Destiny: Nick Pope, First Contact

Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning. Hey, Hi, I hope you're doing well. I had a great opportunity at this conference, Contact in the Desert, which is really focused on UFOs alien abductions, the phenomenon which has been rebranded as UAPs Unidentified aerial phenomenon, and the beans

flying them. And it's really quite interesting that since that conference there's been a tremendous amount of information coming out from the military, and most notably a whistle blower known as David Grish, and we're going to talk about him in a minute. But today's program is focused on government releasing data or government's knowledge of

UFOs UAPs. Now, if you've been listening to me for a few years now, I've had a great interest in this phenomenon directly, and twenty years ago, i'd say maybe even twenty five years ago, I would program direct conferences and focus on the latest and the greatest people at that time. In subsequently years, I became frustrated because it just wasn't moving quick enough. We

weren't having disclosure for the government. NASA was covering up all kinds of stuff, and they continue to cover up material Department of Defense Space Command, even

the European Space Agency was not coming clean and was adherent. It appeared adherent to this document known as the Brookings Institute Research and Clarification Document, which basically says that the United States citizens would have a complete meltdown in the face of disclosing the fact that we are not alone, that there perhaps is evidence of an ancient alien civilization on Mars, on the Moon, perhaps even evidence here

on Earth that there was an alien civilization. Now, the TV program Ancient Aliens, I believe goes a little too far. They highlight and speculate a little too much in my book, and what that means is that what they cannot explain, like the Great Pyramid, the Osyrian, the Sphinx, and hundreds, if not thousands of other anomalies they attribute to aliens. That's flat out just over the top wrong. But I will say this, and my guest today is part of the Ancient alien group. His name is Nick Pope.

And what makes Nick so fascinating is that he used to work for the Ministry of Defense in England and he was a investigator of not only at that time UFOs, but also the alien Abduction phenomenon, the alien contact phenomenon, and civilian activity related to sightings, and we'll talk about that when we have him on the program. But my great frustration over the years is this cover

up of this information. And I think I've read this a few weeks ago that on a yearly basis, there are something like ten to sixteen thousand sightings around the world, thousands of sightings, and some of them can be just you know, they used to use the term swamp gas. Some of them can be sudden reflections and what do they call that, flyovers by comments, by satellites, so forth, and so on that are moving in the sky. But there is a huge phenomenon, a huge number that are actual off

world vehicles flown by intelligence beings from other planetary systems. It's time, and I will say this again, to give us the information our government and those governments outside of the United States fill that we are too sensitive, we're too childlike, we're too adolescent to have this information delivered to us in an adult manner. And because they covered up, they're causing themselves more problems now recently. And we talk about this all the time on Destiny as well as or

ancients the Department of Defense requisitioned a group of theologians. These are religious people like priests and pastors and other religious heads of church, to say, to ask them what they felt would be our reaction to this disclosure of an alien civilization surveying us, observing us, and in some cases landing and either taking samples of the earth and animals, in some cases contacting human beings. What

would be our reaction? Now, for the most part, they still believe and this is what's so crazy about this, And I'm gonna tell you why in a second. Rather, the religious side of it still feels threatened. Perhaps an advanced civilization a thousand, ten thousand years or more would question the whole religious fundamentalism, religious Why you know why religion? Why do you need religion? We don't know, but they feel uncomfortable. But you know what,

why did they ask a religious group, the theologians? Their opinion religion is fading. People are leaving the church in droves. Thousands of people every year leave the Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, and so forth and so on. If you are a religious person, what I'm telling you probably is a little upsetting. I don't want to upset you. My point being is

the church is not the place to ask this question. They should and they'll be better off getting a really good gauge as to the reaction of earth United States citizens. Ask social media. Ask those people in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, ask those people. Now, it's going to be a younger audience. The older audience is less likely to be a part of that.

But you have people in their eighties and beyond still looking at Facebook, still tweeting, still, you know, filling their pages with images for Instagram. Those are the people who are reading the papers, who are wanting to know what's happening with their state, with their country, with the world.

They are the ones to ask. And I bet you and I can almost guarantee that if they were to be surveyed what their opinion is in contact, if an alien civilization was discovered surveying us, observing us, and we were able to identify their craft and the pilots behind these UAPs, we would want to know. Those people would want to know. And this is how pardon me asked backward the United States government is and I think this is why these

whistleblowers are starting to show up now. I'm going to play you a short interview with David Grish. He's a former Air Force intelligence officer. This is something that just happened. He is revealing that there is a special ops in the United States government that has retrieved you fos in full and complete form and damned form. And he also goes on to say that they've also retrieved dead

pilots. He uses the term pilots. I think that's funny, rather than occupants of uf UFOs an he's a Air Force guy, it's the pilots. So this is how a quick listen. This is a show that aired a couple of days ago, and this is wonderful because this is what is happening. The service is like kind of blowing up, imploding under the pressure of this data. And these are servicemen and women who are dedicated to the United States, but they've had about enough of it. So have a quick listen.

You are one of the most trusted former intelligence officials in the US to thins and intelligence establishment. Yes, I was. You were trusted of the most intimate secrets. Yes, what conclusion did you come to at the end of your time on the UAP Task Force? The UAP Task Force was refused access to a broad crash retrieval program. When you say crash retrieval, what

do you mean? These are retrieving non human origin technical vehicles. You know, call it spacecraft if you will, non human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed. We have spicecraft from another species, we do. Yeah? How many? Quite a number? You're kidding now. I thought it was totally nuts, and I thought at first I was being deceived. It was a ruse. People started confiding in me, They approached me.

