1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:10,000 One of these three men is an expert on unidentified flying objects. 2 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:12,000 What is your name, please? 3 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:16,000 My name is Jay Allen Heineck. 4 00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:19,000 My name is Jay Allen Heineck. 5 00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:22,000 My name is Jay Allen Heineck. 6 00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:27,000 Jay Allen Heineck came into the UFO field with the typical scientific attitude, 7 00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:31,000 which is they shouldn't be studied. There's nothing to them. 8 00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:37,000 Ultimately, that changed, and that's sort of the core of the Jay Allen Heineck story. 9 00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:44,000 I, Jay Allen Heineck, am a consultant to the United States Air Force on unidentified flying objects. 10 00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:52,000 Like so many other key figures of that era, Heineck had to push against the government that he once worked for, 11 00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:54,000 and stand up for the truth. 12 00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:59,000 I am also professor of astronomy and director of a large university observatory. 13 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:07,000 Heineck believed that science was the tool. Science could get us to an understanding of what UFOs are, 14 00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:09,000 and that's what he advocated for. 15 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:17,000 There are a lot of people who don't always understand his rationale for the things he did or the things he said, 16 00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:21,000 but Heineck's impact today, I think, is immeasurable. 17 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:25,000 Only one of these men is the real Jay Allen Heineck. 18 00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:30,000 The other two are imposters, and will try to fool this panel on to tell the truth. 19 00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:37,000 We get reports every night. 20 00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:38,000 I don't know what's happening. 21 00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:41,000 It looks like a real pain right around it. 22 00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:43,000 I'd like to report a UFO. 23 00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:56,000 The U.S. government closed its formal study of UFOs, Project Blue Book, in late 1969, 24 00:01:56,000 --> 00:02:01,000 and the government, as a whole, says we're not interested in UFO reports. 25 00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:08,000 The Air Force made the decision, let's get out of this business of investigating UFOs. 26 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:12,000 Our business is national security. We've seen no threat. 27 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:14,000 Let's stop Project Blue Book. 28 00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:22,000 Jay Allen Heineck, who was the scientist who worked for Project Blue Book for almost 20 years, 29 00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:26,000 actually came through that with the opposite perspective, 30 00:02:26,000 --> 00:02:31,000 which was that UFOs were something serious, and they should be investigated. 31 00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:38,000 In my association with Project Blue Book, I know very well that it was not a scientific project. 32 00:02:38,000 --> 00:02:44,000 I also know that they never, never would notify the media when an interesting case came up. 33 00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:48,000 They did everything they could to keep the pressure to keep it down. 34 00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:50,000 So they definitely withheld information. 35 00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:55,000 Dr. Heineck realized that this was a serious problem. 36 00:02:55,000 --> 00:03:00,000 UFO reports could not all be explained, and that the military should be taking this more seriously. 37 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:08,000 We now know that there were UFO cases during this time period that did seem to have national security implications. 38 00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:13,000 I know that when I was a part of Blue Book, there were a number of cases that never got into Blue Book. 39 00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:18,000 They were witnesses. This was observed at a missile base. This was observed by an Air Force pilot. 40 00:03:18,000 --> 00:03:23,000 You mean to tell me that something in the CIA or the FBI and the government hasn't investigated this? 41 00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:31,000 I think the public would be shocked to realize that there were incidents going back even into the 60s, 42 00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:36,000 where our nuclear missile silos were being interfered with. 43 00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:44,000 Production facilities, weapons facilities, we've had incidents over numerous ICBM bases. 44 00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:51,000 During the Cold War, intercontinental ballistic missiles, called ICBMs, 45 00:03:51,000 --> 00:03:55,000 were strategically located throughout northern parts of the United States, 46 00:03:55,000 --> 00:03:59,000 where they were within striking distance of the Soviet Union. 47 00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:05,000 There were almost identical UFO events at two of the Minuteman ICBM locations. 48 00:04:05,000 --> 00:04:10,000 At Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota in 1966, 49 00:04:10,000 --> 00:04:15,000 and at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in 1967. 50 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:24,000 My name is Robert Salas. In 1967, I was a Lieutenant in the Air Force Station in Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana. 51 00:04:24,000 --> 00:04:31,000 My name is David Shimley. I'm a retired Air Force Captain at Minut Air Force Base, North Dakota. 52 00:04:31,000 --> 00:04:40,000 In 1966, my responsibility was to launch our 10 nuclear-tipped missiles upon appropriate and verified order. 53 00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:48,000 My name is Robert Jamison. I was a First Lieutenant in the United States Air Force, Malmstrom Air Force Base, in Montana. 