Pod Insights The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett Ex-Pentagon Official: The U.S Isn't Telling The Truth! Top-Secret UFO Encounters Finally Uncovered! They're Trying To Silence Us! About this episode Are we alone in the universe? If we aren't, are we among friends or enemies? A former top U. S. official reveals the classified UFO secrets that the Pentagon has hidden for years
Luis Elizondo is the former head of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) that operated within the Pentagon. He is also the bestselling author of the book, ‘Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs’.
In this conversation, Luis and Steven discuss topics such as, how to spot a UFO, the dangers of getting too close to a UFO, why Luis resigned from the AATIP, and how UFO's have interfered with nuclear weapons.
(00:00) Intro
(01:35) Who Is Luis?
(02:24) Luis's Professional Resume
(04:38) What Pentagon's Project Did You Work On In 2008-2009?
(10:30) Joining AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program)
(12:12) AATIP's Mission
(13:46) What's A UAP?
(14:21) Stigma Associated With The Term 'UFO'
(15:45) Luis's Beliefs On UFO/UAP
(20:21) Leaving The Program And The Role At Pentagon
(23:28) Why Don’t They Want The Public To Know?
(29:23) What Type Of Information Do You Have Access To In This Role?
(30:08) The Area 51 Conspiracy Theories
(31:00) Bob Lazar's Claims
(31:45) The Process Of Clearing Highly Classified Information To Share With The Public
(33:42) Evidence On UFO/UAP
(34:09) The 'Gimbal' Incident
(35:24) The Reason Why There's No More Declassified UFO Videos
(36:36) Why US Government Doesn't Tell People About UFO's
(41:52) Have There Ever Been Recovered UFO/UAP Materials?
(42:28) People Going To Jail Or Even Harder Punishment For Speaking Out
(43:40) Who's In Charge Of Preventing Information Leakage?
(43:57) US Killed US Citizens With Drones
(46:09) Danger Of Publishing "Imminent"
(47:51) Do American Presidents Know About UFO/UAP?
(48:17) Which Presidents Were Aware Of UFO/UAP?
(50:53) How Much Does An Average Citizen Know About What's Going On In The Government?
(52:04) What Is The Legacy Program & Why Is It Not Well Funded?
(53:17) How Do People In Pentagon Perceive Aliens?
(01:01:18) UFO's Motives To Visit Earth
(01:03:30) What Is A UAP Encounter?
(01:06:11) UAP Sightings At Nuclear Technology Facilities
(01:06:49) Interference With A Nuclear Facility In Russia
(01:07:33) The Colares Incident
(01:10:27) Should We Be Worried?
(01:12:15) Case Against UFO
(01:15:43) Is Witness Testimony Enough To Prove UFO's Existence? Probability And Statistics
(01:18:11) The 'Tic Tac' Incident
(01:21:44) What's A Day In The Life Of Someone Working For AATIP?
(01:23:30) How Has Luis's Work Changed The Way He Lives?
(01:24:11) How Do You Feel Being Such A Small Part Of The Vast Universe?
(01:26:56) What Do Luis's Kids Think Of His Work And UFO?
(01:28:27) Are We Alone In The Universe?
(01:28:58) Why Is The Book Called 'Imminent'?
(01:29:45) Last Guest's Question: What Is Something You Were Once Deeply Afraid Of That You're No Longer Afraid Of?
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Transcript 16,905 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 We are absolutely not alone in the universe. And I know these things are real because I was asked to investigate UFO incursions into controlled US airspace by the Pentagon. These videos here, there's no question what you're seeing.
0:10 Steven Bartlett? And there's more videos like this that you've been exposed to?
0:13 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah, but they're classified because there's a lot of people that don't want us talking about this.
0:17 Steven Bartlett? Should we be worried about this?
0:20 Speaker 02 Luis Elizondo is a respected intelligence officer and former head of the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Where he led efforts to investigate UFO sightings and unidentified aerial phenomena.
0:31 Speaker 00 There were real things that we were encountering over controlled US airspace by an unknown technology that frankly could outperform anything that we had in our inventory. And there was a big national security issue because there's potential for these things to be interfering with our nuclear equities.
0:45 Steven Bartlett? There's evidence to suggest that they turned on the nuclear facilities in Russia, right?
0:48 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's a big deal.
0:50 Steven Bartlett? But has there ever been anyone sent to jail because they've spoken about this subject matter?
0:53 Speaker 00 Worse, my life has been threatened many times, taking huge risks, but I think we deserve the truth, so let's go.
1:00 Steven Bartlett? People say that they were abducted by aliens. Do you believe any of those reports?
1:03 Speaker 00 I can tell you that we definitely have people that are now on US government medical disability because they were involved in a UFO encounter.
1:09 Steven Bartlett? And then one of the rumors is that at Area 51, they've found UFO materials.
1:13 Speaker 00 I cannot comment what Area 51 might or might not have. All I can say is that the government is in possession of material that doesn't look like it's made by us.
1:20 Steven Bartlett? Do you have any theories as to why they might be visiting here?
1:23 Speaker 00 Oh, gosh, well, where do I start?
1:25 Steven Bartlett? You eventually resigned. Why?
1:27 Speaker 00 I resigned in protest because...
1:35 Speaker 00 Lou. Steve. Who are you?
1:40 Speaker 00 Wow, it depends who you ask. I think to some people, I'm probably a patriot. To other people, I'm a father and a husband, and to other people, I'm probably the devil.
1:56 Steven Bartlett? What's your professional CV? What does your professional resume say?
1:59 Speaker 00 Went to college, went to the University of Miami. I studied microbiology, immunology and parasitology. I consider myself a disciple of the scientific method and scientific principles. I then joined the Army, United States Army. I went in as enlisted. I had an opportunity to go in as an officer because of my education. But the words of my father always rung in the back of my head. And he said, in order to be a leader, you must first know what it means to follow. And so I joined the Army as an enlisted soldier. Spent some time in deployments, Korea, spent, lived a year in Asia. Was in military intelligence. And then I was recruited very shortly thereafter into a special program where I became
2:43 Speaker 00 a civilian special agent in counterintelligence, running investigations. Supervised investigations throughout Latin America, South America, Central America. And then spent the rest of my time after nine 11 over in Afghanistan in the Middle East, primarily dealing with terrorism issues, running operations against Hezbollah and ISIS and other organizations. And then after probably several years of that, my wife got very tired of it. Missed too many birthdays, missed too many holidays. And she said, you really need to come back. And more importantly, I'm afraid the next time you leave, you may not come back. We were losing some people over there quite a bit.
3:27 Speaker 00 And so I listened to my wife. I came back, took a supervisory job, ran investigations worldwide, terrorism investigations. And then from there, I went to several other three letter agencies. I worked for the NCIX, National Counterintelligence Executive. I worked for the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence. And it was in 2000, shortly thereafter, that I was asked to be part of a
3:52 Speaker 00 Very interesting program in the Pentagon. What my CV is, I'm probably a jack of all trades, but an expert in nothing. I've done a lot of things, mostly national security crimes, terrorism, espionage, some counter guerrilla operations, counter narcotics, counter insurgency missions.
4:10 Steven Bartlett? You said in 2008, 2009, you were asked to come back to the Pentagon to work on a particular project. What project was that?
4:17 Speaker 00 So, well, it wasn't the one that wound up being the project that everybody knows me for. So in 2008, they asked me to run a program to help integrate national level intelligence to, with law enforcement, local and state law enforcement agencies. Now, why is that important? Because, and then it kind of leads to the next thing. After 9/11, people think here 9/11 was, was caused by, by unfortunately some terrorists doing some bad things. That was an effect, that wasn't the cause. The actual cause was us here in the United States not being able to share information with ourselves very well. We had pockets of information at the CIA, pockets of information at the FBI, pockets
5:02 Speaker 00 of information at the Department of Defense, but we weren't sharing it with each other. And thereby, there was an information gap, an intelligence gap, and the folks in 9/11 were able to do what they did, unfortunately. So we learned that lesson by trying to create better integration. So how do you take super secret information and get it down to a level that can be consumed and usable without compromising sources of methods? So that was the problem I was asked to come back and fix. It was shortly thereafter is when I was visited by some individuals and had some conversations with some other individuals about a program that I had no idea was, that was, was ongoing, but it was.
5:42 Speaker 00 And it was a program involving the investigation, the government's investigation into UAP, or in the vernacular, you might call them UFOs. Who approached you? So there were two individuals, one of them I can talk about, the other one's identity is protected. It's a gentleman named Jay Stratton, who at the time was another intelligence official like me, and another one of his colleagues, and they came to me and they started asking me questions. They had a blue badge, so I knew that they were cleared. They had the same security clearance I had, we all worked in skips. And it's not uncommon when you need expertise in a particular portfolio or mission that you outsource. You find the right people to do this right job. And so I was told they were looking for somebody to run counterintelligence and security
6:27 Speaker 00 for this capability that they had. They didn't tell me what the capability was. And I was a counterintelligence and security guy, I was an expert in it. So after several conversations, a bit of a dance, if you will, you know, kind of like trying to figure each other out. They arranged for me to have a meeting with an individual. And I met the, what I would consider is the premier rocket scientist for the United States government. Now, when I say rocket scientist, I mean literally a rocket scientist. This is a gentleman who can tell you the fuel consumption rate of a first-stage solid rocket motor booster. He can tell you the orbital velocity of a MRF vehicle, multiple reentry vehicle, coming in from low Earth orbit.
7:11 Speaker 00 I mean, the best of the best of the best. He was running a program, and I still didn't know what the program was, but he said, "Look, you know, we've been doing it. We've been given a lot of money to do it right, and we're looking for somebody with me with your skill sets." And his name was Dr. James Lekatsky, and the epitome of a rocket scientist. And at the end of the conversation, I remember him looking at me over his glasses, and he said to me, "What do you think about UFOs?"
7:37 Speaker 00 And so I thought for a moment, and I said to him, I said, "I'm sorry, I don't." And he said, "Well, what do you mean? You don't believe in UFOs?" I said, "No, I didn't say that. You asked me, what do I think of them?" And my response was, "I don't, because I don't think about them. I'm too busy chasing bad guys and trying to fix problems for the government. I never really had the luxury to think about them."
8:00 Speaker 00 And he said to me, "Okay, that's fair, fair enough, but let me just warn you. Don't let your analytic bias get the best of you, because you may learn things here that will challenge any preconceived notion or narrative that you have about the topic."
