Joe Murgia

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George Knapp: You know, in years past, if you were gonna dive into the deep end of the pool, talking about UFOs, you had to navigate a jungle of strange terms and acronyms like NICAP, APRO, CUFOS, CAUS, MUFON, FUFOR. Today, we have a new batch of acronyms and nicknames to digest and they are just as confusing at times: AATIP, AAWSAP, NIDS, BAASS, TTSA, the Tic Tac, the Gimbal. It’s like an alphabet soup. I thought today, considering how daunting these terms are, that maybe I might try to sketch out a little road map so you have a basic understanding of how these things fit together, which ones were created to do what, which ones may still be alive and what they’re up to, and how they came about. And we’ll be hearing from some of the people who made them happen.

But the landscape, I would say, has changed, regardless of where things go in the future, they’re already changed. In particular, the media landscape. It’s an exciting time, things are changing. The media environment has changed dramatically since December of 2017 and like it or not, whether you like Tom DeLonge or not, or TTSA or not, they changed it. They got the New York Times to do a story in December 2017 about a previously secret program that the Pentagon ran to study UFOs, and because of that story, other media followed. It was the New York Times that made it acceptable for other major, news media to do the story as well. CNN and Fox, the Washington Post, countless numbers of local media organizations, newspapers, magazines, etc. That is a big change. I wanna thank Bob Brown for inviting us to this event to talk about the changes that are underway. He and I go way back to the point where when we first met, I had brown hair. I wanna thank Bob and Laurie and Melinda as well for their graciousness and hospitality.

The kind of changes that are underway – the news coverage changes – have affected my line of work, of course, that’s what I do every day. Jeremy Corbell and Matt Adams and I came down here to cover this event as well to participate in it. We missed the presentations of the previous week because we got in yesterday but we’ve heard about it from many of the people that we’ve interacted with here and have heard that it’s been a week of compelling presentations and personal narratives. And looking at today’s line-up – we’ve been able to see what was happening today – it’s been pretty impressive.

Rick Doty, when he walked off the stage, I got to say, ‘Hey, isn’t it nice that you weren’t greeted with torches and pitchforks?’ because that’s sort of (audience and Knapp laugh) how he’s been presented over the years and when he comes to these kind of events and how he’s been portrayed in different books and magazines and articles as some sort of an enigmatic bad guy but you see there’s another side to it.

Jeffrey Mishlove, I did not get to hear, but I think he’s sort of symbolic, that there are academics…there are professionals…there are scientists, who are saying…the hell with it, we’re gonna take a look at this regardless of whether there are professional sanctions involved. It’s a courageous leap for persons in their life of work to investigate these topics. But it’s happening. It’s unfolding right now.

People like Kevin Day and the other folks who have shared very personal experiences about the changes that are happening in their lives, over this week, for the first time. A lot of speakers who are at this event, for the first time, have spoken in public about very dramatic things that have happened. Powerful and spooky events in their personal life. And it’s hard to come forward and talk about that stuff.

As a reporter, I can listen to these kinds of personal stories and report them and share them with the public. And I’ve done that for a long time. The most dramatic aspects of these unusual, paranormal encounters and experiences are difficult to talk about. I mean, the phenomenon, whatever it is, it shows itself to us at different times. We don’t know what the rules are. We don’t know why it appears to certain people. Why it appears at certain at certain places. It is elusive. It is enigmatic. It’s hard to pin down. It’s hard to document. That’s just the nature of the beast. That’s what we’ve got to deal with here.

So, as difficult as it is to document the personal experiences…the kinds of things that you’ve heard about this week, you have to try. That’s sort of what we did at Skinwalker Ranch. I wasn’t part of the investigation. I documented the investigation over the years. It was a private investigation, funded in the early going by Bob Bigelow. But the activity in the Unita Basin didn’t start with Bob Bigelow. It didn’t start with NIDS. It didn’t stop with BAASS, the government study that followed. It’s been going on there as long as people have lived in that basin. 250 years or so. As long as people have been writing things down. They’ve had those experiences: flying saucers, paranormal activity, Bigfoot, cattle mutilations…things of that sort, tend to go on there.

The fact that Skinwalker Ranch, which we’ll touch on a little bit today, is probably the most intensely, scientifically studied hotspot in history. There’s nothing, I think, special about that ranch that isn’t also true to the larger, Uinta Basin. The same things that have been reported at that ranch, have been reported in a much broader area. But the fact is, that what’s different is that that ranch was studied not once but twice. And now, is undergoing a 3rd study as well. Again, evidence is tough to come by but it’s worth trying.

When I started down this road some three decades ago, I decided that my focus would be on the government. Looking for the paper trail. Trying to find evidence of programs…military or otherwise. Intelligence programs that were involved with the study of UFOs. Figuring, I can’t go out and find flying saucers. I don’t know when there’s going to be some kind of mutilation event. But I can at least try to dig into government evidence, the paper trail, and see if there is a way to verify that these programs were real. It’s a small niche when you consider the vast umbrella of different kinds of experiences that have been discussed at this conference this week.

I mean, the UFO part of it is a tiny part of the mystery. And I think that is a major point that I wanna make here today. Is that the programs…the government programs we’re gonna talk about…recognized that – along the way, about 10 or 12 years ago – that if you only study flying saucers and objects in the sky and nuts and bolts flying craft, you’re not gonna really get to the heart of this mystery. And that’s sort of what we’re gonna go down the road looking at today.

This is an endeavor that is fraught with peril. Both personal and professional. For academics, as I mentioned, it’s kind of risky to look at and take this seriously. It’s certainly still true in my line of work, even though the media environment has changed somewhat. You gotta deal with character assassination and recriminations. And it’s kind of amped up in the last year or two. We have a new, recent wrinkle: The wrath of the spurned Ufologists. The debunkers. The jilted, scornful warriors of the Internet, who bravely and courageously joust with and spite, perceived dragons. who are dishing out mighty insults in attempts to intimidate people who are trying to understand what’s going on with them. Or, who wanna share their stories with the world. But they pop their head up on any of these various social media platforms and get pummeled right off the bat.

It’s sort of a microcosm, I think, of our times. The anger and hostility that sort of exploded into all aspects of public life. Ufology, of course, has always been contentious. We’ve always had turf wars and back biting and arguments and accusations about who’s a CIA agent and who’s a disinformation agent and things of that sort. But it’s never been quite like it is right now.

