in Delaware,

some 160 kilometers
from the capital.

Despite combing the skies,

the Air Force
pilots see nothing.

And with no more radar contacts,

they're ordered back to base.

But as soon as they're
out of the way,

the blips are back on the radar.

Jets are scrambled.

And the UFO's would reappear.

The jets would
return to the base,

and the UFO's once
again would appear.

They wanted to be seen.

It's as if they were
playing some form of game.

When daylight
once again returns,

they disappeared as suddenly
as they had arrived.

The events of the night
were a total mystery

witnessed by just a
handful of people.

But this small
group of witnesses

were all highly-trained,
credible professionals.

This was not a random
light in the sky.

This was clearly an
unidentified flying object.

This object was in
government airspace

over The White House
viewed by professionals.

This was known as
the Washington flap.

Even Truman wanted
to know the truth.

By Monday,
the 21st of July,

reports of the strange sightings

over Washington
had hit the press.

And reporters were
demanding answers.

But the US Military and
government quickly closed ranks,

they had learned from their
previous brushes with UFOs.

In 1947,

shortly after the
alleged Roswell incident,

US Government commissioned
a top secret study

into reported UFO sightings.

The first study Project
Sign ran for a year.

Project Grudge followed
and ran from 1948 to 1951.

In 1952,

several important
things happened

in the intelligence world.

The NSA was founded

and Project Grudge was elevated

to Project Blue Book.

Heading
up Project Blue Book,

the US Air Force's
top secret UFO study

was Captain Edward J. Ruppelt.

Captain Ruppelt enlisted in
the US army Air Force in 1942.

He was just 19,

and he became a highly
decorated US bomber crewman.

After the war, he
went into the reserves

and got a degree in
aeronautical engineering.

During the Korean War,

he was recalled to the Air
Technical Intelligence service,

which is based at Wright-Patterson
Air Force Base in Ohio.

It was also the home
of Project Blue Book.

At just 29 years of age,

Ruppelt is responsible

for the UFO phenomenon
in its entirety.

And particularly, of course,
assessing the defense

and national security
implications.

There's a lot riding
on this one guy.

Any US citizen that
reported something strange,

reported it to Ruppelt, who
oversaw Project Blue Book.

So, by the time he took over,

there were 2000 cases
already reported

and he had to
investigate all of them.

Ruppelt hadn't been
in the job for long

when he was warned
out of the blue.

"This is going to happen.
A big event is coming."

In mid-1952,

Ruppelt had met with a scientist

from an unnamed
government agency.

This scientist insisted to him,

"Within the next few days,"

you're going to
have the granddaddy

of all UFO sightings in
Washington or New York.

"Probably Washington."

Did somebody know that
something was in the offing?

Was this planned?

Did someone have fore knowledge

and tip him off?

Or was it just a lucky guess?

We don't know.

But it's a very strange remark.

With this
prediction fresh in his mind,

how did Ruppelt
react to the news

of the UFOs over Washington DC?

Surprisingly, he was
never even alerted to it.

Ruppelt learns of the
incident only by chance.

A few days after it happened,

he lands at Washington
National Airport,

buys a newspaper in the
lobby, and sees the headlines.

So, straight away,
he's off to the Pentagon,

taking names and
asking questions.

Then they start
asking him what to do,

because journalists are
refusing to let go of the story

and top brass don't
know what to say.

But Ruppelt
is less concerned

with the political implications,

and instead focuses
on actual evidence.

He works all night,

laying out the events
of the 19th of July,

and plotting the course
of his investigation.

He starts with a call to the
headquarters of the US Military

seeking assistance

in his bid to visit the
air traffic controllers

who had witnessed
the UFO phenomenon.

He called the Pentagon

to try to get hold
of a staff car,

but he was rebuffed
and they said to him,

"No, this is just
for full colonels

and generals."

So then, he goes to
the finance office

and he tries to rent a car.

And they say, "No, take a bus."

And he's like, "Well, I don't
know the transit system.

Can... Can we not
get around this?"

And, and again, they say no.

They told him to take
a taxi and to use his per diem.

But his per diem wasn't enough
to get him out there again.

He asks to speak to
the finance officer directly.

But the finance officer had apparently
left early to beat the traffic.

Ruppelt knew he was defeated.

"I decided that if flying saucers
were buzzing Pennsylvania Avenue,

I couldn't care less," he
wrote after the events.

"I caught the next
airliner to Dayton."

