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This is Need to Know. Real talk about unidentified anomalous phenomena. From Australia, Ross Coulthart. From the U.S., Bryce Zabel. Well, it's been an eventful time in the world and in the United States, and we have a new president, elect anyway, so now we know.
Since Donald Trump will be in office through January of 2029, in my opinion, that means he's going to be the disclosure president. He got the job whether he wanted that part of it or not.
We'll be talking about that in this episode of Need to Know and all what it means. We'll also be talking, though, about these new congressional hearings that are upcoming and the cast of characters testifying is stellar. There's Lou Elizondo, who everyone on the planet knows by now, but there's also Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet, and there's also former NASA official Michael Gold, and even for good measure, they tossed in a journalist, Michael Schellenberger.
All that, plus there are two new UFO documentary series slash streaming series that we're able to watch right now here in the US. So there's a lot to talk about. So let me bring in my cohort, Ross Coulthard here. Cohort.
I don't know, whatever. Direct from Sydney. Now, Ross says, I understand it. You are sitting there right now with bags packed to go off to Egypt. So tell us what that's all about. And frankly, I think you're probably looking for another Stargate, right? Oh, sure.
Bryce, don't reveal all, mate. Don't reveal all. G'day all. It's lovely to be here. Yes, I'm very excited. I'm packing my bags for Egypt. As-salamu alaykum. The last time I was in the Middle East, I was getting blown up and shot at. So it's very nice to be going to the Middle East and going to a non-
war zone and hopefully things will calm down and not be apocalyptic while I'm over there. My wife's worried about the Third World War breaking out, of course, but I'm going there solely to join a group of very interested people who want to hear about UFOs, but are also interested in ancient civilizations and whether Egyptian history has any connection at all to that UAP issue.
And we're going to be having a look at some of the ancient ruins and looking at the plausibility of explanations for how some of that ancient technology, really advanced technology, was built five, six, seven plus thousand years ago.
It's an interesting one. I'll be really curious to see what your conclusions are. I mean, obviously, Egypt has played a pretty powerful role just in the cultural sense in terms of explaining ancient aliens and everything, like obviously Stargate, the sense that somehow these things are just too good to be there. So as you get on the plane, is that your own personal belief that these pyramids are just
Too good to be there the way they are with just a human only explanation? No, look, prima facie, I do think there is an issue. There is an issue that a lot of the ancient technology, particularly my friend Ben Van Kirkwyk, who runs a fantastic podcast called Uncharted X.
Ben's an Aussie. He's moved to the US and he's self-taught, which infuriates modern archaeology because he constantly rocks the boat on many issues of ancient history. But he's raised serious questions about vases, ceramic, not ceramic, stone vases that are actually made out of incredibly hard granite.
which I think we'd have trouble carving today to the level of accuracy and incredible mathematical congruencies that he's been able to discover within them. There really are some extraordinary objects in ancient Egypt that can't be explained by the technology of the era.
And I was talking to Ben just earlier this week, actually, and we were talking about a grave that's 14,000 plus years old in which were found vases which were carved in a way that I think we would struggle to replicate even today. And if you accept that human civilization supposedly only started around about 12,000 years ago, there's something not right about the historical record. And I think
To be polite about it, modern archaeology has its head in the sand on a lot of these questions. And I think it's important to ask these questions, not necessarily to reach a definitive conclusion, but to at least explore the mystery.
Well, I don't have any great advice to offer you other than don't steal any of these vases and don't get yourself arrested. That would be a bad look. I've got a good friend, an Australian journalist who ended up being imprisoned in Egypt for several years. And basically, it was all very, very political. So I'm keeping my nose very clean.
All right. Well, you've been at least in Australia for the last little while, even though you seem to travel here a lot. How was the presidential election viewed by Australians with boredom or interest or or whatever?
I think this is the most watched presidential election of all time. I mean, for us in Australia, we're a very close ally under the Five Eyes Alliance. It's an enormously important issue. And, you know, we've got half a trillion dollars nearly of nuclear attack submarines that we've pledged to buy off the U.S. under the so-called AUKUS agreement.
And, you know, there's a lot of questions about whether or not Congress is even going to approve those purchases. But no, I mean, our alliance with the US is very much in lockstep. And a lot of Australians think it's absolutely crucial to know who's going to be the new president. And I think it's an interesting new era. It's going to be a very new, interesting time with Donald Trump back at the helm.
To say the least, before I get into any of that, what would you say if Australians had voted, what do you think they would have voted? Would they have been Trump or Harris?
I can't honestly say I think we would ever have a candidate like Donald Trump in Australia. We don't have those kind of media-driven figures, those personalities like that. I can't see anyone who's quite so polarizing getting into a position of political power in Australia.
We're a lot more conservative in Australia. And nothing, I want to preface what I say here, Bryce, and I think we should be really careful because a lot of people this week when I've talked about Trump,
They've taken my comments about his issue on disclosure as some kind of an endorsement. And I think this is a grave misunderstanding to say that Donald Trump has a particular view on UAP disclosure is not to endorse him as a political candidate. And I like to think that people have no idea what my politics are. I don't know how much you read of our comments on our YouTubes, but
If we even utter the word Trump or Harris in the past, somebody has accused us of being in the bag for them. So I think you and I have both been accused of being pro-Trump and pro-Harris. So I think your point is well taken. It's OK to try to analyze what any elected official is going to try to do on disclosure. That's kind of our job here. I have just before we get into what Trump may or may not do, one of the
clear things is that you and I have done a couple of rounds on whether we're optimists or pessimists about what disclosure would be from a timing point of view. But as I look out over the horizon now, and Trump
should he maintain his health and be holding the office would be four years older in 2029 and when he would leave office. So that's a four-year-plus window to get disclosure happening. I happen to think that that's pretty much a done deal, that some form of conversation from the White House will have to be joined on this topic. How do you feel?