On Twitter? The Twit-fologists will jump all over somebody who wants to tell their story. They’re fearsome and mighty. You tangle with them at your own peril. They pounce on anything or anyone who strays beyond the standards that they’ve carved in their dictatel, stone tablets. And along with Twit-fology, there are the Pod-fologists and the Blog-fologists. And the all-around, quintessentially, pissed off, mostly young men, the Shank-fologists. Shank as in a knife, you know? Happy to stick a dictatel shiv in your kidneys when you’re not looking, if  you disagree with them on some social platform. So, I think everybody in this room has probably faced that to one degree or another. My personal feeling is that most of these folks would benefit greatly if they got a girlfriend. Or boyfriend.

I thought today I would share with you, sort of the informational foundation that I’ve acquired. A lot of it recently. But it’s also the result of many years of working developing relationships and a sense of trust with people who have become key players, whether you like it or not. Whether you trust them or not. Whether you have suspicions about them or not. They have become key players in programs that are real. That are tangible. And that are still underway. And I think that you’ll see what the benefit of that is.

So, one year ago, I made this trip to Washington, D.C. at the invitation of Senator Harry Reid. It was St. Patrick’s Day, 2018 and I already knew a little bit about AATIP and AAWSAP and what they’ve been studying and where the money came from and how the program was created. I did this sort of spy thing where I changed hotel rooms and I changed taxis. I was making sure I wasn’t followed. And if there was ever actually, anybody following me, they must have thought I looked ridiculous because it was way over the top.

But I ended up having to meet with Senator Reid and some other people who were directly involved in these programs and they gave me a download. And I thought I knew a lot about these programs when I went there and realized that I only knew a little tiny bit. The purpose of this was to learn about these programs. We all know about AATIP, but in reality, there was something before that.

I sat down for a couple of hours with Senator Reid and other people whose names, they don’t want to be known. They brought me up to speed on how AATIP was created. How its predecessor was under way for a number of years. It coexisted for a long time. People in this room. People who investigate this topic may have suspected for a long time that there was some kind of a program that still existed. We’ve all heard that Project Bluebook was the end. 1969 it ended and the government was done with UFOs. They closed up shop. And the reason they closed it down is because there was no evidence that it involved national security.

And we all knew that was baloney because of the stories that we’ve seen that are really well documented. For example, UFOs over nuclear missile bases. UFO encounters with the military installations and atomic facilities. Things of that sort the have been well documented over the years. There are cases that involved national security. So at the end of Blue Book, of course, this memo said, alright, any cases involving national security will continue to be investigated in the regular way. Well, what the heck was the regular way? We didn’t know. Well now we do know. At least a little bit of it.

And one of the regular ways was this program called AATIP. So I went on this trip. I learned this stuff about AATIP. I had known a lot about it before but I got this briefing about this alphabet soup of different programs, how they began and what they studied. December 2017, the New York Times breaks this story about AATIP. Now, I had known about it for a long time because I lived in Las Vegas. I knew Bob Bigelow. I knew Harry Reid. We’d talk about UFO stuff and what was going on. So when I was told the New York Times was gonna break the story, I’m kind ticked off about it. Because hey, I’ve been sitting on this for a long time. Why don’t I get to break the story? And they had to, one after another, gently remind me, “You know. You’re not the New York Times.” Which I had to admit! It was true. And if I had done the story, the Times had said that they weren’t going to do it if somebody else breaks it. So, if I had done it, it’d be another story from a UFO reporter.

The New York Times did it and they changed everything. Because they did it, wider organizations did it. Some of them took shots at the New York Times because The Times got the story and they didn’t. But that story was accurate, to a degree. But the story that it told was not the full story. AATIP, that we know about…the AATIP that studies nuts and bolts saucers…case of UFOs that have encounters with military units such as the USS Nimitz, that is studied by a group of people, Lue Elizondo was the head of it.

It’s not so much a program as it was a loose network of intelligence officials in different agencies, including the Air Force & the Navy, CIA, DIA, DARPA…there might be a couple of other agencies. But a case would come in from any one of their units [and] it would be shared with this group of people, analysis would be done, evidence would be looked at and then stashed in a draw and nobody ever sees it. It’s not passed up the chain of command.

In 2007, that changed. One of the guys I met with in this meeting in Washington is the one who changed it. He had been in the same position that Lue Elizondo had been in. And his name is just not out there. He grew frustrated with what was happening with the phenomenon and he suspected that UFOs flying around the sky, buzzing our military units every once in a while, is not the full story. Even if you could solve that part of the mystery it wouldn’t solve the bigger part of the picture.

So he grew interested in Skinwalker Ranch and he had read the (Knapp/Kelleher – “Hunt For The Skinwalker”) book. And after he read it, he called up Bob Bigelow and said…actually, he wrote him a letter and said, “Hey, can I go to the ranch…go look around? I’m with the DIA.” Bigelow says, “Come on out to Las Vegas and I’ll take you there.” And that’s what happened. He flew to Las Vegas. They flew on Bigelow’s jet. They went to the ranch. This guy’s not there fifteen minutes and he has an experience. And I’m not gonna go into detail. I’m hoping that he’s going to maybe come forward at some point and describe his experience. But it was just for him. Of all the people in this room, in the encounter, he was the only one who could see it. He’s the only one who had an angle on this thing that appeared. And he’s pretending that he’s not seeing it but it’s right out of the corner of his eye. And he doesn’t say anything until he leaves the ranch. And he gets off and he asks Bigelow if he had seen it. And he had not. The other people who had been in the room had not seen it.

He flies back to Las Vegas, goes back to Washington, D.C. and looks up Harry Reid and tells him about it. Now Reid had some experience in these matters that I’ll get into in a little bit. But as a result of that conversation, Reid, who had an interest in UFOs and had maintained that interest over many years – and I can attest to that personally – called in a couple of his friends in the Senate – Daniel Inouye and Ted Stevens. They had a conversation in a secure room and they decided to provide some funding for a much broader study. Something that looked at…beyond flying saucers, that looked at other paranormal aspects…supernatural aspects that we would not normally associate with aliens or ETs. Assuming that that’s what this is, which I’m not sure anyone knows for sure. And that is how AAWSAP was born. The Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application program.

So you didn’t see that term in the New York Times story. But that’s what the program was called in the beginning: AAWSAP. And the twenty-two million dollars that was spent, that you saw, did not go to the AATIP…the study of flying saucers, the program in the Pentagon. It went to Bob Bigelow. It was put out in a contract. It was advertised on the federal network. Bigelow was the only one who applied for the bid. That was in 2007, is when the groundwork was laid for it. 2008 is when the contract was awarded. And it made sense that he would get it. For one thing, he was willing to put up the facilities. He was wiling to pay for buildings and changes to buildings. He spent a million dollars of his own money preparing for this.