And he flew home.

But then one week later,
something remarkable happened.

They came back.

One week
after the initial wave

of UFO sightings
over Washington DC,

on the night of 26 July,
1952, at 10:00 p.m.,

Air Force intelligence
official, Edward Ruppelt

receives a call from a
Washington journalist.

The unexplained lights are back.

What does the Air
Force plan to do?

And he says, "I have
no idea. Probably nothing."

And so he calls the Pentagon

and he finds out he's
absolutely right.

They're doing nothing.

He's not gonna let a
second chance pass him by.

He sends Fournet and Halcomb
to National's control tower.

The two US
officers arrive at the airport

to an incredible scene.

The air traffic
controllers are tracking

a dozen unexplained blips,

almost double the number they
had seen the week before.

The objects were flying at
low speed in arc formation.

Andrews Air Force Base
was seeing the same thing.

Same number of blips,
same locations,

something was
definitely happening.

Commercial pilots also saw
glowing lights in the sky,

and they reported
it to national.

The evidence was stacking up.

And he was convinced that
what he was seeing on radar

were actual metal objects.

Major Fournet
radioed a passing Air Force B-25

to request they survey the area

and see if they could get official
visual confirmation of these UFOs.

They saw nothing.

Just a tourist boat
on the Potomac.

The scientific
explanation floated at the time

was that these blips
could be the result

of a temperature inversion.

If you have, uh, two
layers of cold air

with a hot air layer in between,

it creates what we
call a refractive zone,

which will bend the radar

so that some things
on the ground

can actually appear in the air.

So, at that time,
the controllers,

the air traffic in Washington,

would've been familiar
with this problem.

In fact,
there hadn't been a day

without a temperature inversion
over Washington for several weeks.

So, radar operators had
constantly been distinguishing

between legitimate contacts

and illusions created by
temperature inversion.

However, Fournet
and Halcomb are certain

that these are legitimate
airborne targets.

And at 11:00 p.m.,

they scramble two interceptor
jets from Newcastle.

The exact
same thing happens.

The F-94's arrive and
the blips disappear.

One of the planes gets
its airborne radar

locked on to one
of these targets,

but quickly loses it.

The F-94's returned to base,
and then the blips reappear.

The two officers,

along with the tower controllers
at National and at Andrews,

continue to track the objects
for another two hours.

At just after 1:00 a.m.,

they make the call to scramble
the interceptor jets again.

This time, they saw
lights in the sky.

The pilot, William Patterson,

tries to engage one
of these objects.

He's gunning it in one of the
fastest jet fighters in the world.

This thing is
designed to intercept

and chase enemy jets.

And yet, whatever he's chasing
is running rings around him.

It's outpacing him.

It's leaving the best technology

that the United States Air
Force has just standing.

So, Patterson
simply gives up.

He quits the chase.

And whether they're enemies
or whether they're aliens,

this is very serious.

Eventually, the US Air
Force jets returned to Newcastle.

And before dawn,

the lights and
the radar contacts

disappear once again.

The Monday morning headlines
of the 28th July, 1952

were every bit as sensational
as you might expect.

"Saucers swarm over capital."

"Jets chase DC sky ghosts."

But beyond the headlines,

there were very
few facts to go on.

And so, we have an unidentified
Air Force personnel

telling reporters that
these are not UFOs,

but we don't know what they are.

World War II
was fresh in our memory.

The Cold War was just starting.

And here is the Air Force
admitting they don't know

what is flying
over Washington DC.

This is huge news.

Enter Major
General John Samford.

He's the director of Intelligence
for the US Air Force.

Not knowing what or
who was in the air

around the nation's capital,

could be a significant
embarrassment for him.

He's at the Pentagon,

and he calls what
turns out to be

the largest press conference

since the end of the
Second World War.

But this is
Tuesday afternoon.

Ruppelt's still investigating.

They still know next to nothing.

Regardless, Sanford,

who was later to become
director of the NSA

had an innate gift for
spouting gibberish.

When asked a simple question

about what the pilots
saw in the skies

above Washington the
previous Saturday,

he gave a typically
evasive response.

So, the general
gives a master class

in kind of nothing speak.

He's talking and talking,

but not really saying anything.

However, there have been
a certain percentage

of this volume of reports

that have been made
by credible observers

of relatively incredible things.

Our basic difficulty
in dealing with these

is that there is no
measurement of them

that makes it possible for
us to put them in any pattern

that would be profitable
for a deliberate,

uh, custom sort of analysis
to take the next step.

