UAP & National Security: Mellon, Gallaudet, von Rennenkampff & McConnell at Disclosure Forum 2026

0:00 So our next panel is security and defense, national security, UAP, and emerging threats. On this panel, this panel will be moderated by Gotti Schwartz, correspondent from NBC. To our ships, what happens night two, night three, night four, based on your information, Chris? Surprisingly, when they came to brief the Congress, my understanding is they said they did not have any video of these objects, even though this had been going on for 17 days. I think it's another example of the lack of preparedness that we sometimes has come to light, as it did on 9-11, where we didn't have a plan for civilian airliners being hijacked. We're used to still thinking, and we need to

1:00 grow from this standpoint, that the oceans give us this great protection, and we don't have to worry so much about the homeland. Well, now we're seeing this happen. This is not a singular event. Matt Ford was talking about what happened in 2019-2020 out west. That went on for months, and it was crazy. I mean, we're talking swarms of unidentified objects and a mothership coming in and them going inside it and that thing taking off at lightning speed. So there's a lot of very intrusive activity that is unlike what we've seen before. After World War II, we had around a lot of our premier bases and facilities, particularly nuclear ones, a lot of activity. But this is really getting more sort of in your face and more persistent in many cases. We've had some of these things fly up in front of a Navy ship and apparently shine a

2:01 light right on the bridge, right into the faces of the boat. So it's like, we're here. You can't do anything about it. And so this represents a more provocative pattern than we've seen before. I can't tell you what happened day three, day four, except that I do know they did start to reach out for other assets. They got a plane with special sensors from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which they deployed. They started reacting with some fighter patrols and things like that, but ultimately they were not successful. You know, one of the things that I always come back to is, and I know this sounds trite, but it's the shrug. There's a shrug that happens where it's like, well, we don't know. You know, what else do you want us to do? You were just talking about the oceans, Admiral. If something like this happens and there is a craft that is beaming a light onto the deck of one of the most powerful ships on planet

3:01 Earth, where does that shrug come in? Is there a shrug or does this go all the way to the top into this darkness where, you know, maybe there are people that are actually in the know? Thanks, Scotty. Well, from my experience operationally, having served on an aircraft carrier and amphibious assault ship and other fleet command ship that I never saw a shrug. It was always reported whenever we saw something in our airspace or water space. And actually, I'd like to turn to the ocean. You had mentioned that we have a sense of security because we have these oceans that bound us. But the reality is that we're seeing these objects in the water. And I've had some marine officers come to me and talk about objects traveling at speeds in excess of 50 knots, closing with constant bearing, decreasing range, and having them to order emergency deep maneuvers to evade. And then the objects slowed down and then trailed them for a time. And this is three submarine officers, very

4:02 credible. So our oceans aren't as secure as we might think, too. And in all those cases, though, they are reported up to higher headquarters. Higher headquarters, though, if something like that happens and you'd expect that to go to the Tippity Joint Chiefs of Staff, I mean, that sounds like a full stop. Let's put all resources, all assets on this. And to our knowledge, that doesn't happen for some reason. Well, this does happen. In fact, I have a friend who stood watch in the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon, which is the watch floor for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, and the President. And they take reports from all the combatant commanders. And in fact, when there was that Alaska UAP following the Chinese balloon, that was reported up to my buddy who was on watch. Now, a lot of those comms are classified. So the President knows. These are reported. And what's done about it is another story.

5:03 I oscillate, as one does when you grapple with this. I oscillate between the possibility that, you know, the credibility of the people that have come forward is pretty impressive. But it does seem that there is some sort of conspiracy cover-up. I just don't know what the nature is. It's either the government knows a lot and doesn't want to share how much they know, or the government knows little and wants to cover up their ignorance. And now we live in a day and age where we're starting to see what looks like the government saying, hey, actually, we don't know. Here's a bunch of the files. You guys look for yourself. But what camps do you all fall in? Do you think that there are repositories within the government that actually fully understand the phenomena? Or is this a circumstance of everybody is just out of their depth when it comes to UAP? Go ahead, Kirk.

6:06 I guess what I would like to say on this topic is from my 37 years up here in national security and eight years before that for a national security consulting company is when the United States government sees, perceives something that is potentially a threat, they don't ignore it. The national security establishment goes after problems, right? They may not do it perfectly. They may not do it successfully. But they don't just ignore stuff. That's my experience. So do you think that they have solved the Langley issue? That's a different, two questions. I think they will have taken this very seriously over decades and studied it, studied the hell out of it. Whether they've succeeded in unraveling what it is and how it works and that sort of thing is a different question. We have reports from, you know, insiders, a

7:08 large number of people who say, yeah, progress has really not been very significant. But, you know, you certainly have other reporting that suggests that that's not true, that there have been some really notable successes. I personally, it's just an opinion, but I think that these black triangles that fly around, I think they're probably ours, just from the circumstances of some of the eyewitness accounts, from Eglin Air Force Base, you know, from Langley Air Force Base. Dylan Borland was smoking a cigarette on And from the other side of the fence at NASA Langley, he sees this huge black triangle rising up seemingly out of a big building there. And we have other reports from a naval officer. I think Chris knows this gentleman who was

8:10 driving to work at 530 in the morning right outside of Norfolk. And he's looking at his sunroof, and there's this huge black triangle flying low right above him at 50 miles an hour down the interstate, you know. So, you know, is this a UAP, an NHI, that's just, you know, cruising along at dawn around Norfolk Air Force bases? I kind of doubt it, but who knows? And this is part of the problem with disclosure is we don't know enough to predict at this point all the national security ramifications until we know what the hell the government knows or doesn't know. Mark, I mean, what camp do you fall in? Does the government know a lot or does the government know a little bit and are covering their asses here? It's a good question. I will, I'll maybe defer to the rest of the panel on that specific question. I want to add just a couple more elements to

9:11 the Langley story in this broader narrative that we're seeing of these, quote unquote, drone incursions. At Langley, again, 17 nights, these objects were displaying bright flashing lights. And that's the base commander there, commander of air combat command, called it close encounters at Langley because they had bright flashing lights. That's not how you do espionage or surveillance, right? That, that is, that is, that's breaking rule number one of surveillance if this is a foreign, foreign entity. I'll add that former NORAD commander, General Glenn Van Herc, said on 60 Minutes openly that they attempted to jam these, these objects and failed, failed. They couldn't get eyeballs, couldn't jam them, and yet they're operating over a key air defense facility right here off the East Coast. And that's, I want to just add on the, kind of on the analytics side, we saw these, these bright flashing lights occurring for months off the coast of Southern California. I think that, you know, the, the FOIA

10:11 documents show that this is going on from at least March until July of 2019. Several months, these objects swarming these naval warships, LCS ships, right? The, the, the newest ships in our, some of the most advanced ships in our inventory. And thanks to Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp, we have video footage. We have radar data from the USS Omaha incident, which is very perplexing because it shows what appears to be a spherical object. And, you know, the, the debunkers have, have put up any number of, of nonsense theories for that. When you actually do the analysis, you, it looks like a spherical object moving against the wind and going into the water. So, um, you add in the events, uh, over the UK, there are several bases in the UK. And, in 2024, um, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was shut down. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, some folks might know that name, was shut down in 2024 because of drone activity. And, and thanks to John Greenwald's FOIA work, we know that at least, I think they,

11:12 they counted at least 15 to 30 objects on radar, right? These are radar hits. So, we have a major problem. I'm going to, again, defer on the, does the government know more or less about this to the rest of the panel? I just want to add some color to how extraordinary these incidents really are. If these, if these, and, you know, it's not necessarily just an if these, uh, things are happening as they are, uh, but there is a thought experiment that has to be done. And, again, not to trivialize this, uh, but if these things do constitute something that is so far beyond the capabilities that, that humans have, uh, you know, there's an interdimensional elephant, I think, in the room, uh, as we've seen over the last week, at least, or so, that has now been very much introduced into the mainstream conversation, even though many people have been talking about it before then. But the question is, uh, we're here celebrating 250 years. Let's say, uh, for the sake of this thought experiment, that 250 years ago, we were able

12:14 to send back drones to fly over some of the battles that were happening between us and the British, right? And, uh, the, the Continental Army saw these drones up in the sky, and, and maybe one crashed, and they took it to George Washington. Or, actually, I think, in this case, we would be the British because of our military superiority, but for the sake of the analogy, they have this drone, there are sightings, villagers have seen them, some of the founding fathers have seen them. I cannot, in this thought experiment, ever see George Washington or anybody else that is involved in the military doing any sort of disclosure because of the ramifications that would come from that disclosure. They would not know whether it was the British, they would not know what they were looking at, and some people would think it was witchcraft. And, and so, the question is, if that is what's happening right now, what incentive does the military have in disclosing this to the public? Chris?

