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["Dvl3 Remix"]

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Hold on.

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You might be wondering why we're rocketing down this road in the middle of nowhere right

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now.

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Let's start over.

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This is a road outside of Rachel, Nevada, known as the Extra-Terrestrial Highway.

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It was a hot day in July, and we were making our way to one of the most infamous UFO-related

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locations in America when we bumped into these guys.

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One of the men, who has a true fascination in secret government installations, brought

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a friend of his to see Area 51.

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Seeing as he had been there before and was willing to lead us there, we said yes.

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On July 8th, the Daily Mail ran a story about a Facebook event titled, Storm Area 51.

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This innocuous, comical little parody event had somehow gathered over 165,000 attendees

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in a matter of hours.

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And in the days to follow, Area 51 would become the center of a meme that didn't want to

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die.

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But then again, the name of the Facebook group is a little disconcerting.

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Storm Area 51, they can't stop all of us.

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Out of the blue, Facebook explodes with this event.

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Storm Area 51, they can't stop us all.

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What is the meaning?

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What is the meaning?

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Aliens.

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We're doing it.

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But honestly.

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I already got my black light tattoos.

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Plus we have the whole Storm Area 51 thing, but I think that guy said don't do it now.

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Yeah, because it had meant to be a prank anyway.

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So okay, with Storm Area 51, if you don't know, on Facebook it started as an event to

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be able to go to.

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It's basically on Storm Area 51.

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There is really no way.

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There's no precedent for this event.

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So there is no way to estimate how many people are going to show up.

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And if you come up to the area, absolutely do not go anywhere near the boundary.

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Range base security will be on high alert.

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They will not be messing around.

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If you go near the boundary, if you even look like you want to cross the boundary, you will

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get arrested.

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Just so happened, the same day that the meme went viral was the very point in time that

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we were making our way to Area 51 itself.

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Unbeknownst to us, while the internet lost its collective mind over Naruto running and

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clapping alien cheeks, we were at the gates of this very real, very serious government

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installation.

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For what I understand, in different websites, states, and southern, the fact that it's about

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a $2,000 to $3,000 fine overnight stay in the Alamo County Jail, your vehicle is put

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in an impound yard about two hours north of here and it's about $100 to $200 a day.

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So basically, they're taking your vehicle and so on.

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This is Nevada National Security site area here, so they don't have to play by the same

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rules as the military.

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They'll give you an ample opportunity to go screw up the rest of your life and then

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they'll stop you.

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Yeah.

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I mean, that building there has completely reflective glass.

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There could be something in there drinking a cup of coffee watching us.

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How many times a day do you think they see people right here or down where the cars are?

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It's going to be the biggest tourist attraction in the year.

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You're right.

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They must just be like twiddling their thumbs.

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When you go to Rachel, it looks like a dust storm back there often with the cars.

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We happen to hit them on a low travel day.

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Can you elaborate a little bit just in case on what your experience is with the military

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and all that?

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Well, I used to be a cop for them and so I was involved in a lot of cool things.

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Not here, but...

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What about conspiracy theories, especially those relating to hidden military bases in

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UFOs?

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20 years with them.

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Research or something like that, I can see, but the other stuff, I don't do the tinfoil

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hat stuff at all.

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You can't escape conspiracies when it comes to ufology.

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Early as soon as Kenneth Arnold cited those strange flying objects in 1947, the culture

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of cover-ups and hidden agendas seemed to seep its way into the subject.

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Today, thanks to shows like The X-Files and Project Blue Book, UFOs and conspiracies are

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intertwined.

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One thing I've noticed about this particular subtopic of the genre is that it seems to

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move far beyond simply the experiencers at the heart of the subject and forces us to

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ask some bigger questions about not just UFOs, but our own government and the world we live

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in.

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The downside is that it often does so at the risk of rational thinking.

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Maybe inevitably, the study of UFOs has become interlaced with conspiracy theories.

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It seems as if the rise of reporting on UFOs coincides with the rise of conspiracy culture,

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and a lot of that has to do with the way that reports were handled by the United States

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government when they came in.

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The original official policy of the Air Force was to deny everything, to conduct studies

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that would attempt to and state fairly clearly that their intention was to explain everything

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away.

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And that gave rise then to a sense that from a public standpoint that we're not being

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told everything that's actually happening.