I certainly like to think that that will be the case. And again, this is not an endorsement of Donald Trump. I know that Donald Trump has in the past made very positive comments about getting to the bottom of the UFO mystery. I know that he's been briefed directly by people in the defense and intelligence community. He's been given a proper presidential briefing in a very qualified way.
I know that he knows what I know, which is that there is a retrieval and reverse engineering program involving retrieved non-human technology.
What I was told by people in the know is that Trump was very cautious about speaking publicly about it because he was genuinely frightened that people in the deep state might try and kill him for speaking about it. And I don't know whether that's a valid fear or not, but I can tell you he has made extraordinarily strong comments about the deep state in a
piece on camera that he distributed in the last two days. If any person gets to be concerned about possibly being killed for something, it would have to be Trump at this point. I mean, he got shot at twice during the campaign. The news that's making the rounds right now is the Iranians tried to kill him as well.
or wanted to. So yeah, he should be as concerned as anybody. I will say that Trump, as you mentioned, has spoken out specifically about the UFO UAP issue. Back in 2020, of course, he was asked about it in the Oval Office by George Stephanopoulos. Then later, he did kind of an interview with his son, Donald Trump Jr. And he basically
didn't really step into it. He said, yeah, it's an interesting thing. I've heard things and et cetera. But then it seemed like this year he got a little deeper into it where he did say specifically that he had talked to Navy pilots, right? So if you've talked to Navy pilots, I think we can draw a map and figure out which ones that might be. I suppose it could be Fravor. It could be Ryan Graves or someone like that. So he's talked to some
who have seen things and been part of things. So he,
he must know a little bit about what's going on. He does say he's open to the disclosure of UFOs. In the same sentence as he says he's also open to more disclosure of the JFK assassination, which I welcome probably as much as you and some of our viewers. But I will say that his new best friend, RFK Jr., certainly has taken the position that they should disclose whatever they know. And his other new best friend, Elon Musk, seems to have the opposite point of view,
where he seems to be saying, nothing to see here, folks. So
When you look at the number of people who have Donald Trump's ear, it includes a lot of people in the Republican Party. Most of the people that are making news for this hearing that's coming up are people who supported Trump in the election, from Tim Burchett to Nancy Mace and Paulina Luna and so forth. And so I tend to think he's got a lot of people around him who are saying, yeah, you should consider doing this.
Well, certainly the suppression of the UAP story certainly fits into the deep state narrative that Donald Trump's been pushing for many years. And, um,
You know, I guess I take the view, I beg your pardon, I take the view that there is no doubt in my mind at all that there is a secret US government program that's trying to suppress public interest and knowledge about this issue. I certainly think it's going to be implausible for them to maintain the cover-up under a Trump administration because at the heart of the revelations that I've been investigating is
is the fact that it's clear successive presidents have been misled and lied to. I mean, if you remember Bill Clinton back in his era, he actually spoke to a little boy in Ireland. And I remember the kid's name was Ryan and he'd written to Clinton and he'd asked him about Roswell. And President Clinton said something like, in fact, I made a note of it here. He basically said, you
As far as I know, Ryan, an alien spacecraft did not land in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. And Ryan, if the US Air Force did recover alien bodies, they didn't tell me about it either. And I want to know. Now, the reason that's significant is because Bill Clinton sought to
and requested information on Roswell. And he was told there was nothing in it. We now have Lou Elizondo on the record, now willing this week to give evidence about Roswell under oath before the Congress, saying that Roswell, as he's told me in interview, was a real crash of an alien spacecraft. So the implications are that a former commander-in-chief
of the United States was lied to. Now, I don't know who these people are that are responsible for maintaining the cover-up. Actually, I've got a pretty good idea. Let's start with the CIA's OGA office. Did you hear the new Mega Millions jackpots are going to be higher than ever? How high? Like really high. As high as the top of this helipad? Higher! This hot air balloon is high enough, right? Higher!
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That's the implication of what we're talking about. Heads may roll. I can't remember the guy's name. He was Trump's either Department of Homeland Security chief or even the CIA chief, one or the other. And you'll probably remember his name better than me. But he was on Fox News and was famous for actually saying, yeah, we're seeing things we can't explain. They might be anything. They're not ours.
Who was that? Do you remember the name of this guy? I think it was John Ratcliffe. Yes, yes, exactly. So I saw Ratcliffe's name on the short list for anything from secretary of defense to the head of the CIA. So you're going to have, if that happens, folks, watch for Ratcliffe. If he gets one of those posts, then that certainly is going to be a voice on the inside saying, we should probably talk about this.
And look, I don't think Ratcliffe's the only one. I think we're going to see soon more very senior figures, particularly on the Republican side, coming forward from former roles in defence and intelligence, saying some extraordinary things about a non-human intelligence. I'm not going to say where or when, but there are revelations coming. And I think
It's untenable, I think, for whichever side of politics would have gotten to power this week. The simple fact is that under President Trump, you're right, there is going to have to be some attempt at disclosure because it's going to become untenable with the weight of evidence that's going to come to bear for the incumbent president to maintain the cover-up.