13:14 Yeah, I don't think the military has a strong incentive to disclose this to the public. Uh, to some degree, it's unfortunate, and when they created the classification guide for, for UAP, um, they sort of put down a blanket, uh, statement that essentially anything UAP-related was going to be classified. And I think it was very short-sighted, it was the typical, uh, institutional desire to protect military secrets, which is understandable, but I think what they missed was that so much of the energy that was leading to greater support from Congress and greater funding, uh, to study the problem and take action was the result of information reaching the American people. Um, when we look at what happened with Sputnik, for example, imagine if the intelligence agencies had kept that secret. We might not have got to the moon when we

14:15 did. The, the military needs the public to understand what its challenges are and to build the support here for the funding and the requirements, et cetera. So I think, um, the, the, the rank and file, the, the, the, the usual sort of routine response is don't share anything, lock everything down. And it's, it's understandable that's the culture, but I think the, the seniors need to make some important exceptions to that. And, and if I may push back just a little bit, if, and again, we're, we're assuming, let's just assume that, uh, interdimensional abilities or, or even, you know, interplanetary abilities are on the table right now. And, and, and, and, and when you apply that to national security, all of a sudden, you know, the idea of full disclosure, the idea of actually, this is how we think, uh, you can travel interdimensionally or, or, or any

15:16 of those things opens up a whole host of issues on, well, can I teleport this into here? Can I teleport this person over here? Like that, that seems to be such a massive game changer to the point that it makes national security, uh, relatively moot. Is that something that comes into the conversation? Are there lines that maybe should not be crossed when it comes to disclosure and national security? If we are dealing with that type of technology, Tim? Well, yeah, God, Ian, first of all, I think that's been the incentive, um, since past World War II. To, for government, our government, not to disclose because no administration wants to admit that it's, it's vulnerable and can't protect its citizens. And that the billions of dollars we spend for the Pentagon is potentially useless to, uh, this unknown, possibly adversary. So that, that, that's, that's true. But then there's a balance because our public deserves to know what their taxpayer dollars are being used for and how, how good

16:17 our defense system is, for example, or not. And, and, and so that's, that's the edge I think we're walking on here and all of us in the room are, are advocating for, uh, and I see Avi Loves here. So we have a science advisory council that's been established and, and, and thankfully we now have the support of the administration to go and answer some of these questions. I can't wait to see that panel and hear hopefully a little bit more about where things stand with interdimensional travel and, uh, and in science right now. Because, you know, unfalsibility is, is really anything that's unfalsifiable is, is something that, you know, we try to, we try to, we try to, doesn't mean it's necessarily true or untrue. We just have to be careful about those conversations, uh, and yet when it does come to thought experiments and, and playing things out, uh, the idea of, uh, this seems like, if these things are true, this seems like fire. This seems like humans don't understand what fire is, have never seen fire, don't even

17:17 know that they can cook. They don't know about thermal dynamics. They don't know about anything. And there is this technology that may be kept away from humans, which we all, I think, agree should have a right to. Uh, and yet if that is what's behind the disclosure wall, uh, Mark, do you think we're ever going to see that? Um, I think, you know, if, if, um, the efforts here in Congress bear fruition and if the, um, you know, I think that the critical matter that is building up in interest, especially with the, the presidentially, uh, directed releases that we've seen, I think it's possible that we'll break through in some respect. I can't tell you how far that will go. How about you, how about you, Kirk? Do you think that if there is something as game changing as, you know, as we can understand it, fire, that is on the other side of disclosure, where it is some sort of breakthrough understanding of how the universe works, uh, that it could, uh, render entire nations

18:17 completely moot, there will be disclosure? Well, you know, this is, I'm sorry, um, you know, this gets back to, uh, the critical question of what's behind the disclosure wall, you know, what is there? Is it, uh, is it, uh, is it the kind of technology that is, uh, that, that you, uh, are alluding to, um, but more importantly, perhaps, is, is it technology that is easily mastered? If it's really, really hard, look, nuclear weapons are incredibly dangerous, you could devastate the whole world, but we were able to apply it to commercial, uh, uh, uses, um, by the, the sheer difficulty of engineering a huge enterprise to mine uranium, to enrich it, to, you, take a react, build a reactor and make plutonium, uh, and, you know, tritium

19:18 and heavy water plants. There's, there's, there's, there's a lot of difficult engineering steps in practice to, to make something that is so dangerous. Uh, so how hard is it going to be and what are the observables? Can you control it? These are the kinds of calculations that I think the government will have to, and the public will have to wrestle with once we get on the other side and try to, and, and get some understanding of what's going on. But look, uh, you know, if, if this is really dangerous stuff and if it's easily proliferated or easily mastered, then, you know, you've got a problem. Given the state of, uh, humanity's, uh, level of, uh, of, of consciousness, you know, we, we fight with each other and, uh, we have lunatics in the world who will, who will just as soon blow it up under some circumstances. So these are really difficult questions, but you know, you can't just have it bottled up and in one little place in the, in the, in,

20:19 in, in, in a country and, uh, and, and perpetuate that forever. Everybody has to share in this decision-making. Chris, I want to bring you in as the man who opened up Pandora's box. I know that's why I try to make the case. It's going to be a good thing. Uh, but what I was going to say is that, you know, we think about say nuclear weapons in the Manhattan project. We kept it, a lid on it until we mastered the technology. You're, if we have something that's a total game changer, then probably at some point we're going to want our adversaries to know it's not a deterrent. If, if it's totally secret and they don't know about it. Um, so there may be a point in time at which we, we want to, uh, uh, the, the country makes a decision to take that out, to deter aggression against the United States. That's conceivable. Um, so I don't know. I think they have to, you know, they, they,

21:19 if they have some technology, how, uh, developed is it? How reliable is it? When they get to a certain point, they might actually have an incentive to want other countries to know that we possess that capability. And, and I want to add to that too. Uh, one argument for disclosure to some degree is to harness the power of the American R and D enterprise. And so like nuclear power, once we mastered it, we then put it out to the national labs and industry. And, and we've been using nuclear power and when, and industries building nuclear powered ships and, and submarines. So I think that's an argument. And, and we, again, our science advisory council is, is here to, to make that case and open up the, the phenomenon to more research that we can hopefully capitalize on from a security standpoint and an economic prosperity standpoint. So much of this overlaps, like in eerily overlaps with the issue of artificial intelligence that we now grapple with.

22:21 That's non-human intelligence. Uh, it is something that was released to the public very quickly. Uh, we don't fully understand the ramifications. We see the government trying to rein it in, uh, and, and doing this odd dance. We're grappling with regulation. We're grappling with all these things as a society right now. Uh, Mark, do you see a lot of overlaps between that and UAP? I, I, I absolutely do. And, and maybe at the risk of, um, you know, opening up a second Pandora's box, um, you know, I think we've heard from enough whistleblowers, David Grush, Jim Lekatsky, uh, Hal Puthoff, Dr. Eric Davis, um, Colonel Carl Nell that have all suggested or alleged. And this is also reflected in congressional legislation that other nations have also potentially retrieved this technology. And I think it's the height of irresponsibility not to have a very, very nuanced discussion of what the potential ramifications of that may be.

23:21 If there is someday some kind of a disclosure, we need to have a policy in place because I don't think, and as I've emailed the group here, I don't think we're magically going to sing Kumbaya, uh, once, you know, once Trump or Xi or, or, or Putin announce the existence of non-human intelligence. If that is true. If, and again, we have to engage in that scenario planning, I'm sure Admiral Gallaudet knows that the military must, you know, it plans for any possible contingency. And I think this is an incredibly important discussion. So, and again, at the risk of, uh, going down a rabbit hole, let's imagine that China and Russia have retrieved Kraft. Let's imagine that Xi, uh, instructs, uh, all of his, his scientific talent, scientific capital, or Putin does the same thing, uh, to work on this problem. And, oh, by the way, they, they have mastered cheap AI technology and can, uh, reverse engineer and make sense of this technology much more rapidly than we can. What happens if one day, and Secretary Rubio has spoken openly about this, what happens

24:23 if one day we wake up and the Chinese have, uh, or the Russians have a national ballistic missile defense system based on this technology? And, oh, by the way, they also have an offensive capability and we're stuck without that capability. That is an enormous, enormous, not only a national security risk, but a global security risk. So, I'll, I'll just throw that to the, to the group. What happens if we are ever in that situation? I think that discussion must be had. I think the discussion also must be had, uh, about how, what it would take for a kumbaya moment. Uh, up until now, uh, we've seen, I don't know if it's menacing behavior, but definitely, hey, like, we see that you see us or whatever it is. Uh, but has there been, uh, an aggressive intent or, or, or even a lethal intent ever detected, uh, from your all knowledge, uh, a UAP incident in which there was some sort of, uh, aggressive intent aimed at military

25:25 service members or, or, or perhaps civilians? We've had radar jamming and that kind of thing, which is a serious matter. It's a serious matter to humans. I mean, the military views that as an act of aggression. Uh, that's not something that, that our aircraft and aircraft from other nations engage in, uh, lightly. So there is that back in the fifties, there were a couple, it was one incident at least where a U.S. fighter aircraft merged on radar with the UAP. He had never came back. Um, nobody knows what happened. Uh, this plane disappeared over the Great Lakes, but I'm not aware of any, uh, lethal hostility, um, other than that historical event. But, and then that, that, that's regarding U.S. platforms. Uh, I have no knowledge either. However, it's too well documented in the ATIP, OSAP, and UAP task force, uh, investigations funded over tens of millions of dollars.

