The Truth They Won't Explain: Ben Schreckinger on UAP and Government Secrecy

0:16 Speaker 1: Thank you.

1:30 Speaker 2: All righty. Welcome back to Total Disclosure. My name is Ty and I am the host of the show. Sorry about this week's live show. Um, Let me know if I'm skipping, by the way, because something happened earlier and I hate to cut this off, but I feel like something is skipping in studio. So if you guys notice something, please let me know. But we're here. Usually I do the live shows on Thursday. On Thursday, I unfortunately had to get a wisdom tooth ripped out of my head. I have the proof around here somewhere if you guys want to see it.

2:12 Speaker 2: It's really disgusting. how big it was. And, um, the pinky size hole in my mouth right now, back here, quite, quite uncomfortable, not to mention, um, someone in my house came down with like fucking bronchitis or something, uh, or pneumonia. And we've just been kind of like playing like roulette sickness and It's been really, really daunting. But we're here today. It's Sunday. We're here with Ben Schreckinger. And he is very uniquely someone I've wanted to talk to for a while, especially with my own reporting on Whistling Mike.

2:57 Speaker 2: You know, Ben is a journalist investigating unidentified aerial phenomena and related subjects. He's a little bit newer to the topic uh, than I'd say most people. He spent a long time at Politico, uh, digging into, you know, DC politics and, um, you know, that realm of things and then took pretty much a lot of 2025 off and then came back and kind of relaunched himself and under this, uh, UAP investigatory brand, uh, which, you know, it's something I've been saying for years. This topic has a, has a way of hooking people and, uh, not taking over their lives, but it's the itch that can't be scratched.

3:44 Speaker 2: So with that being said, I'm going to welcome in our guest today, Ben. Ben, how are you.

3:49 Speaker 3: Doing, man? Hey, Ty. Great to be here. I'm doing well. How are you doing?

3:54 Speaker 2: Fantastic. And starting this off, I've said this so many times to so many people. Do you know how many times I've interviewed someone? I mean, from chief of aerospace medicine at NASA, Dr. Greg Rogers told me, he's like, I'll do one interview and that's it. I just want to go away. I said to him at the time, and I'd said this about 19 times before that already, but I was like, good luck, good luck dropping this story. And then like with a guy with his credentials, like chief of aerospace medicine, um, chief flight surgeon, you know, NASA flew with the astronauts was the astronauts doctor.

4:44 Speaker 2: Like this guy was no joke. And, and, um, I was like, you're going to tell this story and then you think you're just going to skedaddle. And then I brought him to contact in the desert and it was a rap guy. He's he's hooked. And I've had so many conversations with people like that. This topic, you either get into it one of two ways, right? You have an experience and, that leads you down the road to the community and then it just, you know, flutters from there. Or like you,

5:21 Speaker 2: you know, journalism leads you to like various sources that are all saying that there's a there there and you trust them enough to go. And I honestly think this is a little bit more honorable because I've seen a craft I know what I saw for, for, for other people. It's like, I have more, I have more respect for guys who come into this and say, I'm trusting the people, the credible people that are telling me there's a there there. So for people who don't know, you know, maybe who you are or what you do or that aren't familiar with your work, maybe you can give us a little bit of a, you know, bring us up to, up to, up to speed.

6:08 Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. I'm probably best known for my work at Politico over the last decade, a lot of long-form features and investigations. I also authored a tech policy newsletter at one point. My early claim to fame there was covering the presidential campaign of an upstart named Donald Trump starting in July of 2015. When I was the new guy, it was basically my first real job. And our more senior reporters were covering Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. And there were a lot of candidates. So I got put on Donald Trump and the rest is literally history.

6:50 Speaker 3: And

6:53 Speaker 3: that also sort of set a bar for me, I think, in terms of the level of stimulation, the stakes for me. for a coverage area and a beat. That was literally the biggest story in the world and the most explosive story in the world. And so I think I maybe have developed an orientation towards what could possibly match the rise of Donald Trump as a next story to cover. And that instinct, I think, is part of what has brought me to this story. And I still don't know exactly what to make of it. I'm fascinated.

7:34 Speaker 3: I think that whatever I find out about, you know, the underlying reality behind all these claims and all these official actions is going to be important and fascinating. And yeah, I'm interested to dive in.

7:56 Speaker 2: So you took a lot of, so you took some time off in 2025 and then kind of came back. And so was that time off? Was that you kind of like going through this change and it's like, where do I want to go next steps? Cause I find a lot of people have this kind of like ontological realization that there's more to, there's more to the story. There's more to reality. Some kind of like it, Was there any specific incident that you could put your finger on that sent you down the UAP rabbit hole? I don't know if that's a copy written, but let's just say the UFO rabbit hole for sake.

8:44 Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the first thing I would point to is just, I was at Politico in 2017 when my colleague Brian Bender reported on the existence of, you know, OSAP, AATIP, I still, I'm not totally sure about the exact distinction between those programs, but the Times and Politico within a day of each other both reported, you know, surprise, the Pentagon has a secret UFO program. And later, you know, months or a year later, I remember just chatting with Brian Bender, our, at the time, Pentagon defense reporter about that story in the newsroom.

9:24 Speaker 3: And he was giving me a sense of what the consultants on OSAP were hypothesizing about, you know, what could be the cause of these UFO sightings. And it was things like, well, maybe it's not aliens. Maybe they're from the ocean. Maybe they're from the future. Maybe they're interdimensional. And I think to just hear, you know, sort of straight from the horse's mouth, from Brian, what people at the Pentagon thought, who had looked at this were thinking was sort of, a, wow, that's okay. You know, and it sort of shifted my personal Overton window or frame of reference so that later when you see this, you know, these sorts of things being contemplated on Twitter, you don't automatically go, you know, write it off as just sort of lunacy.

10:15 Speaker 3: So I think that was important. And I you know, was interested. I'd watch a Netflix documentary now and then. But it was, and then I, you know, I took note of David Grush's testimony in 2023 and had no idea really what to make of it.

10:33 Speaker 3: And so later when I realized that this person who said this, you know, this was not a one-off. There was a Pentagon report, you know, debunking or calling into question a lot of what Grush testified to. But then he got hired to investigate this by, you know, by a member of Congress, by Eric Burleson. And then early last year, I remember just seeing a number of videos online of people like Carl Nell and Tim Galladet saying unequivocally things like non-human intelligence is here and interacting with humanity.