I suspect Trump will find himself under an enormous amount of pressure from the national security establishment to keep this story suppressed. And the argument will be that we're not going to reveal national security secrets. We don't want to tell our adversaries anything about our capabilities. And frankly, I think that's a self-serving narrative. What these people are trying to do is conceal their own capabilities.
crimes, the crimes of deceit and misinformation. Here's what I've been wondering about Donald Trump. And I'm curious, it's all speculation, but
There's a couple of ways that a president can speak about disclosure. He can do it by design. You know, in other words, get the staff together and those who know about it say, Mr. President, I think it's time for you to make a statement. And that's kind of the organized roll it out way. And then the other way that you'd have to consider as a possibility with Donald Trump is that, you know, what's he call it when he gives a campaign speech? The weave. He may be talking someday in the weave and drop in some words that, you know,
you know, sort of lay it out. So I was just kind of curious, Ross, have you given that any thought? If Trump is the guy, do you have any thoughts on whether they would do it in an organized fashion or whether it might even be organized to be a slip from Trump in some other context?
Look, I think Donald Trump has shown in the last few weeks, whatever you think of him, he's a very cunning and very clever man. He's not going to inadvertently reveal the biggest secret in human history. He knows how sensitive it is. He's been told as president that this is one of the most important national security secrets.
I suspect he doesn't buy the explanation from the deep state that this is a secret that needs to be kept. I think he thinks the public has a right to know. Again, that's not an endorsement of Donald Trump. It's just a simple observation based on people I've been speaking to who tell me that they think
Donald Trump is inclined to disclosure. He keeps on saying he doth protest too much, I think. He keeps on saying, you know, I don't know if I believe this UFO stuff. I'm not so sure. When in fact, he's actually quite engaged. And it's quite clear to me through his son, Don Jr., that there is indeed a great deal of interest in the Trump family. And there are people very close to Trump inside the national security establishment who will almost certainly be part
of a new national security regime, putting a brush through the CIA with any luck, and they are going to be asking some very hard questions, and rightly so. Again, I just wanted to make another point. Barack Obama, in 2021, he told James Corden, when I came into office, the president said, I was like, all right, is there a lab somewhere where we're keeping alien specimens and spaceships? And, you know, they did a little bit of research.
And the answer was no. So Barack Obama, former President Barack Obama, is saying that when he was president, when he was commander in chief, he also was told there was no truth to this story. So if it's true, and I know it is, that there was an alien retrieval and reverse engineering program of alien tech, the president was lied to. And this is the fundamental issue here. It's a constitutional issue.
And this is why whatever you think of Donald Trump, he has a unique opportunity in American politics. He's got control of the House and the Senate. He can bring in people who can put a broom through what I think are corrupt institutions like the CIA. And RFK echoes this in his views. Institutions that have lost their way. They've lost sight of the responsibility and the need for democratic oversight by the Congress.
And I think they're rationalizing that there is a 1954 presidential executive order that was signed way back when that supposedly authorized the intelligence community to keep this a secret, even from presidents. And I think that's untenable, especially when the commander's in chief
Clinton and Obama ask hard questions about whether it's true or not. That's the dirty secret at the heart of why this is a continuing cover-up, Bryce. They are frightened. The people in the deep state, the people in the dark corners of the intelligence community and the Defense Department are
are absolutely terrified that their dirty secret is going to be found out because they've been spending billions, if not trillions of dollars of taxpayers' money on a program that they may think is legal, but which has improperly, illegally been kept from the knowledge of at least two or three presidents.
One of my favorite things about working with you, Ross, is that whenever you talk about Obama, I get to hear you call him Barak. And I love that. Oh, well, how do you mean to say it? I apologize. I think it's Barack. I mean, that's what we've been saying for a long time.
Apparently I was saying Kamala the wrong way for a while as well. We'll join the crowd, everybody. Somebody emailed me and said that the way I was saying it was the conservative right-wing way of saying Kamala. And I went, oh, my God. I have no – I'm hopeless inside American politics.
As someone who's had my name butchered by professionals over the years, I feel like if they just even say your name. I got introduced once when I was the CEO of the TV Academy. The voice from God that introduces you said, ladies and gentlemen, the chairman and CEO of the TV Academy, Mr. Bruce Zobwell.
Now that I thought was a whole different problem. You know, there's just no way out of that one. And I think I said, I hope I said, um, uh, I'm sorry, Bruce Zobwell is not here. I'm Bryce Zabel. I'll be, you know, something to that effect, but I thought it was funny. Anyway, listen, um,
I want to get to this hearing that's coming up, but as long as we're talking about the election, it's fresh in our minds. I just love this little story, and I just want to put it out there because it was 50 years ago. I'm talking about the election of 1976 and then 1980, and it's so fascinating to me because –
Let's just review the history for a moment. In 1976, Ronald Reagan, who was the governor of California at the time, fought hard to get the Republican nomination from Gerald Ford. He lost. Gerald Ford got nominated. And then Gerald Ford went up against the incumbent president, Jimmy Carter. Not the incumbent, but went up against Jimmy Carter. Then four years later, Reagan and Carter fought it out. Here's what's interesting about it.
All three of these guys, three presidents, it turns out, had direct contact on the UFO issue. Ronald Reagan in 1950 claimed that he had seen a UFO on the Pacific Coast Highway just down here from my place.
And he also said in 1974, and it was validated by his pilot, that he saw a UFO in 1974 while flying across California while he was governor. And that he and this pilot went and actually tried to chase the thing.
