Richard Hoffman, 5 Decades of UFO Investigation

Hello, and welcome to over mind UFO Radio. My name is Alejandro Rojas. I am your host for today and I am here with Martin Ruski Willis. That's right, yo, coming at your live from Russia. Yo again. Yeah, you're back in Russia, well for about a month this time. Wow, back in the US. Back in the US is socc but it's not the USSR anymore, that's right, yep, So that's cool. Off tour down that wall the mother country. But it's not your mother country,

right, it is not? What is your mother country? Do you have one? England? Well, Wales? Wales. That's interesting where there's no UFO sightings because it's foggy all the time. Not foggy, but overcast. That's where Catherine Zetta Jones is from. I know where I used to see her all the time. Oh yeah, the coffee shops. Yes, everything, I say, yes, Well that's fun. So is there any particular reason you went out there? Yes, it's actually a medical reasons for

my girlfriend's uh you know, a mother, I mean father. I'm sorry, but you know, everything will be fine, and that's why I'm here for a prolonged time. It's actually, you know, just a couple of surgeries that need to be done, and you know, and that's it. We'll be here for a while. And uh, you know, I got to say, I'm not a fan of the food, and I'm really glad that they can't understand my English because they're in the next room. Like you

know, this so just so many ways you can cook porschh. I mean, that's just it's like a bunch of vegetables with some type of I don't even know what type of brothit is, and then sometimes there's meats in it. You know, this has been vegetable porsch and it's well, you know, I've had it for every meal I've been here, except for breakfast, which is other very strange things. Yeah, what do they do for breakfast?

Well, it's an oatmeal that's like a powder, so it's like a liquid and it's just I mean it's it tastes as bad as it sounds, if you ask me. And then these weird egg things on top of bread, almost like a thick layer of French toast that you do nothing with. And you know it's good because you know, I can take off a few pounds and getting a lot of exercise and on the Black Sea. It's pretty Yeah, that'll be helpful. I mean, I guess losing rap. Did

they have like smoothies? Can you eat smoothies? They have nothing here? No restaurants, No, really yeah, I mean there's a couple of them somewhere in the town. There's only two hundred and fifty thousand people in this town. Holy cow, are you having any problems with old ladies this time? Well? I about to murder you. Yes, I did spot that same exact woman. Oh about two hundred and fifty thousand people actually with her little again and I just steered clear. Yeah, it doesn't recognize me.

Yeah, wow, harrowing, very adventurous. Huh. It is going to Sochi tomorrow for number of days, so that'll be that'll be exciting going to be staying in a big place there. And it's really a beautiful, uh town right on the Black Sea as well. It's a full day drive away. And but you know, you go up into the mountains that's where the Winter Olympics were. But this is right on the Black Sea itself, nice and toasty warm seventy five degrees Wow. Great, here is it pretty out

there? Oh? The Black Sea is absolutely beautiful, you know. I mean it's it's you know, it's big. I mean it's huge, but it's the water sort of turquoise, so it's kind of nice. Wow, that is so cool. I'd love to see it. But I'll pack my own lunch, I guess. Huh yeah, I would bring your own Porsche. Cool. Well, that sounds like fun. So we'll be talking to you and checking up on your Russian adventure over the next few weeks. Huh yeah for a little while. And the Internet sounds great. I mean,

you sound better than some of my guests here in the States. I know, it's amazing. I've been talking to people on my phone all day and it's like the phone works perfect too. You know, we may be making fun of Russia right now, and we're going to make fun of Russia a little bit more and a little bit here, I know, related to some UFO stories, but from what I understand, I mean, really, the US surprisingly has terrible internet compared to many other countries. You know, I've

heard like the worst is Australia, but I'm not sure. I mean that's you know, I guess, yeah, they're pretty I guess what happened is since we were first of the game. We rolled out these cables all over the place. But since others kind of came in later, they were able to roll out the fiber all over the place. Why, I think fiber optics. Yeah, that's the magic. Yeah. Pretty cool. Well awesome. Enjoy yourself out there, buddy. Thanks. Who do you have coming

on today for your guests? That's that's a funny you should say. I was just about to mention my guest is Richard Hoffman. He is a state director for moufon out in Alabama and I think Mississippi, Yeah, nearby two places. And you know, he'll tell us in the interview because my memory for some reason is failing me. Just a super busy morning Mondays of course. And he's also got another title. He manages a I think grategy or something like that for move On. He's got a couple of titles there,

so he does a lot of stuff. But he's been in this forever, which we'll talk about some amazing stuff he did as a child in relation to UFOs and so just a really impressive cool guy. He's also part of the SDU team. So do you remember that they were the guys who researched that Homeland security video. Oh yes, m h. So he's a part of that team and he'll be talking about that case as well. Oh that's good. I still want to follow that case because I don't think it's over yet,

right, it's not so far, so we'll talk about updates. Another interesting fact is he's a bow tie wearer. Oh that's a rare reed. Yeah, which I find I have a even more appreciation for recently due to Doctor Who. I'm a Doctor Who fan, and if you know, the Matt Smith character used to always wear bow ties and say bow ties are cool. That was kind of his little catchphrase bow ties. Well, I got to tell you. I don't know if you have ever tried to tie one

of those suckers, but it is not an easy task. Really. Oh it took me hours to try to figure it out. It's really toss Yeah. I'm not the most coordinated person in the first place. So yeah, don't try. I don't think I will. I kind of like the long tire. I like the you know, no tie personally, because yeah, that's a cool look and it's kind of acceptable these days, right yep. So let's go ahead and get into some UFO news. Have you been able

to see any uf BONE news out there in Russia? Yeah? Well, I want to talk about This is about an army chief of staff and he warns of you know his wording. I got to say it was all on his wording, hybrid armies and little green men. Now, this was a speech last week at Norwich University, and General Mark Miley is his name, chief of Staff for the US Army, told the audience, many of whom were ROTC cadets, that the future the cadets who'll be dealing with, among

other things, is hybrid armies and little green men. Now, some UFO ors assumed this to be an admission that armies of aliens and alien human hybrids are threatening the earth, and you can watch where they're going to go with that. I bet it's going to be pretty big the way things can go. But anyway, this is not what he was actually talking about at all.

He was warning them about the complex makeup of the enemies that they will face, and that includes terrorists and armies without states, cyber warfare, unidentified armies working covertly, and there's also there's also like in I think it was Russia that these are armies, including forces that are just seen like in the Ukraine that are believed to be Russian special forces and like in Ukraine and Crimea, and they wear unmarked uniforms and drive unmarked vehicles. That's kind it's scary,

and so Russia has denied that they've deployed these forces. But it's been a strange case anyway. Anyway, so we'll see again where people go with what he said. You know, Unfortunately he wasn't meaning not unfortunately I'm gonna say, but he wasn't meaning what I believe a lot of people will take it, you know, at face value that it was talking about aliens.

Yeah, and it's kind of one of those crazy things. It's kind of a turned into in some you know, corners, especially these online discussion groups and stuff. It's kind of turned into one of the Mexican Roswell's Slade kind of thing where there people heard him say this, and you know, and he's very straightforward. Hybrid armies and little Green men and UFO people are like, oh my gosh, you know, and they're riding and some well known

people wrote, this is finally disclosure proosy. The army knows that they're fighting with aliens and all this stuff. And I gotta say, it wasn't very difficult. I mean, when I saw it, I was going to write about it. I thought, this is really interesting. He should use these terms. But I thought he's either joking or these terms are military terms. But it wasn't very difficult to find out that. Surprisingly to me, these

were military terms. And people were saying, look, he's not joking because there's a video of him out there and he's very straightforward about these comments and everything, and so it wasn't very hard to find these were military terms. But when people started saying that, you know, of course, the people who have already committed to this idea that this army general is talking about aliens did not give up. They're still out there to this day saying no,

you know, he meant aliens, He didn't mean aliens. And I mean, these terms are on Wikipedia for goodness sakes, but this is really funny development. So Friday, so I wrote my story to clear the water and to write about, you know, what these terms really meant and everything, to give people a reference just before it got too big, Hey, before you get too excited. He wasn't talking about aliens. Here's what he was