11:12 Speaker 3: And I thought, huh, that's, well, you know, what to make of this. And then, yeah, I took some time off. I was traveling. I wasn't sure what I was going to do. But I was in talks with a podcast producer about making podcasts. And I said, well, what if we start by just making a series? And his suggestion was UFOs, aliens. And we talked a bit about, I think, the disconnect between what you could see online, what statements were coming from people like Gallaudet and Cornell and mainstream coverage. And that's really what sent me like fully down the rabbit hole was researching this and gone.

11:51 Speaker 1: Yeah.

11:52 Speaker 2: Is it safe to say that you started seeing really, really high level individuals all saying that there was a there there and that this was not a topic to be kind of just brushed away, that this was in fact something that there was more to. Yeah.

12:17 Speaker 3: And I'd say it's, you know, maybe it's a bit more complicated than that. I was seeing people like Carl Nell and Tim Galladet who were, you know, high ranking officers in the military, but not people I'd ever heard of before saying unequivocally, this is what's going on. And then I, you know, I came across comments from say John Brennan on Tyler Cowen's podcast where he's, he's not unequivocal, but he he's continencing it. He's contemplating that, that, non-human intelligence could be behind some of these UFO sightings.

12:49 Speaker 3: And so that's a little data point. And then I sort of got up to speed on what did those senators propose in that UAP Disclosure Act and what could be behind that? And then I listened to Kirk McConnell on American Alchemy explain a little bit behind the scenes of the Senate Intelligence Committee, what he was hearing that wed him and some members to take it very seriously. So it was a bit of a journey, I would say.

13:17 Speaker 2: Right, right. So, sorry, I got a little cough, if you will. No worries. So one of the things I wanted to ask is why, I mean, I think we've kind of answered this, is why a political reporter who spent a decade on campaigns, the Bidens and tech policy,

13:47 Speaker 2: you know, suddenly change and, you know, want to talk about the UAP subject and then, you know, even launching your independent shop. I think we've kind of touched on all that. So next, what does dogged reporting look like on a subject full of, you know, what some would say are circular claims, you know, disinformation traps, but then also coupled in are genuine anomalies. Yeah.

14:24 Speaker 3: Well, to start, there was a lot of reading and a lot of listening.

14:28 Speaker 2: Right.

14:28 Speaker 3: This was this was a subject where I couldn't really just sort of like come out all cinder, all cylinders firing.

14:35 Speaker 2: Right.

14:36 Speaker 3: Because it's very complicated. There's a long history. I think especially if you want to get a sense of to what extent is this disinformation and circular reporting, it makes the historical background even more important as just sort of like a grounding. So there was that. There were a lot of phone calls with people, UFO researchers, former military and intelligence people, you know, that sort of thing. And that was on and off from, you know, a year ago until, you know, I didn't publish anything until this August, two months ago today.

15:21 Speaker 3: And it's not like that entire period was spent full-time researching this subject, but a fair amount of it was devoted to fairly intensive research. Since then, a lot of the reporting has been so far like just relatively modest blocking and tackling in terms of getting people on the record about this subject where there's just been some gaps. So I had questions about Jim Clapper's very brief interview in Age of Disclosure. He mentions an Air Force program to look into anomalous activity, but it's a short clip.

16:05 Speaker 3: I wanted more context. I went to his lawyer. Robert Litt and got a statement from Litt. I'm not sure I'm fully satisfied by the statement, but it was a statement essentially saying, well, what director Clapper was really referring to was when things like the stealth fighter were being tested, you know, they got a lot of confusing reports that they tracked down. But just getting people officially on the record, you know, John Podesta, I got on the record this week. acknowledging that he did participate in a call about disclosure, about releasing UAP files.

16:47 Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what?

16:48 Speaker 2: Let's start there. That's actually a good place to start because it kind of takes place, even though the reporting is fresh, the story brings us back to kind of the beginning. The 2017 like what most people consider the dam breaking right and um you know you being at politico and and kind of watching that all happen again talking to bender and you know bender is the one of the only one he's the only one that has correct corrected the record which i find to be like the new york times writers never corrected the record in that they got the program name wrong because it wasn't AATIP that got the 22 million.

17:41 Speaker 2: It was OSAP. AATIP was essentially an unfunded hobby desk. And more power to them for doing that on their own time. But it seems like AATIP was not the program that... It was something else. It was more akin to you know, like the Ministry of Defense, Nick Pope hobby desk, rather than an official program like OSAP, which was granted $ 22 million by Senator Harry Reid, like all can be factually tracked down. So let's go back to that. So Podesta claim, so what did you talk to Podesta about?

18:31 Speaker 3: Well, this, this, In this particular case, it was just seeking his comment on what Dave Grush said on Joe Rogan this week, which was essentially that ahead of the 2016 election, John Podesta was Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, and he greenlit, in Grush's words, what Grush described as an acclimatization or popularization program, and that that is the reason that Neil McCasland and Rob Weiss from Lockheed Martin and others ended up advising Tom DeLonge that this was all because Podesta had greenlit this effort to sort of prepare the populace for the truth about UFOs.

19:18 Speaker 3: So I just wanted to get Podesta's response. There are several things that, as you know, that Grush said this week. And I sent out queries about several of them. And Podesta is the one who got back in time for my Thursday Signs of Life newsletter. And he contested the idea that this was part of an acclimatization effort. He said, I don't think the American people need to be acclimatized. I think that they can handle the truth about UFOs. He didn't say what that is. He didn't respond to a follow-up question.

19:53 Speaker 3: But he did, in the course of responding to that, acknowledge on the record for the first time, participating in this call about disclosure with DeLong and McCasland and Weiss, and I believe some others back in 2016, And this had been in emails that leaked as part of the WikiLeaks operation. So it had been reported on. But I still consider it worthwhile and noteworthy to get Podesta on record confirming that he did participate in that call.

20:22 Speaker 2: Absolutely. And I definitely commend you for getting that response in such a timely manner to when the episode came out. Because, again... This does show that something was being worked on behind the scenes. Because if the DNC hack never happens, we never see these emails. We never know, aside from maybe some inferences that after the fact that they were working with Podesta in the Clinton campaign to try to set the playing field for a disclosure scenario had she won the presidency. You know, looking back, we all know what happened.

