Nick Pope - Recent Government UFO Announcements

Hello, and welcome to Open Mind UFO Radio. I am your host, Alejandro Rojas, and we have uh here with me, mister Martin goofball Willis. I know I've called you that before, but you're being uh extreme goofy this morning, a little bit extra today. Yeah, I guess I deserve that or this afternoon or this evening for you out in the East coast. That's right, I deserve that again. So we're recording early because tomorrow is going to be a busy day. So it's actually Sunday. So happy Father's

Day. Way, well, thank you. I enjoying it to your father. Yes, And how's your day going. It's good. I'm just puttering around and you know, it's it's a good day here and mein good good. Well, let's do our introduction to this is Open Mind UFO Radio, where we cover credible UFO news and information. We do it from a journalistic kind of standpoint, looking at substantiated information and calling out, you know, letting you know if it's speculation, which is different from a lot of the

UFO field because a lot of it is based on speculation. And today's really or this era and time is interesting to see how everybody deals with all of this interesting information that's coming forward lately. So at the beginning of the show, we'll review the news here with Martin, and then the second and third parts of segments of the show are our interviews and who are we interviewing.

Well, this is a special show. We have Nick Pope, who used to work for the Ministry of Defense investigating UFOs, so a very similar job really to Elesondo's, was a little bit different in that they were public facing, so he had to deal with the public, whereas the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program a TIP was more hidden and secretive where they didn't have to deal

with the public. So Loue Alezando, the former head of that organization, is now having to deal with the public and no doubt has his hands full

with that. But we'll be talking to Nick Pope about his experience, similarities between the criticisms that he's received and Lou has received, and a particular interest is Nick's insight into how press offices work with the in the defense arena, because, for instance, he's used the term spinning dirty tricks, essentially saying you know that the way that you dealt with the press is to try to kind of throw them off the scent, and he sees similar things happening with

the way that especially the Defense Department is dealing with all of this right now. So we'll get into those details with our interview with Nick. Of course, every time I talk to him, it's extremely insightful and educational, and so I thoroughly enjoyed this interview. So yeah, we'll be talking about that momentarily. Yeah, it's great. You know Nick. The thing about Nick is he only he only interviews with a few people, and you're one of

those people that he don't interviews with. He's very fussy, so he is. Yeah, it is hard because he's mostly he gets a lot of attention, mostly pays attention to the mainstream media. But fortunately I have lots of friends in the mainstream media and he's one of them. We've always kind of seen eye to eye or at least been able to communicate well with one another. So very exciting stuff, very exciting. Great, So we'll get into that in a minute. But there's been a lot of exciting news this week.

So would you like to start off the news, mister Willis, Well, sure, you know, when something happens, I'm sure it happens to you as well. I get a flood of email, and I'm sure you did too. In this one this morning. I woke up starting last night. Actually, and about the exclusive, Trump says he doesn't particularly believe in unidentified flying objects. And this right here at ABC News, and so that's

the title of it. Actually, and President Donald Trump said he doesn't particularly believe in unidentified flying objects UFOs, despite a rise in reports of unidentified aircraft by US Navy pilots. I think that's interesting. They actually added that to the part of the news. In an exclusive interview with ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos this week, the president was asked what he made of the increased reports. Well, I don't know if I should try to do a Trump

impersonation, I'll probably get hate mail. I'll just wing it, so he goes. This is a direct quote that he says. I think it's probably I want them to think whatever they think. They do. They say they see I've read, I've heard, and I did have one brief meeting on it. Now. I think that's the interesting line right there. But people are saying they're seeing UFOs. Do I believe it not particular, he said, and asked if he thought he would know if there was a case of

extraterrestrial life. The President replied, well, I think my great pilots would know. Great pilots would know. They see things a little bit different from the past. So we're going to see, we're watching and you'll be the first to know. So I think that's uh, I think that's interesting. In other words, you know, he might tweet this out if if you find something out, something that would that would be something, wouldn't it? Well, who knows? I mean what's interesting, like you said, is

that he did receive a very brief meeting on it. So who told him what? That'll be interesting to know. We do know from Leapey, who was an executive producer on Unidentified who I'm actually doing a special little interview with tomorrow. That's one of the things I'm going to be busy with. So I'll post that tomorrow. But he has some things that he wants to share, so that'll be a little bonus kind of piece for you all coming tomorrow.

You can expect tomorrow being Monday, so this airs the same day, so sometime today, I guess for most of you, but I don't know if that will be reflected in the show as although Lopee has told us that there To the Star's influence on getting information to the Congress is featured on the show. So we'll talk a little bit about that with Lapey. But it's interesting he says he does not believe, but he does say, you know,

I think that our pilots would know. And of course we know from David Fraber thus far and then the female pilot who was his wingman or wing person in his incident in two thousand and four. Of these were, you know, Navy pilots and they believe that they encountered something that was beyond our technology. We also have these small clips from Lieutenant Grays and a Coin, a couple of Navy jet fighter pilots who had encounters in twenty fifteen, and

that will also be in the fourth episode of Unidentified more about them. But the other videos that The New York Times released, or that To the Stars release, they released three total, one from the Nimic's incident, the other two from the twenty twenty fifteen incident off the coast of Florida with Graves and a Coin. Two of the pilots involved with some of those encounters, but

they also believe that they encountered something unusual. So the pilots, at least some of them, do believe that, you know, there's something to the UFO phenomena. And of course the Navy seems too as well, because they have some new guidelines they put together for tracking UFOs. So the Navy's certainly taking it very seriously. And maybe because his meeting was very brief. We don't know when this meeting happened or the nature of it, but perhaps if

he got updated, he would think differently. Maybe he's watching the show or speaking of news items, another item that you'll see in the headlines on op TV is that lou Elizondo wrote an opinion piece this week just the other day for President Trump's favorite news outlet, which is Fox News. So Fox News actually posted something from Elizondo. Not that there is a lot of new information in this opinion piece, but he's essentially sharing, Hey, I worked for

the Pentagon. It was my job to look and investigate these military cases. Myself and others came to the conclusion that there was more to this phenomena than many people believe, and it is worth a closer look. And he left, you know, because he wanted the government to pay more attention to this phenomena and his leaving and then kind of you know, all of the splash that's been made in the media seems to have prompted the government to take further

action. So his leaving has been successful for those reasons. But yeah, that's interesting, right that Fox News would have of course, they've interviewed Alizondo, Nick Pope, Fravor, the Wing commander. Maybe I wouldn't doubt if these other pilots will also be interviewed on Fox News. So certainly the president is seeing some of this stuff. I would imagine. Oh, you know, I never even thought of that angle. That may have prompted the briefing.

He may have even asked for a briefing on that. Wow, interesting because I know that is it Tucker Carlson or something like that. He does a lot of the lot of the interviews on UFOs, Nick Pope and everyone else, right exactly, He's had a lot of these guys on multiple times,

which is great. You know, I just wanted to talk you talked just a second ago about unidentified and did you happen to catch the tweet from Tom DeLong, what if I was briefed by Italian intelligence that a UFO shot a military helicopter out of the sky and that there are picks to see and this is all for you to see on our next two episodes Unidentified on the History Channel. Yeah, that was mysterious. I know what you're talking about.

Tom DeLong tweeted exactly what you said, which, of course is shocking. If you said that, I would freak, That's my answer. That would be crazy. But he said what if I told you? As a question mark? And then he deleted that tweet? Oh, he deleted it. He did, So why did he post that? Is? Is this kind of you know, we've I've heard that there's something mind blowing in the last episode, the sixth episode of Unidentified. I have no clue what it is. You know, nobody's alluded to what it might be. But it

is that it? And if it is it, why is Tom DeLong spoiling that news, you know, getting it out there? Or is he messing with us? Is that, you know, even the case at all? But I don't know what to make of that tweet. Yeah, yeah, the fact that he took it down. He must have gotten some grief from

that, you know, from the History Channel. Perhaps you never know, Yeah, maybe, because I would imagine show there obviously you and I, for instance, got these interviews with Elizondo, and we know how careful they're being the History Channel with all the information, because of course we had it

was quite an effort to even get those interviews. So and I know from trying to arrange different interviews and information and people keep I don't know if this is happening to you, but it's happened to me over the past few months that people are like, how do I get there a Lozondo? You know, And I always send them to the History Channel and they're usually bummed because you know, they have to wait in line or or you know, go through like we do with the process. But yeah, that could be.

