Pod Insights Conspiracy Theories The Guardian Tape: UFO Caught on Camera, or Hoax? About this episode In 1992, UFO researcher Bob Oeschler received a strange package in the mail. It contained documents, purportedly stolen from some top-secret Canadian project, alleging a vast alien cover-up. The envelope contained something else: a VHS tape. The sender – identified only as “Guardian” – claimed to have captured footage of a UFO landing in rural Ontario. Bob found the tape credible and spent years trying to track down information and witnesses… but there’s one mystery nobody has ever been able to solve. Who WAS Guardian? Help us reach 10k followers on Instagram! @theconspiracypod
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Transcript 0:06 Speaker 00 It's February 1992, and Bob Exler is sifting through his mail. He's used to getting a lot of letters, letters that most people might find a bit strange. See, Bob is a well-known and highly respected UFO researcher, so people write to him from all over the place about their alleged sightings. Some of the reports are convincing, others, not so much. This evening, one envelope in particular catches his eye. There's something different about it. It's missing a return address. Bob's interest is piqued, so he pulls it from the stack, rips the manila envelope open, and dumps out the contents. Out spills a bunch of folded documents.
0:51 Speaker 00 At first glance, they appear to be official Canadian government memos. There's also a hand-drawn map, and photographs of aliens that, well, honestly, look like a guy in a cheap costume. And then, there's a VHS tape. Bob pops it in his VCR, and a shaky homemade video flickers to life on his television. Whoever holds the camera seems to be running through the dark toward a bunch of lights. The images are blurry and the objects far away, so it's not immediately obvious what Bob's looking at. But it appears as though some kind of aircraft is landing near a line of red flares. Bob studies the video.
1:36 Speaker 00 Then he sends it to a colleague with expertise in photoanalysis. They both agree: there's something here worth investigating. To Bob, this could be the most credible piece of UFO evidence ever captured on camera.
1:55 Speaker 00 And it landed right in his lap. Only, he doesn't know who sent it to him. The tape is labeled with just one word. Guardian. Right next to the name, there's an inky fingerprint. Whoever Guardian is, they've just sent Bob down a years-long rabbit hole. One that will ultimately cause him to step away from the field of UFO research entirely. One that still, to this day, has people asking, who is Guardian? Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday.
2:39 Speaker 00 We'd love to hear from you, so if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts, or check us out on Instagram at the conspiracy pod. Stay with us.
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3:53 Speaker 00 Former NASA employee and UFO researcher Bob Exler pours over the Guardian tape. It's February 1992, so that means lots of pausing and rewinding on his VCR. The video is blurry, the camera work is shaky, but there seems to be some horizontal light in the distance with another bluish light blinking above it. At one point, whatever object they're attached to looks as though it flies away. When you watch this video, it seems like there is something there, but also it really is hard to make out exactly what it could be. I can imagine going over this video back and forth a thousand times, as I did.
4:37 Speaker 00 The more Bob looks, the more he feels certain he can see a large curved object briefly illuminated with each strobe. It looks larger than a truck, smaller than a bus, maybe 20 to 30 feet from one end to the other. And of course, it can fly, but it doesn't look like any man-made spacecraft he knows of, which for Bob immediately rules out a hoax. His reasoning: "Faking a scene with an object that size and that shape would take a lot of effort and time." And this appears to be a real video, shot outdoors in a field somewhere in Canada. There are no film sets or tiny models involved here.
5:22 Speaker 00 The staging a hoax of this scale would simply draw too much attention. And just as odd as what Bob sees is what he hears or doesn't hear, the video does have sound: a dog barks off in the distance. But the potential spacecraft is completely silent. From that moment on, Bob works under the assumption that Guardian's video is credible, although there's still a lot he doesn't know. One: what the object in the video really is. Two: when the event supposedly happened. And Three: who was operating the camera?
6:03 Speaker 00 For him, that last question is the biggest hurdle to overcome. He doesn't know Guardian's identity. They seem to be passing themselves off as some kind of government whistleblower, the deep throat of Canadian UFO conspiracies, which would explain why they were able to be in the right place at the right time to capture the video. They had insider information. But because Guardian has remained anonymous, Bob can't get in touch. However, he's a seasoned researcher. He'll just have to go out there and find Guardian, along with the truth behind the video.
