Secret Pentagon Program (Full Episode) | UFOs: Investigating the Unknown

foreign [Applause] November 2004 off the coast of Southern California the radar operators in the USS Princeton begin to see objects coming essentially from space and as I come up I can see him as he's Crossing in front of me it starts to accelerate gets right on my nose and disappears this particular object was not following any of our rules what the first time I just don't know if it's a threat we don't even know what it is we don't know what we don't know if I'd flying I'm gonna honor objects you know I don't know what they are we've established one thing they exist our Pilots have been seeing these things for decades their sightings go all the way back to the 40s and 50s and 60s we have a report of an unidentified aircraft south of the field there have been hundreds of sightings of Westchester Duchess of Putnam counties anything that enters an airspace that's not supposed to be there is a threat there's a lot of people who feel very passionate issue and they just want people to take it seriously as they should the military and the government basically decided on a policy of shaming the Witnesses were very afraid of being ridiculed they think you're a nut tell you the truth that's just what they figure you are we need it to remove the stigma Republicans are just as curious as Democrats when it comes to these matters it used to be that the burden of proof was on the True Believer they saw something proven [Music] the burden of proof has shifted to the government now they have to prove that they don't come from perhaps another universe beyond ours we get reports every night around it yes it came from outer space to fill the world with Terror to bring you Unforgettable suspense when you hear the term UFO I think a lot of people think of a little green man and Elvis on the mother ship and tinfoil hats where did it come from when in reality what we're talking about are real objects that are being encountered over controlled U.S airspace in some cases very sensitive locations performing in ways that frankly can't understand honestly we have video footage of uap's unidentified aerial phenomena oh my gosh they're all going against the wind the winds more and more things that we can't identify so we need to know what it is that is necessary for National Security there's a whole Fleet of them look on the Asa might just be from the Russians Chinese government or another hostile Nation a non-state actor or are these aircraft otherworldly are these beings from another galaxy or universe questions that that have to be answered I think the best way to characterize it is we're vulnerable it's a vulnerability and that vulnerability could be exploited could be massively exploited so that has to be a national security concern we've been looking at this topic for the last 70 years as a country we have substantiated reports of UAP activity from at least World War II [Music] we have received and analyzed between one and two thousand reports did it come to us from all kinds of sources you're not taught this in history class but we had a phenomenal series of UFO sightings directly over the nation's capital in July 1952 on two successive weekends the Air Force interest in this problem has been due to our feeling of an obligation to identify anything in the air that may have the possibility of threat or menace to the United States the American people wanted answers and unfortunately the Air Force chose to obfuscate our critics continually charged that the United States Air Force is withholding information from the general public this is absolutely untrue we are not hiding anything we have nothing to hide so in the early 1970s the government concluded its investigation into UFOs as a result of that there was this quiet period this point where the U.S government had washed its hand to the topic and that occurred for several decades or at least that's what we were led to believe in fact in 2008 I was approached by a couple representatives from a little small obscure office somewhere in in the Pentagon that office was called the advanced Aerospace threat identification program atip the individuals asked me if I would be part of an effort which quite literally looked at UFOs atip was the deliberate and purposeful study of unidentified aerial vehicles that were being encountered in controlled U.S airspace people ask me well why you live and as it was explained to me was because of my my background I'm a career counterintelligence special agent many of my assignments were overseas initially in the Latin American Hemisphere and then later on after September 11th over in Afghanistan in the Middle East I took an oath many many years ago to defend this country from all enemies foreign and domestic and that's why I accepted the offer to join atip I approached this job the same way I did every other job I ever had in intelligence exact same methodologies that we use to hunt terrorists we were using to hunt UFOs the sources of information that was collected was primarily through Department of Defense and Military assets think of fighter aircraft and Military eyewitnesses did not engage the public these Pilots are not only trained observers but they are some of the best aircraft pilots on the planet operating some of the most sophisticated weapon systems on the planet when they're telling you that they are encountering something that they cannot describe that impacts our national security and our ability to respond to a perceived threat and