54 00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:54,000 One of my jobs was to, if a missile goes off alert for any reason, is to go out and restart it. 55 00:04:55,000 --> 00:04:59,000 The Air Force includes missile men. Here at Malmstrom Air Force Base, 56 00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:05,000 a strategic missile wing controls the most modern Minuteman in its underground silo. 57 00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:11,000 The Air Force specialists on this job, by continuous readiness to launch their bird, 58 00:05:11,000 --> 00:05:15,000 help prevent, rather than start, a nuclear war. 59 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:21,000 We had Minuteman one missiles, and that's about 800 kiloton weapon. 60 00:05:21,000 --> 00:05:28,000 And just for reference, the weapons that were dropped on Hiroshima Nagasaki were 20 kilotons. 61 00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:33,000 That capability is helping to keep the peace. 62 00:05:33,000 --> 00:05:38,000 We have a policy of mutually assured destruction, and we suicide for us, 63 00:05:38,000 --> 00:05:47,000 or our potential adversaries to launch a nuclear attack, unless they could disable that capability in that system. 64 00:05:47,000 --> 00:05:55,000 Then they could conceivably decapitate the United States, destroy the capital without fear of retaliatory response, 65 00:05:55,000 --> 00:05:58,000 and change the global balance of power. 66 00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:02,000 Our location was 60 feet underground. 67 00:06:02,000 --> 00:06:05,000 We were very well protected. 68 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:09,000 It was a concrete steel reinforced capsule. 69 00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:14,000 And this capsule was sitting below what we call the launch control facility. 70 00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:17,000 We had six security guards top side. 71 00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:22,000 They had the responsibility for making sure there was nobody trying to break in. 72 00:06:23,000 --> 00:06:27,000 I traveled to base to attend the pre-departure crew briefing. 73 00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:32,000 After the briefing, several missile crews came up to me and said, 74 00:06:32,000 --> 00:06:34,000 did you hear what happened overnight? 75 00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:43,000 Sometime in the evening hours, I get up a call from the main guard upstairs. 76 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:47,000 He tells me that there are strange lights flying over the facility. 77 00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:57,000 They're looking at reddish-orange glowing pulsating light that's hovering just above the front gate. 78 00:06:57,000 --> 00:07:00,000 And he pointed with his arms, and he says, 79 00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:04,000 it's right out there hovering, motionless and without sound. 80 00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:10,000 They did think that there was a solid object within the light, sort of oval shaped. 81 00:07:10,000 --> 00:07:12,000 I kind of dismissed it. 82 00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:14,000 I even said, you mean like UFOs? 83 00:07:14,000 --> 00:07:17,000 And kind of laughed at him. 84 00:07:17,000 --> 00:07:20,000 And he said, well, they're not airplanes, sir. 85 00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:25,000 About five minutes later, he calls back and he's screaming into the phone. 86 00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:28,000 Now he's very frightened. 87 00:07:28,000 --> 00:07:29,000 He's babbling. 88 00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:32,000 He says he's got all the guards out there with their weapons drawn. 89 00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:35,000 They wanted orders on what to do. 90 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:41,000 I told him, make sure nothing enters the fenced area. 91 00:07:42,000 --> 00:07:46,000 When I hung up the phone, I thought we were under attack. 92 00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:50,000 By who or what, I had no idea. 93 00:07:53,000 --> 00:07:56,000 And then we get bells and whistles going off in our control panel. 94 00:07:56,000 --> 00:08:01,000 And we could see the lights going from green to red all across the board, 95 00:08:01,000 --> 00:08:05,000 meaning the missiles were inoperable now. 96 00:08:05,000 --> 00:08:10,000 If the president had given the order to launch the missiles, we could not have launched them. 97 00:08:17,000 --> 00:08:22,000 Losing 10 missiles was a shock, except for that instance. 98 00:08:22,000 --> 00:08:25,000 I never lost more than one missile at a time. 99 00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:34,000 Somehow, some way, vehicles were able to maneuver right over those ICBMs and turn them off. 100 00:08:34,000 --> 00:08:38,000 We don't know why they went down. They still don't know. 101 00:08:38,000 --> 00:08:44,000 There's no other reason I can think of that would cause a 10-to-go-off alert within seconds. 102 00:08:44,000 --> 00:08:51,000 We knew it. It wasn't an ordinary man-made machine because we had nothing like that. 103 00:08:52,000 --> 00:08:58,000 After the incident, I was required not to speak to anybody about it. 104 00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:02,000 I attempted to question the security guard, and he said, 105 00:09:02,000 --> 00:09:06,000 Sorry, sir, I've been told to keep quiet. 106 00:09:06,000 --> 00:09:11,000 And he was told that as far as you're concerned, it never happened. 107 00:09:11,000 --> 00:09:14,000 I had to go through a spatial briefing. 108 00:09:14,000 --> 00:09:19,000 This is where they told me, you're not supposed to say ever again 109 00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:23,000 that something happened because nothing happened. 110 00:09:23,000 --> 00:09:28,000 Of course, the first thing I did when I got home was, hey, I guess what happened? 111 00:09:28,000 --> 00:09:33,000 There was a man from Air Force Office of Special Investigations. 112 00:09:33,000 --> 00:09:40,000 All he wanted me to do was to sign this document stating I would never speak about this again. 113 00:09:40,000 --> 00:09:47,000 Once we signed that document, we were released, told to leave, and that was that. 114 00:09:47,000 --> 00:09:55,000 I never spoke about any of this until 1994, so it was about 27 years later. 115 00:09:58,000 --> 00:10:03,000 Three years after the Mountstrom incident in which 10 missiles were shut down, 116 00:10:03,000 --> 00:10:08,000 the Air Force released a fact sheet to the public announcing the close of Project Blue Book. 117 00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:14,000 And it stated that no UFO reported, investigated, or evaluated by the Air Force, 118 00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:18,000 was ever an indication of a threat to our national security, 119 00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:24,000 meaning not even one has represented any kind of national security threat. 