He talks for
an hour and 20 minutes,

saying little of value.

He eventually lands on the
temperature inversion theory.

Hot air over Washington.

The press seemed to like it,

and it quickly becomes the official
reason for these sightings.

Every publication ran
with the same story.

This was merely a trick of
the weather and the atmosphere

that had fooled the radar
and confused the operators.

The mystery was solved.

Prior to General Samford's
press conference,

Ruppelt's team was receiving
more than 50 reports a day

during the Washington event.

In the week following
the press conference,

that dropped to just 10.

As far as the public
was concerned,

the UFO uproar was over.

There were no further
radar anomalies.

No more sightings
over Washington DC.

The temperature
inversion had answered

the American public's questions

and calmed their fears.

But had they been
sold an elaborate lie?

On consecutive
weekends in July 1952,

a swarm of unidentified
flying objects

buzzed the White House
in Washington DC.

To date, no satisfactory
explanation has been given.

In order to understand
UFO's properly,

you have to know
what was going on

in the culture and
society at the time.

By this point
in postwar history,

UFO sightings were nothing new.

People have always witnessed
strange objects in the sky.

But what changes is
their interpretation.

In the Bible, they
were angelic chariots.

In the 1800s, they
were phantom airships.

In World War II,

pilots gave these
phantom craft a name.

We'd had also during
the Second World War,

the so-called Foo Fighters

which were seen actually by
both Allied and Axis pilots,

each of whom thought it was
a secret weapon of the enemy.

And then,

there was the first
alleged UFO visitation

of a major US city.

In the early hours
of February 25, 1942,

fourteen hundred
anti-aircraft ammunitions

filled the skies
over Los Angeles.

There was some form
of battle happening.

The morning came,
the smoke cleared.

The reports said that

they had seen one to five
unidentified flying objects,

though previously
the night before,

they didn't seem to think
that there were any.

Very confusing story.

In the immediate
aftermath of World War II,

came the story that
brought to the world

the whole concept of
the flying saucer.

In June of 1947,

Kenneth Arnold was flying over
the mountains of Washington state

when he saw nine shiny objects
flying near Mount Rainier.

He described them as
flying as a saucer would

if you skipped it across water.

This opened up the possibility

that strange objects in the sky

might be extraterrestrial craft.

The Arnold sighting
was a catalyst

that changed our interpretation

of strange objects in the sky.

The way they were described,

the speed with which
they were flying,

made people start to think
strange objects in the sky

might be extraterrestrial craft.

Hollywood
ran with the idea,

helping to popularize
and legitimize

the idea of flying saucers
in the public consciousness.

Films such as 1951's
The Day the Earth Stood Still

featured friendly aliens.

But post 1952,

the aliens took a
turn for the worst,

movies such as Earth
vs. the Flying Saucers

and Mars Needs Women

started priming people to think
that aliens might be evil.

And the relatively
new genre of science fiction

was far from the only factor
adding to our anxiety.

In 1952,

the United States
was coming down

from the victory and
elation of World War II.

And facing a new Cold War,

which caused a lot
of concern and fear.

To have mysterious objects flying
over Washington DC was very troubling.

People were now enjoying
post-war prosperity,

but also knew that we now held the
power to destroy our own planet.

Maybe by detonating the bomb,

we captured the
extraterrestrial's attention.

Perhaps these more advanced
ETs were observing us

to protect us from ourselves.

Or maybe they realize
we're on the path

to becoming a threat to them,

and we need to be kept in check.

This was an era where
trust in the government

and the authorities was
pretty much absolute.

So, when the government
made an explanation

or gave an explanation
for something,

people were more
likely to believe it.

Even the report of a crashed
flying saucer in Roswell, New Mexico,

can be explained away

with a plausible
official statement.

So, people forget, I think,
now talking about UFO's

that in relation to the
classic Roswell incident

that within 24 hours of saying,
"We've recovered a flying disc,"

they said, "No, It was
a weather balloon."

And everyone said, "Okay
then," and moved on.

It was erased from the
public consciousness

because of what
the military said

and the way in which
that was accepted.

It was only decades
later, in the late '70s,

that Roswell was
essentially rediscovered.

It wasn't until the publication
of The Roswell Incident,

written by Charles Berlitz
and William Moore in 1980

that the idea of government
cover-ups of UFO incidents

became common knowledge.

