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Joe Rogan Experience #1574 - Jacques Vallee & James Fox

Jacques Vallée is a venture capitalist, technologist, and world-renowned figure in the field of unidentified aerial phenomena. James Fox is the director of The Phenomenon: a new documentary about UFOs and a global effort to conceal their existence.

James FoxguestJoe RoganhostJacques ValléeguestJamie Vernonguest
Jun 27, 20243h 11mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:02 – 1:41

    Jacques Vallée’s first UFO sighting and how it shaped a lifelong investigation

    1. JF

      (drum music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

    2. NA

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

    3. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music) Gentlemen, James, Jacques, welcome. Thanks for being here. Uh, we'll explain, uh, what this is all about 'cause, uh, on the new Spotify podcast we don't really have an intro the same way the old ones did. Um, James, you produced a phenomenal documentary on the phenomenon, on what's going on with, uh, UFOs. And I just sent you an- an article that my friend, Saga sent me today, uh, about a photograph, a very clear photograph that they've taken of this, uh, triangular UFO. Um, so there's something that we'll be talking about in a little bit. Uh, Jacques Vallée, uh, you have been studying this most of your life.

    4. JV

      Too long.

    5. JR

      Too long. (laughs)

    6. JV

      (laughs)

    7. JR

      We did- we discussed it last night at dinner that, um, your interest in this came from an experience that you actually had as a child, you actually saw a UFO.

    8. JV

      As a t- as a teenager with two other witnesses. Uh, one of the witnesses was half a mile away with binoculars so I'm pretty sure that, um, that that object was real and it was, uh, classic disc, middle of the afternoon, clear sky. Absolutely clear. At the time, I became convinced that it might be a prototype of something that would be coming out later and, uh, you know, we're here many years later and we still don't have anything like that. It was just hovering and it was there.

  2. 1:41 – 6:09

    From Close Encounters to real research: Vallée’s Spielberg connection and the “globe & string” scene

    1. JR

      And w- you've been studying this for so long and this is, uh, something you guys talked about on the film that you were actually the character that the French UFO researcher in Close Encounters of the First Kind, or the Third Kind rather, was modeled after.

    2. JV

      Well, S-

    3. JR

      The Steven Spielberg film.

    4. JV

      Spielberg was intrigued with the idea of a- of a character that was not quite as weird as, you know, the ETs, but was a lot weirder than, you know, the- the people on the ground in the US trying to make sense of this and the military and so on. So he needed this intermediate character and he felt, you know, F- Frenchmen was- was the right thing to do.

    5. JR

      And so did you talk to him about the film? Did you talk to him about when- when he was putting it together and-

    6. JV

      Yeah, uh, I, uh, a journalist put us together when about halfway through the, you know, the- the final, uh, final shooting of the film. And there were- there were gaps in the movie at that point. And we, uh, we- so we had lunch twice together and, uh, it was- was a lot of fun. He- he was, at the time, he was looking for a transition between the time when they- they know the, you know, the big thing is coming, the mothership is coming, and they don't know where. And the mothership is sending signals but they can't decipher the signals. And I- he said, you know, he had spent the morning at the- the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and he said he couldn't make any sense of all the mathematics they had. And I said, "Well, maybe you could have, you know, two screens that give you an angle and- and the angle tells you where the thing is." And he said, "No, that's too complicated, you know, and takes too long. I- it, uh, it's got to be just a few minutes in the film." And then I- I thought of a photograph that was on the desk of Dr. Hynek, you know, Dr. J. Allen Hynek-

    7. JR

      J. Allen Hynek.

    8. JV

      ... who was, uh, the Air Force consultant on UFOs at the time. And I was working with him building databases and so on. And i- on that photograph, there were three guys, you know, really well dressed on ladders around a huge, um, sphere of the Earth in the lobby of some building somewhere with pieces of string that they were- they were putting the string over the Earth. And I- I- I told Dr. Hynek, I said, "Allen, you know, what's the story behind this?" And- and he said, "Well, the- when the first Sputnik was launched, you know, October '57, nobody had a computer program to compute an orbit, but they knew where the- the Sputnik had been seen. Nobody expected the Russians to come up with this and they needed to know where it was going next." So they b- The New York Times called the director of Harvard Observatory saying, um, "Can you give us a comment on the Russian satellite?" And the guy said, "Hey, it's 3:00 in the morning, you know, what Russian satellite?" And so they got dressed in a hurry and they- they were trying to compute the orbit by putting a string around the- a- around the model of the Earth in the lobby of the- uh, of Harvard. And I thought it was so funny and- and Spielberg said, "That's it?" You know, that's it. The- the general says, "Come on," uh, you know, you know, the- the geographer who is, uh, the interpreter of the French- of the French guy, uh, says, "Well, it looks like it's somewhere in Wyoming, you know, but where in Wyoming? You know, where should we go?" And the- the general says, "You mean we've got $10 billion worth of radar and, you know, cameras and everything else and nobody's got a map of Wyoming?" And they break into the lobby of the building next door and they come back with this globe and, you know, they've got the globe and they- they look at it- look at it and get their coordinates and because the- the- it turns out the geographer tells them, "You know, those signals, they look like a longitude and a latitude." So they- they- they criss, you know, they- they get the point where it's going to be and that's- that was the piece that was missing in- in the movie. So I was really proud of that, you know, it was- it was really fun.

    9. JR

      Well-

    10. JV

      Also, it's the one funny part in the movie.

  3. 6:09 – 7:41

    Why UFOs wouldn’t “report to the government” — and why witnesses stay quiet

    1. JR

      Yeah. It's a great movie. And it's, uh, it is probably the movie that got me most excited about UFOs when I was a kid. And I- I remember thinking-If UFOs were coming here from another planet, one thing that I remember thinking is, "Why would they even bother talking to the government? Like, what, what do they care who the government is?" Like, if, if I was looking at an ant colony, I'm, I'm not gonna ask the ant colony, "Which one's the m- the elected official that's in charge of all the other ants?" You don't give a shit. You're just, like, trying to study the ants. And I felt like if something was coming here from another planet that was so sophisticated it could either travel from another dimension or travel from another galaxy, why would it care, like, who the president is or who the generals are?

    2. JV

      You know, not only that, but the witnesses don't talk to the government either. You know, by now the witnesses are tired of being ridiculed by scientists and, you know, by... And told that those things don't exist. So they don't, they don't talk. So they'll talk to, you know, uh, people like you, people like me, uh, because they trust, you know, they, they trust me. And in Silicon Valley, you know, you wouldn't believe the number of people who come to me, you know, including CEOs of companies that I've worked with, who tell me about sightings that people in their family have had or sightings they had, including, you know, sightings in Vietnam, for example, and so on, when they were in the military, that, uh, have never been reported. And, and the government isn't getting that.

