1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:12,000 In December 1984, American TV producer Jamie Chanderra received a 35 millimeter film in the mail. 2 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:20,000 Once developed, it revealed eight pages of a document describing an underground organization 3 00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:26,000 that was created in 1947 to deal with all information relating to UFOs. 4 00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:34,000 Supposedly for more than 50 years, this ultra-secret organization was part of a vast worldwide conspiracy 5 00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:39,000 designed to conceal the truth about visits by extraterrestrials. 6 00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:45,000 The code name for this elite group was Majestic 12 or MJ12. 7 00:00:56,000 --> 00:01:03,000 The film was produced by the United States Department of State and the United States Department of State 8 00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:06,000 of America. 9 00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:12,000 The film was produced by the United States Department of State of America. 10 00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:18,000 The film was produced by the United States Department of State of America. 11 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:24,000 The film was produced by the United States Department of State of America. 12 00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:34,000 Just how long do you think a worldwide conspiracy can be kept secret from the entire population? 13 00:01:34,000 --> 00:01:40,000 Can a small group of people maintain secrecy about world issues? 14 00:01:40,000 --> 00:01:45,000 Where does the disinformation end and the conspiracy begin? 15 00:01:45,000 --> 00:01:50,000 In the United States, where the Air Force investigated flying saucers for more than 20 years, 16 00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:55,000 the Pentagon has stated that it has no reason to continue these investigations, 17 00:01:55,000 --> 00:01:58,000 that all information collected to date is available, 18 00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:02,000 and that it has nothing to hide where UFOs are concerned. 19 00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:04,000 Not everyone agrees with this statement. 20 00:02:04,000 --> 00:02:10,000 Through legal means, American UFO experts have forced several government agencies, 21 00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:16,000 such as the NSA, CIA and FBI, to release hundreds of pages of documents, 22 00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:19,000 which they had previously claimed did not exist. 23 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:24,000 If we add to these lies rumors of recovered spaceships and intimidating men in black, 24 00:02:24,000 --> 00:02:28,000 then the idea of a worldwide cover-up doesn't seem so far-fetched. 25 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:31,000 But is there any truth to these rumors? 26 00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:36,000 In 1989, a man named Robert Lazar came out with wild speculations 27 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:43,000 regarding secret military facilities in the Nevada desert, the legendary Area 51. 28 00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:48,000 Robert Lazar is a pretty critical character, even extremely critical. 29 00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:52,000 Robert Lazar has received a lot of criticism. 30 00:02:52,000 --> 00:02:58,000 He was a young physicist who made a sensational statement 31 00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:04,000 that he had worked for a short time at an ultra-secret underground military base 32 00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:14,000 known as Area 51, near Groom Lake, north of Las Vegas. 33 00:03:14,000 --> 00:03:20,000 He claimed that he had been hired to study the recovered spaceships. 34 00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:24,000 I think perhaps the most controversial claims were those of Bob Lazar, 35 00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:31,000 who claims he was a nuclear physicist taken to a secret base 15 miles south of Groom Lake 36 00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:40,000 at Papouse Dry Lake and asked to work on the part of the propulsion system of an alien vehicle. 37 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:46,000 Unfortunately, Bob Lazar claims he is a nuclear physicist. 38 00:03:46,000 --> 00:03:50,000 That's absolute nonsense. He doesn't have any degrees of any kind whatsoever. 39 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:57,000 And when Stanton Friedman asked him basic questions, basic questions about physics 40 00:03:57,000 --> 00:04:02,000 known in high school textbooks, he was unable to answer them. 41 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:05,000 But Lazar's problems were more than academic. 42 00:04:05,000 --> 00:04:09,000 In 1990, he was arrested and charged with pandering. 43 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:15,000 In the field of investigation, it is said that information is only as reliable as its source. 44 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:19,000 Robert Lazar's credibility is rather doubtful. 45 00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:24,000 But thanks to him, it became public knowledge that odd things were happening at Area 51. 46 00:04:24,000 --> 00:04:27,000 Several films were produced by amateurs near Groom Lake, 47 00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:32,000 showing bright objects performing aviation maneuvers that were out of the ordinary. 48 00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:36,000 Were these objects the byproduct of alien technology? 49 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:43,000 Since the Groom Lake facilities were built in 1954 as a result of an agreement between the CIA 50 00:04:43,000 --> 00:04:49,000 and the Lockheed Aviation Corporation, they have been used to develop secret aircraft such as the U-2, 51 00:04:49,000 --> 00:04:55,000 the SR-71 Blackbird, and stealth aircraft such as the F-117A and the B-2 Bomber. 52 00:04:55,000 --> 00:05:00,000 These days, with an increase in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, 53 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:04,000 aircraft capable of performing feasts that are impossible for conventional aircraft, 54 00:05:04,000 --> 00:05:09,000 it's only natural for us to wonder about the object seen over Area 51. 55 00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:13,000 The rumor still persists that the military secretly recovered an alien spaceship 56 00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:16,000 and used it to make technological advances. 57 00:05:16,000 --> 00:05:23,000 Shortly before he died in 1998, Colonel Philip Corso, a retired American military officer, 58 00:05:23,000 --> 00:05:26,000 published a book called The Day After Roswell. 59 00:05:26,000 --> 00:05:30,000 Corso described how the army tried to make technological advances 60 00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:36,000 using a spaceship that was recovered in 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico. 61 00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:44,000 According to his story at one point, his boss at the Pentagon, General Trudeau, 62 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:48,000 gave him UFO remnants that had been stored in an army locker. 63 00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:53,000 I've intentionally mentioned that it was the army since it seems that it was mostly the Air Force 64 00:05:53,000 --> 00:05:56,000 and perhaps the Marines who led the secret operations. 65 00:05:56,000 --> 00:05:59,000 The army was more behind the scenes. 