26:25 And Lou Elizondo is in the room, can speak to this, and he wrote about it, that there are individuals who have encountered UAP and had anomalous health effects. So that, that's real too. Uh, and we certainly cannot claim they're all benevolent. Um, when you know that data is real. If there, if there was such an action that was detected by one of the world's superpowers, do you think that that might be, uh, a catalyst for Putin and Xi and President Trump to, to talk about this together? I mean, that, that gets to, uh, Chris's opening remarks about the, the famous Reagan comments at, at the UN in 1987. And, and fun little historical fact, um, when 1985, when Reagan first met the new premier Gorbachev, uh, in Geneva, and one of their, I think it was their first summit, um, Cold War tensions were really at, at, at, at their height. It was a, it was a very tense moment in the Cold War. And, um, Reagan and Gorbachev, it just

27:26 finished a really intense series of meetings. And it's, you know, it's tough going, they're having a hard time, they're not getting along, they're not, they're not making any progress. And they, they go for a walk, just the two of them. And Reagan asks Gorbachev, just kind of on an, on an offhand manner, hey, uh, you know, if some, some aliens came around and, and attacked us, would you, would you come and help us? And, and Gorbachev says, no doubt about it. And Reagan says, wow, cool, so would we. And, and they, they shared a little chuckle. And that, you know, that, that kind of broke the ice between these two leaders. And, you know, any historians of the Cold War will know that's, that, that's what led to perestroika, glasnost. So, um, you know, there, there is precedent with Reagan's commentary. Reagan obviously viewed as the ultimate Cold Warrior, the, the ultimate, um, national security mindset. But he, you know, clearly had an openness to, to what Chris, again, alluded to in his comments, his opening comments, that maybe there is room, uh, for, for some kind of negotiation discussion, um, if there is a legitimate perceived threat from any kind of. It's so ironic that that was one of the

28:27 things that started thawing this, because the entire reason why we're having this discussion is national security. It's because humans have been at war with other humans and have been worried about some sort of, uh, technological advantage. Uh, Kirk, if, if there was something, you know, whether it's a direct connection between some sort of non-human intelligence and a leader, governments, some sort of, uh, something public. Do you think that, uh, do you think that the world is, is right now set up to be able to adapt to that type of paradigm shift? Uh, is this on? Yes. Well, uh, you know, there's a mixed record, uh, historically on analogous kinds of situations. Um, certainly indigenous peoples around the world, um, in their encounters with European colonizers, for example, always came out on the bad end of things, um, and to say the least. And, uh, what's more that they tended to

29:30 fracture or remain fractured. Like we certainly saw this, um, here in, uh, North America where, uh, you know, tribes, instead of coalescing and fighting a common invader, uh, you know, from Europe, uh, they would make deals, right? Uh, in some areas, uh, countries in Europe, for instance, have practiced a sort of balance of power. They see some great power emerge and they band together to resist that, uh, that great power. In the Pacific, uh, we really don't have any tradition, uh, of that amongst the nations there. So it's really hard to build a NATO-like, uh, defense, uh, structure in, in the Far East. Uh, but, you know, we have examples of both things. Faced with a common foe, uh, uh, nations sometimes will band together, right? But that means that the perception is that this is a really hostile, uh, hostile,

30:31 aggressive, uh, foe. So is that the model that we, that we, uh, that we hope is gonna, is gonna happen to, it has to be a dangerous situation for us to overcome our differences? Or, uh, is it possible that this is gonna be a non-threatening, uh, uh, uh, uh, beings and that, uh, maybe they'll just help us raise our, uh, raise our, our consciousness level, our level of, of morality and, uh, and we'll start to get along better by the example of these intergalactic visitors or interdimensional visitors. I think that's, you know, again, not to bring the shrug back, but, uh, if there is some sort of hostile intent, all of a sudden it's very different than, uh, if something is flying around and, you know, maybe surveilling, but not necessarily, uh, acting aggressively. Uh, but in the absence of that sort of, uh, first of all, I mean, uh, are we prepared if

31:32 there is some sort of aggressive action taken, uh, admiral? I mean, is that, is that something that, I don't know, exists in, uh, the, the deep recesses of military planning? That's a great question. As far as, uh, preparedness, uh, measures and, uh, op orders and whatnot, I, I know of none for the, the phenomena, uh, and there, now, granted, I, I've been run into compartmental programs, but not in all of them. In fact, Dave Rush would be the best one to ask, but, uh, but I, I, I don't think so. In fact, I'll share an anecdote. Um, Chase Stratton is a friend. He worked in naval intelligence when I was in the Pentagon, and, and I'm a friend with several directors, former directors. of naval intelligence, and, uh, I had a meeting with, with one of my buddies who just retired out of that office, two-star admiral, and we were talking about business, but at the end of it, I brought up UAP, and, and he was honest with me, and he said, we, we still don't know what these are. So, and of course, ATIP and OSAP and the UAP

32:33 task force, again, did research, did monitoring, um, but I'm, I'm, I think the government is still trying to come to grips, and, uh, and that's what we're going to be doing, hopefully with some, a major R&D effort. If, if I could just calibrate, because again, all of these conversations, uh, everyone's on a different place in the spectrum of where we, how we see this right now, but just to calibrate the table here, uh, the big question is, do you think that there are factions of the government that truly understand the nature of what we're seeing? And I'll just, yes or no, all the way down. Uh, Chris? If there are, I've not encountered them. How about you, ATIP? Same. I don't know. I'm going to agree with, uh, the rest of the group. Uh, unfortunately, I think that the government knows a lot. Three, okay. So it's three, probably, probably four to one, because I, again, this is one of those things that-

33:33 I agree with Kirk. I think the government knows a lot, but- The true nature of- Do they have a deep understanding of where this is from, what their values might be, the culture, the origin, all of those kind of things? Not as far as I know. Yeah, and I can say this, too, um, based on Kirk, and that, uh, and I, I'm sure that it's, it's siloed like everything else in the government, and a good example is this, um, Sam Gerbis is in the room. He's done some research, and he's, he's pulled out, um, I believe, verification that there's an entity called the National Underwater Reconnaissance Office, and Bobby Ray Inman, Director of National Intelligence, spoke about it. Here I was, the oceanographer of the Navy, the head oceanographer of the Navy, and, uh, high clearances, TSSCI compartmental programs, and I was never read into that. So you, you have that kind of siloing, and I would probably help that office quite a bit with our data and knowledge. So there's the siloing that exists in the

34:33 government, and it's, and it's continually an effort to, for administrations to try to break those down. It was so interesting to hear, I think it was Representative Burleson who said, you know, there is, uh, we forgot how to do this, or we forgot how to do that, and when you look back at, at the phenomenon, it seems to go back to the 1940s, 1950s. There are allegations that, uh, you know, private contractors have come in, and, and that would also help explain why it seems as though there are many in the government that have no idea about any of this and are very dismissive, uh, in terms of active funding, though, for those things, they have to have an SAP, they have to have some sort of, uh, access to either private capital or access to, to our tax dollars. Uh, how does the SAP, uh, process work when it comes to protecting our national secrets and when it comes to protecting things that,

35:35 you know, have been overlooked for decades and decades and decades? Well, we actually have an, it varies by agency and department, um, but we do have a very, uh, extensive system in the Defense Department for bringing all the SAPs together in one place under one committee, they're all reviewed, they're reported to Congress, um, I sat on that committee, I never saw anything related to UAP. It doesn't mean there aren't the things outside of that, there are things called alternative compensatory control mechanisms, there are other workarounds that sometimes people put into effect, um, or some people may just not be compliant, uh, and not, not register their, their program with the SAP oversight system. But we actually have a pretty, pretty, pretty robust active system for accounting for all these things that monitor them. I will also tell you that people who think the government can't keep a secret are absolutely wrong. Uh, the government keeps all hundreds of

