Hello, and welcome to Open Mind UFO Radio. I am your host and my name is Alejandro Rojas, and I am here with my news guy, who is Martin Fancy but willis fancy. But yeah, I was going to use the A word, but uh, you know what I put season YouTube now and I don't want to risk you know, a rating issue, that's true. Yeah, yeah, we can picture what you Yeah, you know it doesn't really work that well. What's that fancy? But I know it
doesn't sound half as good. Now. Have you ever ran into an issue with a guest, you know, using profanity or something on YouTube and then you having any sort of rating issue. No, I've had that happen a couple of times, and you know, I'll one time I repeated the word I said, I don't think we could say yeah beep on this show, and no, nothing ever happened. Huh. Yeah, I know, like I've had like it like Chris O'Brien, I know that's it was, I
think too, really same person. Yeah that is so funny. So just so I guess, no, you know this is actually a UFO show. Although I might get off topic a bit, and I will in a second, but you're gonna enjoy it because I'm going to talk about you know, just how and why Martinez so fancy. But we will be talking UFOs, UFO news and then our guest today, and I'm very excited about this. I know I always say that, but there's an extra level of excitement for
my guest, Nick Pope. And the reason why is that he used to work for the Ministry of Defense investigating UFOs for the British government. And of course a lot of the news that we're talking about, and some of what we'll be talking about with Nick, including some very new and interesting insight, is you know, the US government investigation into UFOs. And I think that you all will be intrigued by our conversation because we will. You know,
I feel we do ask. I do ask some of the tougher questions that you know, people think that could be posed. And I think Nick's answers are just extremely insightful and intelligent, and so this will be a lot of fun. And you know, it helps that he has a British accent to add to his answers even sounding more intelligent. It has that way, doesn't it It does, quite, it quite does. So and I called you speaking of fancy and in Europe. You know, we don't have to give
details because I know you can't talk about your clients. But this is amazing. So you're just finishing a job, you're starting a new one, and you sent me, you know, the picture of the mansion because you're you know, giving I guess pricing for this really expensive historic stuff. But so this person you just got done with, can I at least add you know where she went and stuff? Oh yeah, oh yeah, sure, yeah, she's she's a famous television family. That's uh, that's the best way
you can put it. Yeah, traveling in France with an open pocketbook, purchasing amazing stuff whatever she wanted for thirty years, just for fun. And yeah, sixth floor townhouse at downtown Boston. It's just absolutely so much fun to go through. That is incredible. That would be I can only imagine the type of stuff you're looking at, probably furniture and art and that sort of thing. Oh yeah, yeah, wow, yeah, I'm really historic
pieces too. Wow. So it's a lot of fun. So, speaking of the East Coast, I'm going to be in Baltimore in a few weeks from November eighth to the eleventh, and so will Nick Poke my guest. We're both going to be speaking at alien Con. And since it's kind of that, that's probably still quite a jount for you, huh. You know, I've I've went and visited Ray Stanford down there, and it took me about I think about seven hours something like that drive. It is a bit
of a jaunt. So you probably won't be coming out to visit us, maybe not but you, but but alien Con. Yeah, I mean that's kind of a that's kind of a strange way. Alien Con. Yeah, that's what they're calling it. This is those of you who watch Ancient Aliens probably see the commercials for this during the program. This is kind of they're the major sponsor or the back row of this thing, although it's a different
company that runs it. And of course Georgio and Eric von Danikin and some of these other people who are on that program are are the speakers, and so I've got an opportunity. We are going to have a UFO Congress booth
there. We did that at their last event in Pasadenia and sold stuff like crazy because we have the coolest UFO and alien stuff if you ask me, In fact, you may hear some typing here and there in the background, and that is the famous Karen Brard actually really procuring some more Alien and UFO products for our event and theirs and so yeah, so that ought to be a lot of fun. Wow, And when did you say that was November? I think the event is actually ninth to the eleventh. Ah, so
just google Alien Con and you'll find it. That's right. Wow. Nice. Yeah, So let's go ahead and get into some UFO news. What you got for us? Well, I think this is interesting. Uh. This is something that Cheryl Costa wrote. She always writes in the Syracuse Times or New Times. I guess it's called and I really like this article. It's the Mystery of Changing UFOs. The prize is hiding in the details. That's a subtitle. So basically she's talking about one of the most perplexing of
all UFO shapes. And she's talking about about the morphing or the changing UFO category. I have heard a number of people talk about it. Now. I thought it was very interesting and curious. Maybe sometimes I thought maybe something changed an angle or something. Why people say they change, but people talk
about drastic changes in shape. So she goes on to write that, you know, she was thinking that was perhaps the observers that were flawed, but maybe there's really something to this because she listened to the talk show with George Knapp on Coast to Coast and he was interviewing Shaqa Lee, who of course is one of the deans of uphology, and so Jacques was making a point about the changing UFOs that seemed to morph in an effort to confound observers through
cameras and other scientific equipment that researchers might be using. So I have I know, I've heard of like people saying, well, maybe it's ball, lightning or plasma or something like that. But it's not just we're not talking about just lights in the sky. We're talking about actually seeing some type of what may look like some type of craft and actually shape a change shape as well, not just the lights. So and I have heard of a number
of stories. As a matter of fact, one of the most amazing stories I heard is a guy that's not even interested in UFOs told me about really he told me, I want me to tell you the story real quick. Sure, that'd be great. This is a guy that's actually on the Antiques road show constantly, and I used to share an office with him, and one day admitted to him that I, you know, I did a show on UFOs and he looked at me real serious. He goes, I saw one, and I go, well, can you tell me about it?