66 00:06:00,000 --> 00:06:03,000 Maybe they had wanted to play a role at that point. 67 00:06:03,000 --> 00:06:09,000 So Trudeau gave these remnants to Colonel Corso to play around with and try to find some use for. 68 00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:14,000 They decided to pass the remnants on to a few laboratories very secretly, 69 00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:17,000 with the instructions to do what you want with this, 70 00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:21,000 try to find some way of using it, and patent your ideas. 71 00:06:23,000 --> 00:06:28,000 One thing that was supposedly developed using alien technology was the transistor. 72 00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:31,000 Unfortunately, upon checking with the patent office, 73 00:06:31,000 --> 00:06:36,000 we discovered that these semiconductors were patented well before the Roswell affair. 74 00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:44,000 But French scientist Jean-Pierre Pagy, one of the main researchers into magnetohydrodynamics, or MHD, 75 00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:49,000 believes that alien technology has been used to make human technological advances. 76 00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:54,000 In his most recent book, UFOs and Classified American Weapons, 77 00:06:54,000 --> 00:06:58,000 he said that while attending a conference on advanced propulsion, 78 00:06:58,000 --> 00:07:02,000 a few of his American counterparts confided some surprising information. 79 00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:08,000 When I discussed the matter with American scientists, they were quite glib. 80 00:07:08,000 --> 00:07:14,000 They admitted to having recovered an alien hypersonic shuttle in Roswell in 1947, 81 00:07:14,000 --> 00:07:17,000 not a ship designed for long space travel. 82 00:07:17,000 --> 00:07:21,000 So from then on, they had concrete evidence that MHD existed. 83 00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:26,000 A decision was made from above that we don't want to repeat what happened with the atomic bomb. 84 00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:31,000 We want this to stay strictly American, so I want you to disinform the public. 85 00:07:31,000 --> 00:07:33,000 Their plan worked magnificently. 86 00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:36,000 What's interesting is that MHD sank like a ship. 87 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:40,000 It just disappeared altogether in the early 1970s. 88 00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:45,000 In the U.S., they had developed it in Area 51 in an ultra-secret underground laboratory. 89 00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:51,000 I went to Berkeley to give a lecture in 1987 at the invitation of my friend Tony Oppenheim, 90 00:07:51,000 --> 00:07:54,000 who worked for the Department of Fluid Mechanics. 91 00:07:54,000 --> 00:07:59,000 In the back of the room sat a professor, Kunkel, who was constantly fidgeting, 92 00:07:59,000 --> 00:08:01,000 and Oppenheim said to Kunkel, 93 00:08:01,000 --> 00:08:04,000 why were you so fidgety during the lecture? 94 00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:06,000 And Kunkel replied, 95 00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:09,000 I'm very embarrassed because a lot of what that Frenchman was saying 96 00:08:09,000 --> 00:08:12,000 is actually being studied in secret labs here in the United States, 97 00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:15,000 like Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. 98 00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:19,000 But here it's such a secret that I'm not even authorized to talk about it. 99 00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:24,000 Harry was seeing this French scientist casually explaining MHD to second-year students 100 00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:27,000 when it was supposed to be top secret in the United States, 101 00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:29,000 so it was a bit of a blunder. 102 00:08:29,000 --> 00:08:32,000 That's why the Americans were laughing, as people from Brighton told me, 103 00:08:32,000 --> 00:08:35,000 our military secrets are in your comic books. 104 00:08:36,000 --> 00:08:40,000 As it turns out, the information on MHD was not the only thing 105 00:08:40,000 --> 00:08:42,000 that was revealed to Professor Petit. 106 00:08:42,000 --> 00:08:45,000 He also learned that Americans supposedly had a torpedo 107 00:08:45,000 --> 00:08:49,000 capable of traveling 2,000 miles per hour, 108 00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:53,000 and a hypersonic airplane capable of orbiting Earth. 109 00:08:54,000 --> 00:08:59,000 What's more, the U.S. had allegedly already sent manned flights to Mars. 110 00:08:59,000 --> 00:09:03,000 The scientists believed all of this information without hesitation. 111 00:09:04,000 --> 00:09:08,000 What if Jean-Pierre Petit was merely the victim of a disinformation scheme, 112 00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:12,000 like those accredited to the mysterious men in black? 113 00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:18,000 Among the favorite topics of conspiracy theorists is the strange men in black, 114 00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:21,000 who first appeared under rather odd circumstances. 115 00:09:25,000 --> 00:09:29,000 In the 1950s, other than UFO experts who belonged to what we might call 116 00:09:29,000 --> 00:09:33,000 serious mainstream groups, it's hard to qualify groups like that, 117 00:09:33,000 --> 00:09:37,000 but some published books at the beginning of the UFO movement, 118 00:09:37,000 --> 00:09:39,000 so we might call them serious. 119 00:09:39,000 --> 00:09:45,000 Anyways, other than those serious groups, smaller groups popped up as well, 120 00:09:45,000 --> 00:09:49,000 one of which had a memorable character named Gray Barker. 121 00:09:49,000 --> 00:09:55,000 Gray Barker was an American who became interested in flying saucers in the early 1950s. 122 00:09:55,000 --> 00:10:00,000 He joined a small group on the East Coast led by UFO expert Albert Bender. 123 00:10:00,000 --> 00:10:05,000 This was about the time that the smaller groups were being created. 124 00:10:05,000 --> 00:10:11,000 When the article by Kehoe was published and articles on the subject were appearing in major newspapers, 125 00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:16,000 a lot of people began thinking, hey, I'm interested in that too. 126 00:10:16,000 --> 00:10:22,000 I think I'll start my own group or I'll publish a fan magazine or I'll write books on the subject. 127 00:10:22,000 --> 00:10:25,000 In actual fact, not too many people wrote books. 128 00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:27,000 Most wrote bulletins. 129 00:10:28,000 --> 00:10:31,000 So there were quite a few small groups. 130 00:10:31,000 --> 00:10:35,000 Gray Barker joined a group that claimed to have contacts around the world. 131 00:10:35,000 --> 00:10:39,000 Each time that someone wrote to them, the person would become a contact, 132 00:10:39,000 --> 00:10:41,000 so their network spread quickly. 133 00:10:41,000 --> 00:10:43,000 And then something odd happened to this group. 134 00:10:43,000 --> 00:10:48,000 It's President, Albert Bender, suddenly dropped all of his activities. 135 00:10:48,000 --> 00:10:52,000 This was a mystery to his friends who wondered what had happened. 136 00:10:52,000 --> 00:10:56,000 He told them that he had been visited by three mysterious men in black 137 00:10:56,000 --> 00:10:59,000 who told him to drop his interest in the subject. 138 00:10:59,000 --> 00:11:03,000 Apparently he was too close to the truth, which made him a dangerous element, 139 00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:07,000 and these men had come to intimidate him and tell him to drop the subject. 