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Hey, everybody, it's Bryce Zabel and you are listening to Need to Know Extra. Now, there's been a lot of talk about crash wreckage these days. It seems to be everywhere. Representative Ana Paulina Luna is talking about it when it comes to her new committee in Congress that she says is going to investigate UFOs and UAP as well as other things. And of course, our own Ross Coulthart broke the story of Jake Barber who claims that he was flying helicopters that picked up crash wreckage.
So I want to talk about crash wreckage today, but I want to go back to the granddaddy of it all that we've almost put aside. And of course, I'm talking about Roswell. Roswell, of course, over the years has sort of
marginalized by people who, by the government, who of course have offered multiple explanations for the whole thing, but also just by our culture, which kind of turned it into kind of something that maybe wasn't all that serious, but things have started to change. I've been obsessed by Roswell myself since I first moved to Los Angeles. And when I got to Los Angeles, I was the CNN correspondent and my office made a guy named Fred Saxon had a
told me about this book and I went down to the local grocery store and bought this, The Roswell Incident. This is the first time I really got a sense of it. Now, there's a lot of inaccuracies in this book, as we'll learn from our guest in a few minutes, but it also laid out a story that had happened in 1947 and said, not so fast on passing on this story.
And of course, then we started really looking into it. The investigation picked up in intensity after Stanton Friedman met with Jesse Marcel, I believe in 1978, and then reported it. And that sort of got things going. Our guest is someone who has been to Roswell so many times, it's probably uncountable, but I'm going to ask him to count it anyway. But what happened recently is very interesting to me.
I did a blog post on an old site I had on Medium about Roswell.
It ended up getting put on Chris Mellon's blog site or just website on his front page and left there for over a month. This was before a lot of things had broken. I thought that's very curious. That's a way to say something is real without coming out and actually saying it. I was very proud about that and I thought maybe Chris Mellon was sending a message. Now, of course,
We're hearing from a lot of different people. We had Lou Elizondo on Need to Know not too long ago when his book came out. And I'm just going to read you what he said on this show not long ago. This is Lou Elizondo. He says...
I will say, let me get my glasses on so I can read this. I will say there was a point in time when I was told to my face verbatim that I am not allowed to talk about crash retrievals at all, or I will go to jail. That's Elizondo talking. He says, and I've honored that. And that's why my book went through the process at the Pentagon, because I wanted to make sure I had Pentagon approval to do it. And so my book took almost a year to go through that process.
And they approved me to talk about Roswell. This is Elizondo talking. And he says, and so that's why I can talk about Roswell? Yes. Roswell, by all accounts, was a crash.
It was not a balloon. It was not test dummies being thrown out. It was a crash. And biological samples were recovered that non-human biological samples were recovered. There were reports that were generated as a result of that event that colleagues of mine had access to.
So we are entering the great new age. Of course, David Grush has also confirmed Roswell. So it's becoming what I would call an open secret. One of the things I want to talk about with my next guest and my next guest is Donald Schmidt, who wrote UFO Crash at Roswell back in 1991 with his then partner, Kevin Randall, an excellent book that really took it another step further. These days,
I actually, as a screenwriter, have this book under option, Cover Up at Roswell, because it's a terrific distillation of what really happened at Roswell. So without further ado, let me bring in my friend and what I would call the leading researcher of Roswell in the entire world at this point. And that's you, Don Schmidt. Welcome to the show.
Well, always great to see you, Bryce. And we've had so many good times together and let's hope that Roswell will continue to be the, you know, the instigator for some of the best things yet to come. Because as you know, I still maintain, as you described, that Roswell is the granddaddy of them all. And it's the one case that could solve this overnight.
You may have already answered it in your question. I mean, in your answer, I was going to say what you have devoted your adult life to this story. Not a lot of people can say they've devoted their adult life to anything other than maybe debauchery or something. You devoted it to Roswell.
Why did you do it? But not so much voluntarily and certainly not with any preconceived notion as to what was the true nature of the case. And as you remember, Bryce, I was a total skeptic on the case, as well as Kevin Randall. And we made that first trip. And my God, when I think, you know, it was February of 1989.
And we fully expected that we would make a single weekend jaunt down to the land of enchantment, New Mexico, and either confirm, as the government still maintains, that this was nothing more than a balloon device or something just as prosaic, just as conventional.
And by the time we were heading home, we had already agreed we not only needed to get back as soon as possible, but we better get ahead of this story because if we're wrong.
If indeed it was something extraordinary, if it was something as the eyewitnesses back then were described to us was something of a non-earthly origin, we need to start treating it in that manner. Otherwise, you know, we get caught with our pants down. We would wind up telegraphing our moves. And in other words, we realized we started, we needed to start playing hardball.
We needed to start treating it as it was potentially the real thing. Well, it certainly turned out to be the real thing. Within short order. Yes, yes, yes. You know, Don, let me put it this way.
If I were to stop the average person on the street and say, what do you know about Roswell? They might say, you mean the TV show? Or they might say, yeah, I've heard about Roswell. And then if you found a couple of those people and you said, well, what do you know about it? They'd say, well, I mean, it was a long time ago. I think something crashed in the desert someplace. And I think they said it was a weather balloon.
And that's basically what people might know, even if they were suspicious. So without going into the 10 minute version now, and we could do probably the three hour version. What's the what's the less than a minute version of just saying to people, here is the basic Roswell story? What is you know, we are we call our show need to know what is the basic amount of information about Roswell that people actually need to know?