120 00:10:24,000 --> 00:10:30,000 That was certainly a lie. Let's use the right word. 121 00:10:30,000 --> 00:10:36,000 The Air Force knew full well these were UFO related incidents 122 00:10:36,000 --> 00:10:41,000 and the UFOs were responsible for the shutdown of these missiles. 123 00:10:41,000 --> 00:10:49,000 We found out later in 1979 that in fact a secret memo had circulated called the Bollender Memo, 124 00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:59,000 which stated that any national security cases could continue to be reported through channels already in place. 125 00:11:02,000 --> 00:11:08,000 And so it was a complete black and white contradiction between what was being said to the public 126 00:11:08,000 --> 00:11:12,000 and what was being said behind the scenes. 127 00:11:20,000 --> 00:11:24,000 There's something that's in our atmosphere that we just don't know what it is. 128 00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:29,000 These things seem to be interested in our nuclear capabilities, 129 00:11:29,000 --> 00:11:33,000 and that's something that we should be concerned about. 130 00:11:33,000 --> 00:11:36,000 I kept a secret for 40 years. 131 00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:41,000 It was a long time to have this burden on the back of my shoulders. 132 00:11:41,000 --> 00:11:46,000 I'm normally quiet personality and I just don't want to be in the limelight, 133 00:11:46,000 --> 00:11:50,000 but the public needs to know this. 134 00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:54,000 Robert Salas did not speak out about what happened for many, many years 135 00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:59,000 and it shows how intimidated these people are to come forward. 136 00:11:59,000 --> 00:12:02,000 Decades will go by and they won't even talk about it. 137 00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:06,000 Good morning. My name is David Shindley. 138 00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:13,000 In 2001, I found an article describing Robert Salas' incident. 139 00:12:13,000 --> 00:12:22,000 And when I saw that, I said, oh my God, the incident that he had was almost identical to the one I had. 140 00:12:22,000 --> 00:12:30,000 And I experienced just a joyful freedom and I finally was able to tell my wife my secret. 141 00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:37,000 And so, thanks Robert for helping me out. 142 00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:45,000 After the incident, the guards had called me and literally begged me to come out and see them 143 00:12:45,000 --> 00:12:49,000 because this was a very traumatic experience for the guards. 144 00:12:49,000 --> 00:12:58,000 But I had just signed a nondisclosure statement, so I had to tell them on the phone that I could not see them. 145 00:12:58,000 --> 00:13:08,000 So when I talk about this, I do it partly for those airmen that begged me to come see them and I just couldn't do it. 146 00:13:08,000 --> 00:13:15,000 There is a shyness and a reluctance on the part of many witnesses and understandably so against reporting 147 00:13:15,000 --> 00:13:21,000 because too many have been ridiculed and the life has been made somewhat miserable for them. 148 00:13:22,000 --> 00:13:29,000 Dr. Heineck grew increasingly disillusioned by the Air Force's dismissive approach to these sightings 149 00:13:29,000 --> 00:13:32,000 and dismissive approach to the evidence. 150 00:13:32,000 --> 00:13:38,000 Heineck gradually realized that this was a subject that demanded serious study. 151 00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:42,000 Back when Heineck was in Project Blue Book, there was a case. 152 00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:45,000 It involved a father and his two sons in Idaho. 153 00:13:45,000 --> 00:13:53,000 One day they all saw this object just zoom down this gully down the riverbed and disappear. 154 00:13:53,000 --> 00:13:56,000 They all three saw it. Heineck found it fairly convincing. 155 00:13:56,000 --> 00:14:00,000 He ended up writing it off as something with a natural cause. 156 00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:04,000 But that was Heineck's official report to Project Blue Book. 157 00:14:04,000 --> 00:14:12,000 Why this is significant is years later when Heineck started to change his mind, he had regrets about that specific case. 158 00:14:12,000 --> 00:14:17,000 He said with that case, I should have said, you know what, it doesn't add up completely. 159 00:14:17,000 --> 00:14:22,000 I think there's more going on here. I'm not going to dismiss it. I'm going to try to find out more. 160 00:14:22,000 --> 00:14:27,000 So that was kind of the first chink in Heineck's facade as a debunker. 161 00:14:28,000 --> 00:14:33,000 I began to get certain doubts because it was the people themselves. 162 00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:38,000 I said to myself, well, now come on, how much longer am I going to call these people crazy? 163 00:14:38,000 --> 00:14:44,000 And when I changed my glasses, you might say a little bit and took a view that maybe these people aren't crazy. 164 00:14:44,000 --> 00:14:49,000 And began to realize what two sort of people they were, good, solid people. 165 00:14:49,000 --> 00:14:56,000 I said to myself, well, the time has come to maybe change my attitude. 166 00:14:56,000 --> 00:15:14,000 With the United States Air Force leaving the role behind of taking in UFO investigations, this left a large vacuum that civilian organizations began to fill. 167 00:15:14,000 --> 00:15:21,000 In 1974, J. Allen Heineck founded the Center for UFO Studies, abbreviated COOFOs. 168 00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:35,000 This was a civilian group composed of very qualified people that runs the gamut of the average person with enthusiasm to a very highly trained scientist or academic. 169 00:15:35,000 --> 00:15:40,000 And the records that they provided are absolutely crucial. 170 00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:50,000 I'm Mark Rottiger, the scientific director of the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago. 171 00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:54,000 Dr. Heineck mentored me and designated me as a successor. 172 00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:59,000 Dr. Heineck was the classic professor. He loved teaching. 173 00:15:59,000 --> 00:16:03,000 He also really enjoyed jokes, you know, in a good time. 174 00:16:03,000 --> 00:16:06,000 He wasn't stuffy, he had a little twinkle in his eye. 175 00:16:06,000 --> 00:16:09,000 People really warmed up to him. 176 00:16:09,000 --> 00:16:17,000 Allen was very open-minded and that is really the background to him being interested in UFOs. 177 00:16:17,000 --> 00:16:21,000 UFO groups, you know, they're not massive organizations. 178 00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:27,000 In fact, we're now sitting in the basement in my UFO office here in my house. 