I have plenty of current former senior intelligence officers that came to me, many which I knew almost my whole career, that can confided in me. They were a part of a program. They named the program. I've never heard of it. And they told me, based on their oral testimony, and they provided me documents and other other proof that there was in fact a program

that the UAP Task Force was not read into. If you're right, if you're telling us the truth, everyone, the entire American public has been lied to for decades. Yeah, there's a sophisticated disinformation campaign targeting the US populace, which is extremely unethical and immoral. U as saying to the human race. For the first time, an official intelligence representative at a high level from the US government is saying publicly, we are not alone. We're definitely not

alone. Absolutely, the data points empirically that we're not alone. Yeah. Do we have bodies? Do we have species? Both? Well, naturally, when you recover something that's either landed or crashed, sometimes you encounter dead pilots And I believe it or not. As as fantastical as that sounds, it's true. So I've got to be bunt about this. You're not making this up. This is not a lie. No, absolutely not, Because everybody watching this right now is looking at your face. They're going, it's

this guy for real. I am for real, and I'm you know, I'm sitting here at great personal risk and obvious professional risk by talking to you today. Now I mentioned this to you before. There is a book written by Colonel Philip Corso who was a former intelligence officer for the United States government and he was in charge of retrieving technology from down ships. He wrote a book called The Day After Roswell. If you don't have this book, you

need to get it as a quick read. It's a very important book. He describes the technology that has been reverse engineered and included in our society. This is silicon chips, this is laser technology, is high technology that we have you know, actually, like I said, reverse engineered and is now part of our society. His book was mind blowing to a lot of people, but it also greatly upset the military because it kind of takes the item

behind the curtain and reveals it to the general public. This kind of revelation to the people. They want to keep it all undercover. You can't keep it undercover anymore. And as you heard from Grish, this is the tip of the iceberg. We've known for a long time that Area fifty one in Nevada houses a number of UFOs or UAPs. There's one that was found in a cave that is dated to thousands of years in the past, which reveals that this observation of earthlings, that's you and me, has been going on

thousands of years or longer. And this is something that we need to begin to understand. We need to make it more open. We need to understand who is observing us, what the government knows. You know, if it's true, and this is a rumor, I've talked about in the past that President Eisenhower signing an agreement with an alien race. Why why did he do that, What was the agreement, and what does it mean for us average folk who are just curious about the other civilizations who are out there. So

I think there's kind of a break. There's a break in the cover up, there's a break in the secrecy, and I'm excited. I mean, I've always hoped that in my lifetime we will know who we are in the universe and the cosmos, who our neighbors are, and to have a chance to interact with off world types, extraterrestrials from other nearby planets and we automatically

move into a different age. I think it's really time, especially in this potential nuclear war with Russia and Ukraine and China and so, you know, I think it's time as a civilization Earth civilization, that we begin to move beyond the warring ways and go to the next step. Because our planet is having a hard time. We're really not paying attention to our planets wellness.

And I think when we know that we're at a certain phase in our development as compared to our neighbors and nearby planets we can evolve, and this is critical. We need to evolve. So our program today is with Nick Pope, and we're going to learn about how the government reacts, or i should say, how governments react to UFO sightings, landings, abductions and interactions and

what perhaps we can expect in the future. Now he doesn't really prognosticate that much, but we get a good sense of how our government is ill equipped, really ill equipped to handle this, and what the reaction is when there is sightings, why they would rebrand UFOs to UAPs, and that's a real big one for me, and other strategies that the government uses to keep this material top secret. So today's program with Nick Pope is called First Contact.

Nick Pope has worked in the UK Ministry of Defense for twenty one years. For three of those years his responsibility is included investigating UFO sightings and any impact they may have on UK national defense. He is the author of several books, including Open Skies, Closed Minds, The Uninvited, and co author of Encounters in Rindall'sham Forest. He has worked on a number of programs and TV series and is a regular on Ancient Aliens. We're Here at Contact in the

Desert. We're in the Palm Springs area of California and we are talking to a number of the prisoners. We have a keynote. Nick Pope is with us. I've been wanting to speak with Nick for a number of years and he is a former Ministry of Defense employee. Actually was with him for a number of years. And it is wonderful to have you with us and have you here in California. Nick, Welcome to Earth Ancients. Thank you.

It's great to be on the show. I got to ask you read the top there has been a rebranding of the UFO phenomenon from Unidentified Flying Objects to UAP Unidentified Aerial phenomenon. Why do you think NASA did that and why is that it's so important? Well, it's not just NASA, it's the government as a whole. And actually interesting you asked me that because I played a direct role in that, and it's something that goes back to the nineties to

something that happened at the UK Ministry of Defense. We had felt for a long time that we were hampered in our work on this issue by the pop culture baggage that the term UFO had, so in other words, the stigmatization, the association with this being fringe conspiracy, science fiction. We treated it as a serious defense and national security issue and a safety of flight issue, but we found it difficult getting engagement within the ministry. I'm not talking about

with the public. I'm talking about engagement with senior stakeholders in the Ministry of Defense who we wanted to take this more seriously, we wanted more resources put on it. We were not going to get in the door of any senior people for meetings if we said, can we come talk to you about your

efforts. But what we did is we rebranded. So we said, we need to talk to you about a serious defense and national security issue that may involve an adversary Russia or China, or it may involve some exotic atmospheric plasma phenomena, whatever it is, whatever we're dealing with, um, it's it's it's kind of serious and we need we need something done. And also it's a science problem. So they said, oh, what is this and we said, up, it's unidentified aerial phenomena. Oh right, yes, yes,

So we got in, we got the meeting. So wet it was also palatable to these senior officials then UFOs, which they branded as kind of a joke. Yes, it's a simple linguistic slight of its interesting. So what happened was that, not with the media and the public, but internally

for our own classified policy discussions, we rebranded from UFO to UAP. The US government took notice, and what happened was that in June of twenty eleven, now I had left, I'd taken earlier retirement from the Ministry Defense by that but I the British government declassified and released a lot of its UFO files, many of which I'd written, so my name was was out there. I received an invitation to fly to Washington, d C. For a fairly

high powered meeting. I can't name all the people who were there, but there was a former presidential Chief of Staff. There was a former CIA director.