And he said, well, yes, he was in college and he said they were. He said, I I admit I was drinking. We were in a dorm and he says, but outside some of the cart our eye outside, and he said, we saw the thing swoop in and we looked and it was the shape of a box, like a rectangular box, with
lights all around it, and it was just floating. He was on like the seventeenth floor and Amherst and Amherst College, and he says it was below them, and then he saw it shoot off into the sky, and all of a sudden he saw it burst into five lights, and then the lights were opposing and they were like he said, they were like the signaling back and forth. And then he heard noise and he saw a fighter jet with
its after burner going right toward it. And as soon as it got nearer, the thing, he said, absolutely disappeared vanished, which I think is really a great UFO the UFO completely vanished. All the lights were just gone. It was totally gone. He never saw it take off or anything. So I said, oh my god, I said, didn't that change your whole life? And he goes, I could care less. I can't care so less. I was so shocked by that answer. A funny answer, yeah, And so I asked him, if you talk on my show,
he goes, not a chance. Wow, he sounds like a character, definitely is how funny. Wow, that's a that's that's a great sighting though,
And you're right, this is a great story. And I'm glad that Cheryl tackled this because the stats that she showed were also interesting in that the reports of morphing you know, craft or UFOs is consistent throughout the years, which kind of bolsters the point that this isn't just mistaken you know these but you know, if if they were mistaken and people were just accidentally you know, seeing something more, you probably wouldn't see that consistency throughout the years that
she's demonstrated there is. So yeah, I agree. I think it was a fascinating topic for her to tackle. And she goes into like you said, she goes into all the statistics. It's very very well written article and there's graphs and everything, and so that's the there's even graphs. Yeah, she even writes graphs. So if you go on to the Sarahcuse New Times website, you can see that article right there, right, and you can find that the front page of Open Minds that TV and yes, it's linked
right there. So you can also see moving on to a new story where you and I are at least have a bit of an I told you so,
I think moment here is on our front page. You also see a bunch of stories about Tom DeLong and to the Stars, and of course you and I have talked about this, and you know, I didn't shy away from this, even though people call me a kind of an apologist or something for to the Stars and a bit I am, I'd admit, because I'm very excited about what they're doing, and I think what they're doing is really
important. But this, you know, in the UFO conspiracy circles, people were talking about them being thirty seven million dollars in debt, and I was afraid that this was kind of and I was half expecting, I don't know about you, that it would bleed into mainstream media, and sure enough it did. Ours Technique wrote the first story, and then some others wrote a story on that, and of course DeLong actually responded upset, and so did to the Stars because they were way off base. And it has to do
with something I pointed out because people mentioned this. So I looked at the SEC Security document and you see here that if you go down to the budget, because it's all outlined here, those millions of dollars are on this line called stock based compensation. People are speculating, Oh, they built a big UFO with a thirty million dollars and they're not gonna share it with people that are just gonna call the bankrupt and fly around in their UFO or something like
that. But no stock based compensation. So I don't know the deed. You know, this is just as complicated as the astrophysics that some of the guys come on and talk about. But uh or that Chris Cogswell, he wrote a great story actually on the science of investigating materials, and it's very high level too. You can find that out Open Minds. But this stock based compensation line is not real money. It's not money. They spent.
It's essentially how they compensate their employees and investors and others. I guess with stock. And I have a story on minds dot TV from Isaac Cooy that's not his real name, but he's actually a barrister in the UK, a lawyer in the UK who is into UFO stuff, and he explains this a little better and although he is often critical occasionally to the stars, he says these stories were really unfair and completely off base, that that's not real money
that they owe. Essentially, I guess in order to make good on this, they do need money to come in. But it's kind of like, you know, a lot of these organizations are nonprofit and the people involved don't get paid at all, like mufon or something like that. And Uh, However, in this case, they'll it in the hopes that the company makes money eventually. Uh, then they will make money off of the stock that they're compensated from. Uh. And that's kind of where this all comes down
to. So it was not they're not thirty seven million dollars in debt. That's completely inaccurate, and everybody, including our technique and the mainstream has corrected their stories. So they've got egg on their face. Yeah, and I'm sure that that author and who I felt what, you know, he wrote a sloppy story, is what I've called it, because it is, you
know, And unfortunately we've talked about this before. The mainstream media when they write about paranormal UFOs don't seem to always adhere to the level standards that end with others, and so they are loose with their facts and statements and kind of tongue in cheek like this story was, and he was way off on it. So so I just feel kind of glad that at least, you know, we took kind of a more closer look at that than many did. And you know, when I was pointing out, hey guys, this
is stock based competition. This isn't real dollars what you're seeing here spent or not, like this isn't you know, they're not in debt, I got a lot of criticism for it for oh yeah, right, you know, and then what is it? Why would they say this? And it's like,
well, we just have to ask people. As always, when you don't understand something, instead of making some big conspiracy, you need to talk to an expert to explain it to you is what it comes down to, which is what journalism is and what this is why we do these interviews and certainly many times when you have an expert come in and explain, Hey, guys, this is what this really means. It's not as nefarious or as it may seem to be. Is there some type of tax implications to this
as well? I mean for the reason yeah, of this filing. I think you're exactly. I'm pretty sure from what I understand, that's why they have to report it in this way. It's all about tax reporting. So I guess there's a perceived value or potential value to the stocks and they have to report that value. And that's what this is all about. Is is Isaac cooy puts it and you can read the details because it, like I said, it gets over my head. He talks about like, let's say