179 00:16:27,000 --> 00:16:30,000 You know, the Center is really like a scientific think tank. 180 00:16:30,000 --> 00:16:38,000 Dr. Heineck realized that there was a need for a focused professional group to study UFOs. 181 00:16:38,000 --> 00:16:41,000 That involves mainly three things. 182 00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:44,000 Being a place for people to report sightings. 183 00:16:44,000 --> 00:16:47,000 Number two is to be a place for reliable information. 184 00:16:47,000 --> 00:16:51,000 We publish a journal, a periodical, with monographs. 185 00:16:51,000 --> 00:16:54,000 And finally, of course, a place to do research. 186 00:16:54,000 --> 00:16:58,000 We've stayed pretty close to that mission all through the years. 187 00:16:58,000 --> 00:17:05,000 One of the first things that Kufos did was establish a national hotline for UFO reporting. 188 00:17:05,000 --> 00:17:10,000 They distributed this hotline to law enforcement agencies around the country and said, 189 00:17:10,000 --> 00:17:12,000 put this on your bulletin board. 190 00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:19,000 If you ever get a call from someone who has seen a UFO, call us on this hotline and we will do the investigation. 191 00:17:19,000 --> 00:17:24,000 But it didn't look like anything I know of. 192 00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:31,000 But there was a big difference between civilian and military investigations of UFOs. 193 00:17:31,000 --> 00:17:37,000 The military has access to other information civilian and stone. 194 00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:40,000 I went to see Don Rumsfeld at the White House, 195 00:17:40,000 --> 00:17:43,000 namely because he's a friend of mine, and said to him, 196 00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:47,000 look, I have this Center for UFO Studies and I wanted you to know 197 00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:52,000 that should this subject ever get to the presidential, the congressional level, 198 00:17:52,000 --> 00:17:55,000 there is a group of scientists who are ready to work on it. 199 00:17:55,000 --> 00:17:59,000 And I said, I do have a certain responsibility to these scientists. 200 00:17:59,000 --> 00:18:01,000 Are we spinning our wheels? 201 00:18:01,000 --> 00:18:04,000 If this work has already been done by somebody else. 202 00:18:04,000 --> 00:18:09,000 I said, because of my responsibility to these scientists, I felt that I had a need to know. 203 00:18:09,000 --> 00:18:13,000 And he snapped right back at me, said, you do not have a need to know. 204 00:18:13,000 --> 00:18:16,000 Now you interpret that any darn way you want. 205 00:18:16,000 --> 00:18:19,000 In any case, you cannot stop scientists from working. 206 00:18:19,000 --> 00:18:21,000 And it's the whole point of being a scientist. 207 00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:22,000 They're individualists. 208 00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:27,000 They're going to do what they damn please anyway. 209 00:18:27,000 --> 00:18:32,000 In the 70s and 80s, in general, government officials were not talking about UFOs. 210 00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:37,000 But some presidents were also interested in getting information about UFOs. 211 00:18:37,000 --> 00:18:40,000 When Jimmy Carter was the governor of Georgia in 1969, 212 00:18:40,000 --> 00:18:43,000 he had a sighting with a group of other witnesses. 213 00:18:43,000 --> 00:18:47,000 All of it saw a very bright light in the western sky. 214 00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:53,000 And he got closer and closer, and then it seemed to stop in its proximity to us. 215 00:18:53,000 --> 00:18:58,000 And then the color of it changed from white to blue to red. 216 00:18:58,000 --> 00:19:00,000 Jimmy Carter was very impressed by that. 217 00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:02,000 It really impacted him. 218 00:19:02,000 --> 00:19:08,000 Then in 1973, he filed a written report on this with a number of civilian UFO groups. 219 00:19:08,000 --> 00:19:09,000 So it's on the record. 220 00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:15,000 So when he did become president, he approached NASA to see if they would open up a new investigation 221 00:19:15,000 --> 00:19:20,000 that could continue what the Air Force had been doing prior to closing down Project Blue Book. 222 00:19:20,000 --> 00:19:26,000 The Air Force would not have wanted this to happen seven years after closing Project Blue Book. 223 00:19:26,000 --> 00:19:31,000 So the Air Force jumped in on the process and said to NASA, 224 00:19:31,000 --> 00:19:33,000 we don't want you to do this. 225 00:19:33,000 --> 00:19:40,000 After a series of exchanges, NASA did decline the president's request. 226 00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:45,000 Under pressure to answer by the end of the year, NASA concluded that it would be pointless 227 00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:49,000 to mount a new research effort because of the lack of physical evidence. 228 00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:55,000 It was kind of stunning that a request from the president would have been denied. 229 00:20:00,000 --> 00:20:05,000 If there is no concrete evidence of people from outer space, how do you write a whole book about UFOs? 230 00:20:05,000 --> 00:20:08,000 Well, that's exactly why I called it the UFO experience 231 00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:11,000 instead of something that would have sold more like sex in the UFO. 232 00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:18,000 I called it the UFO experience because that's what I was talking about, the experience that people had. 233 00:20:18,000 --> 00:20:22,000 And you can't convince a person who's had a real UFO experience that he hasn't had it. 234 00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:29,000 In the early 70s, J.L. and Heineck came out with his monumental book called the UFO Experience. 235 00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:32,000 It wasn't just about research. 236 00:20:32,000 --> 00:20:38,000 He was somebody that would listen and took people seriously who had sightings and had experiences. 237 00:20:38,000 --> 00:20:43,000 He would go on lots of TV shows and radio interviews, 238 00:20:43,000 --> 00:20:50,000 and he was a public figure advocating for official recognition and study of UFOs. 239 00:20:52,000 --> 00:20:59,000 With the space program taking off, there was a groundswell of interest in outer space. 240 00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:06,000 That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. 241 00:21:06,000 --> 00:21:13,000 It was a national movement, and so people's imaginations, of course, run wild. 242 00:21:13,000 --> 00:21:19,000 Hollywood was able to capture that and feed people's thirst and imagination, 243 00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:24,000 and it led to a long-standing, powerful genre. 