140 00:11:07,000 --> 00:11:11,000 These men were dressed in black, wore felt hats and drove a Cadillac 141 00:11:11,000 --> 00:11:16,000 just like the stereotypes seen in the movie of the same name, Men in Black. 142 00:11:16,000 --> 00:11:19,000 This was the first report of the Men in Black. 143 00:11:19,000 --> 00:11:23,000 Unlike Bender, Gray Barker decided not to drop the subject, 144 00:11:23,000 --> 00:11:26,000 and he decided to investigate the matter. 145 00:11:26,000 --> 00:11:31,000 In 1956, he wrote a book called They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, 146 00:11:31,000 --> 00:11:35,000 which was the first book written on this subject. 147 00:11:35,000 --> 00:11:39,000 Since then, the Men in Black have become a known element among UFO circles, 148 00:11:39,000 --> 00:11:43,000 although the subject remained on the fringes for a long time. 149 00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:46,000 Most ufologists did not take the matter seriously. 150 00:11:46,000 --> 00:11:50,000 These Men in Black were not attention grabbers like UFOs, 151 00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:54,000 which were a more serious issue, a more scientific matter. 152 00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:56,000 But the idea persisted over the years, 153 00:11:56,000 --> 00:12:00,000 and now the public in general has heard of Men in Black thanks to Hollywood. 154 00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:04,000 In his book, Gray Barker gave the impression that these Men in Black 155 00:12:04,000 --> 00:12:07,000 might be federal agents, specifically FBI agents. 156 00:12:07,000 --> 00:12:09,000 That inference did not go unnoticed. 157 00:12:09,000 --> 00:12:14,000 In January 1959, the Federal Bureau of Investigation told the Chicago agents 158 00:12:14,000 --> 00:12:19,000 that it wanted a copy of Barker's book, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. 159 00:12:19,000 --> 00:12:24,000 Upon investigation, Edgar Hoover's Men concluded that the FBI had not been involved 160 00:12:24,000 --> 00:12:26,000 in what happened to Albert Bender. 161 00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:28,000 Could someone else be interfering? 162 00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:37,000 Gray Barker published his book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers in 1956. 163 00:12:37,000 --> 00:12:41,000 Over the next few years, several UFO experts visited Al Bender 164 00:12:41,000 --> 00:12:44,000 to learn about the use of hearing his version of what had happened. 165 00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:46,000 But he remained silent. 166 00:12:46,000 --> 00:12:48,000 He didn't say anything or do anything. 167 00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:54,000 In 1958 or 1959, he wrote an article on so-called revelations, 168 00:12:54,000 --> 00:12:57,000 but his article didn't really reveal anything. 169 00:12:57,000 --> 00:13:00,000 It just described how he had been harassed for years. 170 00:13:00,000 --> 00:13:04,000 In 1962, Gray Barker published a book which was a manuscript 171 00:13:04,000 --> 00:13:08,000 prepared by Bender telling his version of the story. 172 00:13:08,000 --> 00:13:12,000 The local community was disappointed since this book did not reflect 173 00:13:12,000 --> 00:13:15,000 what Barker had said in his first book. 174 00:13:15,000 --> 00:13:19,000 The men in black were neither government agents nor fifth column aliens. 175 00:13:19,000 --> 00:13:22,000 They were aliens based in the Antarctic. 176 00:13:22,000 --> 00:13:26,000 The story was nothing more than really bad science fiction. 177 00:13:26,000 --> 00:13:30,000 Most people I've spoken with in UFO circles believe that it was nothing more than fiction 178 00:13:30,000 --> 00:13:34,000 and bad fiction at that, since he was claiming that these beings 179 00:13:34,000 --> 00:13:37,000 would materialize in his home out of thin air. 180 00:13:37,000 --> 00:13:39,000 They were male and female beings. 181 00:13:39,000 --> 00:13:45,000 In fact, Bender's manuscript even contained stories that bordered on eroticism. 182 00:13:45,000 --> 00:13:48,000 He claimed that the aliens took him to their base. 183 00:13:48,000 --> 00:13:51,000 They told him that they had come to Earth because our water contained 184 00:13:51,000 --> 00:13:53,000 some element that they needed for their planet. 185 00:13:53,000 --> 00:13:58,000 Supposedly, they headed back to their planet in 1960 or 1961, 186 00:13:58,000 --> 00:14:01,000 and that was when Bender could finally reveal his secret. 187 00:14:01,000 --> 00:14:04,000 Up until then, the aliens had been telling him, 188 00:14:04,000 --> 00:14:06,000 don't talk about this. 189 00:14:06,000 --> 00:14:09,000 And that was why Bender had given up his study group, 190 00:14:09,000 --> 00:14:12,000 because the extraterrestrial beings had politely asked him 191 00:14:12,000 --> 00:14:15,000 not to reveal their existence. 192 00:14:15,000 --> 00:14:20,000 As you can see, this story was very bizarre. 193 00:14:20,000 --> 00:14:25,000 It reflected Bender's personality since he was not a typical UFO expert. 194 00:14:25,000 --> 00:14:28,000 Even Barker, who added his own personal notes to the book, 195 00:14:28,000 --> 00:14:31,000 since it seems that the manuscript was badly written, 196 00:14:31,000 --> 00:14:35,000 said that he had a hard time believing Bender's story. 197 00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:40,000 So the whole issue of men in black got pushed to the fringes of the UFO community, 198 00:14:40,000 --> 00:14:44,000 even though it ended up being discussed more than other issues. 199 00:14:44,000 --> 00:14:47,000 Apart from the myth created by Barker and Bender, 200 00:14:47,000 --> 00:14:50,000 UFO literature is filled with stories of men in black. 201 00:14:50,000 --> 00:14:53,000 They seem to be everywhere in the 1960s. 202 00:14:53,000 --> 00:14:57,000 In 1967, the U.S. Air Force issued a memo to its staff, 203 00:14:57,000 --> 00:15:00,000 advising them that individuals dressed in civilian clothes 204 00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:03,000 were posing as members of an elite branch of NORAD, 205 00:15:03,000 --> 00:15:06,000 visiting witnesses who had seen a UFO 206 00:15:06,000 --> 00:15:09,000 and asking them not to say anything about what they had seen. 207 00:15:09,000 --> 00:15:13,000 The Air Force also stated that these visitors were imposters, 208 00:15:13,000 --> 00:15:16,000 and any officer with information regarding these individuals 209 00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:19,000 should immediately notify his superiors. 210 00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:21,000 In her book, The Truth Behind Men in Black, 211 00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:25,000 British UFO expert Jenny Randalls describes dozens of cases 212 00:15:25,000 --> 00:15:28,000 where people were visited by men in black, 213 00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:31,000 extending from the 1950s up to the present. 214 00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:35,000 So if the MIB are not agents working for a secret government agency, 215 00:15:35,000 --> 00:15:37,000 then who are they? 216 00:15:37,000 --> 00:15:43,000 I'm very interested by the so-called men in black cases. 217 00:15:43,000 --> 00:15:47,000 Undoubtedly, there is a phenomenon of some sort here, 218 00:15:47,000 --> 00:15:50,000 whether it's connected to the UFO mystery 219 00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:56,000 or whether it's perhaps a separate but related paranormal phenomenon. 220 00:15:56,000 --> 00:16:01,000 I don't know, but I can't help but think it's more likely 221 00:16:01,000 --> 00:16:06,000 that there are two rather more ordinary things going on here. 222 00:16:06,000 --> 00:16:12,000 Firstly, perhaps somebody deliberately hoaxing people 223 00:16:12,000 --> 00:16:15,000 who want to believe perhaps a little bit too much 224 00:16:15,000 --> 00:16:19,000 in extraterrestrials and playing a trick on them. 225 00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:29,000 Secondly, the sorts of people who do enjoy dressing as and pretending to be, 226 00:16:29,000 --> 00:16:32,000 say secret agents. 