you've got a company. You're selling books, and you know you're you're selling a thousand books and you know you make ten thousand dollars a year, but somebody gives you a technology and says, hey, you can have this and
you can now sell this. Well, in order to develop that technology, you would sell stock into your company which is kind of you know, projected with your company, and you have to guess, I think I'm going to be able to make X amount, so I'm going to value my stock at this and uh so then you're going to sell that stock so you can develop your product, and so you have to report, you know, what your potential value is when for your company. So I think that that kind of
makes sense to me, so that it's it's similar to that. Now. I wonder if they've like had people try to pull out of you know, people that are investing or I mean, wonder if this has been a real negative you know, has had negative implications to what they're trying to do. You know what, That's a very good question. And at least I've heard anecdotedly, anecdotally that some investors have been a bit taken aback by this because they didn't understand and they're like, oh, what the heck, you know,
did I just throw away all my money? And and and they supposedly have not gotten answers when they ask about it. I don't know that any of that is true. Those are just some of the accusations out there, and of course there's so much mud slinging going on. In fact, earlier, I think today I had a I like my little saying here. What I told someone is that the UFO community often has a bad habit of eating its own and the bigger the fish, the more they feast. And what
I mean is bigelow all of these organizations. The bigger you are when you get involved with this topic, the more you're criticized and just attacked. Sure, and which is frustrating. And but unfortunately the way it is, yeah, some you know, some actually deserve it. But uh but you know, the yeah, yeah, because they're they're actually it is a just a money game, right, But those aren't usually, at least to me,
the big fish in the respect of a mainstream. Often those are people in certain niches who are taking advance, taking advantage of and they become big as far as followings and dollars. I think that they pull in some of these people even though they're charlatan. It's like you're saying, but what can you do? Huh? Right, can only keep our side of the street clean, as they say, yeah, and doing that, you know, I think that Chris Cogs will and he is a bit of a critic when it
comes to to the Stars. He of course I've had him on fairly recently. He's a PhD in chemical engineering. But he did it the right way. He submitted and I'm so happy he did. He submitted this paper to me for Open Minds about the science of proving if an object is created by
an extraterrestrial civilization. And his intent is that, you know, if to the Stars is claiming that they're going to be doing this sort of analysis, here's the sort of analysis that needs to be done, and I think that's the right way to do it. It's a professional way to say that, hey, public, you know, here is what they are up against. And he's kind of saying, as a scientist in this field, this is the bar that I'm going to hold them to when they come out with their
information, which is the appropriate way to do it. That's how science is done, is that you know, science check each other's work, and so that's what he's going to be doing. He's going to say, it's kind of like, hey, guys, you know, I think really you or anybody else doing this, this is what you need to do if we're going to prove this to the mainstream scientific community. That's right. That's what makes sense. So it's a great article. It's highly technical. I don't know
if you read it. The first few paragraphs the introduction I get, and that's the most important part. He outlines, you know, the steps and everything, and then it gets really technical into the actual test that need to be done X ray diffraction, isotopic research and atoms and isotopic racial map spectraumetry. I don't even know if I'm saying it right. All this really complicated stuff. So, especially for you science nerds out there who do know what
all this stuff is, I think you really love this article. You'll find it out open Minds. I was just scanning through it. Wow. It is very thorough, it is, isn't it. Yeah, really makes a lot of sense to a lot of big words. Are there words that you don't know? Or are you kind of a physics genius? The words I don't know? Yeah, Well, that's good that you're honest, because if you would have said you are a physics genius, I would have called you on it. Oh no, I'm so glad I almost did right here in
public, in front of everybody. I would have said, you're full of it. My friend but no, you're honest, dude. Well, yeah, I'm not really up on what energy disperseif X ray spectrocrosipy is either very complicated stuff, but it makes a lot of sense. It's essentially he's saying, it's threefold. You have to prove that something is made in space.
But if it's made in space, that doesn't necessarily mean it it's of an extra terrestrial intelligence, because a meteor, for example, would come from space. So it also needs to demonstrate it's engineered. It's a manufactured thing, but even if it's manufactured in space, that doesn't necessarily mean it's from an extraterrestrial civilization. So the one more thing that you need is that the technology used to produce this engineered material needs to be of a nature that is foreign
to us or more advanced that we don't understand. So those three things, and it does sound like to the stars in what they're looking at is trying to do just that. So it'll be interesting, of course, it'll be groundbreaking if they're able to prove such a thing in the future, right, I mean, you know they're with the elements that are available in the universe. We who knows. I mean something could be exactly like something we could
make and still be alien technology. Yeah, that's entirely possible. At the point is that in order to prove it to the mainstream that it is extraterrestural, it'll have to go beyond. But you're right, and that is even the case with extraterrestrial life. So there are instances, and we have this video with you know, a NASA scientist talking about it, where there's life
found on a meteorit or potential signs of life. But the next step of proving that it came from elsewhere, not the planet, that's the hard part. Even though it may have we haven't. We're not necessarily able to prove that. But we're out right we are already. Wow. Yeah, lies. Well, thank you so much for joining us with the news. Martin Willis check him out on podcast UFO. We will be right back after this short break with Nick Pope, so stay tuned. I am very happy to
welcome back to the show Nick Pope. Now, I know you're a busy guy, and thank you so much for coming back to the show. Thank you, it's great to be back on now. It's great to have you too, because it wasn't so long ago where I think you said you were going to kind of slow down your involvement in the field of UFOs, But that didn't really happen, did it. Well, as the classic quote goes, just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.