244 00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:27,000 Made of force and with use. 245 00:21:27,000 --> 00:21:35,000 So UFOs became a cultural, creative, imaginative area, and Heineck's book was a big hit. 246 00:21:35,000 --> 00:21:37,000 Dr. J. Allen Heineck. 247 00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:45,000 Steven Spielberg bought the rights to Heineck's book and hired Dr. Heineck as a technical consultant. 248 00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:52,000 And so Spielberg worked with Heineck in helping to get the facts accurate for his movie Close Encounters. 249 00:21:53,000 --> 00:22:00,000 I was very influenced by J. Allen Heineck because he was not looking at UFOs as science fiction, 250 00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:04,000 but he was looking at them as science speculation. 251 00:22:04,000 --> 00:22:09,000 So I met with him, and I used him, and I picked his brain, and he consulted with me. 252 00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:13,000 Dr. Heineck was the fellow that coined the term Close Encounters. 253 00:22:13,000 --> 00:22:18,000 Close Encounter, the first kind, is one is close, but nothing really happened. 254 00:22:19,000 --> 00:22:24,000 Close Encounter, the second kind, includes physical damage to the environment. 255 00:22:24,000 --> 00:22:29,000 That could be landing pad imprints in the grass where a UFO was said to have landed. 256 00:22:29,000 --> 00:22:33,000 And the close encounters of the third kind are the most interesting of all. 257 00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:39,000 Close Encounter, the third kind, is really what you meet them. 258 00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:47,000 It was clear that Spielberg wanted real science, real data, accurate information about UFOs, 259 00:22:47,000 --> 00:22:50,000 and that's why he called on J. Allen Heineck. 260 00:22:50,000 --> 00:22:57,000 They were drawing from real US government information on how these things operated and maneuvered. 261 00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:06,000 Hypersonic velocities are fast speeds, instantaneous acceleration, even biological effects where Richard Dreyfus 262 00:23:06,000 --> 00:23:08,000 has his face, has his sunburn. 263 00:23:08,000 --> 00:23:13,000 Those were all observables that we were seeing in the US government, real observables, 264 00:23:13,000 --> 00:23:16,000 that made their way onto the Hollywood screen. 265 00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:23,000 And that's because Steven Spielberg was provided information from people from Project Blue Book. 266 00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:29,000 Along with Heineck, Spielberg also talked to Jacques Valais, 267 00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:35,000 a French scientist who was well known in the UFO field and had written numerous books on the topic. 268 00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:39,000 I had the privilege of working with Dr. Heineck for five years. 269 00:23:39,000 --> 00:23:48,000 We built the first computer-based data catalog of UFO sightings starting with the Air Force files, 270 00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:52,000 which covered about 20,000 cases. 271 00:23:57,000 --> 00:24:03,000 The French scientist in the movie, Character of la Combe, was based loosely on me. 272 00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:15,000 France has an official scientific committee for UFOs that includes physicists, the military, including sociologists and psychologists. 273 00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:24,000 By letting the project team leader be a Frenchman, it immediately gave more of a depth to the understanding of UFOs. 274 00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:32,000 In the whole history of American movies, it's always, they come from somewhere, they kill somebody, 275 00:24:32,000 --> 00:24:36,000 so we bring the tanks and they destroy all the tanks. 276 00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:42,000 That's a very American way of looking at an alien life form. 277 00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:48,000 If everything's ready here on the dark side of the moon, play the five tones. 278 00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:57,000 The movie was the first movie in which we were greeting these aliens and they were coming to us as equal, 279 00:24:57,000 --> 00:25:03,000 and we were going to have an intelligent discussion with them, or intelligent exchange. 280 00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:08,000 Close Encounters 281 00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:18,000 Close Encounters, we just captured the spirit of the mystery of the phenomenon, the scariness of the phenomenon, 282 00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:21,000 and kind of the impact that it has on people. 283 00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:26,000 Whatever the government may think about them, unidentified flying objects seem to be popular with the people. 284 00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:33,000 Columbia Pictures reports that its film Close Encounters of a Third Kind has grossed $39 million in three weeks. 285 00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:42,000 I owe a lot to J. Allen Heineck. His instilling in me, a professional's point of view on this kind of field reporting, 286 00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:46,000 and he helped me make the movie more credible than it would have been without his existence. 287 00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:57,000 Steven Spielberg actually brought him on set for when they filmed the movie's huge climax at the secret UFO base in Wyoming. 288 00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:01,000 United States Navy, 043-431. 289 00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:07,000 Captain. And of course Close Encounters became a household term because of Steven Spielberg's movie, 290 00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:10,000 and really catapulted Heineck to a degree of celebrity. 291 00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:16,000 Therefore will the real Dr. J. Allen Heineck please stand up. 292 00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:26,000 Even though Heineck worked for our government for almost two decades, 293 00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:33,000 what he was doing in the 70s and 80s seemed to have no impact at all on the government, and sightings continued. 294 00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:40,000 There's the fantastic sightings last year and this year in the Westchester and Putnam County areas. 