The money came in and I know there are a lot of questions about twenty-two million dollars, which, to Bob Bigelow, a billionaire, it’s not a lot of money. He hired 54 people, at one point. The names of all of those people. you can find them online. He advertised online for scientists and investigators. And he hired them. And he sent them to work. And some of the work that they did was at Skinwalker Ranch and a lot of the work was creating a gigantic database. Maybe the biggest UFO database in the world.

It included personal investigations. They sent out investigators to UFO hot spots. They’d get reports and do these investigations to try to figure things out. Some of the stuff… involved medical effects on people. Deleterious medical effects on people who encountered UFOs and other kinds of paranormal and supernatural phenomena. It was a gigantic database that included data that was acquired from foreign governments. It analyzed incidents like the Tic Tac. Not just Tic Tac but other, dramatic incidents like that. That went on for three years and then the money was pulled. And it’s unfortunate because if that had gone on, if it had been allowed to continue, we might some answers to some of these big questions that we’re tackling now.

The contract, as I said, was posted online in 2008. A week after it was awarded to Bob Bigelow, if you had been paying attention, there was a trail of bread crumbs of what was going on. Because a week after the contract was signed, he came on to “Coast to Coast AM” with me. September 28th of that year, 2008, and he announced it. He announced the creation of BAASS – Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies. He announced it on the air and he said, on the air, it’s to investigate UFOs and related phenomena. And he said, “I got a partner. We’ve got a partner. We’ve got a sponsor.” Didn’t say it was the DIA but that’s who it was. He said it on the air and nobody paid any attention.

And in that same interview, he talked about, “Look, I don’t think Disclosure’s gonna happen. ” He thought that the best thing we could do is get confirmation. And one way we get confirmation is by studying this stuff. By studying it. Taking it seriously. Looking for evidence. Reaching out to scientists and investigators to getting to the bottom of it. Which is what he did. There were other breadcrumbs as well. You might recall the FAA. They announced a policy that any pilot sightings, any airplane sightings involving UFOs, should be directed to Bigelow Aerospace. Kind of a big clue that something was going on. And yet, the world didn’t really pay much attention to it. The program was cancelled a couple of years later despite the best evidence and efforts by Senator Harry Reid and others.

I’ll give you a little insight into what they did. The scientist who wrote the proposal for Bob Bigelow, that went to the DIA, is Dr. Hal Puthoff. You heard Rick Doty talking about Hal Puthoff earlier today. I guess to some, in some quarters, Hal is controversial because he worked the CIA and he developed the protocols that became remote viewing. I think that is a courageous thing. And he’s worked on a lot of other classified projects. He’s had the highest security clearances in our country.

Our government, our intelligence agencies, our military…trust him! They trust him to do the right thing. They trust him and his team. He wrote the proposal. The proposal was accepted. The contract was put out. Hal was the chief scientist in charge of the program…developing the protocols, what they would study, where the money would be spent, what kinds of investigative efforts they would do. This is a presentation he made in Las Vegas last summer. (Puthoff Video Plays)

Hal Puthoff: The third area, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, I have not published anything in. Why? Because the program I was involved in, in the Pentagon and in the intelligence community has been Top Secret, behind-the-scenes and only recently has there been release of information about the program. So this is the first chance that I’ve had a chance to actually appear before the public and speak about details of the program and not go to jail.

There is a two-fold nature to the threat. First of all, you’ve got these Advanced Aerospace Vehicles flying around that we don’t know where they come from, who’s driving them, what the intent is – possibly off-world even. But the future threat, was actually as far as the Department of Defense went and the intelligence community, one of the greater concerns. What happens if potential adversaries achieve significant breakthroughs by getting hold of advanced technology either based on their study of the phenomena, or from sensor data, or from crash retrieved materials? That could provide a problem for the United States in the sense of threat. There’s reason to be concerned about that.

One of the reasons why it attracted attention at this point is the quality of the sources going public. Ex-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is the one who initiated the program. Top-rated F-18 pilots who encountered Advanced Aerospace Vehicles at close range were permitted to come forward and tell their stories, which up till now they hadn’t because they didn’t want to lose their flight status by reporting what they had found, at least publicly. And a number of significant Department of Defense and intelligence community officials have come forward to talk about the reality of this phenomena and the fact that there were programs going on.

One of the critical issues there’s so much high-level security and compartmentalization in this subject area, and there’s a lot of it, it’s difficult for contractors to obtain expert opinions on advanced technologies because they would expose why they are interested. So, I acted as a surrogate. I was contracted to commission mostly unclassified white papers from experts around the globe about where their particular subject areas would be in (the year) 2050 as like a general survey of aerospace futures. I decided this would be the best way to get the best knowledge we had across many technologies without actually exposing why we wanted to know. So, I let out 38 contracts over a two-year period. (End Puthoff Video)

George Knapp: We’ll talk about the 38 contracts in a moment. So the Twit-fologists. The Pod-fologists…tee off on Hal Puthoff. And it is unbelievable to me. This topic has screamed out for so many years: Why don’t they tell us what’s going on? Why doesn’t our government take this seriously? Why don’t we have scientists who have the courage to dig into the subject matter and investigate it and tell us what they find? Here’s Hal Puthoff, who’s been doing it for more than 30 years, studying UFOs. And he gets trashed every day by people into this subject matter.

He worked for the CIA, you can’t trust him. You want scientists to do this stuff. You want men with his credentials to take a look at it, investigate it. And anyone who does, gets beaten up about it. There aren’t that many scientists to go round. I know maybe you’re suspicious. There’s Hal Puthoff, who worked for the CIA, in remote viewing. Then he worked with Bob Bigelow and NIDs. Then he was involved with BAASS. Now he’s involved with TTSA, Tom DeLonge’s organization. You know, there’s something fishy about that. Well, you know what? There aren’t a whole lot of guys of his caliber who are willing to do this because they aren’t willing to be beaten up by the folks who do this on a regular basis. So, it’s amazing the courage that he’s had to stick with it. He’s a brilliant guy who’s been trusted by our government with its most sensitive secrets for a long time. But he’s not quite good enough for Ufology. Tough standards here. Tough crowd.

He mentioned about the 38 papers. So Matt (Adams) and I broke this story. I was able to obtain list of the 38 papers. These were written for the DIA as sort of a public face of what this program was. Hal Puthoff had asked the scientists that he contacted to look at different aspects…look at 40 years into the future of aerospace and aviation. Imagine what we might be able to do. You don’t have to mention UFOs but we’re using them as an example. The kind of technology that we know is possible, that somebody else has got. Who the somebody else, is we don’t quite know. But we’ve seen the evidence of it. Our defense agencies have seen it. They’ve got video. They’ve got radar sightings. They’ve got a mountain of evidence that suggests that this stuff is real.