6:46 Speaker 00 If Bob can do all that, he might be looking at a career-defining case. And in a way, he ends up being right. Probably just not in the way he hoped. Like any great 90s adventure, this one starts with a map. Guardian hasn't spelled out for Bob exactly where to go, but he did send along a hand-drawn map of a Canadian region known as West Carlton, about 35 miles outside of Ottawa, Ontario. The search area defined on the map covers a little over one square mile. It's not huge, but we're talking about a place with big, open fields, farmland. Some areas are covered in dense vegetation. There are even swamps.
7:30 Speaker 00 It's not the easiest terrain, especially if you're trying to pinpoint the precise location where a 20- to 30-foot object might have landed. Now, Bob lives in Maryland, and he doesn't know much about West Carlton, but he does have a head start thanks to his connections. He's a member of the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFO, and his first order of business is calling his fellow researchers in Canada. The guy he talks to tells Bob he's not the only person who received a VHS tape from Guardian. On the one hand, that's gotta sting a little bit, right? Like, Bob's not as special as he might have thought he was. "Oh, oh, you got a tape too? No, I figured, I mean, of course you got a tape.
8:13 Speaker 00 I didn't think I was the only one who got the super-special tape." On the other hand, it's kind of exciting news. Bob's no longer alone in this mystery. Plus, he learns not all of the tapes are identical. His copy includes a closer shot of the mysterious craft.
8:33 Speaker 00 By the end of that long-distance call, which probably cost an arm and a leg, that was very much the thing in the early 90s, he has a plan to visit Wes Carlton the following week. On May 10th, Bob and his son meet up with a crew of eight Canadian UFO researchers, including a man named Graham Lightfoot, who knows a little more about the history of Guardian. And yes, I said "history," because apparently Guardian has been sending out packages since 1989. He'd mailed various organizations and lecturers and experts at least four times before. The difference is, those earlier communications only included documents and some blurry photos,
9:17 Speaker 00 never a VHS. Even so, Guardian's first letters caused a bit of a stir. Back in 89, Guardian wrote about an alleged UFO crash near Ottawa, in roughly the same area where the tape is later filmed. Graham Lightfoot was sent to investigate that first claim. He managed to track down at least three possible witnesses to the 1989 crash Guardian described. There's a couple who recalled an intense light flooding into their house, and a woman named Diane Labanac saw something similar. A bright light that she says flew over her house and toward the adjacent swamp,
9:57 Speaker 00 followed by several helicopters that appeared to be using their lights to search for something. That may sound like a solid lead, but Graham is a thorough and discerning researcher. He ends up speaking to far more residents who don't recall seeing anything out of the ordinary. He searches the land surrounding Diane's house on foot and comes up empty-handed. Ultimately, Graham has no choice but to report back, "I could find nothing conclusive to support or disprove any of the witnesses' claims."
10:31 Speaker 00 So, the first investigation prompted by Guardian was a bust. But now it's 1992, three years later. There's a bigger crew, new leads, a map, and not to mention a friggin' video. The search begins near the Cedar Ridge Estates, an upscale neighborhood. Stately two-story homes dot the countryside, each one surrounded by a couple acres. The open fields bring to mind the scene from Guardian's video. What's more, one investigator notices he can hear a single dog barking in the distance. When the team thinks they've pinpointed the square mile highlighted on Guardian's map, there's a problem.
11:16 Speaker 00 They're standing in the middle of a mosquito-infested swamp. The land is wet and mucky, and they have to trudge through knee-high plants. After a while, most of the team decides to throw in the towel and get some dinner. Only Bob and his son stay behind. When they all rendezvous that evening, Bob announces he's found the spot from Guardian's video. Graham Lightfoot realizes it's not far from the home of Diane Lavenack, the woman he believes is a credible witness to the 1989 sighting. The following day, Graham introduces Diane to Bob. They ask if she's seen anything else strange near her home in the past few months, and
11:59 Speaker 00 once again, she has. Diane remembers a night in mid-August 1991, around 10:00 PM. A bright light caught her attention and drew her to a nearby window. She recalls thinking there was a fire out in the field beyond her house, but it may have been flares. And then, as she watched, it looked like some kind of aircraft landed out there.