So he knew about that. He came back and he started talking about it. And his people had to take him aside and go, you know, governor, it's probably better if you don't keep talking about this with the optics aren't really good on it or whatever. So he shut up for a while. Gerald Ford, who he was running against, who was the president, was the guy 10 years earlier, was the representative from the
district in Michigan where the swamp gas UFO situation embarrassed J. Allen Hynek so badly. And Ford had many, many, many thousands of constituents who were saying, what's going on here? I want answers.
And so Gerald Ford, who was the president at the time, had called repeatedly in writing and in interviews for congressional investigations about UFOs. He didn't get his wish then, but he's going to get it this year again, and we'll talk about that in a second.
Meantime, Jimmy Carter, apparently back when he was the governor of Georgia, saw a UFO with about 25 other witnesses at a at a outdoor. You know, he was I forget who he was working with, but he was at some meeting and he was outdoors and they all saw it together. And Carter even filed a report with NICAP, which was the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon.
So how ironic is it? Because here's the thing that I really find completely strange. All right. It's 1976. They have three presidential debates. Most of the reporters know that Reagan has claimed to have seen a UFO and Carter or and Carter had the same issue. He had claimed to see a UFO and these people knew it. And again,
It had even been for Carter in a Playboy interview where he talked about it. And yet not one question about the fact that these three, these two guys had each seen a UFO in those three debates. Flash forward four years later, it's 1980. You got Reagan and Carter there. Both these guys, again, have seen the UFO, a UFO and nothing.
People know about it in the know and nobody asks about it. So I think we're making some progress, Ross, because at least we're talking about it again. And although I would note, again, in the debates this year, didn't really come up, and certainly in the presidential or vice presidential debate, which I think is odd given that the current
thinking for most people is that UFOs need to be discussed, if nothing else, as a national security issue, given all their interest in nuclear sites and so forth. So I just find this whole political thing that we're in very intriguing. It's not like presidents have been immune from the phenomenon. Basically, those three in 76 and 80, all were part of it. And yet nothing ever came up about it.
Yeah, and that's why I think we're entitled to be sceptical about any promises that Trump has made, because while he may see political advantage in telling his audience during the election campaign that, oh, yes, I'm interested in UFOs and, yes, I will get to the bottom of that. I remember, for example, he was talking to Lex Friedman on Lex's show just a few months ago, and he assured Lex when he was asked about UFO videos that he would release UFOs.
the videos that have hitherto been unreleased on UFOs and he'd get to the bottom of it. Now, I guess we should hold his feet to the fire. You know, basically, it's important that he be reminded that he's made these promises. And again, the issue relies on public impetus. I think one of the one of the lessons, I think, from this election campaign is that
Whatever you think of Trump, he won the popular vote. He didn't just win the electoral college. He won the popular vote. Whatever he's saying, it's resonating with an audience, particularly an audience of young white men who felt, I think, for a long time disenfranchised and slightly unable to articulate what they feel in the public arena.
And one of the issues that I know that demographic is very, very interested in is the UAP cover-up. I mean, there is a wisdom of the crowd here. People aren't buying the accepted narrative that UAPs are something that needs to be mocked and ridiculed and stigmatized. They know instinctively that there is something to this.
And I just think that Trump's going to be under an inordinate amount of pressure, despite the pushback that he will inevitably get from the national security establishment. He's going to be under an enormous amount of pressure to be more open. And I know that there are very senior people in his incoming administration who are minded to get to the bottom of the UAP mystery. And what we know is an ongoing cover up.
a criminal cover-up, by the way. I don't understand how they can rationalise, which is apparently what they're doing, that they are protected by some executive order right back in the 1950s. Nothing signed by any president in the 1950s gives that president the power to stop successive commanders-in-chief from knowing the truth of the UAP issue. And I think that's the fundamental issue here at the...
At the heart of this, it's not just an issue of this arcane area of UAP disclosure. It's an issue of democracy. It's an issue of the American constitution, the right of the executive to be scrutinized by Congress. And that was enshrined in the constitution's authors all those hundreds of years ago. You know, the people who wrote your constitution
were aware of tyrannical authoritarian regimes from Europe that had got completely out of control. And so when they came to the new America, they articulated an idea in their constitution that there would be these checks and balances.
Now, that is clearly not happening with the UAP issue. And that's why it's not just an arcane area of interest for a bunch of people who are sort of tinfoil hat crazies, as we are so often pejoratively dismissed.
It's a constitutional issue. It's a major issue of accountability and oversight. And that's why this matters. And it's very much now on Trump's table for him to actually embrace this issue, along with all the other concerns that he says he has about the so-called deep state. Well, it's certainly the issue of the hour. It'll be very interesting, though, because
I don't think anybody in Trump's administration or obviously in Biden's administration felt like it was a good idea to do it, or they might have done it already. I mean, Trump was president for four years, Biden was president for four years, and what do we know about those eight years taken together? Nobody in the executive branch talked about it other than Biden talking about shooting down Chinese balloons.
We haven't really grappled with it at the presidential level. And I think the one thing that you could probably say about when comparing the two ways of looking at it, Biden was probably more of an institutionalist. I think that's pretty fair to say. And so from his point of view, if the institutions were telling him this has to be handled in a certain careful way, he probably listened to them.
