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Welcome back to Coast to Coast AM. I'm your host, Rich Barra, and let's talk about our first guest, Alejandro Rojas. He's published articles on science and science fiction, but is most known for his coverage and involvement in the study of unidentified and nomalist phenomena that is the UAP, otherwise known as UFOs. Alejandro is president and CEO of the
nonprofit UAP Discovery and consultant for Enigma Labs. We're going to talk about that a lot tonight too, and also as the founding member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP, he has spent over twenty years researching and writing about UFOs. I believe the thing that Alejandro is studying we are starting to hear more and more about. I don't think it's you know, exploding. I think the truth is trickling out. Welcome Alejandra. Hey, it's nice to meet you. I don't
think we've ever talked before. Nice to meet you, good sir.
I don't think we have, so I'm excited to talk with you. Thanks so much for having me on.
I got so many questions. In fact, let's start from the beginning. Let's go from take me from a novice point of view of UFOs in UIPS and you're getting involved with it. Go back to twenty plus years ago. What made you decide to start getting so involved in this?
Okay, so yeah, I'm a little different than most. A lot of people come into this after they have their own signing or experience. With me, I was a journalism student. I actually entered college to become a rocket scientist. But my friend who got me into journalism started dating this guy who would just kept talking about UFOs and I, you know, was really into science and space, and I
just thought, this guy's a goofball. I wish you'd cut it out, but you know, I started listening to him, and he had cluped me into some things I hadn't heard of, even though I had looked into the topic, and I quickly realized there was a lot of There were a lot of credible people taking this all very seriously, and these weren't in the documentaries or shows out at
the time. But of course, the nineties was kind of a dark ages where this topic where really the media wasn't paying as much serious attention to it, so I kind of.
I mean beyond the x files really, right, it was just the x files that we had. The only show we had was the x files. Everything else was so that was about it, right.
I think you're right. The X Files was out, which was kind of creating this kind of mythos in the background of the smoking Man and all of that. And then meanwhile, you know, there were credible things happening at the time, and so I saw this as a beat that's not being covered. It should be taken more seriously. I'm going to take it more seriously and I'm going
to write about it. And it became very popular. No one else was doing it, understandably, you know, they were afraid of hurting their credibility and their ability to write about other topics or pay by we get employed to places. But luckily for me, I get employed to write about and research this topic over time. So that's really what it was a kind of journalistic curiosity.
So give me, give me a little topic. Since you've been kind of in this field for a little bit. It seems like, in fact, we're even seeing a little bit with the drones that are over Jersey, Like I assume that those are not alien to nature. I assume that is either us or another country or we're being lied to. But what is it about journalism? When you watch any sort of news, they always like to make a little hint, in a joke, in a wink about maybe they're little green men. What is it about journalism
itself that doesn't want to take that seriously? Or are we afraid of it and we don't want to that we don't want to assume that that it could be something from another planet.
Yeah, I think you're exactly right. I think it's just nervousness around the possibility if there's something that UFOs posed a mystery that is more than just you know, what is dark matter? What is you know? Is there methane on Mars? The implications of some sort of advanced technology, which is scary. The people with the most advanced technology historically is in a you know, are the people in charge who use that technology to take over we harness
and use technology for that purpose. So it's scary to think that there might be another society or civilization out there, I think, and I think that that really messes with people. So journalists in particular, it's easier to make fun of it and have a skeptical perspective because you're going to get hit. Everybody's going to go, oh, you're right, those goofballs,
So it's a real safe space to take. But to put your you know, to really put your neck out there and say, hey, guys, I think there's something to this, then you're going to take a lot of heat. And there's been a few mainstream journalists have who have decided to do that and take the heat, but it's far and few between.
When you watch the hearings or you know that when they bring this sort of stuff sort of around the Pentagon and there's a congressional thing, are you watching with great interest or is this a song and dance that you feel like, Okay, they're just letting a little bit of this out so that they can say that they covered it, but everybody knows more than they're letting on. Do you feel that way.
A bit of both? You know, definitely, And that's the difficulty. So when I'm watching this, on the one hand, I am very familiar and I've covered the people who are making the more kind of wild claims, and to be honest, I don't find their claims credible. I know that they've I've always gone after and interviewed many of these people, say what is your evidence? Whatever is your evidence, and it's always here, say it's always a second third had person.
