UFO Conspiracies: The Hidden Truth (2020) - full transcript

[dramatic intro music]

[static over comms]

[siren wails]

[narrator]
In April 2020, the United
States' Department of Defense

took the unprecedented decision

to declassify and release
to the world's media

three previously
classified recordings

made by US Navy pilots,

showing what the DoD
described simply as

"unexplained aerial phenomena".

The recordings,
made between 2004 and 2015,



appear to show a kind of
circular flying object,

which might at one time have
been labelled a flying saucer.

Upon its release, the footage
went viral on social media

and, unusually, was accompanied by no explanation from
the authorities

as to what the flying discs
might be.

The accompanying press release
simply stated:

A marked change in approach
from the Cold War era,

which, as we shall see,
was a time of denial,
lies and admitted cover-ups

by some of the United States'
most powerful institutions.

[dramatic music]

The state of New Mexico
on the southern border of
the United States,

where in July 1947,
the town of Roswell

became the sight of one of
the most notorious cover-ups
in American history,

although the repercussions
wouldn't be felt until several
decades into the future.



A rancher named
William Mack Brazel

was out riding when he stumbled upon a large amount of
mysterious-looking wreckage.

[flames crackling]

Brazel informed
the local sheriff,

who, in turn, reported
the wreckage to the Army
Air Force Base at Roswell,

believing it to be the result
of some kind of military
air exercise.

Air Force intelligence officer
Jesse Marcel

collected some of the wreckage,

and is said to have been
so excited by the strange
other-worldly material

that he rushed home in the early hours to show pieces of it
to his family.

At the time, recent press
reports of lights in the sky
and flying saucers

in other parts of the country
had already piqued
the public interest.

So when local Air Force
press officer Walter Haut

issued a press release,
claiming that the Air Force

was in possession of a flying
disc, the story became

an international
sensation overnight.

The matter was referred
to General Roger M Ramey

of the Eighth Air Force
in Fort Worth, Texas,

and it was here that
the story was to be quashed

almost as quickly
as it had been born.

[camera shutter clicks]

General Ramey ordered
a press conference,

at which he showed off some
sections of what was purported
to be the famous wreckage.

The news reports issued
the following day

were anticlimactic,
to say the least.

at the press conference -

small pieces of wood,
rubber and tinfoil -

were less than impressive,

and with that, public interest
in the story waned.

Locally, however, many insisted that the material displayed
by General Ramey

did not come from
the Roswell wreckage.

personnel threatening witnesses

and rumours of a second,
more extensive crash site,

which was hidden from the
public, ensured that the story
would never quite die.

Gary Heseltine is
the founder and editor of

"UFO Truth Magazine".

I, personally, have met
many of the top searchers
involved in the Roswell story.

But I think there is something
like 800 witnesses loosely

based throughout the decades
that have been traced

and, without a shadow of
a doubt, it's a cover-up
by the US Air Force,

the US Government and was
one of the pinnacle things

that set us on a path of
ufology, the modern era.

It was decades later,
under intense pressure
from UFO researchers,

that the US Air Force
was finally forced to admit

the water balloon
story was a lie.

We were in a cold war
and there was a real fear

of Soviet expansion and
there'd be a Third World War,

which would, of course,
have been a nuclear atomic war,

which would have probably
decimated the entire Earth.

And I think that was
a genuine reason why

they didn't want people to
think, well, actually there
might be aliens as well,

and that's another treat -
we could have an alien invasion.

Personally, I don't think
it stacks up longer term.

As we shall see, there had
been a cover-up at Roswell.

But a cover-up of what?

[dramatic music]

to take an official interest

in the UFO phenomenon.

The US Air Force decided to
create a project called
Project Sign.

And I think in the early days,
this was a serious attempt

to study what was genuinely
baffling sightings,

often by military personnel,
commercial pilots.

People were genuinely
interested in the subject

and they set up this
Project Sign

with the intention of
trying to get to the truth.

Project Sign was headed up
by General Nathan Twining

and was established
in response both to
the incident at Roswell

and another major sighting
that also took place in 1947.

Mount Rainier, Washington State.

On June 24th, 1947,

a civilian pilot
named Kenneth Arnold

was flying his light aircraft

in search of a downed
Marine Corps' transport plane,

for which the Air Force
was offering a reward.