8:17 Speaker 00 And so I left that meeting thinking to myself, is this some sort of psychological evaluation? Was that a serious question? You know, or... And it was very soon thereafter that I learned the reality that the United States government was absolutely invested in a UFO investigative program, and more importantly, that it was legitimate. It was real. There were real things that we were encountering over controlled US airspace, over sensitive military installations by an unknown technology that frankly could outperform anything that we had in our inventory.
8:54 Speaker 00 So that was my, that was my introduction to now what is known as ATIP. The program had several iterations before. It was under the contract vehicle was called OSAP. My focus was specifically more on the nuts and bolts investigations of these UAP incursions into controlled US airspace, encounters by military aircraft of these things. We weren't really focused on civilians' information, right? It wasn't like a grandma seeing some lights in the backyard. These were, these were, well, to lack a better term, close encounters by trained military pilots, trained observers, by the way, who could recognize
9:34 Speaker 00 a silhouette between an SU-22, a MiG-25, and an F-16 from 10 miles away and make a split second decision as a friend or foe. And what these pilots were encountering were also being backed up by, by gun camera footage and, and FLIR footage, forward-looking infrared footage, and oh, by the way, that was being further backed up by radar data, airborne data, airborne radar data, and also ground-based radar data and sea-based radar data.
10:02 Steven Bartlett? How'd you go from the project you were working on into ATIP? Because that was the first sort of meeting, right? That was like an introductory conversation.
10:09 Speaker 00 So there were several meetings before that, where they were trying to vet me and see if I had, I guess, the right background of skill sets. It wasn't until that meeting with Jim Lukasiewicz that the word UFO was used.
10:21 Speaker 00 And how did I, how did I go about that? He's the one who made the decision. It was his program. I had nothing to do with that. I just, you know, yeah, I'll do it. I didn't even know what I was signing up for until after my meeting with him.
10:31 Steven Bartlett? So did he say to you, okay, well, we'd like you to work on this program, this AATIP program. And the acronym there stands for Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.
10:38 Speaker 00 Correct.
10:40 Steven Bartlett? And eventually you became the director of that program.
10:42 Speaker 00 Yeah, so it, there was a, there was a natural evolution of it. Initially, I was just, they were brought in to provide counterintelligence and security expertise. But as that program, OSAP, faded away, the necessity and urgency of some of these incursions were, was getting to a desperate crescendo. It was getting really, there was a lot of these incursions happening. There was a big national security issue that, that we were all recognizing. And there were some elements in the government that were trying to kill the effort. And not for reasons you might think, believe it or not, it was completely different.
11:17 Speaker 00 And so the decision was made to bring it up to the Pentagon, up to where I was, take it out of DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency. And with the authorities I had, I was the Director of National Programs, Special Management Staff. And so that was my job. I ran special access programs for, for the White House and for the National Security Council. And we, we put the program under that, keeping it out of the, the prying eyes of some of the folks that previously were trying to kill the program.
11:44 Steven Bartlett? So this program, Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, was really focused on investigating reports and incidents of UAPs or UFOs in military environments. So if there was a UFO slash UAP in a, I don't know, in a military base, then this project would investigate what that was? Is that, is that correct?
12:08 Speaker 00 Correct, that's correct. So it was only military focused. It wasn't interested in civilian data. By the time we were running it at the Pentagon, it was really looking at, for example, nuclear carrier strike groups that were encountering these things all the time. It would be, for example, an Air Force base, or a Navy base, or there was a special operations, you know, on a particular patrol. And if they happened to encounter a UAP, those type of reports. And I also want to emphasize here, we weren't looking for UFOs. You know, we were, we were always coming into a situation with the understanding that there's some sort of prosaic. There's a prosaic answer to what this is, right? It actually wasn't a UFO. It was a drone, a test fire of a missile.
12:51 Speaker 00 It was a drone, it was a balloon, it was whatever, whatever. Because there are certain signatures and profiles that you can look very quickly determine, oh, that's just conventional technology. But there was a guideline that we use that helped us understand when something really was anomalous. When we're really, we're talking about, it's not our technology and whatever that is, it's probably not adversarial or foreign technology. So now we're getting into the real world of UAP. That's anomalous.
13:18 Steven Bartlett? What's UAP?
13:19 Speaker 00 Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon. So let me, if I can, for, let me backtrack a little bit. For years and years and years, the term UFO, Unidentified Flying Object, was used. There were several reasons, but later on, the term was changed to UAP. And it stood for Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. And that's probably in the last year, year and a half, you're starting to see yet another definition of UAP, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon. And there's a reason for that, happy to explain if you want, but the decision was made to change from UFO to UAP.
13:53 Steven Bartlett? I read that it was because a lot of the sort of military personnel stopped reporting their sightings because there was a stigma associated with the term UFO.
14:01 Speaker 00 Correct, so it's two reasons. There is stigma and taboo associated with this term, because the moment you say UFO, people think tinfoil hats and...
14:09 Steven Bartlett? They think you're crazy.
14:10 Speaker 00 Yeah, Elvis on the mothership, you know, nonsense like that. But the reality is, is that this was a real issue, a national security issue for our nation, and other nations too, by the way. But also, the term UFO isn't really accurate anymore. So what do I mean by that? Well, Unidentified Flying Object. What is flying? Well, flying means you have four fundamental forces. You have thrust, lift, drag, and weight. And when you understand that, you can create wings and create lift. And that is the definition of flying, right? These things didn't have wings. They didn't have rudders, elevators, control surfaces, ailerons, cockpits, and yet somehow they were able to remain aloft in our atmosphere.
14:51 Speaker 00 So they weren't flying technically. So the name was changed to anomalous, I'm sorry, unidentified aerial phenomenon because they were being seen in the air. But then they realized, you know what? They're also being seen underwater. They're also being seen in high altitude and possibly low earth orbit. So to say that they're aerial isn't even accurate either. So then they said, okay, it's unidentified anomalous phenomenon to cover all the separate domains or environments that these things are being encountered in.
15:16 Steven Bartlett? Before you had the meeting regarding this project at the Pentagon, what did you believe about UAPs and slash UFOs?
15:24 Speaker 00 I didn't. I was never interested even in science fiction as a kid.
15:27 Steven Bartlett? Did you believe they were, if I had asked you there, if I'd come up to you and said, are UFOs real? And I say UFOs because that's the sort of
15:34 Speaker 00 Sure.
15:34 Steven Bartlett? social term, but what would you have said?
15:38 Speaker 00 Probably not. I mean, I would have said literally, probably not. I wouldn't say for sure not because I didn't know.
15:44 Steven Bartlett? What about now?
15:46 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah, kidding me? I mean, yeah, it's, these are real. I mean, don't take my word for it. Our government's already said it. I mean, you have a former director of national intelligence telling the world, yeah, these, these things are real, whatever they are. You have a former director of CIA. You have a former president of the United States. And we've known for a long time, they're real. And by the way, it's not just our country. There's other countries that are very forthcoming. There's countries in South America that have been dealing with this for a long time. Japan just entered into a bilateral information sharing agreement with our country for the express purposes of sharing UAP information and data. China's interested. Russia's interested in this. Several European countries have a fairly robust capability and have had, have a lot of information on this.
16:30 Steven Bartlett? Was there a moment when your belief changed? Was there a moment that you can remember where you thought, you know what? What I thought about UAPs was wrong?
16:39 Speaker 00 Sure. And what I often tell people, there's, there's, there's two types of individuals, the way that we process this information. In one category, you have people that will sit there and say, I had this epiphany, this revelatory moment where all of a sudden it's like, oh my God, they're real? Right? Are you kidding me? And then there's another group of people, which I probably fall into that second category, the latter category, which is more of a slow progression.
17:07 Speaker 00 And realization of what we're dealing with is not a conventional technology. It's not our technology. It's something else.
17:21 Speaker 00 At some point, the preponderance of evidence is so overwhelming. Let me give you an example. I am.
17:29 Speaker 00 I spent my life in investigations. Terrorists, spies, whatever. And I've always been what I consider just the fax ma'am kind of guy, very, very data driven. I don't really care about innuendos and suppositions and your opinion very much. I care about what the data says. What does it, what does the data suggest? And in this case, this particular case,
17:53 Speaker 00 you have eyewitness testimony. You have it backed up by gun camera footage. You have it backed up by FLIR footage. You have it backed up by radar information. You've got five, six, sometimes seven pieces of corroborating sensor data. That's all reporting the same event at the same time, at the same place, under the same circumstances. Now, if I was in a court of law and I was presenting this as evidence, we are well beyond reasonable doubt. The jury would have no choice but to convict because the evidence is so. The same collection sensor suite that we use to prosecute and win a war, and forgive the vernacular, but literally drop warheads on foreheads, is the same information, the same, same systems we're using to collect the data on the anomalous
18:39 Speaker 00 vehicles we're seeing. And so, you know, I know it's a very uncomfortable conversation to have. I'm not saying it's not. What I'm saying is that we have to deal with this. And it's not me just telling you that. This is our government. We know, we've already, we have laws now on the books because this topic is now so serious. We have whistleblowers ready to come out and testify before the American people because this is so serious. We have set up an organization specifically, its sole purpose is to investigate. U A P because this topic is so serious. So this is not a, you know, a flight of fancy here. We're investing millions of dollars, taxpayer dollars, to try to figure this out.
19:21 Speaker 00 And interestingly enough, I think when the investigative body first came, was was realized, was was created, there was this hope that in the first report, they said, oh, there's a hundred and forty three incidents that remain unidentified, but we're going to whittle them away. What happened the next time they had a report? There was now three hundred. And what happened after that? Now eight hundred. The number's going up, not down. That remain unresolved. And so, you know, we've, we've, we've got to have this uncomfortable conversation with ourselves.
19:53 Steven Bartlett? You eventually left.
19:55 Speaker 00 I did.
19:55 Steven Bartlett? Um, you're that project, but also more broadly, you you resigned from working with the Pentagon in the role that you were working with them. Why did you resign?
20:04 Speaker 00 I resigned because that's what you do when you can't fix a problem internally. My concern was that we were spending time and money on an issue that leadership didn't want to know about. That leadership didn't want to inform the boss, the then Secretary of Defense, General Jim Mattis, the details about what was going on. And there's reasons for that, and we can certainly get into that if you want. I understand them. I don't necessarily agree with them, but I understand them. But at least here in in our country, when you can't fix a problem, you don't stay and make it worse. You leave. You resign. And then if you still want to do something, you do it from outside, but you don't create problems inside.
20:48 Speaker 00 And it's not that uncommon, is it? Because if you look just a year later, after I left, Secretary of Defense himself resigned, right? So I resigned in protest, but not out of disloyalty. I resigned because of my loyalty to this country and to this government. And
21:05 Steven Bartlett? What is that protest, sorry? Just to be clear.