36:36 these SAP programs. And in my experience, not a single one of them leaked except for one that we used in combat, which was therefore exposed to the press and the media and got in Newsweek and whatever. But all those other programs remained completely under lock and key and completely unknown. And they were not things that, uh, the public would have a problem with. They were mostly just very technical things like, you know, how do you make a tank armor tougher? How do you make a missile warhead more effective? It's that kind of stuff. So it's not really even very press worthy necessarily, but it's stuff you don't want your adversaries to know. And yet, if there was truly some sort of crash retrieval program or some sort of, I mean, you're talking like the amount of money you would have to hide for something like that to exist? One of the other stories is they gave up trying to redo the, uh, uh, one of the main sources that we had initially on crash retrieval was that they closed the program

37:39 down because they were making no headway and they were spending a lot of money. Tell me more and tell me everything about this. Well, we, there's some other people in the room here that, that, uh, that could speak to that as well. That, um, but that's, that's my, uh, and then they tried to, some other folks tried to make a deal to get them to, to bring some of that out of, uh, as they were closing the program down to take another stab at trying to understand the technology. Um, that's, uh, that's, uh, that's, that's one of the, uh, that one of the people that I first brought to the Hill to, um, raise this issue, uh, back in 2019. That was the story, uh, that was given. If, you know, and again, this is all for me, at least a thought experiment, a very important thought experiment that we should all participate in. But if the government is or was ever in

38:41 possession of, uh, off world or, or non-human craft biologics, whatever the case may be. Again, we go back to the, there is fire that we are not privy to. There is something that is so far beyond, uh, you know, anything we can do with our civilization that would change literally everything. Uh, if that's the case, I know the public polling suggests that people want to know, but if that's the case, do you think that we are ready for that type of disclosure? I do. I think that that's what our polling data is telling us. And, and by the way, I think in terms of the international impact, I don't think you have to have, uh, aggression, lethality or hostility. I think the mere fact that there is a more powerful actor, um, operating in our seas and in our skies, even if nothing changed from the way it is today, that would globally raise all kinds of, uh, concerns.

39:45 And, uh, uh, I think that would affect all of the, the major countries. And I think they would probably come together to talk about it. What do you know? What are you seeing? You know, how can we work together on this? Unless it posed a threat to power. It was really confirmed that, that there is a non-human intelligence operating craft in our atmosphere. I think that would be immediately of immense concern to every major power. Kirk, I want to bring you in here because, you know, again, if, if that is disclosed, like the, the, the one thing that, that would be very vulnerable is, is power as humans understand it. Vulnerable. Yeah. All of a sudden the idea of, of, of rulers or, or democracy or those types of things, you open up that door. And there are a lot of questions about, uh, how we want to be led. Uh, do you think that same question? Do you think that if that is the case, if we're assuming that the crash retrievals, uh, allegations are real, uh,

40:46 and that the United States has possibly been in possession of human, uh, non-human biologics, uh, do you think that the, the power structures on earth are ready for that type of disclosure? Uh, I, I, I don't think I really, uh, have a strong view about that, but I will say that it's, uh, you know, bad news doesn't get better, uh, over, over time. And, uh, you know, people have to buckle up and, uh, and face it. Uh, and I think governments have to do that. So if that's the reality, if that's the reality that we're facing, we're going to have to learn to deal with it. Um, so I, I don't think, uh, I'm anticipating the next question is, well, if we're not ready, should we just put a lid on it? And I, I, I end up thinking, no, we can't, you can't, you shouldn't put a lid on it and pretend that you're not noticing this. Uh,

41:47 but I, I will say this, you know, if, if these, uh, if we are being visited by non-human intelligent beings, uh, interdimensional or intergalactic or whatever, uh, they've probably been here a long time. I think historically there's some evidence to, to make us think that they have been coming here a long time. Um, you know, they're that, if they're that much superior to us, if they meant, uh, to be really aggressive, uh, I think we'd have, we'd have figured that out by now. Um, so, you know, I, I think that's a data point to suggest that, um, that this will, uh, that there's a benign aspect or something that is, uh, keeping these, uh, these, these beings from taking over the place, you know, either they're not interested or they're beyond that. It's like, you know, it's, it's just not something that they engage in or something, uh, has, has, has

42:47 kept us, uh, kept us safe. So I, I have, I have some hope that, uh, that we will, uh, rise to the occasion and, uh, recognize, uh, you know, superior technology and so on. Um, so I, I am hopeful that we can deal with it, but if not, that's not a reason not to face it. We live in such an interesting time. Today is a day that I, and I could, I could truly say this. There's one person that could change all of this like right now, right? Uh, and he's just down the street and he has seemed to have, uh, an interest in all of this. And yet we don't see that we, we, we see, you know, him definitely toying with the, with the topic, but do you think that president Trump is read in on the true nature of what UAP represents or all of the,

43:51 uh, dealings that the United States government has historically had with, with the phenomenon? Well, I can address that partially. So president Trump personally, I, I don't know, but when he took, uh, came in office, we, I met with some of his appointees in the office of undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, I think in development. And, uh, and they were committed to look under the hood and gain control with political appointees of, of the whole UAP, uh, issue. And so, and they were very hell bent on getting the deep state wrestling a topic from them. And, uh, and so I, and I've, I've seen them move out in every other topic area in that way. So I, I seem to think at least there are people in the administration who know. Uh, how far along do you think they might be? Well, I, I was going to say that, um, I spoke with someone on the white house staff about this, who was a, already a supporter of, uh, of

44:53 disclosure who worked directly on, in these areas on, uh, national security and intelligence. And during his tenure there, he's no longer there. The issue never came up that, that he saw. And he was frustrated about it, trying to, to look into it himself, but he was not privy to any briefings that, uh, that touched on, on matters, uh, UAP beyond, uh, sort of meeting some Navy pilots and some more routine, nothing about, you know, crash recovery, that sort of thing. Now, since he left, perhaps there's been other briefings. I don't know. Mark, we, we live in a time when also the, the interest in the, uh, in the topic of UAP has gone into some weird domains. We all think back to what happened when there was a big hype over alien.gov. Uh, and we've seen the issue somewhat politically weaponized, uh, to, to

45:56 focus on illegal immigration. Are you worried about that type of political weaponization of, of something like this? That's a, that's a really good question. I know there's a lot of disappointment when that website was rolled out. I think, you know, a lot of people perhaps rightfully view that as, uh, frankly, an insult to all the whistleblowers who have, have come forward, testified to Congress. Um, some as, you know, Senator, uh, rounds, uh, and Secretary Rubio said it at great cost to themselves. Um, and, um, so look, that, that is disappointing at the end of the day. I think this is, this topic is so much bigger than any kind of what I now see as a distraction. I think this, you know, with, uh, the Spielberg film and again, these tranches of these releases that are coming out. Uh, I do think that there is, I mean, look how full this room is. Look at the, look at the, the venue that we're in here. Um, it's pretty extraordinary to see how this has developed and it's only growing. So I, I feel that a critical mass again is building. And I think those, those distractions, if you will, um, I, I don't think we'll, I hope we'll not let's stop

46:58 progress on this topic. As that critical mass builds, so does the noise around all of this. For those of us who have been following this for pre 2017, you know, it's even for us, it's hard to keep your eye on what, what we're talking about here, right? Uh, now we have AI making things even noisier. Uh, I do wonder how all of that noise affects, uh, the operational lens of, of national security. If all of a sudden you were literally having to track down and trace down every single, uh, report that comes in, uh, and, and you don't have the manpower, is that something that, that should be of concern right now? Well, it's interesting about AI because we are going to be dealing with a super intelligence one way or another. Maybe we'll be dealing with two, but we're certainly going to be dealing with one. And that one's probably a bigger threat

47:58 to your job and your career than, than the other one's going to be. So, um, I, I think we actually probably need, uh, to change our style of government in some degrees. I've tried to, uh, propose something, uh, in an article in Politico recognizing that, um, one, the, the average representative is not a deep technical programmer and that kind of thing, but we have a range of increasingly, uh, technologically demanding sophisticated issues. And I think there's the, uh, there's alternative means for bringing in people with, on a very bipartisan basis that have deep expertise that can formulate policy. And the model that I would use is the base closure realignment commission where Congress said, uh, this is too hard for us. We keep failing at this. We're going to set aside. We're going to pick a group of people from both parties

48:58 who are genuine experts. And those people are not raising money. They're not running for office. They're not getting paid off by special interest groups. And they're going to actually not going to write a commission study that goes on a shelf. They're going to write legislation that's going to automatically become law unless vetoed by the president or two thirds in Congress. And I think the first year they saved $700 million for the taxpayer. It was so successful. They did it three other times. I think it's a very interesting model for the public to think about as we increasingly face issues that are not of the kind that the founding fathers envisioned. And as we think about how our society has evolved into one in which money plays such an overwhelming role in elections and access to our politicians. That makes me think of that, that weird little drone thought experiment, George Washington holding a drone, Benjamin Franklin holding a drone. We'd have a very