so when they are encountering these objects we have to take their testimony seriously imagine something that had the ability to fly in space underwater and in our atmosphere at 13 000 miles an hour and and change directions instantly we fly the SR-71 at 3 200 miles an hour if you wanted to take a right-hand turn it would take you roughly half the state of Ohio to do it and yet what we're seeing are objects I can do 90 degree turns instantly and we're not talking about speeds of 3200 miles an hour they've been been clocked at over 13 000. the question arises how is that possible on the armed services committee the one thing I did become aware of that I was very concerned about is that members of our armed forces have come forward over many years reports of unidentified aerial phenomenon that they actually captured of that information being well received it's often been denigrated by and large most of the data was not even filed or saved or reported the information that was stored did not go to a central Authority it's not acceptable no it is hey well then let's not look at it or let's not admit it's there and so I wanted to look into this further [Music] so is that like an adrenaline junkie is that what you call yourself Sam adrenaline junkie but I like Fast Cars and flying jets are pretty cool and it's I think it's the greatest job on the planet my name is David fraver I'm a retired Navy Commander Super Hornet pilot I flew for 18 years for the United States Navy July 1969 I was with my mom watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon up and I was fascinated with space and my mom said they were all former military pilots and about from that point on I had this goal that I was going to fly tactical aircraft somewhere in the United States military I got some Pilots that I worry about occasionally you know the first thing you don't want to lose anybody and number two the airplanes are pretty expensive and it's tax dollars in November of 2004 we were going to work with the USS Princeton and we were flying we're training our air crew [Music] flying the other plane the Princeton came up and and said Hey sir we're gonna we're gonna hold on training today so I said hey we have a real world vector and they turned us off to the West it goes to Oh Real World maybe we're going to intercept some drug runners we were flying in a tactical combat spread formation to aircraft each aircraft had two air crew as the radar hits on the USS Princeton Scopes start to March towards each other they get so close that they can't differentiate them and that's called a merge plot an emerge plot is when you would expect to merge with this other aircraft and if you're in a combat situation that's obviously a very tense moment so when you do that you start looking outside so we're kind of doing this looking around to see where it's at because it's somewhere around you and you don't know and I look down I go what is that close your eyes and imagine a long cylindrical white object with rounded ends roughly 40 feet long that look like a giant Tic Tac it was white Pure White it had no windows no wings no visual signs of propulsion and this thing was going like this and I describe it as like if you put a ping pong ball and it was bouncing off a wall this particular object was not following any of our rules it didn't have a turn radius that we would expect it didn't have a period to accelerate and decelerate it just seemed to zip so quickly that it was again really disorienting really confusing for us at this moment yeah yeah there were definitely some wtfs on the radio not in a scared way but like what the is that like we're seeing something for the first time you know some people go what is that and they run and then some people see it what is that and they're curious they want to get closer and closer I wanted to get closer see what it was my lead Commander David fraver who says I'm in which means that he's engaging with this thing we're going around we get to about the 12 o'clock position and this thing's still pointing North South the Tic Tac goes and turns and starts coming up so now it's mirroring me whatever it was was aware that we were there as I come up I can see him as he's Crossing in front of me it starts to accelerate gets right on my nose and disappears for something to come off the surface of the ocean like it was moving around to be able to just accelerate to match my speed and then to rapidly go away we do not possess that technology Dave framer was my commanding officer at his encounter counter he comes back and lands on the carrier and goes I'm a little weirded out you were out there and we saw this object I need you to go out to this sector of airspace and try to find it flying his entire career over 20 years when he says something like that I take it seriously Chad decided if there's any way possible if I can get this thing on video I'm going to do it I think it's a testament to Chad Underwood and his Pilot their experience their expertise their their technical Acumen that they were able to launch and find it and bring back flare footage see we just jumped to infrared Target is now White against a black background it's the same picture it's just a different kind of polarity I told my pilot I'm like hey I'm going to go into every single field of view Zoom TV and just try to bring back as much footage so we pop the tapes in and take a look and every single eyeball in the room was just like wide open like whoa how do I describe this to someone who's going to be you know skeptical