Craft of unknown origin and the paranormal umbrella: Lacatski on Future Visions (8 News Now, April 2026)

0:00 A U.S. intelligence official who designed and directed the largest UFO investigation in American history has confirmed at least one UFO type craft of unknown origin is being studied in absolute secrecy. But Dr. James Lakatsky adds the fact that our government has stashed away one of these craft is just a small part of a much bigger mystery. Lakatsky spoke exclusively with our chief investigator, George Knapp. Yeah, we're overdue for some UFO news, right? Some of our viewers might remember the name James Lakatsky, an analyst and nuclear engineer who worked for the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and oversaw a program called OSAP, based here in Las Vegas. The government still hasn't released a single page from the OSAP files, though the program ended 15 years ago. But Dr. Lakatsky has been authorized to spill some of these deep, dark secrets. Reducing 30,000 pages of analyst photos and information and logs and sightings, etc.,

1:01 and investigations, that was a tough job. So when I first met you, I could only give you a very top-level view of what we had done. The first time Dr. James Lakatsky revealed the existence of OSAP, the government's largest ever UFO-related investigation, was in a hush-hush Washington, D.C. meeting in March 2018, arranged by Senator Harry Reid. It happened seven years after the program had ended, and four months after the New York Times revealed the existence of a smaller, unofficial, offshoot effort called ATIP. OSAP, authorized by the DIA, secretly funded by Reid and colleagues, and carried out by a Las Vegas subcontractor of Bigelow Aerospace, was larger than all previous UFO programs put together. It produced a staggering body of work in its 27-month existence, more than 100 thick, detailed scientific reports, not one page of which has ever been released by the government. The most unique part of OSAP is that the

2:03 program was allowed to follow the evidence wherever it led, and it invariably led to phenomena far stranger than mere UFOs. And it didn't go off track into the paranormal. It was from, it was to investigate the paranormal as being the umbrella over UFOs right from the get-go. And your bosses knew that from the beginning. They knew it was going to get weird. They knew it from the beginning. They were concerned from the beginning about the leak, but we never had a leak. Not at all. Lekatsky and a DIA colleague, Jay Stratton, were inspired to pursue these subjects in part by continued reports of UFO activity over sensitive U.S. military assets and by a cornucopia of bizarre, seemingly paranormal phenomena at what is now well-known as Skinwalker Ranch. He's got three big toes and one at the back. Creatures, animal mutilations, poltergeist or trickster-type activities, along with a

3:03 smorgasbord of possible UFOs. Lekatsky visited the ranch, had an experience himself, and wondered if the paranormal events were a side effect caused by UFO technology and whoever was piloting those craft. It turned out to be the other way around, he says. UFOs are a subset under a larger paranormal umbrella. Lekatsky makes that argument in his new book about OSAP, Future Visions. That's the purpose of the government effort, was to look into, is there something really there, especially in the paranormal umbrella? And the answer is absolutely yes. Members of Congress and the UFO public are mostly focused these days on testimony they've heard about legacy programs, places where crashed UFOs and alien bodies are supposedly stashed, the kind of allegations that put Nevada's Area 51 on the map back in 1989. And why not? In a previous book, Lekatsky was authorized to say, in very brief terms, that the government does possess at least

4:06 one advanced craft of unknown origin. As big as that news is, Lekatsky says, it does not answer the even larger questions. You could have craft, you could have bodies. It wouldn't necessarily tell you where they're from, why they're here, what their plan is. Nope, it wouldn't. And that's part of the story. What have we really done? In fact, if there was an alien intelligence, which some people think is behind all of this, they must be shaking their heads in frustration, because we move like a snail. And maybe at times we even go backwards. This is Dr. Lekatsky's fourth and final book based on the OSAP files. I was co-author on two of those, along with Dr. Colum Kelleher. Future Visions contains many new details about dramatic UFO incidents and cases, weird events at Skinwalker Ranch and similar locations, and hints about another program that grew out of OSAP. The full interview can eventually be viewed on our Mystery Wire site.

5:07 Back to you. Good reading, George. Thanks so much. Does it get more interesting than a George lab report? Never. You can hear a pin drop when he's talking.