I would not imagine that they would want him sharing information about future episodes like that. So maybe it was them. So is that true or not? I don't know that ought to be. Well, I guess we'll find out. And we don't have to wait long. We're already essentially halfway through the series where they had episode three just the other day, another great episode. I thought and so we've only got three left. Yeah, that's right. Do you think they're gonna now renew or do any more segments or this is

the whole shebang and they're done. No, I think they have a second season. And I can't remember specifically why I believe this if I was told this, but I'm pretty sure I did hear through some you know way that they do have a second season queued up. Wow. Well, it's certainly not like anything else that's ever been on TV before. No, it's not. It feels weird. I mean, it's weird that we have this show

that's on the History Channel. It has, you know, kind of the music and the trappings of a regular kind of reality show, but you have these officials, these retired officials, these this guy who worked at the Pentagon essentially almost like a whistleblower, giving us information from behind the scenes, and and that spills out from just the show. Usually it's just you know, contained within the show or the fan base of the show. But no, this is also playing out on Fox News, on CNN, on ABC with

George Stephanopoulos. It's you know, it's also a big news thing where we've got this wild you know, information kind of coming forward through the show and through the news, and it's just it is so strange. It's it's very surrealistic. It is. It's it's really you said it at the top of the show. It's interesting times we're in. It just seems almost seems like

a slight snowballing of it, you know, things happening. It is and it's really surreal for me, and I think for listeners, I wonder if you would agree, and not to pat myself on the back, really, but if you've been reading my articles and my stories, I think, what's really strange. And I know that Tyler Rogaway because I've been speaking with him, who writes with you know, the Drive war Zone, kind of feels

similarly with some of the stuff he's written. Is that we're seeing a lot of the information from our articles playing out on the screen and it's just really

weird. It's kind of a great thing because it shows, you know that I was accurate in my reporting and like Lou said in my interview, but you know, not a lot of a lot of people were kind of hung up on different things instead of paying attention to the meat of what is going on, and now we're seeing that, and I think, you know, my listeners will be like, hey, you know, Alejandro already told me

about this. He already told me about that. This is just like Alejandro's article, and you got to know what's weird about this also, And I think that's why I've been hearing from La pay is that, you know, I wrote my articles completely independent of these guys. I didn't even know the show existed. So while I'm writing my articles, they're writing their scripts and or even had shot this stuff already, and you know, they turn out very similar. But that's the way, you know, the facts should play

out. If you're both following a trail of facts. You know, the facts don't change. You're maybe able to look at them in different ways. But I think they're laying them out just like an investigative journalist would, and so the facts are laying out in a similar way. And it's very exciting, it's very strange, it's fun, and I can't wait to see where this all goes. Because of course I've only written about bits and pieces of

this. I've been able to catch wind of or get interviews about with some of the people in the know, like George Knapp and Lela Kane and of course George Knapp his writing, He's been revealing a lot of these nuggets all along. And these are people. You know, people have been bashing us, and I'm not even sure why because we're sharing information and they've been grouping together me with Leslie Kane and George Nappen saying things like, oh, we're

biased and everything. But you know what, I first of all, I am so honored to be grouped together with these guys, even if it is to be bashed together with them. But I feel that their writing has been proven over and over and over and over again to be accurate, one hundred percent accurate, which isn't surprising to me because I've been following these guys for

years and they've always been accurate. But their work has held up to screw and boy has it been scrutinized, And it's really held up even to my own scrutiny because I've scrutinized their articles. I mean, it's our job to make sure you know all of the points that they have said are accurate and

to substantiate them on our own, and they have. I mean, even though, for instance, Leslie Kane's original article or the article that was a group effort with Ralph Blumenthal and Helene Cooper on the New York Times in December

twenty seventeen. It was a group effort, of course, but even though they didn't include the original organization that received the funding as app the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program, it didn't include any of that or the paranormal background, it still was accurate as to the perspective and the information they had.

They just know people are picking on one that one little detail, you know, as if you know, to throw the baby out with the bathwater, right, Yeah, so, and I think they've done, and they've been proven over and over again. In fact, they've been right when the DoD Press Office has been wrong, and then that their work has proven to be right over the press office. So this kind of comes back to one of the things you said, you know, the New York Times, they don't

mess around when they bet their information, you know it. You know that their information is very solid, and they've been proven to be right over what the Department of Defense has told us. And we're going to get into that some of that with Nick coming up here. When I when I first read that article that Keith Klore put out. I sent it to Leslie and just asked for her two cents and she just sent back. You know, she usually is very wordy with me when she replies, and this was We stand

by our reporting. That's all you said. And just for the audience to know this was Keith Gore wrote an article in The Intercept in which Idea, the spokesperson, had told him that Lou had no responsibility towards a tip the program that he says he ran with the Pentagon. Since his article, George

Knapp has released a further unredacted document that Harry Reid had written. It was a letter asking for special Access program status for a tip, and in that list, the names of people mostly were redacted, but George and Napp unredacted help put Off's name and Lou Elizondo's name, so you could see they were listed as people who worked on the program help put Off. Doctor help Putoff

was a contractor. I contacted doctor help put Off and I told Chlora, this is what you should do if this is what the DoD is telling you. We have documents that say otherwise, who else would be in the know The contractors, So asked the contractors, who did you report to? How told me Lou definitely was in a tip and in fact, he just told John Greenwald, who's been questioning all of this also along with Keith Klore.

He gave John Greenwald a more clear answer, saying, yes, I was a contractor working for Big Low Aerospace the Bass project and a tip, and yes we were under the leadership of Lou Arizondo. So he was very clear how put Off about this, and we know, you know from official documents that help put Off worked for it, so he would know. And he even went on to say, I'm not surprised that the press office wouldn't have this information. They have access to very little information. They weren't part of

the program. And that's what we've heard from a lot of different people. And in fact, you know, people have been concerned, well, why isn't Brian Bender or some of these others, like from political concerned about that. And he's been criticized as well because he's a mainstream journalist, I guess writing about this stuff, But he says it's not surprising. He says the same thing as hell. The Public Affairs Department, first of all, they're

going to say what they're told to say. Not to that I'm saying there's a conspiracy, but I'm just saying that they're not going to have all the information. They would have to do a lot of research to be able to figure out the in and out of this program that we know was kind of being kept hush hush. So it's not surprising that they wouldn't have all the information. And that's why we've seen this pattern over and over again. The DD says no, you know, those those videos were not ours. Then

they later say, Okay, they were ours. You know, we've seen this over and over again where they've said one thing and then had to change their story later after they received more information because they didn't have that information to begin with. I wonder why they're just blatantly saying that, you know, the press people are just blatantly saying, you know, he had no affiliation.

You know, I mean, but this is why this conspiracy theory breaks down, where oh no, you know, I keep hearing people even just now and I won't say who, you know, some guy saying a prominent UFO figure saying, see, this is all part of the government. The D to the Stars is part of the DoD. This is a DoD effort. Well, why are they arguing back and forth about the facts, then why is the DoD calling into question the facts that to the Stars are putting

forth? That does not show a cooperation in any way. And I've said this over and over again. I believe that you know, they have been put on the back foot. They didn't know lou E Alisanda was going to come out and talk about this. They probably didn't even know this project existed. Just imagine you're a press guy in the DoD and all of a sudden you have a flood of media coming to you and saying, what about UFOs, what's this thing about UFOs? You'd be like, I don't know nothing

about UFOs, what are you talking about? And so then they've got to try to figure out how to answer all of these questions and figure out what's going on. So I'm sure it hasn't been easy for them, and I'm sure they are not appreciative of the position that they've been put in. Well do they actually go to like a superior and say, you know, what do I do in this situation? I mean, I just wonder how that's well you're going to have to listen to my interview with Nick pot So.

Actually we talk a lot about this and he has insight into this, so we'll be talking more about this with Nick Pope. Well, I didn't we about out of time. Yeah, we're pretty much out of time. But we've got a lot of other news stories. Those ones that we've talked about you can see on the front page of Openminds dot TV. But let's go ahead and get to our interview with Nick. And thank you Martin Willison podcast UFO joining us once again with the news. You're very welcome, sir.