Instead of the transport plane, Arnold encountered a series
of strange lights,

which as he approached them
appeared to be
saucer-shaped craft

flying in formation
at incredible speed.

Arnold knew the layout
of the mountains,

and he knew the distances
between two peaks,

which proved advantageous
because he saw them

pass the beginning of one peak
and he knew the distance
between the other peak.

So he was able to calculate
the speed from the first one
to reaching the second one.

And he concluded that it was
about 1,200 miles an hour.

Arnold provided a report of
the incident to the Air Force,

who, he said, took it seriously.

and the subsequent news stories

are thought to represent
the first-ever published use
of the term "flying saucer",

based on Arnold's descriptions.

However, the subsequent
Air Force report into
the incident was dismissive.

Public awareness of
the flying saucer issue

increased further in 1948,

thanks to a highly publicised
incident over Kentucky.

January 7th, 1948,

the Godman Army Airfield
in Kentucky

receives multiple reports
of some kind of unidentified
airborne object.

The object remained in view
for over an hour

and was witnessed by
numerous senior officers,

none of whom were able
to identify it.

Flight Commander
Captain Thomas Mantell

was conducting a routine
training flight nearby

and was ordered by the
control tower to investigate
the strange object.

Mantell, who was flying
without an oxygen mask,

climbed to 15,000 feet

and radioed the tower that
he had the object in sight

and was giving chase.

That was the last report
he made.

The wreckage of his plane
was later found

90 miles south
of Godman Airfield.

Air Force pilot losing his life

in pursuit of a flying saucer
caught the public imagination

and was widely reported
by the press.

But again, the Air Force report attempted to explain away
the entire incident

with an astonishingly
unlikely conclusion.

By the end of 1948,

they looked over
about 1,000 reports

during that 12-month period.

And they came up with a report
called "The Estimate
of the Situation".

"The Estimate of the Situation"
concluded that,

almost certainly, some of
the sightings involved

interplanetary craft,

which was a term of the day
in 1948.

And that was sent to a General,

who was supposed to send it on
to the President.

The General said, "No, we're not
having that as a conclusion."

And basically, ordered
that all copies be burned.

With the vast majority of
the incidents recorded
in Project Sign

sightings of everyday phenomena,

the project was closed down
by Air Force Chief of Staff

General Hoyt Vandenberg,

on the basis that it was
a waste of time and resources.

They were genuinely good guys
trying to get to the truth
on Project Sign.

They were replaced by a whole
new team of investigators,

but with a clearly
different remit.

And that remit was,
from '48 onwards,

with Project Grudge,
which is to debunk everything.

According to a 1999 report by
Gerald Haines of the National
Reconnaissance Office,

the intention
of the debunking remit

was to alleviate public
anxiety over UFOs.

But a less charitable conclusion would be that sightings
were explained away

in order to discourage public
curiosity about such events.

In any case, in the only
official report

ever produced by Project Grudge,

hundreds of incidents
and sightings

recorded throughout
the 1940s

were dismissed in a variety
of creative ways.

And the report's final
conclusion was that:

By the end of the decade,

Project Grudge was quietly
being wrapped up.

[dramatic music]

In the early 1950s,

two incidents, in particular,
reawakened

the Air Force's interest
in UFOs.

The first of these took place
in Lubbock, Texas,

in August 1951,

from the Texas Technical College

witnessed a number of
mysterious lights

moving in a U- or V-shaped
formation.

Several days later,
the same group of men

witnessed the lights again
and, separately,

to have photographed the lights.

The photographs, though never
confirmed to be genuine,

were widely publicised,

necessitating an official
Air Force response,

lights were most likely birds

recently installed street lamps.

The second incident, however,
was not so easy to dismiss.

One of the biggest events
that took place

in UFO history
was actually in 1952,

when over two
successive weekends

multiple UFOs were seen
visually and on radar

over the capital,
Washington DC.

It began on the 19th July, 1952,

when a Washington DC
aircraft controller

spotted numerous objects
on his radar

aircraft or flight plans.

The readings were confirmed
by other operators,

while witnesses saw
bright lights moving at
incredible speeds

over the White House.