I need to quickly point out what was so important about New Mexico.
at the end of World War II and within just years thereafter. First atomic bomb was detonated just two hours west of Roswell. You had all the testing of the captured German V-2 rockets at the White Sands Proving Grounds just to the south of that area. You had ongoing atomic research at Los Alamos and in Roswell itself, you had the Roswell Army Airfield, which was the headquarters of the first atomic bomb squadron in the world.
So it was the hotbed of military activity research testing in the world, bar none at that time. According to Project Blue Book, there were more UFO sightings in New Mexico at that time than anywhere else in the world. And wouldn't you know that on the late evening of July 2nd, 1947, something crashed in the high desert just 65 miles northwest of Roswell.
Blanchard would notify the base. It was the colonel, base commander, William Blanchard, who would dispatch his two intel officers to check it out. Within days, they put out a press release that they had actually captured a flying saucer. Within five hours, Blanchard's boss, General Roger Ramey, explained it all away as just a conventional off-the-shelf weather balloon with a radar reflector kite.
And it wasn't until 30 years later that the very intelligence officer who led the investigation, who was first to go investigate the crash site, he was diagnosed with terminal emphysema and he broke his security oath. He went public and said, quote, being familiar with all materials, both foreign and domestic, this was nothing made on this earth, end quote.
Well, how much more profound, how much more direct can you be than that? In other words, what we recovered back in Roswell in 1947 was not made on this earth. So let's put this in some context.
It happens in 1947 when Truman is president. And by the way, let's just underline that. Roswell was the only nuclear bomber base on the planet at that time. All right. Then
30 years go by, and during the Carter administration, the final years of the Carter administration, Jesse Marcel comes out. And Stanton Friedman, I believe, is the guy that was lucky enough to sort of turn him over and bring him to the world's attention. So this has been going on for a while. But what is so fascinating is that
And to this day, I can't quite get my brain around it. They actually issue a press release days after getting this material that we've actually captured a flying disc. And the one thing that I thought I'd ask you today, because it's 2025, can you imagine a similar situation today if a crash was retrieved anywhere where anybody official had put out a press release? Yes, we recovered a disc.
Exactly. And we pulled it at a different time. Precisely, precisely. And from no less, as we both mentioned, the first atomic bomb squadron in the world. They were the elite within the military at that time where it was a composite unit where they selected the best officers, best pilots, crew, doctors, nurses. They all happened to be stationed.
They're in Roswell at the time of this crash of this craft of unknown origin and that they should then put out such a press release. And I always point out, you know,
It's not as though we have, you know, perpetuated this notion that they recovered something so extraordinary that now almost 80 years later that the myth, as it's been often called, you know, still continues. But lest we forget, they started it. They put out the press release. They captured a flying saucer. We didn't. The witnesses didn't. They did.
and they admitted it for a few hours. And in fact, I think the thing that I would like you to do is set the stage for us here. Because again, you sort of almost have to ask the government, were you lying when you first put out the press release? Or were you lying a day later when you had Jesse Marcel looking through a weather balloon? There have been multiple explanations over the years from our own government about it. We'll get to the witness testimony in a second. But
What has been the history of the government talking about Roswell? Well,
One of the things in even the very press release itself, that so often people are quick to suggest that this was just a knee-jerk reaction on the part of the Roswell Army Airfield, whether it was the base commander, whether it was the Major Marcel, the head of intelligence, whether it was even First Lieutenant Walter Hott, who was the public information officer, that they kind of jumped the gun, that type of thing. Well, if we go through the chronology very quickly,
When the rancher first reports the crash, that's Sunday, July 6th. And going up the chain of command, the fact that as Colonel Thomas DuBose, who was General Ramey's chief of staff over at Carswell, they were the head of the 8th Air Force, which was the commanding office over the 509th Bomb Wing in Roswell. DuBose, in the absence of Ramey,
home in Denton, Texas at that time. It's a Fourth of July weekend. He's there for the unveiling of a new aircraft. He's with family. Du Bois takes the call from Roswell and Colonel Blanchard, telling him what he has just witnessed, what he is holding in his hands at that very moment.
Du Bois contacts the Pentagon. Within minutes, it's General Clements McMullin, who is the deputy commander of Strategic Air Command, who orders him to contact Blanchard and have that wreckage immediately flown to their attention at the Pentagon. The point I'm making, Bryce, is that Washington already has wreckage in hand by late evening, Sunday, July 6th.
When does the press release go out from Roswell that they've captured a flying saucer? At noon, Tuesday, July 8th, a day and a half later. So they've had plenty of time to orchestrate this entire cover-up because it was a high-risk gamble on their part that not only would the press accept the counter-explanation, but
Was it going to leak out even further? Were they going to be unable to contain the media in Roswell, in New Mexico? Were there witnesses who would get beyond their control and start talking about bodies? And so, but it worked. They had a press conference in Fort Worth and major myself. I think you just touched upon the one thing, the one thing that's always just fascinating
Stuck like a burr in the saddle for me on this thing. If I hear you correctly, you're saying Sunday night they have the wreckage in hand. Correct. But the press release doesn't go out till Tuesday. Correct. Correct. Okay. That's the part that makes me kind of nuts.
