in 2017 this new york times headline shocked the world a clandestine us government program have been investigating ufos the pentagon has confirmed the existence of the advanced aerospace threat identification program that studied ufos and they released video [Applause] for eight years the secret program was run by this man lou elizondo time and time again we were coming up with these mystery objects performing in a way that defies logic frustrated by what he says was a cover-up elizondo quit and joined forces with an elite group of former government insiders we're going to figure out how to get to the bottom of it now they have one mission to expose what they say is the truth about ufos u.s airspace is being violated by vehicles of unknown origin with advanced capabilities it was raining ufos i put my entire career and future on the line because i believe in what i believe in carl sagan once famously said extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof he was absolutely right but now we have the proof [Music] lou elizondo is on his way to interview a key eyewitness to one of the most stunning ufo events in recent history we're trying to build a case here for the jury and so when you're building a case for the jury there is nothing more compelling than eyewitness testimony they were there and by the way they're trained observers these are people who can think critically and this particular pilot has never given an interview about this incident ever in 2004 this navy fighter pilot was training for deployment on board the uss nimitz aircraft carrier now a high-ranking officer this is her first on-camera interview about the incident she wants to keep her identity hidden due to the sensitivity of what she's about to say i want to make sure that everybody in this room understands that her identity is to remain protected at all times so when that includes when you're writing notes on email back to executives hey that was a great interview with don't write that don't put it in there just say the pilot wingman pilot would be appropriate okay so that's the wingman pilot i still have a security clearance so as a result we will not be discussing anything classified at all during this interview in fact if at any time anything is discussed and classified we will stop the interview right there and then sure elizondo is still bound by notes of secrecy so he hopes testimony like this will force the government to acknowledge ufos are a threat to national security and to take action because this issue is such kryptonite inside the national security establishment he needed to figure out a way to do it so that what he's gathering could be made public these are not crazy people that are reporting this stuff these are the people that we entrust our security to why don't we just start from the beginning we were operating off the coast of california in a designated military working area with our carrier strike group we had launched to perform a practice fight against each other to rehearse our maneuvers on november fourteenth 14 2004 this pilot took off from the deck of the nimitz as the wingman to a second jet flown by her squadron commander she soon found herself in the middle of one of the most significant ufo encounters on record it was daylight and oh yeah it was in the middle of the night clear blue skies middle of the day normally fighter pilots are directed by a radar plane known as a hawkeye but the two fa-18 super hornets are suddenly redirected by controllers on the uss princeton we were interrupted by a ship-borne controller their tone was urgent and their requests were unusual this is not an exercise this is a real world intercept didn't have much experience i thought maybe it's a drug runner or something coming up the coast of mexico and i thought wow that would be cool with no information about their target as the two jets arrive at the designated location they're confused my heart sank there was something in the water there was a churning and i went from being sort of giddy excited to thinking oh my god now we're on scene commanders of iraq somebody's crashed and you know this aircraft is sinking and this is when you notice an object we were all clamoring to get on the radio do you see in the water what is that a bizarre craft is hovering over the churning water what does it look like no windows no flight surfaces so no wings at all no wings no smooth white no intakes no smoke trail it looked like a giant tic tac give me a rough size maybe 40 feet okay 40 feet fair enough large enough to scare the anatomy it was so unnerving because it was so unpredictable high g rapid velocity rapid acceleration so you're wondering you know how can i possibly fight this we have no ordinance on board you know unless one of us rammed this thing which the way it was maneuvering would have been impossible so i stayed high cover the wingmen watched from above as her commander flies directly at the strange craft now elizondo is on his way to interview the other pilot in the air that day the wingman's commander these are reports from military pilots they've been in combat and this is something that they cannot explain and it's shaking them up to the point that they're willing to risk their professional standing by coming forward and talking about it [Music] brother dave how are you how you doing man i'm doing better than i deserve how you doing good boy you live in a castle man [Laughter] retired u.s navy commander david fravor led the black aces squadron flying combat missions over the middle east and africa he now works in the private sector as an aeronautics consultant instantaneous acceleration commander fravor is a very rare breed he's one of the few folks that