and and there was kind of that stigma of like all right you saw an alien left I didn't say I saw an alien that's all I can tell you is I couldn't describe it there's a lot more videos there what we're seeing on gun camera footage is being validated and verified by eyewitness testimony which is also being further substantiated by radar data [Music] my intent was to have this information presented to the Secretary of Defense so he could make an informed decision there are aspects of this phenomenon that definitely belong within the National Security Arena especially if these objects were over controlled U.S airspace that's inherent government business the boss needed to see the data and unfortunately that information was not permitted to get to him on a regular routine basis I was brought up to the Secretary of suite and I was briefing his direct reports but they wouldn't bring it to his attention and I suspect they were trying to save him from embarrassment because if someone in the media said were you ever briefed on UFOs you'd have to say yes and so after several failed attempts to brief the Secretary of Defense I chose to resign sometimes if you want to help the system you have to leave the very system to do it and that's what I chose to do my resignation it wasn't easy it was probably most difficult on my family I had given up a successful career but it's kind of a code of ethic with us in government that if you can't fix a problem internally then you leave which is ultimately what I had to do Leslie interview take one mark my name is Leslie Kane and I'm an investigative journalist and I've been reporting on UFOs for about 21 years fall of 2017 I got a call from a source of mine Chris Mellon a former undersecretary of Defense who was very interested in UFOs and he invited me to the secret meeting in Washington DC and I eventually learned that the purpose was for me to meet the former head of an official program within the Department of Defense which was studying UFOs and had been doing so for 10 years I met Lou Elizondo the day after he resigned from the secret program so this was unbelievable to me there was a program and I was actually about to meet the person who headed up that program it was a big deal it was the biggest moment of my career as a journalist these are original copies from the original negative of the probably the most when I first started reporting on UFOs in 2000 I was working at a public radio station in Berkeley California and suddenly this colleague from France sent me a report in the mail the report was called the cametto report and I had the only exclusive English translation what it was was a 90-page study of official UFO cases put together by French military officials generals and Admiral the chief of police what really stunned me when I read it was their conclusion what they said was that the Extraterrestrial hypothesis was the most valid rational and logical explanation for the UFO cases that they studied so I thought this was a huge story and I thought to myself what if the equivalent level of officials in America said something like that wouldn't that be Front Page News wouldn't that go all over the world and then I pitched a story to the Boston Globe in May of 2000 that story came out the response was huge within the UFO world but what I was surprised about was that there wasn't more response outside of the people who already cared about this topic and so my goal in writing about UFOs has been mainly to bring information forward to the public but beyond that it's to motivate our government to pay attention I commend the media for for tackling this because they're they're putting a lot at risk as well reporting on this topic Pilots are in a position to provide very useful information to scientists and that's how we have a comprehensive conversation with the American people I did not walk away from that meeting with Lou Elizondo carrying anything with me I was shown three videos of UFOs and these were official Department of Defense videos that were without question unexplained objects [Music] she ran through the videos and she asked me are these authentic and I said I can tell you that the videos are authentic and only reason why I'm telling you this is because they're unclassified I facilitated the review process for them through the Department of Defense [Music] of them had audio tapes of the pilots exclaiming about they were seeing awk and they're awe and everything else this was just absolutely stunning to me because there have been no official videos of UFOs released I don't think ever but certainly not for since way back in the 50s or 60s and they were official that's the thing they weren't just somebody out with a cell phone taking a video counters it's very compelling my gosh they're obviously startled they're obviously encountering something that they can't explain and we need to figure out what we collectively are going to do about it [Music] that's why I resigned from the Department of Defense Luis elizondo's letter of resignation that he wrote for the Secretary of Defense I think that might have just not be out almost more than anything else he explained why he was resigning this job and it had to do with his understanding that UFOs were a national security concern written down and the courage that it took was just incredible [Music] in order to understand why I resigned I think you have to go back to where I came from I come from on my father's side Cuban immigrants that's meaningful for me because this country offered my family