Jay Stratton's first on-camera interview, recorded 2022 (WEAPONIZED, released October 2026)

0:00 Jay was at the DIA at the same time Lekhatsky was there. He was sort of on loan from the Office of Naval Intelligence and worked with Lekhatsky, came up with the idea for OSAP. He was one of the formative figures in putting that program together. This was the first on-camera interview he ever did, and it took a long time for us to talk him into it. Jay, have you done an on-camera interview before? Have you done interviews before? So it's the first. The sphere with a cube in it, that Lieutenant Graves saw, you know, in the gimbal, right, in the go-fast. Those, you know, those things came across my desk. I was the first one to get them in the Pentagon because it was my job. This is Weaponized. I'm George Knapp here in Las Vegas, joined by my friend and colleague, Jeremy Corbell, who's lounging. What are you doing? Just goofing off? Deep research, man. Deep research. There's so much going on in the UFO field,

1:00 and it's pretty interesting to see everybody talking about it. So, yeah. So, you know, last week we touched on it just a little bit. Robert Bigelow had received a letter from the DIA saying, hey, we found the long-lost OSAP files. And, you know, I don't have a copy of the letter, so I can't release it. It's not to me, but I did read it. There was some confusion in the beginning. Bigelow thought they were telling him to go ahead and release the files, which I don't believe he's even seen in years. But in actuality, they were telling Mr. Bigelow as a courtesy, DIA has found them. They're going to start the process of redacting them. And I think they were looking for a little bit of help from Colum and Bigelow, who had gone through that stuff. Colum has probably seen more of that, those documents than anyone. And of course, as we know, you know, a lot of that stuff has been released. We released it. You know, the dirds, I started posting those on KLAS in 2018. And with permission, I didn't want to cross a line.

2:00 Some people who had helped me get copies of that had said it's okay. We gave some of them to Joe Rogan right on the air, you'll recall. And then, you know, and some of the other reports have been leaked over the years, various reasons behind that. I think one report, a 10-month report that was put out by someone intentionally leaked, I think, to try to embarrass OSAP in comparison to the rigorous scholarship of ATIP, because that 10-month report had a lot of crazy stuff in it, lot of crazy, wacky stuff that seems on its face to be outrageous and unbelievable, but which really did happen in and around Skinwalker Ranch. So, you know, some of the stuff that's going to be made public eventually, we don't know how long it's going to take. The redaction process is going to take some time. There's sensitive information in there. A lot of the people who spoke to OSAP and the investigators did so with the promise that their names would never be made public. So you've got to

3:01 take those out and honor that promise. You've got current military people who are still on duty or intelligence officers whose names should not be made public because it puts them at risk. That all has to be taken out. And I hope they do a better job of redacting these documents than, say, the Epstein documents that were leaked with all kinds of names that most certainly should not have been made public. And it's going to take some time. I mean, it's a lot of stuff. You'll recall Jim Lekatsky, who was the program manager. He wrote this book, Skinwalkers at the Pentagon with Colm Kelleher and a little bit of help from me. And it draws the broad strokes of what those documents include. Everything in that book and the books that followed is from those documents. So he wanted the public to know he did the necessary redactions. It took 14 months for Dobser to approve that information coming out. But still, the public will want to see these these papers. They'll want to see it for themselves once DIA can go through it. I don't know. Do you think DIA purposely hit him and

4:03 pretended they couldn't find him? No, you know, I don't think that's the case. I do know that when they so they wrote a letter. Let's back up for everybody. So this huge program, everybody's been talking about OSCEP, the $22 million, not ATIP, but OSCEP. It was misreported in the New York Times. Everybody's caught up now, right? Like this big program. You know, obviously, there's tons and tons of data and information. We've heard about it for years. We've been interviewing Dr. Lekatsky, Dr. Kelleher, even the first interview you did with Jay Stratton in Huntsville, Alabama, years before he was a public figure and just asking him about all this. So we know that there's this big archive. The DIA had it. Dr. Lekatsky admits to digitizing everything. No, I don't think it's sinister that they never found it. I think it's easier to not find it. But now with Pursue in Motion, they have now found the files. And how we know that is you broke that story. You were on the Bigelow podcast and he received a letter from the DIA saying, we found all these

5:04 files and we want your help in basically sanitizing the names of individuals and stuff that shouldn't go out. And that's where Dr. Lekatsky, Dr. Kelleher could really help with that and then basically get that out through Pursue. So this is great. This is what we've always wanted. You've tried to bring a 141 plus document of the technical aspects of the Tic Tac UAP encounters into public realm by bringing it to Congress. I remember we were there in Congress and you were trying your hardest to get that onto congressional record. But as a journalist, you know, when you obtain something, you know, you don't necessarily have the right to just throw it out into public view because then you'll never be given that trust again. So it was a really hard moment where we were unable to make that happen. Later, some of that got leaked out. And I do remember that, that, that, that technical report did later in 2025 did leak out. So we saw it coming. So bottom line is this. There's now like an

6:07 authorization from the DIA. They found the OSAP files. When they say that, I don't know what they mean, because Dr. Lekatsky said they had, I think, 109 really intense reports. But of course, there's all the notes. There's all the investigations. There's, there's everything that went into that, that might be contained within Bass. I'm not sure. So I don't know when the, when the DIA says we found them, what exactly did they find? In fact, I wrote some foyers to the DIA this weekend to say, what exactly, can you give me that letter that you gave to Bigelow? And can you tell me what it is you found? Now, I don't have high hopes that they're going to detail everything out for us, but maybe they did answer us last time, George, which was pretty amazing. Maybe, maybe they will. Um, yeah, I, I don't believe the DIA was purposely hiding this stuff and pretending they couldn't find it. They've had hundreds of FOIA requests, including from me, right in the beginning. Hey, can I get these documents? And their answer is always, Hey,