Trump is a lot less of an institutionalist. So he's more apt to do exactly whatever he thinks is right. I don't know what that is. I'm not in his head right now. But I'd say indications are that he's open to it. So I sort of say it almost doesn't matter what
Trump currently is thinking, because over the next four years, with all the new whistleblowers that will have been heard from, with possible leaks and documents and hearings and so forth, there's going to be a lot more pressure to talk about it. So let's talk about those hearings for a second. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. Go ahead.
No, no, I just wanted to make the point. To me, as an outsider, and forgive this presumption, Bryce, and I hope people don't feel insulted by this, looking out from in into American society and having researched the JFK story,
I see the JFK murder in a conspiracy, in a state-sponsored conspiracy, as part of the broader UAP cover-up. I can't divorce the two. And to me, it's just so egregiously alarming that the American public can just go, oh, gee, what?
You know, wow. You know, there is probably a conspiracy to murder JFK. Gee, there is probably the fact that the CIA was involved in a coup d'etat against the president in 1963. Oh, well, let's get on with life.
And that's the thing that really shocks me about this is that there is a scar, there is a wound in the body politic of America that I think goes to the absolute heart of your democracy. You know, it's interesting though, Ross, in your example, you're saying people sort of understand that UFOs are real and that JFK was killed in a conspiracy, but who cares? I think it's
Maybe that's true for a lot of people, but let's just take our media, for example. They've taken a completely different point of view. Their point of view is, whenever they've covered it, is, well, some say yes, those are conspiracy theorists. Some say no, those are people that are historians and know things, but we'll never know. So what's really bothered me about the JFK thing, because this is another thing besides UFOs that you and I like to talk about, the JFK thing,
as it currently stands here in the United States, has gotten to the place where people, I think the majority of people go, well, I have opinions, but we'll never know.
which strikes me as completely wrong. It is possible to know. And the reason we don't know for sure is that certain people have decided not to tell us over the years. And it doesn't mean that it's over. So honestly, if President Trump or his people are listening to this, I am very happy to hear that they may release all the JFK documents and get to the bottom of it. I think it's time and I'd love to see that happen.
Yeah, I think maybe we should move on to the hearing now because I'll rant all day about this. But to me, it just leaps out at me, Bryce, the alarming way that people just compliantly roll. The PC gave us computing power at home, the internet connected us, and mobile let us do it pretty much anywhere. Now generative AI lets us communicate with technology in our own language using our own senses.
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and let things happen to them in America. I mean, we did it in Australia with COVID where we basically accepted that the government was going to lock us up in our homes and essentially put us under martial law. And it turns out now that that was sponsored by a lot of the mainstream media in a completely diluted, unscientific campaign that had no basis at all in objective, solid, empirical data-driven science.
And similarly, the mainstream media has been pushing a narrative now for decades that the issue of UAPs and for that matter, the JFK assassination conspiracy theory should just be dismissed and put under the carpet because there's no basis to it and move on, folks. You know, listen to us in the mainstream media. Well, look how well that's gone. And I say this as somebody who's worked in the mainstream media for much of my life.
There is a dogmatic, truculent resistance to acknowledging that they're wrong in the mainstream media. They've fucked it up big time with the coverage of Donald Trump. Whatever you think of the guy, a large rump of America thought very, very strongly that they weren't racists, they weren't Nazis, and they were entitled to vote however the hell they wanted to vote, no matter what the mainstream media told them to think about Donald Trump.
They have screwed up mightily, and I think they've egregiously damaged the public faith in legacy media with the way they've conducted themselves with such palpable bias. And it's got to be said. I mean, I don't understand why. You just started this show by saying you weren't going to say anything that would get you –
On one side or the other, and now you've gone and done it, my friend. It doesn't make me a Trumpster. It doesn't make me a Trumpster to observe that the legacy media has conducted itself with a complete lack of objectivity largely during this campaign.
The fear, the politics of fear and the way that the media have conducted themselves is reprehensible. It's not the media that I was taught to be part of as a young man. And I'm sure you probably feel the same. You know, the way that journalists feel now that they have the right to voice their opinions on particular political candidates, I just don't think is right.
So, let's get to the hearing before I dig myself a shell. Well, I'm just going to follow up that. Because I'm working on a book about these things and sort of calling back my memories, I remember as a young reporter at an NBC affiliate, then at CNN.
pitching my boss, either the bureau chief at CNN or my news director at the station, doing a UFO story. And in both cases, those people looked at me like, yeah, over my dead body, you're going to go out and do a UFO story.
So I was shut down pretty hard. That's what I'm referring to. Yeah. I mean, when we're talking about bias, that's the kind of inherent bias I'm talking about, which is an inability to actually look at the empirical data, which is there in plain sight,
that there is definitely something there. It's a matter of public record that the Director of National Intelligence of the United States acknowledges that UAPs are real. But so much of the mainstream legacy media has its head up its ass on this issue. They just refuse to engage. And frankly, we don't need them anymore. The big lesson from Donald Trump's victory... Well, first of all...
You don't need a better example than these hearings coming up. Yeah, they should be covered live. The Watergate hearings were covered live on television back in 1973. So I don't know why these won't be covered live by somebody. They should be on C-SPAN or something, but they're not going to be. So I do. I will say, though.
This hearing looks interesting because you got Lou Elizondo who's saying, "Hey, I'm gonna be under oath and I'm gonna try to tell the truth as I know it to everybody."