  4. 7:41 – 9:06

    James Fox’s origin story: from Roswell skepticism to making UFO documentaries

    1. JR

      When you first started studying this, James, when you started studying this phenomenon, when you were- were thinking that you were gonna put together this, this movie, what... Uh, you've done other documentaries on UFOs. What, what got you into this?

    2. JF

      So I had a really good friend of mine who was a high school buddy, this guy Rene. We traveled around Europe together after we graduated from high school. And in our early 20s he told me about this UFO crash in Roswell, in New Mexico. And I literally thought at the time, "I'm gonna have to write this guy off. I've lost my best friend. He's lost his mind." And, uh, and that was that. And I sort of walked away thinking, "God, we've had such a great friendship. I'm so sorry this guy's gone." And I brought it up with a guy that I was mentoring, he was my mentor, uh, at a production faci- excuse me, production facility in California, this guy Richard. And he goes, "Oh yeah, Roswell? Yeah, that was an alien spaceship that crashed. I mean, the government admitted it. I mean, they, they put the story out themselves. Those guys were the, the only bomb unit in the world, the 509th, exclusively responsible for the deployment of atomic weapons. These guys would not mistake an everyday weather balloon for a flying saucer." He goes, "That actually happened." And I went, "Really?" So then I started looking into it, and before I knew it, uh, I started making a movie.

  5. 9:06 – 13:58

    Roswell details, competing narratives, and Vallée’s insistence on pattern over one ‘perfect’ case

    1. JR

      Wow. So, what, like, when you heard about Roswell, and you, you've investigated it now and you've gotten into it, what do you think that was?

    2. JF

      Well, I can only go by the people that were there. And, uh, Major Jesse Marcel was one of the first military officers on the scene. He's part of the 509th. And Major Marcel said the debris was strewn over an extremely large area, and it was material that was not of this earth. And he described the, the, the material was one chu- one chunk in particular was three to four feet long, three feet wide, light as a feather, you could barely feel it in your hands when you carried it. But they couldn't destroy it with a blowtorch, they couldn't destroy it with...

    3. JR

      This photo you're showing us right now, Jamie, is the debris that they threw on the floor that was clearly just aluminum foil and sticks and-

    4. JF

      That's the-

    5. JR

      ... stuff from a weather balloon.

    6. JF

      That's the fake debris.

    7. JR

      Yeah. Well, they, there's two stories, right? There was a story that came out the first day that said, "We've recovered a crashed UFO." And then there's a story that came out the second day, "Whoops, it was a weather balloon." And, uh, this was after they had taken the wreckage and they flew it to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. And it wasn't what you would do with wreckage from a weather balloon. What they'd done is they'd flown it in two separate jets, or, uh, planes, I don't know if there were even jets back then. Two separate planes to make sure that they had at least some of it. Like, if one of them crashed, they at least had some of this stuff. And to this day there's people that were there that swear that this was something that was from an alien world. And then you've got all the debunkers and all the other people that swear that it's nonsense and that people are just making things up. And they get a lot of attention from this. And so they're, you know, they've been telling these stories for decades and th- they might even believe it themselves but it's all bullshit.

    8. JV

      Well, m- my approach to that is, you know, no single case... And I think the, the scientists are not completely to blame there. No single case can, can prove either that we're being visited or even that there is a phenomenon here on Earth that we still need to be discovering. You, you need to... I've been trained to look for patterns. You know, my, my background is in artificial intelligence and computer science. And you look for patterns, whether it's in medicine, in business, you know, in, in, in other fields, in physics. And one case even as, as good as Roswell is, you know, that doesn't do it. So I've been looking for other cases that can reinforce a pattern and reveal, you know, what is, what is really behind it. Because the idea that it's just ET coming here, that doesn't really answer all the questions we have.

    9. JR

      Well, it seems like there's been so many reports over time and it's so difficult to find out who's telling the truth and who's not 'cause many of these are just anecdotal stories, they're just eyewitness accounts. And we know people are occasionally or quite often full of shit.

    10. JF

      Mm-hmm.

    11. JR

      So it's just-... that's just a part of people. They, they lie and they make things up.

    12. JF

      I wanted to put the cap on Roswell because what people don't realize is that they announced to the world that they recovered a flying saucer. There had been a whole massive wave in the '40s, late '40s.

    13. JR

      And this is following the detonation of the first atomic bombs.

    14. JF

      Atomic bomb.

    15. JR

      Yeah, the tests, y- you know, the, and then the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan.

    16. JF

      Yeah. So we had the d- uh, Trinity site in 1945 and then there were two bombs dropped. And that was from the Enola Gay, which was stationed at Roswell, New Mexico in, in '47 when this incident occurred. They announced and they told the truth to the world. That's a fact. They were flying the debris to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. There was no cover-up. It was all out in the open with a quick stop in Fort Worth. When they got to Fort Worth, they had the debris filled in their B-29 bomber. General Mar- uh, uh, Major Marcel gets off the airplane and General Roger Ramey s- there's a flurry of, of, uh, press activity and he says, "Keep your mouth shut and let me handle this." Grabs some debris from an everyday weather balloon, throws it on the floor. He says, "You keep your mouth shut." And they pose with Dubose, Colonel Dubose, and with Major General, uh, Major Rod- uh, uh, Marcel and General Ramey. Two out of the three people came clean on camera before they died and said that was a fake press conference, that was fake debris. What we recovered was the real- initial story that came out was true. It was not of this world.

    17. JR

      Now, what is the current understanding of what happened to that debris?

  6. 13:58 – 18:10

    Crash materials and isotope analysis: what would count as revolutionary evidence

    1. JV

      The, m- w- uh, you know, in, back in Silicon Valley we're sort of, uh, you know, there's a group of people who are getting really interested in this because we've got new technology to analyze materials. And we've got materials from a number of similar incidents. Um, again, what we're looking for... And it's, it's hard to do, okay? And it's only now that we've really got equipment, scientific equipment that can, can really look at this. The, the characteristics of, uh... I mean, materials are the same throughout the universe. I mean, iron from Mars is just like iron from, you know, from the Earth. The isotopes would be the same ones. The isotopes are the, you know, the, the, the components w- uh, that define the, the orbits of the, you know, of, of the atom and the, what goes into the nucleus of the atom. They would be the same ones in outer space when they are on the Earth, okay? Um, what could change would be if somebody was altering artificially the ratio of the isotopes within the elements. So it gets pretty complicated. Uh, we're doing... We're, we're doing a survey of all the samples that we have from a number of crashes like Roswell. Roswell was not unique. It was not unique in New Mexico and now we have, we have samples from Europe, we have samples from South America. Uh, there are a number of people who have started to look at that. There were publications by a professor from Stanford, Professor Sturac, 30 years ago about, um, material recovered from Brazil, uh, where, again, the, the isotopes were measured. I'm the guy who... Uh, he, um... The French volunteered to measure the isotope ratios and I carried that, you know, that precious little sample to, to Paris to get it to the people who were, were doing the experiments. Uh, the jury is still out. Um, obviously somebody could take, you know, common elements, refine the isotopes and put them back together. Um, the... Of course that was done for the atom bomb, you know? It were between different isotopes of uranium, you know, and you have to, um, uh, differentiate between, you know, which... W- what goes into really making the bomb. And now you can buy, for medicine for example, you can buy radioisotopes in small quantities, but they cost, you know, an enormous amount for a few grams. Uh, so if we find that some of those samples have been altered, that's a revolution because it means that there is somebody somewhere, either on Earth or off-planet who has the technology to do that for a particular purpose. If we find that, that's a revolution.