21:17 Speaker 2: She didn't. So that TTSA set up, you know, to try to take advantage of that playing field and that new industry was, kind of fell flat and TTSA kind of fell flat after that. But Podesta is an interesting character in all this because what do you make of Podesta in general when it comes to UFOs? Do you think he's more of a, like he really wants disclosure or do you think he's more of a kind of just go with the flow? Like, go where the voter trends are?

21:59 Speaker 3: I don't think this has anything to do with voter trends or politics. I think this has been a long-held personal interest of his. I believe when he was Bill Clinton's chief of staff, he investigated government knowledge about UFOs and aliens or what was the truth about Roswell in Area 51. And he has never really spoken, as far as I know, about the substance of what he's found. But ever since then, consistently, he's advocated for disclosure and he's repeatedly used, and he used this phrase again in his email or a version of it with me this week, the American people can handle the truth.

22:40 Speaker 3: And for me, it just always raises the question, well, what is that truth? And this is not my first exchange with Podesta. I engaged with him a bit last fall. I could not get him on the phone. I obviously, I've actually... was at a dinner with a small handful of journalists and John Podesta, I don't know, 10 years ago at this point, eight years ago, this subject came up, um, and he didn't, he didn't let slip anything of substance really, but, uh, you know, I imagine somebody who's busy, who has a lot of, a lot of, uh, A lot of irons in the fire would not keep coming back to this subject if whatever they discovered was totally mundane and uninteresting and unimportant.

23:25 Speaker 3: So I infer that there's something there. Right.

23:29 Speaker 2: Right. So you think so. So what I can't get over is that we see that McCasland keeps getting brought up right in this. So Podesta, you got Podesta. McCasland and Tom DeLonge, right? They're all having this conversation and they're alluding to things like, make sure you look at like, look at the Greek gods, right? Make sure, you know, take a look at the Greek gods and all these like kind of like really obscure, you know, esoteric kind of notions. McCasland ends up going missing about, I think a couple of days after Trump announces the NDA commuting process.

24:22 Speaker 2: What do you make of that in lieu of these emails and what the plan was at least at one time?

24:34 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I don't know what to make of the disappearance of Neil McCasland.

24:38 Speaker 1: I think that.

24:41 Speaker 3: Given his... you know, extracurricular activities related to UFO transparency, given the timing that you mentioned, I don't know. It was around the time that Donald Trump announced release of UFO files. I find that at least noteworthy. Um, you know, it's not every day that a retired general of his age is reported missing. That's quite unusual. Um, I don't have any particular theory of what happened there. And, um, You know, I have spoken to a relative of William Colby, the former CIA director who did go missing on his boat one day when he was retired in the Potomac.

25:29 Speaker 3: That person said, we actually don't suspect foul play. We think it was an accident. I don't know what the family of Neil McCasland is saying about this. Coincidences do happen. You know, there's more than one person involved in UFO disclosure. And so.

25:44 Speaker 2: I just found it weird that the wife almost the wife was like making jokes about like making jokes about how it's not UFO related and like made, she like made some weird, weird comments that it was like, I know people are saying it's all UFO related. And it was like, no one even mentioned that to you in this conversation. It was so out of left field that it just seemed very odd. I think the whole thing is weird. I think the whole... I'm just not quite sure what to make of it. If high-level scientists and people in this movement are actually going missing, and people like armed along who are once very vocal kind of go underground.

26:47 Speaker 2: Other people, many people have gone, you know, been at the top and kind of just fizzled faded into the background. Um, and, and, and it, it seems like a topic that again, it's one you can't stop itching, but, um, it's almost like once you see behind the curtains, you're almost a little bit intimidated or scared or there's a little fear to it, which I'm not sure what to make of because bad things are happening to people, real bad things. And then, you know, Tim Phillips says that it's all bullshit.

27:30 Speaker 2: So who do you believe?

27:35 Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I also, I tracked some of the theorizing and maybe even the White House acknowledged that they were looking at this at one point around various, you know, the murders of a couple of those scientists, disappearances. It was hard for me to detect like a clear nexus between all those things. I think like it's a big world and, you know, coincidences occur. I would pick out McCaslin's disappearance as like, separate from the question of whether there's a connection between those other incidents as just like in and of itself, very question begging.

28:14 Speaker 3: But again, it's all circumstantial. And, you know, I don't know. I was at a bachelor party this weekend in Virginia and there was somebody there who has a background at DARPA. Yeah, Harvard educated, very sort of, conventional kind of person. And I was surprised. I was bringing up what I was reporting on this week in the name, you know, McCasland and this fellow knew all about Neil McCasland and knew all about this Twitter account that some people.

28:49 Speaker 2: Oh, that's right.

28:51 Speaker 3: And seem to believe the upshot of this Twitter account that not only that it was McCasland behind it, but that what this Twitter account was saying was true about, you know, an advanced us.

29:04 Speaker 1: System that can counteract gravity.

29:07 Speaker 3: Um, and that, that was just an interesting thing because this is not a person I know especially well, but like somebody who worked at DARPA, um, professional opinion, I actually, you know, would look to for.

29:22 Speaker 1: Something like that.

29:24 Speaker 3: And they seem to believe it. Um, so it's not just, uh, you know, it's not just sort of like armchair jockeys out there on the internet.

29:34 Speaker 2: This, you know, this is like a legitimate, credible person.

29:40 Speaker 3: Sure absolutely so.

29:44 Speaker 2: Um sorry again reality shock you open with the 2023 senate language on eminent domain over technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence. How close do you think that that actually came to being real policy? And what does that failure tell you?

30:14 Speaker 3: Yeah, I would love to do more reporting on the legislative fights over that provision and other provisions over the last three years. My understanding, and it's not a super sharp understanding this is, but I believe that that got blocked in the House, in the House Armed Services Committee. And correct me if I'm wrong.

30:46 Speaker 4: And that.

30:48 Speaker 3: What I sort of, some scuttlebutt I heard was.

30:51 Speaker 2: I think you're right.

30:52 Speaker 3: That the, you know, that the arguments were kind of for like, let's not. pass this into law some of the arguments behind the scenes amounted to like look the people behind this movement won't be satisfied with anything so if we pass this and then we don't get anything they're not going to be satisfied um they're just going to come up with a new theory of what's really going on right and Two, you can imagine that it just creates legal, strange legal liability for these contractors. There could be material of unknown origin.

