One thing I've learned is that if you're gonna tackle big questions,
sometimes the only way to do it
is to piece together little bits of information
that when you put them together, it can reveal a larger truth.
I came to Phoenix to gather information for my counter report.
But what stands out most to me is
how the government tried so hard to sweep this phenomenon away,
and yet the craft itself was and continues to be defiant
about asserting its presence.
I'm convinced there is a reason
why the intelligence that was piloting this craft
allowed itself to be seen by so many people back in 1997
and continues revealing itself to witnesses even today.
It's like the craft itself won't let the story be buried.
To bolster my counter report, I asked Vee to track down pilots
who may have encountered this object in the air.
Meanwhile, I'm gonna meet with Dr. Lynne Kitei
who is the preeminent expert in the world on the Phoenix Lights incident.
And I want to talk to her to fill in the gaps
about what is publicly known about this event
and what may have been suppressed.
- This view is spectacular, isn't it? - Oh yeah.
Let's sit down here and talk.
Dr. Lynne is a medical professional
who recorded the definitive images of the Phoenix Lights on the key night.
She took it on herself to gather all kinds of evidence,
to talk to witnesses,
to put it all together long before she decided to go public.
So I've seen your iconic photos.
How did you realize
that this was potentially a nonhuman craft?
About 8:30 that evening, I see some orbs pop up in the sky.
Massive span, over six lights, equidistantly spaced.
I mean, I called the FAA
because it looked like it was near the airport.
And, you know, I asked
if any of the air traffic controllers had seen something. Tell me what it is.
- And did they? - He said the three popped up at 8 o'clock.
So they looked on radar. It did not show up on radar.
And then it disappeared.
When the six showed up at 8:30, that really alarmed them.
There were six points of light, totally equidistant from each other.
Massive span, over a mile wide, that seemed to be attached to something.
But they couldn't quite see what these lights were attached to.
The entire thing turned as a unit against the wind,
and then elevated slowly,
and in synchrony moved behind South Mountain.
So I said to him, "What was it?"
He said that the whole group ruled out every conventional aircraft, balloons,
Chinese lanterns, flares, even skydivers with lights.
They had no idea what these were.
Seems like the authorities weren't even willing to consider
it was a nonhuman craft.
No.
So I spent all day trying to track down
a former Air Force pilot named Mel
who allegedly interacted with the Phoenix Lights craft
while on duty at Luke Air Force Base.
I'd love to be able to talk to him, pilot to pilot. "What did you see?"
He'd be able to tell me about the technology that he thinks he saw.
Like, this guy was up close and personal.
But as of yet, I've totally struck out.
I know now that this can happen
with people who've experienced these things.
They shrink away from the public for fear of being ridiculed.
- Vee? - Yeah, Jim.
- Get right in. - All right.
But I did get referred to another local investigator named Jim Dilettoso
who apparently spoke with Mel shortly after he returned from his shift.
So, how'd you get involved with this case?
I was involved in UFO investigations for a long time.
Scientific equipment, instrumentation.
I had a business that tested many photographs over the years.
So when the Phoenix Lights happened in 1997,
we analyzed the pictures and talked to many witnesses.
So that's how you connected with Mel?
I spoke with Mel in person and on the phone, confidentially.
Mm-hmm.
We didn't whip out a confidentiality agreement.
But we both knew why we were there and how it should be.
Right. What was his experience?
He, uh, talked about taking off and immediately going to the object.
He was directed to the object, which...
Luke Air Force Base is on the west side of Phoenix.
Right.
He crossed through Phoenix
to the southwestern part of Phoenix, Tempe, Arizona, near the airport,
to approach a bright object
close enough
that he thought he was gonna hit it.
Because he couldn't tell how big it was or how far away it was.
He was really disoriented by the whole thing.
Just as a human, he didn't understand what had happened to him.
- Yes. - Gotcha.
- Yes. - Was he able to give any description?
He described it as a ball that was illuminated from the inside.