Which is interesting because here's my question. We can get to the other guests and witnesses in a second. Because we just had Elizondo on and he got out of certain hard questions in kind of a weird way, I thought. A couple of times he said, well, I wasn't born back during when Roswell happened. So I really don't have an opinion on it. When you were born doesn't really matter in
in terms of trying to get to the truth of something. The truth, you can discover something true about the Lincoln assassination at this point. And that's, you weren't alive for that. So I don't really know where he's coming from. And I don't know how that would fly if he tried to say that in a congressional testimony. But now we know how carefully Lou chooses his words. He's very forthcoming as much as he can. And then he chooses his words.
If he's under oath and somebody says, so you've stated that you believe that there are crash retrieval programs. Yes. Tell us specifically where they are and what's going on. What would he say?
Well, this is part of the problem with the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, because I think people who are expecting witnesses to tell all at the hearing this coming week, they're really not going to hear it because they can't. Under the laws that operate, even in Congress, you can't depose people and hear evidence that is protected by national security laws.
You can bring those people into a SCIF and you can get them to testify in a SCIF under top secret SCI compartmented clearances. And then you can make a decision about how much the public can be told about that. But you can't just depose people and put their evidence out there in the public arena. And frankly, there's a good reason for that, Bryce. You know, there are secrets as commonplace.
as countries we need to protect as part of the Five Eyes Alliance. We don't want foreign adversaries to know our capabilities and our advantages over them.
But I don't see why admitting the existence of a non-human intelligence engaging with this planet, something that is categorically denied by the Pentagon. And remember that. Remember that in a few months' time when the Pentagon is forced, and I suspect it will be, into a groveling admission. How are they going to justify their behavior?
How are men, primarily men, and officials in the CIA's Office of Global Access going to explain the fact that they have egregiously, criminally, illegally lied to the public and to the president and to the Congress about a simple thing like the existence of a non-human intelligence? Admittedly, yes, there are technologies that ought not be revealed. I accept that.
But the issue fundamentally is, can these things be revealed to Congress? Yes, in the right circumstances. But I don't think the Oversight Accountability Committee hearing is going to get any dramatic revelations this week because they're just not legally authorized to hear it. Well, we'll see. By the way, I want to apologize to our YouTube friends.
I thought I discovered the world's greatest lighting system bringing in all this outside light. And now I just looked like, I don't know what I look like. I look like a man who's, you know, again, it's hostage video time for me, but okay, moving on. We'll just have to live with it. Okay. Besides Lou Elizondo, there's another person testifying though. And I just kind of want to know why he's there. And it's this former NASA official, Michael Gold. Now,
The other, Lou Elizondo, like I said, household name, and Rear Admiral Timothy Galadit, also well-known in the circles. But Michael Gold, the NASA official, is really something out of left field for most of us. Most people have not heard of him, and we're not quite sure why in the hell he's up there sitting at the table with Lou Elizondo and Galadit. So maybe you can shed some light on that?
Well, I don't know a huge amount about Michael Gold, but people that I've spoken to have told me he's very highly spoken of and that not only was he on the NASA team that did the review report, I'm told he was a member of that group. I'm told he has very strong opinions on the UAP subject and a large part of why might be because Michael worked for Bob Bigelow, Robert Bigelow at Bigelow Aerospace for around 10 to 12 years.
And that was during the period when Bigelow Aerospace was doing a lot of its work. I beg your pardon, a lot of its research into anomalous phenomena. So I'm hoping that Michael Gold will be asked the key question. You know, was he happy with the way that his personal views were represented in the NASA report? That would be a good question. And the other question is, did he form a view of
on the basis of what he saw during his time at Bigelow Aerospace, about the existence of a non-human intelligence engaging with this planet. I'd love to hear his answer on that point. I hope that he feels willing and candid about coming forward. And good on him for being prepared to testify. Well, if he does answer with any specifics to those, that will be quite a contrast from the NASA press conference when they
a year or so ago released the findings of their investigation because that was a very irritating thing to watch. Okay, moving on. Another person who's gonna be testifying is journalist Michael Schellenberger. And for those of you who are saying, "I'm not sure I remember that name," he's broken some UFO stories. The most recent one is one where he said he had a whistleblower ready to come forward, and he told that person's story.
And so some people have brought up the point, Ross, and I'm very curious what you would think about it, because here is Schellenberger, a journalist who's testifying. But again, where's the whistleblower? And as somebody pointed out, I believe it was on X on your site, they said, no offense, but having.
What Schellenberger on is like, instead of having David Grush testify back in 23, having Ross testify about having talked to him, which would not have been, even though I think you'd have been a great witness, my friend, don't get me wrong. But that would be weird to do that. And it feels weird now. Why are they doing that? That seems like such an odd choice.
Look, I suspect, and I haven't spoken to Michael about it. I've spoken to Michael a fair bit about his research, and I really admire what he's done. And I've got a sense of who I suspect some of his sources may be, or at least the programs within which they're operating. And I'm sure that he knows people who are operating within the legacy program who've been leaking him information.
And simple fact is, I think what he's probably going to be talking about is what's needed for the people that do want to testify to feel safe about coming forward to Congress and giving evidence.
And that's the issue at the moment. There is a log jam. I'm talking to people in the legacy program, people who are formerly in the legacy program, people who've been involved in retrievals, people who've been involved in reverse engineering and are involved in reverse engineering attempts. And they are deeply concerned about coming forward in the current environment. Now, that might have changed under the new administration. Let's wait and see whether they hold fast with their promises.