really talking about. Well, on Friday, the Army Times wrote a follow up story and about how UFO enthusiasts are going crazy with with that lecture, and they quoted our story, our open mind story. They said, however, yeah, really cool. They wrote, However, the UFO website, you know, UFO news website, Open Minds, tried to debunk the whole thing to let people know what was really going on, and they used a quote from my story and then they went on to describe, you know,

what those terms really meant like you just had outlined. So that was kind of cool. The Army Times given us some credit, but setting the record straight. They moved pretty quickly too, to write there follow up UFO story. Well, I got to tell you, if you watch what unfolds about this, it'll be I can just almost guarantee you that you're going to see some you know, spots in some of the UK tabloids and things like that

next thing you know, to be everywhere. Yeah. I hate to sound like such a you know, pessimist, but I just have seen it so many times. Right, they'll just take off with it. Yeah, And I mean, I'm sorry to any listeners out there who are really excited, I think that he was talking about aliens. But I mean, you could read my story and go to my links and read the Army Times story to see very clearly that you know, these are terms, and you know this

is like, these are terms that are in their lexicon. These are terms that this guy probably goes to briefings every day and they talk about hybrid armies and they talk about little Green men and so these are things they talk about regularly. So for him, these terms are every day and he probably didn't think that, you know, the general public doesn't know what he's talking about when he says these things, and that they would kind of be taken aback

a bit. But yeah, so that's the story. And you know what this week's kind of been like that. Some other people like there wasn't a whole lot of news, but the news that was out there was mostly from UK tabloids covering known hoaxes. So I'm sorry people, but you know this as well. Martin Secure Team ten had one or two stories out there.

Those are fake videos, Those are hoaxes. Those are fake, Those aren't real, no matter if the UK Daily Express or the Daily Star, Pick Them Up or The Sun, all of which are tabloids, which, of course, when you go to their stories, they're full of bikini girls doing all kinds of weird stuff, you know, or women without bikinis or anything. That's the other favorite thing to cover. But these are tabloids who really don't care about accuracy as much as sensationalism. But the Secure Team ten and

they're only thinly veiled hoaxes. I don't even think Securit Team ten meant to hoax everybody, but just have fun and people run wild with that stuff. Wow. Just for the record, I never like to cover women without baby in suits, if you catch my drift. Yeah, there's kind of a pun there. You'd never like to cover women just a little bit. Yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, sorry, I'm gonna make you hang here

by are you trying to make like an awkward moment? Yeah, I'm making any hang because if I would have moved on, it would have gotten you off the hook. But by waiting and now by talking about it, it's kind of about what and to pretend it never happened. Now, now that you're out in Russia, you're gonna this is your version of Little Green men tonight it ever happened even though we have a recording, So you're learning to yeah. So yeah, and so did you want to vent any frustration about

Secure Team tenor or anything any comments? Do you agree that they they're not real? Well, yeah, you know, it's just a well, you know, it's just kind of goes along with what I was saying just a few minutes ago. You know, Unfortunately, and there are so many cases I was talking to Kevin Randall last night. There are so many cases where

like myth seems to become reality in these stories. And you know, you can only do what you can do, and that's, you know, right, the gist of what really is going on, and just hopefully some of that will get out there like it did. The Army paper saw that and covered it, which is good. But all we can do, you know, personally, all anybody can do is keep their side of the street clean and try to make factual stories and not and be careful of the myths.

Anyone can fall into them. Right. So, two things though that I want to mention that aren't myth are you know, we talked about this last week. There's a UFO detector software out there. We just put this. We featured it on our UFO Open Mind UFO report that we posted Friday, that's up on the internet and on our page, you know, our video thing. But also last week's guests with Robert Hastings. That's the real deal. I mean, that is good hard information, you know, military witnesses.

Again. I've just can't express enough that how important and how great that he's done this, and that I do implore people to go download and watch his documentary. Have you been able to do that yet? No, I've had I had such a busy week before I came to Russia. I can imagine I wasn't able to do anything. But I will have some downtime here or I can do that. Yeah, and there's Russian stories too, Russian

nukes stories about the same thing happening here. You know, accounts of military people in Russia saying the same thing happened over there, with things like UFOs coming over and turning off nukes and stuff. But we did that last week. But anyway, Yeah, great great stuff. Otherwise, I did want to mention something on another serious note, as serious as I can be.

I guess I didn't get much. I figured I want to bring awareness around this medical condition I have and I had to spend all day last Tuesday at the doctor's part of this trial and this drug that I have for something called ankle licing spondylitis. So in my videos, what's up that doesn't sound good? Well, it's yeah, well I don't know. In a way,

it's not as bad as it sounds, but it kind of is. So in my videos, you know, or if you've seen me, a lot of people will mention, oh, man, your neck looks like it hurts, or you look kind of hunched down a bit. I am because I have this thing called inkolescing spindelitis, which I wish I would have known about earlier. And that's why I want to tell people about it, because I

think there needs to be a lot more awareness. If I would have known that I had this condition, let's say, you know, fifteen years ago when it first started acting up, I could have you know, saved a lot of my back curvature from unfortunately being curved like it is now. And

what it is is it it's akin to rheumatoid arthritis. It's a it's an immunity disease where essentially your immune system is overactive and for some reason in my case with arthritis, it's other joints, but in my case it's the spine. It sees the spine and attacks the spine as if it's a virus or something. Oh my god. Yeah, So what happens is the joints in between the spine gets start to deteriorate and in order to garbage, yeah, the cartilage, because it attacks that, and so those begin to close.

And then it also, like your body tries to compensate, so it grows more cartilage out from the bones essentially kind of thing, and those spine your spine then begins to fuse, but it fuses curved and it pushes forward. And so there's a lot of people you might have seen people who are really bent over and through as the longer you have this, and more and more it pushes down. So what happens is you begin to get this in your twenties, and if you're lucky, it doesn't last very long. It can

last anywhere from twenty to or ten to years. Usually it goes away in your forties or fifties. But if you catch it earlier enough, you can take some drugs that get rid of that inflammation and then so you save you know, from that fusing from happening, so you don't lose mobility. Like I can't turn my head left or right very far, i can't bend over very far. And I've got this kind of like you know, curve in my neck that people can see, and that'll never go away because there's you

know a few spine spinal columns that are fused. So the unfortunate part is when I used to tell my doctors about my back hurting, you know, I thought it was you know, they would say, oh, you know, it's just regular back pain, and so they never said anything. They didn't tell me to go to a rheumatologist. So if you're in your twenties and you have back pain, go to a roomatologist. At least get checked.

Because if I would have been checked, I could have been on the drugs, and then I wouldn't have I only just started taking drugs about two years ago to relieve this, and my back pain was severe. I mean it was really bad. I had to watch how I walked and stepped. I didn't even know how much it affected me until I got on this drug and it alleviated that. So Luckily, my back has been fine the last

couple of years. I used to think maybe it was because I was over eight overweight, because years ago I was, but I lost the weight and it still didn't go away. And that's what triggered the alarm is I was going to the gym practically every day. I'd lost sixty pounds working out. Anything I ever tried couldn't solve the problem. I thought, I'm just gonna have to live with this pain. My girlfriend actually just kept pushing me,

you got to go to the chiropractor. So I did, and luckily, one of the chiropractors says, you know what, I think you may have ink licing spondylitis. Because all the chiropractors told me your back looks like the spine of a ninety year old. So I finally went and got diagnosed and started to get the issue worked on. But I'll never regain any of that mobility or be able to stand up straight. So yeah, so if you

if you have back pain, go get it checked. Don't think that you'll just have to live with it, even though unfortunately millions of people do just have to live with the pain. And that's why we have a huge issue with people getting hooked on on pain does and painkillers. But luckily, so luckily in my case, there's a drug that can alleviate the pain unlike others. But and if you catch it early enough, you know, you don't have these complications. So I just want people to know. And it is

large. It's like one out of ten young men have this condition in glycn spondylitis. Wow. Now I have it worse than most, but still that's a lot of people, it really is. That's huge. Yeah, wow, that's really something. So I was thinking about it because I missed, you know, and I was thinking about it yesterday that well, you know, that affected my work and I was like, I should really start telling people about this, you know, so because people need to know that they

need to get their backchecked if they have back pains in their twenties. So yeah, that's that's a good message. I'm glad you're getting that out there. You know, a lot of people have different types of back pain, but it's you know, if it's persistent, then you're right you should get a check. That could be a number of things. And I always here you don't jump into back surgery right away either. You really wait it out to see if it's something else or you can do something else. A lot

of people have regrets from getting surgery. Well, the surgery is a lot of them. Some of them only works seventy five percent of the time. So but my mom's going to try one of them because she's tried everything and hasn't had really from the pain, and she doesn't want to get hooked on the pain killers. In the US, we have such a problem with that, and we do. There's so many people and I know a few people who have died from it. Yeah, so you know, overdosed. So

Prince might have. There's suspicions that Prince's death may be due to that and they're looking into it, so we'll find out soon if that's the case. But regardless, he was someone who suffered from hip joint pain. So yeah, it's a really difficult situation. I mean, it's the biggest health issue is people with different sorts of pain. But just don't be stubborn, I guess, like me, go to the doctor, get it checked out.