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You know, I'll preface this by saying I don't think the military gets in there, intelligence

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gets in there, it leads people astray because they don't want to know the truth about UFOs.

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They don't want them to get near sensitive information, whatever that might be, and I

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don't think it really has anything to do with UFOs.

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But the subject can be used to direct people's attention in certain ways, because I don't

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think they exactly know what's going on.

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If they did, we wouldn't hear about it, right?

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Because they'd know, and they wouldn't have to say anything about it.

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A UFO conspiracy doesn't need to involve elaborate plots, shadowy men in black, or any of the

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trappings that pop culture has focused on for the last couple decades now.

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It can be as simple as one person of power choosing to quiet a report of something that

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they simply don't know how to deal with.

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In 1947, something crashed in the desert outside Roswell, New Mexico.

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And in the days that followed the crash, the Air Force made every effort to not only quiet

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the incident, but to bury it entirely.

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Years later, we still don't know what actually happened in Roswell.

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We make every effort by researchers to ascertain proof that it was a crashed saucer that fell

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in the desert.

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It's possible that something unexplained did fall from the sky, and that the real cause

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of all the misinformation, discrediting and quieting of witnesses that took place in the

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years to follow, was that our own government didn't understand what they'd found.

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More identified the wreckage in the Jesse Marcell picture as a mogul ML-307B that had

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been launched from Alamogordo, New Mexico.

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They confirmed a crash would have spread wreckage over a large area.

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And why wouldn't anyone have recognized it?

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But more said no one around Roswell had ever seen one, or was even cleared to know about

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mogul flights.

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Roswell is far from the only case of the U.S. military quieting the reports of a high-profile

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incident involving a UAP.

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And not all of them are based in the United States.

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The Tehran-Iran incident is one that, even for ones that are skeptic, they'll say, well,

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there is maybe something to that.

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So can you describe more about what you saw, or can you talk about that?

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Yeah.

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Tehran is a city in Iran of approximately 2 million people at the time.

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And this happened in September of 1976.

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Over the city, people had started reporting seeing strange lights in the sky.

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More and more calls started to come into the local airport about it.

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And they said, we have nothing up there, so we don't know what this is.

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It then got turned over to the Iranian Air Force.

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A UFO was spotted by not just the local Yocals.

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Turns out it was the Secretary of Defense for Iran, the head of the Iranian Royal Imperial

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Air Force.

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They launched an F-4, which was at that time one of the top fighters in the world.

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So the pilot goes up there, and he is in the area where people had reported seeing this.

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And the closer he got, the more the instruments on his plane started to malfunction.

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As soon as the F-4 electronics locked onto the UFO, the electronics on board the aircraft

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shut down.

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The plane started to fall from the sky.

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As soon as there no longer a threat, all the electronics returned.

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He couldn't communicate and let them know what he was seeing or what was going on.

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So he got pretty scared.

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The closer he got to this thing, these lights, the more things seemed to go wrong.

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So he knew at that point, like, I got a bell.

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I have no weaponry that's working.

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His weaponry malfunction.

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I could run out of fuel if I stay up here too long.

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And no one knows where the hell I actually am.

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In the meantime, the UFO was spotted by two airline pilots.

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Over half a million people, the UFO disappears.

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They recall the fighters and then they spotted it across the city on the mountains on the

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other side of the city.

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It appeared to land.

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So he lands, he reports what he'd seen, he was told not to talk about it.

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The next day he and several investigators from the Iranian Air Force and the CIA in America

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went out to look for whatever that object was that went into the area.

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They never found anything.

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But after that, the CIA, the DIA got involved and it was now an American case.

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We were loaning our planes to the Iranian Air Force at the time.

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So they wanted to know what was outmaneuvering our own technology.

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I would imagine the conversations were not too friendly and that just like always our

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intelligence agencies probably bullied their way in.

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But Parvish Jafari, the guy who was a part of all this, he was told to never talk about

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it and he didn't.

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And that came straight from the CIA at that time.

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While simple intimidation and instruction to secrecy may seem to run counter to the more

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romantic notion of a conspiracy, in UFO circles this sort of case is by far the most common

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and verifiable version of the government actively covering up a UFO sighting.

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The bulk of conspiracies tend to revolve around crashed objects and secret installations.

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While Roswell was the first purported crash to make the mainstream, it wasn't the last

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and it certainly wasn't the only one to involve the government and a military base.