The object was floating, at rest,
and as he's approaching it,
it goes up and heads southwest towards Tucson.
Do you happen to know if his camera was recording?
Yes, it was.
Wow. So there could be some footage out there of exactly what he saw.
Between George and I, we've heard multiple accounts
that this gun camera footage actually exists.
And if we could just get our hands on it,
it could prove that it was created by an extraterrestrial craft.
I'll have to keep looking, digging, reaching out to my network.
But at least this information will help George's case
and let AARO know there's something to look for.
While we've hit a few obstacles here,
I think we've collected the best available evidence and testimony
regarding the Phoenix Lights case.
Visuals of both the original event and new sightings.
Details to refute the explanation
that the authorities used to debunk the case.
And secondhand accounts of close encounters in the air
between pilots and that craft.
But I can't leave here without addressing the larger question,
the one we've been asking since the beginning, and that's the why.
Why did this intelligence, wherever it's from,
why did they allow them to be seen by so many people over a major city?
Dr. Lynne Kitei has spoken with hundreds of witnesses.
What I want to do is take the testimony
that she's collected and look for patterns,
and see if it might explain why this thing happened.
So you did a scientific study of people who witnessed the Phoenix Lights.
How big was it, and what did you learn?
We have over 2,000 in our study already that have shared
that they've had a contact or connection
with these nonhuman intelligent beings, we call them.
Really? What did they say?
Not to be worried. We are not here to harm you.
- Is that the general message? - Oh yeah.
I found that talking to witnesses,
the vast majority, over 90%, had a positive, awakening transformation.
That it affected them very deeply.
People were in awe and in wonder, curious, pulled their cars over.
I still have people today saying to me
that they feel blessed to have had the experience with the Phoenix Lights.
What's amazing is that whoever did this wanted to wake us up
to their presence in a very gentle, nonthreatening way.
There's much more out there than what we're being told.
I know that the Phoenix Lights were witnessed by a huge number of people,
but it's also interesting to learn
that there may have been some sort of a profound shared experience,
which is different from what we've heard in other parts of the world,
where they've had very disturbing experiences,
where they were frightened and scared of the whole thing.
This points to a theory
that the visitors' purpose in revealing themselves to humans
is to send us a message.
But is that message really as simple as, "We're not here to harm you,"
or is it something more profound?
I've been working on compiling my own counter report
to AARO's outrageous claims
that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever
of nonhuman intelligence or extraterrestrials.
There is urgency here. I mean, it's an election year.
We don't know who the new administration is going to be.
A lot of the people who are champions for UFO transparency in Congress
may not be around.
So I put calls out to everyone whom I could determine testified to AARO
to see if they'd share their accounts.
What I've found is, people are shutting down fast.
There's a lot of pushback, and the window is shrinking.
But I just got a call back from someone who might be the final key piece
to putting this counter report together.
Bob Jacobs is the most important witness
to what might be the most significant UFO event ever.
1964, Vandenberg Air Force Base.
They're shooting a missile with a dummy nuclear warhead on top,
and something comes out during the test.
Flying saucer.
Bob Jacobs is a Lieutenant in the US Air Force at the time.
He was responsible for documenting this test,
and he captured the whole thing on film.
Naturally, that footage was seized immediately.
Bob's experience is not without precedent.
Since the 1940s,
military personnel have reported mysterious craft
tampering with nuclear missile launch systems.
I even encountered this when I went to Russia,
where I obtained files from the Ministry of Defense
about their UFO programs,
including a very specific incident
where a Russian ICBM base was overrun by UFOs.
The UFOs entered the correct launch control codes
and nearly started World War III.
AARO took testimony from at least a half a dozen American missile operators
who shared similar experiences.
But there is little, if any, indication that AARO took these reports seriously.
Many years later, he finally came forward
and said something about it to a friend of mine, Robert Hastings,
who'd investigated similar incidents.