I am so happy, especially at this time, to have back on the show. Nick Pope, Hello, mister Pope. Hi there, good to be back. Yes, you know, we were just talking a second ago when we came online about you know, we've talked over the years, and there's certainly times where there's it, there's not much going on. It feels almost like we're just talking to each other for the heck of it, as supposed to talking to an audience. But right now, I mean, all

the eyes are on UFOs. What an interesting time we're finding ourselves in. Absolutely. I wrote a recent op ed for the New York Post, where I said, essentially, this subject has now come out of the fringe and into the mainstream. And as you say, it's interesting to speculate just a couple of years ago if you'd spoken to people in the UFO community and said to them, where do you want to be a couple of years from now? What is your desired in state? Short of the rather cliched my fellow

Americans, people of the world, we're not alone. But assuming you're not going to get that, where would you like to be? And people would respond with answers like, well, I'd like to see this subject in the mainstream media. I'd like to see it in the Times, the Post, Politico and addressed in a serious manner, without a little, you know, snide jokes and laughing asides. And that's what I would like. And that's exactly where we are. And I have the same sentiment. And you know,

I've asked some people this, especially like Leslie Kane. I've asked the same ques question and her answer was similar to what you had just said, and I felt the same. What's interesting, though, is how great this is for you and I the majority of the UFO community. This is when I've posited, you know, this is a great direction, This is a

direction we should go. I disagree. They want something bigger and grander, and you can kind of see many of them feel let down that, you know, the hanger doors were not opened at Area fifty one to reveal, you know, the alien technology that they've been flying around there with aliens and stuff. A lot of people aren't satisfied until we get that. Yes, And the problem, of course, is that that might be undeliverable, not

because it's politically impossible, because it just doesn't exist. The real answer might be that the government doesn't know what this is. The real answer might be that all you want to get to get it's pretty much what we have now. The DoD the US Navy essentially acknowledging yes, there is something here. We call it UAP. We can get into the terminology later. I'm sure it's in our airspace. Our radar operators track them, our pilots chase them.

We don't know what it is. It's a defense s we need to find out. We need to take preventative action. But yeah, no spaceship in a hangar, because we don't have one. But we do have these unauthorized incursions. So yeah, I think you're right people in the UFO community. In one sense, it's like the kid that doesn't quite get what they want for Christmas. They get a nice present, but because it's not the

really big, shiny thing they wanted, they're disappointed. Well, you should be grateful for the things that you have and not worry about the things you don't have. It's funny you say that, because, as you say that, it feels like some of us that have been in this field who have kind of seen or wanted this progression, hoped for it, and it certainly has happened, at least at an increased rate that I certainly could never have predicted. But it is almost like we're parents to the kids. Hey,

you know this is still good. This is still a good present. Yes, And I think if you'd have said to most people in the UFO community prior to December sixteenth, twenty seventeen, what if we delivered this? And as I say, this is the coverage in The Times, the Post, and the Politico. This is retired intelligence officials and military personnel involved in both investigations, policy work, and encounters speaking out on the record in a serious

way. I think people would have taken that. Sure, it's not disclosure with a big D, it's not the spaceship in a hangar. But I think if you'd have said to people before December sixteenth, twenty seventeen, will you take that, they would have said yes, well, you know, And I asked those a lot of those kind of questions, and people surprisingly weren't saying yes so much. They said if that happened, I don't even think I would trust those people. And we are seeing that kind of play

out to me, and I'd love to hear your perspective on this. More and more so, I'm seeing that this really, what is going on right now is not so much for the UFO community. They're not, you know, enjoying the gift that they got there, taking it for granted perhaps, but more so this is they're looking for something else. But what this gift is great for is the general public, peaking interests, incredible venues that this has never really been able to get a platform in before or attention from.

That's what's really I think is most exciting about what we see going on. Well, I agree, and I think it's a little bit of a slow Burner this one. And I think it doesn't have the immediate effect that maybe people in the UFO community, the deep specialists would hope and expect. But what it does, what all this constant background coverage, It's sort of background noise that's gone on since The Times broke the story a year and a half ago. It what it does is it it kind of slowly but surely changes

the debate about this, the background perception that people have. And when I say people, I don't mean the UFO community now, I mean I mean there's sort of everybody else who's who's not particularly interested in it, sees something thing from time to time. But what they have had for the last year and a half now is a steady stream of articles in these top level publications

that have flipped the narrative one hundred and eighty degrees. So even if they're not necessarily consciously aware of it and talking about it every day, as the deep specialists in the UFO community do, their perceptions are slowly but surely being

changed. Managed if you'll excuse a somewhat conspiratorial word. And I think what this does is it means that we are now in a different world and if this subject comes up now to a neutral person who's not particularly interested, hadn't given it much thought, but their response, if they're asked, will be, oh, yeah, yeah, I read something about that. The government does that. Yeah, they know about these things in the airspace. Yeah,

then the navy chase them, the radar people track them. Sure, sure it's real, not particularly necessarily interested in have the in depth knowledge. But when people when people respond like that, that sort of yeah, I've heard it, I know about this response, then you know that you have moved progress. The goalposts have been subtly but majorly moved over a period of

say eighteen months or so. And there is something that you're participating that is along these lines that I think is pretty extraordinary in that you have The New York Post doing these videos with John green Street one of their writers, and you talking about UFOs. I think that's pretty incredible for a mainstream paper. Of course, the New York Post can be a bit of tabloid dish,

but that they would be doing this is pretty extraordinary. Well, I think it's important to cover all ends of the political and demographic and social spectrum with this, So we started off discussing how this had gotten into the Times, the Post, and Politico, But yeah, to get it into something like the New York Post, it's a different audience, but it's an equally important

audience. And of course, let's not forget it. It was the host of the Basement Office, Stephen green Street, who first got that great scoop, and it was published on May twenty second, where the DoD spokesperson confirmed, I think for the first time that yes, a tip And this next bit is the direct quote, did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena.

Now, right up until that point, I think people forget. But right up until that point, the skeptics were saying in response to this, ah, yes, but this is just probably next generation aircraft, missiles and drones. And indeed, if you look at the letter that the DIA sent

to Congress about this, that's exactly how they tried to spin it. But UAP, there is no getting away from the fact that unidentified aerial phenomena UAP is the recognized phrase that government, the military, and the intelligence community uses for what the media and the public term UFOs. And I know because I was doing this at the Ministry of Defense back in the nineties, and one can see the UK influence on this, which is great. So yeah,

what the New York Post are doing is really good. They have I think this series is going to be five or six episodes, and each of them about twenty five minutes. The host, Stephen green Street and myself just sitting down discussing not just the current story about the Pentagon's A tip program and the Navy encounters, but the history of this subject. How did we get to where we are today? Story? And I think that's great and a lot of people we forget, but a lot of people are coming to this pretty

much for the first time. And I look down at the comments when these things get posted on YouTube, and the overwhelming response that you get from people is finally somebody is taking this seriously. Thanks people. M hm. How else has it been received? Have you gotten responses from people you would not have expected, especially this being in New York? Yes, I think so.

I think I've received a lot of emails about this. As I say, when they're put up on YouTube. I think the first episode has over two hundred thousand hits now, and it's probably on other platforms too, So that only tells part of the story. I think when they did this they weren't quite sure how it was going to be received. But I think everyone is phenomenally pleased. And I have to say that Stephen green Street has done

a fantastic job of putting this all together. When I flew to New York to meet him and get together with him, he came armed with absolutely reams and reams of paper on all this. He had done a deep dive into the history of this subject. He dug up documents and clips that I say, even deep specialists in this subject probably couldn't necessarily put their hands on. And it's getting this subject to a different and new audience, and that's what

it's all about. I think in all of this we should forget that. We should not forget that there are two important things. The message is, of course hugely important, but so's the audience. There's no point just preaching to the choir with all of this. It's all about getting it to a new and different audience, changing the debate, changing people's perception of this, not just in the UFO community, but right across society. Mm hm,

I agree one hundred percent, and that's what's exciting. I think Stephen is an exciting person. You know, he's a lot of fun to see him react to what your discussions. And he's also obviously very well versed, and like you said, started right off the bat with this major revelationist comment from the DoD. So we'll get it more into it. So let's I guess, get more wank you get into the weeds here, but I guess we'll go kind of backwards or just a bit ago. You talked about how the

US took the UK's lead. So you think that they noticed you all were using this term UAP back in the nineties and adopted that. Yes, now, I can't claim credit for inventing the phrase UAP. It had been around for a while, but there's no getting away from the fact that in the early nineties we at the Ministry of Defense in the UK sat down and deliberately strategized this and we said, look, not for the media in the public,

but internally for the defense community, for the intelligence community audience. We wanted to reframe the debate by changing the language. And I think you and I have discussed some parts of this before. We effectively ditched the pop culture baggage that came with the term UFO by replacing it with UAP. Now, I brief that certainly to a US political, military, and intelligence community audience

in June of two thousand and eleven in DC. And it's a matter of record that obviously even people like Hillary Clinton suddenly started saying in her media interviews about this. No, no, there's a new term for this. It's not UFO anymore, it's UAP. But it wasn't just Clinton. It clearly got into the system. And I don't want to claim undue UK influence here or kind of reach in terms of a TIP. I will let the people

involved with ATIP speak to that themselves. But again there's no getting away from the fact that if you look, for example, just at the use of the word UAP, we were doing that in the Ministry Defense in the nineties.