Two jet fighters were scrambled to intercept the mystery
aircraft.

But before the planes
could reach Washington,

all of the objects had
vanished from the radar.

As soon as they
were seen on radar,

they despatched the pilots
to go up, vectored to the area,

and then, mysteriously,
they would disappear.

When the jets subsequently
left the area to refuel,

the UFOs reappeared,
suggesting a controlled,
intelligent behaviour

that could not be dismissed
as birds or errant
weather balloons.

Over two successive weekends,
there were multiple incursions
over Washington DC

and despite planes
being sent up,

they could never find them.

And yet,
the top radar guy said,

you know, we had nine hours
on one particular weekend

where these objects
were buzzing around.

And he said,
these were real aircraft.

These were machines. These were
not temperature inversions.

These were not swamp gas.
These were not Venus.

And he was convinced that there
was real objects being seen.

Mysterious aircraft in the
vicinity of the White House

was a potential threat
to national security

went all the way to the top.

Whilst public statements
announced that the radar blips

had been caused by
"temperature inversions",

behind the scenes,
plans were being formulated

for a new Air Force project
to investigate UFOs,

named Project Blue Book.

And this time, the CIA was
to become actively involved.

The CIA were tasked
at one point

to investigate UFOs,
but it was all done in secret.

But their role was not to
investigate the validity
or truthfulness

of UFO cases, it was really,
"How do we manage
public perception?"

And what they did,
they commissioned
the Robertson Panel,

the scientists, which in 1953,
that created, in a sense,

the theme of the debunking
programme,

which has been followed
ever since.

In the 1999
Gerald Haines' report,

he admits that the CIA
had been monitoring
the Air Force's investigations

into UFOs since 1947.

keep the intelligence agencies' interest in such matters

a closely guarded secret.

A classified CIA memo
from the time stated:

was established in 1947

as a response to the growing
threat from the Soviet Union.

But it could be argued
that it quickly developed

a tendency towards
spying on and controlling

the American public.

This is evidenced
by the agency's attitude

towards the supposed threat
represented by UFOs.

Rather than assist in
the Air Force investigations,

the CIA suggested a media
campaign of public debunking

to "educate" the population

and discourage them from
reporting UFO incidents.

this was to include:

Most people aren't aware
that the CIA commissioned

a panel of top scientists
of the day.

And they said, "How do we strip
the aura that the public have,

the fascination the public
generally have for
this mystery?"

And they concluded, after
two days of talking about this,

that the best way to strip
the aura of flying saucers,

which was the term of the day
in the '50s,

was to debunk it
in all forms of media,

ie, film, TV, radio, newspaper.

And so, if you think about it,
that's what's happened.

And America control the subject
of UFOs worldwide, historically.

And so, literally,
anybody born after 1953,

has lived in a genuine world
of a debunking programme.

[dramatic music]

When the CIA did undertake
investigations,

secrecy and outright deception
were standard operating
procedure.

Once such incident outlined
in the Gerald Haines report

took place in 1955.

Two elderly sisters contacted
the Journal of Space Flight

to say that they had intercepted a strange alien code
on their radio

and had made a recording
of the broadcast.

[beeping and static]

the attention of the CIA-backed

Office of Scientific
Intelligence,

and a field officer
named Dewelt Walker

Was despatched to interview
the sisters and to make
a copy of the recording.

Rather than admit to the CIA's
involvement in such
an investigation,

Walker told the sisters that
he worked for the Air Force.

The recording, when analysed,

turned out to be nothing
more than some accidentally
intercepted Morse code

until two years later,

when an independent
UFO researcher

decided to follow up
on the case

asking for clarification around who had taken the recording

and what had been done with it.

The result was a lengthy
correspondence

in which the Air Force
and the CIA

attempted to shift the
responsibility to another

unnamed government agency,

before finally stating that
the recording had been
destroyed to save file space.

This was not
an isolated incident

and it may even be the case
that the celebrated
urban legend

of the mysterious
"Men In Black",

unnamed agents who are said
to appear out of nowhere

in response to reports
of UFO sightings,

might actually be down to CIA
agents acting suspiciously

and refusing to
identify themselves.