7:08 we, what documents? We don't have them. I think that they were being honest. I, I suspect that, uh, Dr. Lakatsky clever guy that he is electronically copied them and stuck them in a file somewhere that made it not so obvious and easy to find them. And they really couldn't find them. So when the white house asked, Hey, what about these OSAP documents? Uh, we want to see them. And DIA had to say, well, we don't, we can't find them. I think they were being honest about that, not trying to stonewall the public FOIA, Congress, all that stuff. Um, but they did, they went back and look and found them. And now the process is going to start. And, uh, you know, some of that stuff is out. Some of it has been reported in, uh, Dr. Lakatsky's books. And, uh, you know, when the, when you see these documents, I mean, there, there's nothing that the public shouldn't be allowed to see. As far as I can tell, there's some scary stuff in there for sure. And a lot of weird stuff, but the public is not going to freak out when they see this stuff, the report that you and I wanted to give to Congress about the physics of the tic-tac.

8:08 And it's not just that case, a lot of really hardcore engineering data analysis of cold, hard facts about how fast it was moving and, and, um, speculation about how it might, what the propulsion might be. That's the kind of stuff that the public says they want. I'm not so sure that's true because I know that Lakatsky, his second book that he wrote, which was all physics and engineering measurements of, uh, how heavy these craft were when they landed, how fast they, they moved the fact that they could go right through solid material analysis of meta materials that might help that kind of a propulsion system. People demand, we want the data and the data was provided and nobody read that book. Nobody, nobody bought it. So I suspect that's what we're going to see with these documents when they come out is a lot of people like, uh, is that all there is kind of moan and grind and grown and, and wine. And, and, um, well, there's some good stuff in there. Uh, the difference is it doesn't contain the context

9:10 such as from Lakatsky column, et cetera. Uh, Jay, uh, people who really did work on these programs, did the analysis and understand why particular facts and aspects are really important, but I'm glad it's finally going to happen. I know it's not going to happen fast enough for the public, but, um, the fact that it's coming out, that's great. Can't wait to see it. Yeah. And the other kind of big thing that's happened this week, obviously is, you know, Jay Stratton's new book has finally come out and people are dissecting it and they're analyzing it. I'll, I'll remind our audience. Cause I think it was the second weaponized where we, um, showed clips of our interview with Jay Stratton. It was the first visual interview, the first interview he is, he had ever done. And I was looking back at that, uh, this last couple of days and how natural he is. He's just telling it like it is. It was really cool to see that interview. It was summer, George of 2022, when you and I flew to Huntsville, Alabama, and we got to do that interview

10:11 with Jay and, and with Travis. And you really, you asked him, I mean, for hours, over two hours, you asked him about all the architecture of the programs, what's been going on. It was just really cool to see that I'm reflecting on that now compared to the media tour that he's doing now to promote his book. I mean, he's gone prime time, man. He was on with Fox. He's on with CNN news nation. I'm sure there's a lot more coming. You got, you got to promote your book, you know, once it comes out and it's a great book. Like, um, you know, I read through most of it so far, I'm really taking my time with it, but he makes some pretty, you know, interesting revelations. He tries to lay it out his perspective, what he's been fighting for this and what his direct knowledge was. And I always found that interesting. He's been out there saying, you know, I have seen non-human craft and non-human beings. And I've always wondered where did he see a non-human being? Because like news people will call me up, like as if I have any information and they'll be like, you know, did he see that in official capacity, even political people? And my

11:12 response is, I don't think so. I think that was part of the aftermath of, of when he's investigating this stuff. But I think he did say on Tapper that it was a personal encounter with a grade being outside a window of his sons. So I'm glad he's clarifying that because leaving that open, people are going to be like, so you saw the bodies, the Roswell bodies, were you in the skip? Look, don't do more than you need to do. Tell it like it is. And I think he's, he's doing that. I'm starting to see him really just put it out there. It arrived at my doorstep two evenings ago. And I said, I'm too busy. I got this to do and that to do. I'm not going to start reading it. And I brought it in. I might as well just take a look at it and then, you know, open up the box and wait a second, look at this chapter here and did some speed reading. And I realized, holy crap, this is full of really good stuff. I got to give it the proper time. So this weekend, Saturday, I'm starting and going all through it. But, you know, what I've seen so far, just taking a glimpse at it, absolutely packed

12:14 with great stuff. I think most interesting, and you've seen it in these early interviews that Jay has done, is that he acknowledges that he is basically Axelrod. He's the guy that we wrote about in Skinwalkers at the Pentagon who had these strange encounters on the ranch, as did every other intelligence agent that went there as an assignment. Every single one of them had an experience there, and every single one of them took it home with him. He's the guy who not only changed UFO to UAP, he's the guy who came up with the name Hitchhiker. It was the name of the band that he's in with Travis Taylor and Micah Hanks and others. And it's now changed to the Hitchhiker Effect. But Jay called it a Hitchhiker, I think, in a conversation with Colin Kelleher. And that's the name that stuck, because that's what it's like. For whatever reason, you go there to that property and have an experience and something follows your home. He had shared privately with me some of the things that happened to he and his family. I couldn't say anything about it. We had a pseudonym in

13:17 the book about some of it, but it went on and on for years. I think it might still be going on. His two sons had lived in that house after Jay and his wife moved to Alabama, and the stuff was still going on there. And it followed Jay and Michelle to Alabama as well. What is it? It acts like a virus. It spreads. And then, you know, in this book, he acknowledges that it happened to his kids, scared the hell out of him, wolf man outside the house, werewolf type figure that takes off running. And then the kids had not told their friends what was going on. But the friends started having these experiences as well and telling Jay's sons about it. I'm so glad he came forward with the admission that he's the Axelrod guy. And I know that every single interview he's going to do on this book tour is going to have a Wolfman question in it as a way to, you know, oh, you believe in Wolfman, right? And I don't know if there's a better way to answer it. But, you know, that's what hostile interviewers