So he tasked these different scientists, paid them some money to look at different aspects of it. Cloaking. Cloaking experimentation. One of the papers that they’ve made public deals with tracking hyper-velocity objects in space. It doesn’t say it’s UFOs. And, you can argue, “Well, that seems to be a waste of money…far out, Star Trek-type stuff. What value is that?” Until you realize that was 10, 12 years ago when they were doing these studies. Within the last six months, the Russians, the Russian military has boasted they’ve got hyper-velocity missiles now that cannot be tracked. That they’re impenetrable. That we cannot stop them. It gives them a first-strike capability. It would be nice to have some technology that could track hyper-velocity objects. That’s what this program was working on. Whether the (indecipherable) of UFOs – unknown objects that travel real fast through space – how can we track them? It seems like a good idea.

I’ve seen statements from the DIA in the last two weeks in response to questions submitted by Ufologists who don’t like this program, who don’t like the stories that have been done about and they’re looking for any kind of support. To the point that they will trust the Pentagon to tell them the truth over people who worked in the program directly. So the Pentagon has said…the DIA says, “No, all we did was have those 38 papers. They’ve got nothing to do with UFOs. We’ve never overseen a UFO program.” That is baloney. It’s just baloney. That was why the program was created. It’s what the program did. 38 papers is a tiny portion of what that study did.

As I mentioned, those 38 people who wrote those papers – it’s not actually 38. It’s about 33 because some of them wrote more than one – they were contracted out to do those assignments. But there were 54 full time employees working at Bigelow Aerospace, investigating UFO cases and paranormal cases and Skinwalker Ranch. And your tax dollars were paying for it. And they accumulated this giant database. They put boots on the ground out in the field. Did some amazing investigations. And whether or not we will ever see that material, I don’t know. But for the DIA to say it doesn’t exist and for the Pentagon to say it’s not there and this never happened? It’s baloney. And it just goes back to show you what we heard from Project Blue Book and Project Sign and Project Grudge. What the FBI and CIA would have told us about UFOs before there was a FOIA. Before it existed. You asked them for their UFO files, they laughed at you. We don’t study that stuff. We don’t have any of that.

FOIA becomes the law of the land in 1976 and those agencies were forced to cough up thousands and thousands of pages. They wrote memos in those days – The Defense Department, about UFOs – never figured there’d be a FOIA. Never figured they’d be seen by the public. (indecipherable) would candidly discuss this stuff. And they said, “This is real. They’re from somewhere else. It’s not ours. It’s not Russians. It can do things we can’t do.” That was true. And then they could confer in what was then private. They were pretty candid about it. When FOIA existed, then it became a lot harder to get this information. I don’t know if these files will ever come out. There are thousands of FOIA requests in right now to get ’em. I’m one of ’em. I’ve been able to acquire some of the material and when I get it, I put it out into the public. And again, the Tweet-fologists got problems with it? Too bad.

So the program…Hal was the chief scientist. He picked out which topics to be covered, which scientists would do that. There were other program managers, both on the East Coast and in Las Vegas, who hired the investigators, oversaw the investigations. There was interaction with Lue Elizondo’s program. We now call that AATIP. [Back] then, I don’t know what the name of it was. But there was interaction between those organizations. He would check in with the AAWSAP study, about what they were doing, on some cases, because they intersected. But that was not part of what came to be known as AATIP. His organization was separate. This was the Bigelow organization, BAASS, a different program, with a much broader focus than UFOs. Then it continued for a couple of years.

The guy who made it happen is Harry Reid. Now I have heard Tweet-fologists…Twit-fologists, pardon me…say, “Well, Harry Reid doesn’t strike me as somebody who’s interested in UFOs.” Oh, you know Harry Reid, do ya? You talk to Harry Reid a lot? And you know what he’s interested in and UFOs is not on the list? Well that’s baloney. I’ll just tell you a little side story. Back when I first met Bob Lazar. This is 1989. The first person, outside of our newsroom, that I told about it was Harry Reid. And I remember, we were in a limousine. He was on his way to McCarran Airport to fly back to Washington and I told him this story. Senator, I know you are on the appropriations committee. You’re involved with funding of Nellis and Area 51 and you’re interested in national security issues. This is a heck of a story here and I wanna tell you about it. “Hmm,” he said. “I’m interested in that. I’ll check into it.”

It started a dialogue between he and I that lasted for more than 30 years and continues till this day. He was not out in front about it. He was not crazy. He’s a canny, smart politician. He knows this is not a winner for politicians, any more than it’s a winner for reporters. Because you get nothing but grief for covering this. And he certainly wanted to be re-elected and not be smeared as the UFO Senator. So he kept it quiet. But when I would go to Washington and Matt and I would go and interview him once a year or so, we would always go to the side and have a conversation about UFOs. And it drove his staff crazy! Well he would help me from time to time. He would help me get documents. Congressional Research Service had done a really massive study of UFOs that they would give to elected members of Congress and I had never seen it before. And I don’t think Ufology had seen it before and he got it for me.

In 1995, Bob Bigelow grew frustrated with the UFO organizations of the time. He had offered them a bunch of money if they would shape up and do actual investigations. And it fell through. So he decided to create his own organization, NIDS: The National Institute for Discovery Science. And he put together this world class, science advisory board. You’ve heard some of the names here today. Hal Puthoff was one of ’em. Jacques Vallee was one of ’em. Kit Green was one of ’em. Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the 6th man to walk on the Moon, and a brilliant scientist, was one of ’em. There was another astronaut. Another member of Congress. Just an amazing group of people. And they were willing to put their reputation on the line to study these issues, to take their own time, and come to Las Vegas and analyze these papers and hear presentations. I once gave a presentation to them about Russia. Russian, UFO material.

And I told Harry Reid about it in 1995 when NIDS first got going and he said, “Do you think I could go to one of these meetings?” And I said, “I’ll ask.” Sure enough, he goes to the meeting, he sat in and I think he went to more than one. And he was hooked. And he and Bigelow started a dialogue about UFOs in, I think, 1997.

I went to Washington to do a story about the space chimps. The space chimps were the chimpanzees that were raised to go into space, instead of astronauts. It was less dangerous, they figured, to send a monkey or an an ape, instead of a human. So they had these chimps and by the late 90s, the chimps were no longer needed so they and their offspring were shipped off to this medical research facility in Mexico. And they were being injected with diseases. It was just a terrible, terrible thing. And I had been doing some stories about chimpanzees and captive chimps in people’s backyards. And I wanted to do a story on it. And I asked Harry Reid for help. He said, “Sure I’ll help you. Come back to Washington, I want you to meet somebody.” I go back to Washington and the person he wanted me to meet was John Glenn. And John Glenn was interested in UFOs. And he had had a conversation with Harry Reid about it before and we had a conversation about it then, so long as I kept it quiet. Which I did.