actually run towards danger not away from it fravor was the wingman's commanding officer that day over the pacific he had that fighter instinct so it wasn't surprising his actions on that day i really wanted to see what it was i mean if i could have joined right up on it and you know got like blue angel close then i probably would have done that as fraver attempted to get a closer look his wingmen watched from above this object seemed to recognize that we were there and went from this very low altitude to maneuvering in an erratic uh very rapid manner [Music] so the hair on the back of my neck is standing up i'm thinking i'm going to be watching a disaster here most of my questions are going to be focused on the five interrogatives right the who what when where how and why just like we're doing a terrorism and our espionage investigation lou elizondo may be the most significant u.s official to ever claim the ufo phenomenon is real for two decades he served as a counterintelligence officer for the department of defense lou is in many ways an enigma here was a guy who had spent decades really in the intelligence community whether it was the taliban or as al-qaeda or as isis or as guantanamo bay he had to deal with all of it in 2009 elizondo took over the 22 million advanced aerospace threat identification program or a-tip that investigated encounters between ufos and the u.s military is this three reports was this five reports we were made aware of many many many many incidents it remains of a sensitive number those numbers are increasing on a regular and routine basis some of these incidents are very very recent and very compelling but in 2017 he made the shocking announcement he was walking away from a 20-year military career and going public i had tried in vain to work within the silos of the organization but i ultimately left the department of defense because of my loyalty to the department and to the secretary not disloyalty for the past year unidentified cameras have had exclusive access to elizondo and his new team as they track down military personnel willing to go on the record with their incredible encounters with ufos you are able to provide a play-by-play of what actually went down those moments that you were encountering that tic tac that's correct so all that's going to be hugely important he's meeting with one of the navy's top former fighter pilots who came face to face with a tic-tac-shaped ufo in 2004 flying a navy fighter is probably one of the most spectacular jobs you could ever have in the entire world it's like a roller coaster times ten thousand and i got to do it in some semblance of a tactical airplane for 18 years on november 14 2004 commander david fravor and his wingman pilot took off from the uss nimitz which was on maneuvers south of san diego i was the commanding officer of strike fighter squadron 4-1 the black aces we're flying brand new super hornets the nuclear-powered uss nimitz was the lead vessel of a carrier strike group that included the destroyers uss higgins and chafee the attack submarine uss louisville and the radar-equipped missile cruiser uss princeton if you asked any senior military officer what is the crown jewel of the american military arsenal they would say the aircraft carrier battle group if we have to go into combat sometime quickly it's likely going to be a carrier battle group that's going to be there first and it's going to be in action first it was an air defense exercise two good guys against two bad guys probably 70 miles 60 miles off the coast in the gap between san diego and ensenada suddenly the pilots are contacted by radar operators on the princeton the princeton control comes up and says we're going to suspend training we have real-world tasking the pilots are re-vectored to a new destination but aren't told why so we start heading off to the west the other airplane is on my left hand side i was the junior pilot trying to keep up with the senior pilot and the lead aircraft we're looking we don't see anything on our radars at all and we're talking to each other trying to figure this out the princeton's aegis spy-1 radar system is powerful enough to track an object as small as a baseball at an altitude of 80 000 feet but the jets are flying blind we tried to see what was out there which is difficult when you know what you're looking for it's even harder when you don't know what you're looking for so it goes down 60 50 40 30 20 gets all the way down they get to a point where they can't separate us from the blip they call it merge plot which means you're in the same space as whatever you're looking for and you got to start looking outside because the radar can't help you anymore then far below in the water they see what looks like a plane crash or a submerging submarine but the weapons officer in the rear seat of fravor's jet spots something else i hear hey skipper do you see and as he's saying that i noticed the tic tac it's white it has no wings it has no rotors i go holy what is that and he goes i don't know according to this leaked summary of the incident contact was made here 30 miles off the coast 70 miles south of the u.s mexico border