Yes. They got wreckage, and probably by that point, they have bodies. And yet they put out a press release saying we got it. Why wouldn't they do the opposite? Why wouldn't on Tuesday they say, you know, if there hadn't been any leaks about it, they caused the first leak. Why would they put the press release out saying we got it when they didn't need to do that? Because they didn't create the first leak.
civilians were involved. The rancher who had first reported this to the sheriff, Sheriff George Wilcox in Chavez County, headquartered in Roswell. And then he would speak to Frank Joyce at radio station KGFL. So the media also was aware of it all before the military would become involved. So it's one thing to order their own personnel
You know, you can't talk about this any further. You're ordered not to say another word about this. They can't do that with civilians. But these people, these civilians are talking and they don't want them talking about it. Correct. So I would think that's when you go straight to a balloon explanation. I don't understand the stutter step of here's a press release admitting that we've got it.
That sound defies logic. Is it FUBAR? Is it the Army thing effed up beyond all recognition and it just happened? Well, first of all, the press release, when I say they put it out at noon, they had moved up that morning staff meeting to 7.30, 7.30 a.m., where they laid out exactly what they were going to do.
We have from DuBose's personal testimony alone that both he and Ramey were at that staff meeting in Roswell. They extra flew over from Fort Worth to be part of that strategy, that meeting. They would sit on the press release till noon. OK, one for two obvious reasons. First of all,
You miss all the morning editions, all the morning newspapers, and at noon you hopefully miss also all the afternoon. They've already gone to press for the day. Well, the one paper, the only newspaper that waited and then ran the press release was the San Francisco Chronicle. Otherwise, what then would become the banner headline
that would overwhelm all chatter, all rumor, all talk of the flying saucer was it's a weather balloon. Those were the banner headlines the next morning. At Capella University, you can learn at your own pace with our FlexPath learning format.
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And you say it got to San Francisco. My recollection is it did actually reverberate a bit around the world. Was there a worldwide reaction to that first press release that was then followed by the counterreaction about the weather balloon? I mean, were people... Because just to make sure everyone's got the context, 1947 in June, this is...
Actually, it's June 24th. So that's only two weeks before Roswell. That's when Kenneth Arnold sites the craft up in Washington State, which starts the summer of the saucers all over the United States and then around the world. So this is two weeks later. So when somebody says, we actually have one of them, that would raise a lot of attention. Was there a big worldwide media attention at that time? Yes, there was. And in fact, Walter Hott, the public information officer, was...
would state that he had a stack of phone messages on his desk almost six inches high. And that Colonel Blanchard then told him to go home. In other words, you're not going to feel any further questioning from the press. And it was the same with Colonel Blanchard, that he would announce that he was going on leave, when in reality, he set up a base of operation out at the crash site
Major Marcel, who is the only one mentioned in the press release, he is over in Fort Worth for the weather balloon press conference. They would keep him overnight and not allow the flight back to Roswell. So it was even the balloon press conference, as far as Bryce, that there was a hallway of reporters waiting to come into General Ramey's office.
to see the pieces of the flying saucer just arrived from Roswell. And only one reporter was allowed into the room, and that was James B. Johnson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He would take a number of pictures, and it was because of those pictures that it then generated worldwide attention. It was because of the balloon explanation
Not the flying saucer explanation. It was the balloon explanation. How could the very people involved in charge of the atomic bomb make such a mistake? Well, I mean, let's just underline that and put it in bold. The people that we trusted to know what was up there in our skies immediately after World War II, where all manner of things were in the skies and people had to notice them, these nuclear bomber people didn't.
apparently were being said, couldn't tell the difference between a flying saucer and a weather balloon. I want to focus for a second on what I've always been compelled by, which is the human drama of Jesse Marcel. This guy's the intelligence officer. He's one of the guys that gets sent out to a crash site. He picks up a carload of wreckage. I believe that's in the trunk of his car. He takes it home and shows it to his son and his wife. Then he,
Then, knowing that it's not of this earth, as I believe he said later, not made by human hands,
Then he's the guy that has to go to the news conference and crouch on the floor with a weather balloon. And I believe we're going to be showing a picture of the most famous picture where Jesse is on the, you know, sitting with the weather balloon stuff. And if you look at his eyes, he is a guy caught like a deer in the headlights. And you can imagine the pain. Then he's
He goes 30 years before he gets this bad medical diagnosis, and he basically says, screw it. What are they going to do to me now? I'm going to tell the truth. Is that roughly what happens to this guy? It is. And as people will be able to observe, even in the photograph, he still has dust on his shoes from the crash site.
That's how quickly things have turned around and gone as far as into reverse motion. And as I was suggesting too, that by the very verbiage of the press release, it doesn't tell us where the crash took place. It doesn't mention anyone as far as having witnessed this, except it does mention Major Marcel.
and that he is on his way to higher headquarters for the material to be analyzed. And he's conveniently then ordered onto a B-29 bomber called Dave's Dream. He arrives in Fort Worth with a box of the actual material. Marcel would describe how he placed the box on General Ramey's desk. He would then be taken to a map room to look at the location
And then when they return back, the debris is gone. And in its place is this shredded radar reflector kite of foil, wooden sticks, string and tape, and a clump of rotting neoprene rubber balloon that just reeked of burnt rubber.
So, yes, I just imagine and you're you realize, oh, my God, I'm about to be set up. I'm about to become the Patsy, the fall guy. And I can hardly, you know, refute, you know, the situation without the risk of being court martialed because I am a mere major. And there's a full bird colonel and a one star general who are calling the shots.