14:19 certainly use that question as a way to undermine his credibility. But it's real. And he's not the only one to whom that has happened. Yeah. So we, you know, I'm curious, can we play some of the clips from the first interview he ever did that you did with him in 2022? I think that's really important for the public. You know, he talks about having utilized the the OSAP archive to kind of get his bearings with some of what he was doing. I think it's a historically important interview. Can we play a couple of clips from that? Yeah. So just some context where we jump into it. But, you know, Jay was at the DIA at the same time Lekatsky was there. He was sort of on loan from the Office of Naval Intelligence and worked with Lekatsky, came up with the idea for OSAP. He was one of the formative figures in putting that program together. And he did the very first investigation that OSAP did was in the Tic Tac case. He interviewed the key witnesses and wrote a report on it. And I made that, we made that public in 28, back in 2018. So

15:19 he went on from OSAP. He then reignited a sort of a working group that came to be known as ATIP. Again, you know, New York Times broke that story and it changed the world. And I know we've quibbled with the story. I think those reporters did the best they could for the time and what they were allowed to report. Lewis talked about ATIP because he was involved with Jay. He was not part of OSAP. He would have been part of it. He was going to be the counterintelligence officer if they had been made into a SAP, a special access program. But he got fever, UFO fever and stuck with it. Jay and he and a group of others had this working group called ATIP. And then that New York Times story comes out and suddenly Jay is getting calls from his superiors. Hey, you were involved in this stuff. What's the deal? And he starts getting invitations to brief members of Congress and tell them what they had discovered during those two investigations about military encounters, civilian cases. And so after a few of those briefings, they

16:22 casually created what later became the UAP task force. And Jay became the first director of the UAP task force and they did good work. We know personally that they ran interference for journalists. When, you know, the lies that are told by the DOD back then, deny everything, dismiss it. It's not a UFO, who cares? Get out of our face kind of an approach. He made them answer the questions. He made them acknowledge, yes, this is a real Department of Defense video that somehow leaked. I think Jay was embarrassed about it because we know him. I've known him a long time before I could ever even say his name. And I certainly would not report it even after, you know, the UAP task force was known, was a known entity and his name was out there. So he was the only person I know of that was OSAP, ATIP and UAP task force. And you remember, Amanda, the reports that he and Travis put together, they had 144 UFO cases and 143

17:24 were unexplained. Very unlike what came next. You know, they were doing too good of a job, the task force. So Penn and Guy got rid of them and then made AIMSOG and then made Arrow. And we've seen how that whole investigation has gone since then. Not very well, but Jay was doing a great job. He didn't stick with the DIA all the way through OSAP. He was sent back to ONI, but he stayed in touch with all the principals. So he was up on everything they were doing. So I'm sorry I got too carried away on that intro here, but this was the first on-camera interview he ever did. And it took a long time for us to talk him into it. Jay, have you done an on-camera interview before? Have you done interviews before? It's the first. We're trying to distinguish between, is it a threat to us? Right, right. Is it, could it be Russian or, and then at some point you realize maybe it's not theirs, but we need to work on it anyway because we need to build it if we can. Absolutely. So if you're looking at those

18:25 technologies and you decide, okay, this seems to exceed ours, then you, then you have a few avenues you could potentially take. Some of those I won't talk about. But I would be and have gone out to your industry experts, right? The folks you would think of, Lockheed Skunk Works and Bowling Phantom Works, uh, your, uh, your skunks, uh, and, and try to get them engaged. Hey, here's what, what I've got, right? Brief them, brief them on what I have, and then kind of put their brains to work, uh, and, and get them to tackle. Hey, can you build that? You know, can you, can you do this now? And sometimes they would say, Jay, we can't talk to you, right? Because they're, it's either their own money, what we, you know, the, the, I read money that we call it, the independent research and development money that Boeing's paying or Lockheed's paying, or they might be working with the Air Force and they don't want to burn a bridge or, or someone else, right? I mean, you'd go to them to ask them, hey, is this you? I mean, you've got something. I absolutely did that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, uh, and, and again, because of the various positions I had, I had relationships with

19:28 all those folks, right? So I'm not walking in as a stranger and saying, hey, you know, can you, can you look at this for me? I'm walking in as, oh, he's here, you know, what can we do for you? You know, um, and the same with government offices. Can you speak in general about the things that came across your desk that suggested to you, this is really exotic. I mean, I don't know how, what kind of parameters that you can share with us about the types of information that came your way. Yeah. I don't want to touch on a whole lot of that, uh, in various specifics, but we can use, you know, examples of things that have been out in the press recently, right? So, um, the, the sphere with a cube in it that, that, that Lieutenant Graves saw and, you know, in the gimbal, right? And the go fast, uh, those, you know, those things came across my desk. Uh, I was the first one to get them in the Pentagon because it was my job, right? I was in a job where, uh, we're assessing foreign versus, you know, the blue concerns and, and we want to make sure we're not surprised. Uh, and then I get these videos that, that, that, that, hey,

20:29 Jay, you can, you know, one person's going to know who this is. Jay may know what this is. Um, I immediately take those videos down the hall to my Air Force brothers and my, you know, and, uh, the DOD and everybody else and, and, and, uh, and get them to look at it, right? So trying to rule out us. And, uh, so if you, if you take those examples, uh, you know, still to this day, I'm, I'm, I'm the guy who told the press that these are unidentified, right? Um, because I didn't, you know, one, we got to be honest with American people. It's our job. And two, why would I go on and say it's something it's not right? So it's unidentified. We don't know what it is. That's the, the, the root of the word, right? So, um, you got those, you got, you know, the backstories on those are, are very interesting. And, and, uh, that's what you got to think about, right? That the, there's more than just a video, there's more than the, and, and you got to take that whole picture and then shoot for that data-driven assessment or, or an answer. But, but that