And unfortunately, even your general practitioner may not give you the best advice or know what's going on, so you might just on your own go to a specialist or tell your doctor I want to get it checked out. Or you can go to the chiropractor if you suspect and ask them if there's any fusing going on or what happens is these little spines will start to grow out, starting to connect your you know, the parts of your spine, different things

that your chiropractor can identify. So go get it checked out. Good, But there you go. Yeah, so that's it for news. There are a couple other stories out there. Roger Marsh from moufan has written a couple UFO sighting stories that we have on the site from last week. Also nothing with photos or videos, which of course people like, but still people love to hear from other people, you know, what they've seen. So and of course a lot of the popular UFO sightings out there rely on the credibility

of the witness and they don't have pictures or videos. So so yeah, check those out. Anything else not not from overseas, Nope. All right, it's so cool that you sound so great. You sound like you're in the room here, all right, Yeah, I'm loving it. Yeah, all right, Well, thank you so much for joining us from Russia. What time is it there? It is nine to forty in the evening. Oh wow, yeah, it's eleven forty in the am here, so well cool. Yeah, thanks buddy, and you have a great time out there.

All right, you take care. All right, let's go ahead and hear what mister Hoffman has to say. I am very excited to welcome for the first time to the show, Rich Hoffman. Hey, Alejandro, it's excited to be here. I haven't been with you before, so this is a new kind of thing for us to chat. And I'm looking well, And it's funny because I do this sometimes and I told you that, you know when we set this up. Oh yeah, have you back on the

show. But you're one of the guys I just talked to so regularly that I had figured you've been on the podcast before, but you haven't. I think we did like a Skype video interview before. But it's wonderful to be talking to you on the podcast here. Welcome, well, thanks, looking forward to it. It's a great program that you've got going on. I've been enjoying it over the period time you've been doing it, so it's great. Thank you, you know, and your Skype picture here you don't have

a bow tie. Usually I see you with a bow tie, you know, I get it's amazing to me. But I do wear a bow tile a lot and every day to work and stuff like that. So when I don't wear it, or when somebody has a picture or she's a picture without it, man, I get grief about the fact that I'm not wearing my bow tie. Yeah, Like, who is that individual? Yeah? Who is that's not Rich Hoffman? I mean he doesn't have a bow tie on.

Yeah. Well, I got a big kick out of sending you that gift the other day of the doctor Who, the Matt Smith doctor Who, because he's always saying bow ties are cool. So I don't know if you saw that, but yes I did. Yeah, yep. I get a lot of that doctor Who thing. It's like, yeah, where's your chartist? Well, doctor Who is really cool. So that's a compliment. Yeah, well, thank you so much. Thanks. I'll be wearing my bowtie done to uphone symposium too. Yeah, so I guess we'll get in to

UFOs. I guess that's what we're going to talk about. But just gotta switch away from bow ties. Yeah, at least for now, I'm sure they'll come up again, all right eventually. But when did you first get into UFOs because you've been like with Muffan since like to turn to the century or something, right, yeah, back when the dinosaurs, I think somehow, you know, I mean no, no, literally, I I got well, first off, I got started with UFOs back in nineteen sixty four.

Back in fact, I just celebrated my fifty second year of ufology. It was April twenty fourth, nineteen sixty four when well Lottie's the Moor Case happened. As a matter of fact, I think that's really what that's what really got me. And then I found out I was living in Dayton, Ohio, and Project Bluebook was up the road, and that even did me in further because it was like, wow, that's pretty neat. There's a project that the UIR Force Base, which I hadn't even no clue about.

And then suddenly I got, you know, pulled into the whole subject. I couldn't put a book down. I was reading everything, newspaper, clip things, anything on the subject. And but I joined upon see, so let me go back, because I started my own organization, and in fact it was called Day's Cap which was Dayton, you know, Committee on Society, Committee on Aerial phenomena similar to Nightcap. You know, so I would guess that you were pretty young. Then if you don't want to, you

don't have to reveal the age. Well, no, I mean I was thirteen years old. Wow, so I was only in eighth grade, you know, that's what what got me. But you know, uh, and then by the time I was fifteen, and I was actually on the Phil Donahue show in Dayton, and uh, you're kidding. No, I thought you knew that. Yeah, I didn't know that. And I love Phil dona here. Yeah, I love Phil Donahue too. And I got home that and this is before he went and became really famous up in Chicago.

But nevertheless, he had the same kind of show format that he had when he went up there. And he was just right up the street actually from where I lived. I could ride my bike to the station and stuff. But he had heard me. I was doing presentations, as you know, already around the city through different groups, and somebody mentioned my name, and I guess the next thing I know is I got on the show and at fifteen, yeah, fifteen years old, and I handled all the questions pretty

well. And then then what happened was because it played in Dayton. The next thing I know is I was getting phone calls from everybody and their brother that wanted to know more. And and then the next thing I know is I'm like giving, like I said, lectures everywhere television shows. I was pulled on Moh my god, I can't even begin to tell you how many

times I was on TV. And then, you know, and then it got to be the point where, like you know, I was literally getting calls from everybody and their brother, and I didn't have really enough people to help me out. And it was like I didn't even know that many people in the UFO subject. But suddenly I started to pull people together and we started actually having meetings in my garage garage, and you know, I started

pulling together a group and then UH, and eventually I got UH. There was another group down in southern Ohio UH in the Fairfield area called and we called ourselves the Ohio UFO Investigators League, and UH I got connected with them

somehow I became their uh, their director of investigations. UH. And then you know, then what happened was I I had heard that there was a thing called Midwest UFO Network that was starting up and it was in sache Sageen, Illinois, and I thought, well, I need to get connected with them, and so I joined up. And you know, so I'm one of those like early people that was with the Midwest UFO group. And I got my first manual which was like, you know, I still have my

manual from that. Wow and uh. And so you know, I've been with them for a long long time, forty some odd years and the thing that's exciting for me is that, you know, after being with them all this time, this is my first chance to actually now do a presentation at a symposium. Can you believe it? This is your first the very first time that I'm a presenter at the New Fond Symposium since I've been with them. Wow. In nineteen seventy eight, I hosted the New Fond Symposium and

we rented out the entire Dayton Convention Center. Oh and this was during Close Encounters. This is a big three thousand, you got it. So this is the one where Heinik was there, Donald KiHa was there. Wow.

Leonard Springfield was talking about crash retrievals. Ted Blotcher was there all these people that are you know, incredible, and it was a and then we actually had the filming of our like a huge screen that we had in the Dayton convention that are that showed the close encounters or that that mothership scene, and that was you know, coincided with but I that I was actually up on stage and I was a moderator for that, introducing the guests. But that's

that's it. So I'm pretty excited about actually now doing my my first presentation with new von at a symposium. How cool. I'm excited too because I'm doing move On for the first time and it feels like, you know, I've been around move On for a long time, but not even a fraction of it as long as as you have. And that's not a dig to your age, that's all right, That is in honor of your Yeah, of your I don't know, Uh you're an elder statesman, I guess.