So the seeds had been planted for a long time with Harry Reid. His interest in UFOs was real. It continued for many years. It continues to this day. So when this DIA guy comes to him, after visiting Skinwalker Ranch and said, “We need to look into this. Who knows if it’s national security implications but it’s weird. It’s inexplicable. We believe it’s related to UFOs. We need to widen the parameters of the study and look into this. We’re never gonna understand it just studying flying saucer cases that come in now & then because the Nimitz sees it or something like that.” So, Reid agreed.

We’ll hear a little piece of Harry Reid from the first interview he gave. Two days after the New York Times story, he went on camera with us and this is what he talked about. (Reid Video Plays).

Harry Reid: I just had such admiration for those two men. (Senators Inouye & Stevens) I said, “Gentlemen, I have been following, for a number of years, these unexplained aerial phenomena. I don’t know what they are. And I wanna study it.” And Stevens said, “I’ve been waiting for decades for someone to ask me to do something about this.” He said, “I was a pilot in WWII and on one occasion, I’ll never forget.” He said, “It was like yesterday. I was flying and there was an object next to me. I could not get rid of that. I couldn’t. I would slow up. It would be there. I would speed up. It would be there. I would dive. It would be there. I called. Nothing on radar. I [was] a very, very calm, combat pilot. But that disturbed me. I could never, ever figure that out. I got back and like everybody else, I was thinking something was wrong with me.” And he said, “So, what do you need?” And that was the beginning of how we got this program started.

Knapp: How did it proceed from there? Did u have to secure any appropriations? How’s it work?

Reid: It was done.

Knapp: Boom.

Reid: When those two men wanted it, it was done. It was all over.

Knapp: Are you glad the story’s out?

Reid: Yeah, I’m very glad. Because now we have scientific evidence. Because the studies that were done because of the actions of Inouye, Stevens and Reid. We have now a scientific study that has done something that needed to be done for a long, long time. We’ve documented all these observances. We have situations where, in the northern part of America, we have missile bases. How many were stationed there? It’s all in the documents. But, scores and scores of mostly men up there, would come out and look up there: “Oh, I wonder what that is?” The communications in the missile defense installation was shut down. Didn’t happen once. More than once. We have things with ships at sea. There are things in the water. What is that? Can’t you get rid of them? There’s nothing on radar. Because why? Because the whole communication system on the ship is dead! This is all documented now. And now we can have pilots and shipmasters who are seeing these strange events, report it back to their superiors because they’re not crazy! It’s been happening for a long time. So why shouldn’t we study this? – (End of Reid Video)

George Knapp: Reid was fired up about it. After the NYT story came out and once it was out and he could talk about it, he was fired up! You know, his phone starts ringing off the hook. Members of Congress, former colleagues: “I didn’t know u were interested in that. How can we help?” And he was willing to take a dive in there. He’s not working for Bob Bigelow. He’s out of office. But he’s willing take a shot and try to move this ball down the field.

On May 4th of last year, I’m on my way to his house. I’m in my car driving and I get a call from him. He says, “We have to cancel our appointment.” Because he just returned from a medical screening and he said the doctors found something. So I said, “Okay, Senator. I’ll talk to you later.” And it was ten days later, I get a call from him. He’s at Johns Hopkins, on the East Coast  and he had pancreatic cancer, which is like 95% fatal. And so he had an operation. And I said, “You know, the world’s gonna wanna know about this. I’m not telling anybody if you don’t want it out.” He said, “Wait until I get out of surgery and then u can let it go.” And I did. I let it slip and that was a big story.

And then it didn’t look like he was gonna make it. In fact, the New York Times sent somebody out, even after the cancer was gone. And Reid had a tough time dealing with the chemotherapy. Bones in his back were breaking. People pretty much wrote him off that he was a goner. But this guy’s tough. Reid might not look tough but he is tough. And he’s smart. And he beat it. And he got through it and now he’s fired up again about the topic. We interviewed him about a month ago, in which he shared a lot more information and you’ll hear some of that in just a moment.

But for those naysayers. For the Twit-fologists who complain, “Harry Reid doesn’t care about UFOs. This is all made up. He wanted to do a favor for his friend, Bigelow.” I happen to find something the other day as Matt and I were going through our files. An interview that I did with Harry Reid. November, 1989. On the same day that Bob Lazar’s story was gonna break. We did a live interview with Harry Reid. And talking about UFOs. And he acknowledged that we’ve had these conversations. He acknowledges that he had talked to John Glenn about it. And he remembered the Bob Lazar story. And let’s just play the clip for those of you who don’t believe he’s been interested in it for a long time.” (1989 Reid Clip Plays)

Knapp: I think as you’re aware, Senator, this week we’ve been taking a look at UFOs and some of the evidence surrounding that. What we found is perhaps not all government agencies have been completely on the up and up with the American people about what they know. I’m wondering what it would take, whether there’d be any appetite for Congress to jump back and take a look at the subject.

Reid: George, you know in the past, Congress has looked into this. There have been Congressional hearings on this subject before. And I have…in fact I wanted to do it tonight…I’m gonna watch your tapes. They recorded those for me. And if there as good as some people say, we might have to look at it again.

Knapp: Well, what you’re gonna see tonight is a man who says he worked for the Navy on flying saucers here in Nevada. That he’s been threatened and harassed. That he was told he could sign away his constitutional rights. Could something like that actually happen? Would there be any kind of protection for him?

Reid: Well, I was referring to the past episode but I’ll look forward to the one tonight. Well, you know, George, I’ll have to look at this. I have heard about this exact story. I’ve heard about it as kind of a preview of your program when I visited with you once before. I’m anxious to get the facts. I think it’s something we should look into. I think John Glenn’s government operations…this would be the appropriate committee to look into this.

[End KLAS Video Clip of Knapp interview of Reid from November of 1989]

George Knapp: 1989, Harry Reid’s interested in UFOs.

AAWSAP – Reid gets the money for it. The contract is put out. Bigelow gets awarded the contract. There’s only one other company that was sort of interested and that was Lockheed. But they didn’t put in a bid for it. I know that looks like it’s rigged. You can believe what you want. This was no bargain for Bigelow. He spent way more money than he got from the government because he was interested in it. And he provided the facilities and money up front. And after the program’s money was taken away, he kept it going for a year. And if it was still going, I think we’d be way further down the road in understanding these mysteries.