opportunities that nobody else would and so from a very young age I've always wanted to to serve the the country that gave my family so much you know ironically I I left the Department of Defense out of loyalty not disloyalty I left the Department of Defense to finish the very Mission they gave me in the first place [Music] after reporting all these years on UFOs there was nothing that came close to the power of that particular meeting once I realized this was a big story I teamed up with my colleague Ralph Blumenthal who was a freelance reporter for the New York Times and he pitched It To The Head editor never reported for the New York Times before so I didn't know what would happen but that's where I felt the story should go the public has a right to know about what we were learning about this extraordinary phenomenon I think it was sometime in the fall of 2017 my boss is the Washington beer Chief who walked up to my desk and said do you want to write about UFOs and we both sort of laughed and she said Leslie Kane had information about a Secret Pentagon program and that was easily to me fascinating there's no way I don't want to write about it I'm Helene Cooper I'm the Pentagon correspondent for the New York Times I've been with the paper since 2004. you could always sell a pentagon reporter because we like to say that's the best beat in Washington you're on aircraft carriers you're on fighter jets I've been on bombers I've been on the B1 and the B2 they are naval destroyers in the South China Sea you're never bored once Helene Cooper was on board we set up a meeting with Luis Elizondo the former head of the Pentagon program at a hotel somewhere near Capitol Hill [Music] starting in the afternoon it ended up in the evening she made it very clear that she was she was writing this story I owed a little bit to be completely forthcoming a little intimidated when the New York Times comes knocking so I don't get your attention pretty quickly give stacks of papers and information I think they were trying to get me to confirm you know who was to sponsored program he told us that Senator Harry Reid had put money in the Pentagon budget to fund this program Leslie Ralph and I all thought that Harry Reid would deny that he put the money in there this was black money it was kind of off the books and so all I wanted was to nail the fact that the Pentagon had a UFO secret UFO program that's all I needed to do I'm not trying to prove that they're UFOs I'm not trying to prove that anybody's visited I just wanted to interview the people who were involved in this program and put them on the record going to interview Senator Reid was a big deal we needed him to acknowledge that he put the money into the program if we didn't have Harry Reid we might not have a story he was that important we didn't know whether he would be willing to go on the record because this was a very sketchy field to begin with you know most people thought if you're a senior person in the government it's kind of a career Ender to say that the government should actually take seriously the prospect that unidentified aerial phenomena might be in fact UFOs and so I flew to Las Vegas to meet with Senator Reid he like has this huge Suite of offices at the Bellagio this is gonna be it this is my one shot and I walked in to talk to him and he was completely open these unidentified flying objects you know I don't know what they are but we've established one thing they exist in that moment you're sitting there as a reporter and your blood is sort of pounding because you're getting the goods and I was so excited it's like I'm writing it down and I can't believe he's telling me this stuff my name is Harry Reid I served in the United States Congress from 1982 to 2017. I was born and raised in Searchlight Nevada which is about 55 miles here from Las Vegas during the time that I grew up there it was uh Minds were gone and the number one business was prostitution so that's the atmosphere I was raised in still remember looking up at the sky I was wondering what it was all about and I always always have remembered that Harry Reid really stood out because he was one of the few members of Congress who are willing to talk about this issue and he had also gotten secret funds to start this program it was a modest amount 22 million dollars which is a drop in the bucket of the Pentagon budget but it was the first significant amount of money to be dedicated to this issue of UFOs well it's interesting you know my staff they said in so many words Senator don't get involved in this this is too weird it's not going to help your career that is so strange didn't tend to be a topic that members of the of the house or members of the senate or people in senior positions in the executive branch wanted to embrace but I was determined to learn more about this and so in spite of the admonitions for me to stay the hell away from it I had and did it well God bless Senator Reid he was certainly someone I looked up to and admired people want their leaders and representatives to be bold and if you're unwilling to be bold then why are you in office as I look back over my involvement in this I think what if we hadn't done this where would we be without the work that we did we would be nowhere technological standpoint security of this nation these are the reasons we have to continue looking into this [Applause] at the end of the interview with Senator weed I walked out of the Bellagio and there's a bridge from the Bellagio over the strip to whatever is on the other