21:30 whole story is what kind of makes it more important than just seeing a video. The 2004 incident, the most important thing that I was accomplished in, in every bit of that investigation was the fact that we talked to the pilots and we, we didn't ridicule. We took them seriously and we listened to what they were saying and we tried to do something about it, right? That's what I didn't want to die, right? I didn't want that to go to the Pentagon and, and fall on the cutting room floor because it's weird. I wanted somebody to go talk to that, to the pilots or, or whatever came in, right? Go talk to those people and figure out what this means. So OSAP is dead, but there are guys like you and Lou who had been at least involved around, right? Who want to keep it going. Was it informal in the beginning and it became something else or describe the evolution of it? Sure. And I know, Lou kind of hates it when I call it a working group, but that's what I would call it. Lou would call it an organization or a

22:30 team, you know, a program, a team. It all gets lost in DC, right? It doesn't really matter if you're, if you're not on a budget line somewhere and, and getting funded to do work. I mean, but what we were doing was important. And, and we knew we could make this happen. And again, it's, it's in my job jar, right? This is something I do for a living. Lou was in USDI and he was a policy guy and he was at the higher headquarters. And, and what did Lou do? Lou opened doors for me when I needed help and, and our, you know, any, any other service, uh, colleague. Um, so you can call it a working group, call it a program, call it, but it existed, a hundred percent existed. And it existed in order to keep, uh, on that, that, uh, drama of preventing disruptive technology and tech surprise. Uh, and we worked together and we had friends that helped, right. To, to try to get answers on anything that came in. And, and the day that I got the gimbal video, I went to Lou, you know, Lou was the first person I brought in the room to say, Hey Lou, what do you think of this?

23:31 Right. You know, and then I go down the hall to, to start talking to Tristan, you know, the, is it ours question? So, um, you know, that's very important that, that because Lou would, would again, uh, biology background, right? Different, different background, always looked at things differently. And he'd come to me and I would look at it from that, you know, kind of aerospace perspective, or maybe the military perspective and say, that doesn't make sense, you know, or whatever I would say. Right. So it's important to understand that he and I complimented each other very greatly and, and other teammates from OSAP or, or from the old days, complimented each other because we were there for a reason. OSAP's gone. ATIP's there, informal, formal, whatever you want to call it. You get Tic Tac comes in. You've already seen that for a couple of years. Right. Gimbal comes in. Can you tell about that day when you first saw that? What's your take on that? Wow. Absolutely. Yeah. Right. So, you know, when I see that, I'm going to go to it from a different perspective than the fleet guys that got it, right? Because the fleet guys sent it to us

24:33 thinking, oh, you know, we're going to send this to the Pentagon and they're going to tell us it's ours and we're going to have to sign some paperwork and, and, you know, it'll be it. And that's actually one of the big stigma points, right? They don't want to report it because they think it's ours and they don't want to deal with all that extra hassle. But it did get to me. At the time I was running an office that used to be called Deep Red, where we were kind of experts on blue and experts on red. And, and the whole office was designed to make sure that we were fully informed as the term on everything so that, you know, if there was some leading edge potential disruptive technology, we would, we would make sure the right people understood it and prevent us from wasting a lot of money building something that could be easily defeated, right? Uh, so it was the right place for that video to land. Uh, I got it on my super net. I saw the email chain, which had gone through a lot of people, uh, before it got to us. I mean, just a lot of people out in the fleet, right? It just bounced around because they're trying to figure out what this is themselves before they even,

25:34 you know, the Pentagon's like, why would I send something to the Pentagon? It's just one of the captains down there knew me from, from my background. And he, and he said, we need to send it up there. This guy, you know, having run spear and, and air warfare, like, you know, let's see what they think, right? Um, I got the chain. I saw how many people were on it. And I immediately, my, my, my immediate response was stop emailing, right? Because in case it is ours, right? That's a lot to clean up. And that was my first email response to that. Uh, recommend everyone stop emailing. And then I walked down and physically walked down to my boss and, uh, and I'll let her know at that point, Hey, kind of got a background in this topic and told her the CliffsNotes version of my DIA experience and, and early O and I experience. And, uh, so she got it. And, uh, I said, Hey, I'll try to figure this out. And I mean, we got go fast at the same time, pretty much. Uh, you know, gimbal was more interesting, uh, for sure. Uh, and then the, the, like you said, you hear it on there. Hey, look at the ASA. There's a whole fleet of

26:35 them. You know, I immediately picked up on that and said, I got to start calling people. I know if you've got that, you know, data preservation, you know, let's try to get all the data we can. Um, one big lesson learned on all of that. And, uh, uh, Ryan Graves has talked about this too, is that that feedback loop, right? So I did all this work and we were doing all this work for months. We were trying to figure out what gamble was, but we never once went back to that email chain and said, Hey guys, uh, we're working on this. We're going to try to get you an answer, right? Feeds the stigma because the attitude then becomes, well, I told them and nothing happened, you know, nothing ever came of it. So why should I even bother reporting that stuff? It just makes me look like a, like a UFO guy. Um, so some lessons were learned out of that alone, but, uh, you know, chasing that down. Uh, but then future, right. Again, education and learning out through the process. I got to have somebody to talk to about this stuff. I got to under, I got to understand that AT FLIR better than anybody. I got to be able to, to figure out if there's an easy answer to this because, you know, I