49:58 different, uh, society, I think. And yet, and I feel sacrilegious even, uh, bringing this up, but that was for base closures. That was for saving money. That model could be used for other things, but that necessarily for, right. For AI, we'd be good. AI. Yes. Uh, paradigm shifting technological breakthrough. Uh, we need something a little bit more drastic, which, uh, again, very interesting conversation. I'm hoping that you guys will participate here, but do we need a different form of government? Do we need to tweak some of the way that we are governed here in America and beyond, Admiral? Well, there's a lot of room for change and improvement. I'll say that, but, uh, but I think Chris is right. I think we can look at past precedent and apply models that have been successful to, to this problem. Um, but I want to go back to, uh, some of the other discussion, my, my, about whether we should know or not and open this up or put a lid on it. Uh, one

51:00 of my favorite quotes from Chris is, when has ignorance ever been a good national strategy? And, and I think, yeah. Yeah. The, the idea of, you know, explaining that to George Washington and it's like, no, no, there are these things called combustible, you know, engines and, and, and everyone's, you're going to have Uber drivers and like the idea of just gunpowder and those types of things in the hands of just everyday citizens that would boggle the mind. And yet 250 years, we can look back at, at, at the progress that we've made. But Mark, the government question, do we need a different framework? Uh, if this truly is what many people suspect it is? Um, in short, no, I mean, I think democracy is what the, the least bad option of government, right? So, um, I think at the end of the day, um, the system should be answerable to the people. If these allegations,

52:01 again, that have been made under oath from a variety of whistleblowers are true, the system has failed, but that doesn't necessarily mean we overthrow or change the system entirely. Sure. Again, I agree. There could be many tweaks. I think, I think we can all agree money and influence in politics are corrosive. Um, but at the end of the day, I, I don't think we, we throw the baby out with the bathwater or we don't change the entire system. Yeah. And let me point to the good that's being done. I know representative Burleson put in, I think a provision for the 2027 NDAA about, uh, convening, I think a panel to re to review records and release records. Uh, and so that, that's, that's positive. Again, we have now the, the white house, again, I'll make the pitch, the, uh, science advisory council. So that's a positive development. And then you have various record releases under this pursue program, which is revealing some very interesting information and that we're going to work to get more data for. So I think, uh, right now we're at a time where there is positive development. Certainly

53:01 when you look at, go back a decade and compare the two, most of us in this room would never believe we'd be here having this discussion, uh, 10 years ago. And so, uh, right now I think let's just monitor the progress and do the best we can. And then, and then ideas for change will arrive. And Kirk, I mean, again, going back to executive branch, judicial branch, uh, Congress, state's rights. Do you think that that framework is adequate? Do we have enough self-correcting mechanisms in here to be able to deal with, uh, technological advance like many people suggest? Well, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm in agreement with, uh, Mark that, um, uh, for all of our, uh, flaws in the way our government functions, I think it's the best, uh, it's the best model that we have, but I, I would say this, um, what's wrong now is that we're not living up to what our structure is. Uh, the idea that Congress can go 80

54:04 years without officially and, and consistently being part of the, uh, uh, making a policy in the, in an area like this is just unconscionable. Um, and I, I, you can't sugarcoat it. I, I, I'm an institutionalist of, of this institution and this is what offends me as, as, as much as anything about this is keeping Congress out of the picture, out of the decision making process is just, uh, indefensible. And, and all of that is done in the interest of, yeah. And it's, it's fascinating because all of that is, or at least we believe may have been done in the interest of, of national security, right? National security is the great, uh, line that has verboten to cross. Are you all suggesting that national security, maybe, uh, you know, I, I, when we're,

55:07 when we're talking about whistleblower protections and we're talking about, uh, some of the details in the language on, uh, who can come forward and, and what they can say, national security once again comes, uh, right back front and center. Um, how, how do you navigate that when it comes to the specific language and what people are allowed to disclose to the public, to individual members of Congress, and then possibly to the executive? Well, the good news is nobody has ever been prosecuted for bringing classified information to Congress, uh, and presenting it in a secure facility to an appropriate committee. So, um, I would say the, the doors are wide open. They remain open. We're doing everything we can do to encourage people to come forward. And I do think there's room for additional legislation to provide additional compensation or protections to people. Um, here in the disclosure foundation, we have a legal staff that's prepared to provide free

56:08 legal advice to people that may have questions about their rights and, and, uh, obligations. So we're trying to facilitate that in any way we can, but, um, people that have come forward to date, um, uh, none of them have been prosecuted. Uh, they've suffered administrative sort of, uh, blowback in some cases. And, uh, that is, uh, a more difficult, uh, thing to, to shield them from, but I would say right now that's the principal, um, problem that they, that they face if they do come to Congress. And so work can be done in that regard. Yeah. And, uh, in the end of the day, um, we swore an oath to the constitution and we're a government by the people for the people. And so that I think that people have a right to know. Admiral, you, you of all people here, I think at, at the desk, you know, you, you

57:10 took quite, quite a risk in coming forward and, and, and approaching this before it was very mainstream. It's so weird because I keep finding myself in conversations with, I believe the same people that I've been arguing with throughout the years and I'm surrounded. I'm like, wait a minute. I thought I was the one that had to convince you guys to take this stuff seriously. And now you're all just assuming that it's aliens. Like we have to deal with this with nuance. And they're like, wait, are you the skept? And I'm like, I don't, I don't know. But so often it does seem as though, you know, the pendulum has, has swung. Um, and now we have the ability to, to look beyond the stigma, but now that that has happened, do you think that the whistleblower protection, additional whistleblower protections that are being discussed are necessary? Or do you think that this idea of just going straight to your Congress member or going straight to, uh, an executive in, in the correct manner are sufficient to

58:12 bring about more disclosure? Um, well, I, I think, uh, I agree completely with what Chris said is that, uh, you know, there's no case of, of people even attempted to be prosecuted, much less convicted for sharing classified information with Congress in a secure manner. Um, now he also then said, yeah, but they have administrative weapons to apply. And, uh, I would, uh, I, I take that. We all take that incredibly seriously. And it's, it's a real problem. Whistleblower protections are simply inadequate. They just absolutely are ridiculous, ridiculously one-sided. Um, and so this is, uh, this is a real, it is a real problem and it is, is still ongoing today. You'll, you'll lose your job. You'll lose your clearance. Um, you'll, your, your reputation. Uh, it's really difficult to, to,

59:13 uh, to start a new career, you know, uh, from scratch. Um, and you got a family to support, you have yourself to support, uh, it, the deck is a really stacked against, against these people. Um, and, you know, Congress is, has a right, you know, the, the, the way procedures have been set up in law, um, people can come forward and disclose to Congress. It doesn't mean that the Congress has the tools to protect them from reprisals. If, if I may try to strongman the other side of, of that argument, um, let's say all of a sudden we got whistleblower protection that has specific language that has to do with UAP and that becomes the next, well, Hey, I have an HR issue. I hate my boss. Uh, guess what? I now have some language that will protect me that will let me take this all the way on my grievances, all the way to the tippity tippity top. And oh yeah, I definitely was abducted or something along those lines. Right. That does open up the

1:00:15 floodgates, the HR floodgates, uh, that could be out there. Again, I'm so glad that we're having these conversations because this is step two, step three, step four in, in trying to suss out some of the unintended consequences, but that's gotta be a concern, right? Um, I think there is a legitimate concern on the part of the executive branch. It's hard to manage, uh, in my experience, it is challenging to manage a civilian, uh, civil service workforce because you don't have the ability to fire people. And, um, if, you know, to some extent, uh, they're somewhat like tenured academics. And so you have to lead by, you know, hopefully by example or by inspiration, but, uh, they can be a management challenge for people in the executive branch. And if their subordinates are running out, um, you know, it makes me think like there's no, uh, those, those things really chew up the clock. I mean, um, they can, they can take over your, your time and your day and, and sort of, uh,

1:01:18 it's a big deal if one of your subordinates does something like that. There is no HR for UFO Twitter as you guys probably noticed, but I don't think that's a reason not to have whistleblower protection, but I do think it needs to be carefully crafted. Go ahead. Well, I, I would say that, uh, that your reasoning is not, uh, is certainly not unsound. Um, and this has been the rationale I think for, uh, for, uh, that's prevented reforms, uh, to date. Uh, you know, Congress has, it has been reluctant to open the floodgates, right? Uh, waste fraud and abuse has been around forever and people who report that, uh, uh, uh, should be, uh, and, and have been rewarded. Um, but at the same time, you do have this problem of how do you control your, control your

1:02:18 workforce and, uh, and do you let them make frivolous, uh, uh, charges and the like. So it is a problem. Um, uh, and, and you see that Congress is reluctant to really vigorously, uh, reform the whistleblower protection standards. At the same time, I think that, uh, something could be done around this specific issue. Like, you know, you could do set up, uh, uh, uh, a set of protections for this class of whistleblower and you could put a sunset on it. You know, you can give people three years, five years or whatever to come forward. Um, I, uh, I think also there's potentially a role for the private sector to raise money, uh, uh, privately to compensate, uh, people, a restitution fund or something like that. Um, but at some point I think we're going to have to face even the larger question, uh,