People have suggested that
the DC incident in 1952

was a government
disinformation scheme.

But that wasn't a
contemporary opinion.

This is not a popular opinion.

A lot of people disagree
with me on this.

But I worked for the
ministry of Defense

for 21 years,

and I can say that the
view from within government

is you don't tell lies.

It really is only a
handful of circumstances,

often to do with intelligence
matters where it's allowed.

But we do have
evidence of cover stories

being used to explain
unusual activity.

That's a delicate issue.

I would say a lot of highly
classified operations

can have cover stories.

And I wouldn't call those
cover stories disinformation.

It's just how we protect
classified information.

There's a big difference

between trying to
explain something away

and actually doing
some form of analysis.

The long arm of the government

did reach Ruppelt in
Project Blue Book.

And he did spend all of his
time creating explanations,

as opposed to doing an
actual investigation.

With
general agreement

that US intelligence
agencies were capable

of constructing cover
stories to obscure the truth

behind the July
1952 UFO sightings,

Major General
Samford's promotion

of the temperature
inversion theory

requires additional
scientific investigation.

A
temperature inversion occurs

when you get a layer of
cold air close to the ground

and a layer of warm air above.

But with layers of
different density,

this changes the path
of the radio waves

through the atmosphere.

This can give you a
misreading of the position

of the object you're looking at.

But
temperature inversion

is only one
potential explanation

for the phenomenon of July 1952.

There are a lot
of different ways

you can get strange
things on the radar screen

that have nothing to do
with what's really there.

For example, just recently,

scientists have
discovered microorganisms

that live permanently
in the upper atmosphere.

And we know that some bacteria
and organisms are bioluminescent.

So, maybe some of
the lights we see

moving around in the sky are
actually living organisms.

Adding
further room for doubt

on the official line of
temperature inversion,

is the sudden disappearance
of the radar blips

when the scramble jets arrived.

Well, I can
think of one scenario.

Let's suppose those radar
glints that we're getting

were actually the result

of what we call
Bragg diffraction,

which is radar reflecting off of
periodic turbulence in the atmosphere.

When they send the jets up,

they're gonna break
up that pattern

and you'd see the
radar glints disappear

just by the act of the
airplanes flying into the air.

If this was
the case, why then,

even when these
blips disappeared

from air traffic control
screens in Washington,

were there identical anomalies
still being seen by analysts

at CIA headquarters
in Langley, Virginia?

Next is the visual evidence
provided by expert witnesses,

the pilots and the
control tower staff.

There's a reason why pilots are
considered really good witnesses,

and that's because
they are much better

than the average person
at estimating height,

speed and distance.

Their lives depend on it.

The way the objects maneuvered

does give us some
form of indication

that they're being operated
by some form of intelligence.

The military's
reaction to the phenomenon

also suggests that this
was no atmospheric event.

We don't scramble jets
for temperature inversion.

This was not the first time
any of these professionals

experienced
temperature inversion.

It is not cost
effective or practical

nor is it following
appropriate protocol.

Add to that an
institutional reluctance among pilots

to not report
extraordinary sightings

unless absolutely necessary.

There is a huge culture
of underreporting

because of the stigma

and also because of
the perceived threat

of a psychological evaluation,

which would lead to a
pilot being grounded.

And for a pilot to
lose their wings,

well, that's the worst
thing in the world.

So, they keep quiet.

Despite all
attempts to explain away

the UFO sightings of
July 1952 scientifically,

there is little doubt that
the interceptor pilots

and tower crew believed
they were tracking

and had seen physical objects

as opposed to a
freak weather system

or trick of the light.

A radar blip can be an anomaly.

A visual sighting
can be a mistake.

But combine the two

and you've really
got a situation

where the whole is greater
than the sum of the parts.

A radar visual case tells you
that there was something there.

But of course, it
doesn't tell you what.

If we were allowed
weather phenomena,

then we can look at manmade
reasons for these sightings.

There were
rumors at the time

that Boeing was
secretly producing

experimental aircraft
for the US military.

Could this have been a test
flight of a groundbreaking

new military aircraft or weapon?

Well, of course, there were.

There were a lot of
companies at the time

like Lockheed and
Conveyer and others

who were testing
experimental aircraft.

But there was
nothing at that time

that comes even
close to performing

like the things
we're talking about.

Boeing had contracts
with the Air Force.

It participated in
technology at Area 51.

Boeing built interceptor jets

and spy planes
throughout the 1950s,

when the fear of a
Russian attack persisted.