There were a number of senior government military intelligence community personnel, some serving, some retired, and they were particularly I gave a short briefing on my official research and investigation for the UK government, but they were particularly interested in this rebranding because obviously they were facing the same issue, and so I walked

them through that. Didn't think much about it until two thousand and sixteen, when in the run up to the presidential election, I saw an interview with Hillary Clinton on I think it was Jimmy Kimmel, and the question came, well, you said you're interested in UFOs and you open the files, and she said, no, no, it's not UFOs. There's a new term. It's up Hillary. So yeah. So now she was not at the meeting that I attended in twenty eleven, but clearly some of her people were,

and people who brief her on it were. So I was, I don't know whether you would say directly, probably more indirectly involved in getting that to the attention of the US government, who subsequently adopted it. And it's interesting when this subject made its transition from fringe to mainstream, and I date that back to December twenty seventeen and the New York Times story about a tip

and the US Navy videos. At some point somebody asked about this term UAP, and a US Navy spokesperson, Joseph Gradisher, said, we got the term from the Brits, and again that was an acknowledgement of the work that myself and colleagues at the Ministry of Defense had done in a round about nineteen ninety three ninety four, So it was a slow burner. But now it's changed again. It's still up, but now instead of unidentified aerial phenomena,

it is now unidentified anomalous phenomena. And the reason is that they are not just talking about things in the air, but under the ocean. Some of these objects, whatever these things are, we've heard the phrase transmedium travel, and of course also to pick up the fact that it's not just air, it's space. So UAP is still UAP, but it's now anomalous and not aerial. And we saw that very recently when NASA held the public meeting of

the UAP Independent Study Team. Right now, would you say that here in the United States, we are still hesitant to describe the occupants of these vehicles. It doesn't seem like there's enough emphasis. Yes, it's wonderful that NASA, Department of Defense Space Command are saying, hey, UAPs are here, We've had our Navy flyers photographed them. But when are we going to get to the point where we're going? Who are these beans, where are they

coming from? And what is their purpose? You know the old phrase softy softy, catchy monkey, comes to mind. This is small moves. We are not at the moment that's a bridge too far. You are not going to look We've worked very hard. I mean I say we. You know there are many other people with more recent experience than myself, but a lot of hard work has been done to get this issue in front of Congress,

to get the DD and ODNI and others fully engaged. A lot of that has come about because certain key individuals in Congress have been briefed and have been sufficiently interested and concerned by what they've been told to take this seriously, to push for public hearings and private classified briefings in the various committees. And we're talking when I say Congress, we're talking both the Senate and the House.

We are talking predominantly the Armed Services committees and the intelligence committees. But there are others engaged as well. And you know, I'm not going to list all of the names, but just to pick out too, because this is bipartisan. Micao Rubio as a Republican and Kirsten Gillibrand as a Democrat, and

there are others, but they I think have perhaps been most vocal. You are not going to get those sorts of people talking about this, engaging on this writing UFO UAP provisions into the National Defense Authorization Act, all of which has happened. You're not going to get that if you say any phrase like occupants or aliens or extraterrestrials, you would it's a bridge too far at the

moment. I can't rule out that it will happen in the future, but for now, if you push too hard on that, you're going to lose it. Because you know, particularly with in the run up to the presidential election, you know, none of these politicians going to bring about They're quite happy to talk about UAP national security issue. Is it Russia, is it China? Is it something else? They'll leave that question hanging, but no

one, No one's going to go and talk about space alias Nick. I consider you a rare bird into the fact that you, you know, you've been studying this phenomenon for decades and as a member of the Ministry of Defense, you questioned, and you brought a lot of data to that organization, what is going to be the point and when that we have some kind of a disclosure that goes beyond just the craft. It depends what there is to disclose. And I'm not trying to be glib with that answer, but there

are of course multiple competing theories out there about what we're dealing with. And in the first of the two ODNI reports that we've had to date, and so the one was published in June twenty twenty one, ODNI went to great pains to say, look, there's not going to be one single, neat

answer to all this. There are multiple things going on, often conventional things, prototype aircraft, drones, balloons, you know, we've had, of course the whole SPI balloon, sayah, and there may be other things going on. They just had five categories of things, including sensor anomalies, and they have one of the categories it's just called other. And the word extraterrestrial or alien didn't appear anywhere in that first o DNA report and understandably so.

So so you know, it depends what there is to disclose. Is it an extraterrestrial presence. If it is, what's the agenda or is it? And you you know, some people talk about interdimensional, some people talk about inter temporal. You know, sounds kind of wacky, you're talking time travel, but you know, and some people Interestingly, some people in government take

the view that it's demonic. And this is a particularly interesting and I think unhelpful aspect to this, because whatever your beliefs, there's a faction of people in government. I came across it in the UK and the nineties, but Lou Alizondo more recently has spoken about it being a factor here. There's a faction of people who think that we should not be studying UAP. Not because they are hard nosed skeptics and they think it's all a waste of time and

money. They think it's real, but they think it's demonic, and therefore their view is we should not be feeding it, giving it energy by engaging with it. And I remember Lou Alisando gave an interview about this and he said one time he was saying we need to do more about the UAP. Sue and very senior manager at the Pentagon just said, go home and read your Bible. Wow. And there's a passage, of course in the Book of Effesions which describes Satan in terms of the quote is the prince of the

power of the air. And that's where that it's one of the reasons if it's to be as well, it's it's yeah, just because Satan is described as the prince of the power of the air. When these people who take a very kind of fundamentalist view of this Christian fundamentalist view, when when they talk about UFOs, they are reminded of this quote, the Prince of the

power of the air. We do see deception running through not just the UFO phenomenon, but particularly you know, people who claim to have had entity encounters. People talk about the trickster nature of the phenomenon. But but you know, whereas some people talk about Norse gods like Loki and humanity has always had its trickster gods, the more fundamentalist Christians say that, well, that that trickster is the devil. And of course the greatest trick the devil ever played

was convincing us that he doesn't exist. Crazy some of the more unique in owners. We all know about Roswell in nineteen forty seven, but you wrote a book called Encounter in Rundelsham Forest that you believe is substantially more important than Roswell. Talk a little bit about why it's more important. Well, I did say more important. I'm not sure I would necessarily stand by that now.