227 00:16:32,000 --> 00:16:36,000 And it seems to me that it is a well-known psychological 228 00:16:36,000 --> 00:16:41,000 and psychiatric phenomenon that there are people, for example, 229 00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:46,000 who dress as police officers or as paramedics 230 00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:50,000 and who have their uniforms and they enjoy, 231 00:16:50,000 --> 00:16:55,000 it fulfills some sort of psychological need to be seen in this role. 232 00:16:55,000 --> 00:17:00,000 It doesn't seem to me too far-fetched to suggest that a lot of people might enjoy 233 00:17:00,000 --> 00:17:06,000 posing as an agent of some shadowy government agency. 234 00:17:06,000 --> 00:17:11,000 Is there a secret agency? Why not MJ12? 235 00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:18,000 In November 1950, upon his return to Ottawa after a visit to the American capital, 236 00:17:18,000 --> 00:17:22,000 Wilbur Smith, an engineer working for the Federal Department of Transport, 237 00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:26,000 submitted a trip report to his superiors. 238 00:17:26,000 --> 00:17:31,000 Smith stated that in the U.S. the whole subject of flying saucers 239 00:17:31,000 --> 00:17:35,000 was classified more confidential than the H-bomb. 240 00:17:35,000 --> 00:17:38,000 And a group had been set up to study them, 241 00:17:38,000 --> 00:17:43,000 led by Dr. Vannevar Bush, President Truman's scientific advisor. 242 00:17:45,000 --> 00:17:49,000 Rumors of this secret group charged with studying flying saucers 243 00:17:49,000 --> 00:17:51,000 have persisted to this day. 244 00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:56,000 In the early 1950s, Captain Edward Rupelt was director of Project Blue Book, 245 00:17:56,000 --> 00:18:00,000 an American committee set up to investigate UFOs. 246 00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:04,000 In his book, reports on unidentified flying objects. 247 00:18:04,000 --> 00:18:07,000 He explained that during his term as director, 248 00:18:07,000 --> 00:18:12,000 he had the feeling that a secret organization was also working on the same subject. 249 00:18:12,000 --> 00:18:15,000 What was this mysterious organization? 250 00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:18,000 There are many MJ12 documents. 251 00:18:18,000 --> 00:18:22,000 One of the documents that first came was the Eisenhower Briefing document. 252 00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:27,000 And that arrived at the home of Jamie Chandra in the form of two roles of undeveloped film. 253 00:18:27,000 --> 00:18:30,000 Maybe one role of undeveloped film with 16 frames. 254 00:18:30,000 --> 00:18:35,000 But each of the frames sets now are in the possession of two people. 255 00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:39,000 One of them is Bill Moore and the other is Jamie Chandra. 256 00:18:39,000 --> 00:18:41,000 They were identical sets. 257 00:18:41,000 --> 00:18:45,000 And I was able to get a copy of one of the sets from Jamie Chandra, 258 00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:50,000 which includes the famous Truman Forest Hall memo, 259 00:18:50,000 --> 00:18:55,000 which was the 1947 memo that presumably kicked off the Majestic 12 program. 260 00:18:55,000 --> 00:18:59,000 The first six pages apparently written in November 1952 261 00:18:59,000 --> 00:19:02,000 and addressed to President-elect Dwight Eisenhower 262 00:19:02,000 --> 00:19:09,000 basically a briefing note describing the objectives of a project named Majestic 12 or MJ12. 263 00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:12,000 This was followed by two pages of appendices 264 00:19:12,000 --> 00:19:19,000 and the memo dated September 24, 1947, signed by the president at that time, Harry Truman. 265 00:19:19,000 --> 00:19:24,000 In the memo, the president authorized Secretary of Defense James Forrestal 266 00:19:24,000 --> 00:19:28,000 to proceed with an operation referred to as MJ12, 267 00:19:28,000 --> 00:19:34,000 with the assistance of Dr. Bush, the White House's scientific advisor. 268 00:19:34,000 --> 00:19:40,000 The documents were stamped, top secret, magic and eyes only. 269 00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:48,000 The MJ12 program was the program that was begun and initiated by Truman 270 00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:50,000 according to the documents in 1947. 271 00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:54,000 And it has remained apparently from the documents that I have, 272 00:19:54,000 --> 00:20:02,000 continuous under various names, but including Majestic 12 or MJ12, up to at least 1976. 273 00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:05,000 These documents focused on the Roswell affair 274 00:20:05,000 --> 00:20:08,000 and spoke of the creation of an ultra-secret group, Majestic 12, 275 00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:12,000 which was supposed to be aware of everything relating to UFOs in Roswell. 276 00:20:12,000 --> 00:20:20,000 Since then, it appears that the scope of the program has broadened to understand how they work, 277 00:20:20,000 --> 00:20:22,000 maybe to begin some reverse engineering process 278 00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:27,000 because one of the documents that I have from about 1952 279 00:20:27,000 --> 00:20:30,000 seems to summarize what we've learned about the technologies. 280 00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:33,000 These sheets were not the only ones of their kind. 281 00:20:33,000 --> 00:20:40,000 Over the next few years, other similar documents were sent to UFO experts, always anonymously. 282 00:20:40,000 --> 00:20:47,000 One of the most important documents was a sort of operating manual for MJ12 agents. 283 00:20:47,000 --> 00:20:54,000 After I retired in 1993, a friend of mine, Stan Friedman, who is well known in the UFO community, 284 00:20:54,000 --> 00:21:01,000 said that he thought that he knew that Don Berliner, who is actually the head of the Fund for UFO Research now, 285 00:21:01,000 --> 00:21:06,000 had received some documents in the mail that I might be interested in looking at. 286 00:21:06,000 --> 00:21:12,000 So I asked Don Berliner if he could share these documents with me. 287 00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:15,000 He ran a copy of them, but they weren't very good. 288 00:21:15,000 --> 00:21:21,000 I visited Don in Washington, and together we found a black-and-white photographic shop 289 00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:24,000 and made extremely good copies, which I purchased. 290 00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:31,000 And then from those copies, I recreated the manual, which turns out to be a special operations manual, 291 00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:39,000 Psalm 101, that allegedly explains to the troops in the field how to recover a crashed UFO, 292 00:21:39,000 --> 00:21:44,000 how to deceive the public that there's anything there, and where to ship the bodies and where to send the parts. 293 00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:51,000 When the first MJ12 documents were received in the mid-1980s, several UFO experts studied them 294 00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:56,000 in the hopes of finding clues as to whether they were genuine or fake. 295 00:21:56,000 --> 00:22:02,000 Their results led to a general state of skepticism. 296 00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:06,000 It seems clear to me that studies into these documents by investigators such as Barry Greenwood, 297 00:22:06,000 --> 00:22:11,000 Robert Todd, and others showed that these documents were fakes. 298 00:22:11,000 --> 00:22:17,000 First of all, in one of the memos allegedly signed by Truman, the president's signature had been photocopied 299 00:22:17,000 --> 00:22:23,000 from another document, which was genuine and which can be found at the National Archives office. 