So I wasn't surprised that I think came of that, But I also wasn't price and nothing came from the government. They're not in a position to or do they ever plan. I think plan to really give us a lot of information when it comes to this topic. It's around sensitive topic. There's no advantage for them to really give us more information except for to a piece of public which it brings.
In Congress. Congress, they are politicians. They're going to use it as a political kind of tool to gain favor and get votes.
Okay, so if you're in them, if you're if you're a Congress person and you're pushing for disclosure for UFOs, that's what people want, even though you know that there's only so much disclosure you're going to get. It's just you're you're just kind of putting it out there. So you're like, hey, I want to know the same things you do, but you're not you're not invited to that party. Nobody's invited to that party, right.
And what I like to see though, and I think we've gotten a little more personally. I think we've gotten some more insight is what does the government really know? And to be honest, I think they know less than than people assume that they do. I think that you know, during your commercial there is that there's someone who says
something similar, and I think he is right. I think that the secret is I think there's lots of secrets the government has around this topic, but one of the big ones, and perhaps the biggest, is we don't know
we're in a position where we can't protect you. And some of the philosophers that have been kind of examining this topic recently say, you know, that's kind of a big deal because it's part of our social contract with the government that they're here to protect us, and if they can't do that, it undermines their credibility and their authority, and that's what they're afraid of. I can see that
being an issue. I think there's also been and the CIA has a long paper on this disinformation and misinformation that they put out on this topic, mostly to cover up like top secret projects and things like that, but I think they've also used it to screw with the Russians, and you know, see what they know and this sort of thing, And I don't think they want to admit to that, let alone. What's theirs you know that we're
seeing out there. They don't want to let us know that, So their hands are tied on a lot of the types of information they can give us on this topic. So really we're not going to learn much from them either. I think what I do like to see is Congress pushing the government to give us more information and to look at this further. I think that's great, but I really think there has to be some sort of more open, transparent sort of research, something like I think NASA could
participate in. That needs to happen. But there just doesn't seem to be that motivation in the scientific community.
I know, it seems like the Internet starting to take over with things, you know, where where the regular news doesn't have as much in depth as the Internet, and we're starting to discover stuff. In fact, I think this is kind of interesting. I know we talked about taking calls. In fact, I want to go to one early because I mentioned tonight as we were coming on the air. I saw Newsweek. This is from Newsweek online. Yeah, that
there are reports of some orbs over Minnesota. Let's go to the east of the Rockies line where Suzanne is on. She's right near Lake Superior, Minnesota, and she saw them over the neighborhood tonight, right, Suzanne.
Yes, I was. I had stepped out on my porch. It was exactly midnight because the news was just coming on, and I'm looking north. The lake is to the south of me, about a mile and a half, and all of a sudden, there's this blue and blue green, greenish blue, I should say, very bright, and from my vantage point, it looked like the size of a softball, and it just kind of, you know, went over the houses and continued north. So that was kind of cool. Wow, especially because it was this greenish color.
I wonder about I wonder about that stuff. Over water, Alejandro, tell me about what that might be.
It's difficult to stay over water. I mean, overwater isn't necessarily indicative of anything. I know, lots of people talk about us, so we really don't have enough data to say water has a relation to it. However, why water is important is we're inch into drones. You know, we're talking about drones so much. Of course, I'm more interested in something more mysterious than drones, the true anomalous type of stuff.
But let's get into that just a second. Let's let's back up, let's get a let's get a beginner's guide here. Tell me, I think we've got a unique position with you. Where you went to school to be a rocket scientist. So you've got the science behind you. I'm sure you're you're a good engineer student. And then you've also got the journalistic approach. So if I'm just turning into the show and I'm like, yeah, I mean, I want to
know about UFOs, tell me the difference. I'm kind of an open thinker here, a little bit of a skeptic, but I'm going to see if you can you can pull me into your world a little. Tell me the difference between what a UFO and a UAP might be.