    2. JR

      But did they find that with Roswell? Was... Is there any record of what happened with the wreckage, what, what was studied, what they discovered?

    3. JV

      S- so, uh, uh, you have to go in two directions. First, you, you don't need something, you know, three feet by five feet to do that. You can do it on a few grams, okay? Uh, we've got instruments now, new instruments that, that, uh, w- were created by some of the people that I work with that can just do it at the biological level, you know, like almost the level of a, you know, a few, a few grams or a few milligrams. So, uh, w- we're in the process of doing that and in fact the, the book that I'm preparing is going to talk about that. Uh, the other thing is, you know, where would the, the big thing go? You know, we don't have the big thing.

    4. JR

      Yeah.

  7. 18:10 – 24:28

    Compartmentalized secret science, ‘reverse engineering’ problems, and where Roswell might have gone

    1. JV

      Um, well, you know, after a few years people talk and again, uh, both in Silicon Valley and other places, scientists need to talk to each other. And I've had...... discussions with people who handle that material. One of them I can tell you about was, uh, a, a very high level, um, engineering manager in a, a large company that has research labs in, in Silicon Valley. He was asked 30 years ago to look at some material and he described to me what that was. And actually he show- showed it to me. The... he said it was a matrix of orthosilicates, and he could not understand the deep structure. I mean, he could analyze it in his lab. Um, he was a man who developed the, uh, magnetic quoting for disks and tapes. So, I don't need to tell you how many billions of dollars of business those companies that he worked with, you know, uh, made based on his patents. So, he, he had a good lab and he, he was able to do the, the analysis. He could not understand the deep structure of that material. Now, the, the problem that the people who have those vehicles have is they will... because it's top secret, they have to compartmentalize everything. So, one company would get the material, another company might get some descriptions of maybe the beings. Another company might get some- something that looks like fiber optics or electronics. So, they wouldn't put... only a few people would be able to put all the information together. That's not a good way to do research. It's not a good way to, to do science. We've got to get that stuff to the scientific community and open it up.

    2. JR

      Well, this, this is, uh, what Bob Lazar had said about working at Area S-4. That that was the problem they were having. One group was working on propulsion, the other group was working on metallurgy. But this material that this gentleman had seen, where he couldn't identify the structure, what was that and where was it from?

    3. JV

      It was from a crash.

    4. JR

      From a crash? Where?

    5. JV

      He didn't tell me.

    6. JR

      He didn't tell you?

    7. JV

      No.

    8. JR

      But they had... and he had gotten it through what method?

    9. JV

      Uh, he had been asked on a secret project, to do the analysis.

    10. JR

      So, this had been something the government had brought to him?

    11. JV

      Because he was... he had a lab that was unique in the United States. And, you know, that was... he was the appropriate guy.

    12. JR

      Is it possible that this could have been some material that was created by a foreign government that has an extremely advanced understanding of these materials?

    13. JV

      If it had been, that material would have been used by now and we've never seen that material again.

    14. JR

      And what year was this when he did the study?

    15. JV

      Um, I don't know when he did the study. Uh, he's dead now, so he's not going to be-

    16. JR

      Right.

    17. JV

      ... you know, (laughs) uh, thrown in jail for.

    18. JR

      And because this is all top secret-

    19. JV

      This, you know... and... look, in, in Silicon Valley, people from different companies and so on get together and they, you know, they, they, they look at things together if they trust you. You know, because when... the, the, you, you need to get different minds on the same, on the same page.

    20. JR

      Right.

    21. JV

      And, you know. So, um, that conversation was over 20 years ago. I've never forgotten it. Uh, I had another conversation with a, a, a m- a military man who is, you know, retired now, who told me that he was brought in, um, to a large hangar where there were pieces of things that looked like a vehicle. And there was a wing that would have been, you know, the size of this table. And he could, he could lift it with one hand. It was, again, very light. You know, like what James was saying about Roswell. Extremely light material that was very, very strong. Well, still today we don't have anything like that. We've got fancy titanium things and so on, but he was... he knew what technology went into, you know, our advanced aircraft. He was with the Air Force and he couldn't believe that he could lift that, that entire metal, you know, surface with one hand.

    22. JR

      So, what is the current speculation on where the wreckage from Roswell went? Like, as far as people know, what people do talk. Like, it... clearly if there was some material that was recovered that was from an alien spacecraft, it must be somewhere.

    23. JV

      It would... well, typically, the, the, the way... you know, a secret project works, uh, if, if you look at other projects that we, we know now how they were handled, like the submarine, you know, the Russian submarine that was recovered, um... and, uh, it would go to different places because you, you'd send different parts to the best experts. Absolutely the best world experts in those... people you already have under contract. And y- you might not tell them, you know, where it comes from. You might tell them, "This is something, you know, one of our guys got this out of Czechoslovakia, you know, and we think it's Russian stuff from a MiG, you know."

    24. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    25. JV

      And, uh, "Why don't you analyze it?" They would, they wouldn't necessarily tell you that it comes from a UFO.

    26. JR

      Right.

    27. JV

      Whatever UFOs are.

    28. JF

      Ask Jacques where the bodies are.

    29. JR

      Okay, but hold on. This, this... does anybody... is anybody speculating as to where the material from Roswell is? Like, is there... is there legend? Is there...

  8. 24:28 – 31:00

    Corso, tech ‘spinoffs,’ and why transistors/fiber optics don’t prove alien back-engineering

    1. JV

      ... rumor, n- not something that would pass, y- you know, that the scientists would really, really look at. Um, you know, in, in the '40s, uh, there, there was, you know, there were people working on advanced materials for ultralight aircraft, for rockets. Um, you know, the, the transistor, people say, "Look at the transistor. We must have gotten this from the aliens." Well, the patent for the transistor is a German patent from 1934. You know, that the German scientist, uh, d- discovered the transistor effect-

    2. JV

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JV

      ... and he described it. And, but nobody, nobody had any need for that. I mean, there was no electronics in 1934.