But he got a lot of crap and just stopped doing interviews,
until this AARO report gives him an opportunity.
He goes in, in good faith, thinks,
"All right, here's my chance to put my story on the record."
They even included his case in the AARO report,
but determined it was inconclusive.
Wow. So how did you get Bob to talk to us?
Him coming forward to AARO
and then being treated so shabbily really ticked him off.
So we took advantage of that by getting him to come forward
and fly out here to see us. Um...
I feel a little bit guilty about it, but not entirely.
This might be the most important evidence
that AARO did, in fact, drop the ball in their report,
and the work needs to continue.
The window can't close now
because vital answers are still out there to be found.
- This is my colleague Vee. - Hi.
Bob Jacobs. So, Bob, tell us what happened
when you got the developed film back from the missile test.
I was working away happily one day,
and a major from the first Strategic Aerospace Division
called me up and said, "Lieutenant, could you come into my office?"
So I walked in, and two guys in gray suits standing against the wall in his office.
He said, "Watch this."
He turns off the lights, turns on the projector.
Here's the warhead flying along. This thing comes in here like that,
shoots a beam of light at it, flies up here,
shoots another beam of light at it, flies around here, another beam,
and flies under it, another beam, and then zips out of the frame that way.
And the warhead tumbled out of the frame.
That thing was a flying saucer.
A circular, uh, disk with a bulb on top of it.
- I get emotional at this. - Yeah. Yeah.
I can see. Of course.
Long time ago, but... the lights came on.
Major Mansmann said, and I quote, "Were you guys screwing around up there?"
And I said, "No, sir." He said, "Well, what was that?"
And I said, "Looks to me like we've got a UFO."
He said, "You are never to speak of that again."
"As far as you're concerned, Lieutenant, it never happened."
Did the guys in the gray suits say anything?
Not a thing. They simply stared at me.
- You know who they are? - I know who they are now.
Major Mansmann informed me later who they were.
They were CIA.
What did you think when you saw it in that moment?
My mind exploded.
My whole vision of the universe changed.
- I didn't believe in UFOs. - Right.
The universe was different. We weren't alone. It was astonishing.
That's why, for 17 years, I... I... I...
I get emotional. I... I wanted to tell the story.
It was eating away at me.
I couldn't tell my wife. I couldn't tell friends.
I couldn't tell the men I worked with. I couldn't tell anybody.
Think of that, being taught you have to lie.
I and they, I'm sure, believe that this is the most significant thing
that's happened in human history.
We are not alone.
The AARO report comes out.
Give me your sense of, when you read that thing,
what was it like that day?
I was so mad. I was just angry. I was furious.
This... this account that I'd given happened.
I resent deeply my integrity, my honor, my PhD degree, my books,
all of the things I've done is on the line now
thanks to this complete idiotic silence that the government gives us.
They don't want anybody to ask the questions.
They don't want anybody to think that these things flying around are real.
I don't believe they're real. I know they're real.
There's no belief involved.
It did happen.
It happened to me.
We do know that this has happened dozens, maybe hundreds of times around the world.
- US nuclear bases. - Yep.
Shut down, taken offline.
- Yup. - Russians, something similar.
They entered the codes and enabled those missiles.
Exactly so.
Some really dramatic incidents
at nuclear missile silos and storage areas.
And they're intensely interested in our nuclear weapons.
Yes, they are. Because they want us to stop using them.
Some of the most compelling statements I've read about the ET
or nonhuman intelligence phenomena are what I call alien editorials.
These beings interact with humans, and they tell 'em a couple of things
over and over and over, from the '40s on to present day.
"Quit messing with nuclear weapons. You're gonna destroy yourself."
"Quit poisoning your planet. Take care of it."
It suggests to me that at least some of them
are more interested in the planet than they are in us.
Maybe they live here too.
I was just gonna raise that. They would jeopardize their bases.
There are those of us, I'm one, who believe they've been here for
hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.
So up to this point, I had two missions.