Over the next decade,
Project Blue Book

increasingly became
a bureaucratic exercise

in box ticking and debunking

with the barest minimum of
investigative work undertaken.

Any report of
a balloon-like object

was recorded as a balloon.

was simply a star,

the planet Venus or the Moon.

Project Blue Book
is littered with cases.

You could have four aviation
pilots all looking at

a triangular object
in front of them,

from four different
aircraft perspectives,

and they'd say it was Venus
or temperature inversions.

Reports and press releases
from the project

began attracting criticism

from UFO researchers
and reputable witnesses,

who felt that their testimony
and professionalism
was being undermined.

One such example came
in the summer of 1955.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol
reported that an Air Force
base near Oklahoma City

had tracked up to four UFOs
simultaneously

and that several of them
had descended very rapidly,

from about 22,000 feet
to about 4,000 feet
in just a few seconds,

which was well beyond
the capabilities of any
conventional aircraft.

At the same time, eyewitnesses
saw multi-coloured lights

and mysterious diamond-shaped
aerial objects.

Project Blue Book concluded
that witnesses had
simply mistaken

the planet Jupiter and bright
stars, such as Rigel
and Betelgeuse,

for something more sinister.

However, this report was
ridiculed when independent
experts pointed out

that these stars and planets
are not visible from
Oklahoma in the summer.

You would literally have
to be on the other side of
the planet to have seen them.

Not to mention the fact
that the UFOs
were tracked on radar,

which is unlikely to have
picked up a planet located
365 million miles from Earth.

Similarly, in 1966,
two police officers

spotted a disc-shaped, silvery
object with a bright light

in the sky above Ravenna, Ohio.

The police officers gave chase,

following the object at high
speed for over half an hour,

with officers from several
other jurisdictions
joining in the pursuit.

The event made national news

to Project Blue Book,

where the official response
was that the officers must
have been, at various points,

chasing a satellite, a star
and even the Moon.

former Air Force pilot himself,

angrily rejected this finding

and even Ohio Congressman
J William Stanton

commented on the incident.

Prophetic words for
Project Blue Book.

The three US Air Force projects,

Sign, Grudge and Blue Book,

basically, ran for 22 years
but by '69, it closed.

Why did it close?
Well, that's quite simple.

They found a mechanism
and a way to close it.

And the mechanism was
to ask a university

and it went to a guy
called Edward Condon

and it became known
as the Condon Committee.

And basically, they had
a two-year contract

to look at all of the best
evidence, in theory,

and make conclusions
to the US Air Force.

Well, literally, on day one,

Condon, who was a very
well-regarded physicist,

he privately said,
this is just a paper exercise.

We already know
it's a load of rubbish.

As with Project Sign
and Project Grudge,

the Condon Committee
delivered a final report,

which was long on pages
but short on revelations.

A panel chaired by Yale
astronomer Gerald M Clemence

studied the report for
six weeks and concluded that:

What you had, literally,
from the late '40s onwards,

until it finished for 20 years,
was a debunking programme

and we kind of know and always
suspected as UFO researchers

that many of the best cases
never found their way

into what should have been
this definitive project,
Project Blue Book.

And we know that
because General Bolender

actually admitted in
the late '60s and early '70s

that there was
a secret programme

and the best cases didn't
go into Project Blue Book.

So I think the general
conclusion is as we look back

on the history of ufology
is that for many, many years

the... Project Blue Book
and certainly Project Grudge

were nothing but public
relations exercises
for the public.

[dramatic music]

[Houston]
OK, Neil, we can see you
coming down the ladder now.

[Neil Armstrong]
It's one small step for man,

one giant leap for mankind.

[narrator] In 1969, the very
same year that Project Blue
Book was disbanded,

NASA achieved what many
had thought impossible,

and some still think impossible,

sending Neil Armstrong,
Buzz Aldrin and
Michael Collins to the Moon

and bringing them back alive.

It was inevitable that
the validity of such
an extraordinary achievement

would be called into question
and thousands of conspiracy
theorists around the world

soon began pointing out what
appear to be strange anomalies

in the images and footage
presented to the public.

of tampering in photographs,

together with questionable
physics and the lack of stars

in the footage
from the Moon's surface.

