How Project Blue Book Worked, Pt II

Days of official investigation. You know, every time I hear salad Days, I think of Monty Python sketch about it's just called salad Days. Great, you should look at I'll check it out. Is there is there blood? I need blood in my Monty Py A lot of blood. Okay, I'm in then, So let's talk about this was a big if you want to talk to salad days of UFO sightings. Speaking of salad days, this is one of

the big years. Uh. There were fifty hundred and one UFO sightings in nineteen fifty two, which there were a hundred and sixty nine. So there's a lot. Yeah, almost an increase of ten times, that's right, pretty order of magnitude, that's right. Yeah, So that's a pretty big uptick. I guess you could say, and it just so happens that the Air Force had positioned itself already to investigate this stuff with an open mind. Yeah, And there were some big ones, like there was one where the Air Force

scrambled jets to intercept what they called brilliant objects over Washington. Uh, they were on radar and seen visually in the sky. And Major General John Sandford, he was the Director of Intelligence, actually brief the FBI on this one and said, it is not entirely impossible that the object sided may possibly

be ships from another planet such as Mars. You shouldn't added that last, really really suck the wind out of his credibility, Yeah, because he had to go in with a pretty good sentence there, and he could have just said from a somewhere else in the galaxy, right, He might as well have said Uranus. He might as well said martians. M So Sandford also, I got the impression

he went a little bit rogue here. He held a press conference, from what I understand of his own accord, Yeah, to reassure the general public that the Air Force was on the case and that yes, it's true, we can't really explain all this stuff but we're looking into it. But he included the word however, which is very important because what followed that was, however, a certain percentage had

been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things. It is this group of observations that we now are attempting to resolve. But there is no conceivable threat to the United States. I don't know if I would have felt better hearing that presser, I wouldn't have. Yeah, I would have been like, I knew it. I knew at the was about to end ye Martians. Who knows who's going to replace Tom Cruise in top gun. There's this utter

chaos and disorder, that's right. Um. So there was an article much the same way that the Saturday Evening Post helped put it kind of a damper on the UFO craze. The behest of the Air Force back in the forties. The UFO fever that spiked in nineteen fifty two was helped along by a Life magazine article, but not from the Air Force behest. No, No, it was like the opposite. It was called have we visitors from outer Space? It's

just such a nineteen fifties headline, you know. Yeah, And they offered or they said they were offering scientific evidence that there's a real case for in a planetary saucers. And then I think about ten sightings that they kind of just went over in great detail. Right, it was a very long article. It was, um, it really made the case that yes, there was probably extraterrestrials visiting US.

I bet that was a big issue of life. Sure, but they sold a lot of those, Yeah, and they I mean it landed really well and really hard among the American public because they were in the grips of UFO fever again. So while this is going on like it, it had kind of died down a little bit as crazy and in fact, the I think the Air Force was kind of surprised when it flared up again because it had a little bit died down from seven to say nifty, and then all of a sudden fifty two.

I don't know where it comes back. It's like a hemorrhoid you thought you'd taken care of exactly. That's an exact analogy. It's perfect. So the c I A, um, they had been kind of keeping tabs on this stuff. I wondered about this when I was reading this, I was like where are they this whole time? That's exactly what they wanted you to wonder and then conclude they're not doing anything exactly Could that be on the news? Right? Right? So it turns out that the CIA was doing something

even though it wasn't on the news. Um. There was a guy named H. H. Marshall Chadwell, where did all these people come from? Yel or something's great there? Everyone involved in this this UFO investigation came from Yale. BA sound like blue bloods. So um. He was the assistant director of Scientific Intelligence for the CIA, and he basically said, hey, um, we don't know what these are. By the way, I don't know if you've been paying attention to this stuff,

but we should probably investigate it. That's right. So he Um. He got a panel impaneled, there's really no other way to put it. I like that word. Um in ninety two and it was led by a physicist, a very famous, likable physicist named Howard Percy Robertson. He was likable physicists, sure, he was very very well liked in his class at Yale. He would be H. Percy Robertson at Yale though, Oh I guess so he really would he loosened the club