27:37 didn't even know at that time that, you know, fast forward, you know, three years, I'm briefing Congress constantly on all this stuff. Right. Um, and it'd get maybe even better later. Right. But, uh, it taught me a lot of lessons about really understanding what you're looking at and, and try not to let my own eyeballs be fooled, but then who in that Rolodex can I reach out to, to, to answer those questions. And, and I got some of that later and we'll talk about that, but, um, you know, and, uh, some of the key players, even through the task force, uh, so DIA back to the, the problem set of having a lot of history majors and political science majors that defense warning office that I was a part of became the TLA at Charlottesville, but they really became more of a, a very small, uh, policy oriented, uh, office. Not really like we were where we talked a lot about tech and had engineers and, you know, they still have some engineers, but they're not necessarily doing it. Right. So my point in bringing all that up, the only engineers that live at DIA are at the missile space Intel center in Huntsville, where I moved to, right. I want to be, I want to be here in rocket city. Um, those

28:39 guys were the ones that I knew I could reach out to. And because of my air warfare background for all those years, I had all my friends there and ironically, I'm working with them now, you know, so it's, it's the place I want to be. It's the people I like working with. And I, and, and that's who helped me, uh, try to understand from their perspective, what, what we're potentially looking at, because they were really, they know how to look at some of the sensor data and such. So it's been, you know, learning and evolution throughout the process, but it's been really good to, to try to get the right answers ultimately for the American public. Right. So we'll go to Lou coming out in a second, but wall reader on the tic-tac gimbal. So you're looking at those for a while. Eventually they get out into the public at the New York times story. Right. And then you see all this, the social media experts, debunkers who explained this was seagulls. Right. It's flair. It's a jet that's a far away. And they get a lot of attraction. They get a lot of traction. They get on television. You got to dismiss this stuff. It's not important. It's all a barrage. Clearly you have a lot of

29:39 information that the public doesn't see, that the debunkers don't see. Are you laughing at these explanations? It's frustrating, right? Because, uh, later, you know, fast forward to the task force everyone knows about, you know, I spent a decent amount of time in Congress explaining why that wasn't true, you know, based on, uh, my advisors and what I knew. Uh, so there's a lot of cleanup to do when, when you, when you have a lot of these people saying it's birds or whatever they're saying. Um, it's frustrating because you know the rest of the story and you can't tell the rest of the story. You can't handle it, uh, you know, hands on and try to, to, to go, actually, that's not true. As much as you may know everything they're saying, uh, is not true. Right. And it's probably trans, transpose that to any intel topic, you know, that we know a lot more about the Ukraine, you know, or sorry, Ukraine or, um, any of these other topics, right? You just transposes, uh, just my topic happens to be one people love talking about. Well, I, I look at the explanations. I think for this to be accurate, you have to assume

30:39 that the U.S. military is stupid, you know, that you don't recognize a bird or flare from some other plane. Right. You know, you're, you're also, uh, discounting the pilot a hundred percent, right? And the people that, uh, you know, there's a reason why we have officers flying aircraft and that's because they're going to employ a weapon, right? They're, they're, they're making it a policy decision for the United States as they pull that trigger. Um, and if you take that into the nukes, it's even a whole different animal, right? So you got people there that we trust to employ these weapon systems and make that policy decision on the fly at some point. And they've been, some of them, Dave Fravor, for example, right? Lots and lots of time, right? Somebody like that, who's an expert and you're telling them they're seeing birds, right? Or they're seeing something that's a, that's one, an ego hit for them. And they're not going to put up with it typically. Uh, but two, it just waters it down. So it, anybody that, that comes forward that has this juicy flare tape or anything else, they're going to say, um, I don't know if I want the

31:39 attention, right? Uh, just be frustrated by it all. So, you know, the pilot witness testimony, if you want to call it that is very important. Um, but I'll caveat that, that witness, uh, witness testimony slash debrief along with data is even more important and the more data sources I can get. And the, and the, and what I was telling the fleet, you know, is the, the faster they can get it to me, right? Because there's no data preservation, uh, out there. So if I learn about something and I know about it the day it happens, I'm going to get a heck of a lot more data than I'm going to get even two, three days later. Suffice to say it's later in the UAP task force, when you're briefing Congress on a regular basis, you're able to show them behind closed doors a lot more information than you're able to tell the American public about classified systems and sensors that you don't want our enemies to know about. Right. You're not telling them, hey, this tic-tac is something real when you know it's not. I mean, when you say this is unidentified, it's an unknown, you're pretty confident that it really is an unknown. Absolutely. I wouldn't be there briefing it

32:39 if I wasn't confident of that. And later I was absolutely confident that it was not something of ours. So, and, and, and as we built the reputation of the task force and, and the, built the business out and I had enough support, uh, both at the senior levels all the way down to the Lieutenant on the flight line, uh, that, that became very important because the, uh, trust was there that when I'm there telling you about something, it's absolutely an unknown. It's absolutely something that, that we need to understand better either from an aviation safety trend standpoint or a security standpoint. A tip was real. I mean, you know, it's whatever you want to call it, program, whatever. Right. Whether it had a budget or not or it had in its own office, it was real. It was a real effort. It absolutely was because again, we didn't want anything to fall through. I didn't want to have to rebuild what OSAP had started to build and what, uh, you know, all of, all of our, uh, colleagues had started to build and let it just die and start from scratch again because there was reporting. And, and if there's reporting, somebody needs to

33:41 be addressing that reporting. You've had a database for OSAP. I mean, you know, in addition to those 38 papers, the public is saying, and there's a lot that was produced, including this gigantic data warehouse. Did you use that? Yes. Uh, having only because now I'll caveat that with, I wouldn't have known it existed if, if I hadn't been involved. And, and since I wasn't, you know, enough that I, I knew Jacques Vallée had, and, and that he had built this thing that I obtained a copy so that later again, fast forward to the task force, you know, we could use that, uh, as a, as a basis to start, you know, when you, and it comes out of the question of, has this ever been seen before? Right. Let me find out. Right. The slides, they're known to be part of a briefing and that that briefing that your department and you, I mean, that's you guys, you put that together. Right. You're the guys or the people. Yes. Okay. Just, just want to confirm a couple of things. Okay. If it's okay. Um,