295 00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:46,000 Those are literally out of this world. I can find no logical explanation for them. 296 00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:48,000 I don't know what the hell it is. 297 00:26:59,000 --> 00:27:04,000 We were coming home from grad school, and we were just yacking like we are now, 298 00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:08,000 and all of a sudden Doris says, what are those lights up there? 299 00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:13,000 I was driving north on 118, and as I was approaching the light here, 300 00:27:13,000 --> 00:27:18,000 I looked into the northern sky and saw what appeared to be a large aircraft with landing lights, 301 00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:26,000 flying very low about 500 feet, and it stopped, and it rotated 180 degrees and started to head west. 302 00:27:27,000 --> 00:27:32,000 I looked up at Interstate 84, and it was a parking lot. 303 00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:37,000 People were out of their cars, blinking lights, pointing up at the sky, 304 00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:41,000 and there was that city of lights hovering over in my backyard. 305 00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:45,000 And it went from night to broad daylight. 306 00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:50,000 And all of a sudden it was, it's going to land, it's going to land. 307 00:27:50,000 --> 00:27:54,000 When I came to the station, the phones were ringing off the hook. 308 00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:59,000 The object came directly over my head, less than 500 feet above me. 309 00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:05,000 The covered whole sky was totally quiet, no sound whatsoever. 310 00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:10,000 You could hear a pin drop. 311 00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:16,000 I said, oh, what do I do with my family? How am I going to handle all this? 312 00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:23,000 What I saw was unbelievable, mind boggling. 313 00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:26,000 The whole town saw what I saw. 314 00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:34,000 Beginning in around 1983, there was an incredibly dramatic series of sightings 315 00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:38,000 that took place in the Hudson Valley area of New York State and in Connecticut, 316 00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:42,000 which was actually a wave, because it took place over years. 317 00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:48,000 People would report these UFOs to the police or maybe to local UFO groups, 318 00:28:48,000 --> 00:28:52,000 and a lot of people were kind of awed and frightened. 319 00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:54,000 It was a little spooky. 320 00:28:54,000 --> 00:28:57,000 I come because it was unexplainable. 321 00:28:57,000 --> 00:28:58,000 What Jim Brooks saw... 322 00:28:58,000 --> 00:29:03,000 There was a lot of local reporting, some local civilian investigation. 323 00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:06,000 Our researchers have set up a special UFO hotline in Westchester. 324 00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:12,000 But it was something that involved hundreds, at least, witnesses, if not more. 325 00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:23,000 There was nothing coming from our government, even though these gigantic craft were cruising around over a part of the United States. 326 00:29:24,000 --> 00:29:28,000 The Federal Aviation Administration has joined the Air Force and many astronomers 327 00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:32,000 in attributing most UFO sightings to man-made objects and natural phenomenon. 328 00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:38,000 Believe it or not, the plant Venus is a fairly common UFO sighting. 329 00:29:38,000 --> 00:29:40,000 It moved very slowly. 330 00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:43,000 We looked up in the sky, we saw six lights in a V-shape. 331 00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:48,000 Even after all these witnesses had seen these objects and had reported them to their local police, 332 00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:51,000 it still became a kind of a joke. 333 00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:56,000 The head of my school, he said, you know, some people might think you're crazy. 334 00:29:57,000 --> 00:30:03,000 I was the commissioner of motor vehicles, and I was involved in a political race at that time. 335 00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:09,000 The last thing I wanted to be known for was little green people or UFOs. 336 00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:15,000 My husband also thought I was nuts, and so I didn't talk about it too much. 337 00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:19,000 What is interesting, tragic and amusing, all at the one and the same time, 338 00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:22,000 is that lots of people are afraid to talk about it. 339 00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:32,000 They, their friends will laugh at them and so forth, and we need to let those people feel safe and talk about it. 340 00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:40,000 On August 25th of 1984, Heineck came to the Hudson Valley, and he gave a talk at the middle school there. 341 00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:46,000 This was the last case that he was involved with before he died, and it made a huge impression on him. 342 00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:50,000 Here's a sketch of the thing going on in Westchester County now. 343 00:30:50,000 --> 00:31:00,000 This is large, boomerang-shaped object that moves slowly, far below the stall speed of aircraft, moves silently. 344 00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:05,000 I've been told by highly responsible witnesses that it is as large as the football field. 345 00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:12,000 It speaks to the importance of the Hudson Valley wave that Jay Allen Heineck came here. 346 00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:18,000 He thought it was important enough to speak to the witnesses, to go to the sites. 347 00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:22,000 I spent a weekend with Dr. Heineck. 348 00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:28,000 Dr. Heineck could ask you a question, and he'd sit back and he would listen, 349 00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:33,000 and if one of my kids jumped into the conversation, he would just kindly just put up his hand and go, 350 00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:40,000 I'll get right back to you with a little wink, and you were the most important person for that moment he was talking to you. 351 00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:42,000 That's the way he made me feel. 352 00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:50,000 It was very important for these witnesses who were not getting any official recognition that somebody like Jay Allen Heineck, 353 00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:57,000 an astronomer who had worked for the government, that he came there and spoke with them and took them seriously. 