If you look at Harry Reid's all important June twenty fourth, two thousand and nine letter to William Lynn, the third Deputy Secretary of Defense, one of the very few of paperwork that we still have on the a TIP program, but probably one of the most important, if not the most important.

You can see now not a lot of people have actually done this, but if you look at some of the emerging disruptive technologies that Harry Reid talks about, you'll see a clear parallel between the language that Harry Reid uses and the language that we used in the Ministry of Defense in an intelligent assessment of the UFO phenomenon that was code named Project Condine. Now, the official title of that study, Project Condine, was Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defense

Region. A bit of a mouthful, I know, but there are clear parallels which not many people have I think picked up on in the language there. So again I'll let the ATIP people speak to this themselves, and they don't want to make inflated claims, but the language that the similarity in the

language is interesting. And it's also interesting that Harry Reid in that letter talks, for example, about what he terms the human interface and human effects aspect of the ATIP program, when again, this is something that we were doing in Project Condine in relation to the Rendalsham Forest incident, where we were talking about prolonged exposure to what we termed uap radiation. So this, again, I think is an important part of the story, and the full story has

yet to emerge. I think we're going to be hearing more about this in the next few weeks. I suspect, but I wanted to put it on the record, and I've certainly done so in a couple of interviews and in an art to kill the UK national daily newspaper Metro published a few weeks ago. Now I want to get into that. But it's great that you brought up Condine because that was put together by the Defense Intelligence staff and a story

that you put out just recently. And this normally would be a big story in the UFO community, but of course it's gotten overlooked by everything that's been going on. That finally a couple of these last UFO files. The UK DOODC or Ministry of Defense, said they had released all their UFO files. It turned out that they in two thousand and eight, turned out that they hadn't. There were still some stragglers and it's taken them years to get these

documents out. And finally the last two files come out, and you found something really interesting. This infighting going on between the Defense Intelligence staff and others. Tell us about what you found in those files. Well, it was interesting, and you make a very important point actually that perhaps this story didn't get the publicity that it would have. I think there are two reasons for

that. Firstly, it's been overshadowed, understandably by the bigger and still unfolding story of the A TIP program and the US Navy interaction with this phenomenon, and the new Navy guidance to their pilots and radar operators another personnel about this. The other reason why I don't think this story made quite the media splash that it might have is that, in one sense, it looks like we've

had this story before, and we have. The Ministry of Defense in June two thousand and thirteen announced that they had completed the program to declassify and release the files, as you rightly point out, they hadn't. They then discovered

further files that had not been released. They went backwards and forwards between the Ministry of Defense and the National Archives in the UK again, as you say, literally for years, and interestingly Rendelsham Forest witnessed John Burrows played arguably I think the key role in discovering or lobbying the Ministry Defense to release these further files. But it's still even from that took some years and in all, the program has taken eleven years. I mean I left the Ministry Defense in

two thousand and six. In two thousand and eight, as I think you know, because we've discussed it, I came out of retirement to help with this program, and I actually made the official announcement on the National Archives website. I've probably done literally thousands of interviews over the last eleven years. But it does have a sense of deja vu about it because people correctly recall having

read from June twenty thirteen onwards. Yes, yes, this is the last of the files, and of course every couple of years there was a oh, well, here are a few extra ones we've discovered. Now we really

do have I think the last of them. And yes, this dog fight, this skeptic versus believer dogfight going on in the Ministry of Defense in the United Kingdom between the Defense Intelligence Staff, who wanted to do much more in depth research and investigation into this from a scientific and technical intelligence point, and the Policy Division on UFOs, who handled the way that this subject was viewed

and investigated and researched across government. The Policy Division wanted to back off and were far more worried about how this would be perceived in the British Parliament and the media, for example, whether it would whether it would contradict statements previously made by defense ministers, including the Secretary of State for Defense, that we don't really put much resources into this, and then something like Project Condine comes

along and wait a minute, this is effectively an intelligence assessment of the phenomenon. So the files show this story of the fundamental breakdown in relations between the two parts of the ministry who were supposed to be cooperating on this. Now I say not guilty from a personal point of view before you ask me. When I was there, because of my high security clearance, my need to know, and my good working relationship with colleagues in the Defense Intelligence staff,

we didn't have any of this. It was seamless. We were in and out of each other's offices, you know, every week, swapping ideas, plotting how we would take this forward. It was my opposite number and I who sat down and changed UFO to UAP and all this is in the files, by the way. But yes, it was unfortunate that for a number of reasons after I left there was this breakdown in relations and if it wasn't so dire in terms of the defense and national security implications. It would also

it would almost be comedic. I mean it was almost literally by the end of the relationship, they weren't even talking to each other. Wow. So we've got to take a break. But we're going to get more into this because there are a lot of parallels with what's going on, what's being revealed in the television show about to the Stars and Alezando and this Pentagon program,

but also some of the infighting between departments. There's just a lot of parallels between what you all experienced rotating in the UK and what's going on now. And we'll get into that after the break. We're going to take a short break. For those of you listening on a radio show or program, you'll hear commercials. For the rest of you, you'll hear a short musical interlude,

and we'll be right back with Nick Pope. I am back. This is your host, Alejandro Rojas. You're listening to Open Mind UFO Radio, and I'm talking to Nick Pope, formerly of the Ministry of Defense. UFO Desk, that's that's how we call it, but the UFO Desk, So some of the controversies going on right now that parallel what you used to do, and we'll get this will all get into what we were just talking about

as well. But one of these controversies is people are arguing that Lou Alessando, who worked for you know, a tip, ran it, this term

ran it, and people give you a lot of heck about this. In fact, I get it because they are like, why do you say Nick is so great when he says he ran the UFO desk, that there was no big department he was in charge of, And people are kind of saying, Lou, the same thing you're saying, you ran this a tip thing it was it was smaller, you know, debating the semantics of the turn

ran. Do you feel there's a similarity in the attacks against Arizonto that you've received for any same kind of accusations, Yes, there is, And in fact Lew and I have discussed this very issue with a kind of rye smile and the laugh. I think he's beginning to experience what I've experienced for the last few years. Sometimes. I mean we we in the UK, for

example, and I know the parallels are uncanny. Remember all the debate about what a tip was actually called whether it was aerospace or aviation, whether there was an extra and in the title somewhere what the relationship was between a TIP and ORSAP. I had exactly the same in the UK. Was it the UFO project, Was it the UFO Desk? Was it the UFO program? Technically it was neither because we didn't, unlike the US with Blue Book, we didn't actually give it a name. So it was a workstream that was

embedded in a division called Secretariat Air Staff. But Secretariat air Staff is meaningless to people outside the department, so one has to communicate through nicknames and colloquialisms.

Now I'm fortunate. I'm fortunate in that of course, for anyone that doubted my position, not only has it now been confirmed by the British Parliament, but of course, as we've just discussed before the break, somewhere in the region of sixty thousand pages of documents pertaining to my old job have now been declassified and released, and I tell you several hundred of them still have my name on, even though I think they were supposed to redact them.

But you know, never mind, it's all out there, and I'm sure that as time goes by Lou will be completely vindicated by similar disclosures. I think that there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of a TIP related Freedom of Information Act requests in the pipeline. I've heard estimates that it will be twenty twenty maybe twenty twenty one before all of those are necessarily dealt with with full responses. But when they do, I'm sure we're going to find

Lou's name all over this, just as we found in the UK. I mean not only not only am I mentioned in these files, as I say, I wrote a large proportion of them, and I think that's what we're going to find with Lou. But here's the other point. I think people sometimes seem to forget a couple of things. I just sent a tweet this

morning pointing out this very thing. For anyone who says, well, look, a DoD press officer has now made this statement, and doesn't this call in to question lose role in relation to a tip, whether he ran it or whether he was simply somebody who was on it or had access to it, or however you want to describe it. You know, we can get too bogged down in the words, if you had gone this is my point.

If you had gone to the DoD before December twenty seventeen and ask them about this, you wouldn't have got anything other than the line that the subject wasn't investigated by the department. So let's not get too hung up on what public affairs officers and press officers say. And let's also not kid ourselves that any of those people are going to have anything other than a brief sheet of paper that they're given by the subject matter expert saying this is your line to

take. They are not going to have actual access into those intelligence programs, and rightly so exactly, I think. Yet you make a great point. In fact, that's exactly what I was going to bring up next is your tweet from this morning, which I thought was great and brings us back to reality. Just like you said, Yeah, before December twenty seventeen, they

were telling us there was no program. So I plus your perspective on this is important because you understand bureaucracy, but they're and you know, kind of getting back to your point, how you and Lou have found yourself in a

similar position. There actually is an advantage that Lou has in a way in that he has a lot of colleagues that have kind of coming out as part of all of this, such as contractors like Eric Davis or how put Off who have talked about working with Lou with this program, or you have you know, people like Chris Mellon who has mentioned that he worked with Lou during the AIGHTEP period of time in trying to get this information to the Secretary of

Defense. So at least he even you know, beyond just these statements from the DoD, has a host of very credible characters, you know, backing him that he was working in this program. Absolutely, almost every statement from anyone involved in this, whether it was at a governmental level or a contractor level, has said, hey, it was Lou's sitting across the desk as

the guy in government that we had to deal with on this. So you know, you can have a debate about whether he ran it or was director of it, but there's no getting away from the fact that if anything went on with a TIP, it was Lou Alizondo who was the guy in the room at the meetings. He was the guy on the distribution list of the document. So you know, let's not get to hung up on whether it was a formal program or a project or a workstream or whatever it was.