So just imagine. It's astonishing. You know, it is astonishing. That's why I've been so compelled. I haven't I've been compelled, but I have not devoted my my waking days as you have. And I want to get into that in a moment. But the one thing I think that is worth really pointing out to people right now.
because there's a cry, you know, when we see the Jake Barber tape. Well, let me show, show me the evidence or, you know, just one great photo. And, you know, people are, are always angry when we do a show. Ross and I have people often like, well, yeah, quit talking about it. Show us the evidence. Then we'll move on. All right. Well, clearly there was some evidence at Roswell, but we don't have it right now. You know, we don't have the bodies and we don't have the craft. We, somebody does, but we don't. And the reason I say somebody does is Roswell.
If it was a weather balloon, which is a pretty standard thing, right? I mean, people know about weather balloons and particularly at an airfield like that, a weather balloon coming down is not a four alarm fire. It's not like, holy shit, the Soviets are firing weapons at us right now. No, it's a weather balloon. What I want you to address here is,
We may not have the evidence, you may not be able to prove, okay, here's a photo of the body that is incontrovertible. But we can show that hundreds of people did
things that they would never, ever, ever have done for a weather balloon, but they managed to do it for something else. And whatever it was had to be so important that they wouldn't have done this. Can you kind of paint that picture for us? I did an article a number of years ago entitled The Extraordinary Reaction to an Extraordinary Event. Bingo. And I demonstrated that whether it was the highest ranking event
highly experienced officers who were involved down to the children at that time who just happened to be present when they
were presented with a piece of the wreckage in their home and they were able to handle it and feel its characteristics and then describe it many years later, that their behavior, their response was identical. It was as though they were all reading from the same script.
as though there was no one that could look this up in the Army manual and, well, this is how you deal with a crash of a flying saucer, that they were winging it. They were at times resorting to the most extreme measures, especially in dealing with the civilians, because as we both know, the civilians were threatened. They were threatened to submission. They were intimidated. They were threatened with death.
If they were ever to speak out of turn regarding this. Now, just imagine I'm an officer and those are my orders. You are to go to the residence of so-and-so and you are to take the parents in the one room and the children into another room and you are to read them the right act. Well, it's just been explained away as a weather balloon. But you've elevated it once again to the point that over threat of physical violence,
death that should you ever speak out of turn about this, you will have hell to pay. And so they were caught in that quandary as far as in, yeah, we have to contain this, but yet we can't allow it to get out of hand. We still have to maintain a level of civility.
with the witnesses involved, but we still have to make sure that they understand the urgency in their cooperation. And it was a balancing act that with the military, they were threatened with Leavenworth. We've talked to many enlisted men who were told that they would spend the rest of their lives in Leavenworth if they didn't follow orders about this.
And then the civilians were told, no less. We will kill your children. We will kill your grandchildren. So the again, the the breakdown of accepting that this was of the mundane when the response was hardly mundane. It was it was extreme to the point that neighbors were being threatened by neighbors, right?
that personnel that coexisted with the civilian population of Roswell. It's one of the things that always also struck me as a curiosity, Bryce, and that beforehand there was a wonderful rapport between the people of Roswell and the base, especially after World War II. The military walked on water
I mean, they could do no wrong. They had saved the world as far as Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. And they were heroes in the eyes of all the locals.
And how that was destroyed immediately after this weather balloon recovery. There too, it doesn't add up, it doesn't measure up. It's pretty hard to imagine somebody threatening you with life in prison if you talk about a weather balloon. That doesn't seem credible. But I want to go back to that because I asked you this earlier, and I think we glossed over it.
The government has a history of offering different explanations for this. And explanation one is we have a flying saucer. Maybe they accidentally told the truth at that time. Explanation two is it's weatherblown, but it hasn't stopped there, has it? Tell us the rest of the story. Well, that explanation would stand for the next 40 years until we became involved and we were working specifically
with the late Congressman Stephen Schiff of New Mexico when we had approached him about representing his own constituents in New Mexico. And what really raised his ire was not so much that this was a cover-up,
that we were potentially dealing with the story of the millennium. But it was the way by which he was stonewalled by not only the White House, not only by the Pentagon, but I remember how upset he was specifically that he had sent three separate letters to then Secretary of Defense Les Aspin.
And all three were ignored. All he was asking was, can I see the files on that weather balloon incident that took place back in July of 1947 in New Mexico? And so having door after door slammed in his face, he finally once became so bold as that he accused the Air Force of a massive ongoing cover up.
And he had assurances from the Air Force. They would go through their files, and should they find anything, that they would send it to him immediately. Well, as Newsweek magazine very aptly put it, that it was as though it was a preemptive strike.
It was Colonel Richard Weaver at the Pentagon. He had a press conference in September of 1994 where he acknowledged that the military had lied about the balloon explanation. And he said that a number of times. And then he presented a new theory and he continually called it a theory theory.
That it was the same balloon, but that it was part of a top secret project at that time. It was a Russian spy balloon. And the theory was that should the Soviets detonate the first atomic bomb, which they wouldn't do until August of 1949.
that the balloon would pick up the shockwave, that it was a son of a boy with an acoustic listening device. So that was the only additional equipment on this particular balloon. So the third explanation then in 1994, and it was a 750 page report that subsequently came out,
that they tried to explain this all away as Project Mogul. By the way, that report is so heavy, it's like 10 pounds and it makes a great doorstop. Great doorstop, right. What about these crash dummies, though? Yes, yeah. Well, I should quickly point out that Project Mogul, that explanation was resoundingly dismissed.
not only based on Project Mogul's own records, and they're attributing that it was launch number four, which would account for the debris at the crash site
at that time, that launch number four had been scrubbed, that the helium-filled balloons were jettisoned, but that due to a heavy overcast, the radar or the arrays of those kites was not included. So
there would have been no debris. It would have just been a rubber balloon and nothing more. So we were able to quickly dismiss Project Mogul based on their own records. So end of that. And in fact, whenever Mogul comes up, it's like, do your homework, do your history. Because again, you can document the fact that you cannot place a balloon as far as within that window on that ranch.