34:41 have you determined the controllers of the 2019 swarms on more about 10 of our Navy warships? Yeah. Over a series of days. Have you, have you, have you, yes or no determined the controllers? Can't say. I just can't say because we don't want to, it's part of the assessment that is protected. So, but if, if, if the answer was no, could you still not say? I wouldn't say. You wouldn't say. Yeah. Because I believe that to be protected. So, so part of the problem that there's some... The Navy said that they, that they didn't know. It went on record, head of the Navy. Then, then quote him. Uh, yeah, because he's the ultimate classification authority for that. Am I making a mistake by saying, by pursuing that and saying that our government right now is saying that they don't know. Am I making a mistake? I don't think you're making a mistake pursuing that, no. Say it again? I don't think you're making a mistake pursuing that. Can you say if those objects in 2019, can you say if you know if they were Russia,

35:43 China, or any foreign nation other than ours? Can you say that? They're unidentified. The green footage from the USS Russell, you know that George and I obtained and released. So, you know somebody's filmed a screening and shouldn't have done that, but that's not me. It's journalists. There's shield law. Obtained and released. But you've seen it. They played it in Congress, right? Okay. The question about that is, was that, to the best of your knowledge, is that a camera artifact of the iris? The shape that you see in the green footage, we're called green. Is that an artifact of the iris? To my knowledge, based on three PhDs, it is the shape in that video is the shape that you're seeing, in that it is a pyramid and that it is self-illuminating. It's a what? It's that illumination is coming from the object itself. That's my understanding based on, you know, what I had from the taxpayers. You said

36:44 three PhDs. You got three PhDs, or you got three PhD people to look at it? I got three PhD people to look at it, you know. Were they like optical physicists? Yes, because there might be an easy explanation, and get it to the right people. And when it came down to sensor performance, right, and somebody saying, oh, you know, the gimbal on the FLIR changes in this regime of flight. Cool, but the guys that made it told me a different answer, right? So I'd always try to go to the best expert I could get on anything to give me their answer, because then it's not Jay answering it. It's that person answering that question. I think that original interview, first time he went on camera, that is so cool now because we get to see it so many years later. Nobody knew that he was going to be able to come out in this form with a book and be in the movie that he did, Age of Disclosure. So I think it's really cool. It was a good day to have someone like Jay fighting on the inside for transparency on this stuff. And now that he's out, I think, to some degree, mostly out, you know, it is cool to see him

37:45 throwing punches to fight for transparency on this issue, responsibly. You know, from the outside, I think he's a real asset to the idea of transparency and truth. And we certainly experienced that when we were doing our reporting. I mean, I bet he didn't like it so much that things got leaked to us from reports that he had done. But he made sure that the PR people at the time, I think it was Susan Goh that was at the time, reported accurately that what we obtained and released to the public was indeed military film footage of UAP. And I attribute that to Jay because you and I have heard that he's the one that made sure the Pentagon was honest in the American public. So I think he's been a real asset to it. And I'm excited to kind of dissect his book more. But I want to ask you something. In his book, one part that I did read, he talks a lot about Jim Ryder, former Lockheed vice president. And he talks about a conversation he had with Jim Ryder, where Jim acknowledged to him that,

38:46 you know, about the Roswell crash that had broken into two pieces, that there were bodies recovered, non-human intelligence bodies. And I just, and also I think in that section, there was something about how the CIA officially blocked access of, of that information to awesome. And that's a real famous story now, because you brought that forward about Jim Ryder with Harry Reid. You brought that forward about how Jim Ryder was trying to help the transfer of this technology. One more thing. He mentions that there were 12 craft, which we've heard Eric Davis say. We've also heard Hal Puthoff say that on Joe Rogan. I don't know if Lockheed owned all of those craft or had custody of all his craft, but clearly that comes from Jim Ryder. So can you tell our audience a little bit about Jim Ryder, that transfer, is he trustworthy? Is that what you've heard from the inside all these decades that Jim Ryder was really trying to get this out? And then you

39:46 famously said a name under oath in Congress of the CIA individual, Glenn Gaffney, who blocked the transfer of the non-human technology. Can you tell our audience a little bit about Jim Ryder and the blocking of the CIA? So Jim Ryder was a vice president at Lockheed, had the trust of the top guys, was close with Ben Rich. You know, there's always been a suspicion that Skunk Works may have gotten some of the ideas for their amazing craft that they've built over the years, including the F-117, got some ideas from technology that had been recovered. I did get a chance to meet Ben Rich and do an interview on the day they made the stealth fighter public out at Nellis Air Force Base. I asked him that question, he kind of smiled and said, "Nope, it's just good old American know-how." But that suspicion is well-founded. I mean, those guys have had a presence at Area 51 since the day the place opened. And so if anyone was going to have that stuff, it would be them. You know, we've heard differing stories about how they've handled the technology and

40:48 their inability to reverse engineer the propulsion. Understandable. But if any company in the country were going to have that stuff, crash materials, crashes from UFOs, it would be Lockheed. I think that it's been spread out to other aerospace manufacturers and defense contractors. I think Jay in those books says TRW was involved and I've heard that name before. Anyway, I started hearing that story about Jim Ryder being at Lockheed and being in negotiations with Mr. Bigelow about getting some of the goodies and transferring it. My understanding was, and I could never report it, obviously, but my understanding was there were leftovers. It wasn't an entire craft, but there were leftovers, scraps and things that Ryder and Lockheed were willing to trade to Bigelow and Bass, the OSAP program, in exchange for something else that Mr. Bigelow offered them, something they could not get on their own. And they progressed to the point, I know there were meetings in Southern California. I know that Ryder came to Las