    4. JV

      Yeah.

    5. JV

      So nobody really had any need for it. And then, the electronics was in glass tubes and so on and so f- So that, uh, that was rediscovered, you know, by, uh, at, at Bell Labs, by the people who patented the transistor in the US.

    6. JV

      Yeah, that was one of the big UFO conspiracy theories was that some of the technology that was recovered from Roswell was used and back engineered to create transistors. And they did this at Bell Labs. And there's a company called the American Computer Company that had a whole website dedicated to explaining where some of the technology that we c- we currently use came from. And they had the, they were all in on this conspiracy that it came from Roswell.

    7. JV

      I don't, I, I don't think you would find too many people in Silicon Valley who would believe that because they, you know, some of the people from Bell Labs, you know, uh, came west. And some of them are still alive and they will tell you how it happened. And if you, when you look at the old films, the old movies from Bell Labs, you know, you can, you can see what they were doing. And it's, it's, it's kind of laughable. I mean, it's, it's, you know, high school physics, you know, hooking up the thing with big wires and so on. I mean, this was not really advanced stuff. But they, they, uh, they understood the transistor effect which was known since the '30s.

    8. JV

      Yeah.

    9. JV

      It was not an, it was not new science. It was just something that had never, uh, been, uh, you know, required by industry-

    10. JV

      There was no application for it.

    11. JV

      ... to develop because they, you know, the ampli- im- amplifiers worked fine, you know?

    12. JV

      Mm-hmm.

    13. JV

      And there was no real need for it. When there was a need, then they started working on that. But-

    14. JV

      That's one of the big rumors though, right, is the transistor?

    15. JV

      Well, uh-

    16. JV

      That was one of the-

    17. JV

      ... fibers, um-

    18. JV

      Fibers.

    19. JV

      ... uh, you know, uh-

    20. JV

      Fiber optics.

    21. JV

      Colonel Corso, who was, is someone I, you know, respect and admire, uh, revealed that he was in charge for the army of getting, he got a lot of... I mean, somebody gave him a, you know, a cardboard box literally full of stuff that came from places like Roswell. And they were fibers. And when you put a light at one end, you know, the light would go to the end of the fiber and so on. Well, that effect has been known, you know, in physics for a long time. So again, that's not, that doesn't prove anything. I had that conversation with Corso. I spent two days with him thanks to Mr. Bigelow, you know? Uh, he, we brought him to Las Vegas to, you know, talk to the, the science board, uh, of, uh, of Bigelow Aerospace. And, and then I had some private conversations with him about some other things that were not in his book. But the fiber, you know, uh, I told him frankly, you know, fibers, glass fibers were known before World War II. Uh, people used them for, in, in, in lab work and so on. So that's not really new, uh, uh, really new.

    22. JV

      It's not really proof.

    23. JV

      And he said, "Look, I, you know, I'm not a scientist, you know? I, I'm a military guy. But I was asked by, uh, you know, the head of the lab to preserve this and to..." and what he did is to give it to different labs, you know? Give it to MIT, give it to, I don't know, uh, Battelle, uh, give it to a few others.

    24. JV

      And what happened when he did that?

    25. JV

      I don't know what happened.

    26. JV

      I interviewed Colonel Corso. Do you believe him?

    27. JV

      Yes.

    28. JV

      Okay. So I interviewed Colonel Corso on camera in 1997 in Roswell. It was right at the 50th anniversary of the Roswell event. There was a lot of hoopla around, around what had happened. And he told me on camera, A, that he saw these bodies that he assumed were childlike with these big heads and eyes-

    29. JV

      Yes.

    30. JV

      ... in a, in a warehouse somewhere. But he described the materials. What he said to me, and I'm not saying this is true or not true, but what he said to me was that they were shocked at the lack of provisions on the craft, that the bodies had no reproductive organs, uh, slits for mouths, no vocal cords. (laughs)

  9. 31:00 – 37:17

    Who is cleared to know? Presidential ‘need-to-know,’ secrecy tiers, and the new UAP openness

    1. JR

      And this is something Clinton looked into-

    2. JV

      Uh-

    3. JR

      ... when he was president, right?

    4. JV

      The president wouldn't necessarily be cleared.

    5. JR

      That's hilarious.

    6. JV

      To, I mean, to, number one, I, to, I, oh, I, obviously I don't know the facts, but-

    7. JR

      But you would think that if you get-

    8. JV

      ... any, any protects-

    9. JR

      ... to the top office of the United States that you would get access to that. But I guess because you're, it's transient, because they're in and out.

    10. JV

      Well, it, it's not a matter of curiosity. It's a matter of, um, need to know. And you also want to protect the president. And also, the president changes every four years.

    11. JR

      Yeah.

    12. JV

      And also, there are three different classes of, of, uh, secrets, you know. There is, there are secrets that are under the control of the president. Uh, there are secrets that are under the control of the State Department that have to do with foreign intelligence that don't go through the same channels, and then there are the atomic secrets. And yet, the clearances for, you know, o- over the years have occasionally been cleared. I was cleared for the Bass Project under, you know, under Mr. Rigolo- Mr. Bigelow. Um, the, uh, but the, the, the clearances for atomic secrets are the P clearances, the Q clearances, the R clearances. They are completely segregated from the kind of clearances that we had as part of the, the, the, the Bass Project or the AATIP Project. So those people would not have been cleared for some of the scientific information. And I think we're getting to the point, uh, where we need to, somebody needs to open up the doors and the windows and get the scientific community involved.

    13. JR

      Well, it does seem like there's more openness now from the Penthouse, right? There was the one person who, who worked at the, the Pentagon, uh, that was saying that there's, they've recovered crafts that are off-world vehicles not from this earth. Like, that was a, that was a direct quote. And then these photos that supposedly exist now from this new article that's out that are top secret, but people are trying to get these photographs released to the general public, that show this triangular UFO. This, but just these kind of statements and just the release of the Go Fast video and the other videos, uh, from the, um, the, uh, the gimbal video that, that show these vehicles that are being observed by these fighter jet pilots that are watching these things in real time going, "Holy shit, what is that?" And you get to hear their words. You get to see the video. You see the actual object jetting across the, the, you know, the surface of the, of the ocean. And they don't know what it is, and they're trying to figure it out while they're watching it. Um, that's never existed before. There's never been this much openness. So there's a, a new level of at least admitting that there's an issue, that there's a phenomenon that didn't exist before.

    14. JV

      You're talking about the US.

    15. JR

      Yes.

    16. JV

      In other countries, people have been a lot more open.

    17. JR

      Yeah.