So I've got the gray hair to prove it. Yeah, well I've got gray hair too. So you you you look talking about going back all of these years, you don't look to be, uh that old. Well, thank you. I guess I'm very fortunate in the gene area. So how did you and the UFO community feel when Close Encounters came out? Oh, well, to me, I can tell you this much, that we were all very, very excited because here was for the very first time. It's so hard to get movies that depict, you know, actual true to life

kind of events. You know that they keep it, they keep to the stories as they're happening. So good example would be the you know, Royniria in the truck and then you know, and the truck goes dead and it starts back up on its own, and and then you had the varieties of shapes that you'd see. Uh we we we really haven't had too many mother ships and some other things, but we've had those like little you know,

like ball of lights that are moving around and things like that. And you gotta you had a chance to see a lot of other different aspects like the radar screen you see him watching something, so you high had some elements of it that that Heinik was able to bring in and his cameo performance, and then you know that it was cool to be able to see Jacques Vallet in Francois Truffau's characterization of him, and so it kind of like made it, you know, I brought it home for us, and we thought that that

would be a big, very big helpful kind of like event, if you would, and it was to a large extent, except that you know, it's you know, but the real problem was that, you know, when when Bluebook decided to terminate and they get the condomn report did the nail on the coffin, and then he had the National Academy of Scientists actually now doing the nail on the scientist. It just put an end to a lot of

things. And then so suddenly we lost we lost the top cover over a period of time where we had we're now doing the same kind of work.

And then people were like, oh well, the Air Force thinks it must be pretty good, so okay, it's got some credibility to it, right, But as you watched, and I even do presentations on this, but over the period of time, the real UFO subject became blurred by all of the distractions that go around it. And that's you know, I'm talking about the fact that you know, it's it's the mythology that's been created around this whole thing now is far different than anything that we had back in that day,

you know, And so you know that's the sad part because now we'll spend our times with distractions versus spending our times on the real UFO or unidentified objects that we can't explain. It's funny you say that, because I had thought that Heinich, you know, must have really loved Close Encounters because his involvement, and like you, it's so accurate as to what happened. And

I love the heck out of that movie. But I heard from Don Schmidt Heinich didn't really like the movie, and I can totally see it because of that. He felt that it was sensationalized and it wasn't real. They went too far away departing from the actual, real, live events. And you know, having been on television like you have and having your work be misrepresented by entertainers, I can identify with the way Heinek would have felt. Yeah,

and he did. I mean I had conversations with him, and he did say that I actually had a chance to go up and be in his house with him and Meme uh huh, And in fact Mark Rudiger was there was but I mean, yeah, I mean conversations with him was if he was disappointed. We all have that same thing where we go in and we provide all us wonderful information, and we want these recreations to be you know,

exact. We'd like to be able to see real cases presented, and then Hollywood and producers and various other people turn it into something completely different, and then you're saying, well, well, that's not what happened, you know, And then they're out there like either creating another story and adding to the mythology that separates us even further from the real legitimate data that you rarely read the case up front, you'd see that it was this way, and

then you'd find out that it's portrayed, you know, they broadened the story, and you know, I mean we see that all the time. And even though it's recreations you see on television, which are just pure bs, I mean, they just they basically just devastate and create. In other words, you could see like the cash Landrum case, where there might be blue sparks because they portray it blue sparks jumping out of the bottom of the thing. Well there weren't any blue sparks. I mean, it's like that didn't

have that. And then so then you'd see like, well, people saying, hey, I saw something that looks like but I had blue sparks out of it. You know, Okay, well there you go, yeah, and it's off. And then the world of the internet is just abysmal in a sense of passing around truth. More untruth gets passed around every day than any truth you can get out there, so we don't And then you know,

I'll say this right now, I'm going to be presenting. I was asked by a visiting professor that's coming to Huntsville to speak at the University of Alabama Huntsville in an honors college class coming up next month. And I'm excited about it because one of the topics that we're going to be talking I'm going to be able to use. The subject goes extremely well with it is he wants to be able to take his psychology class and to teach critical thinking skills.

And one of the things that I know because I've also been in the training and development field. In fact, I was with a company or an organization called American Society for Training and Development, and I became a regional director up in the New England area. But we started to we to study where we found out that we started to see that critical thinking was one of the

things that we were missing in schools. And so here you see those two and this was like you know, you know several This is like maybe thirty years and twenty twenty five years ago or something. Anyway, the bottom line is we see that that's out there and continuing to evolve and worsen to the point where you don't have you have either a gullbility you know, I accept everything because it's on the internet, or but you don't have any critical thinking,

you know, then go talk. So we're I'm going to go over and present them, you know, the UFO information. Uh, I'm going to talk about and we're going to walk through a case. I thought i'd use the Iddia case since I don't be taught about it and just say, okay, let's let's walk through a case and then to see the kinds of things that they can come up with and to see how they think and to

try to promote that. So I'm excited about that. But I guess what I'm trying to say is we have people that watch those lousy shows that are on that are misproduced and not correct and people accept them and they without question that's what I saw it. It's therefore it is, you know, hm, and so it's very sad that we have that. Yeah, I think, but you know, go ahead, oh, just I was gonna say

my last guess. I think, as you know, Robert Hastings expressed his frustration and even he even used a bad word, yes, and I applaud his bad word because because he's he's so down to earth and he expresses, you know, with you know, kind of like this is the way it is, you know, I'm sorry, you know, it's just horrible. Yeah. Well, at least Close Encounters was a fiction movie, whereas a lot of these shows, like like the ones like I think, what is

generating your frustration? My frustrations Robert hastings frustrations are these modern television shows which port themselves, which try to say that they're documentarian or their journalistic when they're actually largely fictional. Yes, yeah, completely agree. You know, you don't know how many people saw the movie even fourth uh, the fourth encounter?

What was the fourth kind? The fourth yeah, the fourth kind and believe that that whole story was actually true and argued with me about the fact that that's that's the way it is. That that is the way it is. And and I'm going like, I'm sorry, it was a movie. Yeah, it was fake, people, it was faked, and you know, and then you can tell people that and it's like they still don't want

to accept it. I have. I've had a you know, my own experience looking and seeing the Google loon balloon take off from here in Huntsville. It was reported for four days as it was moving up and I watched it in CMS for the New Funds database. I watched it and tracked it every day, and as it progressively moved up from me to Tennessee, to Kentucky to and it it ended up in Pennsylvania and then eventually it ended up in

Canada. But this thing was reported as a UFO along the way. And don't you know, I mean, when I explained to everybody that it was a Google loon balloon, it was launched from Huntsville, and it was a NASA Engineer balloon, solar balloon, they didn't accept it. I'm sorry, it's it was a UFO. It was it was it was an alien spacecraft and you're wrong. Yeah, It's funny because one of my first cases as a as a UFO filled researcher with Moufin was a video case. And we

watched this video and it was amazing. It was these white objects in the sky and none of us could figure out what it was. It wasn't birds, it wasn't planes. They were bright objects, you know, five or six of them, and it was shocking. Well, I took that video and I wasn't that great with video editing at the time, not that I'm a masterp it now. Luckily we have Michael here who is. But I was able to zoom in and I could see the flapping of the wings and

it was birds. It was duck butts, is what I told everybody. It's because they had just flown through some rain and they were then the sun was hitting on him and they were just really brightly lit. And when I sent the email to everybody, hey, these are duck butts, they didn't want to believe me. And then I showed them, well, look look at this particular one. This is a duck. Well that may be a

duck, but the others weren't, so I don't know. I guess sometimes we get so invested that this had an idea that it's hard to step back and say, oh man, we were wrong about that one. Yep. And to this day, I mean it's like, you know, you got people out there, like a good example, I was, I was doing some reading backup some old literature that I had the dealt with. I actually got the meat Major Hector Quinella when he was sold as wow at the blue