I mean, I think probably when when the book came out, I thought, you know, obviously I needed to do some marketing and publicity, and that was, you know, the idea that this is bigger than Roswell and more important. It was an attention. Yet where I do stand by it is in terms of the chain of custody, the audit trail or whatever you want to call it. With the best will in the world, Roswell

is now nearly eighty years in the past. And of course they say, well, the old saying isn't when no war is truly over until the last soldier passes. But now, of course all the Roswell witnesses are dead and gone, and so we're dealing with with the children, the grandchildren, the great grandchildren. Oh yeah, my granddad was involved in that, you know, with the best will in the world, that's a cold case now, Randallsham, you know, that's forty years in the popiece now. But but

it's it's doable. It's more doable. That's the point. You know, the witnesses are still alive. There is a paper trail that you can follow of declassified government documents on that, both from the US and the UK give us a little all review of the keys, would you please sure? December nineteen eighty takes place over three consecutive nights, surrounds events that happened at two

Air Force bases, bent Waters and Woodbridge. These are United States Air Force bases in England, in the County of Suffolk, and it starts on the first night with people seeing a security police law enforcement personnel seen lights in the forest, strange lights. They think maybe a light aircraft has crashed and started a fire, so they go out there to see what the situation is. They encounter not a crashed aircraft but a landed UFO and one of them gets

close enough to touch the side of this thing. He sees strange symbols, he feels a kind of electric shock through his body. He joked about it afterwards to me. He said, Nick, that was probably not a smart thing to do. But you know, and this thing was quite small, maybe nine feed across, you know, triangular shaped, maybe nine feet high. As as right source of shape, well, I mean, you know, somewhere between triangul and and and Saucer. The nearest thing if you look

at it, there's a British unmanned aerial vehicle called terranis. If you look at that, it sits a you know, unmanned aerial vehicle can fly around the world drop drop bombs and missiles on the bad guys, that sort of thing. If you look at a couple of photos of it, it's not a million miles away, although the timeline doesn't work for that being a solution of course, and a number of other facts don't fit. So this thing

was. It was in a small clearing on on the ground and it had smashed some branches off the trees as it had come down vertically, and it was just sitting there and then they took some photos. They were subsequently told they didn't come out. Jim Jim Penniston made some sketches which have survived, including not just the craft but strange symbols on the side. And then after a while this thing just rose up slowly vertically again, cleared the tree tops

and then away to the horizon in an instant. And Jim Peniston, who was one of the two witnesses there on the first night, along with John Burrows, these are the two that I teamed up with to write the book. He just wrote in his police notebook speed impossible, and Jim Jim was yeah. And Jim was an aircraft recognition expert. Of course, he was one of these people who one of his training courses was, you know, you look, if I show you the shape of any Warsaw packed or NATO

unitary aircraft, you identify it within seconds. Oh yeah, that's a mid twenty nine. That's, you know, an F sixteen, just from the silhouettes. So this guy is an expert. He knows everything about aircraft recognition, speeds, maneuvers, acceleration. He just write speed impassable. So that

was night number one. Night number two we know less about. We know that a ball of light passed through the cabin of a vehicle and so spooked one of the security police and law enforcement personnel that they had to be returned sort of medically evacuated. I believed the United States in almost like a state of shock. This thing had had somehow this sphere, this ball of light had passed through the solid closed glass, interacted in some way, and then

passed out the other side. I am, we don't know much about that. There are sensitivities over that, so I'm not gonna go into too many details. The third night, there was an awards ceremony going on and all the senior personnel were there. Before it could really start, one of the young officers burst into the room. He came up to the commander and the deputy base commander and he saluted, and he said he looked shell shocked. He said, sir, it's back. And they were like, what are

you talking about? What's back? And he's the UFOs it's back. And of course, because of what had happened on the two preceding nights, the rumors about this had gone round the base like wildfire. So the deputy base commander, Colonel Halt, was basically right right, I'm going to go out into the forest. Base commander said, well, you know, either I'm going to have to do this or you and say you're the deputy base commander, you go out. So he Colonel Holt, who I know quite well,

threw together a small team of about half a dozen people. He went out into the forest, as he put it, to debunkle this UFO nonsense which was beginning to interfere with what he felt was the smooth running of operations. He said, it's getting out of hand. I'm going to put this to bed. He said he couldn't because he ended up a witness himself.

They started off at the landing site where this thing had come down on the first night, Lee took some One of the people in the team was Munroe Nevill's who was the Disaster Preparedness Office officer, so he had Geiger Counter with him. He took some readings which were subsequently assessed and this has been declassified and released. You can read it. Ministry Defense assessment said that those levels of radioactivity seemed significantly higher than the average background, so so that wast in

terms of physical corroboration. So the third night, did the vehicle come down again and this officer was able to actually see it. No, he started off not seeing it. He was told it. Yeah, he couldn't when he went out there first because other people had seen it. They didn't see it. That's why they used that time to take some radioactivity levels at the

landing site. But then they saw it. We're gonna take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we'll be right back with my guest, Nick Pope. My guest today is author Nick Pope, who spent over twenty one years as a Special investigator for the Ministry of Defense in England. He's the author of a number of books, including Open Skies, Closed Minds, and he's featured on Ancient Aliens. Nick, what's the point

in covering up these sightings, these UFO sightings. There are a number of theories about that, and you hear people say we need to cover this up because it would people would panic, and it would you destroy the major world religions with all the geopolitical chaos that would follow that, or encourage more fundamentalism. I don't think that's I don't think any of that's right now. This is this is speculation I said earlier. I think it's always important to say

when you're moving from what you know to what you think. It's something I always, as an analyst and a briefer did in my Ministry Defense career, whether it was on UFOs, whether it was on Iraq, whatever it was on. So my one word answer to your question is technology. And here's what I mean by this. We are at the moment in a you know, sort of rather awkward we being the United States. But maybe as a brit who lives in the US now maybe it tooking the NATO military alliance.