21:07 Speaker 00 The protest is that we weren't able to get the information and the help we needed with with this issue up to the right level of people. They were happy with us doing it, but they said, don't tell the boss. Well, wait a minute. The boss needs to know. We're having almost a midair collision with our fighter pilots. We have captains and admirals of Navy ships asking us, what do we do about these things? Like, there's an email saying, Lou, we can't keep these guys below deck forever. What do you want me to do? They're all over the ship. You know, so a decision has to be made. What are we going to do about it? And that decision has to be made by the top guy, the Secretary of Defense. And for whatever reason, the upper echelons of leadership didn't want to tell the boss. And we weren't getting any guidance to what to do about it.
21:51 Speaker 00 Now, keep in mind, these things are coming over our sensitive military installations as well. And there's potential for these things to be interfering with our nuclear equities. That's a big deal. And nobody wants to have the conversation? Now, wait a minute. Let's, let's put this on the backdrop of, of other national security issues, right? Like terrorism. If you go to any airport in the United States today, or any train station, you always hear over the announcements, if, if you see something suspicious, say something, report it. Well, that wasn't the case with these things. In fact, people were told not to report. Yes, if you saw a UFO and you saw it over a sensitive military installation, don't report it because they'll think you're crazy. And that is dangerous. That is a dangerous mindset because if these things had a Russian star on the tail
22:35 Speaker 00 or a North Korean tail number, this would be huge. But because these things didn't have a tail at all, and didn't have any obvious signs of propulsion or whatnot, it was cricket. People would know about it. It was a worst kept secret. People are like, yeah, we see them all the time, but we don't want to report it. Well, you have to report it. Well, there's no reporting mechanism. Okay, well, let's create one. Well, we can't create one because we need permission to do it. And this person needs to be briefed up. Meanwhile, you're being told, no, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't.
23:00 Steven Bartlett? Why wouldn't they want to report this information? Why wouldn't they want the public to know? Why wouldn't they want the boss to know?
23:06 Speaker 00 Well, I think it's a stigma and taboo. Well, there's several reasons, but I think superficially stigma and taboo. No one wants to be known as that UFO guy or gal. I, I get it, you know, especially if you're a pilot because historically you'd be taken off flight status. You'd, you know, put behind a desk and you'd fly a desk the rest of your career because people think you're mentally unstable, could affect your security clearance. I mean, there's all sorts of things that can happen. And so people were being, being reinforced not to report this information. Even civilian pilots today, if you talk to them, they'll tell you quietly, yeah, you know, we see things in the sky, but we're not going to report anything because I need a job, you know?
23:41 Steven Bartlett? What did you see?
23:43 Speaker 00 Oh, my, what day? I mean, videos, reports, photographs. I mean, we have, there's videos that are so compelling in high definition that there's no question what you're seeing. It's not our technology. It's not our technology and the capabilities are beyond anything we can do. I mean, I can, I'm happy to explain some of those capabilities if you like, but, but you know, when you, when you look at this from a rational perspective, you only come to one outcome. But it's only one it can be. The other one is so remotely possible that the mental gymnastics to get to that, and we can go into that in a minute. It's, it's absurd. And so, um, let's go into a little bit about what makes these things unique. Okay. Cause planes fly and you appear in the air. So that doesn't make them unique. And you know, things go fast and whatnot.
24:28 Speaker 00 So you have to, in intelligence, if you want to filter out data and, and, and only focus on certain data, you have to create parameters. So we realized early on in the government that these things had five parameters, five observables that made them stand out away from everything else. And so the first one was instantaneous acceleration. So what is acceleration? It is the change of velocity, right? It is the ability to change your velocity very quickly. And as a result, as a consequence, there are inertial forces that are experienced. So for us human beings, we express those inertial forces as G forces. So the force of gravity is pulling on us equally at 9.8 meters per second per second.
25:12 Speaker 00 And that's, that's, that's experienced as one G. A human being can withstand up to nine Gs for a very short period of time before you start having medical consequences, right? You have things like blackouts and redouts and ultimately death. To compare that to, let's say, standard technology. One of our most highly maneuverable aircraft, manned maneuverable aircraft, let me emphasize manned, is an older aircraft. It's called the General Dynamics F-16. Built by General Dynamics, it's the F-16. Um, and that at an unclassified level can pull about 17 Gs before you start having structural failure, meaning wings snap off, right? The plane begins to disintegrate while you're flying it.
25:52 Speaker 00 What we are seeing are objects that are performing in excesses of 2,000 and 3,000 G-forces, okay? Well beyond the healthy limitations of anything biological to withstand and certainly from a material science perspective, more than, more than we have. There's an advanced technology here. The second observable is hypersonic velocity. So what is hypersonic? Hypersonics are those speeds in excess of Mach 5 or above. What's a Mach? It's the speed of sound, roughly 760 some miles an hour at sea level. So really fast. Now, do we have technology that can do hypersonic? Sure we do. Absolutely.
26:33 Speaker 00 We have, one of the best examples is a Lockheed YF-12A SR-71, otherwise known as a Blackbird. It can get to about Mach 5, which is really fast. But at that speed, if the SR-71 wants to take a right-hand turn, takes roughly half the state of Ohio to execute that maneuver. We are seeing things, not doing Mach 5, we are seeing things doing in excess of 10,000, 13,000 miles an hour and executing immediate right-hand turns and even 180s, right? So that is another observable that is significantly above and beyond anything we have. Another observable, it's a bit of an oxymoron, but it's called low observability, meaning
27:15 Speaker 00 you'll hear from the pilots, "Lou, I was there, I saw, but I can't describe it. Didn't have wings, didn't have rudder, tail, anything, no rivets, nothing." And then also on the radar, you will get these nonsensical returns. These returns like it's, there's some sort of active jamming or spoofing going on with, within the radar system. So low observability. Now, do we have low observable vehicles? Sure. For example, the B-2 bomber and the Valkyrie, these are stealth vehicles. Well, this is a little more than that because it's actually also with the human eye very hard to discern. The fourth observable is something called transmedium or multi- multimedium travel.
27:58 Speaker 00 So that means the ability to operate in multiple domains, or more specifically, multiple environments. Now, once again, do we have multi-domain vehicles? Absolutely. A seaplane is a perfect example of a multimedium vehicle. It can fly and it can float. But let's face it, a seaplane is neither a really good airplane or a good boat. And why? Because there are design compromises that have to be made in performance and design in order for it to operate in multiple domains. And that's true with just about every technology we have. The more domains we want something to operate in, the more sacrifices we have to make. That's why a submarine looks like a submarine because it's designed to be underwater. And a plane looks like a plane, and a rocket looks like a rocket.
28:42 Speaker 00 These things can operate in multiple different domains. It can operate in air, underwater, and possibly even space. But they don't have that performance and design sacrifice that we have to do with our technology.
28:55 Steven Bartlett? So is it like a, when you get this job, do you get to see like a folder on a computer? Like, I'm trying to understand what access you're given to these things.
29:07 Speaker 00 Everything. I mean, you are, you're seeing the investigations that were done previously by other members of UAP. You're seeing video, you're seeing photographs, you're seeing the historical reports.
29:18 Steven Bartlett? And are these classified?
29:19 Speaker 00 Oh, absolutely, very.
29:20 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so the general public can't see these kinds of things?
29:23 Speaker 00 No.
29:23 Steven Bartlett? And they haven't been published?
29:25 Speaker 00 Correct. They have not been public, made publicly available. They are highly classified.
29:29 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so it's videos, it's photos, it's various accounts, it's...
29:33 Speaker 00 Correct.
29:33 Steven Bartlett? You know, a lot of people talk about Area 51 when they talk about UFOs and such. I think one of the sort of rumors is that at Area 51, they've found and retained UFO materials, spacecraft, etc., that they've studied to understand the technology so that they can introduce it to the US military. Is there any truth in that?
29:56 Speaker 00 You know, the US government invests a lot of money in research. They have a lot of test facilities where we want to be able to test things outside the prying eyes of our enemies. And so we create these test ranges for that purpose. We do all sorts of things at those test ranges. You know, I cannot comment on what Area 51 might or might not have. I would not be authorized to talk about that. All I can say is what is in the public domain, which people already know that is a it's a sensitive test facility where we experiment with with things.
30:31 Steven Bartlett? Because there was a gentleman, I think, from that worked near Area 51 that's talked a little bit about this publicly, Bob Lazar.
30:38 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
30:39 Steven Bartlett? I actually didn't know anything about Bob Lazar until about two hours ago. So what is exactly is it that Bob Lazar is claiming?
30:46 Speaker 00 Well, to be fair, you'd probably have to ask Bob. I don't know Mr. Lazar. I've never met him. I've never spoken to him. His claims were that he worked at a particular facility and he had access to and privy to one of recovered vehicles, crash retrievals, that was allegedly performed by the United States and acquired and brought there. That is what is in the public domain. I cannot and will not comment on Bob Lazar because I don't know him.
31:17 Steven Bartlett? So when you say you can't comment on something and as it relates to something that's classified, is have you had to go through some process? There's a book in front of me called Imminent, which is the book you've written. It says Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs. What is the process when you're writing books like this to get information cleared so that you can share it?
31:35 Speaker 00 It's like birthing an elephant.
31:36 Steven Bartlett? Right.
31:37 Speaker 00 I can only imagine if I was ever a woman and had to give birth.
31:42 Steven Bartlett? Because they probably don't want you talking about these things.
31:45 Speaker 00 There's a lot of people that don't want us talking about this. But there's also a lot that do. So you go through a process. It's called DOCSER. In the US government, we love our acronyms. It stands for Department of Defense Office of Pre-publication and Security Review. As a former defense official, if I want to write anything, it has to go through a review process to make sure it's not classified and I can talk about it. That book went through an exhaustive, almost one-year process through the government before they allowed me to publish it. And even then, they redacted portions out. If you look in there, you will see grayed out portions because I wanted Americans to see what Some people don't need to see.
32:27 Speaker 00 And so those redactions are there by the government. And it is, it is a very exhaustive process. But it's important because that's what keeps us legal. That's what keeps people like me not going to jail. Because you, I, I go through the proper procedures. I'm, I'm not a leaker. I have never leaked classified information. I will never discuss classified information. An unauthorized disclosure is something that, that should be avoided at all times. I'm, like I said, I'm a patriot. I'm loyal to my country. I'm not disloyal. So there's a right way and a wrong way to do things. So if you want to write a book and you want to talk about things you're not sure you can talk about, you go through this Dobbs process. And that's exactly what I did. And that's how that book was able to be published.