tie by going by Howard Percy. Yeah, so he was from cal Tech and he looked into this thing and they had this panel and they met for for days twelve hours a few hours a day. That seems a little skimpy to me, but whatever, same here, I've only got three hours a day to do. They just basically went around the room taking turns reading that Life magazine article out loud, I guess so, and then discussing what they thought about it. So Repelled is still here. He's

the head of Blue Book at the time. Still Heinik was there. He's still around. Yeah, he's never he's never left, right, No, he's part of this this ongoing project that's right investigation. Uh. And then other people that were involved that you know should have been in the room and were in the room, and they were all presenting what they thought were the most interesting cases to what would be eventually known as

the Robertson Panel. Right, the Robertson Panel said thank you very much, all of you will will be in touch. Don't call us, We'll call you. And they issued a final report and it said that of all UFO cases could be explained by meteorological, meteorological, astronomical, celestial, known scientific stuff. Sure technology, that that's believable. Okay, the other ten percent, though, if we spend enough time and energy investigating it, we could also explain those. Yeah, that's where the b S

comes in. Their conclusion was that given enough time and effort, of all UFO sightings could be explained underknown scientific or technological explanation. And no one said, so are you saying that ten percent of these are so confounding that you can't explain them? And they went, yeah, but we could, we just don't have enough time. Exactly. It's a really passive aggressive way of saying there is no such thing as alien. Yeah, pretty much so that but that is

ultimately what they said. Yeah, but here's the thing though, they did see that this was the fact that people were sighting these UFOs, and it was all over the papers. Um, the craze was a bad thing and and dangerous, even because the Cold War is heating up like we were talking about. Um, the Soviets have been known to secretly exploit the American psyche. Um, that never happens anymore. Of course, they don't do anything like that. Well, it's like you said,

this was the Cold War, that's right. They were known to do this kind of thing, and they thought, this is a perfect opportunity for the Soviets to come in fake reports about UFOs, get everyone distracted, worked up into a frenzy, um and they start asking them questions about pulsating and and they said, and not only that, but the Soviets, Uh, I read their papers or I have them read to me, and uh, they don't have any reportings of UFO sidings. So they're clearly if there are any,

they're keeping a lid on it. And this is our problem that they can exploit. We can't do the same back to them, right, So all the Soviets had to do would be come in and be like UFOs UFOs basically like shouting, you know, fire and a crowded theater, which is the legal of course, as everyone knows. That's right. Um, so, uh, this is a this is a problem. This is like with the way the CIA thought, you know, this is

something that they need to do something about. So they decided to um basically undo that that Cold War hysteria and panic. Yeah, but they were in a pickle though, because they like they're supposed to be tamping down this thing that they don't if that they I feel like they shouldn't even be investigating to begin with. Right, they're denying that something even exists, but continuing to investigate it. Right.

So what I was saying is they decided to say, Okay, we need to get rid of this Cold War hysteria, we need to kind of take the air out of this weird phenomenon in American culture. And they decided to do that by exploiting America with a public relations campaign very as you say, bern Asian. Uh. And they said, hey, call up Walt Disney. Yeah, and they really did. They thought, you know, um, we're gonna get this out in the media.

We're gonna have um, we're gonna create this propaganda that's gonna sweep the nation on TV and in movies and in newspapers debunking all this stuff, showing like, hey, this is how you explain this stuff, right, saying like here's this report and here's the scientific explanation for it, and that they consider that would be very powerful. And I think they're right. Yeah, just basically priming America's pump to where if you're having a water cooler conversation and bring

something up about a UFO. There are five people there to say, didn't you see that thing like that? It's weather balloons. People love doing that and if you can arm people with that, they will do it every time. And that that actually is a pretty good plan for tamping down. It's a great plan. They also decided, maybe one of the less great parts of the plan, to surveil and keep tabs on UFO groups for anti American