We're in a kind of uneasy sort of war of nerves. Some would say we're actually edging into or are in a proxy war with two major nuclear power adversaries a Russia and China. If you throw the possibility of extraterrestrial technology, if that's what we're dealing with, into that mix, we have a potentially explosive I use that word deliberately outcome in that the nation on Earth that first acquires this technology, if it exists, is going to be the dominant force

on this planet for the foreseeable future. At the moment, the piece is being kept by mutually assured destruction in terms of nuclear missiles bombs. But and it's a dangerous tight rope to walk, but we have walked it, and it has worked. If you throw in a game changing, war winning super weapon technology, and bear in mind it doesn't even have to be a weapon. But if we are dealing with extraterrestrials, one absolute certainty, I don't

want to be too anthropocentric about this. We can make very few assumptions about aliens, but one very good assumption is that to have viable interstellar travel, whether it's warpholes or worm drives, or whether it's matter antimatter annihilation or nuclear fusion or fission, it's going to involve very high energies. And one thing about anything that involves very high energies, so you can weaponize it. So my one word answer technology, as I say what I mean is the nation

that first gets this is going to have a huge advantage. And this was articulated in I believe it was a two thousand and nine maybe twenty ten letter from Senator how Reid, who set up the a TIP program, and he was seeking special Access program status for a TIP Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which looked at UAP amongst other things, and in seeking it, he made this point about the tech and he said, look, if we can figure

this out, it will give the United States an incalculable advantage in geopolitical strategic sense. But conversely, if an adversary gets there first, this will be a catastrophic potential threat to the national security of the United States. So it's all about the technology, the race for that technology, and the race to ensure that an adversary does not yet that technology first. And the one thing you do, you imagine this. Imagine this. I call it sometimes a

new space race for the tech. It's like a high stakes game of poker. One thing you never do in the game of poker or show the other players what cons you're holding. So that's why people say, why are the UFO secrecy? That's it in a nutshell, I think. But let me give you for instance, what if we run into a civilization, as to say, five hundred thousand years advance of US, extremely sophisticated technology, and they land and say, we want to speak with your officials, so forth

and so on. This is a what if. And of course everything about the Americans always, as you suggest, leads to militarization. You know, how can we get their weapons, how can we get their technology? So forth and so on. That's I would think that that's not a possibility with a civilization of that great sophistication. I could be naive in thinking that, But you, being on the military side, are seeing that the technology is everything. How do we go about first contact? If that's our mindset to

be looking for an advantage? Is it possible at our current stage of evolution to speak with an et civilization, which is obviously an advance of us, and perhaps this is where we're at right now. Well, it is, and a lot of sues to unpie in response to that question. I mean one one question is, and it's an interesting one actually, it's could we

figure out what the tech in the first place? If it's if it's fifty years ahead of us maybe, I mean, you look at cell phones or an interesting example if if you have an iPhone fourteen, if I went back in you know, like five years in time, and I gave somebody at Apple that phone, they would know instantly what it was. That they would be a little bit wow, that's high tech. But they'd be able to figure it out. Same probably ten years back. But if you went twenty

years back with it, maybe not. If you went fifty years, it's like, you know, whatever it is. If you go back ten thousand years, it's like, you know, shine, nice shiny rock, flat shiny rock, right, they wouldn't even know what it was, as you say, let alone, they wouldn't be able to build one. So that's sue number one. If the technology gap is much more than a few years, maybe we wouldn't be able to figure it out. But that's not point.

Point is we try, and maybe in doing so we'd accidentally crack this planet open like a night because it's probably not a good idea. Probably not a good idea. But again, in relation to the second part of your question, how might first contact go with? While Stephen Hawking warned about this, of course, he said, when we encounter extraterrestrials, it might be similar to when the European explorers encounter the Native Americans, only this time we

humanity will be the Native Americans. So there's that. Then there is the famous quote by Arthur C. Clark who said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So it's not necessarily that you couldn't figure it out, it's the damage you might do by trying. That's one question strictly focused on the tech, but more generally, as I say, going into the second half of your question, again, it depends what their agenda is. Are

they coming here to conquer? Probably not. Are they coming here for resources? Probably not. Any technology, any civilization with the technology for viable interstellar travel, it's probably figured out you know how to fulfill its it's basic resources without needing to to come and steal someone's gold and water for want of You know, it's pretty easy to the universe is full of hydrogen and oxygen, and you know, you can you can any civilization that's traveling between the stars

can figure that out. So that's not it. What it might be, I think is anthropology because to really advanced civilizations, and in a universe nearly fourteen billion years old, that might be civilizations out there are billion years ahead of us, so their technology would be indistinguishable from magic, and they themselves would be indistinguishable from gods. To such civilizations, newly emerging technological civilizations like

us might just be the last interesting thing in the cosmos. We're interested in society. The structure of society, political structures, you know, is when we you know, when anthropologists encounter indigenous people, they there are some societies still that are tribal and hunter gatherers, maybe without a written language. Some of them still will be like that in the mind's eye of the extraterrestrials. But we are just beginning to take our first little baby steps out into the

wider cosmos. And there may be a trigger point or a couple of trigger points. But what is it that makes a civilization, you know, if the universe is full of life, is there really anything new? Well? Maybe, but what makes it interesting and potentially important? Well maybe when they do two things, when they develop atomic power and harness that and when they

develop rocket technology. And if you put the two of those things together, it might sound some alarms in any confederation of civilizations that might be out there. It's it's a kind of the kids have found the matches moment. I like your analysis. I'm curious your tig the abduction phenomena, which seems to

have died down a bit. I've had Bud Hopkins, David Jacob, and even doctor John Mack at different conferences back in the late nineties in San Francisco, and they were analyzing and writing about the phenomenon of abductions of women and in vitro fertilization scenarios, and in some cases the mothers were returned to the ships and viewed their hybrid offspring. It doesn't seem to be happening as much.