    18. JV

      Including Russia, you know. I mean, and, and inc- certainly including France. I mean, there was one, one incident in 1978, um, a Mirage, you know, a guy flying a Mirage, uh, full colonel French Air Force. The Mirage doesn't have any weapons. It's just coming in to Dijon, you know, Dijon, where the mustard comes from, okay? Well, they happen to have, you know, a base, an atomic base there. And they are, you know, the mi- the Mirages are fighter bombers. They can take, they can take nuclear ammunition. Uh, he was unarmed. He's flying at, you know, late afternoon, early evening. Uh, no problem. Sees a light at his two o'clock position, bright light. Doesn't know what it is. Gets bigger. He thinks he sees a structure behind the light, but he was never really sure, you know. There seems to be an object there, solid object. But the, the, the, the light goes around him and stops up on his tail, which is a kill position, you know, in, f- for a fighter, for a fighter jet. He doesn't like that. Um, he takes evasive action, which he wasn't prepared to do. I mean, he didn't have, you know, special suits or anything. He dives. Uh, the object starts moving again, goes around him, makes a 360-degree circle at high speed. At, and he can't believe it. I mean, there, number one, there couldn't be a pilot, because the pilot would be crushed. But there is nothing that can move that fast, and the thing is back on its tail. He has to dive a second time, okay? He lands in Dijon, writes a report. The report would probably not have come out except that there was a, there were a number of people on the ground who saw this happen, saw the whole thing. And there was a gendarme, you know, who was, uh, French police, uh, it's uh, a branch of, you know, parallel to the French police, who wrote a report, and that report was public. So they-... interviewed. They found the pilot, they interviewed him. I mean, there is no question that happened. And this was 1978. So, I mean, what else is new, okay, that we've got those things? Well, what's new is we have footage, you know.

    19. JF

      Mm-hmm.

    20. JV

      And some of the footage that James had in his, you know, in his movie, um, that actually proves it. But actually, you know, footage doesn't prove anything, because you can fake the camera. But when, when you have pe- the, the pilots themselves and the footage and the instrumentation and the radar ... I mean, that thing was tracked on radar that saw the whole thing, you know. Uh, you don't, you don't really do that to a nuclear bomber.

    21. JF

      Hmm.

    22. JR

      What ... You have something on this?

  10. 37:17 – 42:18

    Breaking update: Mellon’s message and the push to release new Navy photos (triangle and cube-in-sphere)

    1. JF

      Yeah. So this is a breaking story. And, uh, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Christopher Mellon, uh, literally sent this to me about 15 minutes ago, and he wanted me to read it, uh, verbatim. So I was gonna read it. This is pretty startling stuff.

    2. JV

      Yeah, go ahead.

    3. JF

      So, I'll read it. "In the last, uh, 48 hours, the public has learned of two stunning incidents captured on film by US Navy carrier pilots earlier this year. One of the cases features a photo of a bizarre flying sphere and a black cube inside that is identical to dozens of other reports, uh, by Navy pilots. Uh, these strange objects have been shadowing East Coast naval ops since 2015. They sometimes maneuver in formation and have occasionally been reported achieving supersonic speeds. The other incident produced a stunning detailed photograph of a massive triangular-shaped vehicle that emerged from the ocean and flew vertically straight up and out of sight, just past a Navy F-18 operating off the US, uh, aircraft carrier. These iPhone photos taken by the pilots should be released to the public, as there are no sources and methods to protect, and the national security benefits of raising awareness regarding this issue vastly outweigh any conceivable benefit from concealing the information. It is hard to believe that in the face of such radical and incredible technology within our vast Defense Department, the only ... we only have a so-called taskforce consisting of two individuals with no budget, who are still being off- or stiff-armed for access to relevant and timely information by the Air Force and other security organizations. By comparison, 60 years ago, in response to Sputnik, America entered the space race which led to landing on the moon. Our government needs to wake up and address the far greater technology gap that these and many other incidents are revealing. There is obviously a glaring strategic mismatch between the current taskforce and the technology that has been identified."

    4. JR

      Why did he send you this?

    5. JF

      Because he feels it's a developing story and he wants people to be aware that there's r- really compelling evidence right now, photographically, that needs to be released.

    6. JR

      And so you told him you were coming on here, and that's when he sent it to you?

    7. JF

      Yes, and he said that, that these people need to feel some pressure, um, they need to th- They need to know that we are requesting, not demanding, but requesting further government transparency on this issue. And he's very passionate about it. He knows of these photographs. The government's ... We r- we got the story, I think it was yesterday. And the government is refusing to release these photographs. The pilots want these photographs released. The people that were involved with the incident want the photographs released. And so we ... He wants the public to know that these photographs exist and that they should be released.

    8. JR

      And they're currently in the possession of ...

    9. JF

      Uh, he wouldn't reveal that. He knows the person, but, uh, but he said that the government is not wanting them released, and he feels that they ... that we have a right to these photographs.

    10. JR

      And there's video that came with this story as well.

    11. JF

      Well, remember, this comes from the very guy who, uh, was strategic, Christopher Mellon, in getting those videotaped evidence from the cockpits of those F-18 fighter jets-

    12. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    13. JF

      ... off the East Coast as well as off the West Coast in 2004, 2015, and ended up with that big story on the front page of the New York Times in 2017.

    14. JR

      Yeah. See, that, that's a new thing, because if you went to, like, '24 or 2004 when this all happened, uh, no one was really talking about UFOs in a serious manner. Like, it was still something that would be mocked and ridiculed. But to have it on the front page of the New York Times and to have this spokesperson for the Pentagon say that they've recovered off-world vehicles, not from this Earth, not made on this Earth, like, this is a, this is a change, right, a, uh, really ... I mean, even though it doesn't receive that much public attention, 'cause it's all happening during a pandemic-

    15. JF

      Mm-hmm.

    16. JR

      ... and everyone's just, f- And also, the news cycle today is so bizarre. Something gets into the news cycle, and then it's gone tomorrow because of new scandal or people find out Ellen's mean, or what- whatever it is. There's always something new that's coming out. And these, these things, though, th- they seem to ... It seems to be there's more of them and more of them coming out. And with each new story that comes out, people feel more emboldened to tell their story.

    17. JF

      You know, uh, I think, personally, everything changed in December of twenty- 2017 when that page, uh, uh, front page of the New York Times revealed that secret AATIP program. And, um, I know personally, c- because I've gotten ridiculed for decades (laughs) for the work I do, a lot less so recently, um, people are suddenly raising an eyebrow going, "Wow, there's clearly something more to this than just, you know, radar, uh, weather balloons and, and misidentified aircraft."

  11. 42:18 – 45:43

    Evaluating videos and defining ‘real UAP performance’: no wings, extreme acceleration, right-angle turns

    1. JR

      Jamie, pull up the video of ... that's in that article. There's a, there's an actual YouTube video. There's two, one's from '94, one's from 2013. Let's go with the 2013 one.