stuff because this was during the McCarthy era. Of course. Yeah, so everybody was doing anti America and stuff if they weren't painting their white picket fence. Yeah, and I was. You know, I mentioned Disney and we both laugh, But that was not a joke. They actually did think about um and who knows, maybe they got in touch with Disney about making some propaganda pieces to help them out because they had done that before. Chip and Dale originally

started out as UFOO investigators. But it's just kind of one thing led to another. Uh. They worked on propaganda pieces before that was one called Donald gets drafted, uh Donald Duck propaganda film UM And they said it never came to fruition, but it would not surprise me if they didn't poke around a little bit, right, like in Earnest Donald gets drafted. Did Yeah that was a one

that got released. Oh you mean like the UFO one. Yeah, Like, it wouldn't surprise me if they really did have an official meeting and Disney just said no, like we're not going to get involved. They're like, but we have this idea about psychic children. But I guess it's kind of pro psychic. Really, I wonder what the messages an Escape from which Mountain. I haven't seen it in so long. I'm sure there's some very clear message that as an adult, you'd be like, this is what I was taught. Yeah,

I mean I saw both of those. Didn't the rock recreate that remake it? I think so? But I did not recreate. Makes it sound like he just did it in his head in his living room or something here. He recreated that after dinner one night. I really think he was in that a remake. No, I think you're right. I never I never bothered. Oh I didn't. I like that guy though. Oh The Rocky is great. I mean I don't go see his movies much, but he seems like a good dude, right, he does seem like a

good dude. You have a sense for these kind of things. There was one TV show, There was a CBS show called UFOs colon Friend, Foe or Fantasy? And is this the one that Cronkite Okay, I didn't know if that was a separate one. Did I write this that poorly? It's part of the same sentence? No, I know, I just I couldn't tell if it was me it was my because it says isn't the same sentence narrated by Walter Cronkite? Yes, okay, No, you are heated, grace, thank

you for rest. This is the nineteen sixty six uh. And this was um largely over the Michigan sightings. Yeah, we'll talk about those in a little bit. Yeah, just stick a pin in that. But it was big enough that they brought concrete or cron Kite out concrete, you know how I'm talking about, Sure Walter concrete. That's he's a legend. You turn them upside down and shake him

and we'll come out of the cup. So but in that in that documentary is very much a pro skeptic anti UFO documentary where it's they followed this um the Robertson Panel recommendations of saying, here's this amazing report of the sighting. Here's how it's explained. Here's another study. Here's how it's explained. Don't you see now that UFOs are actually really just kind of something. They're they're not alien.

It's fantasy. They called it friend forward fantasy. They should have just called it UFOs fantasy, right, because that was the upshot of it all. So UM, that Robertson panel report, there's something else that was really interesting about it. UM had a very surprising knock on effect years later. So this the panel was was impaneled in ninety two, i think the year of that, that UFO fever outbreak, and it's um it's proceedings and its recommendations stayed classified until

nineteen seventy five, and after a blue book was gone. Yeah, years after it was gone. So I'm sure they figured like, oh, it's fine, whatever, just release it. But here's the thing. Up to that point, up to nineteen seventy five, as far as anyone in the American public was concerned, the CIA had just remained quiet on the whole thing. It

was all you. US Air Force CEA had nothing to do with it, And so all of a sudden, this Robertson panel comes out, and it's not only their own report, but they also mentioned an earlier CIA panel that had basically the same conclusions um that showed that very much the I was involved in this and that they covered it up and two people in nine it gave the the alien conspiracy theory a real shot in the arm because it showed no, the CIA was definitely investigating this

and they covered it up. So how can we trust anything that anybody says about this? Yeah, covering, covering it up to begin with just made the cover up. It was a cover up. It made a it made something that wasn't a cover up a cover up. Yeah, exactly, by covering and fueled all sorts of conspiracy theories. That's how it works. That's just how it works. The US government, probably any government, will never ever learn, but that is

just how it works. That's right. There was another report declassified in nine, uh, where the CIA set around the mid nineteen fifties, they started observing planes that could flat high altitudes, they started creating them. Yeah, well it said observing, So I guess they were just observing what they create.