And so I'm wondering, and using your anthropology scenario, do you think this is perhaps a phase that these ets are going through in viewing earthlings. Again, a really interesting question with a lot to unpine the skeptical arguments. I mean, I give us suggest that you've answered your own question, but but there is a skeptical or that you've pointed people the right way? Shall

I say? Because there's one of the things in the odn I report, and I know that this was about UAP, not abductions, but it talked about collection bias. It said there is apparent clustering of UAP sightings around military bases, and we hear, for example, about the UFO nuclear connection. But the skeptical argument is it's collection bias. And all that that really means is that those areas are more heavily surveiled, so you're more likely to get

reports because we've got a lot of eyes on those areas. So when it comes why I say that you've answered your own question, is is you mentioned Bud Hopkins, Dave Jacobs, and John may Well. Bud Hopkinson and John Mack of course have died, and Dave Jacobs is now of an age where I don't believe he's actively researching or taking place taking part in conferences or doing media. So the three people who really were the leading lights of this,

the big names, all in a very small period of time. Basically, we're taken off the board. And what that meant was that if you look, if you consider abduction research to be part of the wider spectrum of UFO UAP research, which I think is a legitimate position, you would say that the center of gravity, with the loss of those three giant figures, shifted

elsewhere. Does it mean that abductions aren't happening or happening much less, or does it simply mean that we're not hearing as much about it because the people who were doing that work and no longer with us, were no longer able to do that work with Dave Jacobs. Now, that's not to say there aren't some really good people still working on this. Yvonne Smith, Barbara Lamb, a number of other Mouffon now has a whole experience. A resource team

stood up their RT to look at this. Ivon Smith has her Sero organization. I believe there are many other people, but we still haven't quite got

abduction back onto the agendas as much as it was. If you'd if this event had been held in in nineteen ninety seven, I guarantee that the headline speakers would would not be you know, Richard Dolan, Graham Hancock, Linda Molten, how they would probably, I mean, they may be there anyway, but some of the other keynotes would be would be Hopkins, Jacobs and mad And so there are some people who say there are some people who say,

well, abductions are slowing down. That means the aliens have kind of got what they wanted and we are, as you you know, asked, you know, speculated, maybe moving on to another phase. But the skeptical of argument is no, it's still pretty much as it was, but we're hearing less about it. And remember what I said about this being of entity

reports are going to be a bridge too far for Congress. Not only aren't we hearing about it, but some people, and this is a confession from me, some people are actively well, it's kind of an a mission. When I get asked, when this comes up in the media, I get off the topic. I don't want to talk about it because I know that I will do I will undo the good work that's been done to get this

to Congress. But you know, the moment, the moment, the moment Marco Rubio gets asked about his interest in space aliens, he's out of the room. He's not going to do that. So you ask him about UAPU and he's like, yeah, well, we've got the pilots, get the radar operators. He's not going to say, well, I'm interested in in these people who claim that they were floated out through their window taken onto that.

He's not going to go down that road. Yeah, so people like myself, people like Chris Melon lu Alisando, I would put it to you that if you, if you look and that they get asked those questions. No, they'll speculate, but then they'll shift the conversation back back to uap defense, national security satellite data, radar data, pilots, you know.

And I do that deliberately, and I apologize for it because I know it's not fair to the people that you know are having these experiences whatever is happening. But I don't apologize for it because it's the price we have to pay to get this subject where it is. And remember I said, softly, softly, catchy monkey, it's late. You've got your foot in the door. You are not going to get that door further open by talking about abductions.

I think what you're saying is you're taking baby steps it's like it's introducing topics that are palatable to the power elite, which in the United States is our government officials. Yes, but let me round off that with one final observation from John May and I remember him saying this very clearly. Where you know, you talk about and a number of people believe that what we're dealing

with is as a sort of hybridization program. The structure of an abduction seems to have a lot of common strands to it, and something that we often hear about is this. You know, somebody was on a flat table or platform, raised platform of some sort. They were on their back, they saw entities, there was some sort of device, There was an intrusive procedure. You know, either sperm or eggs were removed, maybe a fetus was removed or implanted. John Max said, wait a minute, he said,

wait, hold on. He said, let's not be too anthropocentric about this. He said, we we say that this is like a medical procedure. He said, that's all we can say. It may be something completely different. We be just saying, well, the nearest analogy I can think of is, oh, it was like that time I was in hospital and I had that operation and they removed my appendix. Yeah, they you know, they gave me a shot. I was out, I was kind of drifting.

Next thing, I maybe membered something and I had a scar and something, you know. But John Mack said, we don't know. That's what it is. We can't hope to get into the mindset of another civilization, particularly if they're a billion years ahead of us. So we can theorize and

speculate that it's a hybridization program. We can say that some aspects of the abduction experience look like a medical procedure, but as I say, they look like it, they may not be a Yeah, I'm curious about your opinion of Whitley Steber book just came out called them and in the book he believes that these hybrids are walking among us. They're so undetectable they look just like

us. And one of his hypothesis is the fact is the feeling that these beings are here to not only interact with us, but to actually improve our society. What you're what you're feeling on that, Well, there's an old saying in the intelligence analysis community. Interesting if true. Yeah, absolutely, I'd like to think it was true. It would be quite interesting and fun.

Any technology, any civilization with the technology to travel between the stars may well have the technology to to, you know, run a hybridization program to create you know, link biological, synthetic, biological robots, humaniform robots. The idea that would be robot indistinguishable from a human being, whether it's them, whether it's it's AI, whether it's biological, post biological, whether it's it's it's a mix. Yeah, and if their mission is to improve our

society, well, you know, yeah, bring it on. We could do. You do it a little bit of improvement down here. And yeah, I guess until though, until we got one of these in a lab and said, wait a minute, this is this is not human, we wouldn't know. And again maybe if that ever looked like it was going to happen, they would step in and make sure it didn't. So so, I it's a it's an intriguing theory, but I suspect it would be very

difficult to I mean, you intellectually know how you would prove it. Like I say, you would get one of these things in a lab, But like I say, could you? But as an ex military person, wouldn't that be a kind of a worst case scenario to have one of these half alien, perhaps a full alien that looks just like us, walking among us, getting work, perhaps even being a government official. Is that a good

or bad scenario? Well, I would say it depends on the agenda, if the agenda, If the agenda really is a sort of high minded kind of attempt to steer humanity away from our self destructive path, then maybe that would be a good thing. But yes, and by the way, I should say I was a civilian employee of the UK Ministry of Defense, so I was not military myself, though I worked alongside military colleagues on various programs and such like, But I was a civilian myself. But coming from that

defense background, yeah, it is, it is a worrying possibility. And yeah, what if these things infiltrated leadership positions all around the world, political, military, intelligence community, big business. Um, you know, you position all your pieces and then you make you move. So so yeah, if, like I say, it goes back to what the agenda is, if it's if it's takeover, Yeah, it's it's the perfect takeover scenario. You win a war without having to fire a shot because you are the leadership.