41:49 Vegas and I know which room he was in talking to him about this. The deal was basically done. And then Lockheed let CIA know that they were going to do this. And this guy Gaffney, the name that I revealed to Congress, stepped in and put the kibosh on it. First, he was really pissed off that Lockheed still had this stuff because they were supposed to turn it all over. Where it went from there, I don't know. I can tell you the building that was in at the time that Bigelow was talking to Lockheed about it. Okay. So I'd heard this story and it's driving me crazy. Oh my gosh, that's a huge story. I can't say anything about it for years. I did go by and get some video of the building, the office complex, where the material was stored. Which building was it in? It's on Rye Road there in Southern California, outside of Palmdale. And it's not a Lockheed facility anymore. At least it doesn't look like it. It's offices, complex and warehouses and things, but that's where it was. And so the deal was

42:49 done. Bigelow agreed to provide a service to Lockheed. Lockheed was going to turn over this stuff that OSAP could study. Bigelow had spent a million dollars bringing his aerospace plant up to par. So it met national security standards of the DIA. And the DIA stepped in and killed it. And where the stuff went from there, I don't know. But Lockheed no longer has it. And then Jim Ryder, everyone described him as a great guy. Jay, you know, in my skimming of the book, he had a lot of communications with Jim Ryder. Ryder went on to have some really eclectic interests, esoteric type stuff. He's given some presentations that have appeared online. That was an interesting guy, but he passed away. And it's too bad because he'd be really a great guy to have an interview with. And now that Jay has formally gone out and said this, I am relieved to see somebody else say it in public because I did testify to that in Congress. And I did it with permission. You know, you can guess who

43:50 okayed that. Because I lobbied hard to get that on the record. And I'm glad it's finally there. And I'm glad that Jay has buttressed that information because I was kind of out on a limb there. Yeah. So Jay's book is titled Out of the Shadows, which is a great title. And yeah, I think, you know, a lot of people are calling me asking me, what, you know, should they take this seriously? Kind of like the Grush interview with Rogan. And, you know, all I can say is that Jay was always in position. He's always been honest. From everything we know, he's fought for the American people to have the basic understanding. He's identified the gatekeepers. That's something Representative Burleson said to me in private. It's not secret or anything. But he said that, you know, Jay was really aware of and helpful with identifying the gatekeepers. And we can kind of reverse engineer that to, you know, to be about, well, who at CIA, Glenn Gaffney, blocked the transfer. So it makes you wonder, with Jay coming out now, his book, Out of the Shadows, is Congress going to subpoena any of these

44:52 contractors? You know, they've clearly said now, there's 12 craft. And I think it gives Congress kind of a hit list of who they can talk to. And I'm sure Jay has been advising with Pursue and all those people. I think Bret Baier even said that in the intro and Jay didn't deny it. So if Jay has been involved, he can really lead people to, you know, he can lead Congress on who they need to speak with, who's holding back information on this. So I'm hopeful, you know, about that. I think he's you're right. I think he's already told them who's got the goods and who could testify. Will Congress follow through? Right now, every single member of the House is running for their lives. There's an election coming up in three weeks. They're all out there campaigning. They're worrying about hanging on to their jobs, not about UFOs. Which party will control the House when we come back and the Senate as well. That could change the focus. You know, we know that some of the most forceful transparency advocates in the House, these

45:55 Republicans may be in the minority next time. But, you know, as we've said before, this is a bipartisan issue. The interest level among the House members that we talked to, the Democrats, is just as passionate as the three principal people we've been in contact with. So I think Jay would help them find it. I don't know that somebody from Lockheed or Northrop or McDonnell Douglas would actually show up. They'd have to be subpoenaed, I would think. It would have to be done closed doors because this is classified stuff. And I'm not sure that everyone in Congress has a need to know. So it's not real clear to me how far those companies might go in spilling the beans. And look, you know, we've talked about it before. Bigelow has advocated for sort of a blanket amnesty for all those companies. Let's not hold them criminally accountable for hiding this and lying about it. I'm okay with that. So long as it doesn't involve murdering someone or, you know, we don't have any evidence of anything like

46:56 that. But I'm in favor of giving them a break, cutting them some slack if they come clean, because they did what we asked them to do. That's what our government asked them to do. Here's this stuff. We don't know where it's from or how it works. Why don't you take it and study it and see if you can figure out how to replicate the technology. That's what we ask them to do. So I'm okay with giving them a break if they are willing to come forward and tell us what they know, even if it's just to some members of Congress behind closed doors, because eventually what they tell Congress will get out, you know. And so, yeah, this book is jam-packed. It's an important book, a lot of great stuff. And this is a guy who was there. He was in the room for this stuff, for those three programs and a whole lot more. And every interaction we've had with Jay, he's been upfront and straightforward. And if he can't tell us something, he says that, but I've never caught him in a lie. I can't imagine he would. He says, look, I've never been a UFO guy. I

47:57 did this because it's my job. Yeah. Look, I think we have these three big personalities that have come out over the years and really helped push UAP into the mainstream public. You've done the first interviews with most of them. So you've got Luis Elizondo's come forward. You've got Jay Stratton. You've got David Grush. You have a pantheon of whistleblowers, some more credible, some less credible. The ones that we have brought their stories and accounts forward, I find very compelling. Nothing has ever shown me that they're not. They've testified by the Congress. They've done that on their own volition. I know that people are talking with the FBI in the coming weeks to help get more and more information into this pursue system so that we can bring more transparency. The big issue that I find, and I've said it a bunch and I'll say it again, which is that we've got to get beyond where we are now and get into the crash retrievals and what we've obtained. We've had officials come forward like Dr. Lekaski