The person, of course, that we know as the face of AATIP – that’s the name that AAWSAP evolved into – is Lue Elizondo. Now, somewhere along the way, AAWSAP became AATIP. I know it happened by 2009 because Senator Reid sent a letter to the Secretary of Defense – we made that letter public earlier this year – in which – it might have been last year – he says that he wanted to take the program and and make it a Special Access Program. Not so much for secrecy but for a couple of reasons. One was to take it outside the regular, Pentagon budget process where people could pilfer the money. So you wouldn’t have to fight for the money every year.

But secondly, so he could gain access to special materials. Other (UFO) programs. So when you’ve heard people talking about this – we’ve reported it a couple of times – that AATIP is one of several programs and I think that there are several underway right now. As many as four is what I’ve heard. I don’t know the names of the other ones. But Senator Reid confirmed, in an interview that you’ll hear in just a couple of minutes, that that’s what he was trying to do. A special access program…is gain access to the materials that were kept top top secret in these other programs.

In the meantime, AAWSAP became AATIP. And it may just be, somebody just renamed it along the way. But I asked Lue Elizondo about it in the 2nd interview we did about the confusion over the name. Here’s what he said.

[Begin KLAS, Knapp interviewing Elizondo clip]

Luis Elizondo: In essence, in 2007…the initial program was called A-W-S-A-P (Elizondo leaves off the first “A” ~Joe) program. And it was that name for about nine months. And that program was later refined…it was a bit of a shotgun approach to the phenomenon. So it put in a lot of stuff in this program…trying to figure out how these things fly and where they’re coming out of…where they’re going and things like that. When I came into the program the name had just been changed to A-A-T-I-P, Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. AATIP. Not Advanced Aviation. Advanced Aerospace. I know people keep saying it’s Advanced Aviation. It’s not. And eventually that will come out, too. People will realize that well, that’s not the name. It’s Advanced Aerospace…Threat Identification Program.

So, when I came in, the name AATIP had already been issued and that’s what it was being referred to. Now, as to whether or not a nickname or formal name? It was a formal name for us. It was briefed as AATIP. But if people wanna argue about semantics and they wanna say it’s a nickname? That’s fine. But it wasn’t really a nickname. At least not for me and the guys up there and gals that were working with me. It was AATIP and that’s how we briefed it. That focus was really more on the nuts and bolts…looking at what it is and how does it work, right? And as I’ve said before, many times, that was our focus and that was AATIP’s focus. We went from a broad, kind of spotlight approach, to more of a narrowly focused, laser approach, trying to figure out pieces of this. Because it was just too much of the elephant to eat in one bite, frankly, in my opinion anyways. I could be wrong.

But, looking at now hindsight being 20/20, the A-W-S-A-P program, given the resources, twenty-two million dollars, would never be enough to really follow each and every…go down each and every rabbit hole to do this conclusively, in my opinion anyways. So they moved their focus to AATIP. I took over in 2010. The program continued to go as AATIP. 2012, that initial five-year funding dried up. So we were issued more funding in 2013-2014. Unfortunately, the verbiage, in the way it was written in the bill, that when it finally came out, another office in the Pentagon took our money.

George Knapp: So Lue Elizondo leaves a really good job. He goes out on a limb. He resigns. He ends up going to work for Tom DeLonge’s To The Stars and stands on a stage in October of 2017 and says, “I was at the Pentagon. I was in charge of this UFO study. It’s real.” And almost no one paid any attention. Until a couple of months later, the New York Times does the story & then the whole world paid attention. And, of course, Ufologists dumped all over it. Well, he’s an intelligence agent, you can’t trust him. Because he’s telling you what? Exactly what you’ve been asking for. For scientists & the government to come clean? That UFOs is a real security issue? That it should be taken seriously? As John Alexander put it: Ufology can’t take yes for an answer. You know, they say that it’s real, that it needs to be studied. What’s wrong with that picture? I don’t know.

I’m gonna play one more clip for ya. From Harry Reid, where he discusses the Special Access Program idea that he tried in 2009 and failed. And what his motives were.

[Knapp story on KLAS with Reid, Elizondo and Puthoff plays and can be seen here]

George Knapp voiceover: The U.S. Navy pilots who encountered Tic Tac shaped objects off the coast of California in 2004 were flummoxed by the astounding technology of the unknown intruders.

So were the pilots who encountered the so-called Gimbal UFO in 2015 off the coast of Florida, as were pilots and sailors in dozens of similar incidents.

These kinds of cases inspired Senator Harry Reid, in 2007, to initiate a secret military study of UFO encounters. Reid publicly acknowledged the study last December.

Senator Harry Reid: George, I think these studies are so loaded with information. The reason I say that is that we learned a lot.

Knapp voiceover: Reacting to news stories about the now-canceled study, called AATIP, Pentagon spokespersons said the study didn’t learn much. But that’s not how Reid described the program in this 2009 letter to the deputy secretary of defense. The letter is not classified but a footnote says it is exempt from disclosure under FOIA.

Only 14 people were copied, all of them with security clearances. In the letter, Reid said the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) study to that point had focused on “advanced aerospace threats and disruptive aerospace technologies, that the AATIP study was already a success, and that exotic technologies could be catastrophic if used by our adversaries.”

Luis Elizondo, who was in charge of AATIP until he left the Pentagon last year, was surprised we had a copy of the letter but acknowledged it is legit.

Luis Elizondo: Yes, I have read that letter. I think that the letter portrays a very compelling picture to the Department of Defense that the preliminary results of the AATIP program were warranting an increase in the protection of that information.

Knapp voiceover: Although Elizondo was instrumental in getting the release of three Pentagon UFO videos, the files and reports generated by the AATIP study have not been made public and he is not authorized to spill the secrets.

Elizondo now works with To the Stars Academy in California. One of his colleagues, physicist and longtime CIA consultant Dr. Hal Puthoff, recently told a science group in Las Vegas, the existence of a formal study allowed reluctant witnesses to step forward.

Dr. Hal Puthoff: And a number of significant Department of Defense and intelligence community officials have come forward to talk about the reality of this phenomena and the fact that there were programs going on.

Knapp voiceover: Elizondo declines to name names but says there is no question AATIP produced valuable intelligence.

Luis Elizondo: Absolutely, it was successful. It was absolutely successful. That is undeniable, to the point where that point was raised to senior levels of the Department of Defense.

Knapp voiceover: So, why would Pentagon spokespersons claim the study produced little?

Elizondo: The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. I think they try. I don’t think it’s deliberate or on purpose. I don’t think it’s a misinformation campaign.

Knapp voiceover: Senator Reid told us, he hopes some of his former colleagues in Congress are paying attention and that they will authorize a resumption or expansion of the Study.