33:10 Speaker 00 Otherwise, right now, I'd probably be in jail.
33:13 Steven Bartlett? Is there a single most compelling piece of evidence that you were witness to as it relates to your belief in UFOs and UAPs?
33:21 Speaker 00 They were, they were all significant. There wasn't one that said, oh, that's it. Because they were all compelling in their own way. Whether you can go back to the USS Nimitz incident in 2004 or the Roosevelt incidents in 2014 and 2015. There, there was so much data. Every time you think you had one that was great, another would come and it was even better. So.
33:41 Steven Bartlett? I mean, you've put one on the front cover of this book there, right?
33:43 Speaker 00 Yeah.
33:44 Steven Bartlett? What is this incident on the front cover of your book?
33:46 Speaker 00 That is known as the Gimbal Incident. That is a video that was taken by an F-18. And you can hear the exacerbation. If you listen to the actual video, you can hear the pilots trying to discuss what it is. And then you also hear on it the discussion of, there's a whole fleet of them. Look at the ASA. And oh, by the way, it's going 120 knots against the wind at roughly 20,000 feet. So it's not a balloon. And you begin to see this, this, this vehicle orientate itself in a 90-degree angle. Now, if this was a plane, look at your, see your wings. If you go in a 90-degree angle, you lose altitude, right? Because that's how the principles of lift work. That's not the case there.
34:27 Steven Bartlett? I think this is the video.
34:29 Speaker 00 Yep.
34:56 Steven Bartlett? And that was shot by two US fighter pilots.
35:02 Speaker 00 There's a lot more of those out there, and a lot clearer too, but they're classified.
35:05 Steven Bartlett? So there's more videos like this that you've been exposed to?
35:08 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
35:09 Steven Bartlett? But they won't release them?
35:11 Speaker 00 They will not release them.
35:12 Steven Bartlett? Why?
35:13 Speaker 00 Because of sources and methods, because they remain classified, because how they were taken, where they were taken, under what circumstances, what technological capabilities were used to collect the information. The US government wants to keep out of the hands of its adversaries what our true capabilities are. So let's say you're flying a mission over a denied area, and you don't want the enemy to know that you're over it, right? The last thing you want to do is release a video where you can look and say, oh, we're in this location, and now the enemy knows, or we have this capability, or we can see this good. These are the technologies we have. These videos here ironically are probably some of the least compelling videos. Now, people say, oh, these are incredible, but these are the ones that were unclassified that could be released. The other ones, some
35:55 Speaker 00 of these are so clear, the problem is, is how they were taken, the collection capabilities that were used to take them, where they were taken, under what circumstances, the metadata in the video, all that is a consideration.
36:08 Steven Bartlett? Okay. And do the US government and the Pentagon generally want people to believe that UFOs, UAPs exist or not?
36:19 Speaker 00 I think it's both. I think up until recently, nobody wanted to have this conversation. The problem is, the government backed itself up after 70 years of denial into a corner, and it has to figure a way out. There are some elements now that want the conversation to occur. And so that's why you see Congress getting engaged, why the creation of Arrow. But there are still elements, unfortunately, in the Pentagon that don't want this conversation to occur. And they will continue doing what they can to discredit individuals and launch this campaign against them. One of my colleagues, David Gruj, who was a decorated Air Force officer and a senior intelligence official, the moment he broke rank and went public
36:59 Speaker 00 about this topic, within 24 hours, they released his medical records, trying to discredit him, and they did it illegally. So there are people there that definitely don't want this conversation to occur.
37:11 Steven Bartlett? Why?
37:12 Speaker 00 Well, there's a lot of reasons why. You know, back historically...
37:17 Speaker 00 Great question. Let's, can I unpack that a little bit? Yeah. Do you mind that? Yeah. Okay, so let's start really at the heels of World War II. You have these foo fighters that are being observed by allied pilots. These luminous balls that would follow them into combat areas. And then after, particularly as we started developing the atomic weapons, we started releasing a lot of UFOs over our controlled military airspace and over our center of military installations, our research facilities. And so at the time you have this mindset, you have height of the Cold War, United States versus Soviet Union. And by the way, they had nukes and so did we, right? So you've got a real potential threat over there. And then you've got these other things over here.
37:59 Speaker 00 So as a general in the Pentagon, say, look, I know these things are real, but they're not showing any overt hostilities. Meanwhile, we've got this real issue over here, this real threat called Soviet Union. Let's focus on this threat and then we'll worry about this other stuff later. The other part of that is the mindset of, look, it's really uncomfortable as a government to have a conversation with its people about a problem that there's no solution for, right? We can see what they do, but there's not a damn thing we can do about it. We can't stop what they're doing. And so do you really want to have a conversation with the American people and admit a problem for which we don't have a solution for it? Governments are solution focused. And that is not a great spot to be in, right?
38:44 Speaker 00 And it's, by the way, not the first time this has happened. Let's look at the U-2, for example, spy plane. When we first built that, the CIA commissioned it through Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. And we were flying that vehicle in contravention to a standing treaty we had with Russia, that we would not fly manned reconnaissance missions over Russia, mainland Russia. We were. But we built this plane to fly so fast and so high, we thought they couldn't detect us, right? And for a while, we thought they couldn't because we went unchallenged until the Russians were able to develop the surface-to-air missile, SA-2 missile, and successfully shoot one down. And then, and only then, did they admit to the world, we've been tracking these things since day one. The reason why they didn't talk about it is because they didn't have a means to shoot it down.
39:29 Speaker 00 So why admit? A problem for which there's no solution until you have a solution. So that's another mindset in the Pentagon. And then you had several studies done that were commissioned by the US government in the past that asked the question, if we were to be honest and truthful about disclosure, about we're not alone in the university, things are real, what would the consequences be? And these studies came back unanimously, said you can't do it. The American people are not ready to have this conversation. It'll cause civil discord and it'll cause, it'll upset the population and people will lose faith in their religions and the economy may crash. You can't do it. And so the decision was made, okay, we're not going to do it. In fact, we're going to actively suppress this information. We're going to stigmatize the heck out of it so bad that no one will ever want to even mention the word UFO.
40:13 Speaker 00 And it was very successful. That campaign to stigmatize this topic was so successful, in fact, that even now it's hard to unwind the tape and have the conversation. And so therein lies part of the problem. Why doesn't the government, parts of the government want to have this conversation? Then you've got a legal issue, which is probably the biggest issue now. You have elements in the government that were making unilateral decisions not to inform Congress and not to inform the President of the United States, right? That's illegal. There are oversight committees that have a designated need to know on all intelligence matters, especially when it comes to funding, right? We're spending billions of dollars on these projects.
40:57 Speaker 00 You've got to inform Congress, certain elements of certain oversight committees, like the Senate Solicitor Committee on Intelligence. They weren't being briefed to this. There's also this fear by some people on the inside of the government that, oh my gosh, I used to work on a secret UFO program. Am I going to be in trouble now because, you know, we've been lying to Congress? And so it's a little more complicated than necessarily just saying, oh, well, we want the truth, be honest. It's not that easy.
41:23 Steven Bartlett? To your knowledge, has there ever been recovered UAP or UFO materials?
41:29 Speaker 00 What I can say, what I've been allowed to say, which is yes. Up until recently, I wasn't even allowed to say that.
41:34 Steven Bartlett? When did that change?
41:35 Speaker 00 When that book got reviewed. Up until that point, I had signed documentation from the government saying, I will never discuss that, ever.
41:42 Steven Bartlett? What happens if you did?
41:43 Speaker 00 Jail. Oh, yeah. That's why that book I had to go through the process because what I wrote in that book I am allowed to talk about. I can't go beyond that, but at least I can talk about that. And in the book I talk about, yes, that the government is in possession of material, exotic material that doesn't look like it's made by us.
42:00 Steven Bartlett? Has there ever been anyone sent to jail because they've spoken about this subject matter?
42:04 Speaker 00 Worse, worse. And that that story has yet to be told. Yes, there are people who have had faced extreme disciplinary actions and and and potentially worse.
42:18 Steven Bartlett? The death penalty?
42:21 Speaker 00 I'm not going to elaborate right now because there's some things happening to try to. This is why Congress is working hard for whistleblower protections because we want people to feel safe to come out and have a conversation. And right now they don't feel overly safe. They've seen some of the tactics and techniques that were applied to try to keep people quiet in the past. Let me say this in general terms. People say, oh, well, the government would never kill anybody to protect a secret. Try going to Area 51 and look at the signs on that chain link fence where it says lethal force authorized. You cross that fence and they can kill you dead. Okay, so the government can, under certain
43:02 Speaker 00 extreme cases, under certain extreme situations and conditions, they can do whatever they need to do to protect national security, and they will.
43:12 Steven Bartlett? Which department is that?
43:14 Speaker 00 I cannot go into that conversation, unfortunately.
43:16 Steven Bartlett? Because people think of it as maybe the CIA or something, but
43:19 Speaker 00 I can't I can't elaborate, unfortunately.
43:22 Steven Bartlett? You know, because I know very little about American governmental departments and such, but obviously, most of the world knows about the like presidential assassinations and things like that. So and I've spoken to a few CIA agents and stuff like that on my podcast before, but I've never really understood, frankly, who would who would be making such an order and how those things don't leak, you know?
43:44 Speaker 00 Well, you know.
43:47 Speaker 00 Good question.
43:51 Speaker 00 Look, we've done it in the past, another situation, some pretty recently.
43:57 Speaker 00 And I'll give you a case in point, and this is not, you know, attacking anybody. We have droned, used drones to lethally kill people, Americans, an American citizen specifically, and the person's child, without due process.
44:14 Steven Bartlett? In the US?
44:15 Speaker 00 Not in the US, he was a US citizen. He was suspected of being a terrorist, and there's some other things here, I'm not going to go in there. But we, as American citizens, are, as American citizens, we are afforded something called due process, under the law of peace. And meaning, you get your day in court, no matter what. And there've been Americans where that hasn't been the case. They didn't get a day in court. Someone made the decision to liquidate them.
44:42 Speaker 00 You know, there are examples of that happening. You know, there's another one with, with Rosenbergs, the, those who were accused of selling the atomic secrets to the Russians, actually giving it to them. And if you know a little bit about what happened with his wife, turns out that she was innocent.
45:02 Steven Bartlett? What happened to his wife?