1:03:20 like South Africa did, uh, with apartheid is, you know, we're going to need some kind of truth and reconciliation process at the end of this because we've had 80 years of this kind of, uh, suppression. Um, and there's lots of bones buried, I think. And, um, uh, so it's a difficult problem, but again, it's something that we have to figure out a solution for. We also live in a day and age in which the, uh, the gatekeepers are no longer the gatekeepers, uh, from the government all the way down through the media, right? So all of a sudden everybody has access to if things line up the entire population of planet earth, given whatever social media platform you choose. Uh, and, and yet we, we so often think disclosure may come from the government. And then we see things like the bugosphere or, you know, the, the mummies or, and, and, and

1:04:20 again, trying to grapple with what is real, what is not real. Uh, if there is a non-human intelligence, they may not be selective of who they are, uh, disclosing their origin from if they exist. Uh, and, and that type of disclosure may not come from a government. It may come from just anybody on the street. I, I, I, I love that this question because it, it opens up a such an, an incredibly important aspect of this problem. Uh, we have Avi Loeb here. We have other, uh, technical scientific people here, how put off that represent private efforts. Nevermind the hell with the government, you know, let's figure this out ourselves. And, and we're, you know, maybe getting to the point where private sector funding and private sector, uh, acumen and the instruments that are affordable and so on, that, that maybe, uh, we, we can think about, uh, uh, the, the private sector discovering,

1:05:24 uh, things, uh, on its own, uh, uh, without the government. I would also say that some of the people have brought up here today, the people who have, uh, encountered, uh, non-human intelligent beings, either been abducted or close encounters. And, uh, and they have a lot of information. Uh, they've been marginalized and ridiculed for decade upon decade, but they are a repository of, of, of, uh, knowledge about the nature of these, uh, these beings and how they communicate, what they've communicated, why they say they're here, uh, why they say that they're behaving the way they do. So I think there is a great untapped potential for the private sector to pitch in and solve this problem. And yet, with something.

1:06:29 And, and yet with something like that, it comes the, the question of, of filter applying any sort of filter and for myself, I mean, I've had an experience that doesn't pass the, you know, the unfalsifiable threshold there where it's like, okay, I, I just, you know, I don't know. Um, but when you're dealing with that at scale, how do you apply any filter to, to try to suss out the signal from the noise? Merrick? That is, uh, that's the million dollar question from an analytic perspective. And, and I just want to go back to kind of the discussion just now and, and kind of bring this all together. And, um, I think with the latest batch of releases that we've gotten from the, from the, uh, the white house and the government, um, some of you might be familiar with a series of incidents in 2023 occurring at a series of, uh, test ranges out west where, uh, over the

1:07:30 course of several nights, six law enforcement officers observed fiery reddish orbs, these spheres. Fast forward to late last year, 2025. Um, and you had quite literally senior intelligence officials flying around in a helicopter, literally hunting UFOs. They had received word, intel, radar tracks, um, that there was anomalous activity at another range out west. I don't know what that is. Tonopah, China Lake, you can go up and down the list, but apparently this is around one of these sensitive facilities and they're in this helicopter flying around. Um, and all of a sudden you see that these, you know, four, six observers, pilots in, in this helicopter, see these bright reddish orange orbs right above the rotor blades lighting up in a, apparently in a T-shaped formation formation. Um, they, they move on, they get some more radar tracks and they ultimately see their, they've got their night vision goggles on and they, uh, they're,

1:08:32 they know that fighter jets are operating in the area and they, uh, see these bright reddish orange orbs, uh, directly above these fighter jets flaring up and then flaring down. And oh, by the way, the government has released 32, I think, images, infrared images from that second series of events, that helicopter, that helo series. Uh, and guess what? You can see a round object, black, hot, very black, uh, compared to its surroundings. And it's a desert, it's a desert background. So it's not a Starlink flare for, for our, um, you know, for our skeptic friends out there. Um, and oh, by the way, this is the Foo Fighter phenomenon. This goes back to 1945, where, um, I find this truly fascinating. The oldest documents in these, these releases, 1944, 45 described precisely the same phenomenon, the same morphology as the most perplexing recent incidents. So I think that that for, from an

1:09:33 analytic perspective, I see that as a form of soft disclosure. The government is saying we have this one morphology that we are seeing consistently operating in clearly intelligently controlled ways. Um, that is out, that is out there folks. Any, anybody can go on war.gov/UFO and look at this. This is happening live. Um, you know, again, this is only people in the weeds kind of connect these dots, but we're here. This is happening right now. So, um, I probably didn't answer your question, but I did need to highlight that incredible series of events that, um, um, you know, you see consistently, and I'll just add quickly, and I've, I'm one of the weirdos who's gone in and read the raw case reports, project blue book over the years. And guess what? Reddish fiery orbs are ubiquitous in these reports. And I can point to several instances in the 1952 Washington DC flyovers where people saw reddish orange orbs, Foo fighters flying over DC. So, um, this is it. This is happening live. And I think this

1:10:33 is a form of self-disclosure. Yeah. Right. And to go back to your question though, about how do you filter the signal from the noise? Uh, scientific standards is the answer. And so if we get not only private citizen scientists, which I think Kirk was alluding to, but, but academic institutions to mainstream this, this is a problem. The government relies on all sorts of academic institutions and labs and getting them to accept and institutionalize the research of UAP is going to increase our understanding and also make it more palatable for the public. And, and, and that is a movement that's occurring right now. You have it at Harvard, you have, uh, uh, and university of Albany just got funded to study UAP. You have the, the soul foundation at Stanford university and there are others. And so it's, it's, it's, it's happening. It's, it's growing. I think one of the incredible telling things is that those videos have been watched now over a billion times. It's incredible,

1:11:34 incredible the amount of public interest in this topic globally. So I find that very encouraging. And, and, and yet when I watch those videos, like a hawk, I am looking for certain characteristics and some of them come close. And yet that smoking gun eludes us. And if you've covered this for as long as, as I have, or, or you've been dealing with this for as long as you have, there are always rumors about things that could allegedly settle this once and for all immediately, right outside of these doors, we have such and such, or we're going to airdrop this video to everybody right now. And from here on out, we don't have to talk about whether or not this is happening anymore. Are those things real? How close are we to actually seeing things emerging from the ocean or things from 50 feet away from a cockpit or things with high fidelity of physical evidence that could just put this to bed today. Yeah. Um, I, what I can, one thing I can say

1:12:36 is that, that we've helped to, uh, Eric representative Burleson compile lists of specific videos, some of which some of us have seen in a classified setting. Uh, they're not necessarily going to be the, uh, you know, perfect Hollywood, uh, quality video, but I think they, they're better than what's been released and more informative and could help move the needle. Uh, of course, many of them I haven't seen myself, so I, I don't know. So many of them you haven't seen, but have you seen any, have you seen, I have seen some that would, I think move the needle and move the needle or like break it. Um, I think it would be, uh, not necessarily the skeptics are going to be resisting anything up to the point of the president coming out, making an announcement. I don't think it is going to settle the issue. I think that would settle it for them. I think it would, I think it would, I think there's certainly a video that would help move it further, much further in the direction of,

1:13:37 wow, this is kind of crazy and this is hard to explain. And, uh, so, uh, you know, we're actually specifying individual videos and helping the Congress prepare lists of those which are being requested. And it, it, the mood, the needle is already moving tremendously. So on behalf of everybody, thank you guys for this. Uh, Admiral, have you seen anything that would break that needle? No, I'm not seeing. No, I got it. I'm not seeing with my own eyes, even though I, I know people who have, in fact, uh, Chris just mentioned this, uh, now captain, by the way, he's got promoted to captain in the Navy who observed a triangle over the interstate near Norfolk. And these are pretty convincing and I'm, I'm not in the camp to think that that's our technology. So I know people, but not myself. I think that is our, I think that could be our technology, but I would point out that those triangles have been observed since at least the fifties. So it's not just our technology.