12:27 Speaker 00 Graham is gobsmacked, not only by her clear memories of the event, but because Diane is describing exactly what unfolds on Guardian's video. Only, she hasn't seen the video yet. She doesn't even know it exists! Then Graham asks her to draw the aircraft, and Diane sketches a basic silver object with a zigzag design, which reportedly looks a lot like a sketch included in Guardian's documents. When Graham and Bob show her the tape, Diane agrees. "That's it. That's what she saw back in August." She feels like, finally, here's some proof that she's not imagining things. Which is apparently something she's been wrestling with.
13:11 Speaker 00 She's been nervous about telling anybody her story, because she knows how all this sounds. However, that night wasn't the end of her troubles. If you ask Diane Labanec, unmarked helicopters have been buzzing over her house, flying too low, all the time. A few choppers every now and then wouldn't be so strange in West Carlton, but there's a military base not far away. Except, the Canadian government claims the helicopters... aren't theirs. Now that Bob has found a possible witness to back up the Guardian tape, it's time to inspect the site where he thinks it all happened. He guides Graham through the swamp, to a patch of land that looks like it's been disturbed.
13:57 Speaker 00 And Bob excitedly points out, "A lot of the nearby plants seem to have been blasted by intense heat." "They look like they could fall apart to the touch." "Maybe they've even been irradiated." Graham... isn't so sure. He happens to work for the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, so when Graham sees the dug-up soil, he thinks it's simply the work of a... regular old skunk. As for the irradiated plants, Graham knows it's common for juniper bushes to look dried out after surviving the harsh winter. Bob isn't a turd. He just thinks he needs to locate the real Guardian, the person who started this whole investigation.
14:42 Speaker 00 But so far, none of the UFO researchers working the case have any clue who Guardian could be. So Bob decides, why not get this story out to the largest audience possible? Surely, someone out there knows more. If only Bob could get enough eyes on this Guardian tape. And in the early 90s, there is one person who could make that happen. The man, the icon, Robert Stack, host of Unsolved Mysteries. Okay, Bob actually reaches out to one of the show's producers, not Robert Stack, who I imagine was too busy in wardrobe fittings,
15:26 Speaker 00 trying on 1,000 different trench coats. Too trenchy, too cody, just perfect. At this point, Unsolved Mysteries has been on the air for about five years, and it's grown from a time slot filler into a massive hit. The weekly show features everything from wanted fugitives to murders to UFO sightings. When Bob pitches the Guardian case, the producers bite. They agree to travel with him to West Carlton in the fall of 1992 to film a segment. It airs in season five and features Bob, Graham, and Diane playing themselves in one of the show's Hallmark recreations.
16:08 Speaker 00 Producers on the show also track down a couple of experts. First, there's Dr. Robert Nathan of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He watches the Guardian tape and concludes that he can't say whether or not the events captured are real or a hoax. Then there's Major N.J. Patterson of the Canadian Forces Base in Ottawa. He confirms that if any helicopters are flying over Diane Labanek's house, they are not military. He also says something else. Major Patterson gets a good look at the documents sent by Guardian. Remember the envelope with the VHS tape? It also included the cheap-looking alien photos
16:50 Speaker 00 I mentioned earlier, along with a bunch of papers. They are emblazoned with an official-looking letterhead that purportedly comes from the Department of National Defense.
17:02 Speaker 00 But if the letterhead adds any authenticity at all, the contents of those documents quickly reveal that these aren't real government memos. They outline a supposed conspiracy between China, working with, quote, "gray aliens to take over the world." Anyway, Major Patterson looks through these pages and, without hesitation, concludes, "They're forged." He cites several errors throughout and adds, quote, "Someone with very little effort could have come a lot closer than this." Just both a pretty solid burn and a really nice way to call out the documents as pure BS.
17:46 Speaker 00 If you're wondering why Bob has put so much faith and effort into this case, considering how unbelievable the documents and alien photos are, well, he says he was just that confident in the video evidence. Regardless, Going to Unsolved Mysteries does have its intended effect. Not long after the episode airs, showing the raw footage to the world for the first time, more information comes to light. Another witness steps forward, who works for the government, and she believes, on that night in August 1991, she may have seen extraterrestrials.