300 00:22:23,000 --> 00:22:30,000 The rest was a mixture of items commonly found in UFO literature, but there was nothing that pointed to a real American operation. 301 00:22:30,000 --> 00:22:35,000 The authenticity of these documents was doubtful, and they were the beginning of a history of fakes, 302 00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:41,000 which show up in all areas, including UFO circles, unfortunately. 303 00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:45,000 I think the test of time has not been good on MJ12. 304 00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:55,000 Given the amount of whistleblowing, given the amount of ways in which secrets are really blown by a very invasive press and media, 305 00:22:55,000 --> 00:23:00,000 that something that big could be covered up that long is very difficult to believe, 306 00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:07,000 that the Americans could actually have a flying saucer and alien bodies over 50 years guarded by many troops, 307 00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:14,000 guarded by scientists, even the amount of cleaners that would have to go through a base on that over 50 years, 308 00:23:14,000 --> 00:23:19,000 there's a lot of people that if they could just produce one piece of proof that would blow the story, 309 00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:24,000 would interest anybody of a serious investigative reporting nature. 310 00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:29,000 And yet the serious investigative reporters, the sort of the Paxmans and the Cronkites, 311 00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:35,000 don't get involved in this kind of stuff because the real evidence that they would rely on, that they would demand, has not been forthcoming. 312 00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:41,000 MJ12 looks good superficially until you ask, well, why was it given to those people? 313 00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:52,000 If you were a government person and you wanted people to know this, you could take that evidence with its kind of guarantees to people like Cronkite, 314 00:23:52,000 --> 00:23:55,000 and if you could convince them, then you've got your story out. 315 00:23:55,000 --> 00:24:01,000 To give it to UFO proponents is a guaranteed way, almost, of in fact getting it ridiculed. 316 00:24:01,000 --> 00:24:10,000 Now, if that was the government that actually gave the MJ12 documents, I would suggest that it's not because the MJ12 documents are genuine, 317 00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:15,000 but that the government wanted to see the rumours, to see how it would work and what would happen and so on. 318 00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:18,000 And if they're involved, then I think it was quite deliberate. 319 00:24:18,000 --> 00:24:24,000 And in fact, I believe Linda Morton Howe, who's perhaps more famous for her work on animal mutilations and so on, 320 00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:30,000 she told the story of actually being taken into a room, being shown documents very much like MJ12, 321 00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:35,000 then having them taken away from her and told never show those to anybody, never tell anybody you saw them. 322 00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:39,000 Well, the simple answer is, if you don't want her to tell anybody, why show it to them in the first place? 323 00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:44,000 Clearly, someone was trying to manipulate her, I think she was a bit savvy on this one, 324 00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:49,000 but clearly they were trying to manipulate her and I think the release of those documents in the way they came out 325 00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:57,000 was another, perhaps slightly clumsy way of doing this kind of let's see what happens in the population, which I think is what's behind it. 326 00:24:57,000 --> 00:25:07,000 Not many UFO experts believe in the MJ12 affair, but if these documents were fake, then what explains the rumours about secret groups? 327 00:25:08,000 --> 00:25:17,000 Other than MJ12, there was an ongoing tradition of secret groups that supposedly studied UFOs, with most of these being American. 328 00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:22,000 This was mentioned in Rupel's book, Report on UFOs in 1956. 329 00:25:22,000 --> 00:25:29,000 He spoke of a group linked to the President of the United States that came to investigate his Blue Book files. 330 00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:37,000 Then there was Wilbur Smith in the 1950s, who wrote a memo mentioning how he had met with individuals from the American government. 331 00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:41,000 So there were a lot of stories circulating about these secret groups. 332 00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:48,000 As for Rupel's story, it seems obvious to me that the President would have had advisors keeping him informed of what was happening, 333 00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:52,000 and naturally they would have taken an interest in the UFO matter. 334 00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:55,000 We know that Americans studied UFOs. 335 00:25:55,000 --> 00:26:01,000 However, there are enough records available in public archives now for us to cross-check information. 336 00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:06,000 And I don't get the impression that there was a group spending all of its time on the matter. 337 00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:09,000 At least, it doesn't seem very likely. 338 00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:16,000 It's possible that there were times when the subject was particularly sensitive. 339 00:26:16,000 --> 00:26:22,000 Like during the wave of sightings in 1952 when UFOs were flying over Washington, 340 00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:26,000 and the President would have said to his advisors, I want a report on this. 341 00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:28,000 I want to know what's going on. 342 00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:36,000 Also, during periods of tension with the Russians, the U.S. government might have been interested in certain matters. 343 00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:38,000 That's highly likely. 344 00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:41,000 But there's been no ongoing effort since then. 345 00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:47,000 And what's important to remember is that these individuals did not have the answers. 346 00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:49,000 That's important. 347 00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:54,000 In any conspiracy theory, there is a tendency to think that people in power know everything about the matter. 348 00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:58,000 The attitude is that they've known everything from the start. 349 00:26:58,000 --> 00:27:04,000 My impression is that they were just as lost as everyone else, and they were asking themselves the same questions. 350 00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:12,000 So it's hard to imagine that they worked continually on the UFO issue, unless they found something along the way, which doesn't seem very likely. 351 00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:17,000 Obviously, they asked themselves the same questions as everyone else, but they didn't find any answers. 352 00:27:17,000 --> 00:27:22,000 And UFOs were not their number one problem at the time. They had other fish to fry. 353 00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:27,000 If UFOs had been clearly linked to the Russians at the time, then it would have been a highly sensitive matter. 