One is to counter the AARO Report by bringing forth proof
of nonhuman intelligence interacting with humans.
And secondly, to answer the question of, "Why are they here?"
But I realize the two goals are intertwined.
In order to keep this moving forward, to keep the window open,
I need to present everything that we've accumulated.
The big questions, the who, the where, and especially the why.
I can't hold anything back.
Trying to answer these big question
has led me down some conflicting and sometimes contradictory paths.
It seemed that the motivation behind Colares and animal mutilations
may have been research or sampling.
But what about the vast majority of so-called alien interactions
which are benign and maybe even positive?
Luckily, I'm not the only one asking these questions.
I'm headed to meet with Mike Masters.
He's a professor of anthropology at Montana Tech University.
He's a tenured professor and a respected academic
who has really been shaking things up with some unique ideas
about who these visitors are and how long they've been here.
I want to see how his theories can help me make sense of how these aliens look at us,
and maybe, how we should look at them.
- George, good to see you. Have a seat. - Yeah. In person, finally.
Yeah.
We've been traveling around the world,
trying to figure out answers to the big questions.
And your theory is different from the ET paradigm
that has been explored for so long.
Well, I think it's important to bring in a multidisciplinary approach.
So I try to look at this through the context of what we can learn
from astrobiology, astronomy, physics, and, most importantly, anthropology.
And there's a lot of indications
that these visitors, the occupants of the UFOs, might be us.
Time travelers from the future.
I'm not saying it's right. No one can know.
But it's important to, at least, consider this model because it does make sense.
So what you're saying is, witnesses see this craft and these beings,
and they say to themselves, "Look at those aliens in the spaceship,"
when in fact, it might really be humans in a time machine.
Yeah. And it follows Occam's razor.
We don't know if there's complex life forms
anywhere else, but we know we're here.
So how does long-term evolutionary change relate to this question?
There's a lot of indications
that as our brains get bigger and our faces get smaller,
the dominant trend throughout the last six to eight million years,
if those continue...
we'd be expected to look like gray aliens.
It's starting from a place of simplicity and then building from there.
Among reports of people who claim they've had close encounters with nonhumans
are descriptions of what are called gray aliens.
These short little beings
with big round heads and big black almond eyes.
This description first came to prominence in 1965
with the alleged abduction of Barney and Betty Hill.
But similar sightings have been reported on an ongoing basis all over the world.
How do you test this theory?
We have ways of modeling these skulls into the future.
We take these individual points from all around the skull,
and then we can digitize those
through this geometric morphometric process,
and we can see what that would look like in the deep future.
And sure enough, it looked exactly
like what we expect a gray alien skull to look like.
The skull became even more upright, more of a forehead.
The eye orbits increased in size and curved up.
That's one of the main things described,
these wraparound eyes that are so commonly seen
in association with these grays.
And if bipedalism is the trait that defines our lineage,
and if they walk upright on two legs with four limbs,
we're probably related.
People ask the question, why don't extraterrestrials take over?
They've been here a long time. I guess if they're from the future,
they wouldn't take over because they depend on us.
It's the grandfather paradox for our entire species.
If your grandfather made your parents, either mother or father,
they went on to reproduce, make you, you can't go back and change that.
Why would they ever attack us if they depend on our survival?
I think it's important to consider
that they might be a part of our family tree,
just from a more distant branch onset tree.
The modern UFO era is, like, 75 years,
but have they been around longer?
Seemingly, they've been around throughout human antiquity.
Going back into prehistoric times,
you have all kinds of petroglyphs, geoglyphs, carvings.
You have case after case
that seems to indicate that people are seeing similar,
if not the same, things throughout the human past.
Which again points to time travel.
And yeah, some do say they're from space,
but a lot do say they're from time as well.
When you've got your head around the UFO mystery,
"These were ETs from other planets," along comes Mike Masters and says,
"Wait a second. Maybe they're us from the future."