Book. It was the last guy to run blue Book. You got it. He closed the doors and uh and I you know, of course the other thing was for me it was I got to know a number of them well enough that uh, in fact, I got they also sit on some cases that I was on where I had a blue Book officer next to me. Wow, so I had I've had one of those like rare experiences that

before they closed the project. But uh yeah, but anyway, uh, in fact, to me it was exciting was that they let me use the radar approach control to be able to contact them if I had an object that I was like looking in really wow. Yeah. So I mean it sounds like, you know, this isn't some good insight because a lot of people feel, you know, blue Book was a cover up. It was just

a cover. I mean, what what didn't feel to do was its whole thing was to go out and to just like almost like in the context of MUFON, go out, get data, fill out a form, make sure that the form is filled out completely, bring it back, stick it in hypothetically and their own like database, whether it be files or whatever like that. But they were never really there to go and to take the material and

look look at it and do the research on it. Which is why Quinella was like saying, you know, if you can find somebody that would actually do something with this data, I'd be happy to provide it. And so when he got when he got the University of Colorado project underway, he was extremely you know, wanting to pass it along. And of course, oh by that time, I mean, you know, he's so, you know, I want to get out of this thing. I mean I want to

you know, it's not going anywhere. We don't need to do this anymore. And in the public, I mean they were he wasn't even getting all

the good sightings. I mean it's like, you know, if you took a look at him, they were small office with a secretary at a clerk or this and that you know, as it's already been pointed out, you know, even by the ball Underman memo that that all the legitimate you know stuff will be passed off to others, you know, and he didn't even get those cases because even in the classified world he wouldn't even get him His

staff wasn't even able to get the real classified stuff. So so hypothetically, I mean, he's just getting this stuff that's low visibility and it wasn't going anywhere, nobody was studying it. He was able to get a you know, the Condon thing was probably put in and help being fostered by the CIA, which by the way that they were doing that since the Robertson panel and and so you had the CIA helping to put the squelch on it, you had and they just you know, eventually were able to get out of it

because it was costing taxpayers money, not going anywhere, nobody was doing anything with it, and they weren't exactly coming up with anything that was you know, proved that we were being visited. And uh and so with that being said, you know, I'm and them had you know, constant you know run ins. You know, he was trying to Nightcap would be out there trying to say, well, the Air Force isn't doing this or not doing

that, and sure they weren't. But but at the same time, you know, it's like there was this lack of really truly interest in this subject because it was really looked at as big. And that's true even today. By the way I worked in the military world. I've been in it since, you know, for God's sakes, I started when I went to as I'm in a contractor for with the US Army Material Command, which is the corollary to the Air Force Material Command up in Dayton that actually had the Project

ULBO. So on those on those signs. Like, first of all, I guess, because I want to get into this is did your work your early interest in UFOs influence uh your career choices? And uh yeah, if you could share what you do and have to an as a career. Yeah, So I mean, I guess I was always interested in the military.

I mean I wasn't you know. I actually tried to go into the military when I got to college, and I think that, you know, I think on some level I was interested in knowing what they knew, and I thought, well, maybe I can become and so I was in the Air Force ROTC and when I was in college, and I was in it for a very short time because guess what, they basically said that I've got a heart murmur romatic fever. You're not allowed to go into the service. Okay,

great, So that thus ended my career there. And then I kind of like, you know, just dropped the ball, let it go. And and you know, of course, everybody in this field, you know, you can't make a living off of being a ufologist unless you're going to go out around, you know, even you know, writing a whole bunch of books and maybe the Nick Redfern method or something like that, you know, or whatever. But you know, I do, even then you have

to compliment your your income. And I just couldn't make it. So I had to go up and get career and I couldn't be UFOs. And so eventually I got into the it world because I have a strong interest in the IT world. And then well and behold, when I was in the DC area, I was asked to go and to do some training or something like

that. It was with a company that was a training company. In fact, I was head of the training and I went over and the next thing I know is that they wanted me to come and be a trainer there and that turned out to be the ar the Army Material Command. I thought, wow, that's pretty interesting. So here I am. I'm an IT kind of guy that's working with a whole variety of companies depending upon which contract wins. And I've been a defense contractor. I'm working in the IT world.

I was working with even the Boozel and Hamilton, which is the same company that Edward Snowden was in, and you know, and I've and I've earned the trust of the government, you know, from the standpoint of all these years doing my IT work, and they value them the work that I do, and I helped them out in a lot of different way. We're doing cloud computing where we're actually doing data center consolidation, and I helped play in

on that. So I'm at the IT strategical level for the Army Material Command and I've become a you know, pretty much known there. But you know, they also know, and I don't hide it that I'm into have an interest in UFOs. I mean, Mike Cube is decorated with UFO paraphernalia. Pole you know, people know that that's where I'm at. You know, I've I've had a number of other people that I worked around. I had a friend of mine who that his job was to monitor conversations that were possibly

coming out of Area fifty one. Really yeah, I mean he was His job was to go out there and to see if he could pick up any conversations he was out there. And they do that to be able to ensure that there's no leaks coming from off the post and stuff like that, and that's what his job was. And so I've had conversations like that. I've talked to other people in the military there. Most of them are very curious, but there's absolutely nothing that I see in the entire command that shows any

remote connection or involvement in anything that looks like smells like UFO. So I have kind of like the same experience that John Alexander has when he's you know, if you listen to or read his books, he says, well, you know, I used to work in the Army of Material Command in the R and D world, and he worked in inscom and other places, and

you look around you don't see any interest in that subject at all. And so I can you know, nobody's bothered to ask me what I know what I do that, And I'm going like, Okay, they really don't have a care in the world about it, and it really hasn't done anything for them, and certainly if there is any remote interest, it's like, you know, my god, I don't know where they're hiding because I've been all over the command and I can't see anything that looks like or you know,

addresses that. That's why, you know, I've always maintained that if there's any body that really cares about this subject at all, it's going to be you know, a maybe some sort of a very close, old, highly secret, compartmentalized group of people. And then you know, if there's any R and D work, it's not in the government world, it's out in

the in the commercial world. It's it's like the Northrops and all that stuff like that, who are in the Black Project world, and none of that gets conveyed or translated over to the uh the people, like, for example, the propulsion you might come up with in the in the in the black world is not going to be shared over in the commercial world. And that's sad. So NASA can't benefit if we came up with anti gravity devices in

the one world with the other one. So uh, you know, so that's that's the problem that you see, and and and some of the stuff that I'm aware of. But it's been a great career. I've enjoyed working there. Uh. Like I said that they tolerated upologists within them, and I'm that's okay. I mean, I'm uh, I've seen too much an

experience too much that I'm not gonna start now. And you know, I've got the security clearances and all that stuff like that, but I can't possibly even begin to tell you that anything that shows anything that looks like smells like a UFO m hm. And on that note, I mean, just with your years of experience, you mentioned the bowl under memo where it was like essentially anything that was a national security concern was sent somewhere else other than blue

Book. Yes. So but the problem is, and I don't know that anybody knows for sure, uh where those went. Yeah, well you have, you know exactly I think that, you know, it's it's hard to find out, you know, I've seen I've seen speculation that it went to the Navy. Uh, and that might have been in you know, the the intelligence world of the Navy, And I mean there's parts of that that can make sense and stuff like that, because as it's you know, but

you can't really seem to trap down things. It's not like that there's an easy paper trail to find that tells you where those little nuggets would be. To me, what I've always believed is that, you know, the DARPA world. DARPA is one of those things that came about in the like nineteen sixty time frame. In uh, before that it was ARPA, you know, and anyway, so but anyway, so it would have done things like you know, encouraging uh, you know, corporations and things like that go

off to go off in a certain direction. So in other words, I get it. Let's say I've got a crash and I got material from the crash. I would be able to take that material and probably you know, I say, hey, look, DARPA, I look at this here, and that DARPA would go out and create a contact or contract or put it out a request for investigation or an information and stuff like that, and you would have had a whole bunch of people providing new papers that would have been

collecting the R and D stuff, you know that type of information. Plus you've got you know, like Foreign Technology Division at right PAT and you've got like you know here, you've got in Huntsville, you've got missil and Space Intelligence Center MISSIC. You have another of these places. This is where they collect the debris and stuff like that and they re engineer it. And that's what their job is, to re engineer stuff to see if they can tear

it apart, figure out how it runs. And that's what we do. So and every government on the planet does the same kind of thing, so it's no surprise. And so people know though who are listening, they're talking about like a Russian uh maybe satellite or missile or something. Taking that and back engineering that correct. Yeah, we get another words, a missile that came down might have been a scud or something like that. The scud gets

brought back, We tear it apart and we look at it. So the nature of what we do with debris and and all that stuff like that has passed along. If we collected a new kind of gun, for example, and that would go over to the R and D people that would be working with it, and the would get passed off to them. And uh, and then you know that a lot of those R and D shops or contract companies their contract sheds, so they go off and they do their whatever they're