Come on. You can't take everything I say, literally. Uh, and we're talking about remember earlier I kind of teased about the fact that the Soviets might have these spy planes because we had spy planes, the U two spy plane very much top secret at the time. Yeah, it's it's like the old adage when you point in the sky at the Rusha's spy plane, you've got three fingers pointing back at your spy plane. Right. Uh. It was very much top secret, like I said, and it was.

It could go up to sixty thousand feet, which is three to five times higher than any commercial plane could fly at the time. And they were commercial pilots are seeing these things and reporting on them. Well, yeah, because they were silver at first, they weren't painted the cooler

black color until later on. I guess with the touring models that they started to pump out there and they you know, were very reflective, so at sunrise and at sunset, these things would cast these weird lights and uh, you know, commercial pilots, because they didn't know this was a thing, would say, hey, there's something going on a way up above me, or people would see them from the ground. Yeah,

flying really fast, really high, and looking like fire. Yeah, because this started I think testerones in the mid nineteen fifties, so that coincides with a lot of these sightings. Yeah. So this this c I a memo for that was declassified in basically said, by our estimate of that seven one unidentified UM report of the reports that were remain unidentified, Project bluebooks files, UM are you two and SR seventy one test flights can probably account for about half of those, right,

which whittles that number down dramatically. Should we take another break? All right, We'll take a break and come back and talk about the return of Heineck right after this, Chuck, this is going so well. Thanks, I'm really impressed. Good so Heinich, He said he returned, but really he never went anywhere. He's still plodding along doing his thing. He started out at Project sign. By this time it's blue book. It's like us with this place. How many times has

it changed hands? A million? We're still here. We're like the Heinecks here of how stuff works. So um with with the years, however, Heinek himself seems to have changed, and he changed probably earlier than he made it public that he had changed. But he later said, you know what, everybody, I actually think that these UFOs are a thing at the very least some stuff we can't explain, and we should be investigating them way more scientifically than we are.

And that really flew in the face of the public face that he had, which by the by the time he he came out and said that had become something of a laughing stock at the behest of the Air Force. Yeah, like what the change was is Repelled left in nineteen fifty three and he was the dude that kind of had it running like a legit investigatory body. He left, and then Heineck says it basically just became a pr

device um and the stats prove it out. It was the unexplained case rate of up to that we talked about after Repelled left that went down to one, which is just an insult. Even if you're a skeptic, that's an insult, right, because again they would use anything that they could think of, including planets that weren't even visible

in the sky at the time. There was very famously one UM where I think there was a sighting in Oklahoma, I believe, Yeah, yeah, there was a the Oklahoma State Police Tinker Air Force Base and a meteorologist in Oklahoma who was using weather radar at the time, all independently tracked four objects, one of them on radar, and Heinek in the Air Force of who were doing UM Project

blue Book representing Project Blue Books, said it was Jupiter. Yeah, which is not a good explanation for four objects that are both visually cited and show up on radar, because Jupiter doesn't show up on radar, and it certainly doesn't show up as four fast moving objects. Yes, and Jupiter wasn't even visible in the night sky on that date, right, So this definitely kind of like is a really good example of what what Heinech was having to come out and say to the public, you know, towards the end

of his UM his Camel's backbreaking. Yeah. And here's the thing is, he was still slightly skept I mean, I don't know about slightly skeptical. He was still a skeptic, I guess. But his whole beef was uh. And he says, this is a direct quote, he said, everything was negative and unyielding in their attitude. Everything had to have an explanation. And I began to resent that even though I basically felt the same way. I thought they weren't going about

it in the right way. So that was the deal is the Air Force was just sort of an obligatory stamp of not true. It was this, and he was like, well, I don't necessarily think it's a alien saucer either, but like, can we investigate it and get like a real explanation at least? Yeah, that was definitely his thing. And then the other thing was that one through line that has kept skeptics interested in this is credible observers reporting incredible,

unexplainable things. That's right. So those two things, the Air Force jurking him in the way that they were carrying out the investigation, and these credible observers actually caused him to undergo a conversion. There's a debate, oh, for whether it was a slow conversion or a quick conversion. Some people suspect that he was actually a lifelong believer and that he just kind of kept it under wraps. But even after you underwent this conversion, which has been estimated