So then as we continued to come up with firsthand witnesses to non-human bodies, they were again having to deal with, well, balloons don't have pilots. So how do we address this? So it was in May of 1997, just before the 50th anniversary
that the Pentagon had another press conference. And this was to address the growing number of eyewitnesses to there being bodies recovered at Roswell. And the best they could come up with was Project High Dive and Project Excelsior, which were high altitude crash test dummies, anthropomorphic crash test dummies of plastic, wood, metal,
in jumpsuits with harnesses and parachutes, six foot tall, and testing this oxygen, this breathing equipment. Well, the projects didn't originate until 1952, five years after Roswell.
So then the Air Force proposed, and your viewers will not find this in any medical book, any journal. No one has ever been treated for this or diagnosed with this. And it's the condition called time compression. The idea that the older you get, you not only start to confuse the years, but also the decades. There's no such thing.
And so that was the best they could come up with regarding the bodies. And sorry, as I often joke, husbands, try that with your wives. Well, that's like saying you can't remember whether it was your high school graduation or your college graduation. I mean, you pretty well know certain things. You don't make those kind of mistakes. You certainly don't imagine that crash test dummies
are aliens. And when they're five years apart, listen, let's go back to Schiff, Congressman Stephen Schiff.
Right. One of the things about Schiff, well, one of the more interesting things is that he died of a fast-acting cancer when he was 52 years old. But we'll get back to that in a moment. Schiff really, really, toward the end of his life, was pushing for congressional hearings, correct? Absolutely. And in fact, I will never forget that very afternoon when...
when Colonel Weaver, with the press conference at the Pentagon, announcing the new theory about Project Mogul. And I was just beside myself. I just thought, well, that ends our work with the good congressman. And I reluctantly, I called him up at his office. I spoke to his chief aide, Mary Martinek at that time. And then he eventually called me back
And I thought he would wash his hands of our wonderful working relationship at that time. And I will never forget what he said, because it's one of the things that still makes him a champion and a hero in my eyes. When he went down, they're a bunch of goddamn liars. And I need to get reelected. And we're going to hit them even harder.
Well, I could not have been more proud of the man. And I, again, I offered my full involvement and cooperation to,
And he did get reelected. And we were to the point we were going to start setting up our plan as far as our second effort in pushing for congressional hearings. And then, as you mentioned, how sadly he was diagnosed with this rapid skin cancer disease.
that originated behind his ear and then within months it had moved to the front of his neck and then at that early age that he had left us. I spoke to him one last time at his office in Albuquerque and just as a quick follow-up, I had received a phone call from his oncologist and he said, "The next time you are in Albuquerque,
I need to meet with you because I would like to discuss with you precisely what the Congressman told me before he died. Whoa. Well, and I thought, whoa, so we're talking about a deathbed. We're talking about something that was very confidential. And I couldn't get back to New Mexico quickly, quickly enough. And when I did, I immediately called at the airport. He wouldn't come to the phone.
And I called repeatedly. And finally, a nurse came to the phone and said, the doctor instructs me to tell you, you are never to call him again. He has nothing further to say to you. Oh, so, you know, that proverbial phone call, that knock on the door. It's like, OK, been there before. I haven't given up on him, Bryce, because I feel it's still that important.
Just so I'm clear, was it also while Schiff was doing his own work and you were in the middle of your own, the Roswell files actually have gone missing, correct? Oh, yes, yes, yes. That when he had failed at every other source in Washington, the Pentagon, the White House itself, he then assigned files.
the investigation to then the GAO, the General Accounting Office, Congress's own investigative department. And they put out then a systematic request through all the branches of the military, as well as departments of intelligence, that they would do a cursory search for any documents, at least pertaining to expenses that may have accrued because of the incident.
And whereas the Air Force report on Project Mogul was 750 pages, the GAO report on Roswell was a mere 27 pages.
And the explanation was that the very first atomic bomb squadron in the world, all of their files had been mysteriously destroyed during that crucial summer of 1947.
How convenient. What a shock. What a shock. It's so hard to maintain files. I mean, my files just go missing all the time in my office. In a movie, you'd walk up because you'd go, this is becoming too predictable. I mean, it's your intelligence, right? Listen, I...
I hope that when Anna Paulina Luna calls to the hearings in order that she's chairing, I hope they have a moment where they acknowledge Stephen Schiff, a fellow congressperson, and his efforts for transparency because he really deserves it. And honestly,
I think if you look ahead a few years, Stephen Schiff will take his rightful place in history because he's one of the guys that got it early. And just so I'm not sure, I think you said it, but I just want to underline it again. Stephen Schiff represented the Roswell district. I mean, literally Roswell's actually, actually, yeah.
No, no. Oh, I thought it did. Roswell was not as drastic. He was in the Albuquerque. He was in the northern part. But nonetheless, it was still New Mexico. Yeah, it was. So he still felt very obligated. Well, of course. Of course. He could not have been more responsive.
And, you know, more outgoing as far as in talking to these people, meeting with them and addressing their concerns, especially their concerns that they had been threatened over something, again, as simple as a weather balloon.