1:14:37 It might've been reverse engineered perhaps, but it's, it's not, not historically always been our technology. It doesn't have to be us today. It could be us tomorrow. Okay. Uh, quickly jump in. It's not just the four or five of us talking about black triangles, the former deputy director of the Pentagon's UFO analysis office, the all domain anomaly resolution office, Tim Phillips has said, the two morphologies that perplexed him, freaked him out, are, you guessed it, fiery spheres and black triangles. That's the government. That's, that is a, the deputy director, acting director of that office has specifically said the government is perplexed by black triangles. So, you know, do, do with, do with that, what you will. But I think that is, again, it's not just us talking about that. That is the government. In terms of the, the, the chain of command, uh, when somebody sees something like this and it goes up and it goes up and it goes up, uh, going back to who is, who is in charge of getting

1:15:39 to the bottom of it and who is in charge of just, you know, say, turn it back to the troops and being like, all right, go back to, you know, the status quo, go back to normal life. Because that, that right there seems to be at least for us with the fidelity of the sensors that, that we have, uh, and the access to a lot of classified information. That seems like the choke point. Well, right now their office of director of national intelligence is, is the, the point office, if you will, the point man. And, and that's who we're reporting to in the science advisory council. And, and they're, they're, they're on top of it. And we're, they're, we're sending, we sent them basically information requests, uh, for the different videos and, and reports to gain more, uh, data and metadata to do the analysis I talked about. So right now that that's who's running point on this. Can I quickly just chime in? I thought it was absolutely fascinating to see the FBI get involved. Um, real life X files, by the way. Um, and

1:16:39 they have put out some of the most intriguing products in these releases to be, to be honest with you, you know, the 302 forms, the, the witness interview forms, and they've done, uh, composite sketches. They've created, you know, digital recreations, um, that I, I think it, the more law enforcement, the more analytic eyeballs in the government from various entities and agencies that are on this problem, the better, the more diffuse better. I, I think that again, there, I would hope that curiosity among agent Smith and agent Jones, uh, grows and grows and grows. And, and that there's, you know, kind of, again, this organic growth within the government spread out that can only lead towards hopefully more, more transparency disclosure. Mark, I want to ask you, you know, uh, what, what case was it that brought you into, into all of this? The gimbal case, which, uh, these gentlemen know very well. Um, and I've worked very closely with legitimate real scientists, citizen scientists. Um, there's an enormous amount of data in that video. We can, you know, we know

1:17:40 where the camera's looking. We know where the, where the plane is flying. Um, and we have now found with a very high degree, and I challenge anybody, any scientist that wants to talk with me about this, I can go for days. Um, uh, we have a very high degree of confidence that that object was at that close range described by the aviators, tracked on radar, observed on their, their FLIR sensor. Um, I think Ryan's in the audience here, but we picked his brain quite a bit. Um, and we can reconstruct in 3D the flight path that that object takes. And it does extraordinary maneuvers with no wings, no engines, no exhaust plume, because again, we know how close it is. We know the distance and the range is the most important element of all of these, of these analyses. And through, through multiple different methods, we are able to have high confidence that we know the range that that object is at. And oh, by the way, the government, um, the Pentagon has, has, has said zero. There's no case resolution. They have been silent on that, um, uh, on that incident. And I just want to quickly add, sorry, I can,

1:18:41 I can go on for a while, but Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the former director of the Pentagon's UFO analysis office, told me on two separate occasions that the gimbal object was a balloon reflecting sunlight. You can hear on the audio, the air crew saying it's moving against 120 knot winds. I don't know any balloons that can move against hurricane force winds, number one. Number two, this was at night. That's a balloon reflecting the sunlight at night, moving against 120 knot winds. That's Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick for you, folks. Um, it's, it's, it's told me that twice, twice. And that, oh, by the way, that is the most recognizable UFO footage of all time. And what did the taxpayers pay him to do? Study UFOs. And he's telling me that the most recognizable footage of all time is a balloon moving against hurricane force winds. I don't know what to tell you. Yeah. And, and, and

1:19:43 Chris, again, thank you for opening Pandora's box with, with that video and the others. Uh, Admiral, I want to ask you, same question. Was there a particular case that, that forced you to look at this? I've spoken about this at length, but it was the, uh, go fast video because I, when, before it was declassified that I saw that on the Navy secret network and because when Ryan was flying, uh, off the East coast from the theater, Roosevelt, I had a bunch of wet, uh, meteorologists on that ship and other ships in the, in the strike group during the training exercise. So I was tracking the exercise and I, I got the sipper email and it was from the operations officer. I've told the story a lot, uh, from fleet forces command. And he asked all the subordinate commanders and staff, do you know what these are? We're, we're having near midair collisions in this exercise. We're going to have to shut it down if we, if we don't resolve this. And, uh, and so, yeah, that, that video crossed my desk and I, I know we don't experiment with technology like that in training ranges, especially if it's going to potentially hazard air crew. And, uh, and

1:20:44 then, uh, and Jay, Jay Stratt and I have addressed this. He was involved in getting that video and the email take taken from everybody's computer afterwards, because at the time they were not sure if it was foreign tech or not, but since they've, they've determined it, it was, it was, uh, unexplained and it wasn't foreign tech. Just very quickly, the go fast video occurred 10 minutes before gimbal. And it's the same air crew, same night. There are people that shrug and then there are people that don't. And, uh, you know, that's kind of what leads you down this path. So appreciate that. Uh, same question. Was there a particular case that brought you? I think, I think the case more than any other for me was, uh, was the Tic Tac, uh, incident off Southern California, sitting down with Dave Fravor and Alex Dietrich, those pilots. Uh, and they walked through carefully, uh, the sequence of events. You know, that one

1:21:47 had everything, right? It had, it had, uh, eight sets of eyeballs on, uh, uh, from experienced operators on this object. You had radar from the E2C, the Navy's version of AWACS. You had, uh, the, uh, Aegis radar, uh, uh, getting the thing. You had the radar on the F-18 at one point got it. You had infrared, uh, sensing of this object. Uh, all the same event. You had all these different modalities, uh, sent and different kinds of sensors all across the electromagnetic spectrum. Uh, and it's, it's just an extraordinary event. Um, so yeah, that was early on in our, uh, investigation up here, uh, that, that it was like, okay, this, this is, this is really serious. And Kirk points to

1:22:48 something I think we should probably address in this national security panel. And that is, there's been a running narrative, uh, from individuals, including the aforementioned Dr. Kirkpatrick, that the tick-tack was U.S. tech. And, and so Kirk is fairly convinced that that, that was not our, is unexplainable. And yeah, you know, I've talked to Alex and David and the, the other pilots, myself. And so that, what about that disinformation? It'll be very interesting right now, uh, because with the whole pursuit UFO file drop, the science advisory council, I'm waiting to see if that disinformation effort that the government has sponsored in different offices, if it's going to discontinue or not. I mean, it was it was only very recently that Dr. Kirkpatrick in a, in, in, in Arlington, actually, you know, in person, uh, gave that narrative that it was a DARPA experiment, which, uh, I'm, I can convince you it was otherwise. Well, gosh, we, we have not gotten the hook

1:23:48 yet. So since we're all, you know, it was since we're all here. And I think everybody in here is somewhat on a similar page or at least the same book. Um, when we're talking about the, the Tic Tac incident, there, there are two things that, uh, Commander Fravor said to me that, that have always just stuck in my mind. It's the description of the two circle dog fight, right? Which is a very, a very human thing for something to do. If, if this truly was from a different galaxy or something, the idea of, you know, uh, uh, of, of aft versus nose would not like, it didn't have a front or a back based on the morphology, right? And so the two circle dog fight is one. And then the other thing is the cap point, the teleporting to a facility, like a, a very specific latitude and longitude, right? Of, of what this is. Both of those suggest not necessarily. Uh, I, I mean, again, interdimensional

1:24:49 is difficult and, and intergalactic is difficult and our own technology is also difficult, but those things, they, they muddy the waters for me, not necessarily in discounting the entire thing, but being inconvenient, inconvenient aspects of that story that don't necessarily line up with even the idea of interdimensional or even, even the idea of, of, of off-world technology. Have you all grappled with why? like, why a two circle dog fight? Why this very specific cap point? Well, obviously we see intelligent control and, and some degree of consciousness in, in the involved. And, and, and obviously they, the cap point is some kind of non-local information transfer from the pilots to this phenomena. I, I can't explain that. There are many people who are grappling with this issue, um, in different

1:25:50 circles, like Diane Hennessey Powell, who is, uh, you can look her up. She's a researcher on, on telepathy, of all things. So, consciousness is, is, is the area of studies I think this is invoking. Do you have anything? I mean, look, we're really going in the weeds here, but the tic-tac encounter is, is interesting and, and I still have, you know, a, a five, 10% kind of, um, uh, thought that this might be our tech because commander, uh, Fravor and Alex Dietrich, uh, Lieutenant Dietrich, or I think she's a lieutenant. Um, they recall observing in the video, the higher quality video that was recorded after their incident. They, they recall seeing what they describe as little pitot tubes, right? Which, which generally is, is a measurement instrument that we humans use to measure speed, uh, you know, air, uh,

1:26:50 it's a sensor system that allows us to know about the environment, the aircraft's environment. That's the only thing that was kind of bizarre about that. He, in, you know, in recreations, you can see it. And even the video, if you, if you play around with a little bit, you can actually see those little protrusions. Um, it's perplexing. I don't know. I don't know what that means, but I think to your point, the cap point showing up there, uh, and then engaging in some kind of a, you know, that, that, that two circle dog fight, truly interesting. I don't know what to make of it. I, the thing that I take from it is it's those inconveniences that, that to me make it all ring more true. It's not just a clean story. It's a, but there's this one thing where there are these few things that don't necessarily fit with what your preconceived conception of this could be. Um, and yeah, that's, thank you. We have not gotten the, the, the time, the timer yet, and we could go on with all of these stories. I was, I was saving you for, for last on the, the case that brought you in to this fold. Uh, tell us how it started. Are you a tic-tac case?