they're doing, they're going to do with it to re engineer it. So now people see that as being the mysterious government and all this other wonderful stuff. But you know, the bottom line is that every day you've got these people that are out there that they're helping to do something to protect us,

and that's their purpose is to defend us. And and so I have to applaud them and support everything that they do because the things that they come up with are only there to help protect this country and the people in it, you know, and so more power to them, and I applaud that kind of level of concern. Just like even you know, if you go back to Roswell Alejandro, I mean it's like, you know, was it right that they came in with a cover story? Your dog gone right? It

was with the right thing. I mean, it's it's too bad that they came up with multiple stories. But but the bottom line was that you know, we already had soviets that have had already penetrated a lot of our even our defense areas and and our government. And don't you know that the moment you had this thing where there was a disc clot every government around the planet

was already asking their spies to get the information. Right, so put it to rest, stop it and deflect that kind of thing and create a cover story. And that's exactly what happened there. Was it a nice thing to do, well, not to upologists, but to the government. Yeah, maybe you needed to do that because every spy out there is collecting the debris and going to do the same thing to you that you want to do to them. And so you have a feeling that what do you think did crash

in in Roswell? Well? I mean I think that legitimately, if you you know, if you take a look at all the collected you know, evidence or testimony, let me put it that way, the testimony that you heard, and the sheer volume of the monitoring that went on of people, and the you know, the threats that were made and everything else that that you know, of course that Kerrie and Schmidt had collected in terms of their

work as well as others. You know, I mean that something unknown legitimately came down there and there were beings of some sort that it didn't match anything from this earth, and so I really believe that there is something to it. You don't see that level of monitoring of conversations and threats and everything else, which go way beyond anything that you and I would experience even even today.

I mean, at least as we believe that went on for you know, years, you know, and so there was something there, and I believe that there was a real event. I think that it was the materials that were collected were confiscated. I think it was taken much like I told you before, I said that it goes to an R and D shop, And guess where an R and D shop is, well up in Dayton,

Ohio at right Pad Airfield, and take it up there. It collect as much as you can, and probably there it got filtered out to other places.

But tell Memorial Institute was under contract with the Air Force at the time, and that's a think tank, and so quite logically, since they played a heavy role in shape memory alloy development, which happens to be similar to the memory metal that was found in Roswell, that we suddenly see that in nineteen sixties that kind of shape memory alloys and these other kinds of things coming out that are bendable and metal. It bends and folds back and comes back

to the original shape. We start to see that happening. Knittin all nickel titanium alloy is is an example of that right now, All that nittan al, I mean, it's it's part of our R and D work. So it's a lot of stuff that might have been found and collected was passed off to again to defense contractors. Whether it was through Philip Corso or not, I don't know, but I mean I still think that it was passed around and and it would have been used or leveraged in some capacity. And that's

what we do. That's what the government, that's what the military does. Right So, and for people who might not remember or know that Philip Corso was a guy who worked at R and D, worked at the Pentagon, he claimed that that's what he did. He was given the Risewell material and

gave it off to various contractors. And it would seem an advantage to contractors is they're not set check to FOIA and they can have people sign gag orders and you could be sued for lots of money if you talked about something. Yeah, exactly, and you know, and now all this is trust me, it's all speculation because you can't you won't find a written transfer of we haven't found it yet. Yeah, the handbill that shipped this roswell debris to

this place to this place to this place. It's it's it's only on the basis of you know, repeatable stories that somewhat you can look at and you can say, okay, well that makes sense, that makes sense, that doesn't make sense, and you call that out and you and and that's the way we have all had to work. It's occasionally that you know, That's the nice thing about Robert Hastings is he's been able to find a document,

paper trail that helps him out, which is great. You know Len Screenfield, for example, when he was doing all his collection on crash retrievals, had a lot of testimonials with a lot of different people, but short on

documents. And that's where again it's the frustration. And so if you don't have a paper trail, it's like hard to get it, and then you have to rely on getting additional credible sources to validate that you might have heard from that, because again, if I go talk to five people, I'll get different five different stories, right, yeah, which is kind of the same problem with Roswell. You have a lot of witnesses, but then skeptics

point out you have a lot of discrepancies between the testimony. Well, and you know, I would love them to do. You know, ever, a UFO investigation or a criminal investigation, you're always going to get discrepancies between people. So so you use the two people that did have a different story as the means to debate and just credit the rest of the stuff. I'm sorry, that doesn't work for me. You know, that's not how it works, and so, you know, too bad. But legitimately we could

just drop the whole thing because everybody's got an opinion about UFOs. I mean, that's okay, there's nothing to it, you know. Well, I do want to move on to the Puerto Rico case because you were part of that, and of course we've talked a lot about it on the show. We've had Robert on you weren't going to come to the symposium to talk about it, but you were off vacationing in Mexico or something shaping around the beach.

So Robert came to talk about it, Robert Powell. But so that's unique too because that you have a video and now it's been confirmed that it was a homeland security video. Indeed, yeah, we were you know the whole thing about this video. And you know as well as I do. You get some you see videos all the time. Uh, people pass you like YouTube links or they pass you this or that and you take a look at it and there's of course no, there's no nothing that validates the video

is done by the photographer. There's nothing that that's out there that that helps you to legitimates, uh, create legitimacy around that that that that that video well, I mean much the same to us as we had. Uh you know, we got the video passed to us very early on, and it's like, well, okay, well is this really a homeland security whatever?

You know? And what how do we know that? You know? And uh, and so we were extremely you know, while we thought that it was like a very compelling video and it still is a compelling video, it's just a matter of like, well, how do you validate that this isn't something that's contrived? And so for us, it was a very critical thing

too to make sure that we could validate that. And that's why when you see when we when we looked at and got the radar data, the radar data was able to confirm the fact that indeed a custom UH and Border Protection plane did take off at that time and did fly two circles around the airport

UH and and the times matched up with with the case. And then you look at the the codes that come in for the that and you find out that the codes that the I D codes that that come up match what's been handed over to Customs and Border Protection, so these are that that was able to be helpful. Then we then later through thankfully a freedom of information at UH done by Billy Cox, he was able to get an actual piece of information in fact that again validated the fact that it was one of theirs.

So that was an important piece that we had to do, is to confirm that that was the case. And of course then from there, you know, it was the we spent you know, two years analyzing the video that was that was really the whole thing we were We were really not doing a case investigation as much as a video investigation. So we were tackling the video. What can this be? Can it's infra red? You know? Wow?

What did all these numbers on the screen mean? You know? And there were a lot of numbers around the screen, and people if they want to go there, you just go to explore e x P l O r E s c U dot org. Uh, explore s U dot org and they can you know, you can see the video. We've got the video posted up there. We got our paper posted up there. You got to see the radar animation that's going on. And so, you know, you began one of those things where it's like what is this thing? And and

then can you even determine that? And you know, and then we how does the video? What can we deduce from the video? And so let's take it and break it into seven twenty seven frames and look at every single frame. Let's compute the the We know that the frame rate was one thirty a second, so there's gonna be thirty of these frames it's going to leap to one second. What does that give us? And then we had to go out and learn about the camera. You know, we got to hold

with third. First, we thought it was a Fleaer camera and then I went and did some checking on the the installation and found out that it was not a fleaar camera and they told me it was a Westcam L three camera. And then I went and contacted Westcam and spoke with them and they confirmed that it was one of theirs. And we started to go off there in terms of getting camera information, and we got some camera information, and then over period time, we you know, we we finally were able to make

contacts with different like IR technicians, different people that were doing things. Hey, the story keeps evolving and we keep learning more and more about infrared that all of us, as the team of basically five me and five others, we learned about infrared more so than anything else. And we learned about what

the object was. We did a lot of obviously a lot of math and a lot of calculations on the different things in terms of speed and it's maneuvering into the water and all this other stuff, and what the temperature might be, and we did some a lot of investigation on that. The bottom line was that we put together what we could based upon the information that we had, and then we said, hey, what could this conceivably be? And then when you. You know, typically in upology and this is the way

we do things. It's like in Heine called it the the escalation of hypotheses. You start off with the known and you work to the unknown. Right, and so we, uh we did what he did, which was basically, well, it's not a bird, it's not a plane, it's not a kite, it's not this, it's not that you know, do we