45:03 Speaker 00 They hung her, hung her and him, for espionage. But because of the information that we had at the time, we was so sensitive, we'd have to reveal a capability, so unfortunately, it looks like maybe we may have, we have done something that we maybe shouldn't have done. I wasn't around for that, so I can't tell you definitively what happened. I can only tell you what, what, what my understanding of it is. I could absolutely be wrong, and I really hope I am. But it turns out that, you know, there are extreme examples where we will take drastic measures to protect national security.
45:41 Steven Bartlett? So, in writing this book and in talking about the subjects, you understand that there's some people that don't want you talking about these subjects?
45:47 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
45:49 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
45:49 Steven Bartlett? So, and you also understand that punishment for talking about these subjects in range from jail or worse.
45:56 Speaker 00 Yep.
45:57 Steven Bartlett? So are you not scared?
45:58 Speaker 00 I didn't say that. I didn't say I wasn't scared.
46:00 Steven Bartlett? Hmm.
46:02 Speaker 00 I mean, I'm taking huge risks. I, I, but I've been, my life has been threatened many times and it's very concerning for me. It's a reason why I, I live in Wyoming and I'm heavily armed and have now six German shepherds. Yeah, I'm very cautious and careful, but I'm also understanding, I also know the left and right limits of the law and I'm not going to break the law under any circumstances. I didn't, this book isn't a leak. I'm authorized to talk about that book because I went through the proper processes of getting it reviewed, whether they like it or not. But yes, I am absolutely worried. You know, this is why I'm very careful when I say things because I don't want to, I'll walk up to the line. I will not step over the line. I will not violate my security oath and compromise national
46:44 Speaker 00 security for disclosure. And I don't think I have to. I think the proof is in the pudding. The fact that it's been seven years and we've come this far in the conversation and I haven't gone to jail and I'm still here to have the conversation, I think is indicative of the fact that there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. I understand people want disclosure and they want it now. But I've told people before, there's a difference between doing things right and doing things right now. They're different and we only get one chance to do this right. And so hopefully we can have this conversation, this collective conversation in a way where we don't have to be disruptive. No one has to be threatened. No one has to go to jail. No one has to lose their jobs or anything like that.
47:23 Steven Bartlett? You mentioned presidents earlier on. Do presidents of the United States know about UFOs?
47:29 Speaker 00 Some do, some do not. Unfortunately, there's a mindset by some people that think that politicians and presidents are temporary hires. They're here today, gone in four years. So why brief them up on something, especially if they have no military or intelligence background? It's a risk. So you know what? Don't brief them.
47:48 Steven Bartlett? Which presidents do you think were aware of UFOs and? These sort of, these kinds of programs.
47:54 Speaker 00 Sure, well, we know for sure there were several, you know. For sure, for example, Carter was, but then.
47:59 Steven Bartlett? How'd you know?
48:00 Speaker 00 Clinton, well, because Carter was briefed. I know somebody who actually worked with Carter to get information on this topic. I won't say the person's name. The person's still alive, so I don't have permission to talk about that. But we know that for a fact and there's records of it. But there's other presidents like Bill Clinton, who wasn't briefed, but wanted to be briefed. Right, and so, and again, this is the crux of the problem. Who's making the decision on what president gets briefed and what doesn't? That's nonsense. President George Bush Senior was briefed. He was also the director of the CIA, so he was very well aware of this topic. But then there's other presidents that weren't. And so this is, again, this is highlighting the very problem that I have. Who's making the decision to choose who gets briefed and who doesn't?
48:43 Steven Bartlett? What about Obama and Trump?
48:45 Speaker 00 I can't answer for them. Obama has recently stated for the record that these UAP are a national security issue, not a threat, but an issue, that there's something there, that these are real, whatever they are, whatever it is. President Trump recently, former President Trump said a week and a half ago, for the record, when asked, that he would be willing to release the UFO files and that he wanted to do it in the past, but he faced fierce resistance. Now, think about that statement for a minute. Who the hell is giving him resistance to releasing UFO files when you're the president? Right, that is, that is a very significant statement. That is what needs to be fixed. If the president himself can't get, or herself can't get a briefing, who in the hell has
49:29 Speaker 00 the authority to make that decision? Nobody.
49:32 Steven Bartlett? What is that fierce resistance that Trump's talking about?
49:35 Speaker 00 I don't know, you'd have to ask Trump.
49:36 Steven Bartlett? What do you think it is?
49:39 Speaker 00 I think there is a huge amount of influence by the military industrial complex. And they, it is an enormous business, always has been.
49:51 Speaker 00 It's huge. It is probably the world's largest business globally.
49:57 Steven Bartlett? And why wouldn't the military industrial complex want those files to be released?
50:02 Speaker 00 Well, because they have to admit that they're part of the programs. Some of these folks, you know, have had been, a lot of their successes is being able to work super secret program for the US government. And maybe there's technology that they don't want released. Maybe there's capabilities that we had that we don't want to tell our adversaries. And there's a lot of reasons for it, which you understand. Some of them are actually legitimate, I can understand. I don't agree with, but I can understand.
50:25 Steven Bartlett? How much do you think the average person on the street knows about what goes on in
50:30 Steven Bartlett? the Pentagon and behind the scenes of the government?
50:32 Speaker 00 Brother, it's, forget the government Pentagon. How many parents, they can tell you who's a quarterback of their favorite football team, and they can tell you their stats, but how many parents know who their kid sits next to during lunch or in second period math class? Government is, I mean, that's basic facts, man. We, as humans, most of us, we suck. We don't know anything and we're so used to being force fed information by whatever outlet de jour we want to tune into, you know? If I'm a liberal, I'll watch this. If I'm a conservative, I'll watch that. I'll go straight to my echo chamber and, you know, just hear what I want to hear and have people tell me not only information that I, that they think I need to know, but even my opinion of what it should be about.
51:18 Speaker 00 This is a much, much bigger issue than just UFOs and UAP. We, as people, have become extremely lazy and we no longer are willing to ask the hard questions. We're not.
51:36 Steven Bartlett? You were part of one program, but you also referenced this second program called the Legacy Program? What is the Legacy Program?
51:42 Speaker 00 It is the traditional, long-held effort by the US government to study UAP. People think ATIP was the only program and OSAP. Before that, there was, there was Blue Book and before that, the Legacy Program is the collaborative effort of individuals over the course of several decades that have been looking into this topic for the US government and by the US government.
52:06 Steven Bartlett? And, okay, just doing similar things to what ATIP did?
52:10 Speaker 00 Yes, and more robust and much more well-funded.
52:14 Steven Bartlett? I wonder why they don't fund it as well these days.
52:18 Speaker 00 Uh, there's a reason for that, too, that I, I, I, I would need permission to talk about.
52:26 Speaker 00 Um, there were some distractions in the early 2000s that lifted and shifted resources away from, from efforts to something else.
52:36 Speaker 00 You know, you probably can figure out what this, what that was, but um, there was an enormous resource drain and refocusing um, in the early 2000s to focus on something else. And so.
52:49 Steven Bartlett? I, I heard you talk as well about this sort of different types of aliens per se, because when we think of aliens, we reflect on movies that we've seen and they have like the big heads and things like that. And maybe they're like, like white, tall, skinny with like the big arms and the big legs and stuff like that. Is that what people in the Pentagon consider aliens to be, what we see in movies?
53:11 Speaker 00 Uh, I, I can't speak on behalf of other people. I can only speak on behalf of me. Um, I've been very, very careful not to, to stereotype anybody or anything. I think it's important we have to keep an open mind because when you say the word aliens, you're automatically presuming that these things are from outer space. They might not be. There's lots of different options. It doesn't have to be from outer space.
53:34 Steven Bartlett? What do you believe? Do you believe they're amongst us?
53:37 Speaker 00 Well, let's, can I, can I explore this with you? This question? Okay, so it's, it's not an either or.
53:45 Speaker 00 So in the beginning of our conversation, I told you I went to the University of Miami and I studied microbiology, immunology and the study of parasites. Now, if you go to some anthropologists, they will suggest to you that modern human beings, Homo sapiens sapiens, has been around roughly between 100 to possibly 200,000 years. So on a 24 hour clock, right? It's only the last 2,000 years. And it was the Greeks that proposed there were two fundamental life forms on this planet. And you were either a plant or you were an animal and human beings were an animal. And so the 24 hour clock, you're talking, we're talking maybe, I don't know, 10 minutes ago, before midnight.
54:23 Speaker 00 Well, it was 300 years ago during the Renaissance or the days of enlightenment, uh, that we discovered an entire new life form on this planet that's been here all along. And that, and that was, that was neither plant nor animal. It was the world of fungus. And we pat ourselves on the shoulder and say, hey, we found a new life form.
54:44 Speaker 00 In this 24 hour clock, it's been probably the last, maybe 10 seconds, last 120 years only, that we discovered for the first time the true dominant alpha life form on this planet. And in fact, if you take all the biomass of every plant and all the biomass of every animal and all the biomass of every fungus and added it all up together, it still will not equal the biomass of this hidden yet dominant life form that's been on this planet all along. And it wasn't until we could have the technology to curve glass and look through a little tube and famously shout the words, "Little beasties, little beasties", did we discover the world of microorganisms. Okay, the true dominant life form on this planet that's been here all along.
55:30 Speaker 00 In fact, it's inside of us, it makes us up, it's pervasive everywhere. And we just discovered it. So when I say to people, you know, my people say, "Oh, do you think from outer space?" They can be from outer space, inner space, or frankly, the space in between. These things can be just as natural to our environment as we are. Maybe we're at the point now where technologically we can start interacting. Maybe they're from under the ocean. Look, less than 10% of the ocean floor has been mapped. We know more about the surface of the moon than we do of our own oceans. Is it possible these things are just as natural to this planet as we are? Possibly. Or is it possible these things are from somewhere else? Yes, that's possible too. So we have to keep all options on the table until they're no longer on the table.
56:14 Speaker 00 We live in an infinitely, infinitely complex universe.
56:21 Speaker 00 See if I can, and I've often used this before to try to help people wrap their heads around, around this. We perceive life through five fundamental, five fundamental senses. And if we can't touch it, taste it, hear it, smell it, et cetera, we can't interact with it. We have no idea it's there. Where I live out in Wyoming, we have these beautiful night skies, unoccluded night skies, and you can see all the heavens, beautiful Milky Way in front of you. If you were to look through that, at that same night sky through a radio telescope, you would see something different. You would see nebula, you would see things that you can't normally perceive, and the ultraviolet and infrared spectrums, and X-ray, right? It's there, you just can't perceive it. It's just like if you had cellphone vision.