The Northrop Grumman
craft that's designed

as one long, sleek,
wing-looking craft.

The shape of the
craft was unusual

and was often
misidentified as a UFO.

As many military craft are.

They have to go
through numerous tests.

They test them over the public

to see if the public
will recognize it.

Then they test the components.

The speed and everything of
the craft out in other places.

These are stealth craft.

They're stealth because
they're interceptors.

They're made to be not seen.

The X43 is a craft that flies
at 7,000 miles per hour.

One can only imagine
what other crafts

are currently under development.

Look, in 1952,

there was nothing that
could perform like that.

And today there's nothing
that can perform like that.

There are some exotic
forms of propulsion

that NASA's been evaluating.

For example, magnetic levitation

and various forms of ion drives

that could give you a
lot faster performance

than we have today.

But none of those have
really been reduced

to an operational setting
that would apply here.

And what
of other rumors

that this was Washington
testing its air defense forces

against a new and
deadly Cold War threat?

The Soviets had just
developed the Tu-95,

which is a long range
strategic bomber.

There's no consensus about this,

but at one level, it does
make some military sense

because a conventional attack

would take the form
of waves of aircraft,

but a single aircraft,
you might ignore,

because somebody
would be saying,

"Well, maybe it's a
temperature inversion,"

"Maybe there's a fault with
one of the radar systems,"

but in reality, the
strategy would be,

"We'll send one bomber."

It will drop a nuclear bomb

which will decapitate
the political

and military leadership
of the United States

"in a single swoop."

To assure
that wouldn't happen,

radar operators
and military chiefs

would need to be
put to the test.

If this was the case,

and they had failed the test,

the one thing that they
would not want to do

is let the Soviets

or the public know.

And finally
then, what of the theory

that the US military
had recovered a crashed

alien craft at Roswell in 1947?

Which, by 1952,

it had learned to fly and was
putting it through its paces.

There is no
evidence here to suggest

these were of
extraterrestrial origin.

The events do,
however, point out

that there's something
going on, unexplained,

that says there's a lot
we don't understand.

But a scientist or an
intelligence analyst

looking at that wouldn't
start with aliens.

We'd look at all the
other possibilities

and exhaustively rule those out

before we seriously turned
our attention to ET's.

While alien craft

might be the least likely
of all explanations

for the July 1952 sightings,

as conventional
answers diminish,

can a case be made for
visitors from another planet?

Though the
official line given

given for the July
1952 sightings

of UFO's over Washington, D.C.,

remains "Temperature inversion,"

it's clear that no
single explanation

fits all the facts.

Although it's a big leap

with no satisfactory
explanation for the phenomena,

could some form of
alien technology

have been responsible?

It's interesting that
more than 70 years later,

we still don't have the answers.

We've had more sightings and
we have even more questions.

The only thing that's
really changed, perhaps,

since the 1950s,

is our willingness to take the
government's word at face value.

We've also seen some
aspects of science fiction

become science fact,

which might make visits
from ET's more plausible.

Well, if you want
to make the argument

that this was extraterrestrial,

first of all, I guess
you have to show

that alien life exists,

and with the best
will in the world,

though there are a
lot of people looking,

we haven't yet proven this
beyond reasonable doubt.

There are some scientists

who promulgate this
idea called panspermia,

in which life arrived at Earth

on an asteroid or comet
from somewhere else.

And one notion
that supports this

is that mathematicians
have looked at modern DNA

and done the math on
how many generations

and how many billions of years
would have had to bake that DNA,

and found that the
DNA that exists today

would have been older than
the life of the Earth,

suggesting strongly
that life here

came from
extraterrestrial origin.

Science
theory met science fact

as recently as 2023,

when Avi Loeb at
Harvard's Galileo Project

recovered tiny,
metallic spheroids

remnants of an
interstellar meteor

that crashed into our
atmosphere in 2014.

For the first time ever,
his study uncovered metals

unmatched to any existing alloys

in our solar system.

True intergalactic material

unknown to human science,
originating from deep space.

The numbers, distances
and time frames

we are dealing with are
mind-numbingly vast.

We have calculated that
there are approximately

300 billion stars in our galaxy.

And each one of
those stars is a sun

like our sun, our local star.

We've also worked out that
within the whole of the universe,

there are approximately
200 billion galaxies.

But what we've been doing
in the last 30 years,

we've been actually
detecting some of the planets

going around these
distant stars.