More intriguing still is
the staggering admission from
NASA in more recent years

that much of the original
footage and telemetry data
from the Apollo Moon flights

has apparently been "lost".

Critics immediately jumped
on this admission as
further evidence

that NASA had something to hide.

If you think about it,
if we had the technology

to get to the Moon in 1969,

don't you find it a bit
bizarre, even for the most
ardent sceptic,

to think, well, if we could
do it in '69, why haven't
we been back since '72?

Which was the last mission.
It really doesn't make sense.

And actually, you find,
in the world of conspiracy,

that some people will say,
"Actually, the Moon missions
didn't actually happen."

I think they did. I personally
think that the footage

of Neil Armstrong
touching the ground.

I don't think we had
the means to do that live.

And I think that was recreated
in a studio, but I personally
think we did go to the Moon.

But undoubtedly, there's
a lot of cover-ups.

[man] Oh, it's beautiful,
Mike, it really is.

[narrator] So, were the Moon
landings really faked,

or was NASA hiding something
even more extraordinary?

There's a huge amount of data
that would say that, um,

things were seen
en route to the Moon,

that things were seen possibly
on the Moon, the far side
of the Moon.

I mean, there's bits of
footage where, absolutely
unambiguous footage,

where you see a lovely
colour shot of the Lander

coming back towards
the main craft and a UFO,

a white sphere,
passes underneath.

UFO researchers have scoured
the photographs and footage
from NASA missions

looking for unusual
or unexplained objects,

and even NASA personnel
have spoken out on the issue.

Apollo 14 astronaut
Edgar Mitchell

stated that he believed 90%
of reported UFO sightings

were the result
of alien activity.

And that he personally was
aware of several UFO visits
during his career,

and that each one
had been covered up.

a secret cabal in the government

that was studying alien bodies
recovered at Roswell.

NASA issued a terse statement
in response:

Mitchell later
retracted the claims,

stating they were
just speculation.

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin

once claimed to have seen
strange lights

en route to the Moon.

But later stated that his words had been taken out of context
and misunderstood.

The idea of secret UFO bases
on the Moon

stemmed from claims that
private ham radio operators

had managed to record
secret off-air transmissions

between the Apollo 11 crew
and Houston from
the surface of the Moon.

Allegedly, on Apollo 11,

Neil Armstrong went over
the air to say that UFOs

are parked up, as it were,
on a crater rim
looking down at them.

[astronaut] These craters
are huge, enormous!

-[static]
-Oh, my God!

You wouldn't believe it!

I'm telling you, there are
other spacecraft out there,

lined up on the far side
of the crater edge.

They're on the Moon
watching us.

[static over comms]

[narrator] The actual
recordings have never emerged,

but the idea of aliens
on the Moon took hold,

with hundreds of researchers
scouring images

of the Moon's surface
for signs of hidden bases,

with some claiming that
the clearest images
were deleted by NASA.

NASA denies this.

Do I think that there's
a potential cover-up?

Yeah, I think there's evidence
to say that there's a secret
space programme,

but it's to what extent.

I certainly don't think
it's fleets and fleets

of huge battlecruisers
in space, like
a "Star Trek" scenario.

But I do think we probably
have done a lot of other
stuff in space,

missions that
nobody's aware of.

And if you think that
some kind of contact has
been made - ET on the Moon -

I think that's
entirely conceivable,

because I really don't
understand why we've
not been back.

[dramatic music]

The Rendlesham Forest incident
is considered by UFO
researchers

to be second only to Roswell
in terms of its significance.

Britain's most famous case
is what's called the
Rendlesham Forest incident.

And it's regarded now
in UFO historical terms

as being up there with Roswell,
that's how good the case is.

And some people would say
that in many ways it's
a better case than Roswell

because it contains
more evidence.

It began on December 26th, 1980,

at RAF Woodbridge, a military
base in southern England,

used by the American Air Force.

A security patrol near
the east gate of the base

saw strange lights in the sky,

which appeared to be
descending into nearby
Rendlesham Forest.

The next day, servicemen
searching the forest

found three small impressions
on the ground
in a triangular pattern,

broken branches on nearby trees.

All indications that some
kind of triangular craft

had made a landing
in the forest.