And look, I've worked in that world myself in intelligence. The whole point often is that you try and blur the lines. The whole point is that you try to minimize the paper trail. The whole point is that very often you're keeping this off the radar of people in your own department, even because very often what people don't get is that that projects like this are incredibly vulnerable in an environment where all sorts of managers are competing for limited resources and access

to senior managers. Everyone's after the same pot of money. And you know, if you get a chance to kind of kill off somebody else's program at the expense of yours, or or subsume somebody's program under your own authority, I mean, this sort of thing goes on all the time. People have this mistake in view that everything in government is all homogeneous and everyone's kind of marching in the same direction. Absolutely not. It's often a case that people

work in silos. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing. And then you factor in that this was not only highly classified, but deeply sensitive politically in terms of just this whole subject being such a hot potato. It doesn't surprise me that it's a little bit difficult for journalists and bloggers and people making FOI requests to get to the bottom of every last question about this. And that's exactly the way that people running those sorts of programs designed it.

So and that's why I think you're spective is really important in this, because you have this background with press. Also, certainly when you were helping the mod with the release of these final files, it was kind of a pr effort right to to really it wasn't. It wasn't just let me go back and make one more point about press officers. I've done this. I've I've been the subject matter expert briefing the press office on on this, on

not just UFOs but on some some other unrelated defense business. And there's a standard format for it in in the UK, where I'm I'm virtually certain that you can read this across to the US. What you do is you you on any given subject, you give the press officer what's called a key message,

and this is the message that you want the media to run. And sometimes it's playing up a good news story or playing down a bad news story, and you have this key message that you want to get cross, and then you have what are called supporting lines to take, which are sometimes defensive. In other words, you only raise them if the journalist actually asks. But these are very carefully and cleverly crafted and they are given to the press

officers. And the press officers, of course haven't been working on these programs. They are just given this brief to speak from and their job is to get this key message across. So the story runs in a way favorable to the way in which the department wants it to come out. End of story, right. It's their way to keep some modicum of control on the message, especially in this case where it appears, I mean there's some we like you just said, the government is in a bunch of people who are all

headed in the same direction. Talked about in these recent UK files, there was apparent, you know, arguments between these couple of departments, and it seems like we have quite a bit of that going on as this a tip story develops. As well, you have you know, the Navy being very cooperative working with a history channel on this television show. But then you have the DoD PR department or the public affairs kind of like you know, throwing

a ranch in things a bit. And honestly, they're kind of caught under the gun. I'm sure you know lud didn't give them heads up. Hey guys, I'm gonna be talking about this UFO program. You didn't know, so get prepared for an avalanche of questions and foyer requests. So they're kind

of under the gun. And we've seen over and over again they've made these these statements, these quick statements, and then had to retrack them or adjust them as time has gone on. Yes, and let's not forget that any time they wanted to could have killed this story by saying, look, people, when we use phrases like unauthorized and or unidentified aircraft, we one hundred

percent mean conventional aircraft, missiles and drones. We don't necessarily say that we can identify all of them at this stage, but we are one hundred percent certain that this is just aircraft, missiles, and drones. And yet that's not what they say. It's as if they deliberately go that step further. And your right to point out the mixed messages that we've been getting, because, for example, the DIA when they wrote to Congress about this. They

very much used the language of far term aviation threats. But then the US Navy, just as you think that the government have got that particular genie back into the bottle by by talking about this in terms of aircraft, missiles, and drones, the US Navy upset the apple cart by coming out with this bombshell statement, yes, we did pursue researching investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena. So it's almost as if they've carefully tried to manage this and spin it one

way and then another part of the system. In this case, the US Navy says, you know what, that's not right and we're not going to let that stand, and they go and reignite the UFO speculation by throwing this bombshell phrase UAP right back into the center of the stage. Now what do you make of this? So, because there's another player here that's been mostly very silent, although they've had a recent statement that I think is very interesting,

But that's the Air Force. When the Navy said they were going to come up with sidelines, they said that we the Navy and the Air Force, take this very seriously. I don't think that them including the Air Force in their statement was a mistake. It seems very calculated, but what for it does? It seemed like they were trying to drag the Air Force into this conversation, who obviously has not inserted themselves in any way at this point.

Yes, I think if I was in the United States Air Force right now, I'd be pretty annoyed with the Navy, because I think my strategy would be, let's try and keep out of this, and then you find another branch of the military kind of dragging you into the spotlight and out of the shadows with this. And my goodness, if I in my twenty one years in the UK Ministry Defense only three years on the UFO issue, But if I had a dollar for every time some issue of inter service rivalry came

up, I would have a lot of dollars. And it's an interesting angle. Some of the unasked questions about this are worth getting into. One is to what extent does into service rivalry, including and this probably is a whole another show, but including ideas about a space force. How does that play into this debate? How much, if any of what we're seeing now is about jockeying for position and scrambling for resources in a future battle space that is

clearly going to be critical in any future war. That's one one of the big, frankly unasked questions about this. Right, that's a good point, and to this, just real quick, don't forget your other point is that we at least have heard a little bit of inkling. And George Napper referred to this that some of that budget was essentially stolen away is probably not the right term, but that someone just like you're talking about was successful in being

able to pull some of those funds their way. Yes, I mean, my goodness, some of the dog fights in the UK about this were huge. I mean, for example, the UK's strategic nuclear deterrent. The Royal Air Force said we should have this, it should be delivered by long range bombers. The Navy said no, no, you should put this on ballistic missile submarines. And the Navy of course won out. But this was billion dollar dog fight over resources and influence at the highest level, and so how

much of that is a factor. I think one of the other big unasked questions about this, and I don't necessarily claim to have an answer, but sometimes it's the questions that are important is how is all this playing out in Russia and China. It will not have escaped the leadership in Russia and China that for the last eighteen months or so, the US has kind of done a one to eighty degree flip on this, that after decades of down playing

and denying this, it's almost as if they're now pushing it themselves. As I say, just as you think they've got it back into the box, they reignite the debate by using phrases like UAP that they know are going to be like a red rang to or bull. What is the leadership in Russia and China asking their military and intelligence chiefs and to what extent is that part of the story here? So I think I think there are some big aspects of this. We all get bogged down in oh, look at those look

at those three videos, and that's very important and interesting. But there are other aspects to this, the geopolitical aspects that we haven't really kind of talked through yet. Yeah. I think as this unfolds, especially people that are more savvy around those sort of topics, will begin to ask those questions, and those conversations are beginning So to get to your last point, no doubt Russia and China are very aware of American perceptions, or at least very concerned

actively in America's perceptions of their technological capabilities. And that's where the Air Force has come in. So Task and Purpose wrote an article recently where they were debating, you know, and talking about could these be drones from China and Russia, And in fact, they had a Navy spokesperson say it's possible, we don't know yet, we're still looking into it, and then an air Force spokesperson this is the only instance I'm aware of. You may be aware

of others that the Air Force has chimed in. And they said, no, that's probably not the case. They said, any drone that could fly from Russia or China to the United States East Coast would have to be at least as large as an MQ nine Reaper, very big, and the data link used to fly the aircraft would be detectable. So he's saying that, well, we don't know what these things are, but they're probably not Russia and Chinese Chinese drones. Well, it's all smoke and mirrors, and I

don't want to go too far. Down this road for obvious reasons, but sometimes in intelligence work the trick is to hide a capability that you do have and to make the other side think you have a capability that you don't have. Right, So again there's that to factor in. But here's here's one other interesting point about this. Nick goes back to your point about how little

we've heard from from the Air Force as opposed to the Navy. Again, there's no getting away from the fact that as we look at our troubled world today, so many of the major potential flash points are obviously going to involve naval forces. Whether it's it's the East China Sea and the Spratly Islands, whether it's the Strait of Hall Meus, whether it's the Baltic whether it's the Black Sea. But it's going to be the Navy in the front line of

a lot of this. And again I can't help but wonder is that something to factor into all this. That's another great point. So moving on to another topic. And this was actually when I originally scheduled this going to be the main topic, but there's so much that has happened that I've really been

enjoying the I think a very important conversation we've been having thus far. But you had also written an article about you know, the New York Times had mentioned that ATIP had looked into the physical effects of people in I even asked this of Loue Elizondo in my interview with him recently. You know, it is a rendal sham factor into that, and he said essentially no comment.