to have happened around nineteen sixty, he kept it. He kept quiet, as a matter of fact, for years, and he didn't want to stake his personal reputation, his professional career, all that stuff on just coming out and being like, hey, everybody, the Air Force is lying to you, especially considering that the general public by this time had had completely bought into the idea that the Air Force was just blatantly and clumsily trying to cover up knowledge of UFOs and

their reality. Yeah, he said he was kind of waiting for the big one, right, like something so irrefutable that he could actually really go public with it. All right, Well, let's talk about the swamp gas in Michigan. This is in March nineteen sixty six, very famous case. Uh, there was a sighting over several days or hundreds of people that reported glowing objects hovering and flying around an arbor Michigan, and then a bunch of towns along the countryside between

Toledo and Detroit. Same thing. Eight seven students at Hillsdale College in Michigan, and they all said the same stuff as that we've seen these objects with red, white and blue lights. Um one family instead of UFO landed on their farm. I don't know about that one, sure, but you never know. Yeah, the college students might stretch credibility a little bit, but it was a big national story.

Heinek went there and it was basically a frenzy, so much so that he had trouble getting interviews with the witnesses as the official like representative, because the press was all over it. Right, Yeah, the press were eating up all of their time. He couldn't he couldn't interview them, but he finally did, and he held a press conference, and um at the press conference, he said, it's possible some some of the sightings may have mistaken swamp gas for UFOs. And in this guy's defense, he had he

said some. He didn't say all. He wasn't dismissive about it. It was just something he said, but the press took it and and it converted it into all. Basically, the headlines read Heineck dismissed his sightings as swamp gas and that that was that. Like he had basically said, it was all swamp gas. Everybody knew that scores and dozens and possibly hundreds of people across Ohio and Michigan hadn't all seen swamp gas, and that was a preposterous explanation,

especially if you laid it on the whole thing. Yeah, Johnny Carson even had an astronomer on to basically refute the swamp gas theory. There. Yeah, there's a headline air Force insults public with swamp gas theory. That wasn't like a legitimate newspaper. So it was a ridiculous thing that got It was a dumb thing to say, but I think he said it not not realizing that it was going to become the explanation and it was going to

make him a further laughing stock. It just so happened that that swamp gas thing was the last straw that that broke Heine's back. Yeah, it broke his back. And there was a senator out of Michigan named Gerald Ford, and he said, I want to I demand a congressional hearing. And they said who are you? He said, I'm Senator Gerald Ford. I'm gonna be president one day. Yeah, you'll see. I'll fix you good when i'm president. They said, how are you gonna be president? Your senator? He said, well,

it's complicated, you'll see, right. Uh So he demands this hearing and they, uh they held a hearing the following month, and this is when Heinek really got a chance to to kind of publicly out himself as a convert and said my recommendation, Senator Ford, watch your step is UFO sighting should be investigated by scientists and not the military. And this was music to the ears of the military in a lot of ways. Yeah, they said, he said

it finally. Yeah, great, They said, yes, you're absolutely right, we should have somebody scientifically investigate this. And the Air Force, for its part, saw an out of being in this UFO investigating business that it didn't want to be in the first place, that that in some way Heinek had just opened the door for them. So they said, yeah, we agree with Heinek. You guys should totally get some

sort of scientific study going. And I don't know if it was Congress that hired them or if the Air Force did, but either way, a committee led by a physicist named Edward Condon, University of Colorado, UM Buffalo. They yeah, they took up the I they took up the task of figuring out whether um UFOs actually were a thing or not in deserve scientific study. Right. So this is a three year study in the end, and the objective was to really take it seriously as an academic and

they did that, right. No, they didn't it was really just a smoke screen um to get the Air Force out of this business once and for all, because Condon basically, and there was a bit of a drumbeat in the public of like your wastinger taxpayer money. There were some people that shot this was super worthwhile, but most people saw it as like, why is the Air Force wasting

their time with this stuff? I would guess that would have been William F. Buckley's position probably, so so, Yeah, there were some people, especially people in the Air Force tour, like this is this is a dumb thing to do, where this is a dumb waste of time. So Condon said, Okay, I am possibly the only person on the planet who's in a position to get the Air Force out of