18:31 Speaker 00 Then Bob meets a man who tells him he knows the true identity of Guardian. Bob Exler's plan to get the Guardian story out to the public works. After Unsolved Mysteries airs the segment in February 1993, the case gets picked up by papers and local news. That's when a woman reaches out to Bob. She claims she also witnessed the event captured on Guardian's video, because she lives right across a small road from where it supposedly happened. The story this woman tells Bob is apparently so compelling that he persuades her to appear
19:12 Speaker 00 on another national TV show with him called Encounters. She agrees, but will only go on camera in silhouette and with voice modulation. She also uses a pseudonym, Sarah, although we now know that her real name is Susan Gills. Susan insists on staying anonymous because she says she fears repercussions at work. She apparently has some kind of “sensitive government job,” but neither she nor Bob can be more specific. And this is the story she tells on Encounters. On that August night in 1991, Susan was watching television on her couch when her
19:56 Speaker 00 dog Sheba started barking like mad. Out the window, she saw lights beyond the trees spinning counterclockwise. She claimed she could clearly see a large aircraft, so she ran outside. From her vantage point, Susan saw a hatch open on the side of the craft and some kind of glowing humanoid figure stepped out. When the host of Encounters shows her the alien photographs sent by Guardian, Susan agrees they look similar to the beings she saw. Then she tells him she watched as the craft rose straight into the sky. As she stood there in her driveway contemplating what she just witnessed, she heard a sound.
20:41 Speaker 00 It was a car driving toward her house. Now, Susan lives alone. It’s nighttime, and she thinks she just saw aliens, so she was freaked out, to say the least. Frozen in place, she watched as the car ambled past her in the dark without its headlights on. Encounters conducts a lie detector test on Susan, and she apparently does pass. Though polygraphs are known to be unreliable, but whether or not her story sounds believable, she at least seems to believe it really happened. To her, this is a scary story she seems almost reluctant to tell. To Bob, Susan provided an exciting new lead.
21:26 Speaker 00 He thinks the car she saw that night belonged to Guardian. Now, I don't know how much the following events played out exactly as they were described and how much was movie magic, but encounters claim Susan is able to describe the mysterious car and remember the license plate. That brings them to the doorstep of a man they allege is the real Guardian. They perform a full stakeout outside this man's apartment and even give chase when he runs away from their cameras. Why am I a tad skeptical? Well, Graham Lightfoot had already been given this guy's name as a possible Guardian suspect over a year ago.
22:08 Speaker 00 He's Bobby Charlebois, a UFO enthusiast who has reportedly used the name Guardian before. A little side note, their similar names might sound confusing, but Bob is the UFO researcher while Bobby is the potential Guardian suspect, and Bob's been chasing down Bobby for a while now. Okay, got it? Good. It turns out lots of people know Bobby, even for a small town. Remember Diane Labanec, who claims she saw both the 1989 and 1991 incidents Guardian reported? She admits to being close friends with Bobby. He visits her family at her home all the time.
22:51 Speaker 00 He would be familiar with the area depicted on Guardian's map. But wait, it seems like this should be an open and shut case for Bob Exler, right? And remember, he has Guardian's fingerprint to work with. It's stamped on each and every VHS tape. Assuming that finger belongs to Guardian, it's simply a matter of finding a match. First, Bob tries to recruit a local reporter to help him get Bobby's prints. She knows the case and personally knows Bobby Charlebois. She agrees to pass along a packet of information to him. I don't know what's in that packet. It's described only as some kind of UFO material.
23:35 Speaker 00 A dangling carrot for a guy like Bobby, I guess. The hope is that he'll handle the materials, leave his fingerprints all over everything, and return the package. The UFO materials come back an hour later. Bob brings them to the police to have them dusted for prints. They find... Nothing. Hmm. Well, maybe Bobby just didn't take the bait. But Bob thinks it's far more likely that he's outsmarted everyone again. Like, maybe he handled everything with gloves or wiped every page clean somehow. Next, Bob goes to the RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
24:18 Speaker 00 He asks them to charge Bobby with a minor offense for forging government documents. He thinks even if the charges don't stick, maybe they can scare Bobby into admitting he's Guardian. But the RCMP says, "Um, no, we're not going to do that. For one thing, Bob isn't even a Canadian citizen. He lives in Maryland. Secondly, they have no hard evidence that Bobby is behind any of this." Foiled again. And Bob never gains access to these fingerprints. He's never able to confirm or deny whether Bobby Charlebois is Guardian. But if you ask Bobby's friends around town, he's just a regular Joe who happens to be
25:03 Speaker 00 interested in UFOs, not some mastermind or prankster. In these days, the prevailing theory is that the Guardian tape was all a big hoax. A saucer swindle, if you will. I mean, the documents purporting to be from the Canadian Department of National Defense don't really fool anybody. And even Bob Exler can admit the photographs of the aliens don't look realistic. He tells unsolved mysteries. Clearly, this could have been someone dressed up in a costume. The one element Bob seemed convinced by is the videotape. Along with the fact that witnesses claimed they saw something around the time that tape could have been made.