31:35 Speaker 3: How do you define that? So that's sort of what I heard.

31:44 Speaker 1: About why that has not become law.

31:50 Speaker 2: Well, what that tells me is that they see that as such a big, big problem is that they've cut. What it says to me is that they've given contractors so much stuff and it's been lost through the years and they wouldn't even know where to begin to start to try to get that stuff back because, and this is alluded to, in the documentary Age of Disclosure, right? Is that contract, like, so politicians and, you know, these representatives, they come and go, right? So, you know, guy A makes the deal or, you know, does the transfer.

32:46 Speaker 2: His predecessor, I mean, his successor maybe knows a little bit, a half, about it. And then exponentially you just get less and less by this, you know, third, fourth, fifth replacement, the contractor might as well own it a hundred percent because no one ever remembers the deal being made. Like the way they lay it out is obviously a lot cleaner than I just said it, but representatives turn over contractors. They don't. So when you give a piece of advanced material that you got from, say, a crash retrieval to a contractor like Lockheed or, you know, Company A, then have you given Company A an advantage over the market?

33:40 Speaker 2: And that becomes a big legal problem, which was also cited in a think tank during the Bush era, right? It was this idea that the legal battles would, would, would essentially cripple the, the contractor environment because, you know, again, you give, if you're giving Lockheed advanced materials, how are they not going to walk away with, with these sole source contracts? So there's a lot of like shady shit going on. And, There's a lot more like actual legal loops and bounds and things that hurdles that I think the average disclosure advocate doesn't realize that that would have to be addressed.

34:37 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, if the premise of this bill were true, and I think that my guess is that the contractors, at.

34:45 Speaker 1: Least behind the scenes, would be saying, We don't have this stuff. This isn't real.

34:52 Speaker 2: Yeah. Why would they say it? Why would they be like, yeah, yeah, you guys gave it to us. Yeah, yeah, sure. Like, I'd be like, no, there's no such thing as that. I have no idea what you're talking about.

35:05 Speaker 3: I do think it's sort of interesting that I looked into this. What has Lockheed said about this? And apparently, because, you know, Harry Reid, I think, has mentioned Lockheed Martin. I think some people mentioned Lockheed Martin as if we had to name one contractor that we think this is true of. And Lockheed has generally not commented on this over the years, which people can read a lot into that. I think it's noteworthy, and I'd like to at least understand a bit more about why they would issue a simple denial around some of these premises.

35:44 Speaker 3: Especially if the senators are introducing a bill based.

35:47 Speaker 1: On this premise, you know.

35:49 Speaker 2: Yeah.

35:50 Speaker 1: You might want to deny it if Harry Reid is saying in the press something about you like that.

35:57 Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, I definitely. That's that's very fun on the nose.

36:03 Speaker 1: I like it.

36:04 Speaker 3: So.

36:05 Speaker 2: I kind of want to just take take a few minutes here and get your. get your two cents on

36:22 Speaker 2: the playing field right now, the current landscape of the disclosure movement. As someone who's started to look at it, what are you seeing? Do you think Is there anything that you're really excited to look into, like abductions or hybridization programs, like a lot of these woo elements that are becoming less woo, apparently? Because David Grush can say it on Rogan, so it's not really woo anymore.

37:04 Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say in terms of really concrete reporting targets and This has been on my radar and I need to hopefully make progress on it soon. Just the fact that you have Eric Burleson saying that there was a successful UAP luring operation that occurred late last year by our government and that he's briefed on it. That raises a lot of questions. I'm still working on that.

37:31 Speaker 3: An interesting angle on that that I've started to look into is that There are stories and accounts from the former Soviet Union in, I think it was the early 80s, of allegedly the same thing, intentional UAP luring operations by the military. The military noticed when they were conducting a lot of certain types of activity that seemed to draw these things, and so they did it intentionally. You know, there's a, at least one former Soviet military officer who's given an interview, on-camera interview about this alleged incident.

38:18 Speaker 3: So I find it fascinating that whatever I discover about the underlying truth of this, it's not the first time this claim has been made. It's odd that allegedly the Soviets were doing this, and now we have a member of Congress saying he's been briefed on the same exact thing.

38:36 Speaker 2: Well, what if, what if the, because, you know, are you familiar with, like, the Bob Lazar story? Yeah, of course. So, Bob, you know, when I had Luigi Ventitelli here to do an episode, and we got to talking, and a big part of, a large part of someone in my vicinity uh who helps produce the show uh a big facet of his is the soviet stuff um because he was left uh this you know 12 this work these 12 works that essentially go in and it's called Engineering Infinity. I'm sure you've heard of it through Mike or someone.

39:37 Speaker 3: Yeah, this is Gene Sticko's late father-in-law.

39:40 Speaker 2: Yes, yes. The Y-Files just did the episode about it. They did take a little bit of creative liberty, but not in the big stuff. Just, you know, but, you know, I'm very close with Gene. And so when Luigi came here, we got to talking and it dawned on me that Lazar had said, now think, you know, walk through this with me.

40:08 Speaker 3: Ready?

40:09 Speaker 2: So Bob Lazar says that he was told that before he was there, Soviets were scientists were allowed into Area 51, what, you know, Groom Lake, S4, what we know as Area 51, but what they knew as, you know, S4. So Soviet scientists were there. Then some sort of breakthrough happens, right? And they kick the Soviets out, and then they don't let them back in. And we don't really know why. We don't really have a real finite reason why Lazar really couldn't say. But the Soviets never came back, according to him.

41:01 Speaker 2: They were kicked out of the facility. But the only reason they would have been there is that they had something we needed. What did they synthesize years later?

41:15 Speaker 2: Can you tell me?

41:17 Speaker 3: What? No, what are you talking about? I've lost, I know.

41:22 Speaker 2: They, so the Soviets end up synthesizing the first stable element 115 and name it Moscovium. So the element that Lazar talked about that powered these craft that we only had limited supply of Where did that come from? Maybe the Soviets? Maybe we had one part of it, they had another part of it, and we all needed to work together. But then when the breakthrough happened, we kicked them out and we shut it all down. And then you see science go its own way. So to the Soviet sector, where they start luring these things in, because again, for them to then stabilize element 115, The first stable version of it, call it Moscovium, right?