UFO investigations. I'll do a little wink wink, nudge nudge, ask a few people if it pulsated or throbbed, and then we'll just release a report that says no. And that's exactly what they did. In January of nineteen sixty nine, they released the Condom Report, which was respectably four and thirty nine pages long. Yeah, but this quote from Condon though in sixty seven, uh, it is my inclination right now to recommend that the government get out of this business.

My attitude right now is there's nothing to it. But I'm not supposed to reach that conclusion for another year, So that that really it really undermines that really frankly whittles it down to about fifty just with that one quote. You know, so, Um, the kind of report basically says, hey, everybody, Um, our general conclusion is that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past twenty one years that

has added to scientific knowledge. Careful consideration of the record as it is available to us leads us to conclude that further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby. And the weird thing is, Chuck is I agree with him wholeheartedly. Yeah, we didn't learn anything except about ourselves from investigating UFOs all these years that we know about. Okay, I'll give you that, except for toasters, and um, did that come

from the UFO tech. That's something what some people say, Yeah, yeah, there's like if you're a UFO believer, Um, one of the big things people point to is this boom in technology that came after World War Two. We're on about the time the ros Ball crash happened, and they point to right Patterson and say, well, we learned a lot from this, and we started making microwaves and tang and all sorts of stuff ended up on the moon. Um, those aliens were touched in their bread, and right, we

gotta get in on this. I like the real version of it where that guy had a chocolate bar, Percy, I can't remember his last name. He had a chocolate bar in his in his pocket and melted when he got too close to a microwave. He's like, let's start making popcorn with this thing. Man, I forgot about that guy Percy something. We're gonna call him Percy Sledge. Okay, I was just about to say that. I was so uh.

I'll tell you what. Let's take a break here and we'll tell you about what happened with Project blue Book right after this. Alright, Project blue Book closed was killing December seventeenth nine. It was officially closed the Airport sonatifact sheet and said, no UFO has ever been a threat to our national security. UM, they don't recognize any technological developments. Um, there are no extraterrestrial vehicles. UM. And if you're a ufologist,

is that what it's called, you followed upologists? Then um, you think it's just all one big lie. Still, yeah, there's there's another documented sighting. Here's the thing with all these documented sightings, it's like, yes, people did say this. Yeah, So it's it's really tough to kind of like as coming from like the stuff you should know way to be like, well to contradict this official report. Here's this other,

you know, thing that we should be skeptical of. But there is there was something that happened at UM a Malmstrom Air Force based in Montana in ninety seven where allegedly ten of our nuclear warheads were suddenly taken offline while this unidentified object was hovering overhead, and that the people who were tasked with UM watching the warheads all reported on this and it was documented supposedly, and that the Air Forces fact sheet thus that this was never

a threat to our national security was a flat lie. Yeah. So in the end, they Project Bluebook and all of the other projects came before it investigated over twelve thousand sightings, UM seven hundred and one remained unidentified. If you go by that number if you listen to the military, like you said, half of those were you two's or blackbirds,

which is like what three fifty or so? But even still okay, So there's three d and fifty that's a lot, okay, But other people say, no, it's even more than that, right exactly because these were official investigations and you didn't even investigate the one that I saw, buddy. A lot of that stuff goes on. That's one. Um. Yeah, and that's actually evidenced in the number of sightings that increased

after Project Blue Books. So um, in nineteen sixty five, I believe there was eight hundred and eighty six reported sightings as part of Project Blue Book. In two thousand and fourteen, there were eighty six hundred nineteen. In two thou eighteen there were thirty two d and thirty six.