know anything that can look like that move like that? No? No, no, no no. And then you come down with where you and hey, look, you know, unless this is something that is a classified project, then you took the risk of flying a classified project over the and stopped an aircraft from taking off. And you're you're you're you're flying over an airbord for guy's sake. Uh, you know, then why would you do that? You know? And and but that's the only thing you're left with other

than it being something completely unknown that we just don't know about. And and I mean you do not. There's a couple there's still a few out there who are believe it could be a bird or a balloon. Surem but you know, I mean that that's where you know, we asked them to put their paper together like we did, do their homework, show us and make sure that they can make that claim stick. Now, I mean, you know, great, when we see that, then you know we're ready to

assume that something else. Now, let me also clarify that that I'm excited because I've now made contact here with the University of Alabama, Huntsville, the Applied Optics Department, and I've actually got one of the professors who in research who is now joined hands to look at this thing with us, and he may be able to help us to learn more about the infrared than we thought that we could possibly even know. Well, that's cool, and what's great

about this is the people who have come come about with alternate theories. They haven't done the work, like you said, to put together a paper. However, you know, being part of some of the conversations with the group, you and your group you are still take their their input seriously and have looked at it carefully to to see what their points are. And at least so far I believe, and you can correct me if I'm wrong. You

still haven't found an answer however, as to what this was correct. It just you know, you advanced the balloon idea, right, so you know, say great, So they're using a line of sight to show that the maybe the movement of the object was not at the same speed that we thought that it was, or maybe in the different direction, or it didn't didn't do this, or didn't do that. Okay, did you go and check that that and indeed a balloon what it looks like in infrared? Okay,

we did that. I've actually got video clip using the same camera of a balloon. Okay, it doesn't the emissivity that's reflected from the ground in the sky, I don't look anything like this object whatsoever. Then they're not accounting for the fact that it also had it was first seen at night. It was first seen by the tower as well as the aircraft as being a white and a pinky or kind of a white or pinkish light if you would, that came in and basically went dark. It went dark, And they're saying,

okay, well, and they're not even accounting for that. Okay, they don't even mention that that's the case. Okay, well, then you know, and then it went dark, So what what turned out the light

on the balloon? You know, the other thing would be like you know, if it was a balloon or something of that nature, how do you explain the fact that it goes and it disappears at times what appears to be behind a pole, a telephone pole, or it appears to move along the ground and in between trees, or that it seems to go in the water, and it appears to look like it goes in the water and then comes

back up and then splits into two. Okay, so tell me how your balloon splits in the two how it does this kind of moving And their papers don't get that far along, so they haven't done their homework. They need to spend you know, more time doing that. Do the calculations make the case. And that's when we didn't really even want to get into the UFO community. But it's the UFO if you would, the skeptics or or whatever you want to call them, I mean critics if you would, or debunkers,

whatever the term you want to use for that those group. And it's just because they want to be able to prove and they've already come up with it's a balloon, or it's this, or it's that, it's not this, So they're biased from the beginning and they go off and they try to prove that it's can't be a UFO or can't be unidentified. We have to find something else for it. And then they can't come up with an answer

and even tell us what it is. And so that Yet, but they want to point their finger at us, They want to stick fingers in our face, they want to call us names as a group. And yet all we are a bunch of skeptical kind of like you know, I mean, people don't think that I'm not skeptic. Excuse me, wait a minute, I'm very skeptical of most UFO cases. So I too am a skeptic, and you know, and I and I but I also have a feeling that there's legitimacy to the case that needs to be explored and it needs to be

investigated. And so but yet you know, we're you know, we're criticized by that group, and it's just to become actually a carnival with them. And I'm sad to say, but and with the true experts, the ones with the most expertise that are legitimate esque experts, people who work with these systems are agreeing that they do not believe this object to be be a balloon or a bird, correct, And for me that's what's most important because these

are the experts. Everybody can have an opinion, but when it comes down to like even me writing it as a journalist, the expert opinion is what's most important. And it's unique that we even have this expert opinion because often in these UFO cases you can't get experts to put in their two cents because they're afraid of ridicule. And even in this case, they only identified themselves to myself and you all, but otherwise don't want us to release their their

personal information. Yeah, which you know, I'll be perfectized with you. The vast majority of UFA UFO witnesses don't want their names mentioned. Okay, that's just the way it is. And oh, by the way, I mean, do you think that I'm gonna, like, you know, go through the humiliation that I'm gonna get if I tell my put my name out there? No, I mean the media is out there like a carnival and a joke that turns it into a circus. So I'm sorry, I'm gonna

keep my name quiet. But that doesn't mean that their testimony is not valid or nor that we don't think that it's not. I talk to the IR people that do the maintenance work on those cameras, you know, they're the ones that out there knowing all about the camera. I mean, and they're literally their whole office is sitting there looking at this entire video clip and saying, what the heck do you make out of that? That's nothing like anything

I've ever seen, you know. I mean, that counts for something, you know, And so I mean, legitimately, there might be something. And again I go back to the fact that I'm hoping that this IR professor, he's the assistant research director. My god, he's put together so many books on in for red that it's amazing, and it's just a very knowledgeable

guy. And I sat with him for like, you know, over an hour, and he was telling me things that we're like, you know, okay, well, this could be, this could be this would be, this could be this, but great, can you help us out because to me, my opinion is if this has a prosaic explanation to it, I want to know it and I will be the first publish it, Okay,

I mean, I'll make sure that that gets out there. And I've got nothing to hide, you know, but until then, it's an extremely compelling video, Okay, And I'm I think I you know, we owe it to the witnesses who came forward, took the risk to do that, to treat it seriously. That's what they wanted, that's what they got. We treated it seriously. And you know, I'm proud of the work that we

did. Most UFO cases most excellent. When you it's first off, it's extremely rare for us to even begin have a military grade piece of equipment, uh pass, and we get that that video. Okay, show me a case where we've had anything taken infra red. Show me anything where we've had anything that was provided to us by the military that where we can actually go look at it and see an object of some sort. So on. From me to me, it's like, that's a rare event in and of itself,

and it deserves a credible attention to it. And that's what I was proud of our group at least attempting to do that. So we're pretty much out of time. I mean, that flew by. You are the state director for Alabama and Mississippi. Movefon. By the way, we haven't mentioned

that and I believe you have more titles with Movefon right. Yeah, now, the you find director of Strategic Projects, And what that basically means is I'm looking to help out and getting technology implemented out there to be able to help us to tackle this thing. And that's one of the projects Out've got. I'm also helping to document the life cycle of the UFO case so that

we can deploy that into the r CMS design. So I'm doing a lot of that type of stuff, applying my IT skills and stuff like that in that capacity. Did you see that cool UFO I d UFO detector software? Yes, I did, In fact that I think that's really neat. In fact, I've told my team that I've got to go out and let's get it and let's let's try it out and see what it's like and and and

check it out. Yeah, that's cool stuff. So, and people can go to mof on al dot org to find out more about Alabama move On. You're going to be speaking at the move On Symposium in August, which is very cool. Uh, that'll be an Orlando, Florida. And what

are you going to be talking about? Well, the title of my program is going to be target uh the h it's about the Aguada Puerto Rico case and it's called Target Unknown, and so we'll talk about that U I P. Case and that goes along with the theme of the entire thing, which is basically UFOs and uh from the oceans to the skies to out in space and stuff, and so it'll be one of those things I'll be talking on Saturday. I'm kind of like in the Prime Times spot after people come back

from dinner, So I'm excited about it. I'll also be doing the moderating one of the panels on the second day, and I'm looking forward to doing that as well. Cool. Well, that's exciting. Well, anything else you wanted to add before we leave, No other than the fact that you're a great guy. I'm looking forward to being back on with you, Alejandro. I always appreciate your rationality to the subject, and thank you for having me on, and I hope it won't be another fifty two years before I'm

back on with you. Yeah. Well, you know what, thank you so much for coming on, and we'll definitely have you on again because I had a lot more questions I wanted to talk to you about, but this is great to get to know you better, and so the listeners get to know you. I even found out new stuff about you because I didn't know you were just a teenager when you started all of this. That's really cool. Yeah, I was one of those kids that was in influence a lot

of people. There's a magic thing about age thirteen or something like that. I run across it all the time where people were enhanced by this subject arout that age, you know, And so I was like, Wow, that's pretty cool. So I'm yep, thirteen years old. Well, you know what, I'm going to ask this question hopefully you have time anyway, because I didn't ask have you had a sighting of your own? Well, you know, no, I have not seen anything that I would class as a