42:21 Speaker 2: Now, that's a far, far jump because the stable version that they came up with is a different version of the element 115 Lazar is talking about. But I think there's something there that the Soviets had. The Soviets knew. They were working on it. And I think science has no... I don't think science has the boundaries of the same borders that we have. Because if the Soviets were being let into S4 during the Cold War, the Cold War is theater. Why would we be working with them on this behind the scenes?

43:15 Speaker 3: Well, isn't it possible that was ours just making it up? It's not true.

43:23 Speaker 2: It's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can't say it's not. I can't say that that that isn't.

43:32 Speaker 3: But.

43:34 Speaker 2: OK, I'm fair enough. Yeah. But I mean, what are the odds that. You know, what are the odds that. The Soviet Union, or Russia, is the scientific community that ends up with a stable form of element 115, which validates part of Lazar's story. Not to say that we weren't going to get an element 115 one day eventually. It was just graphing the periodic table. But I do think it's an interesting... Again, it's an interesting anecdotal story. Again, that's what the UFO community is. It's built up of all these stories and try to parse it through for what's bullshit and what's not.

44:27 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'm very interested in this, the Soviet perspective on this entire issue. I was, you read the book Phenomena by Annie Jacobson? Yes, yes. She at one point.

44:44 Speaker 4: Writes that the Soviets, from a bureaucratic perspective, they classed directed energy weapons, maybe ESP and psychokinesis.

44:57 Speaker 3: All under one heading, maybe along with UAP. I'm not sure about that. I've never understood that, but I'm very interested in the nexus there. I don't know what to make of it, frankly.

45:15 Speaker 2: I just, with Annie, I love her books. I really do. I just, that's my least favorite out of them. Oh, really? Yeah, because I think she makes a bunch of leaps based on one source. One source telling her all this. And it's like, what, and again, I don't want to get into that. I don't want to get into like nitpicking, but I think Annie's really, her really good work where she shines is like bringing light to how quick the world could end, right? Like with the launch of a nuclear weapon that would have to go over, because then we'd have to retaliate our weapon.

46:02 Speaker 2: Like she lays all that shit out so good. And it's honestly really scary. And I think that's a good thing. The way she scares you is a good thing. Because it shows you the real... And you know what? We'll bridge the gap here. She shows you, or at least illustrates to a younger audience that hasn't been around for nuclear testing or living with the ramifications of Fat Man and Little Boy. That's a story to even me. I wasn't around. You weren't around. I was around for 9-11. I remember that. So there are people that I can't believe that didn't live through 9-11.

46:55 Speaker 2: So I only assume that that's how they think about it. How do you not know what it felt like to have those bombs dropped? And it's that same thing. So what she does is she really flourishes in bringing you through what the sequence of events would be that if the next nuclear launch were to happen from say, Iran, does she choose Iran or North Korea?

47:26 Speaker 3: I've only read phenomena. I'm not familiar with her other work, dude.

47:30 Speaker 2: You got to check out her book about, I forget what it's called. It's like, um, shit. Someone in the chat. What's her, but it's, it's, it's, It's like seconds or something. But anyway, really, really good book. Really, really good book. And then her most recent one is about an even scarier, and I know that's hard to think that something is scarier than nuclear, but biological weapons. That's her newest book. So she's a good writer when she fixed her what I think she's good at. I didn't like her UFO work.

48:17 Speaker 2: But to bridge the gap here, do you think there and we're in speculation territory, so feel free to give me what you think in your heart. Do you think or is it of your volition looking into this that there seems to have been an uptick in ufo encounters whether it be sightings abductions tampering after the splitting of the atom.

48:54 Speaker 3: That's my understanding based on the history of this subject that the ufo like really you know you have you have foo fighters in world war ii you have historical episodes that have been you know people have drawn through lines to that in the modern UFO, but it's really the summer of 1947 when Kenneth Arnold.

49:20 Speaker 1: Sees these, you know, disc-shaped objects.

49:25 Speaker 2: They're not discs.

49:26 Speaker 3: Well, Boomerang, he uses multiple terms. I think he does also describe them as disc-like at a certain point. Yeah.

49:37 Speaker 2: Well, he describes them as So what Kenneth said, which the media ran with, is the way that they moved, it was like a disc. Yeah, like a saucer skipping on water. So the press ran with the disc thing, but the shape was more like a batwing. Yes, yeah.

49:57 Speaker 3: But it's really, I mean, it's really 1947 that you have this modern UFO era. And so it does, coincidentally or not, line up with The nuclear era.

50:11 Speaker 2: Yeah. The atomic era, if you will. And is it such a reach to say that the same people that were working at the top of like the Manhattan Project would have been briefed in on an ongoing like visitor to what they were doing?

50:34 Speaker 3: Um, I mean, there's, I've certainly seen like plenty of speculation and sort of like secondhand reports to that effect. I don't know if I've seen it documented that, you know, your Edward Tellers or your Oppenheimers were, um, were read in or involved on the UFO issue, but, uh, you know, were they, is it, how is that documented?

50:59 Speaker 2: Well, again, if you're to believe Lazar and, and, And I'll take you one further. Teller ends up. Sorry, guys. Teller ends up. I forget who's doing the interview, but they end up pinning him down because. And they ask him about Bob and they go, do you know a guy named Bob Lazar? Because he was the one who essentially referred him to the project. Right.

51:32 Speaker 3: It.

51:33 Speaker 2: To the s4 project um contract allegedly contracted through eg and g right because they were like a headhunter right they would you know like a modern you know um temp bill slots um but they were doing it on this scale that was like you know above classified above classification levels that you would um you know, normally operate at. So Teller gets asked about Lazar and you can see him get visible. And he's, I forget what he says exactly, but it's to the tune of like, if you ask me again about Bob Lazar, this interview is over.

52:21 Speaker 2: So he has a chance to just say, it's all bullshit, but he doesn't. He says, I'm going to end the interview if you ask me about him again. So like, It's that kind of fucking gray that we operate in, right? Like, I feel like that's where the UFO community lives, is the gray. It's like, it could go either way, but you're like, why? It would have been smarter to just say, no, I don't know who the fuck that guy is.