Even more dramatically,
the following night,

a small team led by
the deputy base commander,

Lieutenant Colonel
Charles Halt,

went out to the site
with a Geiger counter

to check for radioactivity.

Halt was recording the event
using a small Dictaphone

when something
incredible happened.

[tape playing, hissing]

[Halt] 3:05. We see
strange strobe-like flashes

to the... rather sporadic,

but there's definitely
something, some kind
of phenomenon.

3:05. At about ten degrees,
horizon, directly north,

we've got two strange objects,

er, half-moon shape, dancing
about with coloured
lights on 'em.

At, er, guess to be about five
to ten miles out, maybe less.

This was an audio tape that
he did into a little Dictaphone

and he made a series
of audio commentaries,

little updates on it
over four or five hours.

So he'll give a regular update.
He'll say, "We're now
crossing the creek.

"We can see an object,"
blah, blah, blah.

But one of the exciting
things that happened

is that at one point
they see an object

move towards them, stop
above their heads at 1,000 feet

and then shine a light
akin to a laser beam
down at their feet.

[soldier] Watch. straight ahead, off my flashlight there, sir.
There it is.

[Halt] I see it, too.
What is it?

-We don't know, sir.
-Can I get some of those?

[Halt] It's a strange,
small red light.

a half mile, maybe further out.

There is no doubt about it,
there's some type of strange
flashing red light ahead.

-[soldier] Sir, it's yellow.
-[Halt] I saw a yellow
tinge in it, too. Weird!

-At eleven o'clock.

There is no doubt about it.
This is weird!

[narrator] Two weeks
after the incident,

Lieutenant Halt
submitted a memorandum

which was released in 1983,

under the Freedom
of Information Act.

But at the time, there
didn't seem to be any will

to investigate
the incident further.

He put in a one-page memo
of three paragraphs
that he sent to the MOD

and, supposedly, the MOD said,
"Ah, there's nowt to this."

Even though it mentioned
in the first paragraph

that there was a landed
triangular craft of
unknown origin.

But interest in the case
was reignited

when the story made its way
into the press in 1983.

The News of the World did
a big full-page "UFOs land
in Suffolk, it's official".

The result was a media
debunking that rivalled

those seen in Project
Blue Book years earlier.

The moving light was identified as being the beam from
a nearby lighthouse.

were just that - stars.

Some of the explanations
given by the sceptics are...

For example... I mean, this is
UFOs seen over multiple nights.

This isn't just one UFO,
it's multiple and 14 or 15
separate incidents

over several consecutive nights.

And yet they would say
they were all done
by a lighthouse!

To counter the growing
scepticism about the event,

in 2010, the now retired
Colonel Halt

signed a notarised affidavit
clarifying what he saw.

Most importantly,
this new affidavit destroys
the lighthouse theory.

Whilst critics have pointed
out that Halt's description
of the lights in the affidavit

does not match the one
he gave in his original memo,

his dramatic cassette recording,

the authenticity of which
is not in dispute,

remains as
persuasive evidence

that something extraordinary
happened in Rendlesham
Forest that night.

[Halt] Here he comes from
the south. He's coming
toward us now.

Now we're observing what
appears to be a beam
coming down to the ground.

This is unreal. [laughs]

It's a very complicated case
but, suffice to say,

that what you have is
US Air Force police officers

guarding nuclear weapons,

and, basically,
over several nights,

they have various encounters
with various shaped UFOs.

And I'm involved and
I've been for the last
two and a half years

in researching the case
from the ground up,

by going through everything
back to day one.

And we've uncovered
a lot of new evidence.

Of all the cases
reported worldwide,

95% have a mundane explanation,

which is atmospherics,
pure misidentification, etc.

Just plain mistakes,
but then we're always left

with a residue of 5% of cases
and that gets the UFO
researchers interested.

And then they delve down
into those cases.

And then you lose another 2%

because they're identified
after investigation.

But you will always have this
residue of, say, about 2% to 3%.

Those cases are the ones
that you should look at.

[dramatic music]

In spite of the best efforts
of the CIA and other
authorities,

in UFOs was at an all-time high

and the formally debunked
Roswell incident

of UFO researchers.

They interviewed hundreds
of people who claimed

to have had a connection
with the events of 1947.