at first the strange craft stays close to the surface moving unlike anything the pilots had ever seen this thing would go instantaneous from one way to another similar to if you threw a ping-pong ball against the wall and we start to kind of orbit because now we're going to watch this thing we start a right-hand turn and we're going from a clock code the object is in the middle of the clock and we're at six o'clock and we're driving around the circle so we get to about nine o'clock and it's just still doing its little erratic thing kind of moving around this disturbance in the water and and i go hey i'm gonna go check it out i'll go down there as we're coming down nice and easy we get to about the 12 o'clock position and all of a sudden it goes and it kind of turns and it's now it's mirroring us and it starts coming up we're like okay now it knows we're here it seemed to be aware and it seems to recognize him it goes from basically just almost a hover into a pretty aggressive climb up to our altitudes when there's a bit of fear because now you're out there dealing with something that you have no idea what it is it's actually reacting to what we're doing i'm kind of pulling nose you know to where he's going to be and he's coming up he just rapidly accelerates beyond anything that i've ever seen crosses my nose and it's gone and i'm like whoa the tic tac appears to have vanished but as the jets streak towards a prearranged rendezvous location known as the cap point the radio chatter becomes frantic the controller from the princeton comes up right as we're doing all this and says hey sir you're not going to believe this he goes but that thing is at your cat point according to fravor the tic tac accelerated from a standing position and flew approximately 60 miles in under a minute as fast as 3 700 miles an hour how did the tic tac know the pilot's cap point and how did it accelerate so quickly you got something that can accelerate and disappear and then show up 60 miles away kind of in awe a little bit because you go whoa we don't have that you know and i'm talking we're flying uh one of the premier airplanes on the planet what was this there was a capability out there don't know where it's from not saying it's from outer space but not saying it's from here either back on the nimitz the pilots tell the rest of the squadron what just happened the next crew is getting ready so we're talking to them about this and they're like you gotta be kidding they took us seriously and the wizzo the guy in the back seat said i'm gonna go find it the next jet to launch had a targeting pod with an infrared sensor and camera it jammed the radar but he got a lock on it and that's the video that you see that doesn't weird yet i don't know what does hey guys how are you good lou how are you good hope he can shed some light on a few things november 14 2004 two pilots launched from the uss nimitz and intercepted a ufo over the pacific south of san diego what did it look like no windows no flight surfaces it looked like a giant tic tac they believed this video recorded later that day by a pilot from their squadron shows the ufo they saw it's one of three department of defense ufo videos louis elizondo helped get released to the public when the three videos came out there was this shock by the world community that oh my gosh these are real videos this effort that we are embarking on i think is going to change a conversation forever now elizondo is meeting with two leading aviation experts to analyze the videos and see if they can help explain the pilot's extraordinary encounters [Music] what i'd like to do is go through these videos very carefully and get your thoughts on these the providence on these videos is very well established they are genuine dod military videos retired lieutenant colonel chris cook is a top gun pilot who spent a career flying the military's most sophisticated fighter jets ross aimer flew commercial aircraft for more than four decades and works as a consultant for the national transportation safety board it's the first time the three men have spoken so the first video i'm going to show you this afternoon was taking it in the 2004 time frame the first video shows the tic-tac-shaped object seen by the nimitz pilots captured by an f-18's infrared camera if you look at it out of context you think oh this is just another ufo video but from my perspective he absolutely captured what we saw earlier in the day 90 second video shows the tic tac flying slowly then sipping away at what appears to be a high rate of speed the altitude is 20 000 feet we're in the tv mode now so it's visual the displays indicators are familiar to the pilots but the image on screen is confusing it doesn't appear to have any characteristics of any normal aircraft that i've witnessed flying the experts wonder how the craft is staying airborne without wings no flight control surfaces i don't see that it does not look like an aircraft but in these images of a fighter jet also shot with an infrared camera the heat from the engine is clearly visible everything we know about propulsion systems is they create an intense amount of heat so if it was a conventional type aircraft you would most most definitely see some type of uh an ir signature plume uh behind the airplane [Applause] if you want to defy earth's gravitational force the way to do it is with either a propeller to mechanically displace air jet engine to compress air to create an equal opposite reaction or a chemical explosion like a missile or a rocket each one of those has a tall tail signature yet here are things that are able to seemingly effortlessly defy earth's gravitational force and maneuver in ways that are complete contrary to anything that we would presume should be able to fly the ability to fly without wings or an engine is one of five distinct characteristics elizondo's pentagon team discovered he calls them the observables and considers them the program's breakthrough discovery anti-gravity the ability to fly without apparent means of propulsion or lift instantaneous acceleration the ability to reach a high rate of speed in a short amount of time hypersonic velocity speeds over 3 700 miles per hour five times the speed of sound low observability the capacity