It may be a good thing because as soon as you said, you know, you might reduce your involvement, then exciting things happened to pull you back in. So it worked absolutely so. And the exciting things that happened were related to the government, the United States government, because all of a sudden, the United States had a secret program, and you have kind of a counterpart in Loue Alexander or Alessando, someone who was involved with investigating UFOs for
the US. However, as you've written in The Guardian, and this is what's really exciting about your recent article is that you kind of highlight the impact that is happening behind the scenes that people don't know so much about. So I guess my question my first question would be you talk about in this article how the Congress essentially is starting to take notice and ask questions and how did you come about that information? From a number of sources, but including some
currently serving internal governmental sources and to clarify what's going on. It's a complex situation. There are three different strands to the current congressional interest and I'll just take them one by one if I can. First, Yeah, the first is the Senate Armed Services Committee. Now they are looking specifically at the two thousand and four Nimits incident, which, of course we've all seen the videos of the Navy jets chasing the UFOs. This was a big part of the
New York Times story when they ran it in December last year. So Senate Armed Services Committee has interviewed at least two of the pilots involved in that incident, reached out too, and I'm not sure whether they have or haven't yet interviewed one of the radar operators. But so there is that strand of interest. Separately, in parallel, the House Armed Services Committee is has looked more generally at a tip what is it, what was it doing, how was
taxpayers money spent? What did they conclude? And there is a congressional record which I linked to in my Guardian article, and it specifically says there that the Defense Intelligence Agency, and of course this was a DIA program, supplied
the House Armed Services Committee with essentially a briefing answering those questions. So Senate Armed Services Committee, House Armed Services Committee, and just when you think it couldn't get more complex, the Space Technology pardon me, the Science, Technology and Space Committee have have taken a look at this and the Space Subcommittee and Representative Amy Barr raised this in a roundtable discussion hosted by Politiko some months ago,
and Amy Bearer said, yeah, I've had discussions with the chair of the Space Subcommittee and the full Science, Technology and Space Committee. So there's arguably three strands of congressional interest in this in specifically the Nimitz incident, specifically in a tip and I think segueing from that into the wider question of UAP itself, what is the phenomena? What are we dealing with here? So
there is undisput indisputably this multi stranded congressional interest. The real question is is any of that going to transition into formal hearings and if so, who's going to lead on that? I mean, for example, what the Space Subcommittee decided, Yeah, we want to get into this, but there was pushback from say the Armed Services Committee saying, wait a minute, a tip was a military an intelligence community program hands off, so that I suspect is the
sort of discussion that's going on behind the scenes at the moment. Firstly, will there be formal hearings and secondly, who's who's going to be managing them. What's interesting too, especially when it comes to this Space Committee, is that it's Bigelow Aerospace because they are and I don't think I make a pointer to call this out every time I can, but I don't think people realize
what a big player they are on the space scene. They're one of the big guys you know that the Space Committee is considering when they're when they're working on their policies and future around working with private corporation. And of course Robert Bigelow is also in the mix, and that he received funding from the Defense
Intelligence Agency for these paranormal investigations. Well, yes, indeed, And of course people are still trying to untangle the thorny inter relationship between all these different acronyms that are flying around a TIP and or SAP and Bigelow Aerospace and specifically the BASS and NEDS and trying to figure out and now of course to the Stars Academy all these players, all these complicated inter relationships, and I don't. I don't profess to have all the answers on this, and I should,
I should say, because this came up actually yesterday. I am not a member of any of these organizations. I tend not to be a joiner. I'm a bit of a lone wolf. So I had no official despite my back government background in the UK, I had no official involvement with or SAP or a TIP. I'd left the British government by then anyway, and it's not clear that the UK government even had a role in these programs.
And I'm certainly not a member. I have never worked for any any Robert Bigelow company or entity, and neither am I a member of the To the Stars Academy. So I don't. I don't hold a brief for any of these people, which in one sense is good. I can take a step back, I can hopefully look at the big strategic picture. And while I'm bound, of course by the British Government secrecy oath, I have no sort of non disclosure agreements here in the UK in the US, so I can
call it how I see it, mm hmm. And that's what makes it interesting too as we all try to figure this out, is how all of these groups relate. And I guess just to as an example of unanswered questions, you referred to ASAP, which was the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program, And from reporting from George Knapp we at KLAS in Las Vegas, we we know the existence of this program and they're the ones who worked with Bigelow
and received the funding. But at the same time, then this other organization, Alizondo, was part of a TIP. UH, it was created. We don't know when or how that kind of took over at least the UFO portion, but there's so many answered questions inside of that that we who knows
when we'll get the answers to that one? And one of those is and this is interesting, is this kind of terminology We hear a TIP referred to as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identify Program, the DoD IS referred to it as the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, and then in this document you're talking about, it's kind of funny because they referred to it as he Advanced Aerospace Threat
and Identification Program. Yes, and one wonders with all of this whether and I Obviously, when I was in the UK government, I received Freedom of
Information Act requests and dealt with them, so I didn't make them. But one wonders what effect, for example, leaving out and would would have on something like this, as you say, if you look at the Congressional record, the House Congressional Record dated April ninth one sees in as you say, paragraph four three eight one this reference to Advanced Aerospace Threat and Identification Program.