57:04 Speaker 00 All of a sudden now, you can see in Wi-Fi and 5G, you would see an entirely different reality around you. So, we perceive light, we perceive life through a very narrow spectrum of visible light, the visible light spectrum, when reality is, most everything else kind of lies beyond that. And then you have a scale issue, you have a scalability issue. What do I mean by scalability? We are a human being, you and I are having a lovely conversation here, somewhere in someplace, on this planet, revolving around an obscure star in an obscure part of the Milky Way galaxy, amongst a supercluster of other galaxies. The visible horizon from any direction we look at of light of the size of the universe
57:46 Speaker 00 has been estimated to be between 13.6 to 13.9 billion light-years, B, billion. What is a light-year? A light-year is the distance that a photon of light can travel in the course of a year. And how fast is that? Well, light travels at roughly 186,000 miles per second, or seven and a half times around our planet in one second, right? Really fast. Imagine how far that goes in a year, and now imagine how far that goes 13.9 billion years, right? So, we're in the middle of the universe here. Our universal horizon in any direction is 13.9 billion light-years, and in that direction, another 13.9. So, roughly 27 billion light-years across, and we're in the middle.
58:27 Speaker 00 Now, scientists are estimating that's, that's less than 10% of the actual size of the universe. The universe is actually much, much bigger than that. This is just the universal horizon, because the expansion of the universe, light this far will never reach Earth. So, now you're talking about a size 100 billion light-years, and as small as we are, right in the middle, this infinitesimally small speck, keep in mind, in our visible universe alone, visible, there are more stars than there are grains of sand in all the beaches in all the world. Think about that incomprehensible number, and as small as we are. Now...
59:04 Speaker 00 Humor me with this. Take one atom, one hydrogen atom. Avogadro's number, one times 10 to the negative 23, okay? That's roughly the same order of magnitude as we are to the universe. So we have this entire huge universe outside and this entire little universe inside every single human being. And we as a human beings can only interact with one or two orders of magnitude up or down. Otherwise, the universe is simply too big or too small. We just will never be able to know. And that is reality. That's where most of everything lies. That's where most of reality is. It's either up there or inside or everything in between.
59:46 Speaker 00 So I guess my point is, every time when people say, well, you know, aliens. What does that mean? What does that mean? Because most people say aliens in Hollywood and little eggheads running around. There's so much more to it. It doesn't, this is, this is us imposing a Hollywood idea of what an alien should look like. And by the way, let's not forget their anthropomorphic values, right? They, they look like us, have arms like us and heads like us and eyes like us. Because we view everything through anthropomorphic eyes. It's the reason why we, we call our dogs human names and we treat them like humans. Because we treat everything as if they have human values, human motivation, human intent, when we may be dealing with something completely different.
1:00:30 Speaker 00 This could be like artificial intelligence. It's just binary. Input in, input out. We don't know. And so, these are some of the questions we have to, you know, really as we were moving down this, this pathway. This is why I always tell people, look, all options have to be on the table until they're no longer on the table. Because we simply don't know.
1:00:50 Steven Bartlett? We also don't know what their intentions are and why they might be here.
1:00:53 Speaker 00 That's right.
1:00:53 Steven Bartlett? Why they might be visiting here.
1:00:55 Speaker 00 That's right.
1:00:55 Steven Bartlett? Do you have a, any theories as to what their intentions might be?
1:00:59 Speaker 00 Brother, there's a whole range of theories. I mean, it could be simply as like when we're on the African Serengeti and we see the wildebeest and we're in a helicopter and, you know, not to make fun of it, but you sit there and say, oh, that one, we dart it, boom. What do we do? We land the helicopter, we come out, we draw blood, we do tests. We wanna see its diet and its migratory patterns, its health. And then what happens? The wildebeest wakes up, kinda growly, disoriented, stumbles over to the watering hole and he's like, hey, Bill, you're not gonna believe this, man. This thing came out of the sky. All some weird stuff happened. I was being touched. I woke up and now my butt hurts, right? It could be something as simple as that.
1:01:31 Steven Bartlett? Do you believe any of those reports? Cause people do say that they were abducted by aliens.
1:01:35 Speaker 00 Well, this is my point, right? So, so that's, that's one option. The other option could be simply to monitor us. It could be that we are getting very close to being able to replicate what they can do. And if that's the case, you know, maybe technologically, we're only a hundred, two hundred years behind. And if that's the case, now all of a sudden, we're gonna be new neighbors, right? And that could be problematic because our species is very violent. We do a lot of bad things to each other. Are we really ready to go out and meet our potential friends from out of town? I don't know. I mean, we're pretty horrible to each other, so maybe not. Certainly, if I was them and we were, I knew we were getting close, I would probably be pretty interested in what we're doing too.
1:02:15 Speaker 00 As far as the abductions, you know, I, I don't know what to tell you because I've never been abducted. I've had some, some people that swear by it, but, you know, you can't have a conversation about abduction and then say, oh, they're here for peaceful reasons. Doesn't work that way.
1:02:31 Steven Bartlett? Do you believe them, the people that swear by it?
1:02:33 Speaker 00 I believe that, I believe that they are being truthful, that they, that experience they feel is real. I don't think they're lying. But the question is, you know.
1:02:43 Steven Bartlett? Did it happen, is the question?
1:02:44 Speaker 00 Yeah, and I, I, and I, I can't say, cause I wasn't there. But I can tell you that we definitely have people that have had experiences where they are now on US government, full medical disability in writing because they got too close to a UAP. Now, was it deliberate that they got injured or was it just a, a byproduct of the technology? They got too close to it.
1:03:02 Steven Bartlett? What does that mean, they got too close to it? And you mentioned that there's some people that are on US disability allowance, so they're being paid by the US government?
1:03:09 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm. In writing, because they, they had a UAP, they were, they were involved in a UAP encounter.
1:03:14 Steven Bartlett? And what does that mean, UAP encounter in that definition?
1:03:16 Speaker 00 Well, so, let's look at it this way. Nah, here's a better one. You go to the airport, right? And I'm gonna hop on a 737 and go fly to Fort Lauderdale. There's no real threat there. I'm getting on a plane, it's safe, sit on the seat, have a cocktail. You know, watch a movie, read a magazine. Now, if I were to walk out onto the tarmac, onto the runway, that same, where that same airplane is, and that airplane decides to spool up its jet engine, chances are I'm gonna be injured. I'm gonna get burnt, I'm gonna lose my hearing, and possibly a lot worse, right? There are individuals, US government servicemen and women, and there's also intelligence officials who have been injured by getting too close to a UAP,
1:03:58 Speaker 00 whether incidentally, or it was deliberate or not. The question is, was that injury sustained because it was deliberate? Or was that injury sustained because it was just a matter of being too close to the technology? For example, it's like putting your head near a microwave oven when it's on. It's probably not very good for you, right?
1:04:17 Steven Bartlett? Have those people spoken out?
1:04:19 Speaker 00 Absolutely.
1:04:21 Steven Bartlett? What's like a good example?
1:04:23 Speaker 00 Um, there's an individual right now named John Burrows, who, uh, who had his medical files classified, and the US government, thankfully because of Senator, late Senator John McCain from Arizona, forced the Air Force to release his files. And as a result, he was able to get full medical disability because of an incident that involved him and another individual in the UK known as Rendlesham Forest Incident, or Bentwaters Incident, where there was a US, joint US and UK base, and there was a UFO incident where this thing had landed in the, in the forest. And they went out to go see this thing, and they were injured.
1:05:04 Steven Bartlett? And they were in the military at the time?
1:05:05 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm, yeah. Air Force Special Police, or police officers.
1:05:10 Steven Bartlett? They were injured?
1:05:12 Speaker 00 They were injured, and that's not all. There's a lot of people that have been injured right now that are under medical care by government doctors. That is a fact.
1:05:24 Steven Bartlett? When they give their account of what happened, what do they say?
1:05:27 Speaker 00 It depends who you ask. I mean, there's some consistency without, within some of the stories, and then there's some divergence. You know, it's like somebody who says they've been in a car accident, depending what kind of car you're in, and was it a multiple car pileup? And where were you sitting in the car? You're gonna have a slightly different experience. So it's not one shoe fits all.
1:05:43 Steven Bartlett? You talk about how they, there's been a lot of UAP sightings at nuclear technology facilities.
1:05:49 Speaker 00 Yes. That is, and that is why this is a national security issue because they seem to be able to disable our nuclear capabilities. Now, people say, oh, that's like, you know, taking matches out of a kid's hands and it's, you know, well, maybe, but in Russia, there's information to suggest he actually turned them on. So, you know, we have to be really careful with that. Our nuclear triad capability is really the crown jewels of the US government. And so if a country or an adversary has the ability to interfere with a nuclear response, that's significant.
1:06:21 Steven Bartlett? There's evidence to suggest that they turned on the nuclear facilities in Russia?
1:06:25 Speaker 00 Yes.
1:06:25 Steven Bartlett? What is that evidence? And when was that?
1:06:28 Speaker 00 There's, there's evidence that there's actually a KGB report that suggested that the, one of their, their places was actually turned on. In fact, there's a lot, let me be careful what I say here. So after the Berlin Wall fell, there was this brief honeymoon period between the Soviet Union and the US where ex-KGB officers were sharing information with us and our government.
1:06:54 Speaker 00 I think that's about all I can probably say about that. But there was some very interesting information that we were able to, to see.
1:07:05 Steven Bartlett? I was reading about this really interesting incident called the Cloris Incident?
1:07:08 Speaker 00 Colares in Brazil.
1:07:09 Steven Bartlett? I can, I can't pronounce that.
1:07:11 Speaker 00 Oh, you did a good, Colares.
1:07:12 Steven Bartlett? Colares, which was in 1977 to 1978.
1:07:19 Steven Bartlett? And it sounded like a UAP incident that was witnessed by hundreds, thousands of people.
1:07:27 Speaker 00 It was investigated officially by the Brazilian military under the command and control of a four-star general named General Uchoa. And he has explained, before he passed away, that even his own military personnel had been, been attacked.
1:07:45 Steven Bartlett? By?
1:07:46 Speaker 00 By UAP.
1:07:47 Steven Bartlett? And what did they see? What was the, what did they document see?
1:07:50 Speaker 00 Oh my goodness, a whole litany of things. A lot of the locals recall being terrified by these things, being pursued by them, almost being like, like a laser blast, if you can imagine that, or directed energy type injury.
1:08:03 Speaker 00 Very provocative. Some of the military personnel were injured as well. A lot of medical doctors came in afterwards to look at the locals and the military personnel, validating the presumption that there was some sort of directed energy type damage, tissue damage to some of these people. And of course, then the fear kind of escalated into some of the other, you know, local lore of some other things.