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While Area 51 gets all the attention, it's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton,

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Ohio that comes up far more often in official documents recovered via Freedom of Information

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Act requests involving unknown objects.

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So Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio has long been a focal point of those studying

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the UFO question.

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The fascinating thing is that when we look at that region of the country, of course,

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in Pennsylvania nearby we have a very famous incident, the Kecksburg UFO incident, where

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something crashed and was recovered and also potentially taken to Wright-Patterson Air

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Force Base.

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I remember that night very clearly, December 1965.

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Thursday night I'm listening to a radio station in Pittsburgh and there's breaking news that

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this brilliant fiery object was seen from Ontario, Canada over Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania.

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Some multitudes of people saw the object as it passed over.

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As the evening went on, more information came in that whatever the object was, it apparently

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fell into a water ravine in the low village of Kecksburg in Westmont County.

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Then you had the local farm departments come in searching for a possible downed aircraft

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and then soon after the military arrives.

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And multitudes of witnesses, including reporters on the scene, confirmed the fact that the

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military was here.

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So we know Army and Air Force were involved.

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We later learned from various sources that the object left this area on a large military

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flatback tractor trailer with a tarp over it and went to Lockborn Air Force Base near

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Columbus, Ohio under very heavy guard.

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I was told they backed the truck and the object into a hangar.

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They set up a security perimeter around it and were given a shoot to kill order.

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Do anybody approach that hangar while the proper clearance?

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It stayed there for a short time then continued on to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and

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where it's at today, we don't know.

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A lot of people believe that alien bodies and crash debris were whisked off to Wright-Patterson

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Air Force Base.

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The idea again is that it was secreted away so that it could be kept from the American

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public and so that military specialists could study the hardware and determine exactly what

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we were dealing with and possibly back engineer it has some conspiracy theorists say.

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So how does a conspiracy theory begin its life?

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Is there any way to peel back decades of lies and disinformation to get at the truth of

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what may really be going on?

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In some ways, the only approach available is to simply ask the questions that need asked.

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Questions like, what does the government have to gain from covering up UFOs?

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Where does the cover up originate?

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Where does the cover up take place?

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Or what are we even covering up to begin with?

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I think there's a lot of reasons why the government would conceal UFOs.

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I mean, the most conspiratorial kind of out there fringe idea is that they're in cahoots

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with the aliens and so they don't want us to know.

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The Air Force has been trying to protect us from them over the years and that now they

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kind of have more ability to do that.

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Others have felt that perhaps there's been a trade of technology.

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Some people have said that they allow, the government allows them to abduct people in

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exchange for technology.

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So you are of the camp that we do have materials that or the government has materials that

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have been recovered from UFOs, crashes or do you think that's all some elaborate?

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Allegedly.

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I don't know because I'm not a scientist.

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I haven't seen the parts and like I said, I'm not going to pass judgment on something.

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I'm going to sit there and listen.

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Now I'm going to watch.

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And as far as I can tell, there's pieces, apparently physical pieces of something that

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people say fell off of or came off of some crashed anomalous flying thing.

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Now proponents of that theory point to things like our rapid advancement in technology,

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military hardware like the stealth bomber and so forth.

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They say, oh, there's no way we could have developed that on our own with the place we

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were at technologically.

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You know, it's too much of a leap.

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But over the years, I've kind of felt and others have talked about this too is that,

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you know, if you're a general in the Air Force or in charge of the airspace over the United

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States, how likely would you be to admit that, you know, you don't have control over

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our airspace?

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Even if the public wouldn't freak out just for your own credibility, you wouldn't necessarily

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be too excited about sharing that kind of information.

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It is kind of curious when we look at the details of some of these theories.

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Of course, Area 51, which is constantly in the media, it seems, has long been a focal

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point of some of those conspiracy theories.

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Area 51's fame is so widespread that many completely overlook the true nature and incredible

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actual objective of the place in favor of focusing on its UFO lore instead.

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Its official name is either Groom Lake or Homie Airport.

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Although, obviously, don't try getting a commercial flight into KXTA or you might find yourself

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shot out of the sky.

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The geographical spot of Groom Lake is called Homie Lake.

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Takeoffs are smooth from Groom Lake.

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The land where Area 51 sits today was acquired in 1955 and encompassed 38,400 acres of land.