I want to get into the personal here for a moment because you've recounted this story probably so many times. You probably recount the story in your sleep and your wife is waking you up saying, Don, stop talking about Roswell again. I've never had a dream about Roswell in my life. I really haven't. I don't know.
You know, listen, it's, it's a profound story. And I just want to encourage no matter how much Don and I were able, we'll be able to have shed light in this short time we're together. You've written so many books done. And for,
people that want to know more, what is fascinating about these books when you go through them is the accretion of witnesses. For me, it's like the mosaic effect. It's like, it'd be lovely to have that one witness who was there from the beginning all the way through, saw all aspects of it, and tells that story in a lovely, nice book that tells it all. But that's not how these things work. What
what is happening with the accretion of witnesses is you got 600 different witnesses or some amount like that. Each one is testifying to their piece of this jigsaw puzzle. And when you put them all together, you say what we said earlier, nobody in their right mind would expend that much time, money, and effort, uh, over a weather balloon, if that was indeed it. And they wouldn't even expend that much time, money, and effort over a weather balloon. That was a spy balloon, uh,
for a Russian test that would not happen for two years. So I just urge people to pick up one of those books. And I want to just
drop back for a minute. This is, if I'm not mistaken, this is your 1991 book, right? As we said, which really was the, I think the one that got you, you, you and Kevin started where everyone was sort of reading it and talking about it. And then you got followed up by some competition from Stanton Friedman and Don Berliner, is it Berliner? Berliner. Yeah. Okay. Berliner. And, and,
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In the 90s, in New Mexico, now that Roswell has been sort of unleashed in 1978, and so now there's teams out there. Team A is Randall and Schmidt, and Team B is Friedman and Berliner. And what I found so interesting, because I was reading this stuff at the time, is
What I found interesting is one of you would talk about some kind of witness and the other team would sort of say, well, wait, that's not really because you guys were finding your way and there was a competition. Talk to me about this competition between Team A and B and how it came about. And did it make you guys better? Did you did it help or did it hurt?
Oh, well, as far as just even describing as far as the competition. It's supposed to be good. Of the competition. Yeah, the competition was healthy. And Kevin, at times, it became a little more personal. And there was a continuing rift between.
between Stan and Kevin in that regard. And there were times that it became a little elevated as far as even between Stan and myself. And Berliner was more just the writer of their book and he was more background. But I love the fact that Stan and I, and as much as at times we would parallel our investigations, we still would always get together and exchange notes.
because we didn't want, first of all, we didn't want to duplicate effort because as he first mentioned, we were racing with the undertaker. And so the time was dwindling and we didn't want to, you know, feel that we needed to follow up in each other's steps as though we didn't trust one another or that the, it was still the eyewitness testimony, which was tantamount that it was more important than who did the interview, who conducted the interview. And, and,
I mean, there were times that Stan and I were even on the road together that we would meet and we would interview who was then retired General Thomas DuBose. And DuBose, you know, describing what we described, what we detailed earlier about his being ordered to have the material flown directly to Washington that first evening, that type of thing. And so it's competition in a sense that it is.
It sped things up. It moved things forward. And it wasn't like one team was trying to outdo the other in the sense that one was better than the other. It was like, who was going to get to the moon first? Who was going to come up with the evidence first? Not who was going to write the next book. Well, you know, though...
Let's face it, what happens after the Super Bowl? One team wins, one team loses, and they go hug in the middle, right, afterwards, right? You may be slightly modest here because there was an intensity to the competition, and I found it compelling and interesting. The other thing, though, is...
I may be wrong about this, but wasn't there a time in the 90s when you and Stan, without your partners, were offered funding for research, provided you worked together? You guys actually worked together for a period of time. Tell me about that. Well, I had mentioned that we traveled together down to Florida. We met with General
Thomas DuBose, General Roger Ramey's aide. And DuBose is pictured in two of the weather balloon pictures with his boss, General Ramey, at that time.
And we met with a number of other witnesses. We traveled to New Mexico together on a number of occasions. I remember on another occasion, we flew into Louisville, Kentucky, and then met with someone regarding testimony at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. So Stan and I had known each other prior to Roswell. And so I love the fact that
Even years thereafter, Stan seeing his health fail, that he was passing down the gauntlet. And he more than once would tell me, "Don, it's up to you to finish it." I love the fact that as his mind was starting to fail, how often he would have me sit next to him at a press conference or at a panel discussion. And I would mouth him answers
You know, just so not to embarrass him. I think we got away with it because I don't believe anybody was ever. And if I'm not mistaken, you guys in the 90s, you shared rental cars and sometimes motel rooms together to stay on budget. Is that right? That is correct. That is correct. So I think professionally, we rose above the competition.