We call them exoplanets.

So far, we've found
about 5,000 of them,

but we think that there are
many, many, many more out there.

You only need one of those
to have developed something

close to light-speed travel

or mastered wormholes,

or to evolve to live tens
of thousands of years,

and interstellar travel
becomes a possibility.

If the craft
over Washington were alien,

where might they have come from

and how would they get here?

If they came from our
nearest exoplanet,

that's an exoplanet going around
the star Proxima Centauri,

that star sits 4.28
light years away from us.

Now 4.28 light years is
40 trillion kilometers.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is
100,000 light-years across.

So even if a beam
of light was sent

from the other
side of the galaxy,

it would take 100,000 years

to reach us.

Our most technologically
advanced space probe,

Voyager 1, has traveled
only 0.1% of the distance

to Proxima Centauri b
In the last 50 years.

With our
current technology,

it would take tens
of thousands of years

to reach the nearest
potentially civilized planet.

To make that leap
through time and space,

an alien race would have
to have had traveled

through a wormhole
to cross the galaxy

in a fraction of what we
currently believe is possible.

In short, we have
no proven physics

that would underlie any of this.

If faster-than-light travel
were in fact a reality,

it would be as much
a mystery to us

as would be time travel.

But though it might
be a mystery to us right now,

it may not be for
very much longer,

if the US military industrial
complex gets its way.

When Congress found out about
the Pentagon's AATIP program,

Advanced Aerospace Threat
Identification Program,

they demanded answers,

and the answer came back.

We've done 38 scientific
and technical studies,

into things like antigravity,
invisibility, wormholes,

warp drive and stargates.

It sounds like science fiction,

but people were working on it,

and they probably still are.

We're in
new territory here.

There are what I would
call the known unknowns

of physics and science.

For example, we don't
know what makes up

95% of the stuff of the universe

because we don't know what dark
energy and dark matter are.

And so that's stuff that
scientists know they don't know.

But there's a whole other realm

which is probably much bigger,

which is stuff we don't
know we don't know.

I think the point is
we have to be humble

and not dismiss these
things out of hand.

Through the lens of
advanced science and technology,

and thanks to access
to recently released

contemporaneous records,

were now able to
re-examine the evidence

from the 1952 sightings.

Seventy years later,

we have better
access to records,

and we can see that the
events were not confined

to Washington, D.C.

While this incident
was happening

on the 26th in Washington,

an identical incident
was happening

2,500 miles away in California,

where F94 was chasing
an orange, glowing light

that was moving at
remarkable speeds,

and then also disappearing
off the radar screens.

And that
wasn't the last of it.

On the night of July 29th, 1952,

a UFO traveling at
over 600 miles per hour

was caught on radar
flying over Lake Huron.

More than half
a dozen reliable sightings

in three distant locations
in a single month.

In all three incidents,

pilots pursued what
they were convinced

was a physical craft with
extraordinary abilities.

That provides more credibility

that something was happening
beyond our understanding.

Does
this new evidence,

combined with what
was known at the time,

help our experts reach any
hard and fast conclusions?

Something extraordinary happened
that night in Washington, D.C.,

but we don't have a
full explanation for it.

And when people
lack an explanation,

they seek one out.

We don't like ambiguity.
We need answers.

So it's not surprising
that people have speculated

about what happened in
Washington, D.C. ever since.

So in all fairness,
we have to say

that there is a
case for conspiracy.

There is a case for
non-human craft,

and there is a case for,
perhaps, a test plane.

But I do believe that there is
intelligent life in the universe.

And I also think that the craft

that were seen during this
UFO flap over Washington

did display intelligence.

Maybe its alien craft,

or maybe there's
something exotic

going on in our atmosphere
we don't understand.

Either way, what a story.

The sightings over
Washington, D.C. in July 1952

were a watershed
moment in UFO history.

For some, they increased
Cold War paranoia.

For others, they
offered reassurance

that perhaps aliens
were watching over us

in this new and
terrifying nuclear age.

And still, others were not so
convinced of their benevolence.

According to the
government at the time,

they were just a trick of light,

an atmospheric
temperature inversion.

Today the clamor for
answers has grown louder

as science has stretched
our understanding

of what's credible.

The idea of UFO's
is no longer fringe.

Government and military
whistleblowers have come forward,

and even the United
States Congress

is holding hearings
about what the military

and intelligence establishment
knows about UFO's.

The days of
half-answers has passed.