I'm a little bit reassured by this idea because if it's us from the future,
it's in their long-term interest that we and the planet survive.
Which is consistent with what Bob Jacobs took away
from his own experience at that nuclear missile site.
But what I really want is to see proof of this time traveler theory.
Dr. Masters indicated he has a contact
who can show us physical evidence a few hundred miles to our south
that can do just that.
Jonathan Redbird Dover is a retired Navajo ranger
who spent ten years investigating UFOs
and other strange phenomena on native lands.
The Fremont were here anywhere from 500 to 900 years ago.
They left quite a record of historical writings on the walls,
detailing events that had occurred.
Oh my gosh.
Boy, the ancestors picked a great canvas for their artwork here.
They spent time thinking about it.
Yeah.
Archaeologists attribute these unique markings
to the Fremont culture,
which occupied the lands around Capitol Reef
for about a thousand years.
The petroglyph etchings were created using stone tools.
Modern-day Hopi and Zuni tribes regard these markings as a detailed history
of their ancestors' daily lives, journeys, and beliefs.
Like an ancient social media feed.
Some of these images are pretty strange.
You know, these in particular, they seem to have spacesuits.
There's a big round helmet
that doesn't really look like the shape of a head.
You can't help but wonder in this time travel theory,
how if you have these time travelers, but different times,
it could be the exact same ones, and they're represented in different ways.
Yeah, that's right. There's a lot of interpretation that can be done.
If I were around at that time in history
and saw something like a spaceman, I'd be up there carving it.
Absolutely.
Whoever carved out these accounts of seeing these strange beings
was really doing what I do as a reporter.
Documenting events as they happen
and creating a record for future generations.
Now that I'm seeing this, I feel my own responsibility
to carry this story forward.
What do you make of what Mike has shared with us about time travelers?
The idea is really interesting
because we think of time as linear.
It's a straight line going into the distance.
And so you're thinking, "Okay, you can never go back."
Uh, it's only one direction.
But if you look at time like a record player
that has grooves in it that are going different directions,
what if the needle skipped,
and you suddenly found yourself in a different timescape?
I don't think it's... it's a linear line like we think it is.
I think it could be circular in some way, or it could be even circular like a ball.
We're going up to this barrier-style pictograph
from about the same time period as the Fremont.
Oh my gosh, look at this.
The term barrier-style pictograph was first coined in 1971
to identify a series of drawings painted with pigments
derived from minerals and plants
that are seen across eastern Utah into western Colorado.
They were carbon dated back to the Archaic Period
between 1,500 and 4,000 years ago and may be even older than that.
- It's amazing. - It is truly amazing.
It's just unbelievable that this panel could even exist.
- And it's still here. - And it's still here, yes.
- You can see why people'd say alien. - Right.
I mean, you have to go pretty far to not recognize a similarity.
- Yeah. - You have to bury your head.
We've got other areas that we can look at too.
Oh, good.
These figures over here are probably the most alien-looking.
They look kind of ghostly.
I mean, it looks like... an alien.
We see this, we're not allowed to say alien as anthropologists,
as archaeologists.
The stigma that's been forced upon us.
But how do you look at that and not draw a comparison?
Exactly.
And if it's one alien-like figure in one place.
Sure, that's interesting onto itself,
but they're all over the world and through time.
People paint what they see. They carve what they see.
And they continually show the same types of things that we see.
Big-eyed, big-headed, what look like gray aliens.
We had examples of what looks like technology.
Antenna, helmets. It looks like, from these likenesses
that are so similar to what people are reporting even now,
that whatever these things are, they've been with us a long time.
They've coexisted with us, peacefully for the most part,
so maybe they are time-traveling humans keeping tabs on their distant relatives.
This is the type of information that's only possible to discover
if people are willing to keep coming forward,
sharing their stories and theories, free of the risk of ridicule
that came with talking about UFOs for so many decades.
Here we are, back in the desert again, which, for me,
is where this journey started more than 35 years ago,
trying to tackle the big questions.