And one wonders, you know, if people are making FOI requests and they leave out an end, or if they ask for aerospace and Pentagon is right and actually it's aviation, whether whether these these FOI requests are going to fall because of a missing and or or whether in the spirit of the act people will respond and say, well, this is clearly what you meant. Here's the paperwork. But of course it's it's staggering actually how little we we have
from from the government at the moment. Another interesting aspect is that the government, our government is so interested. I mean, as you mentioned, you know there's there's three different committees that have decided since the New York Times article in December to actively investigate or inquire about the topics raised in the ATIP program that Alexander and The New York Times and to the Staris have brought to the light. This is pretty shocking really in that what's interesting, and I love
your input. At least in the UK and in the United States in the past, Congress really hasn't gotten involved until there was public pressure. But in this case it's not really due so much to public pressure, it doesn't seem, but it's more like they're taking their own active interest. Do you feel like that's accurate. Yes, I think it is. And one reason,
of course, is that the New York Times story. You know, even though this is small change in the defense budget, once you mentioned that twenty two million dollars of taxpayers money was spent, all sorts of antennae start twitching. And the ultimate irony of this would be if the push for certainly Congress
to take a look at this, maybe to have hearings. Actually, the irony would be if it came from skeptics who might argue, what the heck are we doing spending twenty two million dollars of taxpayers money on this nonsense? For so it might be one of those rare occasions where it's the skeptics who've managed to really kick this one over the line. But what's interesting also when you refer to that political article where the space members of the Space Committee were
discussing I wrote an article on that too, because it's fascinating news. They were discussing this topic in a very positive light. One of the members, a House member who was part of the committee I remember, had mentioned how he thought the topic was really interesting, and it was a political host who actually asked the question, but he said, yeah, this is a really
interesting question. I've brought this up in our committee. And then the others confirmed that, you know, Amy, she had brought up that she had brought it up, and the other gentleman who's part of the committee just said he was willing to talk about it. He found it interesting as well. It seemed like, at least in that environment, it was about genuine curiosity
on the topic. Yes, I think so. And of course it's no coincidence perhaps that literally in the last what month, we had NASA's Techno Signature workshop taking place, I think, down in Houston, and of course now the news that NASA is going to be perhaps focusing a little bit more on the search for life. Well, the fact that all these things are happening
at the same time can only help, I think. But having said that, I go back to the point that there may be pushback from the Armed Services Committee on this and a certain kind of what's the expression, get your tanks off our lawn? And this is more our business. I mean, if you ask the question, should the Space Committee be getting into the nuts and bolts of what an intelligence program embedded in DIA did, the answer might be no. So it might be that a more appropriate home for inquiries and
hearings about a TIP is the Emerging Threats and Capability Subcommittee. And if you look at the if you look at the terms of reference, it specifically mentions unconventional threats and isn't isn't that almost exactly what we're dealing with here? And going back, of course to Harry Reid's June twenty fourth, two thousand and nine letter to William Lynn the third I mean, I think the language is almost identical m the other. And that's kind of where you came from as
well. You were working for the Ministry of Defense, so you were looking into this similar to a TIP, which is part of U d as a potential threat, Yes, very much so. In fact, the final two Ministry of Defense UFO files, which have actually yet to be sent to the National Archives, but I have an advanced copy which I pulled out of my bookshelf just before this interview, and they at quite high levels of classification,
get into this very debate. And I'm reading from a document here. It says, the second and critical question is do UAPs represent a possible threat to the of the realm? And then it gets into a sort of almost philosophical argument about Russian aircraft penetrating our air defenses in the Cold War, and it says, well, they didn't have any hostile intent, but they certainly represented
a threat. And then the paragraph concludes, thus, the only logical conclusion we can come to is that we do not know if UAPs represent a threat to the defense of the realm. And interesting enough, you know, that reminds me of Chile, which is a government who actually investigates and they came to the conclusion, interesting that the phenomena is benign, which I think is the only government aided you know to ever do that. Well, it's a
nice piece of wish for thinking. No, I mean one of we'll probably get onto this, but my new documentary film Aliens in the Pentagon, Aliens at the Pentegon. Pardon me. I can't even get the name of my own movie right now. But the tagline for that, or one of the taglines is the T in a tip stands for threat, and there's a reason for that. Now. I don't know what discussions and intelligence analysis the Chilean government and Air Force have had on that, but I am surprised. I
am surprised that they have concluded this is benign. I don't see. I don't see without a proper intelligence assessment, and maybe they've done one, but I have yet to see one. I don't see how they could have made that conclusion because there is an equation. I know this sounds bizarre. There's an equation for whether a threat exists, and a threat is said to be a construct of capability and intent. Well, we have some idea of the capability, we have no idea, frankly, of of the intent. And
I'm surprised that Chileans would attempt an assessment based on that. That's really interesting to know that there is that formula which makes sense and from what I understand that Chileans used historical data in saying that. You know, I think there there is even some sort of quote to this effect, which was that historically, you know that our interactions have not caused, have not exhibited a malevolence.
Well, yeah, I get that, but I totally disagree. It's like, Okay, Hitler came to power in nineteen thirty three and not Nazi Germany and things. It's kind of a little bit like Stalin saying, well, the Nazi regime hasn't attacked us so far, so there's no threat. Well we all know what happened next. You know, just because something has not displayed overt hostility does not mean that in intelligence terms, does not mean
you can say there is no threat. And in fact, in the last two Ministry of Defense files, when they are released, you will see basically a split developing between different parts of the mod with the intelligence staff frankly saying some pretty disparaging things about my former colleagues and saying, who are these people to say there's no threat? What made them suddenly experts on intelligence and analysts?
That's really interesting. The second part of the Chilean quote was around the biggest threat is distraction from our pilots when they see one, and they figured they needed to have some training essentially to if there's a UFO around, don't worry about it, pay attention to flying the plane. Well, I agree
with that. I have to say that seems to have been lifted directly from the declassified mod Intelligence study Project Condine, which which very famously quoted almost that, and Project Condine was dated the final report was dated two thousand and there was a recommendation on that point and it said air crew encountering UAP should take no action aside from trying to keep the object astern. In other words, whatever these things are, I don't mess with them. So that's where the
Chileans got that one from. They got it from the UK Menstry of Defense. Mm hmm. I'm sure they did, because I know they rely heavily on US and Britain and other countries and their reports. Yes, indeed, and Project Condine is clearly something that a TIP we're aware of as well.
And again if you look at the different studies that some parts of a TIP were doing and the different technologies, quite a lot of them clearly have have I won't say their roots because I don't want to claim that the Ministry of Defense was absolutely first into this business, but there is clearly some cross fertilization between some of what a TIP was doing and some of what's in Project Condine.