Okay, my answer to this, and I think this is significant for not right now is nothing and a lot. And the reason I say nothing is UFOs is unidentified flying objects. It was coined by the US Air Force in nineteen fifty two when they were beginning to do more public UFO research, but people referring to them as flying saucers alien spacecraft. They wanted to say, no, these are unidentified, we don't know what they are. We're going to research them to try to figure that out. So
we're coming up with this term unidentified flying object. Of course, over the time, the public started to view UFOs as alien spacecraft, and that's what it meant to them. So we get into twenty seventeen and everybody's taking my steriously again, and so scientists are like, Okay, we don't want anything to do with UFOs, but we'll study UAP unidentified anomalist phenomena. The problem I had with that, because I'm more work more closely with the scientists and the scientific community, is
that how do you explain what is a UAP. You're going to have to say it's a UFO, and the public doesn't get what is a UAP versus a UFO. So the public is thinking, okay, so they're saying aliens are here, cool, that's wild. And then you know the government's like, there is an aliens. Well, you said UFOs were real and uapr UFOs and that's aliens. So I think there's a ton of confusion created in that, and
so people don't know what to believe or understand. And I get these phone calls where they say the government just said this, and I'm like, well, that's not what necessarily the thing meant. I know, that's what you understand that UFOs to be. So UAP is kind of today represents the scientific really investigation of UFOs, but it's just
really confusing with the public. And then you also have the public thinking, oh, you guys are trying to change things up, bond and trick us and use this new term, and we don't like it, and it just has created more distrust and kind of separation between the general public and the scientists and the government research.
Well, you were talking about in twenty seventeen, everybody got interested in the UAP aspect of UFOs. Why do you think they're being taken seriously just over the last ten years or so, Well, this.
Is what's interesting, and I think where it's kind of slingshot in a way. So, and what I mean by that is that all of a sudden, you know, muel Asano, this intelligence guy comes out and says, hey, we've been investigating UFOs for the last few years and the government does take them seriously, and here's these great cases from these Navy pilots. It makes a huge splash in the New York Times. These Navy pilot cases especially got a lot of attention, and people were like, Wow, there's something
is there is something to this. The Navy then comes out and says, yes, we do take UAP seriously. We do take these reports that from these Navy guys you're hearing in the news very seriously, and we're telling everybody, you know, give us reports on UFOs and take them seriously. Then the Congress felt the same, and that kind of
created the snowball everybody taking it seriously. Then these Senate commit things, you know, hearings come and these intel people start making these really kind of more loocky claims, and everybody's like, whoa wait a second here. And as time progressed up until this last Senate hearing, you know, we heard a lot of Hey, we looked into those, we didn't find any We weren't able to verify any of
that information. You know, the head of the committee in the Senate House hearing even said, I hope you guys have some more information that we can actually work with. But then afterwards a lot of those House representatives were like, they didn't give us nothing to work with, so we still don't have anything to work with on that end of things, and it kind of a lot of that trust and faith in the topic kind of melted at
that point. The other thing that hurt was NATA trying to get involved in this and just getting pummeled on the internet and social media. Like you mentioned before, social media has taken over, and not in a nice way. Well, no, because I don't think it's in a positive way.
I think we don't believe anything.
You don't want anything to do with this anymore.
Then, Yeah, it's like I think it's like it doesn't matter what truth you tell us, we don't necessarily believe it because if you say, yeah, it's just kind of like when I'm looking at the drones, doesn't it seem insulting that there's something that's been flying around that are drones. You can see that they're drones. Is if they have lights, they're huge drones. But they've been up there for a month and they're like, you know what, we really don't
know what they are. Doesn't that seem like that just can't be the truth or unless we are, just why not put a helicopter up there, like you don't know what, idiot, you can't preace the serial number.
Yes and no, actually and I and even yes, as far as even worse than you're saying, because in the UK there are US bases where the Dods said, yes, we've had drone incursions over our UK basis. In Germany today today I'm just reading that we had drones over incursions over basis. So around the world they're having these incursions. New Jersey, to be honest, in my opinion, is a mess. They aren't drones.
For the most part.
What we're seeing in the news, what we're seeing from a lot of those witnesses aren't airplanes. People are posting videos of airplanes. The the FAA and Homeland Security. We're right, and you can look online at UFO researchers and even you know, very hard in UFO researchers are like, guys, I'm into the drones, into the UFOs, but all I see a videos and pictures of airplanes here. Do you have anything to this point, we don't have a lot
of good videos. That's what we're doing at Enigma. I think we do have some better ones to just come to analyze this and album Enigma Labs, And if you go to Enigma Labs and social media, you're going to find an article we just put up. Well, we've got ninety different reports from the area. A lot of those have videos, and some of those videos are more mysterious.
And what do those videos look like? They look more like what your caller said where they look more like what those pilots reported, and what those pilots reported that you mentioned. That's a fascinating case where people are seeing things moving at incredible speeds.
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