    2. JF

      Okay. 2000 and something Puerto Rico.

    3. JR

      Um, but these, uh, videos are very strange. You, you see these, this object ... What's interesting, too, is that ... Okay, this is the one that I didn't see, but that this thing, the way it moves and behav- ... The one that's from ... I guess it was from the '94 one. This is the 2013 one. This is the one from Puerto Rico?

    4. JF

      Mm-hmm.

    5. JR

      So it's just kind of cruising across the sky.It's hard to track here in this black and white. There it is. Did it- does it estimate how fast this thing's supposedly going?

    6. NA

      It looked like they were near, uh, some sort of, like, military base or something.

    7. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    8. NA

      And on Agua Dia, which is like the west coast. Of San Juan.

    9. JF

      When-

    10. JR

      What ... So weird to see. Like, it's not clear what this thing is.

    11. NA

      How about the other video?

    12. JF

      So, one of the things that I think it's really good to establish-

    13. JR

      Go- go- I'm sorry, but go-

    14. JF

      No, no.

    15. JR

      ... further ahead in this video to see if maybe there's a better version of it, or a better-

    16. NA

      I sorta checked. The other one has a little clearer v- video. You can sorta see something.

    17. JR

      Yeah, there you go. That's much clearer. Like, what is that?

    18. JF

      Well if it's-

    19. JR

      Like that's not a bird, like ...

    20. JF

      Yes.

    21. JR

      ... you know, it's moving through the clouds.

    22. JF

      One of the things I wanted to make a distinction of is the technology, the observed technology that these guys are talking about. So you've got objects with no wings, no visible means of propulsion, the ability to hover, accelerate from a standstill to out of sight in the blink of an eye, right angle turns at high speed-

    23. JR

      It-

    24. JF

      ... and fly rings around our fastest jets. That is the technology that cannot be confused ex- or explained away as something conventional. So any time you see an object like we're looking at here, if it performs or exhibits a- a- that technology, maybe it shoots off at a high rate of speed, does a right angle turn at high speeds, um, no wings, no tail, no propulsion, no sonic boom, almost no sound, that's-

    25. JR

      And they're trying to get a close up on this thing to see, get a better idea of what the shape is. It's very hard to tell. But the- these objects, also one of the weird things is, it moves around the same way Commander Fravor described that thing moving around that was hovering over the ocean, that it kinda darts around left and right, right and left, almost like it's just not connected to wha- whatever our atmosphere is. It's like it's moving in, uh, this weird zigzag sort of a way.

    26. JF

      This is an infrared image, right? It's not, uh, visible. It's not a normal camera.

    27. JR

      I don't know. I don't know what it is. Is that what it looks like to you?

    28. JF

      I think it's the same type of camera that, uh, for- as the one from the Nimitz. So you're- you're looking at the heat signature. Uh, you're not really looking at a visual picture.

    29. JR

      Right.

    30. JF

      So that's- that's why it's not- not- you cannot get a clear definition of it.

  12. 45:43 – 51:14

    Hidden evidence, Harry Reid’s ‘most evidence hasn’t seen daylight,’ and the problem of authority

    1. JF

      You know, that was one of the, uh, more startling, uh, moments of producing the film, The Phenomenon, for me, was when I met with Senator Harry Reid, who spearheaded the AATIP program, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, that wound up on the front page of The New York Times. Um, I wasn't quite sure when I met with him how, where his comfort zone was. And so I was really kinda cautious for the first half an hour of the interview. But then I started, we started to relax and- and get more comfortable with each other, and I decided to kind of push it a little bit and I said, "Hey, uh, Senator, I, uh, met with Gordon Cooper," who later became Mercury astronaut, "who told me on camera that there was a landing incident that took place at Edwards Air Force Base circa 1957, where they happened to have a camera crew out, uh, near the dry lake bed capturing the installation of a new landing facility for F-86 fighter jets. And it was broad daylight, and all of a sudden this disc appears out of nowhere, and the camera crew turned their cameras on it and they filmed the landing of this flying saucer on the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base." And I'm telling this story to Senator Reid thinking, you know, I don't know how he's gonna (laughs) react when I ... but this is what I w- I have him on camera. And, uh, and I said that he has the film footage developed, it was good footage, he held it up, he looked at it, it was a disc, you know, blah, blah, blah. And, uh, eventually he gets a courier jet from Washington DC that flies in, pick up the footage. Senator Reid goes, "And it was never seen or heard from again?" And I said, "Yeah, exactly." And I said, "Did you guys uncover stuff like that?" He goes, "Oh, yeah. It's all there. It's- we- we- we have it. It's all there." And then he goes to change the topic and talk about something else and I said, "Well, hold on, Senator. Uh, are you saying that there's evidence that hasn't seen the light of day?" And he looked at me and he kinda pauses and he picks up his water bottle and he drinks a sip of water and that- that- that moment seemed like an hour, but it was probably just a second or two.

    2. JR

      (laughs)

    3. JF

      And he puts his water bottle down and he says, "I'm saying that most of the evidence hasn't seen the light of day." So that- that for me was such a powerful moment because I'm going, "Look at who this is coming from." This is the former head of, you know, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid saying that the vast majority of evidence hasn't seen the light of day. And if the President of the United States can't get access to it, as I found out when I interviewed all the people around President, uh, Clinton, uh, who can? Who has the authority to have this stuff released? And that's something that I would love to know and I've been trying to find out.

    4. JR

      So someone does.

    5. JF

      Yeah.

    6. JR

      Someone in some position of government or some intelligence agency, someone in the Pentagon, someone or some group at the highest level of clearance has accessed this information and knows about it.

    7. JF

      Absolutely. Hey, Senator Reid said they uncovered all this stuff well during the program and he said the level of resistance that he got from the intelligence agencies was insane. Like I mean they did not want this project going forward at the Pentagon. But they pushed and they pushed and they pushed and they got it through. It started in 2007, it went all the way up until it ended up on the front page of The New York Times in 2017. And of course now we know there was another project, but Jacque do you know who has the authority to release this stuff to the general public?

    8. JV

      No, no. Eh, not, not in, in this particular case. If-

    9. JR

      Where are the bodies from Roswell?

    10. JV

      I don't know. I mean, they... You, you know, all you have are rumors, you know. Uh, Walter Reed Hospital, in the basement, you know. Uh, I can't get to the basement of Walter Reed Hospital.

    11. JR

      Have you ever talked to anybody that's reputable? Anybody that you believe-

    12. JV

      Yes.

    13. JR

      ... that seems to know?

    14. JV

      Yes. Well, they are-

    15. JR

      Yeah?