Really interesting Jesus, time flies. So another fascinating aspect of all of this, And I want to say for the listener, Nick and I have a whole other interview that we've done here on Open Mind GFO Radio on Condine in particular, where we talked about that completely the whole time, so you could look that up. But when we're getting back to what you were mentioning about, you know, the threats and this possible jogging with the Space Council.
Hey, you know this is your wheelhouse, this is ours. As you know, more and more of our space programs go into the commercial space. What's interesting about this, and it probably even gives Robert Bigelow even more importance, is that if they decide in you know, the public arena too or the private corporations, that they need to assess whether there are threats and
how this phenomenon may affect their programs. It's interesting to I guess speculate on I wonder if there are you know these conversations happening inside of these corporations. We certainly know it's happening with Bigelow, but I wonder if you know he's gotten called from Elon Musk and said, hey, we need to sit down
and talk about this. Well, you would hope so, particularly because of course space tourism and literally taking people, paying passengers into space is going to be arguably the next step of where this is going, and indeed a big source of potential income for the private sector, which is, as you correctly
say, moving into this ground increasingly. So sure, if there are threats out there, whatever, whether we're dealing with other intelligences or whether we're just dealing with natural phenomena, people like Robert Bigelow, Elon Mask, Richard Branson, they need to know about it. H Well, it's time to take our first break, So we'll take a short break and then we will be right back for the podcast listeners, you will hear a short musical interlude.
But we are here with Nick Pope, who used to work for the Ministry of Defense, investigating UFOs, much like we have recently found Loue Elizondo did and others. Although we don't know who those others are, and there's much more transparent actually with your program then there was with a tip. But we'll get into that after the break, So we'll be right back. You're listening to over Mind you O Radio. Welcome back to Open Mind UFO Radio.
I am here with Nick Pope, formerly of the Ministry of Defense, currently out there sharing his knowledge and thoughts on the UFO topic, claiming to be the expert, the biggest UFO expert in the world. Although I would say that, you know, I might agree with that. I certainly hold you in very high regard when it comes to this topic. Oh well, thank you. Do you get a little embarrassed when people say that that you're the foremost UFO expert. I'm sure my agent would be pleased with those sorts of
statements, but I will let I will let the people decide. I mean, clearly, I'm one of a very small number of people, lou Alizondo being another one who's done this, who's looked at this from the inside. And whether that makes us more expert or not, I don't know, but it certainly gives us a different perspective and an inside view onto all of this. What that reminds me of something else. Lou always tells me, you know, I'm not an expert. I'm not an expert. I don't know
anything about this field. And because he did not look into the historic information when it came to this topic, which I can see actually makes sense at least for civilian research. Was that the case with you and your program, or did you look more into the civilian research in this topic. It's a really tricky one. I get Lou's point that he wanted to come into this with an open mind and he didn't want to be, you know, kind of dragged down by the baggage of history. So coming to this clean is
good. And indeed that's exactly what happened to me in the Ministry of Defense. I was simply posted into the UFO program as just part of the regular cycle of career postings in the Ministry of Defense. I had no prior interest or involvement in this subject, no knowledge, no belief particularly either way.
I was just given this as a job to do. On the other hand, once I had my feet under the table, and no disrespect to Lew's point, but I did feel that to contextualize the newly reported sightings and data that we were getting. It was incumbent on me to do a little bit of digging into what has happened before, not least for example, so that I could try to do some trend analysis. I mean, in one sense, it's yes, you want to go into each and every sighting with a
no in mind. On the other hand, one of the biggest things in the intelligence community is you look for patterns and trends, and to do that, to spot those trends, you need access to historical data. And in fact, one of the big discussions in the last two yet to be officially released Ministure Defense files is about how can we do a proper intelligence assessment if we don't have a big database look for patterns. You know, for example,
are there clusters of sightings around particular sites? If there are, that might tell us something about intent. But if I can just briefly go back, just quote something again, it's a better quote about this whole threat issue. And it's from a document that was classified secret Uki's B and it encapsulates this whole thing perfectly. It says, lack of evidence of hostile acts does not mean there is no threat, which does make a lot of sense.