354 00:31:57,000 --> 00:32:04,000 And we walked through the whole sighting. He wanted to go every place, and every time we made a stop, he said, 355 00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:09,000 well, what are you feeling? Are you feeling anything in your gut? Did you feel connected to this object? 356 00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:15,000 It made a huge difference to have him on site during the wave. 357 00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:22,000 In the Westchester case in New York, we had witnesses geographically independent of each other, didn't know each other, 358 00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:28,000 and yet reported identically the same things. Now, you cannot call that mass hallucination. 359 00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:38,000 Lack of scientific involvement or government acknowledgement of UFOs encourages people's imaginations to go wild, but what are they hiding? 360 00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:47,000 We called the police when we got home, and they didn't tell us that night, but a couple of days later we were reading they thought they were ultralights, the planes. 361 00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:57,000 The chief meteorologist at the Westchester County Airport, with some 25 years experience, told me that when he saw it, it moved very slowly like a ship docking at a berth. 362 00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:03,000 Now, that cannot possibly be ultralights flying in formation. That's just out of the question. 363 00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:10,000 The planes flying in formation is one of the recent sighted, including an article in Discover Magazine. 364 00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:21,000 This article that was in Discover Magazine talks about the pilots who were going up and hoaxing UFOs, and it implies that that's probably what all sightings were. 365 00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:23,000 Can you hear the engines? 366 00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:32,000 Planes fly all the time. You hear 7,000 people coming out and saying, ah, I saw planes over my head. No, they saw something different. 367 00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:40,000 Ultralights, they make noise. They do make noise. So, ah, we've never had a good explanation. 368 00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:57,000 So these pilots did a huge disservice by creating this hoax situation to confuse everything, and to bring a lack of credibility and to give the government something to hang their hat on when they were asked what people were actually seeing. 369 00:33:57,000 --> 00:34:05,000 People began doubting themselves. It kept the entire wave suppressed. 370 00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:10,000 Heineck, who was just stunned by the fact that this was not getting attention. 371 00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:18,000 The subject came up in the United Nations recently. We have reports from 133 different countries, and the same pattern exists around the world. 372 00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:22,000 It's not just localized in one particular country, you see. 373 00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:37,000 So while our government was telling the public that there was nothing to UFOs, that the investigations had all been shut down, documents reveal that officials were, in fact, monitoring cases in other countries. 374 00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:43,000 What they were saying is very similar to what was saying in the Hudson Valley. 375 00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:48,000 We saw something happening in the middle of the United States. 376 00:34:53,000 --> 00:35:00,000 This map was prepared by Dr. Jacques Ballet. 377 00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:07,000 UFO reports are truly global, and they seem to occur in waves or flaps, as they are often called. 378 00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:12,000 Notice how the flaps have been distributed throughout the years and over the world. 379 00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:22,000 This is truly an international phenomenon. There's no question about it. There's a very similar pattern, very similar reports. 380 00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:29,000 Foreign militaries are also having encounters. The Belgian Air Force had some extraordinary encounters. 381 00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:36,000 People claim to have seen for a long time and several times flying and luminous objects of triangular shape. 382 00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:40,000 They saw in the sky a strange phenomenon, an UFO. 383 00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:47,000 A few years after the Hudson Valley wave, a very similar wave occurred in Belgium. 384 00:35:47,000 --> 00:35:57,000 These large black triangles, again, all the characteristics, silent, low beams of light, hovering. 385 00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:04,000 Belgian authorities would scramble jets in order to try to get a better look at the objects. 386 00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:11,000 They wanted to identify what it was that was invading protected airspace over their country. 387 00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:13,000 It felt that this was their responsibility. 388 00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:20,000 The F-16s that the Belgian military had attract these objects on radar. 389 00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:26,000 So they actually have radar imagery of the unknown moving through Belgian airspace. 390 00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:35,000 And the contrast from how the Belgian government handled it there versus how our government didn't handle the events in Hudson Valley are really striking. 391 00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:43,000 The Belgian Air Force became actively involved with a group of scientists to collect reports from witnesses. 392 00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:47,000 They assigned a colonel to head up an investigation. 393 00:36:47,000 --> 00:37:03,000 And they held a press conference packed with media in which they disclosed everything they knew and how they were approaching this. 394 00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:06,000 And the public were encouraged to file reports. 