Watched the show, so apparently they're gonna address this. But you have kind of gone there and the Condon Report, as you said, John Burrows is one of the witnesses in rendels Shom. In fact, at the UFO Congress we gave him an award for the work that you had mentioned earlier getting finding out about these other files. But he has written or at least spoken quite a bit about how you know, in that Condon report they had talked about

UAP effects on them, in particular at Rendelsham. So it seems that that it wasn't just Condon. Condon was kind of speculative, but that there is actual physical work going on in studying these individuals. Yes, there is. Now Again, I had no involvement in in the A TIP program obviously, and I'm not going to attempt to speak for anyone involved with that, they can, you know, discuss what they like in relation to their work. I certainly was not cleared for any of that, and I had pretty much

left the mod anyway by the time that all came to fruition. What I will say is this, it goes back to what Harry Reid termed as the human interface and human effects aspects of this, and I have I'll choose my words carefully because this is a very sensitive area, but essentially there is no doubt in my mind that a number of people who claim to have had close encounters, some of whom were involved in military events like the Rendalscham Forest incident,

have been approached over the years and asked, for example, to provide blood and DNA samples, and this was I think represented to them as being a scientific study, which was probably perfectly true. But I think raises the question was the ultimate customer government and was a TIP involved in any of that. Now, I'm not going to answer that question, and I'm going to you know, I'm not involved in the Unidentified TV show. I had no

involvement in the ATIP program. But again, I think that there's no avoiding the fact that some people have been looked at in relation to that, and the roots of some of this, yes, were in Condine. I mean, there was there was that throwaway line in Condine's final report where it speculated that the Rendelsham Forest witnesses had probably been exposed to uap radiation for longer time

periods than normal. And I know that there have been at least two, maybe three, possibly more settlements with the VA that some of which involved intervention

by US senators. Again, the sensitivity about this, and I can't get into the full story, but again, a lot of this has gone on, and I think we'll be finding out some more about this over the next few weeks and months, but clearly for legal and ethical reasons and reasons of classification, I want to err on the side of caution where it comes to this. Most I suppose provocative and controversial aspect the human interface and human effects

aspects. I mean, some people have literally said to me, is this the US government studying even alien abductees? And I'm not going to answer that. I'm just going to let the cards for where they may exactly. Yeah, those answers still have yet to be revealed, And like lou had said, it turns out it seems as though we're going to get more of that in the television show. So luckily we're not going to have to wait too

long to at least get some more information on that. And I'm not sure if you're where I actually in my latest interview with Eric Davis, one of the contractors a physicists with a hip or with he's worked with Big Low and all kinds of other people, but he admitted, you know, he had some things happened to him at the Skinwalker Ranch and they had the group had felt he was kind of a magnet for these this phenomena and that he had

under contest and he had given them samples. So to your point, to also show that you know, you're not the only one talking about this, that Eric Davis himself is also mentioned he he gave samples. Right. Yes, as I say, I think we'll be hearing a lot more about this this sign it, but of course not least because of the scandal that followed

the mk Ultra situation. There are extreme sensitivities when it comes to this, and there are also sensitivities in regard discussing individuals medical cases under hippa and such like. So again, there are a number of reasons why I don't want to go too far down this road except to say to people watch this space right exactly, And I think you're right, And I think that people haven't gotten their heads around it yet. They don't know what to make of it

because they haven't been speaking much about it. So I was even sort of surprised that it would be featured on the show. Well, I don't know what they're going to be able to come up with on that in a public arena. I mean, of course, clearly I know, not least from personal personal discussion, that there is still a very dipical line that that Lou has to tread. And some of this is doubtless still fairly highly classified and or sensitive, probably both. So so yes, I hope we'll we'll get

more. But goes back to the point we were discussing about press officers don't necessarily expect when it comes to intelligence programs that that we'll be able to get everything on a TV show or from a press officer. Right, so there's some you know, you're you're telling people a clue, right there. Take a look, pay attention to this this human the physical testing sort of aspects

of all of this. Do you have any other sort of parting predictions or advice, Hey, keep an eye out on this area, that or that. I think I would only reiterate to keep an eye on some of the Freedom of Information Act requests that are still in the system. Some of them are fairly bland catch all requests please please send me all your information on a tip, But some of the rather more narrowly focused, cleverly crafted ones,

I think you're going to get into some fairly interesting areas. And it's where there are these throwaway lines like, for example, if there is a map of hotspots for example, which which I've heard kind of as as one point, well, where are the data that populated that map? If there is in the ATIP program a sort of what was it, two hundred and eighty

page document are sort of crown jewels, where is that dossier? So there are some very specific things that have been mentioned that most people might have forgotten, but not everyone has, and I think we might be hearing more about some of these sorts of things. So one of the things I think it staggers me how little official paperwork we yet have on a tip. As I mentioned, we have Harry Reid's two thousand and nine letter to William Lynn the

IID, we have some of the contractual solicitation documents. We have the DIA letter to Congress about the various studies that were undertaken, but we don't have

much more. But there's no doubt in my mind, even notwithstanding my point that you try and suppress the pay per trail where you can, but government is what it is, and there will definitely be despite that intention to sometimes generate as little paperwork as you can, and where you do generate it to make sure that it doesn't come out to press officers and bloggers and UFO community people, there will be some material that inevitably has to come out just because

the FOI requests are sufficiently well crafted. So keep an eye on that. I think that's a really great point. I mean, this is very fertile ground. We know it exists, and as we've seen in the past, and even as you all had experienced in the UK that even the most tightly held records, it takes time, but eventually we'll start to see more. So this may play out just like we just got. You know, these last files from the UK. The whole release of files will probably be a

slow process that will go on for the next few years. Absolutely, but don't rule out some left field revelation that takes everyone by surprise, whether it's a new individual associated with some of this coming forward and speaking out, or something that takes the debate off in an unexpected direction. I mean, there are aspects to this. We've seen the videos, for example, the navy jets chasing the UFOs. We've heard talk of meta materials, so there are

kind of and we've discussed the human effects. Don't be surprised if something else that didn't previously have visibility suddenly explodes into the public consciousness. I agree, probably multiple something else's I wouldn't be surprised. Well, thank you so very, very very much for doing this interview. This has been incredible every time we talk to you, it's so incredibly enlightening and it demonstrates, you know, the importance of input from people who have had the experience to be able

to have some more insight into all of this for us. So thank you for once again coming on the show. Thank you very much, and I guess I'll be seeing you in alien con right in just a week. Absolutely looking forward to that. Alrighty, fascinating and fun. Yeah, we'll see you next week. Thank you so much. Okay bye now. Thank you so much to Nick Pope for joining us once again. He's always awesome.

It's always wonderful to have him on the show because the insight that he lends, having been kind of alue Elizondo in the UK, you know, someone who was on the inside and doing this UFO investigative work for the government and then also doing the public and as well, especially in these times, gives us invaluable insight into what is going on here so we can interpret all of these new revelations and new things that are happening with all of this. However,

we're not done. I have a special bonus audio here. So I got a contact from Anthony Leapey and there are some things he wanted to share with us regarding Unidentified. Leapey as the executive producer and showrunner for Unidentified Inside