That was a slow year. So a lot of people say the Air Force wasn't actually investigating all these Yeah, and granted this is you should know, this comes from private UH groups and citizens who have developed these groups for reporting, like the National UFO Reporting Center, because it's not codified now by the military, so citizens have done this. So take it. Take that number with a grain of salt. But at the same time, it's not necessarily that these

groups are drumming up sightings. There may even be more because at the time, in the forties, fifties, and sixties, the American public generally knew if you saw something, you would contact your local Air Force base. I wonder how many people know who to contact if they think they see something, have no idea. I don't either. I would just drive up to Dobbins and like knock on the front gate. They'd be like, come inside, forever um. One

of the other things. One of the other reasons that people say now the unidentified number is actually way higher than seven hundred is because if you take those cases where you say it was Jupiter, it was a weather balloon, it was some stupid thing we just came up with. Those cases go from identified to actually unidentified, and so

that number increases even further. Project Blue Book Will Never Die Friend, No, well not and something else won't ever die is Heinik is the person who who developed the very famous Close Encounters rating scale. Uh. If you've seen the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, highly recommended. First of all, great Great Steven Spielberg film with the great great Richard Dreyfuss, Terry gar for God's sakes, but using that man, she's so good. I miss her. So

the first kind is and you get one point. It's a rating scale for the believability of a sighting. Yeah, I just love the point thing, right, I got two points. So you get one point if you uh see a UFO within five feet not bad. Set kind is two points. Of course, that is a physical effect um happens, which is like in Close Encounters when he's on the railroad tracks, his headlights start going bersark and his truck shakes, and the crossing gate on the on the railroad track goes

up and down. That would be I wonder if there'd be two points for each of those things. Are two points for the experience? I don't know, because I mean you're just running those numbers, two for each point. It blinked again, It blinked again, right. And then finally the third kind, the old three point line, that is when you see an alien or interact with an alien, and obviously in the film, that is when Richard Dreyfuss at the end walks up into that spaceship and takes the

hand the aliens and probably like the most unbelivable. It's a pretty old movie. And then it's called the Third Kind. Sure, so the most unbelievable part of this whole thing is that Heinik went from the guy who was saying it was a weather balloon, it was this train pilot saw Jupiter even though Jupiter wasn't even the sky right then to the guy who literally wrote the book that founded uphology,

it was the UFO experience calling a scientific inquiry. Yeah, he just completely basically switched sides and said, there's a lot of stuff that we can't explain. Here's all these you know, all this experience that I have investigating these things. Let's go forward and figure this out. I don't want to be a cynic, but I wonder what salary he had as a private citizen for years and years doing this being the face of this. Do you think he

was like, that's pretty good money. Maybe, And then when the time was up, he said, you know what writes some books? Maybe, um As from what I can tell, he's a respected person in the field and in a lot of fields. Actually I didn't get anything because whenever, you know, when we research something, if somebody's like that somebody's out there sniping them. I don't remember this really coming up. The only thing I saw that was that

was somebody throwing shade. Was the idea that he had been a believer all along, right, and then it was actually faking as a skeptic. But he was a pretty pretty believable fake skeptic. That's right. And here's the deal though things did not stop. UM. That was a classified memo that's not classified any longer from October nine, just before blue Book was terminated, that basically revealed that like, hey,

we're gonna still investigate stuff. It's not part of blue Book anymore, but here's how we're gonna do it and what we're gonna do, like, here's the process, and that astounding. Yeah, I mean not really, but I mean there was a memo that was sent out after blue Book, right before blue Book was shut down, saying, don't worry, we're still going to have procedure for reporting this stuff and investigating it.