I mean, I know, a lot of people get frustrated. There's a lot of feedback. You've probably heard that feedback also, because there is a contingency of people who and I kind of get it, really, who refuse to believe that there is any threat. But oh completely I get. I won't say hate mail, but I get when I talk about this and when I talk about threats and things, the whole if I can call it, the new Age wing of the UFO community get up in arms about this,
and I get accused of pushing a kind of cabalist agenda. And you've heard all the nonsense about false flag alien invasions. I've been accused of whipping up climate of fear and hysteria about this so that the New World Order can play what allegedly von Brown called the last card, the alien threat, and that we're going to get some sort of space Patriot Act and the New World Order
and the Illuminati sweep away the last vestiges of our freedoms. I mean, you know, that's the sort of territory you get into if you talk too much about a threat, and you know, you get into something interesting, though, which is where, okay, if there's this renewed interest in our government in this topic. Where do they go with it? So, for example, we have a blue Book and the other projects which just kind of they looked, they looked, and they ended. Of course, I can
you can argue what their intentions were, not necessarily discovery. But if you get with these newer projects or your projects, they there doesn't seem to be much of an endgame there. So even with this renewed interest, where would you recommend if they were to ask you, where would the government go with
this? Well? I think you would have to have a better filter than Blue Book and the British government's UFA project ever had, because it's quite clear if you weighed through the sixty thousand pages of documents that the MOD has declassified in the last ten years, that ninety nine percent of it is garbage or not garbage, but frankly of little value in undertaking a proper intelligence assessment of
what we're dealing with. I mean, it's literally, it's it's clearly, it's it's ninety nine percent aircraft lights and weather balloons and fire lanterns and things like that. You need a way of filtering out that at the very very early stages and focusing in on your really good hard data cases. I touched on this in my Guardian article recently, and I said, let's not get obsessed with with the numbers game here. Let's let's look at quality and not
quantity. And of course everyone, all the skeptics and debunkers love it when the numbers of sighting reports go down and we get bogged down and let's you know, irrelevant. Let's let's look at the good quality information we have, the pilot sightings, the radar data, the photos and videos that government imagery analysts might look at and say, yeah, this this, whatever it is, this is real solid object. Let's find out something about it, which
takes us back to the whole Pentagon video saga. But yeah, we've we've got to we've got to get over this this quantity argument and start talking about quality. So I think the first answer to your question is we need a much more focused inquiry than blue Book and the mods program ever were. Now, if a TIP was that focused program, then great, and maybe Congress
will get to the bottom of that. That is a great point too, because it seems like if at the model that a TIP took was, which was to focus on military cases, would be more along the lines of what you're talking about, and seems like it would be a better model. However, we have really practically no insight into the results. The only real document we have is again one that George Knapp was able to release, which was a leak document where our knowledge is somewhat limited about it, but it was
a report regarding the limit situation in two thousand and four. Yes, I've seen that. That's interesting. We do have to be fair. I go back to the fact that we have Harry Reid's June twenty fourth, two thousand and nine, letter to William Lynn the third That's an important piece of the puzzle I think. I mean this is again it's a dilemma. It's like this question of do you go into citings fresh or do you look at the
history. And you can argue it both way. And as much as I have just argued for a focused inquiry concentrating on military cases, the counter argument to that is that it's patronizing and just plain wrong to assume that no good data can ever come from the public. So I don't necessarily say that I've got the answers to this, but I think these are the sorts of questions
we should be asking. One other big factor that I think we can bring into the the debate about this is the role particularly if we can get historical data digitized and searchable. One big factor is the role that artificial intelligence and
algorithms could play in historical analysis. You hear a lot these days about big data and AI, and I think that might just be a very fruitful if Congress is going to look into this and how can we get past some of these roadblocks that we've hit with this, you know, over the last seventy years, Big data and AI might be an answer to that question. M hm. That makes a lot of sense as well. The other question I would have for you, I guess getting to your documentary Aliens at the Pentagon.
Yes, do you use the term alien? Was that your idea? Yes, but not as a statement that this is definitively extraterrestrial, just as a provocative title that's going to make people think about the situation. And of course alien can have a double meaning in that sense. What I've done with Alien's Pentagon is I've tried to tell the best story I can of some of the very complicated things that we've just discussed about a tip and Bigelow Aerospace or
SAP and how it all fits together. But I've tried to contextualize it and bring in the wider story of how it fits in with the US government's efforts over the last seventy years to try and make sense of this infuriatingly contradictory phenomenon that we're all struggling to deal with. Aliens at the Pentagon is is I think the most complete telling yet of this story. But I don't try and
push an answer on people. I do. I put the data and the information out there and say to people, at the end of the day, you make up your own minds about it. M hm. And it's the other thing is it's and we've had you and I have had this discussion before
about how to bring young people into this subject. I made a very deliberate decision that this was going to be something that we pushed out on all the platforms that these days young people get their information from when they stream, So Aliens at the Pentagon is on you know, Google Play and iTunes and Vimeo and Voodoo and those sorts of places. Mm hm. That makes a lot of sense as well. Absolutely, it's a deliberate way of trying to get
this to a new audience. But what I'm what I'm doing is trying to reignite I feel that the debate has kind of stagnated a little bit. We had to the Stars Academy announcement a year ago, then we had the New York Times article in December last year, and we've had the occasional nugget like Harry Reid's letter, like the Nimitz report that you mentioned, but frankly,
we've not had a whole bunch of other things. We've had a lot of speculation in the blogger sphere and on various forums and websites, very little from the government. So Aliens at the Pentagon tries to do two things, three things. Tried to tell the story, tries to reignite the debate about this,
and it tries to reach a different audience. Another question I have, which is great, Thank you so much for that, because that's that was you always guess what my next question is going to be, and that's exactly where I wanted to go with it. But that's okay because I always have so many questions. That helps get into more information such as this. Uh, this is an interesting kind of phenomena or a result. The way this
all happened is so haphazard. Uh, it's interesting and your perspective, I think would be especially interesting at this point in that lou Elizondo leaves the DODH because they're not paying enough attention to his project on UFOs, they're not taking UFO seriously. He then is asked to join to the stars and these other very credible people, and and in that announcement, you know says hey,
I used to work for the d O D looking at UFOs. A few people paid attention, and this New York Times article came out and it blew up, and all of a sudden, now we have arguably certainly more attention to this topic that by the government than we've had in decades, and perhaps