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Today, it's much larger than that.

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The base is a testing ground for aircraft such as the U-2's biplane, the A-12, and the F-117.

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It's a still functioning facility with a massive number of personnel working on site, though

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most are private contractors who fly out of McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas

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on the infamous unmarked JANET airplanes.

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Today, there's more fiction than reality floating around online regarding the base and

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severing the two is nearly impossible without speaking to someone in the know.

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Most of this was kickstarted in the late 80s by a man named Bob Lazar.

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Hi, I'm Bob Lazar.

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During late 1988 and early 1989, I worked on the propulsion systems of extraterrestrial

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vehicles for the United States government.

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In December of 1988, April of 1989, I worked as a senior staff physicist in what has to

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be the most secret project in history.

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My place of work was a facility at an area known as S-4 on the Nellis Air Force Range

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in central Nevada.

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Area S-4 is located approximately 15 miles south of the infamous Area 51 installation

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at Groom Lake, where the U-2 and SR-71 biplane were developed.

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So just fall of 2019, we see this huge interest in Area 51 and it really took a lot of people

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by surprise, but it's not entirely a new phenomenon.

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Area 51 has captured Americans' hearts and imagination for many years.

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A lot of this started post-Roswell, where there was a debate about where the wreckage

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was being taken and they knew it was taken to a secret government facility and this

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really got solidified with Bob Lazar coming out in the 80s with what was happening at

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S-4 and the testing of alien technology, particularly alien technology as a result of Roswell.

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Area 51, I would call it mythology and when I use the term mythology it doesn't mean

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that it's not necessarily true, but it's a story out there that cannot usually be confirmed.

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And this is one of those where one person came out and said that he worked on back-engineering

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alien technology at Area 51.

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Well of course the rumor was that Bob Lazar was working out there reverse-engineering

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extraterrestrial spacecraft and maybe they possess alien bodies on ice out there, something

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like that.

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Well there's at least one live alien living there.

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There definitely is one live alien, regardless of what Bob says today.

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We're talking about Bob Lazar.

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During December and January, December 1988, January 1989, when he was working out there

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he sat right in that chair.

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Whenever he'd come back from the test site and he'd tell me what he saw.

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Bob Lazar of course came forward in the late 80s and this was at a time when Area 51 was

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being put on the map and that was the place to go if you wanted to see a UFO.

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You have people like Bob Lazar for example coming out making claims in the 1990s about

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having worked at a portion of Area 51 and his claims didn't happen in a vacuum.

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It may happen at a time when news reporting was a major way that people received their

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information.

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He was interviewed by George Knapp, a very credible investigative journalist who says

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that he has had unnamed sources who have remained anonymous that confirm that he really did

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that.

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But unfortunately these people aren't coming forward so we just have this one person.

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Otherwise we don't really have any information that UFOs were investigated at Area 51.

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Where they originally built the nuclear rocket.

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All that facility is there.

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This is the fame you have come out and where they want to store it.

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This is the room right there.

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That's the new strip there.

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TTR is up there.

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The orientation of the runway is there on December 23rd.

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I knew Bob Lazar before he worked at Area S4.

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We were wondering if you wanted to talk about Bob.

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Bob was a skeptic bordering on debunker.

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Several months we met at John Lair's house and he came and he says, you guys are totally

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freaking right.

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I'm working on one of these things.

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They explained it all and he says come on out and watch it.

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They fly every Wednesday night.

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So he said we've got one.

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He said we've got one.

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He said we've got one off planet or one that was a copy of something or better.

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He was told that they shot it down and had a big dent in the side.

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So we went out on a Wednesday night, dark 30 in the morning and we're in a cut where

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the road is like 20 feet down here and we can see him flying around.

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What kind of maneuvers?

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Just dancing around.

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The impression I got, although there was no confirmation, was okay it's your night to

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fly it Bill.

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Okay, let's see what it'll do.

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That's the impression I got.

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The way it was flying around and doing all kinds of crazy things.

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It was almost like somebody that knew how to fly was having a ball with the ultimate

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flying machine.

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Flying around doing crazy aerial maneuvers.

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You didn't see it up closer.

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No, no.

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All we could see was bright lights look like starlight or we're saying what the hell is

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that?

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There's lights, there's the camo dudes I think they're called, or on the hills above us shining

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headlights down on us.