Who are they? Why are they here? What's their interest in us?
The data, the information, the cases, the personal experiences
all over the world paint conflicting pictures.
Some of it seems positive and encouraging,
like in Phoenix where thousands of people witnessed this huge craft
and felt like they were receiving a message of peace.
But we also saw these visitors, if that's what they are,
express hostility or at least ambivalence
to the suffering of humans and animals.
We saw some disturbing encounters in Brazil.
We found evidence too, at various places, that these things are drawn to water,
that maybe they live in water.
They could have bases deep in the uncharted oceans
that they use to keep an eye on us.
We don't know what their timeline is.
To us, they've been here thousands of years.
To them, it might be a weekend.
Why do I think they're here?
I don't know if we have enough information to answer this.
But what it seems to me today, is that we have no single answer,
because it's possible
there isn't just one alien civilization interacting with us.
All signs point to multiple civilizations, presumably with multiple agendas.
But that could be what we perceive.
The reality could be something very different altogether.
Because we don't know what the truth is.
Until or unless we get some inside information from our government,
the true keepers of the secret, we're always gonna be trying
to answer these questions with one hand tied behind our backs.
And as the AARO report showed,
that is just exactly what some people in the government seem to want.
You know, I've heard that from people in intelligence circles
who think maybe there's a good reason for keeping this secret.
Uh, not only the race for this technology
among the US, Russia, China, and other countries,
but also the ultimate truth might be pretty dark.
Maybe somebody has figured out that revealing this information
would totally disrupt society.
But I think people are ready for the truth.
So I'm heading to Washington, DC,
to put my information out there, present it to Congress,
and make sure this window doesn't close once and for all.
I'm meeting my colleague Jeremy Corbell,
who's been working to track down the missing footage
from the jellyfish UFO video.
We're hoping that one of our allies on Capitol Hill,
Representative Tim Burchett, can help get this released
and answer some questions I have
about what disclosures might be coming next.
What's happening?
All right, well, first of all, have you seen
the release of the jellyfish UAP that George and I did?
I did.
We know where the footage is,
where it goes into the water, shows transmedium capability, comes out.
We know what agency confiscated it that night.
And I have direct witnesses willing to talk about it
if there's no repercussions on them.
The pushback is real.
Um, you know, we're seeing it in real ways.
What did you think of the AARO report, Congressman?
Doesn't say anything. Very bland thing I could have written in the third grade.
If they tell us that this stuff doesn't exist,
then why don't they give us the documentation
and give us the unredacted reports?
Do you have a sense about these legacy UFO programs,
the fact that we have crash retrievals, that they have been analyzed
and stashed away for a long time? Do you think it's true?
I think there are some programs out there, and I think the crash retrieval program,
I've talked to people who've said that is real,
and I have no reason to doubt it.
And I'm afraid if I disclose too much about what I know...
I don't want to state the locations where this could possibly exist,
because if I do, then those sites disappear.
So you got a sense that someone here in this building,
um, knows where that stuff is?
Maybe not in this building, but in close proximity to this, yes, sir.
When will we see it?
The way we're gonna get it is somebody's gonna walk out legally
and disclose to us what we need to know.
I'm not under illusions that my report will convince the government
to completely change the course of UFO secrecy
that they've been on for more than 70 years.
But if you told me in 1989 that the people inside the government
would speak publicly about nonhuman contacts,
I'd have said you're nuts.
These are the biggest questions in human existence.
Where are we on the food chain?
Who's higher? What do they have in mind for us?
Are they here to help us? To save us? To guide us? Teach us?
We don't know the answers to any of this stuff.
So I'm sharing my evidence, because the future of humanity may depend on us
understanding why they're here and what they want from us.
This report hopefully has enough gas to keep the window open.
Because while today the buck might stop in Washington,
my pursuit for the ultimate truth about alien intelligence,
nonhuman intelligence, is just getting started.