UFO that I've witnessed. And I you know, I tend to be walking around with my head up in the air. I'm always out, I do sky watches, I'm outlooking and and I haven't and but you know, let me let me clarify. When you've investigated cases where you've seen circular areas that are baked two feet in the ground seventy foot in diameter like I did, and I'm standing in the middle of it. I'm going like, whoa, this is incredible. You see that, and you see other kinds of things

when you do case investigations. I don't have any reason to not believe. I've talked to too many credible Air force people, military people. There's something there. And I really don't even think that I have to see one, because to me, it's like, you know, it's just too much common sense that the planet, every part of the planet's been touched by these things, and all people describe them the same way. So I don't need to

see one. But if I do, great, I love it. Like the closest I came was I saw that Google loon balloon, and man, I thought that that was pretty wild. I thought that maybe that was gonna be my first one until I found out that it was the balloon that was launched from Huntsville. So and I guess finally for reals to this time, But you do believe the most likely answer for the phenomena is that there are extraterrestrial civilizations visiting. I'm gonna put to you this way. I mean,

there's the multiple hypotheses as to where they originate. I mean, you know, and I think that all of them still are on the table. In other words, if you look at the Bentwater's case, you could probably argue that they would tell you that it's something from the future, you know,

And that's pretty much the way that that one went. If you look at the fact, if you read Jacques Vallet's work, and especially since he's done the new re editing of his book Wanders in the Sky, I mean, you're documenting the fact that we've had a relationship with some pretty unusual objects and things like that that go throughout recorded history. So then there's the philosophy or the hypothesis that suggests that they've always been here, they might have they might

have been here before us. And then you you also look at Jacques Belai's work and you'd say, well, well, maybe there's an alternative, alternative hypothesis, you know, and maybe it's like inter dimensional in nature that can pop in and pop out, and so that's just as much on the table. Uh. Then you know, it goes on and on and on to where that there's all these different and it doesn't have to be that they're extra

trest necessarily coming from here. Let me put it through this way. They might not be from here, but they've been here for a very very long time. Is a very very strong possibility. Their ability to move through space and time, you know, might be that they're from you know, not even in this time element that we live in and what we work in.

So we don't know where they originate from. But I believe that they've there's been a relationship between everybody on this planet with some unknown something that we really don't know that has been recorded, tracked, seen, observed. Maybe we've been influenced by it. And I believe that that's also the case. But I don't necessarily jump to the fact that they're flying here in spacecraft from another galactic place or something like that. On a day to day basis, I

believe that the oceans come into play. I believe that there might be conceivably bases underneath the ocean, because it's we shouldn't even be called Earth, you know, three quarters of the planet is water. We should be called probably the planet water and nukes and nukes, well, yeah, I go along with Hastings to me think about about that. I mean, it's like, you know, we've started detonating all these things in the atolls underwater and stuff

like that. If you were water based, you know, wouldn't you be a little bit concerned about that and want to pop out and try to stop all that stuff, you know. So the bottom line is that they've probably got shaken up quite a bit from all the rattling we did with the nukes that we've done, and we're affecting our own planet that they might be sharing with us, and so hey, by the way, let me do something

about that. So I believe very strongly that those interactions that Hastings has put together in his great work called UFOs Nukes and his new documentary is legit, and it's basically, you know, it says that you know, they're wanting to stop us from either annihilating ourselves or or something of that. M h. And finally, do they, whoever they are, have anything to do

with the bow tie? No, I'm sorry to say. I go back and I look at my photographs that I've got, even of me as a kid, and I've found a few of them where I'm wearing a bow tie. And I had uncles who were bow ties. And then it seemed like when I got working in Army Material Command, there was this one gentleman by the name of Forrest Chilton that I that I remember working with me, and

he always wore a bow tie. I thought that was really cool, so he kind of convinced me to go that way, and in fact, I went up and said, can you teach me how to bow and tie this thing? And so there you go and and there you go, and I just now I've got my my wonderful cups and my drawings made by Dennis Reino of me wearing a you know, a bow tie and I'm my coffee mug and stuff like that. So it's pretty cool. All right, You're pretty cool, dude. Hey, thanks, thank you, and again I appreciate

just being on with you. Yeah, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. And we'll talk to you soon, all right. Thank you so much to Richard Hoffman for being on the show. What a great guest. Like I said, you know, I interact with him so much at shocking that I haven't had him on the show before. And now you know why I should have had him on the show earlier, and why I should have him on frequently, which will I definitely will attempt to

do because he's got a lot of great information. He's been in this for decades and he's done a lot of great stuff and has some incredible insights. So I always love working with rich He's very professional, very down to earth and what a background, huh, I mean, an amazing asset to this field. So thank you so much. You can check him out at Alabama Moofon. They've got a website and a Facebook also you could check him out

out on Facebook. And he'll also be speaking at the Mofon Symposium, like you said, actually both of us will be so and Morgan Beale, who is a State director for Florida. Actually the move On Symposium will be in late August in Orlando, and Morgan being the state director, is taking a big role in this year's symposium. And he's also put together these really cool

videos that highlight the different speakers. So he's got a video of yours truly, but he's got some of the other speakers and you can find out about the speaker's backgrounds and what they're into and all about. And they're really cool, fun videos. So they're on the move On YouTube and actually I've been posting them on my Facebook and on our Facebook group, So don't forget.

The Open minds UFO News Facebook group is out there. It's a closed group, but all you have to do is ask to join and we will let you join. And we just want to keep out the real negative people and the people who are just name calling and saying just disgusting things, as as we see so much out there on the internet by these anonymous boneheads. So yeah, so join the Facebook group and you can see these videos. They're really cool and hopefully you can make it to the symposium to see us talk

and to say hello. It's going to be a lot of fun. So really excited about that. I'm also really excited about our video portal, and of course you're hearing about it every time now on the radio show, but you'll see it more in our emails and on our website. But our video portal we've really beefed up. So we have all of the twenty sixteen International UFO Congress lectures up on our on demand video portals. So essentially you can

go there and you'll be able to watch all the lectures right there. They're all streaming, and for one low monthly price, you can watch all of these hundreds of videos of your favorite lectures, I mean, Bob Lazar, Jacques Valet, George Nap, all of the big guys you know out there. I mean, we've got tons of people on there, and so that's a lot of fun. But it's really cheap and if you want, you

can watch one video at a time. However, it's much more cost effective just to do the low month to month on that one, So go check that out when you have a chance. It's well well worth it. You could go to our website openminds dot tv and you'll see the video portal link and you'll see it there. We also have been talking about it in our emails, So on the website on the upper right you'll see a box where

you can join our email newsletter. We only send that out bi weekly, so we don't really spam you, but we let you know what's going on on the radio show with the UFO Congress, with our UFO reports and the latest news and headlines and stuff, so you can keep up to date. So if you get busy with other things, you know, we can always give you tabs on what's going on in the UFO world with this handy email

that we send out on a bi weekly basis. All of the news that we talked about you can find at Openminds dot tv, so be sure to check their regularly. And thank you all so much for listening. Thank you to Caleb Hanks for the opening and close music. And you know, no vacations or nothing in the way. We should have shows over the next few weeks. Actually, I've got interviews scheduled for the next few weeks already, so we'll be going on strong into the summer, into the Arizona desert heat.

It's going to be like ninety five tomorrow, so we are quickly, unfortunately, on our way to those one hundred and ten degree days. But right now, if if you were at the Congress, you remember the weather was spectacular. It was so great, and we've had this amazing weather all the way up until now, so I can't complain because it's been really nice, and hopefully it will be for a few days. But pretty soon here we'll be in the blazing sun. But regardless of that blazing sun beating down,

we will be bringing you the UFO news at Openminds dot TV. So thank you all so much for listening. Thank you to Martin for joining us with the news and we will talk to you all next week. Adio smooth tattoos your emotionless