25:47 Speaker 00 Now, interestingly enough, Bob is able to help open an official investigation. He brings attention to Diane Labanek's complaints of helicopters buzzing her house. As a result, the RCMP agrees to look into the matter. As part of the case, they have to review the Guardian tape to determine what kind of aircraft appears in the footage. Their expert concludes it was a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter. Bob never accepts those findings. But to most, the real mystery here was never, "Is this footage of a real UFO?" Rather, the enduring question remains, "Who is Guardian?" Because nobody ever stepped forward.
26:32 Speaker 00 But over the years, a few more suspects are named. Like Susan Gills, aka Sarah, the anonymous witness working for the government. Her grandson will later tell a CBC documentary that she was seemingly a true believer. She was conducting her own investigation, and she wasn't particularly impressed with Bob's work on the case. The grandson also says that after Susan died, he found a letter where she'd recorded her memories of August 1991.
27:12 Speaker 00 It was, beat for beat, very close to the story she told on Encounters. But with one major difference. She wrote that what really happened was she was sitting on her couch, watching the 9 o'clock program on television, when she heard her dog barking. She saw the lights outside, went to investigate, and spotted beings coming out of a spacecraft. And suddenly, she found herself back on her couch, watching television again. Only now, the 10 o'clock program was on. She didn't remember one show ending and the next one starting. She couldn't account for this jump forward in time at all. It was like, she simply blinked.
27:57 Speaker 00 So adding to the list of bizarre things going on in West Carlton that night, Susan believed she might have been abducted.
28:07 Speaker 00 Or did she? Was it just a story she bought into so much that it continued snowballing long after the spotlight faded away? Or was she invested in the story in the first place? Because Susan really was Guardian. The CBC documentary poses this question to her grandson, who heard the stories she told ever since he was a kid. He says he did notice that she owned a typewriter like the one used by Guardian to forge those government documents. Susan was also good with electronics and would have known how to use a camera.
28:46 Speaker 00 As to whether Nana was really Guardian, her grandson says he can't answer yes or no. If she was, it's hard to guess at a motive unless she really did see something strange. But it doesn't even make sense that Susan would be a whistleblower about vast alien cover-ups. She really does work for the government, that part is true. But it turns out, her job is not as sensitive as Bob Exler made it sound. Susan actually works in external affairs, a detail Bob often conveniently leaves out of the story. Her day-to-day job has to do with managing relationships between Canada and foreign countries.
29:29 Speaker 00 She's not involved in top-secret UFO recoveries or investigations. I can understand why she'd still want to remain anonymous, but not because she's divulging classified information. She just doesn't want to be seen talking about aliens on screens across the world. Not me, though. I live for it. Susan's secret is that her job really isn't secret at all. So why does Bob push her story so hard? Well, think about it. We know he doesn't find those alien photos credible, and clearly Bob's stance is that the documents are counterfeit. He tries to get Bobby Charlebois charged for forging them.
30:12 Speaker 00 Could Bob's support for Susan all be part of the hoax? Could Bob Exler be Guardian?
30:24 Speaker 00 Well, while Bob has been looking into the case and going on camera as an expert and giving talks across the US, another investigation into his investigation has been happening behind the scenes. And the Ontario chapter of MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, has their own theories about why Bob is so obsessed with Guardian.
30:54 Speaker 00 In October 1995, MUFON Ontario releases a special report titled "The Guardian Caper." That's right, "Caper." So you can probably guess what they think of the whole ordeal. They say this was all an elaborate hoax. And that's not the only part of the story they're calling a sham. Some of these MUFON Ontario investigators have worked shoulder to shoulder with Bob Exler since the beginning, traipsing through the swamp on Bob's first visit to West Carlton, tracking down possible witnesses. Heck, they even knew about Guardian before Bob, since the first communications came in 1989. And while Bob and the Canadian investigators start off working together,
31:39 Speaker 00 they very quickly go their separate ways. Because from the jump, they think Bob is in it for all the wrong reasons. According to the MUFON Ontario crew, on their first outing back in May of 1992, Bob rubs them the wrong way. Even though they've been asked to guide him through this location he supposedly doesn't know, he keeps trying to take charge. Okay, so maybe Bob is just excited, that's understandable. He only has a few days in town. He wants to find the site where Guardian allegedly shot that video. And if you'll recall, he claims he's successful.