side and it's a pedestrian bridge and I called Leslie and Ralph and they were on the phone with Lou so we're in this four-way phone call and I was like he confirmed everything never spoken out about this program so this was like the first moment in which he came out on the topic and that was a big deal we were ecstatic because that moment we knew we had it it's like no matter what happens next we have the story the lead up to the actual publication of the story on December 17th was torturous our editors were constantly saying make sure we put Skeptics in there we put people challenging this notion this caution by our editors were starting to naturally get on our nerves it's like run the story already we've like dotted every possible eye we can Dot and we knew at this time that Politico was chasing the story as well it's 11 or and we're hearing from Lou and from other people that Politico is about to post and I'm on the phone with the guy who's the Saturday editor going publish just publish ready he's tinkering around with what kind of headline do he wants just like just like and he finally posted the story the story is up and I'm like thank God it's up I put my phone in my pocketbook I go into Costco and I'm buying I don't know what tenderloin for Christmas and I'm in there for about an hour and I come back out and my phone is like it's blown up and a striking expose published over the weekend the New York Times revealed the exam has confirmed the existence of the advanced Aerospace threat identification program people were calling me and they were like a text and it was just like the response was huge it was a firestorm tens of millions of dollars for the project were pushed through it was all over the place unveiled the existence of a real-life X-Files Department it was all over the world it just went like wildfire it was a huge deal why do you think it attracted so much attention I think one of the main reasons it attracted so much attention was because of those two videos that we included [Music] I mean there is nothing like watching a video of a UFO for people those videos garnered tremendous views among the most watched videos the times it ever put up moms was was huge but when I started to realize just how intense people who care about this are and just also how equally intense the Skeptics are I'm content saying that's mysterious I don't know maybe it's a glitch in in the hardware and if you're gonna say no it's not a glitch in the hardware are you really sure [Applause] laughs for the Navy videos there are in fact explanations that involve nothing more complex than commercial aircraft or balloons or things like that mean they're necessarily alien craft I think that the the assumption that we're being visited fails on the evidence of it but it's not that it's impossible it's just from my point of view so difficult to go from one star system to another I think that it's unlikely these are alien craft the universe brims with Mysteries and we so want many of those Mysteries to be a light in the sky you don't understand gee I want that to be aliens visiting us but for a skeptical scientist that would probably be the last explanation Skeptics had two major points of focus after our story came out one of them was on the videos because they didn't necessarily believe that those videos showed some kind of anomalous object they thought they could be explained the second point is the skepticism about these being extraterrestrial craft which personally to me is is sort of a disconnect because we're not saying that they're extraterrestrial we're just saying we can't explain them don't mind someone being Nicole I think healthy skepticism is a weird sort of way Skeptics are really no different than Believers they're just on the opposite end of that argument at the end of the day data is what is going to determine the validity of something well if Humanity wants to understand what is causing this phenomenon then they need to do real scientific study and that means we need to collect data we need to analyze that data and understand how it might be possible for that phenomenon to fit within the laws of physics now watch the way this thing starts to turn but we can't speculate about what it is we can't just imagine what it is you're looking between 20 and 25 000 feet in altitude and this thing when it turns sideways doesn't go down we need real hard data this 99.9 and range 99. those are indications that my radar is receiving jamming cues it's possible that these objects represent a threat to the United States it's behaving in strange ways it has an aura around it then we need to know exactly what they are so that we can respond accordingly and so I think it's extremely important for us to understand unidentified organ phenomenon for the New York Times story it was blasted out on the internet on a Saturday the story ended up on the front page of the Sunday New York Times and then it was a whole inside page when you opened it up so it was a long piece during all the years I had covered UFOs and I had access to some newspapers but they weren't at the caliber of the New York Times and so to see a story on the front page of that newspaper just meant everything to me did you know it was gonna be like no no I did not know it was gonna be on the front page it was um wow looking back it's a little I haven't thought about that a long time it was profound not only have the New York Times rarely covered UFOs at all and when they had they were usually kind of ridiculing it it's really the fodder