So, all right. I want to, I want to, uh, okay. So this is in the nineties folks. So just so you know, uh, there was that level of intensity, that level of, uh, turning up the witnesses and as Don said, uh, you know, racing with the undertaker and yet that's, it's almost 30 years later and you never stopped. You have kept up for 30 more years. So if you knew what you knew then in the nineties, uh,
Tell me about this next 30 years. What has that process been like? My biggest, and I will say, my biggest regret, my biggest disappointment right now is that, and you hit on it exactly, and that is back when we were working with the late Congressman Stephen Schiff, we had more than 110 witnesses still with us. Just imagine the litany of whistleblowers we would have had
if he would have had any support on Capitol Hill. He had none. There was no one who stepped and provided him any support
any, as far as risk at their own political careers that they would become involved in this most taboo topic back then. And especially at a time when the Pentagon was trying to clamp the lid down tighter and tighter. And so you were going against all odds in many respects. And as a result,
with Schiff because he saw the importance. He saw the relevance. Just imagine if we would have succeeded back at that time. And so I now, I look at as far as the Grushes and the Barkers and the other potential whistleblowers and I go, yeah, but 20 years ago, what we could have done. What you could have had. What you could have had. Listen,
As we start to wrap up here, a couple of other questions. You know, like I thought I have a pretty good grasp of Roswell, better than the average guy. And yet I made my own mistake there where I said Schiff represented Roswell, which is not true. He was a congressman in New Mexico. It's a small thing, but it was a...
you know, a misconception. And when things happen, they need to be corrected. So I just, with all your experience, Don, what is the greatest misconception about Roswell that you've run into that needs clearing up? First of all, and above everything else, this idea that we're dealing with a lot of failed memories. We're dealing with a lot of people who have sought to
glamorize and exploit and become famous over the incident when the exact opposite has always been the case. They, if anything, have been very reluctant. They have resisted any effort of volunteering their information. It isn't like one of the red flags typically is when somebody contacts us
And, oh, you forgot about my involvement. And it's like, nope, nope, that's not consistent with the legitimate witnesses. They don't want involvement. They took oaths. They swore they would never talk about this again. And at times there's been cases of where it's been the spouses or the children who have approached us that, well, we've tried to get them to talk.
all these years and could you help us? Could you possibly come to the house and maybe have one final crack at them speaking out on this? But just quickly getting back to this notion of failed memory. Any one of us who was alive on November 22nd of 1963,
We will forever remember exactly where we were, what we were doing, and what our thoughts even were at the time. And we weren't in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. The same can be said about 9-11. And we will forever remember because anything that is profound, anything that
we contemplate or we think back to over and over again because it was a unique experience through the course of our day-to-day lives. That's what I can demonstrate with all of these witnesses at Roswell. That is because it was something extraordinary. It was profound.
That does that actually is a great example for the crash test dummy bullshit scenario. It's the same as if saying, well, OK, you think we're talking about Kennedy being assassinated at Dealey Plaza in 1963. But actually, in the mid 70s, we did some gun tests, you know, with snipers and cars. I think people have just confused that it wasn't really I mean, it's nuts because you are so right.
If you're involved in something, your memory stays with you forever. Go talk to a Vietnam vet about some of the firefights they were in. Did they forget the details? Did they forget who they were with? Did they confuse something? No. Ask anybody, and let's take the JFK example.
Ask anybody, or now they're mostly gone, but if you ask anybody who was at Dealey Plaza what they were doing, what they were wearing, what the person next to them was saying or doing, they've got every detail. So the idea that these people have somehow all been confused is kind of nuts. Question, have you noticed a change in public opinion about the Roswell case in all the years that you've been studying it?
I'm a little concerned that as history is no longer emphasized, it's no longer even required course as far as on the college level, that it struck me a number of years ago as I was just giving a little historic background perspective, Manhattan Project, World War II, the first atomic bomb. And I'm realizing, my God, these young people have no idea what I'm talking about.
And so I see that the Gen Zers need to be brought up to speed, that there's a whole new generation, a whole new audience that really know nothing of Roswell. And so what's one of the things that even in writing this next book, that I'm writing it more in the order of the Gen Zers as to what, as far as
in their lives would they require as evidence short of the physical evidence? And in this case, how would you take us into a courtroom and present it and win before a judge and jury, that type of thing? Has anyone in Congress ever reached out, of current Congress, not going back to Schiff, et cetera, but...
There's obviously hearings afoot. There have been two in Congress recently, and there's going to be a new succession of them. Have you ever been talked to about offering testimony about Roswell before Congress? Well, yes. I was in Washington just a year ago, and we broached that very possibility. And
since and even before I have talked to Burchette, I've talked to growth men and this idea that why are we, you know, reducing this in scope to just we want to see documents. We want to see pictures. No, no, no. With Roswell, I want to see a piece to the wreckage. Right. And in our case, we can tell you where the bodies are today.
We'll take you by the hand if you would like, because I can't emphasize that Roswell could blow this open overnight.
A piece of the wreckage is sort of the golden goose of this whole thing. The holy grail. The holy grail, yeah. And I got to tell you, even when I was running Dark Skies for NBC because I was doing a UFO TV series, I had several people, one in particular, who put me through hoop after hoop because he knew somebody who had a piece of the wreckage in their father's old home's attic and kind of thing. And I know it made me so...
insane, you know, trying to do my job, but then also wanting to not miss the story of the century. And I came to resent this guy so much because it was obviously all nonsense. It was just, uh, somebody, uh, trying to reach out for a little bit of attention. Have you had to deal with that yourself? Too, too many times, too often. Yeah. And, um,
As far as in performing due diligence, you have to check out every possible lead because it's only going to take that one time. But there are still principal witnesses who we still suspect. We have good reason to believe from outside testimony that people still have pieces that are hidden. And we stay in contact.
And briefly, Don, because we are kind of getting toward the end here.
You've not given up trying to find that Holy Grail. You've conducted digs out in the Roswell area, correct? Tell us about that. Five of them. Yeah, we've had five archaeological digs. We have confirmed that there was indeed an impact that that largest piece of debris, which is even mentioned in the press release that the rancher had stored it in a livestock shed, which was still there until about 20 years ago, about three miles to the north.