52:52 Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll have to look at that interview. That's interesting.

52:56 Speaker 2: We gotta, we gotta... We got to link up, man, like further than this. This is my first show I've done in like three weeks, so my brain's a little rattled. How many times did I delay this show?

53:13 Speaker 3: Two or three times.

53:14 Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's been rough, Brad.

53:17 Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry about your tooth.

53:19 Speaker 2: That's not even– well, that was a big part of it. So I'm getting back into my flow, and I'm still very cloudy. And I think this is a good conversation to kind of get back into my rhythm, my interview circadian rhythm. But so I got to ask now, because it sounds like you've heard the Lazar story, but you don't believe it.

53:50 Speaker 3: Um, I wouldn't, I'd say, I wouldn't say I actively disbelieve it, but it's a question of accepting new claims, uh, and like the level of evidence for those claims. And so I'm aware of the story. Um, I think it's very interesting. Uh, you know, I, I'd be interested to see what Edward Teller, you know, to like look at the primary source of the Teller interview. Um, but I know I don't like accept the truth of what Bob Lazar says and like sort of operate on its truth as an assumption and, and what I do.

54:26 Speaker 1: Yeah.

54:28 Speaker 2: Fair enough. I can't argue with that.

54:31 Speaker 3: Is that, are you more like you're convinced that his, his account is basically truthful?

54:36 Speaker 2: Nope. I operate from a completely neutral place because I have to, um, I will entertain the idea that there's truth to it and I will entertain the idea that it's bullshit. I will go down either hole and see where that leads me. If someone presents evidence that it's all bullshit and has it all dead to right, all the evidence to suggest that everything he said or enough of what he said is fake, I will concede that the story is contaminated. But I'll also operate looking at certain elements of it.

55:37 Speaker 2: I think the John Lear association, his association with John Lear is very problematic. But it's also very intriguing because Lear being who Lear was, right?

55:54 Speaker 3: Yeah.

55:55 Speaker 2: So, because it had to have come up in the background that one of his best friends was John Lear, known conspiracy theorist at the time, like, and they still brought him on.

56:10 Speaker 3: His relationship with Lear predates him going public. That I didn't realize. That's a bit strange, frankly. I don't know what to make of that.

56:23 Speaker 2: A lot of people think that a lot of the skeptics at least think that John Lear pushed the story onto Lazar because the truth of it is the reason George Knapp got a hold of the Lazar story is because they were doing, um, a series with John Lear at the news station and Lear brought up Lazar. Lear had brought up the Lazar story or had presented it some way. And it like in like a short, you know, like a pitch. Yeah. And, and the guy that was doing it was like, nah, nah, I'm all, I'm, I'm good. I'm good at that.

57:11 Speaker 2: And then nap was like, Hey, I'll take a look at that. And that's where he came across the Lazar story. And it wasn't until like a few months later where they ended up having a void for a segment. So Knapp calls up Lear and says, hey, is your guy still willing to go on camera? And that's when they do the Dennis interview when he's, you know, in silhouette and they named him Dennis.

57:42 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

57:43 Speaker 2: Dennis is actually a play on his boss. So Dennis, I mean, if you know the story, you know that Dennis was his, like he used the, he uses the pseudonym, pseudonym Dennis, because that was one of the people he reported to. So he was trying to send a message. No, he was sending a message like, Hey, this is, this is me. Like, doing my insurance policy. But why leave it up to two months' chance if it was meant to be an insurance policy thing to keep him alive? Why would they just let it be like, oh, Nap has free time two months later.

58:33 Speaker 2: So those are the inconsistencies that I find troublesome. Because if Lazar really needed to make sure that he stayed alive, And that's why he comes forward. Why is it only then, when Knapp doesn't have a segment to run that night, that he calls Lear to have the Area 51 guy fill in, which ends up being Lazar? You see what I mean? That's contradictory.

59:03 Speaker 3: Yeah, the whole involvement of Lear in the backdrop of this is news to me, and I don't quite know what.

59:10 Speaker 1: to make of it, frankly.

59:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, man. That's the game in the UFO community is you've got to be able to hear everything. And that's what I do. I don't care if you tell me you're a fucking werewolf. I'll ask you questions and yeah, I'm probably not going to hang out with you during a full moon, just on principle.

59:43 Speaker 3: Right.

59:43 Speaker 2: But I'm going to hear you out because what you're telling me, what you tell me, whether it's fact or not is going to inform me later on. Like when someone else is being, you know, dishonest or truthful or whatever, it helps me. I like to have a, a full spectrum analysis of the playing field, if you will.

1:00:12 Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, you have to consider all statements and all sides on a subject that's tricky and treacherous and be constantly doing sort of Bayesian updates on what you believe about any particular thing. And I think really the only... the only way to navigate this is to sort of develop a constellation of things that are, you know, well-documented, um, and use that as sort of a grounding and an orientation to start to consider things that are being alleged that are not well-documented, you know?

1:00:45 Speaker 2: Yeah. So next up, um, you, you wrote an, uh, you, you wrote an article, uh, about a guy who, that i know named uh well i what he went by the um pseudonym whistling mike on x um can you tell me how you got into this story and what the story is and you know um why you found it um credible interesting and um why you ran that as your first kind of uh story coming back Yeah.

1:01:29 Speaker 3: Well, I, you know, I have a friend who's also out in the, you know, I'm from the Boston area. He's still out in the Boston area. Who's just, you know, living his life, working a normal day job with a family who was very into the UFO story long before I was probably at least since David Grushet first testified to Congress. And Uh, he's constantly been supplying me with additional context and claims as I researched this. And so he put Whistling Mike on my radar, um, and I followed him on Twitter and we've, you know, exchanged messages over the last several months.

1:02:16 Speaker 3: Um, and so kept in touch as I was actually launching, uh, Paradigm and decided I wanted to have a weekly newsletter. It's called Signs of Life. And so let him know that was coming. And he said he wanted to, you know, reveal his identity and reveal more information about what he knew and had concluded. And this event, I think that you're going to participate in in October. And so that was great, you know, because this was like two or three weeks before I launched the newsletter. So I knew I was going to have an item.

1:02:49 Speaker 3: And then I found out uh, as the date approached, I found out about this rock he'd given to the Senate intelligence committee, um, and that they had held it and given it back to him. And I thought that was extraordinary. And I got a photo of it.