America's UFO investigation. This is the show that is covering Tom Delongs to the Stars and also the ATIP organization within the Pentagon and of course the guy who used to run it lou Elizondo. The other guy that we talk about here is Chris Mellon who's part of To the Stars and also in the show. He is the guy who is the former United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense

for Intelligence and then later for Security and Information Operations. So this is a guy who served as a staff director for the United States seni Senate Committee on Intelligence. So he's been in Washington sharing intelligence and information for a long time, which is really important when it comes to some of the topics that we're

going to talk with Anthony about here. The other thing I wanted to remind you all is if you haven't seen the show or you're not, you don't remember this part episode three on unidentified Of course I've interviewed Chris Day or I'm sorry, Kevin Day. And Kevin Day was a radar operator, the supervisor on the nimits, and he had told them an area to go check out near where the NIMES encounter happened. That was essentially Guadalupe Island off the coast

of Mexico, and that's where they go in episode three. So we'll talk about episode three and then some really important upcoming information that's coming up on Unidentified. So check out this interview with Anthony leape Alijandro. How are you good? How are you? I am great? Exciting times. It is really

exciting. So first off, I want to apologize because I was informed, and I think it was by a French Canadian that I had been pronouncing your name wrong last time we talked, and it's Anthony leapey Wei, which is it's a very pretty name. Correct. I'm glad they corrected me. So before we talked, I don't think the show had aired yet, and now it has. What's the response been, like, it's been really incredible people, you know, just from the mainstream media catching on. I mean,

the whole conversation almost overnight has radically changed. You know, you're seeing things like the Washington Post running opinion pieces saying, hey, we got to talk about UFOs, The Atlantic, Bloomberg. I mean, it's been it's been really wild. So it's very gratifying to see that. You know, we've kind of cracked open the conversation. That was really all we really wanted to do, and in some degree it's really exciting and it's so different. It's

very surreal to watch it. First of all, to see so many items that I've written about coming to the screen, my most favorite stuff that I've looked into. But second of all, it spills over in a way that other shows don't. So for instance, and reality shows kind of have their followings, but they don't make the news like you just reference, and especially on really important topics, I mean policy when it comes to the Navy or

some of these other items and articles that have popped up. Yeah, and that's kind of the turn that the series is going to be taking, and that this upcoming week is you're going to see the beginnings of a chain of events that again, this is wholly my unofficial opinion. I cannot prove the

following but and I think people can make up their own minds. But the chain of events that you'll see that starts in this Friday's episode where Louel Zondo and retired Commander David Fraver go and meet a lieutenant named Lieutenant Ryan Graves, an Fateen Fighter pilot from Theodore Roosevelt, and he tells his story for the first time. The chain of events that you see unfold in that episode and then in the following episodes I believe are directly related to both this larger conversation.

Obviously, we saw the New York that, you know, we introduced them to the New York Times. They the New York Times wrote the big article, but also the Navy changing their policy. I believe it was the

events of the Theodore Roosevelt that pushed the Navy. To many of your viewers listeners probably know about this, but you know, in April of this year, the Navy announced new guidelines for reporting of UFOs and essentially tacitly admitted that what these things are are not our own, meaning a US military operation, and that led to this weekend's sort of mind blowing blockbuster news that President Trump has been briefed on these recent events and as he said, is going to

be monitoring it closely, whatever that means. But I believe that there is a direct line and you'll see that unfold beginning this Friday, which is really exciting. Of course, you have the President saying he said he had a short brief so who knows how much information he got. Apparently not enough to convince him that, you know, UFOs are a real thing, although he defers to the pilots. However, you know, the conversation to the level

that the conversation is reached. We had in this article Task and Purpose, where the Navy spokesperson kind of says, well, it could be Chinese Russians, where we're still not sure, we're looking into it. But then the Air Force, and this is the first time I've seen the Air Force kind of pipe in on the conversation, says, well, we don't think it is Russian or Chinese drones. I think we think that they wouldn't have the capability, and you know the nature of the technology that would be used is

not what's demonstrated in these videos sort of thing. So it's really excited. I mean, it's inspired this conversation between the Navy and UFO, or the Navy and the Air Force about UFOs, that Air Force that I'm so glad you brought that up. That Air Force statement, which actually hasn't gotten a lot of attention outside of I think a lot of the UFO circles and the military circles. That statement by that Air Force general was major's major general actually

I think you said it. But you know, that is a really interesting piece of the puzzle because now you have the Navy saying it is not us. They're using the term UAP, which, as Nick Pope has you know, explained, that was a term that was developed when he was at the Ministry of Defense in the UK to to sort of reframe and talk about UFOs in a different way, but has become the parlance in the intelligence and military

community to refer to this phenomena that's unidentified aerial phenomena. So the fact that the Navy is using that term publicly, we all know that they they had been using it, you know, within the realm of ATIP et cetera.

But the fact that they're using it publicly and essentially are saying that these are not our own They're we're not The Navy is saying we're not experiencing unknown craft of our own making, obviously, and then you have the Air Force General coming out and saying they don't believe that the Chinese or the Russians have the

capability. I mean, it really is by process of elimination. You end up in a very interesting place now writing kind of along these lines, writing about UFOs for so long, it's not surprising to me that there's all these conspiracies kind of crop up. But what you've been demonstrating in the show is more of a bottom up effort, and some of these guys, like Chris Mellan has been working with Bob big Low and they've been working on trying to

get UFO serious for a long time. Of course, we never knew that Loue Alisanda was behind the scenes doing this because that was secret for so long. So you really get the sense. And I've asked all of these these players, including some of the contractors like doctor Help put out for doctor Eric

Davis. You know, is that what this is an effort that you all have done to try to get this information out, as opposed to this belief among many that it's a top down that there's some kind of hidden hand that is kind of controlling all of this. And maybe we've talked about this before, but even though you've been presenting how this is all happening, it seems like people are like, yeah, but still you know there's somebody behind the

scenes. How do you react or what is you know? I think, I mean, I think Chris Mellon says this at one point in the show. It's hard to prove and negative, I have no evidence that there is someone pulling the strings behind Chris Mellon in terms of what he's doing, and you will see that in this episode. I don't want to give too much away what happens, but what you're going to see in this episode is the process by which Lieutenant Graves' testimony comes to Washington's. That's what It's not just

us getting Lieutenant Graves and Lieutenant o'coin talking on the record. What you're going to see is how lou and Chris are working behind the scenes to get people aware of what's going on, because that's the thing that I really learned doing this process. And I think it's hard for people, a lot of people to understand there's no such thing as the US government. There's so many different agencies, and there's so many different people, so many different people with different

levels of knowledge about what's going on here. And what you're going to see in this episode and what you see unfold in the rest of the episodes is Congress. The members of Congress who are now taking interest in this and unfortunately I can't share the names, that's all you know been told to me off the record, but the members of Congress who are now paying attention to this you know, these guys were pretty out of the loop, it seems, on what was going on, and a lot of people, you know,

I think a lot of people don't really realize what a TIP was. At least as far as I can tell, was a very siloed, compartmentalized program. This wasn't you know, people, Not that many people were aware of what was going on. And a lot of these reports, you know, and I think because of the politics of the chain of command, just you know, they don't spread. I mean, a lot of people are you know, talk about well, there were five thousand people in the USS Nimics,

and there's probably the same amount on the Theodore Roosevelt. But those reports of those pilots, you know, those are very small cadra of dudes in these squadrons. You know, I spoke to many pilots in Lieutenant Graves, not many. I spoke to five other pilots. I don't want to overstate it when I say I spoke to five other pilots in Lieutenant Graves squadron who

wouldn't go on camera. And you'll see actually some of that process by which Elizondo was trying to get and we were in contact with the guy who was the weapons systems operator whose voice you hear in the two Theodore Roosevelt videos.

He was going to come on camera and then kind of backed out. I spoke to several other guys in that squadron, all of whom confirmed the basic scope of that story, but not I also spoke to a higher up guy on the Roosevelt, and he wasn't even this is a really interesting story. I spoke to a guy who was a much higher ranking officer on the Roosevelt who was not aware of the sightings that were going on over twenty fourteen.

In twenty fifteen, who was a former pilot, but he told us a story off the record of an incident he had an earlier work up, which is another term for an exercise, where he saw a craft that he couldn't explain. So it's interesting who knows what is? You really have to kind of understand how these ships work, and how you know the different parts of the puzzle fit together, and where all these guys are physically on the ships, and who they talked to. It appears to me that you know these

pilots pretty much. You know, they stick stick together, you know, so anyway, it's a little of the sidebar, but it's it's a it's actually it's a larger metaphor for when you look at what's going on inside the Pentagon. Is this information, you know, is not widely known. You hear a lot of people And here's what's really interesting, Audra, I have

we haven't. I haven't told anyone about this yet. But if you notice at the end of our app every episode, now we have an email UH info at unidentified dot tv where we UH have put out the word for UH

military personnel to contact us. We have gotten scores and scores of emails from people, all with telling us their name and rank and where they were deployed, many of whom are talking about similar instance that you UH see in the series, and including several people who are backing up the stories of some of the guys that you've seen and who you know we're on ships, even sending us pictures with them with what is a couple of the guys who you see

in our show saying Hey, I know that guy, I know that story. He's telling you the truth. So it's it's really I feel like we've kind of, you know, crossed the rubicon on this story in a lot of way, and it's we're opening up floodgates and we're sifting through this as we go, and if other military people are listening to this, we we are absolutely reading every single one of those emails and we're going to be following up with people for the stories that we, you know, feel are interesting.