1:08:30 Speaker 00 But it was very well established by the Brazilian military, who also witnessed these encounters. So it's not like just some people in a remote village. These were Brazilian military officers who also vouched for it. And I've spoken to dozens and dozens of military officers all throughout Latin America and Chile and Peru and Uruguay. And, you know, they all reporting, in some cases, some very, very similar encounters. Not necessarily with coladas, but innocent amongst themselves, people who don't even know each other, separated by different countries, are telling me their same encounter and the same morphology of craft and how they would in some cases even try to engage in a dogfight and use cannons, conventional guns, to no avail, of course.
1:09:13 Speaker 00 And there's reports of that in Tehran incident, I believe it was 1978, the Tehran incident with an F-14 Tomcat, where the pilot,
1:09:22 Speaker 00 his aircraft was disabled every time he tried to engage a target. And then, you know, I superimpose that with, here in Huntsville, Alabama, we had some helicopters that we were testing and something like eight out of the eight test pilots all reported UAP coming around their helicopters while they were testing them. And one even reported that he believed his,
1:09:46 Speaker 00 His helicopter was disabled and he went into an emergency situation. I think it was an emergency auto-rotation situation. And as soon as the UAP left, he was able to regain control of his helicopter. Should we be worried about this? No, I don't think worried. I think we should be concerned because, look, from a governmental perspective, to determine if, and this is why I always say this is a national security issue, but not a national security threat. And there's a reason why. So there's a very simple calculus to determine if something is a threat. It's capabilities versus intent. We've seen some of the capabilities. We have no idea the intent, no clue. So we don't know if it's a threat.
1:10:30 Speaker 00 And let me give you a little analogy here that might help kind of put this. I use this analogy a lot to help illustrate what do I mean. I'm sure you live in a lovely home. Let me ask you the question. Do you lock your front door before you go to bed? Yes. Okay. And you know what? I do too. And I think most people, we don't expect anything bad to happen, but just out of precaution, right? And some folks may go the extra mile and decide, you know, I'm going to just make sure the windows are locked once in a while. And you know what? I might even turn the alarm on at night because I can't. Let's say you wake up one Sunday morning to have yourself a nice hot cup of tea or coffee and you walk downstairs and all of a sudden, as you come downstairs one bright morning, you notice size 12 muddy boot prints on your living room carpet that were not there the night before.
1:11:14 Speaker 00 Now, no one's been hurt, nothing's out of place, but despite you locking the front door and checking the windows and turning on the alarm, there are now boot prints in your living room floor that were not there the night before. My question to you is, is that a threat? My response is, it could be if it wanted to be, so we should probably figure out how it's getting into the house. This is kind of the same analogy. Are these things that can come in unimpeded, unchallenged into controlled US airspace over sensitive military installations, potentially interfere with our nuclear equities and capabilities? We should probably figure out what these things are.
1:11:47 Steven Bartlett? With everything that you know in mind and everything you've witnessed and seen, if you had to argue against yourself, if you had to argue the case against everything that you believe, to make the case that UAPs don't exist, what exactly would you say?
1:12:01 Speaker 00 Well, you can't say they don't exist. We've already, we're beyond it. They're real, whatever they are. But I could make the argument that it's foreign adversarial technology. It's Russia, it's China, right? They have leapfrogged us technologically and have been able to execute this, this plan wonderfully. And then the other option is that it's all a grand hallucination. So let's go down each argument. Let's go down the fact that maybe this is, I don't know, Chinese technology, Russian technology. After all, the Chinese did send balloons over our northern continental United States, spy balloons, and, you know, for who knows how long, and we never did anything about it and tracked it. That means that for the last 70 years, some country has been able to create a technology
1:12:44 Speaker 00 in secret that's so far advanced of anything we have, and by the way, deploy it over the continental United States for 70 years, completely non-attributed. Now, where were we 70 years ago? Well, we're on the heels of World War II. We had just broken the sound barrier, and we hadn't made it into space yet. Where was China in the middle of a famine? Where was Russia? No better than we were. So if this was Chinese technology or Russian technology back then, because we had the data to show it goes all the way back, this would be the greatest intelligence failure this country has ever faced, eclipsing that of even 9/11. Because despite the billions of dollars and the 17 intelligence organizations over 70
1:13:29 Speaker 00 years, there's not a trace that these countries were able to develop this and fly over our country and do what we're seeing. So that's option one.
1:13:40 Speaker 00 Also, temporally speaking, that type of technology didn't exist back in 1950, 1948. We, not by us anyway. So that would be like going into King Tut's tomb for the very first time in the 1920s and looking in there and all of a sudden discovering a fully assembled and functioning 747. Doesn't make sense. Egyptians didn't have the technology back then, right? So let's go to the other option. So that would be the huge, biggest intelligence failure that this country's ever experienced, and that's not a good option and very, very unlikely. So the other option is, this is, you know what? It's a mass hallucination. Everybody's crazy.
1:14:23 Speaker 00 So let's go down that rabbit hole for a second. So some of the best and brightest in our intelligence community and our Department of Defense are top gun trained pilots who are trusted to fly live munitions over cities, populated cities, fight and win wars on our behalf. Men and women who have their finger literally on the nuclear button. They're all crazy. They're all absolutely certifiably insane. We've got a bigger problem on our hands than UAP.
1:14:52 Steven Bartlett? What percentage of them have made reports of UAP?
1:14:58 Speaker 00 You know, it's hard to say percentage because you don't know because the ones that don't report, there's no way to measure, right? You only know the ones that do report. So there's no way. Now, we can tell you that people more are reporting because they feel that it's safe, that they can report. But we don't have any metric right now that tells us who's not reporting because they're not reporting.
1:15:15 Steven Bartlett? When we think about this hallucination rationale, I remember many years ago, you know, and I think it was in relation to physical hallucinations, there were ghosts and things like that. Yeah, it was related to ghosts. Someone said to me, they said, if really extremely improbable things never happened, then that would be. A miracle. Because just like the nature of probability means that most sort of predictable things happen most of the time. And then as you get down probability, there's this one side of it, which is highly improbable.
1:15:47 Speaker 00 Bell shaped curve.
1:15:47 Steven Bartlett? Yeah, exactly. So like on the the bell shaped curve, this side of it is extremely improbable things. You know, I was thinking extremely improbable example, we start talking about Andrew Huberman. And then my phone rings and it's Andrew Huberman. And we go, oh, my God, what are the odds of that being Andrew Huberman? We were just talking about him. And the issue there is we've spoken about many people and the phone never rang. But on the one time it does, we go, we connect the dots in hindsight and we go, that is a miracle. And we attribute meaning to that. Is it not possible that, you know, if there's thousands and thousands of these sightings, there's also billions of non sightings?
1:16:26 Steven Bartlett? So on that bell curve of probability, there's, these are just the unexplainable, highly improbable thousand incidents of, you know, maybe there was something on the camera, maybe there was some.
1:16:38 Speaker 00 Ball lightning, atmospheric anomaly. But the problem is you're going back to the, to the, the idea that there are multiple sensor systems collecting the same information at the same time under the same circumstances, right? This isn't just one person like your call. Oh, my gosh, out of the blue, the guy calls. You've got multiple platforms reporting the information at the same time simultaneously, right? So it's not just, oh, I saw an atmospheric aberration. The radar's picking it up, the gun camera's picking it up, the FLIR's picking it up, and another radar system's picking it up, and another radar. And by the way, other capabilities, which I can't discuss here, are also picking it up. So it's a real thing.
1:17:16 Speaker 00 Now, could it be Russian rocket on reentry that happened to use up all its hydrazine and now the booster rocket is burning up? Yeah, but then you don't have these 90 degree turns. You don't have 180 degree turns. You don't have something coming in, sitting at 80,000 feet, then dropping up right above the surface of the water, hovering 50 feet, and then popping right back up again, that you can measure. It's quantifiable and qualifiable data.
1:17:42 Steven Bartlett? Is that, are you referring to the, what they call the Tic Tac incident? Is that, is that what that is as well?
1:17:47 Speaker 00 That, so the Tic Tac incident is, that's not the video from the Tic Tac, but yeah, the Tic Tac incident are these objects that were detected. At one point, one of the operators said it was raining UFOs. So the SpyOne radar can detect a baseball-sized object at 80,000 feet. Okay, so very, very capable. You had E2 Hawkeye.
1:18:08 Steven Bartlett? What's that?
1:18:09 Speaker 00 It's an air platform. It's an aircraft. It's a flying radar system that we use to provide combat support, air support, and combat control for aircraft. So you have the Aegis-class destroyer. It's basically like a Ticonderoga-class, I think. You have the USS Princeton with the SpyOne radar, one of the world's most premier, at the time, radar systems on the planet. You have the E2 Hawkeye also picking it up on radar. Then you have the aircraft that could pick it up on radar. Then you have the eyewitnesses picking it on radar. Then you have also the footage, the FLIR footage, picking these things up as well, electronically. So you're talking about something that is at 80,000 feet, then within a blink of an eye
1:18:54 Speaker 00 has the ability to drop down to 50 feet and then go right back up again instantly. And it's all being verified by various different sensor systems. Now, in this particular case, I'm convoluting a little bit because the pilot's incident confirmed the Tic Tac, but they didn't see it dropping out of 80,000 feet. So I'm kind of putting it all together to make it a little easier for people to consume. But the Tic Tac incident wasn't really an incident. It was incidents over a protracted period of time in the early November timeframe. So it wasn't just one incident. There are multiple incidents, but it's referred to as the Tic Tac incident because the pilot actually reported seeing this white flying, what's been described as a lozenge, what's been described historically as a white flying Bu-ting tank.
1:19:39 Speaker 00 In this particular case, it was described as a white flying Tic Tac, like the breath mint Tic Tac.
1:19:44 Steven Bartlett? And they saw it go up, down on radars and systems like that?
1:19:48 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah. Yeah, they saw it up and down on radar systems, and then the pilots actually saw it zip away and bang, disappear over the horizon, only later on, within a few moments, to be picked up on radar again, 60 miles away at their cap point, where they're supposed to rendezvous next. So you're talking incredible speeds, incredible accelerate, hypersonic velocity, instantaneous acceleration, low observability, all the anti-gravity, all the observables.
1:20:15 Speaker 00 And that's just one, that's just one that's publicly known. There's a lot more of these things that have been, have been happening.
1:20:20 Steven Bartlett? How long were you with this, uh, working on that project at the Pentagon, ATIP?
1:20:25 Speaker 00 Eight years.
1:20:26 Steven Bartlett? Eight years?
1:20:29 Speaker 00 I'm an old guy. This is gray, not blonde.