32:21 Speaker 00 Later that day, he announces that he and his son found the site, while the two of them were out on their own.
32:29 Speaker 00 But one Canadian investigator has a hard time buying what Bob's selling. His name is Tom, and he asked Bob how he was lucky enough to find this needle in a haystack in such a short amount of time while the sun was setting. Tom says he only got a smile in response. Later, he confronts Bob more directly, and again, this is according to Tom, Bob says something to the effect of, "What's wrong with trying to make a buck?" Now, Tom says he has nothing against money, so long as the investigation is still ethical. But he also drops out of the Guardian case.
33:09 Speaker 00 He and others distanced themselves from Bob, so you can connect the dots. One dot, two dot.
33:18 Speaker 00 From there, point in the story onward, the Guardian caper newsletter reads like an exposé on the hoax and on Bob Exler. The team alleges that he feigned expertise on more than one occasion, that his analysis of Guardian's video was unfounded, that he tried to control how the story was portrayed in the media, and that he only revealed parts of his investigation that backed up the story he wanted to tell. "I don't know about you, but I was not ready for this level of interpersonal drama. I mean, this is like a reality TV show before there was reality TV, and it's in UFO land." It's kind of incredible.
33:56 Speaker 00 And keep in mind, Bob is a well-respected researcher, but apparently, it's not uncommon for egos to snake their way into the world of paranormal investigations. In the mid-'90s, UFO researcher Ian Rogers is an enthusiastic teenage novice. Ever since he saw the Guardian case featured on Unsolved Mysteries, he's dreamed of playing Fox Mulder and going to West Carlton to poke around. Now, one day, he finally does it. He borrows his mom's car in the dead of winter and sets off on his own investigation. Well, naturally, his trail leads him to Bob. Eventually, it dawns on Ian that it is a tad strange just how involved Bob is in the story.
34:42 Speaker 00 Not only did he play himself in the Unsolved Mysteries recreations, when it came time to film shots of the anonymous Guardian putting the packages together and stamping each tape with their fingerprint... It was Bob who played that role too. But Ian says it's actually pretty common for investigators to try to put their names on a big case. The Guardian story is suddenly getting picked up by TV shows and news outlets. So yeah, Bob's controlling behavior may seem a little weird, but it's not unheard of by any means. MUFON Ontario goes further though.
35:22 Speaker 00 They suggest that Bob is behind a series of inflammatory comments left on one of their message boards. The user, who goes by the name Alex from Quebec, rails against MUFON's debunking of the case. All their investigation really amounts to, Alex suggests, is "character bashing," meaning they're being too harsh on Bob Exler. We don't know for certain that Alex is Bob, but we do know that Bob's next move in all of this is drastic. In 1994, Bob is at a conference in Florida when he hand delivers a letter to all of his fellow researchers in attendance.
36:06 Speaker 00 It's his resignation from the field of UFO investigations. Although he's made a lot of great friends and achieved some career highs, he writes, "I don't like what I've seen this phenomenon do to otherwise concerned, rational people, including myself. The malicious libel, slander, distortion, and unchecked fabrication that runs rampant in the UFO field is destructive and counterproductive." He wraps up his letter by saying he has no doubt that UFOs are real. And then Bob vanishes into the sunset to spend more time with his family. It's a pretty explosive mic drop to end the whole Guardian debacle.
36:49 Speaker 00 MUFON Ontario bets this will only be temporary, that as soon as people forget about this scandal, Bob will be back, ready to tackle the next big story. But they're wrong. Bob never comes out of retirement, and he never delivers a final documentary or book on the Guardian case as he'd promised. Nobody knows why. Maybe he didn't have anything further to say, or maybe he didn't like how the case devolved into a bunch of finger pointing.