to cloak or conceal trans-medium travel the ability to move through space air and water any one of these mind you would be an absolute strategic game changer for any foreign adversary to have and yet here we have things doing all five nobody that i know is aware of some breakthrough that we've made in technology that could allow aircraft to do what these reportedly are doing brian bender is one of the reporters who broke the story of the pentagon secret ufo program these aircraft seem to defy all of the known aerodynamic properties that we're familiar with so let's let's let the film keep rolling the object the navy pilot is tracking suddenly seems to get bigger so what just happened there what's he doing is he trying to changing the zoom the object then appears to accelerate rapidly disappearing off screen that's a significant rate of acceleration in a horizontal plane off to the left that's very fast the object appears to perform a similar maneuver to what the pilots witnessed we're all amazed at how fast this thing just took off and disappeared instantaneous acceleration at this rate would produce a force of gravity or g-force so extreme it would crush a human being i have no idea what that thing is and it's not acting like a aircraft it's not acting like anything i've ever seen yeah if there are vehicles out there aircraft that are doing things aerodynamically that we've never even thought of then i think we potentially could have real trouble down the road [Music] there was another f-18 that was flying with commander dave fravor that day and for the first time frankly ever we were able to talk to that individual there was there was some frustration frankly there was there was a little bit of fear lou elizondo is briefing his team on new information he's learned about the uss nimitz incident this elite group of former government insiders was formed in 2017 bound by their conviction that the craft in these videos must be investigated we can make a difference and do things because we have the connections in the network and if we can continue to establish credibility with people in the hill and the executive branch we might be able to take this the next step chris mellon served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence steve justice was a top aviation engineer at lockheed martin's legendary skunkworks al putoff was a scientist for the cia if you were trying to come up with the a-team of former high-level government officials who would come forward on this issue you can't really think of a better team lou elizondo chris mellon these are guys who still have security clearances still have networks in washington still are in the business if you will chris mello who's put his entire family's reputation on the line to do this steve just has left a very lucrative job at lockheed skunk works to do this but by far the most unlikely member of elizondo's new team is the man who brought them all together the last show i played was in front of 100 000 people the lights and the pyrotechnics and all that stuff was going on right behind me and then they wonder why i'm not doing that now so back it up introduce yourself yeah my name is tom delong a lot of people know me from my band blink 182 i started that band when i was 16. but i got to that point where my daughter was two years old and i was gone for two years straight and i really really needed a break the only other thing i was ever interested in was ufos de long walked away from stardom and dedicated himself to disclosing what he believes is the truth about ufos i needed to get into the government and i needed to find the people that deal with this subject and let them know what i'm thinking of doing delong says he was able to secure a meeting with a high-level aerospace executive with deep connections to the military all of a sudden out of nowhere i had an opening and i just go i am not naive to this subject i understand the national security implications of this subject but i am asking for your help because i need guidance i just need somebody to help me and give me advice and he leans back and he goes okay that's when my life changed completely soon de long was covertly communicating with powerful people including general william mccaslin the former head of a billion dollar air force research lab and john podesta the former presidential advisor who once said his biggest regret in the white house was not releasing the government's ufo files tom called me out of the blue sort of who is this fellow and why is he calling me and we began to chat and i began to chat with some of the other people he was talking to and he clearly was establishing a network of people who had serious credentials there are people like me who see this as an incredible mystery and enigma that needs to be resolved de long says they were all part of an elite group of high-ranking officials dedicated to ufo disclosure but they wanted to remain in the shadows do you think there's a way over time that we can open up some of these discussions declassify material we ought to be serious about investigating what's going on other countries have done that other countries have classified the information they've had he's one of the most tenacious individuals i've ever met he got to the highest levels of the u.s government to include podesta south l.a but in october 2016 on the eve of the heated presidential election de long was thrust into a media storm wikileaks released more emails the result it appears of massive hacks into the national democratic committee private email account of clinton campaign chair john podesta and who knows who else delong's communications with john podesta and others were stolen by russian hackers and