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1:21:16 Steven Bartlett? What was like, what's like a day in the life of someone working in a project that deals with UFOs at the Pentagon? Like, you come in in the morning, you get your coffee?
1:21:25 Speaker 00 I had the two worst portfolios anybody could ever ask for at the Pentagon. Um, I was, I was, I was like a pariah. I had the two most unpopular portfolios. I was, on one hand, I was working the UAP issue, UFO issue. On the other hand, I was also working Guantanamo Bay issues. Um, very politically charged, very untenable situation. Uh, but that was my job. So I had both those portfolios. And so every day was, um, it was like riding a tiger to work. And every day that tiger just wanted to rip you off and shred you
1:22:06 Speaker 00 into pieces. And you just had to hold on for dear life. Yeah, it was, um, it was stressful. In 2014, uh, I was informed that I was put on the ISIS Al Qaeda kill list for, uh, my work at, uh, involving Guantanamo Bay.
1:22:23 Speaker 00 And of course, we had the UAP issue. It was uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable times. It was uncomfortable time for me professionally. I wouldn't have wished it on anybody.
1:22:35 Steven Bartlett? Did you enjoy it?
1:22:36 Speaker 00 I enjoyed the people. I enjoyed the mission and doing what I thought and what I think is right for our nation. But no, I mean, if there was an easier job I could have had, I probably would have done it. But most of my jobs, I tended to be handpicked to do the jobs I had done.
1:22:56 Speaker 00 I guess someone somewhere thought I was doing a good job with other stuff and they kind of always bump me to new stuff.
1:23:02 Steven Bartlett? How does your work with UFOs and your belief in these other, I was gonna say life forms, but just these other forms of, I don't know, activity that we can't explain because I hesitate on the word life forms because again.
1:23:18 Speaker 00 Yeah, and let me say, it's not a belief in life, it's a belief in possibilities.
1:23:21 Steven Bartlett? Okay, right.
1:23:22 Speaker 00 I don't know. I can't tell you definitively that, oh, I believe in, you know, life and then looks like this in other parts of the galaxy. I don't know. I don't know that. I haven't been to space. I couldn't tell you. But we have to remain open to the possibilities and look at the data. A lot of the data speak for itself and then draw conclusions based upon the data.
1:23:42 Steven Bartlett? Did this understanding make your life more fulfilling or feel more insignificant? Because I sometimes think of when I spend time watching space movies and documentaries and I see them flying to Mars and then through these black holes and stuff. It reminds me how big and vast the universe really is. And all of that then makes me feel a few things, two things at the same time. One of them is like totally insignificant in the grand scheme of what's out there. And the technologies you've described and the way you've described them in part makes me feel quite insignificant because I'm like, I'm just this tiny little grain of sand in this never ending beach and I really don't matter in the grand scheme of this.
1:24:21 Steven Bartlett? And then the second thing, which is a positive consequence of that feeling is it kind of alleviates your anxiety, I guess. Like nothing really matters. Nothing, there's nothing to worry about.
1:24:31 Speaker 00 That is very insightful. Can I, can I ask you a favor? So you have a little iPad in front of you. Type in the words pale blue dot under Google Images and I want you to tell me what you see.
1:24:44 Steven Bartlett? Okay, I'll type in pale blue dot.
1:24:49 Speaker 00 Do you know what that is? Take a look at that. Blow it up. Zoom in. What do you see?
1:24:54 Steven Bartlett? It's a tiny little dot of light. Um, tiny little, there's this massive, I mean, it looks like, kind of like the night sky, almost. And there's this tiny little dot of light.
1:25:06 Speaker 00 You know what that is?
1:25:07 Steven Bartlett? What is that?
1:25:08 Speaker 00 That's the planet you live on. That's Earth.
1:25:10 Steven Bartlett? Oh, that's Earth, okay.
1:25:11 Speaker 00 Every memory, every piece of history occurred on that tiny little insignificant ball hurtling through the vastness and vacuum of space. And that ray of light is actually from the sun. And that was taken by one of our probes as it was heading out towards the solar system. And it was told to turn back and take a picture. That's our home. How does that picture make you feel?
1:25:39 Steven Bartlett? Totally insignificant, irrelevant, um, like I just don't matter.
1:25:45 Speaker 00 But how, but how about this? Yes, it will make you feel insignificant, but you notice it can do? Make you realize just how special we really are. That little blue dot, the little engine that could, that's where we live. That's our home. And that is real and that is special.
1:26:05 Speaker 00 So, to answer your question, how does it make me feel? You can feel insignificant and still feel special at the same time. And that's why I wanted you to see that picture. Because you're illustrating for me exactly the question you're asking me. And so in order to rather than just give you an answer, I wanted you to experience my answer. And that is my answer.
1:26:28 Steven Bartlett? What do your kids think of what you do these days?
1:26:32 Speaker 00 I don't know what I do. My children are the greatest accomplishment in my life. There'll be nothing in my life that will ever come close to the achievement of being a father. Period, full stop. So, there's nothing I will ever do that will come close to that. So it doesn't really matter, uh, what I do else in life. Because that's the most important. Now, what do they think about what I do? You probably have to ask them.
1:26:52 Steven Bartlett? Do they believe in UAP?
1:26:53 Speaker 00 It's not belief. They, they believe in data. I never told them to believe in UAP.
1:26:57 Steven Bartlett? But do they believe that we are alone in the universe?
1:27:00 Speaker 00 Ah, that's a different question. Let's, well, you'd have to ask them for that. But, but let me, let's, let's break that down again because it's important. We, we, we love going into these binary things, either or, okay?
1:27:14 Speaker 00 Does life exist in the universe? Yes, this is living proof. This planet, okay? In fact, life is abundant. Life is everywhere on this planet. Even the place that we think would never possibly exist. It is there and it thrives.
1:27:27 Speaker 00 My, my daughters are very open minded, but they're also independent thinkers. I taught them, don't be like mom and dad. If you don't want to be like mom and dad, if we do something stupid, don't do it. You know, learn the lesson. So we've never prescribed our children what to think or what to believe, ever. It's been up to them. They are incredibly intelligent. They both have very successful careers.
1:27:51 Speaker 00 And they think on their own. And what they think is sacred. And I don't ever want to interfere with that. I've always told them, you know, I'm not asking you to believe anything.
1:27:59 Steven Bartlett? Do you believe we're alone in the universe?
1:28:01 Speaker 00 We are absolutely not alone in the universe.
1:28:07 Steven Bartlett? We just better hope the other life is kind, I guess.
1:28:13 Speaker 00 Ah, see, but there we go again. Isn't it? Me too. But, but what is kind?
1:28:17 Steven Bartlett? Let's just hope they don't hurt us.
1:28:18 Speaker 00 Ah, that's different. You're right.
1:28:20 Steven Bartlett? Let's hope they don't eradicate us.
1:28:22 Speaker 00 Right. Let's hope they're, they're, they're not malevolent. I would agree with that. Let's hope they're not, you know, here for their own interests and not ours.
1:28:29 Steven Bartlett? Why did you call the book imminent?
1:28:32 Speaker 00 Open the, open the first page.
1:28:35 Speaker 00 There, when you get to the first written, actual words, it's before the foreword. It's, what's it say?
1:28:42 Steven Bartlett? Says, you may be wondering why I titled this book imminent. The word itself sometimes is associated with another word, threat. Although at first glance, it may appear that this book focuses on the potential threat of unidentified anomalous phenomena, UAP or UFOs in the vernacular. That is not my intent. According to some of the common definitions of the word imminent, it usually means something is about to happen or impending or inevitable. This is precisely why I chose the, this title.
1:29:10 Steven Bartlett? The invasion isn't imminent, though. That's kind of what I'm trying to check.
1:29:12 Speaker 00 I know. But that's not my intent.
1:29:16 Steven Bartlett? We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. And the question that's been left for you is, what is something you were once deeply afraid of that now you are no longer afraid of?
1:29:36 Speaker 00 Fear.
1:29:41 Speaker 00 Fear. I'm not afraid of it anymore. I used to be afraid of everything, afraid of combat, afraid of death, afraid of war, afraid of healthcare, she's afraid of other people, not for me, but for other people.
1:29:57 Speaker 00 It's a little bit liberating to not be afraid.
1:30:02 Speaker 00 It's like the old saying, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, right?
1:30:08 Speaker 00 I mean, clearly, I'm still concerned, there's concern, but actual fear. Man, I'm over fifty years old, brother. There's nothing that anybody can do to me that, at this point, I've lived a full life, and I've had more than my fair share, whatever, dude. You know, if I spend the rest of my life, it doesn't matter, because I've lived such an incredible life and I have an incredible family, so it doesn't really matter.
1:30:32 Steven Bartlett? Lou, thank you. Thank you for your time and thank you for writing a book which gives us a very, very rare view into what happens inside the Pentagon as it relates to the subject of UAP slash UFOs. It's called Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs: Eminent, and I highly recommend anybody that's interested in these subjects to read this book. I'll link it in the description below because it's fascinating. You know, I'm certainly someone that believes we're not alone in the universe. I have no idea what that means or what that looks like, and I think to really have a strong view either way, to think that we're not alone, or to think that you can perfectly articulate who is here with us, is probably some form of naivety and ignorance, and probably, you know.
1:31:13 Speaker 00 Well, they're one and the same, right? The true believers and the true skeptics, they're just on opposite ends of the spectrum, because no matter what information you give them, they're never going to change their narrative. So I think you're right.
1:31:23 Steven Bartlett? And I think generally, I think a better position to take on all these subjects is to remain open-minded, and that's why I was keen to have this conversation, because I'm just, I like to remain open-minded to information and there's so many times in history that we thought we had it figured out and we didn't. So to think we have it figured out now is stupidity, frankly, so.
1:31:41 Speaker 00 Exactly.
1:31:42 Steven Bartlett? Lou, thank you.
1:31:43 Speaker 00 My honor, my privilege. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
1:31:50 Steven Bartlett? Isn't this cool? Every single conversation I have here on the Diary of a CEO, at the very end of it, you'll know, I ask the guest to leave a question in the Diary of a CEO. And what we've done is we've turned every single question written in the Diary of a CEO into these Conversation Cards that you can play at home. So you've got every guest we've ever had, their question, and on the back of it, if you scan that QR code, you get to watch the person who answered that question. We're finally revealing all of the questions and the people that answered the question. The brand new version two updated Conversation Cards are out right now at theconversationcards.com.
1:32:35 Steven Bartlett? They've sold out twice instantaneously. So if you are interested in getting hold of some limited edition Conversation Cards, I really, really recommend acting quickly.
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