Um, everyone's leadership. But if it is high minded attempt to to improve us, then then obviously that's not so bad. Although we're still in either scenario, we are not, you know, masters of our own destiny anymore. And you know, as as a libertarian, that offends against my sensibility as I guess, all right, finally, what does disclosure look like to earth leans when we are told that we're not the only ones in our cosmos? How does it come about? And give us a prediction of when

you think this is going to happen? It depends. There are two broad scenarios which I have term disclosure with a big D and disclosure with a little D. Disclosure with a big D. As the president calling a special conference, the world is watching. It's my fellow Americans, people of the world. We are not alone. That's disclosure with a big D. I don't know whether that will happen. It might. Arguably, it's its events lead.

It depends how things unfold. I'm more inclined to think that it will be disclosure with a little D. And that's what I describe it as. This that it's a process as opposed to a single event. It takes several years. It includes destigmatization, It includes political engagement. It includes the slow release of various videos, photographs, documents, I witness testimony. Next thing, you look around, you see that NASA who previously rubbished this or engaging.

You see congresses looking at it. You see all these various people talking about you know this, And then one day you wake up and you realize it's happened. And I suggest to you that's kind of where we are now. We're in that process. So when is disclosure happening? My answer is we're living it. It's happening right now, right now, as you're feeling yeah, okay, really quick. When we look at Mars and there's a great deal of evidence of archaeological ruins on that planet, wouldn't it be an

easy way to disclose the fact that we're not all in our cosmos? There's an ancient alien civilization long dead on Mars. Wouldn't they be easy? It would be easy. But it depends what the backstory to that is, because

that that's just a fact. But there's always going to be the nuance the backstory, and if the backstory takes us to a dark or uncomfortable place, um, you know, yeah, there was this civilization and then they experimented with these biological robots that they really just created, and then they died out and the robots live on. It's like, hey, where are the robots? Oh you mean we're the robots, right, you know. So so it kind of depends. It goes back to one of your earlier questions,

and I answered it by saying, depends what there is to disclose. Well, yeah, if it's just artifacts on Mars, that's that's great, hey, aliens. But as I say, if if the backstory raises difficult and uncomfortable questions and perhaps truths about who we are and where we came from, then there are maybe voices of caution who will say, yeah, wait a minute, we might not want to go down that road. Nick Pope, real pleasure having you on the program. How can people read more about you?

Do you have a website? My website is Nick Pope dot net, and I am reasonably active on a couple of social media sites, but mainly in terms of when I have new things out and I want to announce things Twitter. Where I am at Nick Pope m D the MD standing of course for Ministry of Defense. I couldn't quite get that out of my blood. I guess, so, Nick Pope MD okay, and are you speaking anywhere that people can see you in the next week, month, year? Well?

After contact in the Desert, I'm going on and I think at the end of June beginning of July I go to Roswell and they of course have the UFO Festival there. I am doing a one off talk for Phoenix Move Fawn, I think in July from memory. Then in August I go back to the UK to speak at Awakening Expo twenty twenty three in Manchester. And then the big thing that I'm doing is I do Ancient Aliens Live, which

is a ninety minute live show based on the TV series. I moderate it and on the stage with me is Georgiosuka Lass, William Henry, David Childress and doctor Travis Taylor. So we we've done twenty one cities so far. We tour around. People love it, We love it the audiences. The audiences make the show that they're so their passion for this. There we we present a lot of interesting stuff, but we also between the five of us, the more shows we do, the more the more banter there is between

us on stage. People love the little jokes and the quips that we sometimes have it at each other's expense. But the audience's knowledge and their passion is wonderful to see. And we're filling houses. Like I say, we we we go to theaters, so we go to some wonderful venues. You know, capacity is somewhere between fifteen hundred and twenty five hundred, so we're,

yeah, we're selling We're not quite doing stadiums yet. Maybe there will I if we yet disclosure, we'll do that, but for the time being, we're selling out some reasonably big venues with like you know, fifteen hundred, seventeen fifty two thousand people twenty one shows down. We just announced another fourteen for the fall. They've asked me to get my diary out for twenty twenty four. People love it. They can't get enough of it. And we

obviously we all have busy schedules. So one of the big challenges is finding a date that the five of us can actually get together, and sometimes one of us may have to set things out. Travis Taylor, for example, does a lot at Skinwalker Ranch, and he's he's going to have to miss a few shows, but yeah, people love it, and so Ancient Aliens life must go real fair. Oh it's blinking you miss it. Each of you say something that is time's up. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing.

But we really enjoy doing it, and we really enjoy meeting the fans afterwards that you know, when those those people that have a VIP package can come backstage and meet us and get their photo taken with us. So yeah, that's that would be Ancient Aliens dot com pret and get tickets there Ancient Aliens Live dot com or it may be Ancient Aliens too, but but if you search on Ancient Aliens Live, it will come up. Okay, wonderful, Nick Pope, wonderful having you, thank you for your time. Thank you.