354 00:27:27,000 --> 00:27:31,000 I'm sure it would have occurred to them, but they would have eliminated that theory. 355 00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:38,000 UFOs were neither aliens nor Russians. They tended to have the attitude that it's only a pop culture phenomena. 356 00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:41,000 Psychologists succeeded in calming down the population. 357 00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:47,000 It was a time when people were still strongly superstitious, although that tendency was starting to fade. 358 00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:50,000 It was easy to sweep the problem under the carpet. 359 00:27:50,000 --> 00:27:57,000 It is my belief that something like that type of organization has existed. 360 00:27:57,000 --> 00:28:03,000 And whether or not something like that still exists, I'm not as certain, but I'm willing to guess that it probably does. 361 00:28:03,000 --> 00:28:15,000 I say this on the basis of a variety of statements made by former Air Force officer Edward Ruppelt, who I think alluded to the existence of such an organization. 362 00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:21,000 I also believe that, I think it makes sense to be quite honest with you. 363 00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:27,000 Let us play a little historical game and let's pretend that the year is 1947 and that your name is Harry Truman. 364 00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:35,000 And let us just say for the moment that you indeed have information or even possibly technology that is alien in origin. 365 00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:37,000 What would you do? 366 00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:44,000 Certainly we know that in 1947 the United States did have a monopoly of very important technology, and that was nuclear technology. 367 00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:49,000 In 1947, the United States had a monopoly of working nuclear bombs. 368 00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:59,000 And at that time, the entire rest of the world was pounding at the door of the United Nations, basically wanting the U.S. to make nuclear technology public under the control of the U.N. 369 00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:03,000 And the United States' answer at that time was absolutely no way. 370 00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:05,000 We know this. 371 00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:07,000 So therefore, ask yourself a very simple question. 372 00:29:07,000 --> 00:29:16,000 If they're not willing to let atomic technology out to the rest of the world, what would they possibly do with something as exotic as alien technology? 373 00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:28,000 Well, I think the answer would be to make it a secret from yourself even as possible, knowing that Soviet agents did indeed penetrate your own scientific and intelligence community, which was certainly the case. 374 00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:34,000 It would be something that you would want to have as much a high degree of security protocol as possible around. 375 00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:36,000 That's a hypothesis. 376 00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:40,000 However, I think it's one that fits the known facts very well. 377 00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:44,000 So the jury is still out on the existence of an actual MJ-12. 378 00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:52,000 But I think that, again, I think that it is a reasonable supposition to say that something like it did occur and does exist. 379 00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:32,000 This story of an alien conspiracy linked to the American government and multinational corporations is just another piece to the puzzle. 380 00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:54,000 Conspiracy theorists believe that throughout the world, especially in the United States, underground alien bases exist with five or six levels, literally teeming with aliens. 381 00:30:54,000 --> 00:31:12,000 Allegedly, there are thousands of aliens living in these bases, and their only goal is to use humans, raising them like cattle for reproductive research, or interbreeding races to create aliens capable of living among humans without being noticed. 382 00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:32,000 I recently met individuals who were convinced of this theory. These people seemed quite normal and friendly on the surface, but then they get into a state of extreme paranoia when they become convinced that the enemy is everywhere. 383 00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:42,000 In their minds, walls have ears, and we are being watched at all times. 384 00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:56,000 And worst of all, there has been an infiltration from outer space with the consent of governments and major financial institutions throughout the world. 385 00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:18,000 This partnership between aliens and the military is supposedly being overseen by covert groups such as Illuminatis and the Freemasons, whose vast financial resources are being used to set up a new world order. 386 00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:26,000 Luckily, this belief is only supported by militants who use UFOs as an excuse for inventing the worst scenario as possible. 387 00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:32,000 To them, any official story is nothing more than a smoke screen designed to cover up horrible conspiracies. 388 00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:45,000 From the existence of aliens to flu epidemics spread intentionally by multinational pharmaceutical companies in cohort with governments throughout the world. 389 00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:58,000 Since the 1950s, there have always been groups insisting that the truth about UFOs is being kept from the public, that authorities know more than they are telling, that the military should be forced to release all of its more revealing files and so forth. 390 00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:12,000 Over the past couple of decades, these cries have gotten louder, especially in the United States, where they have been taken up by individuals close to the military, right-wing groups who tend to interpret everything in terms of a conspiracy theory. 391 00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:19,000 A few UFO experts are very interested in these conspiracy theories, which raises two points. 392 00:33:19,000 --> 00:33:25,000 Obviously, a debate surfaces over what is acceptable and what isn't in the case of a controversy. 393 00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:34,000 Also, is it necessary to associate yourself with these types of people and theories to be considered credible? 394 00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:47,000 Of course not. It's like saying that to be a politician in France, you have to join the National Front Party. That's not a very pleasant perspective. 395 00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:55,000 Extremist views risk damaging what little credibility has been gained to date in the field of ufology. 396 00:33:55,000 --> 00:34:01,000 I think that some people are just too gung-ho. 397 00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:06,000 They reach a point of no return and gradually lose touch with reality. 398 00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:10,000 And their reliance is more and more disconnected from reality. 399 00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:17,000 If UFOs spotted over Area 51 are nothing more than remotely guided prototypes and not alien spacecraft. 