M hmm, yeah, I think I did it. Why reporting like yours is important so you can see the investigation unfold because the what people assume how things work is not necessarily the case and sometimes can even be counterintuitive, and so it's a learning process to learn how you know this all happens, and how you know this information can only be held by maybe just a handful of people as opposed to you, you know, to the the masses or

large amounts of people like some people assume. Yeah, I mean that's really where this the the series kind of takes a turn where we start you start seeing how Lou and Chris are working behind the scenes. You know. One of the interesting things that I think is is that people really need to understand about Melon and Alizondo is these guys are not whistleblowers. People are trying to

kind of put them into that frame. These guys still have security clearances, and they're still working very closely with people both in all say, you know, the military executive and the intelligence community. They have very close connections and I've seen that personally. I've been in meetings with them, with different members of these different branches of government. Say so, I think it's and they're open about that. I think people are trying, people are getting a little

bit. Maybe we didn't make that clear enough in the show that these guys are not trying to say that they're they're they're not there. And that's what's such a tricky part about this storytelling is there's a lot of information that they can't tell me and they can't say on camera about what they've learned. And that's why we're going out in the show to get these first hand accounts from the pilots themselves, because these guys, you know, are still bound by

their security clearances. I do want to talk a little bit about episode three, Guadalupe Island, because it was the island is so cool. Of course, isn't it incredible? Yeah, Kong Island, you know, that's exactly what I was thinking. Monster Island from Godzilla or something right. And so you get there and you've got these coordinates from Kevin Day, the radar operator supervisor and the nimics in two thousand and four, and he said this is

where he was getting the hits. And you get there. Were you surprised when you started talking to the locals? You know, I have to say it was. I was super as a producer and a showrunner, extremely worried about that trip because it was a major you know, I don't, if you know, about making television, the major expense to rent a boat right in the world of documentary filmmaking. So it was a major sort of risk we were taking. We're like, okay, we're gonna go down to Mexico.

We don't know what we're going to find. We teamed up with this amazing local journalist whom Jorda Lebreja, who works out of Tijuana, kind of guy mostly covers the cartel wars down there, but he's you know, spent, he's knows in Sonata area. And he immediately when I first talked to him and said, you know, will you hear about that all the time down here? This is like it's on the new Their their sightings on the news. There's like big rares ufo radio shows on the local radio in Baja

California, so it's like a very well known thing. Uh that ufo sightings are kind of a thing down there. So we sent him ahead of time down to to Incinata and just to to look around and talk to people. And he said, man, we it was like you know, swinging a cat. It was all I had to do is just start talking to people on the street. And all these fishermen seem to have these stories and none

of them knew about the Nimits incident. They had that that was something that you know, wasn't really widely reported and there, or at least, you know, wasn't part of the world. They didn't really know much about it, so they were really kind of tableau Rosa's. We went down there and it was a you know, crazy experience. I wasn't there, to be clear, my producers went down there. I get really ce sick, so I would have died on that love really but yeah, I would not have

made it to Gualupe. But no, it was incredible, and I think the most eerie part of the spine tingling part about it was the pilot that pilot Ojeda, who basically you know, flies in those waters all the time. His incident where he basically had a run in with the tic tac shaped craft was in twenty fifteen, right eleven years after the Nieman's incident, and when he told us, he basically gave us the approximate location, you know, he said he was twenty three miles south of Enconnada, about ten miles

off the coast. When we kind of roughly plotted that on the map, it was like I believe, I believe it was twenty miles away from where the Fravr and his wingman intercepted the Tiktak in two thousand and four, which when I told one of the pilots about that, they were like, that's

basically the same location. Our turning radius is like ten miles when we circle, you know, holding pattern essentially, So eleven years later, he runs into a craft doing the exact same thing, moving in that weird ticked like you know how Fraverr described it, almost like a ping pong ball inside of a glass cube, and then when it kind of became aware of him, shot right across his nose. That's very very similar to what fravr described the

knimahs tic Tac doing, so that really blew my mind. And then when we got out to Guadalupe where and that's the location where the chief radar operator from the new that said they were all disappearing off his radar envelope. So he wasn't sure whether they were physically disappearing or but that's where he was last able to see them. But he said they were all moving in the southerly location down the Pacific, and then all right to that one location, and

he gave us those Latin lungs. And when we got out there on the boat, sure enough, all the fishermen who work out of this tiny little fisherman's collective all said they'd see things there all the time, including one of the world's most renowned great white shark you know scientists, who also said he

saw something. So it was it was pretty mind blowing to hear that piece of the puzzle and to hear that that now if you look, and this went a little bit quick in the show, but we plotted them all on the map and also by date, and it went they were seeing them before two thousand and four, and they were seeing them the most recent one was it was the last year in twenty eighteen, so it's an ongoing thing.

Whatever these are, whether you know, you want to argue that there's some kind of navy drone swarm that they just constantly have flying around there, you know, I mean, there is interesting, mysterious stuff going on there. The you know, Guadalupe Island is like this really interesting controlled environment where foreigners are not. Actually, we tried very hard to get permission from the Mexican government to be able to land on it and go shoot on shore, and

we couldn't get permission. They claimed that that was it. Well, I think it has to do with the fact that, I mean, it's it's hard to get a straight answer exactly. I mean, the official answer is that it's a marine refuge. So it's sort of like a Galopogos type of

thing, right where they are trying to keep the footprint really low. So the only people who have permission there are there's like a tiny little fishermen's collective and they have like some you know, small shacks where they sleep and fish off there for a couple of weeks at a time, and then they go back and you know, they live in Baja. There's also a Mexican Weather Army uh weather station on the island. But other than but I think it

mostly you know, I don't know what it really has to be. One of the other theories we heard from from our Mexican context was it has to do if there's no immigration on the on the shore there, so they there's no one to check a passport. So if you're if you're coming into Mexico, if it's their first time you're entering Mexican soil, there's no there's they

don't have any facilities to basically allow you into the country. If that makes sense, and honestly is probably it also probably something it also has to do with drugs, in the sense that they don't want people, you know, if that is, that could be a great jump off point, you know for people bringing drugs up there, and if people were kind of you know, so they're trying to keep it as the footprint as minimal as possible.

Or you could go conspiracy theory. Right again, you can't prove a negative that maybe it has to do with whatever you see flying over there and there's some secret you know, underground Illuminati UFO based on the Island, right, I mean whenever you which if you want to go there. There's can't argue that we know there's not right, So and we're about it out of time. But it's a good thing to end on because we're to be at Alien Con you and I this weekend, and now we're going to hear a lot

of pretty wild theories. I think. Yeah, I'm so excited. I've never been to any of these conferences, so I'm really excited to be able to meet you in person and to learn a lot more and to talk more about the show and answer any questions I can. Well, the show is awesome. Thank you so much for coming on with me again for a few minutes to talk about the the next couple of episodes. And I cannot tell you how excited I get watching this show. It's so much fun, and

you guys have done a great job. All right, excellent, all right, talkulater, talk to you later. Thank you so much to Anthony Lapey for joining us and sharing some of the cool stuff that's going on with the show Unidentified. Hopefully you're able to catch that that's every Friday on the History Channel, really good stuff. You can also go to the History Channel website and look up the Unidentified website. They've got some great articles there, just

like they were doing with Project blue Book. They have some cool stuff up there. Also. Of course, what's great is a lot of what Lapey mentioned. He even mentioned Nick Pope was the type of stuff that we're talking with Nick about. Remember you can go visit Nick pope'side at nickpope dot Net. Awesome show today. Thank you so much to everybody who joined us.

Thank you to Martin Willis for joining us with the news. I also ron remind you we have some really cool things coming up with the UFO Congress. James Fox is going to be speaking, and we just added to the list Chuck Sukowski. He's got a brand new show called Alien Highway that is on the Travel Channel and it covers Skinwalker Ranch related to all of this stuff that we've been talking about. So they did a great job with that episode.

They had some weird stuff happened too, So go check out Alien Highway on the Travel Channel. Also, if you haven't heard, of course, I've interviewed Check Sukowski many times because we've been buddies for a very very long time. But I'll also have him and the whole crew from Alien Highway on. Hopefully sometime soon. We're working on that, so be sure to go to ufocongress dot com so you can see Chuck, you can see James Fox, you can see Kevin Day, all of these really cool people at the conference.

It's going to be a lot of fun. Go to ufocongress dot com, remember ufocongress dot com, and you can find out more information about the event and sign up soon. Especially get rooms because the rooms typically sell out. We've got more rooms at this hotel than we've had at a pre hotel. But sign up as soon as you can, and especially your room so you don't run to be sure that you get a room in the host hotel. But thank you all so much. Come say hi this weekend at alien

Con if you're there. I always love to say hi to listeners. In fact that Phoenix move On, I met a couple more and hello to those of you who said hi and Phoenix move on. Thank you all so much for joining us this week. We'll have another great show next week. Until next time, Audios moved tuttos. You are must