(KLAS online version finished with this: “Senator Reid, who is recovering from cancer surgery, wrote the letter to ask that the UFO study be protected as a Special Access Program.”)

George Knapp: Well like many of you, I’ve been watching Project Blue Book on The History Channel. It’s a cool series…and it brings back a flood of memories about when I first started down this road in Ufology, down this road, digging into these cases and the sense of excitement and wonder and discovery as you’d learn this stuff for the first time. But it also reminded me of all the lies that the Pentagon has told over the years. The phrase “swamp gas” comes to mind. Or temperature inversions in 1952. Washington, D.C. flap. Those that are covered in some of the episodes from the first season.

They lied. And they’re lying now. When they said the program is over. It’s not over. It’s still ongoing. In fact, there’s more than one. Whether or not we’ll be able to get that information out and prove it, it’s an ongoing challenge for people in this room. For people like this. You don’t get it by just dumping on it. The story that the New York Times did was good and it changed the media environment. And even if “To The Stars” doesn’t do anything else for the rest of its existence, it accomplished a lot by changing that. One reason the story made such a big impact was because of those videos. And a lot of discussion about whether those videos were released…were already online. Or they were released through channels. Or leaked. Or how it was done. I can tell you…I have seen the paperwork and I hope to make that public, that it WAS released with the permission of the Department of Defense.

And it was that video of the Tic Tac and later the Gimbal and then the Go Fast, that really an impact. Jeremy (Corbell) actually did the story about the Tic Tac before the New York Times did. And I asked him to join us to talk a little bit about what had gone on with that and some of the coverage of that story and how it’s been twisted.

Jeremy Corbell: I was actually on Coast To Coast AM with George Knapp twice. I was studying the Tic Tac UFO case for two years prior to the New York Times being able to talk about it. If you had listened to Coast, you would have heard that. The reason I was able to is because I got a good tip. And this is just hardcore journalism, going after witnesses. I got a tip…I followed it. And for two years, Commander David Fravor, was the individual, as you know, was the only one to have really close proximity, eyes on, to the Tic Tac object. And so I’ve been talking with him. The dilemma for me at the time was…videos were leaked. But I wouldn’t put that out because I didn’t know the classification. That’s something that Lue Elizondo…that’s something through TTSA were able to clear that. Actually, through Lue and put it out through the New York Times. So cool. It’s in the sphere now for everybody to learn about it.

I wanna bring to your attention a few things about the Tic Tac UFO and all the ones you’ve been seeing lately. The craft are of undetermined origin. There were two, major studies on this, prior to going public. Intelligence studies. They are not ours. They are not from any known adversary, or human ally. The pilots of the vehicles, if they are piloted, are unknown. Somebody’s piloting them, either remotely or not. And the purpose and intent remain a mystery. So this is a case of national security issue. And it’s considered a national security issue and that’s why people all take it so seriously. Everything is considered hostile until you know otherwise.

So there’s a quote from Commander Fravor that I thought was really interesting. He’s talking about…I’m gonna read it verbatim. He’s talking about…he told me personally in a lot of conversations how the Tic Tac UFO that he saw…it would drop from 80,000 feet down to 50 feet above the water or closer and it appeared to be, and I quote him, “Docking with something. The water was churning.” He hasn’t been as explicit publicly but the intimation was there was something under the water. The submarine at the time didn’t see anything but it’s exactly what Hal Puthoff was talking about. That’s exactly what Harry Reid was talking about.

Communications are often jammed and again, Commander Fravor hasn’t publicly really stated this in detail but I will tell you directly, that it jammed his systems. That’s an easy way to say it. You understand optical systems are connected to weapon systems. So that’s something that, you know, probably is a threatening action. It actively jammed his weapon systems. Actively jamming means it took that initiative to do that. It wasn’t because of a frequency. There’s a lot of issues about the Tic Tac UFO case and what happened on that day, including it knowing where Commander Fravor was going, called the cap point. There was an intelligence behind this.

But a lot of people don’t know is that this video footage of the Tic Tac…it wasn’t Commander Fravor that filmed it. He was head of the Black Aces…and we’re talking the top fighter pilots in the United States government arsenal. Head of the Black Aces. He was in command of all the Black Aces when this was going on. The moment he got back, he sent out two more pilots and those are the pilots that caught this on FLIR. They didn’t get as close to it as Commander Fravor. But the way he describes it, it was an incredible maneuverability. Something that HAD to be, as Bob Lazar said, actually, the way that it moved, HAD to be a gravitational system. And actually, Commander Fravor believes that’s probably correct.

So, these are the three videos that u are aware of. All of them are significant. All of them are real. A lot of people come & say, “Oh, they’re birds. They’re planes. It’s Superman.” You know, Commander Fravor…he’s not real happy about that. He knows what he saw. It’s not only just his eyes. It was documented on so many different systems. And then there are different types of footage of this event. This is what got kind of leaked out and then officially put out.

And obviously, you know, the one on your far right is the Gimbal. You notice that saucer-shaped craft how it starts to turn without changing any of its velocity…any of its acceleration or anything like that…really reminds me of the very first flight that Bob Lazar would talk about. These craft…it’s just a really interesting thing to look at.

And the middle one, that’s off the East Coast as well, 2015. They call it the Go Fast, publicly. So that one was described to me by Commander Fravor, who’s really good friends with the other pilots. And these things got close. And they were cubes with a circular aura around them. Kind of like scouts. It’s a fascinating case. I think instead of this, kind of trying to debunk these videos, you should hear from the people that actually took them. And Commander Fravor, you’ll have that chance in McMinnville, Oregon, coming up. Thank you.” [End of Corbell presentation]

George Knapp: So, the thing is, when people say, you know, “It’s birds. It’s a flare. That’s jet exhaust or something,” that’s a serious thing. Because you’re talking about our best pilots, in our best planes. And it’s not just one pilot or two pilots. There was a bunch of pilots that saw them. With the Gimbal incidents, there were two dozen of those in 2015. This is not ancient history. We’re talking about 2015, off the coast of Virginia & off the coast of Florida. And it seemed to be accelerating. That’s enough to get the attention of the Department of Defense. Yet, we are faced with statements from the Pentagon in the last couple of weeks: “We never studied UFOs. We don’t know what you’re talking about. 38 papers…that’s all that was produced. We didn’t release those videos.” Well they’re not telling you the truth.