published online by wikileaks the one rule they had is we will help you but don't go out and tell anybody who we are that's the only rule overnight de long found himself at the center of the decades-old debate about ufos i think a lot of people thought that tom delonge was being used was he was being used as a tool they'll tell him some stuff that's not true and it'll be a diversion and we'll fool the russians or fool the chinese george knapp is an investigative journalist who has reported extensively about ufos i'm just going to ask you point blank is tom delong being controlled by a small group of powerful insiders no no i think tom delong has plotted out his own course he's got some really good advisors who are not part of the government all of these events that have happened are because tom de long used shoe leather knocked on doors made phone calls what tom has started in the last year is unprecedented i think in the history of the study of this field by the fall of 2017 de long had assembled his team thanks for joining us live today then he learned the head of the pentagon's secret ufo program had resigned in protest and wanted to join forces it was luis elizondo it was the guy that i wasn't supposed to know his name ever it was the guy that worked at the office of the director of national intelligence and they said but there's one other thing there's the first three videos of ufos are going to be declassified for the first time in u.s history
what it means for america to be under attack on 9 11 he was one of the highest ranking officials inside the pentagon i have lived through and survived intelligence failures including the attack on the pentagon this was a group of 20 guys with no special skills or capabilities or technology and they were able to wreak massive havoc on our country to me what is most interesting about this case most pilots don't report these kinds of incidents where people are bringing information in cases does which is a sign that you know we're establishing some some credibility and some presence now melons out of government part of an elite team of investigators raising the alarm about what they see as another potential aerial threat what is really motivating me right now is the nimitz case we had multiple naval aviators and what they saw in broad daylight over an extended period of time was corroborated by the most sophisticated sensor systems air defense systems on earth any reasonable person would have to conclude defies present understanding of what aircraft are capable of doing it was clearly something beyond the pale chris mellon is an interesting character he's never been very public his jobs have sort of demanded him to work behind the curtain melon hails from one of america's richest and most powerful families the melons made fortunes in oil aluminum and banking and wielded power for generations but chris mellon found his calling in intelligence overseeing the budgets for some of america's most secret programs i was at the senate armed services committee another report emerged indicating the united states had lost a nuclear weapon so they sent me to try to find out what happened to the missing nuke warhead back when i was a junior person in the department of defense we all knew who who christopher mellon was this was a man who had all the secrets i was at area 51 talking to some guys there working some programs and i said do you guys ever see anything really strange i was almost embarrassed to even ask about it because of the the stigma surrounding the topic and much to my surprise these guys said yeah we've see some really strange stuff here at night the deeper melon looked into the controversial subject the more he began to question why the government was doing nothing about it here's a guy who presumably would know or be able to find out if these sightings were related to some very secret military program that these nimitz pilots for example were not aware of and clearly chris doesn't seem to think that these instances were military aircraft being tested and you know in secret he feels so strongly about it that he came out of the shadows when it's not really in his dna to do that chris mellon and lou elizondo weren't the only officials within the government concerned about a potential threat the pentagon secret ufo unit atip was established by a small group of senators including former astronaut john glenn world war ii veterans daniel inouye and ted stevens and former senate majority leader harry reid it's amazing that an individual who worked at such a high level for so long as the majority leader of the united states senate would choose this among all of the myriad of issues that he engaged on with all of the challenges confronting our country today and this is one that he chooses in the twilight of his career to try to carry forward in 2009 reed sent this letter to the deputy secretary of defense arguing america needed to study the potentially groundbreaking technology behind these bizarre craft before it got into the hands of our enemies reed requested a small unit with one of the highest levels of secrecy it was the birth of atip he's making that case and that the strategic inflations are so great that we have to accord it special protection this wasn't the first time the u.s government studied ufos the air force launched project blue book in 1952 when a rash of ufo sightings put the nation on edge this is david brinkley in the radar room at washington national airport on these radar screens last saturday they saw something strange and unusual and at the moment unexplainable it was not an airplane it was not a cloud nobody knows what it was for the next 17 years the air force studied over 12 000 ufo