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So they want Bob Lazar and so we said screw this, we hop in our car and we're heading

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back.

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Now we're on a pretty good dirt road doing maybe 60 miles an hour.

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These guys are in Broncos going across.

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We get down to the main highway and there's a sheriff blocking the road so he stops us,

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takes all of our ID, gives us a big chewing out, Bob gets chewed out.

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About an hour later we go back home with stories to tell.

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What do you think is actually going on in the area 51 though?

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Not much now, but it's got too much publicity.

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Remember that at the time we were in a pretty severe cold war with the Soviet Union and

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the first photographs I ever saw of area 51 came from the Soviet Union.

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But no, I don't think they do much of any testing out there anymore.

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Despite its place in ufology and pop culture, area 51 remains an extremely secretive military

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installation whose activities we still aren't really clear on.

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We know that there was testing of aircraft which took place on site, but as to verifying

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any of the claims made over the years regarding aliens and UFOs, well, it's all still a mystery.

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In some ways, area 51 is best viewed as a microcosm for the conspiracy culture permeating

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the subject.

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While evidence of coverups and shadowy goings on exist, there's no real proof and all we're

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left with is speculation.

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Does any of the theorizing taking place regarding this particular topic actually offer any consolation

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that we still have no idea what's flying around in the skies?

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At the heart of conspiracy theory, I think, is the desire to explain everything in a satisfying

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way.

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The reason I'm tied to that is the sense that the world is out of control.

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It's falling apart right before our eyes.

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We want there to be a reason that that's happening.

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And conspiracy theories do us the service of saying there is a nefarious plot.

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There is a plan.

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So in folklore study conspiracy theories, there's oftentimes this underlying sense of

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disbelief about why people would even buy into the concept relating to any kind of conspiracy

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theory.

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However, when you really delve deep and you begin to look at the conspiracy itself, as

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well as the numerous amount of rumors that really generate that conspiracy theory, you

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find that more often than not, the people who are providing those rumors have had a historical

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experience that explains why they would buy into that conspiracy theory in the first place.

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The fact of the matter is conspiracy theory properly understood, of course, led to things

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like the American Revolution in the sense that we were pretty sure that we were being

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ripped off by the government of Great Britain and decided to do something about it.

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So the governmental distrust really is not a new concept, nor is it one that's completely

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unfounded.

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People who like and value freedom in order to really be free, you have to have as much

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of the facts as you can have.

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00:29:03,620 --> 00:29:24,580
It kind of sounds like there might not be anything going on out here other than like

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sort of traditional, you know, military craft testing and things like that.

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So there's a lot of speculation about how much might be underground.

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The hangars that are massive and of course is one of the longest runways in the country.

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Do I think they're still working on some stuff there?

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Maybe they might be housing some stuff, maybe storing it there.

385
00:29:52,180 --> 00:29:54,460
But I think with all the attention it's gotten.

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00:29:54,460 --> 00:29:59,540
Yeah, I mean you can literally go into the Little Alien and ask them for directions to

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00:29:59,540 --> 00:30:00,540
the area 51.

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00:30:00,540 --> 00:30:08,340
So like this place has become part of the lore, like more so than probably any other

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00:30:08,340 --> 00:30:11,780
piece of ufology other than maybe like Roswell.

390
00:30:11,780 --> 00:30:13,780
Everyone knows area 51.

391
00:30:13,780 --> 00:30:14,780
Right.

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And that's the whole thing.

393
00:30:16,780 --> 00:30:23,540
There's such a mystery of the not knowing is there anything alien there, was there ever

394
00:30:23,540 --> 00:30:25,260
anything alien there.

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And besides that, even if that is something that we made, did we get that technology from

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something off-planning?

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Coming up on the next episode of On the Trail of UFOs.

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It's behind us here, Brown Mountain, North Carolina, and the Black Mountain Range just

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00:30:45,020 --> 00:30:47,540
outside of the Limble Gorge.

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So we turned and looked the opposite direction and there they were.

401
00:30:50,460 --> 00:30:51,460
It's whizzing around.

402
00:30:51,460 --> 00:30:54,060
It's kind of a strange movement that they were making.

403
00:30:54,060 --> 00:30:57,580
And to me it reminded me like an ember that comes off of like a fire.

404
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If you take it just as it is, it's a UFO phenomena.

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It's an unidentified aerial phenomena.