It's just not going to be public, right, and uh, Harry Reid sent a majority leader at the time, UM, he had his program. It was all over the news, UM where what was it called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program because I guess Harry Reid thought there's something out there and we need to look. It was a pet project of his. That's right. You know, both Carter and Reagan claimed to have seen UFOs. I think I did know that a new Carter. Of course Carter. I

didn't know about Reagan. I don't think really. Oh yeah, we talked about that. I think we did, uh live at at Comic Con, didn't we do Ufoh this was better? I agree? I think I agree. This feels more like real. Yeah. Well, if there's anything unreal, it's being at actually south By Southwest that wasn't Yes, okay, no comment. But this stuff still goes on. Even though that project from Harry Reid was shut down supposedly or shut down in twelve people

involved say, no, we're still doing it. We're still doing that stuff. And here's the thing. When that came out, this is two thousand seventeen. The guy who ran that that program um came out and told everybody about it. The New York Times reported on it, used all this breathless stuff like really jumped to conclusions with the facts, and then other people started reporting on that and exactly the kind of reporting that was going on in the forties and the fifties and the sixties and the seventies

about UFOs just continued again in two thousand seventeen. And this is just probably how it's always going to be. Yeah. And one of the big things was this two thousand four sighting in San Diego from to I think Navy pilots. And then they released the footage just a couple of years ago in two thousand seventeen, as part of this New York Times article. Yeah, they released the video footage and you can go watch it on YouTube. I was

released in December of Uh. It is just I mean, you can see this flying saucer, and you can hear these pilots, these trained navy pilots. What the heck? Yeah, they're like, look at it. Bro um. He actually said bro uh did he? I must party calls him bro. They described it as a forty ft long tic tac uh, and then afterward, in subsequent interviews, one of them said it it accelerated like nothing I've ever seen before. And I have no idea what I saw that day, saw

the newest by plane from the future. Who knows, Well, that's it for Project Bluebook. Everybody, I'm sure we um less some stuff out. If we did, let us know, especially if you're U followedists. We want to hear from you. Um And since I said we want to hear from you, that means, of course it's time for a listener mail. This is just a little shout out about a couple of references that that Brad and Sacramento likes. Thanks for

everything over the years, guys. I had to write in too acknowledge Chuck's Striper reference in the Nuclear Semiotics episode. It had me laughing. It took me back. I discovered Striper in the late nineties, which is pretty late for Striper really, and they were kind of a joke in my circle of friends, most of them who had grown up involved in the church. To Hell with the Devil has been my favorite. Was it the name of their album? I think so, or maybe it was just a song.

It's another an album called The Yellow and Black Attack. I had these in my record collections. I don't anymore, you lie, I wish I did. I'm surprised you haven't gone back. Might it would be a fun party joke to see how long it up on? I would love to hear about Chuck's experience seeing them live. Well, I'll go ahead and tell you I was into it when I saw them live, like black and Yellow, spandex Sure. Yeah,

the drummer played. He was set up sideways. I remember that was interesting, Like he was turned perpendicular to the stage to the crowd. Yeah, like the drum set was facing the side of the stage. Well, I guess because he would sing and the microphone was to his left facing the audience. But I don't It still doesn't make sense,

So I don't know why they did it. There's a million ways you can put that microphone that's easier than turning the whole drum kid, I totally that guy liked his abs is what it was, and he wanted you to like. I don't know if I'm not mistaken. The drummer was the brother of the singer. Uh, Michael, Sweet, I'm pulling this all out of behind in your so, Josh.

My favorite reference of yours was a while ago. I don't remember all the details, but I had something to do with a scene from Harry and the Henderson's when Lithgow was trying to get Harry to go back into the wild do you remember what you said? Yeah, I was just describing how he like punches them in the face. He says, yeah, but I don't remember what that was in reference to it wasn't that long ago. I do.

I do remember that. Remember, you guys have a way of making personal connection with your listeners, and I can really appreciate that. Thanks for keeping things PG because I love to listen with my kids and that is Brad and Sacramento. Yeah. Man, it's kind of the point now where I feel your cursing. I had to get used to it on movie Crush cursing, and then it's now it's his second nature. Has it become weird on stuff? You should know to not curse an adult? I can.

There's a dividing line. Oh b camera, huh, yep. Nice. I'm just a big dumb animal. No, no, no, It takes a It takes a lot of verve and grit and to be able to curse here and not curse there. I've always been really good at it because of nieces and nephews and just I was always hyper aware and still am about being in public and like people being around that I might offend. I don't. I don't want to be that guy. Yeah. Well, if you want to congratulate Chuck on this amazing sentiment of his, you should

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