48:57 talking about breaching the whole of a non-human intelligence craft. It's like at this point, you've had so many people come forward. They've got to get into those crash retrievals that people need to fess up through amnesty or whatever. And then the biologics because I don't know what to believe with the biologics anymore. You've had David Greshko and Rogan and talk about reptilian gorilla style huge dudes. That's a story that he heard, but he also said that he saw footage of bodies like Greek looking, sculpture-esque, he said beautiful, like alien bodies. That's not something that can just come out into the public sphere and our government doesn't have to be accountable for that. I'd love to see the footage from Holloman Air Force Base. Very famously, there was footage of a landing, a controlled landing with non-human beings coming out of a craft. If that is true, then that is the kind of thing the public is going to be demanding now. Can you imagine that though? Can you imagine our government being like, okay, we've hid this, but here you go. Here's footage at Holloman Air Force

49:59 Base of craft landing and alien beings coming out to talk with military and intelligence personnel. Can you imagine the day, George, if that were to happen? I have imagined that many times, you know, and it's hard to see it happening in my lifetime, but man, yeah, I've imagined it and hoped for it at some point. And, you know, it reminds me of the end of Steven Spielberg's movie, Disclosure Day. I know a lot of people have trashed that movie, but I felt that moment at the end of the movie when some of those clips of different, Nixon with Jackie Gleason go and see a body and, you know, and crash site retrievals where there are beings that survive the crash and are alive and then are taken away and stashed somewhere. And it moved me, you know, because I have thought about it. You know, I did see a couple of shots at Jay, somebody, Abby Loeb, Abby Loeb, who's the head of this, this council that was created by the White House. I think Gary Nolan is one of the members, very prestigious group of folks who've been given the authority to go ahead and, and dig into

51:01 this. What they don't have are, are top secret security clearances to go into stuff. So Abby Loeb put something on, on social media that he was kind of ticked off at Jay. How dare he go and do an interview with Fox and CNN before he comes and tells us what he knows. Well, a lot of what Jay knows, I mean, he's printed it here. It had to go through Dobser, but a lot of what he knows, he can't say to them or, or pretty much anyone else, unless they've got the clearances to hear it. And also the, um, you know, the, uh, need to know, you know, he can't. So I think for him to go out and try to sell his book, that's not a dishonorable thing. The idea that he owes them, uh, the first shot at what his information is, is ridiculous. I'm glad that those people that quality and their education levels, their esteem are digging into this and taking a look at it, but there's only so far they're empowered to go and they work for ODNI, which, you know, you and I have had a mixed bag of experiences with ODNI, right?

52:02 Yeah. And that's the thing. Like I speak with a number of the people on the scientific panel and they're oftentimes complaining to me about how their hands are bound and they don't have access to good information. And, you know, I, and my response is, well, you report to ODNI, they're going to hand feed you certain things so that you end up, you know, kind of being their mouthpiece and they're all kind of aware of it. They're trying to change things from the inside, but again, they've got really bright minds involved. And I do hope that they, they get some success with that, but I know that the deck is stacked against them and definitely Jay Stratton briefing them is not his top priority. That's like circular briefing. Like he's already in there, you know, doing much bigger reporting. Uh, I, I wish they empowered the scientific coalition or that committee, um, with better information and they all know they're not getting it. So I, I, I think it's a setup from the beginning. Some of them agree with me, even the ones that work on it, but again, we have good people in there and I hope that they can like Gary Nolan, and I hope that they can push from the

53:02 inside. There's so much footage that never gets out to the public. You know, we are so lucky when we obtain certain things and kind of force the release of them. Um, but I, again, I think we're in a different orbit now. I think we're in a place where, um, these bigger claims, both by Jay Stratton, by, by David Grush, by Eric Davis, by Hal Puthoff, those things need to be addressed. Crash retrievals and biologics. Fingers crossed, man. We got to keep fighting for it. Yeah. You know, I, I did not see yet the full Dave Grush on Rogan show, have heard plenty about it, have heard speculation that maybe Dave was trying to undercut the book by coming out when saying some, uh, hugely important stuff that, that dwarfs the release of Jay's book. He did it on purpose. That's not my understanding of how the Rogan show works. You don't just get to pick that date. Hey, I'd like to go on two days before Jay's book comes out. Sure. Come on, Dave. I don't think that that was the purpose. People should remember Dave Grush was given that assignment by Jay

54:03 Stratton. Jay Stratton was head of the UAP task course. He finds Grush who has a brilliant mind and he has the clearances to go after it. And he said, go get it. And he got it. He found it. So yeah, that's just drama. People creating drama. David Grush is telling you how he understands it. Look, his big revelation was that he saw video footage of a crash retrieval in a skiff, official capacity with bodies on the floor. I mean, that's pretty wild, but it's not something he went out to do to undercut Jay's book. It's all cumulative knowledge. And just like anybody that makes a claim, you have to look at it and try to verify it. It doesn't matter what position they're in, but I'm, I'm glad we have these people coming forward. I never thought we'd see this day, but we're seeing it now where people are coming forward and we have stuff to verify. We have stuff we can go after and try to verify. And apparently it's video footage of alien bodies. Well, Out of the Shadows is out. It went to number three on the New York Times bestseller list almost immediately. If you're into this topic, you got to check it out. And I would say I'm

55:03 putting a plug in for Skinwalkers at the Pentagon. Read it again and know that the guy Axelrod, who's identified in this book is now known to be Jay Stratton as many of our friends had guessed, uh, but which had never been confirmed until now. So anyway, that book might not have sold. Well, the Caskey's, you know, third book where he describes a lot of stuff in technical detail might not have been a big seller, but I bet you George, when the OSAP files, whatever the DIA actually has, which I'm on the hunt to find out what it is they say they found. But if that comes out, people are going to use that book as a reference to understand a lot of the documents. So I think it'll have like a second life of importance in the world. Lekatsky has done more for UFO transparency than I even understood at the beginning. And I think that will become obvious as time rolls on. So I, I'm encouraged again, George. Thanks for that. I'm trying to be pessimistic, but it's hard. It's hard. I'll talk to you.