1:03:05 Speaker 1: Uh, photos are great, uh, in media.

1:03:09 Speaker 3: And, um, you know, I was able to confirm, uh, John Estridge, who was a Marco Rubio aid on that committee confirmed some of the basic facts about, uh, Michael Spicer, that's his name, about Spicer's interactions with the committee, this rock.

1:03:28 Speaker 3: And so I'm convinced there's a story, and I'm not equipped to really assess the underlying facts at this point about, you know, did Spicer encounter a craft over Kansas 25 years ago? Has he really deduced this extraordinary new next-generation aviation technology? I don't know, but what I do know is that he got out engagement from staff and members of the Senate Intelligence Committee that's well outside what you would expect if he was just some person peddling a bunch of BS, right? Senate has business to attend to.

1:04:12 Speaker 3: There must be a reason that they dealt with this person. So I'm interested in what he has to say.

1:04:18 Speaker 2: First thing I want to address... The picture that you ran, I think a lot of people had it backwards. What you showed was a piece of material that after he had reverse engineered it from what fell off the craft from the original story, after he figured out what the components of this material were, That was a different sample he found. And that's what you showed.

1:04:56 Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he's mining it, actually. He's mining this material. It's a raw material. It's one of the inputs into what he says is the finished material that is integral to this craft's skin.

1:05:14 Speaker 1: And power source.

1:05:14 Speaker 2: Because a lot of people just started going, well, that just looks like a... a rock or sponge rock or whatever it is. And they kind of just started like, you know, throwing shade at it. And I was like, no, you guys are not seeing like, this is why people read the goddamn article. Like read, don't just look at the headline in the picture. I know it's easy, but read God. Um, it really just, it aggravates me because there's much more to Mike than what people really understand. He's not trying and, and, You know, what is your overall assessment of Michael Spicer?

1:05:55 Speaker 3: He's somebody who's gotten real engagement from the government. He doesn't seem to have changed his story in telling me things at length. He has answers for questions that seem relatively sophisticated. Again, I lack underlying facts and technical expertise to fully assess him. Um, but I, you know, based on my interaction so far, I'm interested to see what else he says and reveals. Um, because I, you know, at this point certainly can't write, write them off, even though many of his claims are quite extraordinary.

1:06:38 Speaker 2: Are they though?

1:06:41 Speaker 3: Well, if somebody says, I mean, what he has said is that this craft, uh, it's skin is its power source is its means of steering. And this is a new energy source that will put the entire oil and gas business, uh, sector out of business. Those to me are extraordinary claims. Yes. Um, so, uh, can I just accept those claims because somebody I've, you know, exchanged emails and phone calls with makes them no, but, uh, I remain intrigued and, uh, you know, it doesn't quite make sense to me that he's just making all this up out of thin air or is, you know, unstable in some sense.

1:07:27 Speaker 3: Like I, well, what do you have to be interested in?

1:07:31 Speaker 2: What do you make of the things that, what do you make of the claims that Tim Phillips made of him and, and how he was potentially, or, or he was, um, uh, uh, trying to, I can't even believe I'm saying this again, but extort the federal government.

1:07:55 Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought that was, you know, a rather extraordinary allegation. And according to Spicer, you know, not only is he not being charged by the FBI with extortion, he's cooperating with them actively. So I don't know what to make of, of, Phillips claim it's possible that there's like a truth somewhere in the middle or a misunderstanding or, you know, Spicer was engaged in some sort of negotiation and Phillips interpreted that as something like extortion. But, you know, I don't know. I haven't interviewed Phillips about it.

1:08:35 Speaker 1: So I'm not really sure, you know, where the truth lies.

1:08:38 Speaker 2: Would you like to?

1:08:40 Speaker 3: Yeah, I would. Sure.

1:08:42 Speaker 1: Sure.

1:08:43 Speaker 2: I'll put you in touch with Tim.

1:08:45 Speaker 3: That'd be great. Yeah. I would absolutely love to touch base with him on this.

1:08:49 Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, that's how I met Mike, by the way, I was, interviewing Tim right as Mike came out. Maybe not right as he came out, but right as it became really contentious between those two specifically. I got caught in the middle of it. I actually held it. I didn't like Mike, to be honest, because I felt that my show was being targeted as this. It's a long story, but, and this is what I mean. Things can look a certain way or feel a certain way. And then when you start digging deeper, you find the truth because obviously cooler heads prevailed.

1:09:38 Speaker 2: And I spoke to Mike privately, not with any cameras and we hashed it out. And, you know, he said, you know, he was sorry for, for the way that it went down and that was never his intention to, to, to put me in the middle of it. But, you know, had I not had, had him and I not kind of stepped to the side and had a conversation, you know, I would have gone on not liking him and, uh, or, or not pursuing his story simply because of, of, uh, the way that the community is essentially pitted on each other.

1:10:21 Speaker 2: And it's something you'll start seeing a lot of the more you're in it. Because you might be doing the most altruistic story of your time. At least that's the way you see it. But there's always going to be Faction A and Faction B who see it completely different. And that is one thing that this community suffers from

1:10:44 Speaker 2: to its peril. is the infighting.

1:10:50 Speaker 3: I've noticed that I've experienced some of that. I was thrown out of a signal chat, I think because of some of my skeptical coverage of some aspects of this. I get it on Reddit, but actually on Reddit, people started out and people did not like that photo. I've you know, exactly what you said about people sort of making fun of the photo or intentionally or unintentionally misunderstanding what that was supposed to be a photo of, uh, with that raw material. Um, but I've actually found around Reddit, uh, they've come, they've come around to my side so far.

1:11:26 Speaker 3: I'm sure I'll lose them. And there's still plenty of, uh, you know, negative Nellies in the, in the comment section.

1:11:33 Speaker 2: But if you got Reddit on your side, that's a fucking don't, don't, Don't, uh, don't mess that up.

1:11:41 Speaker 3: I'll try not to.

1:11:43 Speaker 2: Yeah. It's hard to have.

1:11:44 Speaker 3: Yeah, I know. It was like, it's been a journey. Uh, they seem to like me for now. So, you know, knock on wood.

1:11:53 Speaker 2: I've only met one person that their story. And that was Greg Rogers of NASA. Everyone likes them. I've not met a single person that says he's full of shit. He's this or that.