Their conclusions were that
at least one alien spacecraft

crashed near Roswell.

Alien bodies had been recovered

and a government cover-up of
the incident had taken place.

Such was the popularity
of the story

and the allegations that
something had been covered up,

the Air Force issued
a 1994 report,

along with
this publicity film,

which aimed to put
the controversy to rest.

The report revealed
for the first time,

that the wreckage found
on the Brazel Ranch was
not from a weather balloon,

but was, in fact, from an
experimental high-altitude
listening device

that was being flown by the Air Force as part of a programme
named Project Mogul

and was designed to detect
far-off nuclear detonations,

part of the Cold War arms race
with the Soviet Union.

The report went on to suggest
that people who claim

to have seen alien bodies

to nothing more than mannequins

or crash-test dummies, which
were frequently employed by
the Air Force

when testing experimental
aircraft.

But for many UFO researchers,
the Project Mogul explanation

is barely any more credible
than General Ramey's
weather balloon story.

It was a big mistake and made
it worse for the Air Force,

because they found out that
Project Mogul didn't operate
until the mid-'50s,

when this occurred in 1947,

and it used human six-foot
sized plastic objects that
were dropped from planes.

Well, when we talk about
the bodies that were
reported and recovered,

the aliens, allegedly,
recovered, they were
three feet in height.

Three or four feet high,
so looked nothing like
six-foot, plastic dummies.

So, again, that made their
stance on an explanation
as untenable really.

Researchers also point to the
immediate reaction of the men
at Roswell Airbase,

particularly Major Jesse Marcel.

intelligence officer,

he was part of the elite
509th Bomb Group,

which was responsible
for the deployment of
the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

The idea that Marcel couldn't
recognise and identify

the wreckage of an Air Force
high-altitude balloon,

even an experimental
Project Mogul balloon,

and the breadth and scope
of the subsequent cover-up,

suggests that whatever
was being hidden,

it wasn't a simple balloon-
mounted listening device.

It's created an ongoing debate
for many, many years.

And I have no doubt
that a UFO crashed.

And I have no doubt that
certain pieces of material
were recovered.

As we would do. If a UFO crashed
outside my window now,

the police would get called,
it would get cordoned off,

the military would turn up,
it would be carted off and
you'd never see it again.

Marcel himself maintained
for the rest of his life

that what he saw
at the Brazel Ranch

was something not of this Earth.

The general rule is, if anybody
knows anything about aviation,

is that even stealth aircraft,

for example the F-117,
a little back-wing plane...

Well, that was first flown
in about '75

and yet it didn't become
public until 1991 with
the first Gulf War.

So for 16 years that was
in stealth, in secret mode,

while it was being developed
and it's roughly 15 to 20 years

before it makes
mainstream confirmation.

Well, you've got a conundrum
there because if these objects

are flying around
since the 1940s,

well, OK, then it's a super
secret, man-made object.

The general rule is 20 years.

The fact that it hasn't come out
in 70 years says it's not ours.

The 1990s were also
an interesting time for NASA,

with frequent
Space Shuttle missions

providing researchers with
new footage to analyse.

There is one particular sequence
that I'm very impressed with

as a researcher, which is
called the tether sequence.

[astronaut] Again, we're
just moving into sunrise.

81 nautical miles now
from Columbia.

[narrator]
On February 25th, 1996,

the Space Shuttle Columbia
was attempting to deploy
a tethered satellite system,

designed to investigate new
sources of spacecraft power

and ways to study Earth's
upper atmosphere.

But five hours
into the experiment,

the tether broke and
the satellite floated away.

And a video recording of
the event appeared to show
something extraordinary.

Dozens of unidentified objects
floating in space
around the tether.

[Control] Franklin,
we see a long line,

a couple of star-like things
and a lot of things
swimming in the foreground.

Can you describe
what you're seeing?

These things are flashing,

they seem to self-illuminated,
they pass underneath it.

There's literally hundreds
of these things
all swarming around it.

The astronauts commenting
on what they were recording,

made no particular mention
of the strange phenomena,

which were later dismissed
as space debris and
ice particles.

And they're trying to say,
"Oh, this is ice particles."

But a lot of research has
been done into that footage

and you can actually track
each of the objects.