more for late night talk shows than it is for front page reporting did you go through the secret files the UFO documents I'm not telling you nothing when it comes to aliens there are some things I just can't tell you on air but you'll tell us off at great but the New York Times piece it kind of opened up that you could treat this seriously what it did is it removed a lot of the stigma that was attached to the UFO world now instead of looking at it as a joke we can start looking at these objects from a scientific standpoint we can gather the information we can gather the data and then have experts who are qualified analyze it in a systematic way and so that's why I think it's important to destigmatize the issue one reason that article was so compelling and so good is that it was just very factual based on scientific evidence and I think that was the beginning of the having the American people and probably the world take a look at this these areas of unidentified flying objects more intensely than they had before so the New York Times article generated a lot of questions among people oh you know they're studying these objects and we don't know what they are where where's all the intelligence data how come we didn't know anything and they demonstrate technology that we don't seem to have and we didn't even know about this there's no doubt that there are objects that are seen that behave in ways that are not natural for this planet or for this environment this is a phenomenon we do not yet understand [Music] there's nothing wrong with us not understanding it there are many things in the universe that we do not understand but it asks us to investigate to learn more just as we'd want to learn more about any of the stars or galaxies we see in the universe any of the new creatures we find at the bottom of our oceans here on this planet we want to learn more about this too My Hope Is that we will use the U.S intelligent Community to solve this mystery once and for all to find out where are they coming from who's behind them what is the agenda we have the means and the capability to do that if we set our minds to it as a nation unfortunately the government has been pretty secretive about providing hard data to better understand what this phenomenon might be so right now what we still have is a lot of speculation a lot of what-ifs and no hard information the biggest question that remains for me is what else do they have inside the government what do they actually know about UFOs and why can't more be released to the public and this is a big question because we've spent so long obfuscating the truth about this topic that we've somewhat backed ourselves into a corner a corner for over 70 years Mr secretary there have been charges at the Air Force for reasons best known to the Air Force is hiding something in the UFO field what is that if anything not think this is a car like fine wine where the longer we keep a cork on it the better it gets I think this is a conversation more like rotten vegetables in the refrigerator and the longer we don't address it the more it's going to start to smell there is nothing in Air Force files that come to a conclusion that spaceships have visited the Earth at the secrecy is just because that is what they do in the government there's so many programs going on in that building that they don't talk about you know they classify everything it just adds to the mysteriousness of it never be afraid of what we don't know the third reaction the target is three degrees to the left of my nose and it's five degrees below my nose not knowing is where you start your inquiry so we were operating in and around these Waters off the coast does it mean it's where you end your inquiry and that's where I think the US military if they haven't been doing the work is mistaken don't look like no helicopter the UFO sightings burst into the news in 1947. these sightings have continued ever since the air force made an effort to clear the air about the phenomenon there's nothing to hide at all I was stunned that we didn't have the Integrity to pursue this the US government closed its study of UFOs and so the work fell into the hands of Civilian groups UFO reports not only exist but persist I mean it's a definite UFO the government owes it to this country to investigate sightings of extraordinary objects to cover the whole entire Sky people want to know is this otherworldly this could be one of the biggest events in all of human history [Music]

Channel: National Geographic

Views: 2,091,712

Keywords: national geographic, nat geo, natgeo, animals, wildlife, science, explore, discover, survival, nature, culture, documentary, perpetual planet nat geo, photography, Secret Pentagon Program, full episode, UFO, Investigating the Unknown, The truth behind the U.S, Government’s secret Pentagon program, Unidentified Aerial

Id: Wt7Riw9jGlQ

Length: 42min 11sec (2531 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 09 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/OneDimensionPrinter]

This is one of the episodes of Leslie Kean's show. It's REAL good. And yeah, I also noticed some familiar faces. Was fantastic to see them all in clips here. Really shows just how much these folks have accomplished together. Long live Leslie Kean! (And everyone else, but it's her show so go her.)

[u/Rich0879]

Don't forget to add your submission statement OP.

[u/Rich0879]

Dam, even Nat Geo is in on this. Ffs they even have a Nat Geo Pentagon program. Does NewsNation have one in the Pentagon too? 😂 /s