1:12:10 Speaker 3: No one.

1:12:11 Speaker 2: They're all like, dude, this fucking guy's a hero. Like, no matter what way you cut it, this guy's a hero. And it's true. He just happened to see a recording of a, like a closed caption recording of a next gen, like what was being touted as a next gen aircraft but it was a flying saucer. And it was like it again, you know, I'll send you the link for that episode, but it gets the shit that he says is remark. Like it's that, that's the stuff that that's the stuff I'd love for, for someone new like you to really tailor, like what you're allowing yourself to see.

1:13:02 Speaker 2: Uh, try not to like attack, get, get caught up in the drama and, And you're a journalist from, you know, political means. So I'm sure you have no quarrel or, you know, you're no stranger to this kind of like sabotaged environment. But just keep, you know, keep your head on a swivel, right? As always.

1:13:25 Speaker 3: Yeah, of course.

1:13:27 Speaker 2: So, you know, what are the real next steps for you in covering, you know, Mike's story? in covering Podesta and, and this stuff, like what, what is your, what is your, your, your goals? Like what are your goals in the next year or two?

1:13:48 Speaker 3: Great, great question. And I should, I should probably actually wrap up soon after answering it. Sadly, I'd love to come back.

1:13:57 Speaker 2: I would love to have you in studio. Now I didn't know you were a Boston boy.

1:14:03 Speaker 3: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

1:14:05 Speaker 2: You know, me too.

1:14:08 Speaker 4: So you're in Waltham is that right Lexington or am I oh it's.

1:14:15 Speaker 2: Yeah yeah just keep naming towns as many as you can yeah yeah yeah Revere, Somerville.

1:14:23 Speaker 3: Deep underground military base.

1:14:26 Speaker 2: Right that was funny dude.

1:14:37 Speaker 3: Like I'm getting the lingo you know.

1:14:40 Speaker 2: I try to keep it vague right.

1:14:42 Speaker 3: Fair enough yeah that's fair enough.

1:14:44 Speaker 2: I'm in Boston yeah but no next time you are in the area tell me we'll charter you we'll get you a car here and a car back and then you know we'll bring you out to dinner we have a really cool process for in studio. You can, you can ask Mike about it. He got, we treated him to that as well and treated everyone that, that has done an in studio episode so far. And, you know, these virtual episodes are fun to do. This is a little bit last minute again, kind of pushed back and my head's kind of foggy.

1:15:28 Speaker 2: So I'm kind of getting back into my rhythm, but you know, But yeah, so what is, I would love to have you here is the general consensus, especially after you've gotten your beak wet a little bit more in the topic. But especially with what, you know, guys like Grush say are coming, is coming. That's a thing we hear a lot too is, you know, wait, just wait, just wait. Just wait for the next couple of months. Something big is going to happen. And they dangled a carrot. So we'll see if that's more. Are we experiencing more of that or not?

1:16:07 Speaker 2: But yeah, what is what is your what are your goals for the next year?

1:16:13 Speaker 3: You know, crack the case on the Spicer story specifically. Oh, OK. I well, no, I'd like to crack the whole case, but we'll see about that. Yeah, I know. I know on the Spicer story. Um, I got to wait and see what happens in Colorado on Saturday. I guess you'll be there. So please keep me posted. Um, I guess they're also going to have events on the East coast. So I'd like to attend one of those and see what shakes loose there. I'd like to get to the bottom of these claims about a luring operation.

1:16:46 Speaker 3: Certainly. Um, Grush gave a great checklist of things to look into. Um, And I am interested, in addition to claims about aliens, there are some more down to earth claims about child trafficking at a government agency. He said he worked with the Justice Department on that. I think some of those things may be, one, just a bit more accessible, a bit more amenable to the normal toolkit of investigative reporting, and may also lead to potentially some of the other things that Grush has alleged or reporting that makes sense of where those allegations are coming from.

1:17:30 Speaker 3: So I'm sort of firing out in all directions and seeing, you know, what leads I can generate and I'll follow those strands from there.

1:17:39 Speaker 2: I love that. Yeah, so I can't, I definitely thank you for doing tonight, especially a little bit more discombobulated than you know, I, I normally am, um, a little bit all over the place, but, um, that's the way that the topic sometimes feels. Um, but that, that, that crush, I mean, so much shit was said in that crush interview that like the human trafficking part, like you almost forgot about that. Right. And that's like the most human thing of it, of it all is that wait, wait, you can't just brush up on like, brush up against that and then walk away from it.

1:18:20 Speaker 2: That our government, you brushed up against a human trafficking program? Like, wait, hold on. Because that means everything that that department is doing is illegal. So there should be no classification at that point. There's no oath. Those people aren't, what you're doing is illegal. There's no, like, it is your duty to, shine a light on that. So I have a lot of questions, but where can people find you? Where can people follow you and, and your work?

1:18:55 Speaker 3: Yeah. Paradigm.news is the website paradigm.news slash subscribe. You can subscribe for free. We've got signs of life, a weekly briefing, you know, additional investigations. And yeah. Yeah. subscribe, read, comment, follow me at Trek Reports on Twitter, and hopefully I'll be back here before long with some great updates.

1:19:18 Speaker 2: Love it, man. Ben, thank you for doing this. To everyone, I think we just got a late super chat as well.

1:19:27 Speaker 3: Great.

1:19:28 Speaker 2: Oh, thank you. Thank you, Dave. I appreciate it. Yeah, I just got doxxed on my own show. No, no.

1:19:38 Speaker 2: I don't live in any of those towns that we listed. But thank you guys so much, Ben. Thank you. I will be following your reporting and we'll be covering it here on Total Disclosure because, again, we love journalists that have, you know, backgrounds like yours. And I look forward to, you know, collaborating with you on, you know, maybe helping you get a little bit more of that backstory and those little things you may not have heard about so that you with your means and methods can then chase it down.

1:20:14 Speaker 2: So, you know, you always got me to fill you in on some of the lore, if you will. But just stay in touch.

1:20:24 Speaker 3: Okay. Thanks. Yeah. I'm excited to see what comes out of Colorado. We'll have to debrief afterwards.

1:20:29 Speaker 2: Hell yeah. All right, guys, stay humble, stay kind, and most importantly, stay vigilant.