1:27:52 No, I'm, I'm, I'm talking about whatever it was that forced you to take this and, and it might be the tic-tac case, but well, and how did it happen? And where here in Washington, D.C., did it go down? And what did it look like? So, um, I was, uh, doing some, uh, uh, unpaid consulting and for, for Navy intelligence and met Lou Elizondo and Lou apprised me of these videos that others, a number of others, a number of which have not been released and we're still trying to get them released and there's no reason they shouldn't be. And, uh, I just couldn't believe that nobody was doing anything about this and nobody was, uh, taking action. Um, normally, for example, if we have Russian bear bombers coming across the, uh, Bering Strait or something, um, you know, we react, message goes up to the National Military Command Center, people are all over it. And this stuff was happening and it wasn't being reported out through, through intelligence

1:28:53 channels, et cetera. So, um, I happen to know two people that were close to General Mattis, um, someone in the White House and, uh, someone on his staff. And, uh, we arranged for, for them to get briefings, uh, by some of the same Navy pilots. And, uh, it still became obvious after several months of, of trying that we were not going to be able to get anybody in the, uh, the five-sided nut house to take action. So, uh, at that point, we faced a choice between doing nothing and walking away or going and breaking the fire alarm box and going to the press and going to Congress. And it was just unacceptable to leave this situation unaddressed to, in my mind. I mean, somebody is accessing, somebody is, is got a technology that we don't have and they're clearly, uh, posing a potential risk to the fleet and other assets. And

1:29:54 it was just unacceptable to, to allow that to continue and not, not do whatever we could to try to, uh, uh, bring some attention to that problem. I mean, this is the origin story that has not been told yet, uh, in, in the detail that I've always wanted it to be told in. So I actually contacted several different outlets to try to get some competition going among them. Not me. Oh, I didn't know you then. Yeah. I was too, yeah, I was too early on my time. And, uh, eventually, uh, the New York times, uh, Helene Cooper and Leslie Kane. And Leslie's somewhere. Your editors agreed to, uh, to run the story. And, uh, uh, and then after that, actually, Kirk is the person I called in Congress, um, because the committees weren't reacting the way I thought they would. I thought when we got this in the newspaper, front page of the New York times, we're done, but it didn't turn out that way.

1:30:56 So, uh, we came down to the hill. I talked to Kirk and he set up a meeting and then that led to bringing in some of the Navy people who were, uh, very impressive to the senators, had, uh, tremendous credibility. And that's when we started to get traction. I feel like Ryan Graves was here, uh, as well as commander Faber. It, it, it, it, it is so phenomenal. It's, it, it is truly something anybody that is in this room to have everyone in this room of all rooms. Uh, it is, it is waited for the guillotine and didn't come. I don't know if you ever foresaw this. I think that you, you obviously hoped for something, but uh, this is surpassed my expectations. And we started on this voyage. I thought, you know, the opposition, the, just the intensity of the stigma was so great and the hostility was so great. It was, it was hard to be truly

1:31:57 optimistic, but we hoped that, that we might start a little fire. And, uh, and here it is. It's starting to rage now. If the stigma is behind us, what do you think happens next? Uh, I think we're going to see continued progress in the months ahead with more data being released from the executive branch. The quality will vary, uh, manage our expectations here. Cause that's good. I think so I would say, hang on. Um, I think there's going to be more, I know there's going to be more efforts to get the president to apply more pressure, to get more information out. And, uh, I'm, I think, you know, obvious science panel will, um, generate pressure on the inside to provide more data. Um, and, and so I'm optimistic, but I would urge people to, to bear in mind that, uh, you know, people want, I want it tomorrow, you know, that's sort of our American culture. I want it, you know, don't give me excuses. Just show me the video of the aliens tomorrow. Um, I don't predict that's going to happen tomorrow. Um, I

1:32:59 predict a little bit of patience is going to be required, but I think we're, we're on the right path. And I think more information will be coming out and I, I'm hopeful. I'm, I'm optimistic over the long term, but I don't know. Is that a year? Is that two years? Is that three years? I don't know. This is a very important question. I think, I think I would argue this is the most important question of this panel. Is there something that you fear could totally derail the disclosure that we've seen so far? Uh, I'm not losing sleep over that. Okay. How about you, Admiral? I agree, Chris. I think there's too much momentum right now in the, in the public and private sector and at universities, as I mentioned, I think it's unstoppable. And by the way, those are all constituents. So if not this administration, the next administration or the next, they're going to be behind what we're calling for today. And we've seen, you know, the efforts and how

1:34:00 bipartisan it appears. Uh, Mark, do you, do you agree or do you think that there is something out there that could potentially derail this? Yeah. I don't, I don't think the toothpaste is going back in the tube. Um, I think, I think the, the momentum, the critical mass is, is there. So I agree with Chris and Tim. Yeah, I am, uh, uh, hopeful in the way that, uh, my colleagues here are, um, at the same time, the history of this is that we were talking about this, uh, over dinner last night is, you know, it's, it's, it's, it has been cyclical. Like you, you reach a certain, uh, apex of interest and attention. And then it, uh, it, uh, the government sort of hunkers down and hangs in there and then it's kind of recedes from public, uh, uh, consciousness. And, uh, and then you, you wait again. I, I, I, I think that we're not in that situation this time. I think that it's going to continue to build and, uh, and lead to the success, but

1:35:02 I am mindful of, of the history here and we can't take it for granted that it's going to just keep going. People have to really continue to work, work, work. Uh, yeah, I, I mean, and, and again, I hate to be the, the one on this side of the table that, that does have a fear, but my fear is the shrug. That shrug is very, very powerful. And the American people, as you said, they want answers today, yesterday, tomorrow, especially for something that happened, you know, uh, half a century ago or, or, or beyond. Uh, and so that, that shrug is a major concern. How do you go about continuing to, to, to keep people's, eye on, on what's happening without, uh, without actually being able to deliver a definitive answer as to what this is? I'll quickly just jump in on, on Kirk's comment about the history of this. And he's absolutely right. There, there is a reason to be pessimistic, but at the end of the day, over the last 80 years, the government never

1:36:02 officially acknowledged any kind of anomaly. Now, those red orb incidents are out there. That is out in the ether. That's out in the open. That has been disclosed. And I don't think there's any coming back from that. That's the fundamental difference, right? There is more data. There is more out there now. Um, or as in the past, again, this is denial, ridicule, obstruction, obfuscation. Well, the, you know, the, the NHI, uh, whoever is coming here gets a vote too. And, and, and, and, and let's hope they, yeah, let's hope they're listening in what they, in how they behave and how they, how they interact with us. And, you know, uh, it seems like the pace of this is, uh, is, uh, is, is sort of picking up. And, uh, so, um, um, you know, that, that can, that can be a source of disclosure right there is, uh, is what, is what they decide to do. Well, I, they, they let our mics work this entire panel. So sounds like they're listening.

1:37:05 I think we've gone over on our time. So, uh, yeah, no, we're good. Thank you so much. Um, we have a few more minutes until, uh, Senator rounds gets here and, uh, I I'll selfishly butt in for a second. I, I think one of the things that we're doing to try and answer that question, um, okay. We know that with these releases, there's over, there's 1.5 billion views on the war.gov slash a UFO site, right? That, that increases the political capital for this topic dramatically. Another thing that increases that is like polling work where we're demonstrating that this is, uh, bipartisan, bicameral, uh, believers, non-believers, people have a deep intuition that they're not being told the truth and they want transparency. I've truly believe in Washington, you could run as a single plat, a single issue platform of transparency and get elected. Like people do not want to be lied to anymore. And that's what our polling data reflects. So in terms

1:38:05 of like the momentum that we have, it's not just information and releases. It's the, it's the push and the pull. It's the, it's the push from the public in terms of political capital. And it's the pull from, uh, the executive branch and having presidential will behind this. And it really, the momentum certainly does not seem to be, um, uh, it is accelerating and not decelerating. Let's hope it continues. Thank you guys so very much. Indeed. Um, thank you so much for it. The other point before, since we do have, I think a few minutes, um, send it around. Oh, send it around is here. Excellent. Okay. Well, let's, uh, let's move on. Thank you so much again to the panel here. Thank you to Gotti Schwartz from NBC.