more serious attention than we've had in a very very long time. So by leaving and talking about the program, it seemed to have generated the interest inside the government he was hoping it would generate while he was in the government. I was wondering about your thoughts on that unique kind of situation. Well, Low is clearly a highly principled individual and he's used the phrase, I think he would like to see kickstarted a conversation with the American people and through that
a conversation with their elected leaders about how to take this forward. And he and his colleagues to the Stars Academy. I know they have a lot of critics. I'm I'm not sitting in judgment on any of that. There's no getting away from the fact that they have played a crucial role in getting this information out and in doing just what lou said he wanted to do. I have this conversation with the American people. Now where it goes from here,
I don't know. We've talked about the congressional hearings, but yeah, it's I talk about this. The way I characterize this in Aliens at the Pentagon is I use the phrase a believer faction, and I talk about a believer
faction in government making its move. But I think in a sense, yeah, you're right to make their move fully, they had to then take it outside of government, because obviously in government there are the roadblocks they hit skepticism, the fact that finances is limited for this sort of research, and the fact that the comes a point where certain people's worldview and in some case, and this is a controversial point, it's a religious worldview, causes senior Pentagon
managers to say, let's you know, let's not be getting into this. And there's no getting away from the fact that some of these people have said that UFOs and the paranormal is something they regard as demonic. Well, we don't want we don't want research into this phenomenon halted because somebody in government thinks it's demons. That's crazy. So yeah, let's take it out of there
and take it forward now in the private sector. And just as the space program is slipping out of the hands of government into the hands of the tech billionaires and the venture capitalists and the privates based companies, so the same is happening in parallel with with UFOs and about time too, maybe mm hmm. And and here's a follow up question. In fact, somebody accused me yesterday. Oh, people aren't asking the hard questions, and in this question in
particular, and I actually did ask Lou this question. I don't think you'd mind me sharing the information is if you've got the attention you wanted in the first place, what if the government says, okay, we're you've proven your point, come back and let's take a harder look at this. Would you go back? He said no. He said that for the reasons you just outlined that he feels that this needs to be a public forum and what he was at and if he were to go back, it wouldn't be a public
forum. Now, if the government threw a lot of money at to the stars, who knows what would happen. I mean, if you're faced and that's my question to you, if you're faced with a lucrative opportunity to do some you know, freelance work for our government or your government to look into this topic a serious look where you get to guide you know, you your efforts and your research. But you couldn't share that publicly. You'd have to
go through your normal channels of getting that you're findings declassified or shared. Would you do it? Well, it's it's a difficult hypothetical. You've just thrown my way. I think my cop out answer to you is, I don't know. I would have to look at any offer on a case by case basis. I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. I don't know whether lou
did. I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. And the reason I wouldn't is that with the best will in the world, government still has access to resources and capabilities that the private sector doesn't, right, and that would be attractive to have access to that and do it on the inside. But it depends. It depends how much freedom I was given in terms of shaping the terms and references in terms of reference of any inquiry and the resources and capabilities
that I would then have access to. But I don't rule it out because I think even if the balance of power is shifting to the private sector, and it is, I think you can there are still things the government can do that the private sector can't, So I'm undecided about that. On the other hand, I have already done it for the government, so I get loose point. Well, we tried that and it didn't work. Let's try something different. Well, thank you so much. We are out of time.
Of course, people can go to Nick Pope dot net to find out more about you. They can also watch your new documentary. It just came out Alien To at the Pentagon. How long has it been out now and how has the reaction ben It's been out for about a week reaction is really good. And I shouldn't say this, but I will. It's kind of segued, for whatever reason, out of the UFO and alternative belief community into as well the sci fi and even horror fans, and I think that's just
a consequence of the ways it's available on all these streaming platforms. But the benefit is of that, which I appreciate because it's kind of similar with me writing for Den of Geek. It's the entertainment industry, but it's bringing this topic to new audiences and that's so critical. It's such an important side of this. Yeah, well, thank you so much for being on the show again. Thank you very much. Thank you so much to Nick Pope for
joining us again. He is one of my absolute favorite guests, and right now is an even more important time to have him. So this is such an incredible conversation, I think right now, because you know, we're truly seeing the vastly, you know, the super important results of this Pentagon UFO program being revealed, and it's shocking. I mean, we're in a place that we've never been before. Just like Nick and I talked about, we're both by the way, going to be speaking at Alien Con in Baltimore November
ninth to the eleventh. You can go to Alien theliencn dot com is the website for that to find out more. But check it out come say hi. It'll be a lot of fun. I think we might be on at least one panel together, but otherwise we'll be having it out and it'll be really cool to be out there. I haven't been to Baltimore. I hear that it is gorgeous, but a couple other things. Be sure to check me out on UFO seriously live, where I just babble on about stuff.
Actually what I do is I talk about the UFO news, so we go over every story and I go over some of the other stuff that we've posted for the week, including that story that I talked about earlier, from Chris Cogswell to PhD and chemical engineering. Of course he's been on the show before. Excellent article. Highly recommend that people go check that out at Openminds dot
tv. Also check out the conversation on Facebook if you're on Facebook at the open Minds UFO group, lots more conversation and it's really growing a lot lately, which is fun because I think it's one of the rare groups out there where you get a lot of information about UFO stories in the mainstream, and there's a lot of great people in there, so they're sharing their insight and their knowledge as well. Also check me out on Patreon, that would be
wonderful. On my Patreon, you'll be able to follow all of the different things I'm doing besides UFO as well, so such as my den of geek stories, or I've got an allojandro advantage a different YouTube site where I'm doing different YouTube stuff, so you could check that out. You can click on the button that's there on the front page of Openminds dot tv, and then of course be sure to go to Ufocongress dot com to check out updates.
Really there you're gonna find links too, so you'll find links to the video portal. You got all of the twenty eighteen UFO Congress lectures that you can watch up there on video on demand. And then of course check out our YouTube because we're on a regular basis. There are older lectures being posted there
for free, so that's a great YouTube. Go there and subscribe if you haven't yet, so you can check out lots of free content that's getting posted stuff that you're not gonna find anywhere else that's getting posted there on a regular basis. And then of course, all of the news and information that Martin and I talked about at the beginning of the show you can find out at Openminds dot tv. So thank you so much to Martin for joining us at
the beginning of the show. Check him out on podcast UFO. Thank you to Caleb Hanks for the opening and close music. If you go to the Openminds dot tv radio page, you'll be able to find out more about him and the awesome stuff that he does. And then thank you to Systematics for the bumper music. And of course, as always, thank you the listeners for being here. We'll talk to you next week. Until then, Audio Smooth Churches, you were motionless