37:20 Speaker 00 If you read between the lines of some of these reports, not just by MUFON, but more modern coverage too, it almost seems like there's an insinuation that Bob could be Guardian, except no one dares to spell that out. But MUFON Ontario does submit their own suspect, or should I say suspects, in a real murder-on-the-Orient-Express-style ending. They allege that Guardian wasn't just one person, but a group of hoaxers, including Bobby Charlebois, who was Bob's lead suspect, Diane Labinek and her husband—after all, they were the only witnesses who reported seeing both of Guardian's UFO sightings—
38:04 Speaker 00 and Diane's nephew, whose truck could have been a stand-in for the mysterious aircraft seen in the video. As for Bob's involvement, they say he molded the story into something that was more believable than it had any right to be. Specifically, by confusing the timelines and making it sound like witnesses all saw something the same night that the video was shot. And the Guardian group went along with it. Years later, Ian Rogers, now a former UFO researcher, appears on a CBC documentary. He finds that among people who actually live in West Carlton, where all this took place, there are three camps of thinking. One: This was a hoax.
38:49 Speaker 00 Two: This was a nighttime military training exercise. And three: There really are UFOs in the area. People around West Carlton had been reporting unexplained sightings and eerie phenomena since long before Bob Exler got involved. Once, a young girl living in the Cedar Ridge Estates neighborhood saw a bright light flooding through her bedroom window. She went to look outside, but the light blinded her. Even as a kid, she understood that her family lived near a military base, but the oddest thing she recalls is that there were no sounds, no engine humming, no helicopter blades churning through the night.
39:33 Speaker 00 Not far away, a married couple saw something in the summer of 1991 that frightened them both. Uh, one night Catherine Curly was putting her children to bed when the bright light came through her window. Again, there was no noise. The following day, she and her husband Kirk witnessed a helicopter land on their property. They claimed four people jumped out, ran around frantically, got back in the chopper, and took off again. Yet another man almost nonchalantly tells a documentary crew, "Yep, there's UFOs, and they always come from the west. Don't know what that's about." I like that guy.
40:14 Speaker 00 So Ian Rogers concludes, "There seems to be something odd going on in West Carlton, which The Guardian case and Bob's handling of it overshadowed." Locals have their own theories about why the area seems to be a hotspot. Uh, the town isn't far from Ottawa, the capital city of Canada. If aliens are researching us, they might be drawn to this nexus of operations. Uh, then there's a place called the Deafen Bunker, commissioned in 1959. It was constructed to house and protect more than 500 key members of the Canadian government in the event of nuclear war. It reaches four levels and 75 feet below the ground, and once housed a supercomputer.
40:59 Speaker 00 Before the days of the internet, or even ARPANET, it would allow survivors to continue communications with other governments around the world, even if a five-megaton bomb landed outside. If you're a being from another planet and you wanted to communicate with humans, or were simply interested in how we communicate, you might be intrigued by the Deafen Bunker. And get this, Paul Hellier, Canada's former Minister of National Defense, has said he has no doubt extraterrestrials have visited the Deafen Bunker, which is located in... West Carlton. Today, the Deaton Bunker is a national historic site.
41:44 Speaker 00 It was decommissioned in 1994, right around the same time UFO sightings in the area reportedly dropped off. That was the same year Bob retired. His work on the Guardian case had brought it to international attention. Some say he also delegitimized the bigger story of bizarre phenomena there. If that's true, I think we can at least say that wasn't Bob's intent. But what if someone else did want to disenfranchise Ottowens from speaking up about UFO sightings? There is one last theory about who sent the Guardian package.
42:24 Speaker 00 And it wasn't a whistleblower, but someone in the government was behind it. Remember, aside from Bob and a handful of others, a lot of people looked at Guardian's evidence and called it a hoax. Even UFO enthusiasts came to that same conclusion. According to this theory, that was all intentional. The blurry video, the badly forged documents, the photographs of aliens that looked like men in cheap plastic costumes, all in one neat little package, which conveniently arrived in dozens of mailboxes, right as the residents of West Carlton began seeing things they couldn't explain.
43:08 Speaker 00 What better way to take the heat off than to release a tape showing what's happening, knowing people won't take it seriously? What if government officials sent the Guardian package? So we would never believe a story out of West Carlton again.
43:31 Speaker 00 Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram @TheConspiracyPod. If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Our sources for today's episode include The Carp Mystery from CBC Docs POV, UFO Town, Unsolved Mysteries, and The Carp Case or The Guardian Caper compiled by MUFON Ontario. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story. And the official story isn't always the truth.
44:11 Speaker 00 This episode was written and researched by Mickey Taylor, edited by Justin Sales, fact-checked by Sophie Kemp, and engineered, video-edited, and sound-designed by Alex Button. I'm your host, Carter Roy.
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