400 00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:27,000 If men in black are more of a myth than a real censorship committee, and if the existence of a secret group like MJ-12 is still very uncertain, 401 00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:33,000 then where does that leave us in terms of a worldwide conspiracy theory? 402 00:34:33,000 --> 00:34:43,000 Somewhere between rationalists who claim that governments are transparent and flying saucer buffs who see every new official document as further proof of a large-scale conspiracy, 403 00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:47,000 there lies a middle ground which seems to make sense. 404 00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:57,000 Many people feel that the government has been involved with a kind of a cover-up, but the idea is that we know an awful lot about things that happen in the American government, 405 00:34:57,000 --> 00:34:59,000 and in the Canadian government of course. 406 00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:06,000 And particularly with the American government, it's very difficult to keep secrets if they become politically-political footballs. 407 00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:15,000 The Clinton-Lewinsky case, the innermost secrets of their personal relationships were revealed to the entire world. 408 00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:19,000 And all sorts of other secrets have come forward. 409 00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:27,000 And yet at the same time, it is said that if the government is keeping a secret about UFOs, this is the best kept secret ever, 410 00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:33,000 because we will hear something about the subject once in a while and then nothing, and it's all sort of kept under wraps. 411 00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:38,000 Well, in my opinion, and I'm in a minority of researchers about this, 412 00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:47,000 I believe that if the government was studying this subject and had mounted an enormously huge study, which they would have to, 413 00:35:47,000 --> 00:35:55,000 if they knew that there was something to this subject, they would expend a tremendous amount of resources studying it. 414 00:35:55,000 --> 00:36:00,000 And it would be for a half a century that we would know this. 415 00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:02,000 We would in fact know this. 416 00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:08,000 There are generations of scientists who work on the subject, and generations and generations and generations of politicians 417 00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:13,000 through 11 different presidential administrations who have worked on it. 418 00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:20,000 And it would be expanding almost in a cone-like effect, more and more people becoming involved with it, and we'd know it. 419 00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:26,000 Now, the problem with conspiracy theories is that there is no such thing as deniability. 420 00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:32,000 Every time the government says, no, it's not true, that becomes evidence of the cover-up. 421 00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:37,000 So it's not falsifiable, as they say. You can't ever prove it's not happening. 422 00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:41,000 Everything is in service of the conspiracy. 423 00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:46,000 So I caution my colleagues to be extremely careful with this. 424 00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:53,000 Through my contacts and research, I have met quite a few UFO researchers throughout the world. 425 00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:58,000 For professional reasons I have had to travel to several countries in the world. 426 00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:02,000 I had a chance to mix business with pleasure. 427 00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:07,000 And I'm still not convinced that there's a worldwide conspiracy by government leaders. 428 00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:19,000 I'm positive that over the past 50 or so years a certain number of investigations, reports and conclusions were kept under wraps. 429 00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:22,000 Of that I'm sure. 430 00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:29,000 But I think that the governments were just doing their job. 431 00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:34,000 They were faced with unusual phenomena and they investigated. 432 00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:38,000 That's normal. That's what they're supposed to do. 433 00:37:38,000 --> 00:37:43,000 It follows that if they were unable to come to any definite conclusions at the time, 434 00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:48,000 if they couldn't explain what was happening, then they wouldn't want to admit it. 435 00:37:48,000 --> 00:37:53,000 That's just normal as well. The same thing applies in other areas as well. 436 00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:58,000 When the French government wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, it didn't go around bragging. 437 00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:01,000 It tried to conceal the fact from the public. 438 00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:08,000 As far as UFOs are concerned, I think it's simply a case where the governments could not come to any definite conclusions about what they had on their hands. 439 00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:11,000 So they prefer not to talk about it. 440 00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:19,000 I positively do not believe in the conspiracy theory that little grey men, reptilian beings, are trying to establish a new world order 441 00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:24,000 using Illuminatis to hide the truth as they prepare to colonize the world. 442 00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:28,000 I think there's evidence that at some level there's evasion. 443 00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:37,000 I'm not one to buy into a great organized conspiracy, but there's often uneven release policies between the various agencies. 444 00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:44,000 It's a touchy subject, and you have to wonder, I'll tell you. 445 00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:51,000 I sometimes think when the excuse of national security is used, it's not so much national security, but national insecurity. 446 00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:58,000 Some of these people have huge budgets, and they're responsible for the penetration of our skies and defense systems and oceans, 447 00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:00,000 and they don't like to say we don't know. 448 00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:08,000 The evidence is that we're not ready yet to face the fact that we may not be alone or that we're not at the top of the pecking order. 449 00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:16,000 Look, 50% of the North American public fear we're not alone, 10% of the same North American public claim sightings and encounters. 450 00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:19,000 In fact, in Canada, the percentages are higher than in the U.S. 451 00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:26,000 It's a scary thought to think that we can't be sure of that, and these things move at will and whatever. 452 00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:31,000 I can tell you that if you're an air traffic controller or an astronomer, UFOs are a reality. 