So I was listening to that and thinking, what is the listeners feeling about contact? How do you feel if you were told by your news, your favorite news anchor, that there had been a meeting between the United States leadership Biden kick Kevin McCarthy and the various political heads and the announcement was made that there is a joint agreement to begin a form of diplomatic communication. And this would be something almost like a movie where we would be welcomed into perhaps

a consortium of planets. And I mean it's almost fantastic. But how would you feel if you woke up tomorrow and you were listening to the radio, your favorite podcast, or your television show, or you were scanning the news on the internet, and you discovered that a representative from an alien race that is nearby us another planet had contacted the United States leadership or met with a number of world leaders to announce themselves. How would you feel? Would you

be afraid? Think about this for a minute. I think it's important that you think and get in touch with your feelings because I have this odd sensation that the more we become aware that we're not the only ones, that we step beyond our governments cover up of this data, the more likely we are to have this contact, this first contact. And I think this is important. I keep using language like education, evolution, the next step for homo

sapien sapien, which is evolution. But it's important for us to know that we're not the only ones here in our solar system. So how do you feel? Think about this for a minute. In fact, I'd like to hear from you. Send me an email to Earth ancients for you the number four, the letter you at Gmail and say Cliff, I'd be fine. I'm looking forward to this. I'm looking forward to the day when we can say, hey, we're not the only ones in our cosmos and they this

race that has contacted us. I'm excited about it. Or perhaps you're not happy about it that you're you're afraid. You're afraid to know that we're not the only ones out there. There are other races, other species of intelligent beings who are curious to know more about us, and they have stopped simply flying around and surveying us because there's there's been a lot of questions that these

are what we consider anthropologists studying the human species. Well, no, there's a there's rays that in the scenario I'm talking about, land their craft come out and meet with our political leaders. Now, perhaps it's not just the political leaders. Maybe it's Elon Musk, or it is a Jimmy Kimmel, or it is now. I mean, if it's a comedian that opens up all kinds of floodgates, could that be I think it has to be someone

other than the military. I do not want our military to be part of this and they and they will butt their way in because they're paranoid and they're running the narrative right now. Aliens are peculiar, They're not to be trusted, they're not showing themselves. And by the way, what kind of weapons are they possessing. I mean, look, if there are a thousand, five hundred years in advance of us, we're toast if we get into that

scenario, because hell, forget it, the game over. But that's not what it is, you know, And we really need this right now because our planet is in desperate it's in dire need of more conscious awareness, more e can or environmental concern. I would love it if a race said, look, you've got to start stop polluting, and let's help you along a little bit. You've already started your electric cars here, a little tweak here,

a little tweak there. Everybody can have an electric car that is reasonably reasonably priced, or we can with this technology we're going to offer you, you can convert your gas guzzling, polluting car into a electric car or hydrogen car or whatever. And that would be great. Now, the oil companies are going to have a conniption, as well as society Arabians because they're they're supplying our crude oil. So lots of possibilities. But that's a great scenario.

So again, send me an email if you're feeling that you'd like to know more about our off world brethren, let me know. You know what. I've gotten letters in the past where people are saying, look, they may not be our friends, they may not they may want to dominate us. I don't think that's the case. I think that I mean, I'm even though it's kind of fantastical. The whole idea of a collection of you know, planets, the Consortium of planets, who have representatives who come and

check us out and are meeting us. I love that scenario, I really do. I gotta get I gotta get Steven Agreer on this because he's way ahead of the curve. Although he gets a little paranoid and and things.

I've had him a number of conferences and he's kind of the almost the cutting edge, and and I think in some scenarios he thinks there there are there is contact, but it's worth, it's worth the governmental officials and they continue to squelch this because they just don't want it to come out our government is not helping us in this situation, as you just heard, and it's it's not something we want to continue dealing with. They have to be basically told

or voted against their behavior because the behavior is not helping. So you want to you're looking forward to it, send me an email Earth Ancients for you at gmail dot com. Or Hey, I'm not happy about I don't want to see the aliens. I'm not, you know, looking forward to it, and I'll bring it up in the future podcast. We'll hear what people's ideas are and right right, write me a paragraph for two and I'll read them on the program. Hey, Cliff, I think it's a great idea.

I've been wanting this to happen for years. Or Cliff, I'm scared out of my mind. I don't want, you know, these aliens to come. I don't feel like they're going to help us, and they're not God fearing. And you know, if you're religious, fine, you know, because they're not going to be religious. If there are a thousand years or ten thousand years, a religion is man made. It's not a natural phenomenon. So so there you go, yes or no. Email Earth Ancients

for you at gmail dot com. You're gonna remind you we have a dynamite tour coming up. Typically the tours are a couple of weeks twelve days. We do Egypt for twelve days, but this Mexico tour with doctor ed Barnhardt is going to be seven days. It's November tenth through the seventeenth. We have a few spots left. We're almost full. But this is a tour of Maya land, and it's the Maya of Tabasco and Chiapas. We meet in Vera Homosa, which is a district area in the heart of Omec Land.

Right away we go to Liventa Museum. It's an outdoor museum some of the largest megalists in the world. I am really looking forward to because I've never been to that part of Mexico. Then we take a bus and we bust to Plank and this is the jewel of the Mayan culture. This place has some of the most gorgeous temples, pyramids and buildings in the whole Maya

hierarchy. Will be there for a couple of days. We get a basic tour on the first day and the second day as you got to take us on a private tour of some of the areas that he mapped out but that are not really seen with the general public. These are pyramids and temples that are not on any map, so that's really kind of exciting. Then we bust to bomb Back and some other areas that have some unique murals as well

as temples and pyramids. One of the reasons we do this tour is that we can move around, we can climb these buildings in these pyramids, and we can do meditations. I'm going to bring my trifield meter will measure totric fields in areas that have high energy. You can sit down, you can manifest, you can intend on having things happen, healing whatever, whatever you

need to work on. But this is a really great tour and I'm really excited about doing it because we haven't done anything with Ed before and he seems like a group. He's a really great guy. So for more information go to Earth Ancients dot com, forward slash Tours t o u r S register get on board now because we're almost full. We're only going to take thirty people and I think we're twenty one or maybe twenty, I can't remember.

Anyhow, A great tour great fun. Love to meet you November tenth to the seventeen for more information Earth Ancients dot com, Forward slash Tours come out and join me and ed Right, that's it for this program. I want to thank my guest today, Nick Pope, really enjoyed that interview. As always the team of Ruth Thomas and Mark Foster making it happen. Thank you for your help. And I want to remind you that we are continuing our

Contact in the Desert series with a special guest on Saturday. His name is Adam Apollo. He's kind of the future of science. He's a physicist. I met him for the first time at the conference in Palm Springs, and that interview is not only highlights his personal experience contacting aliens off world types, but what he has brought in terms of a scientific look at the future of Earth and his perspective on what we can expect. So that's gonna be fun.

All right, Take care every well and we will talk to you next time. U