    16. JV

      You know, they are physicians in the, uh, you know, who, with clearances, who have tried to, to get that information. And to my knowledge, of course, I don't, they don't need to tell me everything, but, um, if there was... You know, if, if there is material evidence, like the, the kind of thing I've got, okay, that witnesses have given to me and all, that I went, went out and dug it up, okay? So I know where it comes from. Okay. But if we found that it was really very strange, even beyond our ability to manipulate the isotopes, that still doesn't prove that there isn't somebody who is smarter than we are, somewhere on Earth, making that stuff. Okay. So I still couldn't stand, you know, at the Academy of Sciences and say, "Look, this, this proves it." But if we have bodies, I, I would think that if, if that they have a different structure from any organism that we know, you know, from biology on Earth. I mean, uh, th- ... I would have to think that would be a revolution.

    17. JR

      The strange thing-

    18. JV

      Instantly, I mean.

    19. JR

      Yes, instantly.

    20. JV

      People would be confronted with it.

    21. JR

      The strange thing is that the iconic image of an alien seems consistent. That's one of the weird things is that there's different versions of aliens that people claim to see. But the iconic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, large head, large eyes-

    22. JV

      Yes.

    23. JR

      ... very thin body with no musculature, no genitals, that all seems to be very consistent.

    24. JV

      Correct.

  13. 51:14 – 58:37

    School landings and consistent witnesses: Zimbabwe 1994, Australia 1966, and why schools recur

    1. JF

      Yeah, like the African landing case in-

    2. JR

      Yes.

    3. JF

      ... Ruamzimbabwe in 1994.

    4. JR

      That is a crazy part of your documentary 'cause you see these children that are going to school in Africa. This thing lands, and then they draw pictures of it, the children are all consistent. And then 20 years later, they all meet and talk about it again. And now, when people lie, a lot of times when people lie when they're making up a crazy story, like being abducted by a UFO, they wanna be special. They wanna be different. Like, "I was the one they chose." There's none of that from these kids. They all have the same story. They all have the same... You know, they, they didn't have the best drawing skills, but they all drew something that's incredibly similar. It was all a classic-looking UFO flying saucer type vehicle and a classic-looking iconic creature that is just like the Close Encounters of the Third Kind. They all described something that looked like it was wearing a black wetsuit. They all described something that had large eyes and a large head for its body.

    5. JF

      I was doing my first documentary back in 1997, when I was just naive enough to think I can get an interview with Steven Spielberg. We had a mutual friend involved, uh, this woman Janet. And, uh, she gets back to me, and she's like, "Yeah, so uh, Spielberg's definitely not gonna meet with you, but he knows you're working on this UFO documentary. He thinks you should look into this landing case that happened in Africa at the school." And I said to myself at the time, and remind, you know, remind you guys that I was making a film on UFOs, and I dismissed it so quickly because I thought, "There's no way that a mass landing, with the sheer volume of eyewitness testimony, at a school, in broad daylight, could happen and the whole world not know about it." So I just walked away from that story for about 10 years. 10 years later, I'm doing an event at the National Press Club with, with Leslie Keane, who, uh, was, um, part of the article in New York Times that came out in 2017. And she introduced me to this guy, uh, Randall Nickerson. And she's like, "Oh, he's working on this landing case in Africa." Long story short, uh, he's working on a film, uh, now, I think it's coming out next year, specifically on just that case. Uh, Dan Faras producing it. And he said, um, "I'm working on the case and, and if you wanna do something with me on it, a, a small piece, I could." So I got back into it. I licensed some of the footage that Dr. John Mack, the Harvard psychiatrist that came and interviewed the schoolchildren on camera within a week of it happening. He unfortunately looked the wrong way in London and got run down by a car and died. So I contacted the institute with the help of Randall Nickerson. I licensed the archival footage. We tracked down the witnesses today. We flew them in from all different corners of the world, brought them together. A lot of them were standing right next to each other. These, they came face-to-face, and one of the things I realized was that there were roughly 100 kids in the playground, broad daylight, Ariel School, Ruamzimbabwe, 1994. And they got within arms r- arms, some of them within arm's length of these beings. And brought these witnesses together for the first time in 20 years, and a lot of them hadn't even told their, their, you know, significant others, just because they said they were tired of having to defend this. And I myself didn't believe it when I first heard about it back in 1997. And that segment of the film is the most, in my opinion, is the most powerful segment because-

    6. JR

      It's very compelling.

    7. JF

      ... you've got all these children saying what they saw on camera after it happened, and then you see them 20 years later. And then we go to Africa and we meet with the headmistress, or she was a teacher at the time. We meet with other witnesses, we go to the landing site, we talk to people at the school. That case is absolutely... And it was witnessed by lots of other people in and around the area for several days before it chose a school to land. Steven-

    8. JR

      It's, it's so compelling because the children are all clearly... They're not actors. So as they're adults later, they're all talking about this moment, and it's like they had a religious experience together.

    9. JF

      Yeah.

    10. JR

      ... like, they're all sharing it and talking about it. And you could tell, it's like, it's a deeply moving experience. If, if they were actors, they wouldn't have been able to do such a good job because to, to convey the reality of that moment to them, to, to, to, to be able to have this interpretation of this event where they're all consistent in the story and they're all clearly still shook by this moment, it's really interesting. Because if, if you had that scene in a movie, it would take like, a really good actor to pull it off and they'd probably need multiple takes, they'd probably wanna get the best one. But those kids, the way they were talking about it and the way they were drawing it, you're like, "Wow, it really does seem like something happened to them."

    11. JF

      I, I know how credible that, the testimony of the children is because (laughs) I, I ... My partner, Rebecca, she's never had much of an interest in, in what I do, making documentaries on, on UFOs. I do other things as well. But when I was reviewing in the studio, uh, the archival interview of the children, she just dropped off a cup of coffee and she stopped and went, "Oh my God, those children are not lying. This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen." 'Cause look, I ask your audience to ... Don't take it from me, just suspend judgment for a moment and imagine, hypothetically, if a UFO or several UFOs landed at a school in broad daylight in rural Zimbabwe, Africa and interacted telepathically with nearly 100 schoolchildren. Not all of them had telepathic, but had seen the incident. How significant of a story would you give that? Well, not only that, they had the same message. Yes. Yes.

    12. JR

      But the telepathic message was that technology is a real problem-

    13. JF

      Yes.

    14. JR

      ... and there's things that people are doing with technology that are gonna ruin the Earth.

    15. JF

      Yes.

    16. JR

      And they were trying to relay this to children, which is very strange.

    17. JF

      Yes. Yes.

    18. JR

      You know? I mean, maybe they just thought they were adults 'cause they were the same size as the aliens. I mean, do you think they knew that they were children? Do you think they understood that it was a school? I mean, this is all speculation, right?