The thing is, if pilots like Dave Fravor are wrong and our best sensor systems are wrong…And it’s not just radar on the ships. There was airborne radar, multiple sensor systems. I think Kevin and the panel must have talked about that earlier this week. There’s a lot of evidence and indications that this was an actual craft from somewhere else, doing things that we can’t do. That’s a serious thing. And I’m glad it was being studied and it should be studied some more. You know, skepticism is a good thing. Especially in this field, where you’re dealing with a lot of crazy stuff and far out claims. Skepticism is good. But skepticism, as we’ve learned from UFO debunkers over the years. It’s a bad thing when you don’t wait to hear the evidence. When you make up your mind because you’re angry about something. Or you’ve already decided…that can’t be, and therefore, it isn’t. Which is the kind of tactics that have been used in these cases in dealing with the information that we’re talking about on AATIP and AAWSAP. Those studies were a good thing. We need to do more of them.

Skepticism is fine. Hostility…preordained hostility is not a good thing. It’s the same as of the old debunking and we deserve better. You know, this is supposed to be fun. I can remember back to when I first started on this stuff. It’s fun! You know, it’s one of the reasons I stuck with it.

It’s so damn fun! You know, traveling around and talking to people and hearing these experiences and digging into these mysteries and trying to track down the paper trail and document it and figure it out. It’s a journey of discovery. It’s like being on the Santa Maria or the Nina or the Pinta or the Starship Enterprise, all rolled into one. It’s fun. It’s supposed to be fun. And, you know, don’t let debunkers or the Tweet-fologists ruin it for ya. Dig into it. Thank you.

[End of Main Part of George Knapp Lecture]

George Knapp at MegaCon Q&A – First question was whether Knapp knows if Robert Bigelow has had an encounter of some sort to make him believe that there’s already an ET presence on this planet, as he said on “60 Minutes.”

Knapp: Put it this way: Bob Bigelow has spent more money pursuing UFOs than any person in the history of the world. Millions of dollars of his own money…he created NIDS, he’s funded different kinds of researchers, given out grants to people like Linda Moulton Howe, Stanton Friedman, Bruce Maccabee. For one period in 1995, I did that as well. I was in between jobs. And he did it because he wants to find out. He bought the Skinwalker Ranch & he had it for years & he spent millions on that. And he had teams out there for years & years, 24/7. And then, something happened.

I’ve talked about this publicly…That what happens at the ranch, doesn’t stay at the ranch. There have been multiple experiences where people go there and they…some of them see things and it follows them home. Some of them don’t see things and it follows them home and it spread to their families. Sort of like a virus. And so, loved ones of people who visit that property will have frightening experiences. And I suspect…I’m not gonna speak to private matters for Bob Bigelow but I suspect it would be something along those lines.

Next question is about Bigelow buying MUFON files & giving them money to use for investigations.

Knapp: It was unfortunate. He offered a million dollars to three UFO organizations and then he set up that organization and that was involving BAASS. That was part of the AAWSAP program. They wanted to have civilian researchers on the ground. They wanted access to MUFON’s database to incorporate them in their database. Those files were already public. It’s not like they’re secret files & they were stashed away. They still are public. But I know it ticked off a lot of people how MUFON did business with Bob Bigelow. Well it didn’t work out because they weren’t spending the money. There he is saying, “Hey, here it is. Here’s the credit cards, go spend it.” And they didn’t spend it. And what they did spend, there were accounting issues with it. So he cut it off. And I know that he’s still interested in UFOs and is deeply committed to trying to figure it out. But I think he’s tired of Ufology and doesn’t want to put any of his loved ones at further risk.

Next up was Bob Kiviat, who asked what might be the longest, run-on question/non-question in UFO conference history! It was very muffled so I’ll summarize: Kiviat mentioned one of his shows that aired on Fox network: “UFOs: The Best Evidence Ever Caught on Tape.” Knapp said, “Good title.” It just so happens, Knapp’s multi-part documentary was called “UFOs: The Best Evidence,” and came out three years before Kiviat’s show.

Kiviat went on to say that these UFO shows (like “Unidentified”) need to be on network television instead of cable channels like History. In 2016, Kiviat said he tried to convince Fox to bring back these types of UFO shows. Their answer: No. Today, these UFO/paranormal shows on cable are “faux” investigative shows. Not actual investigations. Like “Ghost Hunters.”

Kiviat tried to get TTSA to work with him on getting their series to a network like CBS & spoke to Hal Puthoff about it. According to Kiviat, Puthoff said. he’d speak with DeLonge, Mellon and Elizondo and he’d get back to him. He never did. Finally, contact with DeLonge. Delonge says their (TTSA) rights are with somebody else. Meaning, they already signed a deal. Knapp jumped in: “Is there a question for me in all of this?” 🙂

Kiviat continued and asked Knapp for help in getting some sort of investigative UFO show onto a major network, in the news division. Maybe a collaboration? Kiviat said the story is much bigger than TTSA. And he then mentioned the first name of the female F-18 pilot who provided high cover for Fravor. He then asked Knapp if he had also heard (as @JTurner423 and @GaryVoorhis have said) that the Tic Tac video is 7 minutes or longer.

Knapp: Yeah, I’ve heard that there are actually some (UFO videos that our government has) that are twenty minutes or longer. (I asked Knapp afterwards if this twenty-minute video was a video connected to Tic Tac case. He said that it was not.)

I agree. I think it should be covered by all the networks. But unfortunately, it’s in the realm of cable television. The main networks, CBS, NBC, ABC, still have an aversion to it. I don’t know why. I think DeLonge, he’s described the program and he’s been talking about it for a long time. At least ten years that I’ve known him talk about…a TV series of some sort. But I think…I look forward to what they’re gonna do. They came to see me during the production of it. I think it’s gonna be really good. I think it’s gonna move the ball down the field. I agree with you. It should be an investigative series. I absolutely agree. Why the network news organizations won’t take it on, I don’t know. Why hasn’t the New York Times done a follow up?

Kiviat said that the two networks he’s talking to can’t do anything because they don’t have access. (access to the witnesses or evidence?) And then he talked about how much of the videos have been made public.

Knapp: I know that Elizondo got released…you’ll see the paperwork. It will be made public. [Elizondo] talked about filing for the permission to have more than two dozen videos released. And that stopped. I don’t think Lue Elizondo makes that call.

Kiviat: If I could get a meeting with the head of CBS News with you, could we try to get more of the video out, which will not in any way impact your relationship with Jeremy or with anyone you’re working with?

Kiviat then mentioned that he’s been trying to convince the new head of CBS News, Susan Zirinksy, if she would take this [UFO/AATIP/AAWSAP) story on. This was when she was @ 48 Hours. They talked about doing a show there.

Kiviat said that she told him she loves UFOs and that he and Knapp should meet with her and pitch the idea. Knapp says he knows Susan Zirinsky and she’s going to be at KLAS in ten days and “if she wants to create a new UFO program, I’m there.”

Kiviat: Love it. Thank you.