But the kind of protections that are necessary to avoid what I think could be a catastrophic disclosure are things like the Presidential Records Review Panel that was proposed in the original Chuck Schumer legislation. And don't forget that was bipartisan legislation. Chuck Schumer, of course, was the Democrat Senate majority leader no longer after the current election. But
I can see that there are people in the Republican side who agree that this legislation is important.
So let's just see whether under a new administration, whether Trump follows through and brings in the kind of checks and balances that people like Michael Schellenberger feel are important to protect his sources and mine. Because there are a lot of us sitting on people who are unwilling at the moment to step forward and identify themselves because they frankly don't trust the national security establishment not to take revenge against them.
You have to understand this is a secret where people have been intimidated, threatened and, yes, allegedly in some cases even murdered to protect this secret. Now, that's a hell of an allegation. It's one that David Grush made to me. It's one that I know has been repeated by other commentators. That's an allegation that at the very least should be being investigated by Congress. I'd love to see it investigated.
because I'm aware of specific cases where people have died in extraordinarily suspicious circumstances. And I do think that it's time for a reckoning.
There is a reckoning coming, and maybe Congress is the place where that could happen. But it's only going to happen, Bryce, if we have some kind of a hearing like a church committee-style hearing where politicians develop the cajones to actually call the right witnesses, bring them before the Congress, and make damn sure they're fully obliged to reveal all they know. Yeah.
I agree. Obviously, murder takes it to a whole new place. I've been looking into some stories that go back to Roswell, where in the immediate aftermath of Roswell, there were murders committed. And I find that very interesting and certainly important for us to know.
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If that happened, you know, obviously the people that probably did the murdering are long gone. So I don't see how that hurts acknowledging it if it happened. Anyway, the other big testimony comes from Rear Admiral Timothy Galadit. And we've heard a lot from this guy. You know, I think you just had him on your reality check program, right? Okay. So, and I'm not saying that
I'm just saying I've heard his stuff. I've heard it on your program. I've heard it on other programs. I find him fascinating. He's super intelligent. He's super terrific as a witness. Do you think, though, that Giladet is packing any kind of other information that might get unloaded at these hearings that is something that goes beyond what he's told you on the air and elsewhere that he could tell because he's under oath?
Well, again, the problem simply is that a committee like the Oversight Committee and Accountability Committee, if he's about to speak about something that is national security sensitive or deemed top secret SCI compartmentalized information, he's legally not allowed to talk about it and he's legally obliged to lie about it. So this is the dilemma that we have with the current catch 22 of the legal system in the United States.
that essentially the compartmentalised secrecy that has been used to gag public awareness of this issue for so long, along with the stigma, ridicule and taboo. And so I don't know, it would be hard for me to sort of say one way or the other what Tim's going to reveal. I do know Tim knows quite a lot about underwater submerged, unknown submerged objects, which have basically attracted the attention of the US Navy today.
And he's very, very well informed from people on the inside, anecdotal stories that he's collected from people who essentially approached him as a highly honorable and very highly respected former senior naval officer. He's basically been approached by people who've told him extraordinary stories. I'm in touch with one of the people who has told him of an account. I
I won't name the guy because I'm still investigating his story, but it involves seven sailors on the flybridge of an aircraft carrier watching jets take off and land on the deck of the aircraft carrier. And unbeknownst to them, there's been a call to general quarters. Everybody's been told to go below. And as they look across, there's a cruiser-sized United States vessel landing.
in parallel with the aircraft carrier,
And he sees a craft, all seven of them see a craft materialize above this U.S. warship that is the length of that warship. It's a massive craft. And I'm in the process of checking that. I know this guy has approached Tim Gallaudet and basically offered him the same information. And I'm in the process of tracking down the other seven colleagues of this guy who've all obviously retired from the Navy and
And it's just one of a whole series of incidents that I've been told about where Navy vessels have actually had objects appear above or around them in extraordinary circumstances. And often the crew have been threatened or intimidated or told to shut the hell up about it. And I think it's time these issues were investigated because all too often so many of these incidents come from
below the water, they come from our ocean. And I think that's where Tim's important because he knows a hell of a lot about our oceans. Which is fascinating because in our last episode, we talked to Richard Dolan, who's writing a three-part book, History of USOs. And by the way, if you haven't seen that show, folks, I'd advise you to watch it. Dolan is...
You know, I mean, everybody's talking about the water now. Water is the thing, which is a nice bridge, though, to what I wanted to talk about before we get... I assume since the hearings haven't happened, we're just going to let it go. Let them happen. Then the next time we talk, we'll talk about what they actually said.
Ross, I've spent the last few days on kind of a film fest, if you will, because there's two new series that have just broken here in the United States that are documentary series about UFOs and they're...
One of them is on MGM Plus and the other is on Netflix. The MGM Plus one is called Beyond UFOs and the Unknown. And to the best of my knowledge, I think it's JJ Abrams who is behind it, who had already done a previous series about UFOs. It's kind of good. I mean, I enjoyed it. I mean, it's not perfect, but it's kind of good.
The only problem is I'm the only guy I know in my neighborhood who has ever seen or heard of MGM+. I have it on MGM+. There must be other ways to watch it or else they wouldn't have made it. But it is kind of intriguing. I thought it was good. But...
The big dog of UFO stuff is the one that just broke on Netflix. It's called Investigation Alien, and it stars our friend of the show, George Knapp. It's six episodes long. They're short. They're not hour-long. They're like 30 to 40 minutes.