    19. JF

      Yeah. But I ... No, I definitely had to ask myself ... Look, during the production of the film, Paula Harris actually turned me on to another landing case that happened in Australia in 1966 at a school, and this time there were roughly 300 witnesses that saw a disc land, uh, right outside of a playground in, in Australia. And we went to Australia and investigated that case, went to the landing site, talked to eyewitness testimony, people that jumped the fence at the school playground and ran over to where this thing landed, and then we even interviewed a guy who snapped a photograph of a disc, a Polaroid, back in 1966, two days prior to the incident. So, it's very, uh, probably that we have a photo- we have photographic evidence, we have, uh, eyewitness testimony, and for the first time, we've got testimony from a science teacher. So, why do these things (laughs) land at schools? It seems like, and I'm just totally speculating here, but it seems like if, if I were gonna do that, it seems like a pretty benign environment. We've had testimony from military guys that we take a fairly hostile position towards, uh, things that penetrate sensitive military installations. And, um, you know, so maybe, I'm just saying maybe, maybe they-

    20. JR

      It's safe.

    21. JF

      Yeah, maybe it's safe.

    22. JR

      Maybe it's safe from-

  14. 58:37 – 1:25:43

    Threat framing vs. broader phenomenon: rare harm cases, Brazil ‘beams,’ and the interdimensional hypothesis

    1. JV

      Yeah, but we have to stop reacting to, uh, you know, intrusions by UFOs as a threat. I mean, that's the whole thing behind this new task force. And as much as I respect, you know, the task force, uh, my colleagues and I want to cooperate with them to the extent that we can bring information or resources to, to what they do, but there is more. This is not, should not be looked at specifically as a threat. I mean, with, with the phenomena that we observe, I mean, if they wanted to blow up those F-18s, they could do it. Okay? The ... Obviously, that's, that's not what it's all about. And this idea of just labeling it all as a, as a threat because it's unknown, that's, that's a wrong idea. 90% of the information comes from the public, comes from children, comes ... And very, very little of it is made up. You know, in France, I mean, the, the data with, we get, you know, with, at the French Space Agency comes through channels where if people reported something that's found to be untrue, they're going to be called by the police. And, and, you know, they may, they may have some penalties associated with that.

    2. JR

      Now, you said that they can blow them up, but there's never been any evidence of a UFO attacking anything, right? Like, the thing that-

    3. JV

      Tha- there has been.

    4. JR

      Really?

    5. JV

      Yes.

    6. JR

      What, what does-

    7. JV

      There have been people killed, f- apparently for no reason.

    8. JF

      Very rare, though.

    9. JR

      Where, where was this?

    10. JV

      Ten, twelve cases. There are, you know, I've spent ... I went to Brazil four times and I got to know Brazil and the data there pretty well. And I spoke to people in the Armed Forces, people in the president, you know, air force, and the police. Uh, there have been a number of, of cases where people died and, uh, uh, where witnesses died. And also cases where witnesses were chased through the jungle by objects with beams. And I was really interested in those beams because those beams were extensible. Well, it's, it's hard to make an extensible ... If you turn on a light or a laser, you know, it's going to keep going. It doesn't go-

    11. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    12. JV

      ... 10 feet and just stopping mid-air. Those beams stop, which means it's not just light, it's something else. And also, they, uh, they will pin you to, you know, a hammock, for example. Some of the people who are asleep in a hammock, they wake up and they see this light, and the light comes down and pins them.... to, to the bed or to the hammock. Um, and it, uh, I've, I've published pictures of injuries that people sustained as a result of those beams. So, you know, this is at least a demonstration of, you know, of the power that, uh, number one, we don't quite understand the technology, and number two, we don't understand why that is.

    13. JR

      And you're of the opinion that these things might not be from another planet. That they could be, they're interdimensional.

    14. JV

      So, yes. I'm amazed that, you know, I mean, in the '50s and '60s, uh, there was all that science fiction about, you know, aliens from other planets and so on, all those, all these movies. So that was... okay, and frankly, when I started looking at the statistics, trying to make sense, trying to build those databases, do AI on top of it, I was looking for, you know, ET, extraterrestrials. Now, we've got so much more data that contradicts that. Things coming through the wall of a bedroom, okay? As a, as a light, and the light turns into something else, and it has information in it, or it has, or it turns into something physical. You know, this is not, this is way off. I mean, these are not just vehicles that come from somewhere else. So-

    15. JR

      So it could be-

    16. JV

      ... there, so there are a number of contradictions in there.

    17. JR

      It could be there's a number of different non-related phenomena.

    18. JV

      Well, you know, to, to some extent, I mean, we keep saying that the scientists are skeptical and so on, but if you look at physics today, I mean, people will tell you there's probably more than, there must be more than four dimensions, you know, of space-time. Uh, there must be to explain, you know, uh, atomic phenomena, to explain quantum mechanics, to explain all those things. They, there, there could very well be. There are theories that are published in physics journals about multiple universes, about universes interpenetrating each other, maybe, uh, channels between those universes. There could be, you know, there could be another universe with a room like this five minutes ahead of us. Uh, we would never see them, we would never detect them. There could be another Earth five minutes ahead of us in another universe. And, um, we, physics today authorizes us to think about those things. Now, they, they think about those things not because of UFOs. They, they consider it because it makes sense in the theories they have to build to explain what they see in the lab, okay? In the, in the, uh, particle labs, in the accelerators, in detecting all these, uh, all these other layers of, of, of matter, of nature. But it, it, it implies that this isn't just, you know, not only the other planet, but this isn't the only universe.

    19. JF

      I was gonna say, Jacques, one of the assets that Jacques brought to this film, The Phenomenon, um, and he became involved through Lee Spiegel. And you could, you know, talk in a minute about your reluctance to get involved. But initially, Jacques was like, "Okay, well, I'll participate just this one little section." And eventually, I lured Jacques out to the studio, and we were editing the film at the end of this dirt road, uh, in a very remote area. We had a place that had no running water-

    20. JV

      (laughs)

    21. JF

      ... no internet, no toilet. (laughs) It's a long story, I was gonna get a, a better space, but I just couldn't find one, and we just got so much work done in this space that I decided to just edit the whole movie here. But-

    22. JV

      It was a little cabin in, in the woods on the, on the California coast. It was gorgeous, full of flowers and so on, but no facilities.

    23. JF

      None. Yeah.

    24. JV

      Just electricity some of the time.

    25. JF

      Yeah.

    26. JV

      And there were times when you-

    27. JF

      Yeah.

    28. JV

      ... uh, there wasn't even electricity. So-

    29. JF

      Oh, yeah. And Jacques would say, "Okay, I'm coming out for the weekend." He would do these marathon edits with us. And he'd say, "I got my face paint, I got my compass." (laughs)

    30. JV

      (laughs) "I'm coming out."

Episode duration: 3:11:19

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