And we confirmed that it was right below the surface with the archaeological as far as using a backhoe, as far as digging perpendicular to the area that we had mapped, that we had targeted. And there it was, a symmetrical V right below the surface. We've demonstrated that the chemical...
as far as condition of the soil is different than the control area in the surrounding soil. We've demonstrated as far as with satellite photographs that under infrared, that there is a scorch, that the area is brighter
than the surrounding area. And so one of the things that we're planning on going back with in the future will be with subterranean radar drones, so we can cover a much greater area. In the past when we used subterranean, it's just on a tool, on a wagon that you roll back and forth, but with the drones, we'll be able to
really cover this entire square mile because as the witnesses described, the wreckage extended for almost a full mile.
Is that a location where you do that? Is that common knowledge? Do people go out there and look for themselves? Or is that private property and people can't get on it? It is landlocked by private property. And then the site itself is Bureau of Land Management Conservation Property. So if the BLM catches you out there, you can be arrested.
Okay. We have to get permits, whatever we work out there. Yes. I was thinking about you the other day for a very different reason. Um,
You know, ufology over the years has kind of come down to there's people for a long time. It was the nuts and bolts people, you know, show me the nuts and bolts of these craft. And then and I'm not saying that it was all of one or all of the other over the years, but it was largely a nuts and bolts issue from the 50s into the 60s and so forth.
And lately there's been this woo issue, the kind of the what's going on at skin Walker ranch and portals and, you know, uh, coincidences and synchronicities and, and, uh,
telepathy and in all your research of Roswell, have you ever run across anything that sort of bridges Roswell's very nuts and bolts capabilities into the Wu story? Do they ever cross or is Roswell a straight ahead, hardcore nuts and bolts case?
At the moment, it still remains very nuts and bolts, you know, kick the tires type of event going up the entire season.
trail of the testing, the analysis, even through the years, the fact that we have firsthand witnesses at Boeing, at Lockheed, at Battelle, at RAND, at Los Alamos, you know, all describing the wreckage coming in. So all the, you know, attempts at reverse engineering, their search for the on button, so to speak. Though we've been open to that,
It's even been suggested that one of the things that we probably missed was just going out at the very early stages of the investigation with psychics and just take them out into the desert and just see what their perceptions were, see if they picked up on anything. And now it's too late because that'd be the first thing that they would suspect. What's the over-under on whether we
finally get some formal recognition and resolution of Roswell. I mean, right now you have Chris Mellon basically saying it's real. You have Lou Elizondo, I read his quote, saying it's real. You have David Grush saying it's real. And they all say this, and yet it's not a congressional committee. It's not the president. It's not somebody official saying
Who's working now? I get they are official. So what's it going to take? What's the over under for you as to when we will finally all basically go? Wow. Yeah, I guess that was real. We've been told by numerous lawyers. I've even been told by two judges that just with the amassed.
first-hand testimony, albeit anecdotal, but that we could still go in any court of law and win this hands down because what witnesses could the government possibly present to counter our position? But
the fact that we are now dealing with more and more of the deathbed testimonies, which are admissible, which are accepted as physical evidence within a courtroom. And we had one just the other night again, that a son finally confided to us what his father told him, and we had tried to get the father to talk
20 years ago about this, and we were just brushed aside. Well, before he died, he finally confessed to his family. Okay, deathbeds. So they're admissible for a reason. And as a result, if we want to throw out the Roswell deathbeds, then we have to throw out all. And I'm sorry, the judicial system has already accepted that such testimony is relevant today.
And substantially as far as relevant as far as in determining as far as the outcome of the case. The physical evidence, certainly that would be the icing on the cake. And that's another reason that we will continue going out to the site. I will continue to, you know, observe certain people who I suspect may indeed be
Still hiding out pieces for whatever reason. And so for that reason, it's not investigation complete that I still want to be able to hold it in my hands and then I can walk away from it. And then it is mission accomplished. I'm done.
Or as you've said many times, to me anyway, nobody has ever been on their deathbed and said, come closer, come closer. It was a weather balloon. It was a weather balloon. Nobody ever has given a deathbed confession about a weather balloon. No, not once.
Listen, Don, all of us, myself included, and all the people who are listening, we all owe you a debt of gratitude for your dedication to doing this and for your ability to pull all this varied and very difficult information together into a coherent narrative. And it's really meant a lot to us. So on behalf of everybody else, I just want to thank you. It's a good thing that you've done, and we all appreciate it very much.
Well, thank you. And coming from you, not only as a dear friend, but for all your support and encouragement, your suggestions, all your own personal efforts. I mean, we've been a good team in that regard. And I hope that it certainly will continue in the future. It's my pleasure. And, you know, just as we close out, I just think it'll be interesting if someday,
10 years from now, 20 years from now, there'll probably be a motel and a restaurant out by the crash site. It'll probably be a bit of a tourist attraction because people will want to see where this thing all really started. And you've done so much to make the public recognition of it. So anyway, folks,
We could go on for hours. As could the Congress. You don't need three people sitting at a table testifying at Congress and each one getting, you know, a few minutes. You could go, you could do a congressional investigation into Roswell that would go on weeks and weeks. There's that much information and hopefully someday they do, Don, and hopefully you and I are still around to appreciate it. You'll be testifying and I'll be covering it and a good time will be had by all. But for now...
We're going to send you back out into the field. Please go with our good wishes. And for everybody else, thanks for watching. We really do appreciate it. And we'll see you at the next one.