453 00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:37,000 They may not be quick to say that they're a vehicle of extraterrestrial origin, but they're a problem in fact, a life that has to be dealt with. 454 00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:41,000 UFOs are real. I don't know what they are, but they're there. 455 00:39:41,000 --> 00:39:49,000 I'll tell you sometimes the fear of the unknown and cringes on these people who are not really trained to deal with it, 456 00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:53,000 but if you receive a complaint, these people must respond and must deal with it. 457 00:39:53,000 --> 00:39:56,000 And, you know, they do the best they can sometimes. 458 00:39:56,000 --> 00:40:00,000 In Canada, I haven't seen the government try to hide anything from me. 459 00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:03,000 I would go so far as to say that the government doesn't know anything. 460 00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:07,000 The military doesn't know anything. The police doesn't know anything either. 461 00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:10,000 Their silence proves that they don't know anything. 462 00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:18,000 Obviously, it could be interpreted as them hiding a big secret from us, but it's better for them to keep quiet because it's less disturbing to the population. 463 00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:22,000 It's somehow reassuring to believe that they're hiding something from us. 464 00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:27,000 We don't need to panic because the military are protecting the sky and the police are protecting the ground. 465 00:40:27,000 --> 00:40:32,000 So perhaps it's best that they keep quiet. 466 00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:35,000 I'm convinced of one thing, however. 467 00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:45,000 There are military officers who use their rank in much the same way that you might use the photocopier or the computer at the office to cut down on personal costs, 468 00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:50,000 sending faxes to Europe at the company's expense rather than having to pay for them yourself. 469 00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:56,000 Well, a high-ranking officer might just turn to a sergeant or a corporal and say, 470 00:40:56,000 --> 00:41:01,000 go to the St. Hubert military base, a UFO landed near there. 471 00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:05,000 Investigate the matter and write me up a report. 472 00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:12,000 Don't ask any questions because I'm a colonel and you're a corporal and you have no business asking questions. 473 00:41:12,000 --> 00:41:16,000 Take the jeep, go with one of your soldiers and check it out. 474 00:41:17,000 --> 00:41:24,000 When these two men get home, they might tell their wives that the army just sent them to investigate a UFO. 475 00:41:24,000 --> 00:41:29,000 And when women hear things from the military, they talk amongst themselves. 476 00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:35,000 It only takes two people for a rumor to start spreading. 477 00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:43,000 I think that at certain levels of the army, not only here in Canada but elsewhere in the world as well, 478 00:41:44,000 --> 00:41:51,000 there are officers who use their rank and position for their own personal gain to gather information. 479 00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:54,000 They aren't instructed to gather the information. 480 00:41:55,000 --> 00:42:02,000 They do it out of personal interest, which doesn't necessarily mean that the army itself is hiding anything. 481 00:42:03,000 --> 00:42:06,000 I tend not to believe that there's a widespread cover-up. 482 00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:10,000 If there is a cover-up, it probably is one more of ignorance. 483 00:42:11,000 --> 00:42:15,000 That is, the government says maybe this UFO phenomenon is important. 484 00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:17,000 We don't understand it. 485 00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:24,000 We can't admit that publicly, so we will stay quiet about whatever we're doing. 486 00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:35,000 I've certainly heard stories, I've heard rumors, I've even talked to some people that have told me or others about secret projects and so forth. 487 00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:42,000 I've never come across any evidence that absolutely convinced me that there is a cover-up. 488 00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:51,000 I have come across evidence that has shown that the U.S. government has done a miserable job at studying the phenomena 489 00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:56,000 and was greatly affected, for example, by the Cold War. 490 00:42:56,000 --> 00:43:02,000 And the American policies, the government policies that basically said secrecy was critical 491 00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:09,000 in all aspects of the military and industrial complex because of our Cold War with the Russians, Soviets. 492 00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:19,000 And this affected their attitudes toward UFOs because it turned out that UFO sightings might have been exploited for psychological reasons, 493 00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:22,000 possibly they thought by the Soviets and so on, and other things, 494 00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:29,000 so that what really should have been an open scientific study about UFOs was turned into something else 495 00:43:29,000 --> 00:43:34,000 by other factors, these social factors, I think, and political factors. 496 00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:40,000 While it cannot be denied that governments are not always forthcoming when it comes to information about UFOs, 497 00:43:40,000 --> 00:43:44,000 there is also no proof of a vast cover-up operation. 498 00:43:44,000 --> 00:43:50,000 In a lot of cases, it's clear that information was kept secret due to the fear that reigned during the Cold War, 499 00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:53,000 the fear of a Russian invasion. 500 00:43:53,000 --> 00:43:57,000 We must be wary of wild rumors and documents whose meaning has been misconstrued. 501 00:43:57,000 --> 00:44:06,000 On the other hand, it's clear that for more than 50 years, there has been an ongoing campaign of disinformation where UFOs are concerned. 502 00:44:06,000 --> 00:44:11,000 The confusion has not been caused by shadowy secret services or elite branches of the government. 503 00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:17,000 No, in this game of true or false, the threat comes from within. 504 00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:22,000 After having promoted sensational stories over and over that could not be proven, 505 00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:29,000 the more zealous ufologists have muddled the subject of UFOs more than all government agencies combined, 506 00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:35,000 with total disregard for the facts and often with a blazing desire to make their point. 507 00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:43,000 These militants have not hesitated to alter facts or completely ignore certain details to justify their cause, 508 00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:50,000 which just goes to show that when it comes to mixing up the truth, we do a good job of it ourselves. 509 00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:56,000 And with the invention of the Internet, there's no doubt that the nightmare has already begun. 510 00:44:56,000 --> 00:45:01,000 To quote David Vincent, star of the fictional series The Invaders.