And so objects will
suddenly appear.

They'll go around it and
then come back on themselves.

They'll stop and then they'll
go left or stop and go right.

So they, you know, they seem
to under intelligent control.

It's, er, it's the tether.

And there's a little bit of
debris that... that kinda
flies with us.

Now, with the International
Space Station cameras
operating 24/7,

providing rolling coverage
of outer space,

researchers are
also working 24/7

to examine the footage
for anomalies,

in the belief that it can
only be a matter of time

before something is captured
that cannot be debunked.

NASA itself comes under
suspicion as being possibly

a front, a public
relations exercise.

And there are some, you know,
really kinda geeky people

who spend their lifetime
going through archives

of thousands of
Apollo photographs

to find a couple of
anomaly photographs

which can't be explained and
we owe them a debt of gratitude,

because most people
wouldn't do that.

But they do find
some very good stuff
that can't be explained.

And similarly, there are people
who study the space footage

and there are anomalies,
but a lot of people suspect

that the best evidence of things
in space has been hidden away.

[dramatic music]

There is no two ways about it,
if you study the subject,

if you were to intelligently
look at the very,
very best cases,

you would thing these
would be front-page news.

And the fact that they're not
means that there has to be

a reason why they're not
on the front page.

Now, I think, in a strange way,
President Trump

has kind of legitimised
the term "fake news".

And that wasn't really
recognised in the mainstream.

But now we have fake news
and "disinformation"

is now a real watch word
in modern society.

Well, it wasn't for many
decades, but now it's
an accepted thing

and, believe me, there is
so much disinformation

on the UFO subject.
And I always say this,

that if the public really
were to be presented
with the best evidence,

that 3% of best cases,
there would be no doubt

the ET phenomenon was real.

Despite the earlier claim that
there had been no serious
government interest

in the UFO phenomenon since the closure of Project Blue Book
in 1969,

in December 2017, there was
a surprise admission from
the Pentagon.

In fact, a secret study
into UFOs entitled

"The Advanced Aviation Threat
Identification Programme"

had been operating
for the last five years

with a total budget
of over $20 million.

I think the Pentagon
admissions in 2017

really did open
the Pandora's box,

because it can only lead
one way.

You can't actually put that
information back now.

The programme was
initiated in 2007,

by then Senate majority
leader Harry Reid,

who in 2009, wrote a letter
to the Deputy Secretary
of Defense,

which contained some
intriguing sentences.

The announcement coincided
with the release by
the New York Times

of leaked UFO footage,
recorded by US Naval pilots,

which was later released
officially by the Pentagon
in 2020.

[pilot] There's a whole fleet
of them. Look on my SA.

My gosh!

They're all going against
the wind. The wind's
120 knots to the west.

Look at that thing, dude!

There's been so much
frustration and lies told.

However, in 16th December, 2017,

the Pentagon admitted that
these things were real

and they didn't know what
they were flying around
the airspace.

And so that changed
the goalposts.

And so now, we're actually
I think definitely on a path

to, um... to...

Within the next three to five
years I think significant events

will push the door open.

Together with the release
of the footage,

came admissions from the
Office of Naval Intelligence

that they were still holding
highly classified documents

pertaining to UFOs.

An official statement
from the Navy read:

But with modern
image-sharing technology

and instant access
to data of all kinds,

it's seems the time of
governments being able to

restrict access to information
is coming to an end,

despite the best efforts
of the mainstream media

and the California tech giants.

UFO researchers yearn for
what's called "Disclosure"
with a big D.

When it's on every TV channel
that there's this open
admission that there's contact.

That ET is real
and it's been visiting us.

That's what we're all
kind of working towards

and we've been working towards
that for the last 70 years

in this, what was classed as,
a modern era.

I think we are moving
in the right direction

and I think with technology and
the world that we live in now,

of mass media, and the way
we can instantly get stuff
around the world,

I think it's all looking good
for a major announcement
in the next few years.

One thing that comes from
Disclosure with a big D

is that the world will need to
finally be truthful.

So if that happens,

then the world will be
in a very different place

and, in terms of history,
the history of the 20th century

and the first part
of the 21st century

will have to be rewritten.

[outro music]