395 00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:19,000 Air Force officers were coming forward and speaking about it. 396 00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:25,000 They gave it a legitimacy that we have yet to see here in this country. 397 00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:34,000 Instead of the government stop investigating back in 1969, do these UFO watchers have any reason to expect the government to get re-involved in investigating these claims? 398 00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:39,000 Right now they're a bit disappointed the government has not gotten more involved than it has in the last 10 years. 399 00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:47,000 But we do know that the CIA and the Defense Department has been doing some research into other sightings in other nations like the Soviet Union and Iran. 400 00:37:47,000 --> 00:37:50,000 But in the United States they seem very skeptical. 401 00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:55,000 The Belgian case was documented by U.S. government officials. 402 00:37:55,000 --> 00:38:00,000 Colonel De Brouwer had approached American officials to inquire whether this was ours. 403 00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:02,000 And we had told them no. 404 00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:05,000 And we had said also we'd like to know who's it was. 405 00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:12,000 So there was a document filed about the Belgian wave, but no document filed about a wave in our own country. 406 00:38:12,000 --> 00:38:17,000 At least that we are aware of. 407 00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:25,000 To me, the greatest evidence for the existence of something strange going on is the caliber of many of the witnesses. 408 00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:33,000 For instance, in Westchester we had meteorologists, Navy test pilot, IBM executives, priests, CPAs. 409 00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:40,000 Are they all saying the same thing that it is not explainable to them by any conventional explanation? 410 00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:44,000 You just said it, Charlie. That's exactly what they're saying. They're saying the same things. 411 00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:51,000 You know, there were so many people that saw it. It wasn't, you know, if I saw it alone I probably wouldn't have told anybody. 412 00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:54,000 The three of us saw it, I might have told my family. 413 00:38:54,000 --> 00:39:00,000 But there were so many people that saw it that I was spined with, you know, spreading the word. 414 00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:01,000 Me too. 415 00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:04,000 And everybody that I told said they were sorry they didn't see it. 416 00:39:04,000 --> 00:39:10,000 A lot of people took solace in the fact that Heineck was a guy who was on their side. 417 00:39:10,000 --> 00:39:17,000 If you witnessed a UFO, Heineck was one person who would take you seriously, wouldn't make fun of you, 418 00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:20,000 and really try to get a full picture of your experience. 419 00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:27,000 And that's so huge to someone who has seen something weird in the sky and doesn't know how to tell anyone about it. 420 00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:32,000 I felt validated. That's the way Dr. Heineck made me feel. 421 00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:39,000 So I could say there's nothing wrong with me and nothing wrong with my eyes and nothing wrong with my intuition. 422 00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:42,000 They're all intact. 423 00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:47,000 Dr. Heineck was someone who was very alive, very open. 424 00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:56,000 He told me once that the reason he became interested in UFOs was about the challenges, about, you know, what is this world? 425 00:39:56,000 --> 00:40:01,000 If this is real, what does that mean for human existence? 426 00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:12,000 The last thing Heineck did before leaving this earth was try to understand the nature of the denial and the disconnect among human beings 427 00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:14,000 when something this dramatic happens. 428 00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:20,000 Heineck wrote an essay. It was a rough draft that was left on his computer when he died. 429 00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:28,000 He said, how is it possible that in the United States where even trivial events are often flashed across the world, 430 00:40:28,000 --> 00:40:35,000 only one national TV and radio network carried an account of these utterly astounding sightings. 431 00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:40,000 Was no one minding the store? Was everyone asleep at the switch? 432 00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:46,000 Heineck was a different person than he was previously when he worked at Project Blue Book. 433 00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:53,000 Here he was saying UFOs, they're of scientific interest. The witnesses should be taken seriously. 434 00:40:53,000 --> 00:41:03,000 It was just the most profoundly important moment and setting a course of events that continued through the 70s, 80s and 90s. 435 00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:12,000 Starting as a complete skeptic, I underwent a transformation and now I guess the best way of saying it is it's an itch that I just have to scratch. 436 00:41:12,000 --> 00:41:20,000 I feel that we have a phenomenon that could be of tremendous potential importance to the human race. 437 00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:22,000 I feel that strongly about it. 438 00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:33,000 It's a definite UFO or something like that. It's just the right over me. 439 00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:38,000 This is highly restricted aerospace. You don't want something up there that doesn't belong there. 440 00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:42,000 The culture as a whole didn't really take UFOs seriously. 441 00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:46,000 I stuck with it despite the level of ridicule for decades. 442 00:41:46,000 --> 00:41:53,000 He described it as a huge ball with lights running around it. He said it was about four times bigger than the 747. 443 00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:56,000 I'm an immediate response was I want to break the story.