sightings and found 701 cases that couldn't be explained but they concluded the incidents posed no national security threat and officially shut project blue book down in 1969. it wasn't lack of compelling information it was actually the result of compelling information ultimately they determined that they needed to tamp down the concern the public concern in part because during the cold war this could uh create some kind of hysteria and overwhelm our air defense systems so the government behind the scenes concluded that they needed to discredit this phenomenon melon claims project blue book created a stigma around ufos that continues to this day inside the military i talked to people in the pentagon who had relayed that they were concerned it was going to make the defense intelligence agency look bad they were more concerned about the optics of it i wonder if at some point this is going to go down as a historical document where people are going to look back and say you know it doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on that was heroic i was never formally debriefed and i wasn't taken seriously for years for over a decade the accounts of two navy fighter pilots of an encounter with an unidentified craft south of san diego were dismissed by the u.s navy if i had been a single
seat pilot and i had encountered it by myself i probably wouldn't have said anything i wouldn't want to risk my security clearance i wouldn't want to arrest people thinking i was a freak or crazy you actually get four people that are eyewitnesses to the performance of this thing and then nothing gets done so the frustration that comes out of that is why it was not only ridicule but then the intel people didn't seem to be interested in their story it was the worst of both worlds for months lou elizondo and former assistant deputy secretary of defense for intelligence chris mellon have been working behind the scenes to organize a meeting between the two pilots and members of congress if people see the evidence they'll understand and they'll find it compelling sometimes it's only by bringing the information public and bringing to the attention of congress that you get action elizondo is driving across the country when one of the pilots retired navy commander david fravor calls to tell him the unprecedented meeting has just taken place fantastic and they asked you some hard good questions on the record oh my god phenomenal fraver tells elizondo that he and his wingman pilot met in secret with members of congress responsible for national security the senators don't want their names revealed because of the sensitivity of the issue the press was not informed and the meeting is not found on any official schedule do you feel positive that it was well received well congratulations you just made history brother again for the first time in history u.s senators were briefed for the record on ufos affecting u.s military aircraft and operations for elizondo this meeting is the first step in an effort to wake lawmakers up to a serious threat to national security how does the story end i have no idea who it was or what it was maybe it's elon musk or somebody out there coming up with some you know disruptive technology that's gonna change our lives like an iphone you know if you'd show me an iphone when i was in high school i would have thought it was voodoo magic i hope it ends peacefully you have to ask yourself is it et or is it independence day you know what's the intent and right now we don't know i promise i will try not to yammer on too long i don't think necessarily disclosure is an event i think it's a process and i think that process began we trust the american people to know that there are certain countries that have nuclear warheads pointed at new york and los angeles that could wipe out millions of people in an instant and yet we don't trust the american people to know that there's something in our airspace so we don't know what it is there's a lot more i don't know than i do know but that's okay that's why we have to continue to seek to find the answers and collect the data because ultimately the data will speak for itself i think the public is closer to understanding the ufo mystery than in any time in my lifetime it's astonishing and yeah it's it's a little bit scary what's worst-case scenario well we talked about it i followed i would tell you already it's too late because it's here so we have a choice we can live with our heads buried in the sand and hope it goes away or we can take our head out of the sand and try to figure out how it works but it doesn't really care what we think in this room because it's here this season on unidentified [Applause] never forget those voices you know those voices yeah elizondo's mission to track down more eyewitnesses if i hadn't seen it with my own eyes i don't know if i would have believed it either choo-choo choo choo it was raining ufos leads him to reveal a disturbing pattern they disappeared down off the coast i could tell you the latter long i saw a little sphere suddenly it shook it moved like that fast and to expose an even larger threat these ufos had an intense interest in anything nuclear what are they and where are they from the beams went down into the weapon storage area and i'm thinking oh my god now these objects have a global presence helicopter arrived and they requested all the data reporting they didn't want the world to know which is scary you don't know what else they're covering up unidentified vehicles are operating at will in restricted airspace just minutes from the nation's capital thousands of people experience unidentified flying objects it's time to look into it you can't ignore facts you
2022-06-22