But my God, this is the series, frankly, Ross, that you and I want to do that he's now done. You know, you wanted to go traveling around the world with a big budget and look into this. And I wanted to sort of try to say, what is going on here? What are the conclusions we can reach? Well, our friend Nap has managed to do both. And I got to tell you, he's just amazing.
I don't know, he's just aged into this perfect character. And what's so fascinating about these six episodes...
even though sometimes the construction is a little hinky or whatever. But what's fascinating is they all hang together as a progression. He starts out in episode one and he's doing this and it leads into two, which leads to three. And so like in episode two, you know, he's in Brazil on a boat going to investigate Colares and that case and other cases. And I got to tell you, I sat there watching it last night and thought, wow,
you know, who does he remind me of? He reminds me of Ernest Hemingway. You know, he's like the old man in the sea, you know, going around there. And I don't say that in a bad way. George is a good personal friend. And I really admire everything the guy has done and the way he's lived his life and been part of this series. But the series has kind of a
You know, remember Anthony Bourdain? He was out traveling the world looking for a good meal. If George Knapp sat down in Brazil and had a meal, he'd have been doing that. I mean, it's just so interesting. So in his first one, what I really thought blew my mind as a way to start a UFO series was what they did. And I haven't talked to George about it, but if I see him next, I'm going to ask him. It literally starts with cattle mutilations.
Right. So it doesn't start with, okay, you know, in 2017, the New York times did this and that, and sort of build the case, which frankly needs to be built for most people. None of the people I hang out with know anything about that. So it's probably good to say it, but he goes straight into cattle mutilations and comes up with some cases that prove it's going on now. It's not something from 1970s. It's happening now. And, and,
I was compelled by it. And so I'm just, I'm giving a thumbs up basically. If anyone wants to spend, you know, good three or four hours watching some good UFO production, check out Investigation Alien with George Knapp on Netflix.
No, I loved it. I thought George's ruggedly hirsute demeanour, he comes across as the kind of senior Marlborough man of ufology. You know, he's kind of a handsome devil, kind of a grisly-looking fella, and I loved the tenacity that he showed in getting to the bottom of these mysteries. It's exactly the sort of show we need. I watched the first two or three eps last night, and I was really struck by the work that he did on the cattle mutilations, but also Calara's.
I mean, the thing about Calaras in Brazil is, as George pointed out, people were hurt during these incidents. Some kind of craft was directing energy beams at human beings and causing them injuries. That's a worry. It's a huge worry. And it's why we can't always assume that this phenomenon is always benevolent and friendly.
And I loved what George did. I think it's fantastic. And I really applaud the fact that there's a show like that now out on Netflix that people can watch and engage with. And I wish him every success. I mean, listen, I...
You know, we're producers. We probably produce something a little different about it, but it's and it has a little bit of Netflix telling him this is what we think the series is. There's a few moments of that, but it's just good. And he's so great. And and of course, he does take on water as a as.
was one of the big things we need to think about. He also though re-examines the Phoenix Lights with some new witnesses and some new people talking about it. And let's face it,
One of the things I thought that he did that I wanted done is I've I know a little bit about the Phoenix Lights and I live near it. I've been in Phoenix many times and I've talked to a bunch of people that saw him. I even had lunch with Fife Symington one time who was the governor during the Phoenix Lights, and he told me about his experience with him.
But what George does in this series that I certainly admire is he said, but what is it? Why would somebody do that? Why would somebody fly a mile-long craft of some kind over a populated city? What would be the point of doing that? And he starts to grapple with those issues. One of the things that he certainly came to a conclusion about cattle mutilations was somebody's on a sampling mission.
Right. And it might even explain Colaris. These are the issues that you and I like to talk about. And I was just glad to see other people talk about it. So that's my highlight for the week. And I'm glad you, so you're able to see it in Australia. You were able to get the latest. Okay, great. So again, you're taking off now. You're going to be gone for a couple of weeks. But just to give a highlight to it, you're doing some kind of Q and A after the, you
after the hearings on the 13th in your Reality Check podcast on News Nation? So if people want to ask me questions or if people want to raise their own issues that they'd like to see explored in a special Q&A that we're doing on my show, Reality Check for News Nation after the hearing, then you'll find that on my Twitter feed and my YouTube feed. And you can basically send in your comments.
And I hope at some stage, my friend, you and I can do our own analysis for next night where we get our teeth into the issue as well.
I would love that. And by the way, I just have to rib you as a friend, uh, your own reality check. The last episode, Ross introduced our show is welcome to reality check, which I had to spend time editing out of the thing. And I thought that was pretty funny because it's totally acceptable and fun. It's just, uh, you know, you're doing a lot these days. I mean, I see the number, the amount of material that you're cranking out. It's prodigious. And I, you know, um,
I assume some of these things that you're going to learn in Egypt are going to become also shows as well.
I will definitely be doing shows from Egypt and I'm continuing to work on major documentary investigations for News Nation that I know you're aware of, Bryce, and they'll be forthcoming. Let me just say that the investigations continue and, you know, I remain very, very committed to tenaciously investigating and getting to the bottom of this mystery and there's a lot to be exposed.
Well, Ross, we're an hour into our show. Time flies whenever we do it. I hope everyone appreciates that I fixed my lighting problem during the show. So things are happening. Listen, safe travels, my friend. Like I said, stay out of trouble, but get into good trouble and come back and tell us all about it when you return. Will do, brother. And here's good luck. Break a leg for the congressional hearing. Yes, thank you. All right, everybody. We'll see you all later. Bye bye.
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