[THEME MUSIC]
>>GEORGE NOORY: Welcome
to "Beyond Belief."
I'm George Noory.
On this program,
we seek the truth.
That's what we're looking for.
We want answers to questions
about all kinds of things,
including UFOs,
unidentified flying objects.
What are they?
Where do they come from?
Our special guest on "Beyond
Belief" is Nick Pope.
Nick used to work for
the Ministry of Defense
in Great Britain.
He had the ability to
actually look at UFO files.
Nick, welcome to
"Beyond Belief."
>>NICK POPE: Thank you, George.
It's great to be on the show.
>>NOORY: When you were
looking at these files
when you were at the Ministry
of Defense, what did you see?
I mean, my gosh, was
it a huge folder?
What were they?
>>POPE: Oh, lots of folders.
I mean literally
thousands of them.
The British government
is in the process
of declassifying and releasing
some of this material.
And it's quite funny,
because for years, they
said, oh, this subject is
of very little interest.
And it turns out that
so far, over 60,000
documents have been released.
So I think that gives you
a sense of the scale of it.
And this goes back decades.
>>NOORY: Now when you
were looking at them,
you weren't like
Edward Snowden, right?
You had the capability
of peeking at them,
doing whatever
you did with them?
>>POPE: Well, I was,
of course, an employee
of the British government,
the Ministry of Defense.
So I was working on
this quite legitimately.
This was my job, my
day-to-day business.
I investigated the newly
reported cases as they came in.
But I was able to access
the entire back archive
of these files.
So as long as I
didn't inadvertently
make anything public,
that was fine.
I had access all area
pass, so to speak.
>>NOORY: Or make copies
for yourself, maybe?
>>POPE: No.
Sadly not, though
it was very tempting
given some of the material.
But, of course, now with the
British government themselves
declassifying and releasing some
of this material, most of it
maybe, it's like a blast from
the past for me seeing some
of the case files that I
worked on, seeing documents
that I wrote, which
I thought would never
see the light of day.
>>NOORY: Give me your
overview on just what
you think this entire field is.
Based on the files, based
on where you are today.
>>POPE: Big question.
I think that it is 99%
noise, but 1% signal.
I think as to what that 1% is.
I'm not one of these people
who sits here and says,
I've got an ultimate answer
to the entire mystery.
The odd thing perhaps--
>>NOORY: But this is a mystery.
>>POPE: It is a genuine mystery.
It's not all aircraft lights,
weather balloons, hoaxes.
There is something going on.
There is a phenomenon.
Could it be extraterrestrial?
Absolutely.
Could it be something else?
Who knows?
I'm one of these people who I'm
not afraid to say I don't know.
And that's the irony.
People say, but you're in
government, you should know.
Well, actually, government is--
certainly the
British government,
sure which is really of course
the only one I can talk about
with any inside authority--
the British government
is actually as mystified about
some of this as anyone else.
>>NOORY: Well, we're getting
these declassified files now,
as you said, and
Paul Hellyer, who
was the former Canadian
Defense Minister,
talks about unidentified
flying objects.
You, talking about
the British files,
talk about unidentified
flying objects.
Here at home, in
the United States,
we're trying to get
disclosure as well.
And people are frustrated,
Nick, because we haven't been
able to pierce that shell yet.
We haven't been able to get
government to come out freely
and say this is
what is going on.
We know about this.
Here are the files.
They're not doing that.
Be that as it may, Hillary
Clinton, of course,
during the presidential
campaign people
thought that if she
had gotten elected,
we would have had disclosure.
There was an initiative called
the Clinton-Podesta Disclosure
Initiative.
You were part of that.
You looked into that.
What did you find?
>>POPE: Well I met John
Podesta in June of 2011.
Podesta, of course, had
been President Obama's Chief
of Staff.
He chaired the transition team.
And he was running
Hillary Clinton's
presidential campaign.
Now, I met him at a private
briefing in Washington DC.
And I gave him an overview of
the British government's UFO
project.
And one thing that he was
particularly interested in
was the way in which we,
in the Ministry of Defense,
had rebranded the phenomenon.
We had dropped the phrase UFO.
And we had replaced it with UAP,
unidentified aerial phenomena.
Now the reason we
did that was that we
felt there was too much--
I call it pop culture baggage--
associated with the term.
>>NOORY: Ah, from UFOs.
>>POPE: Absolutely.
So now, Podesta was
extremely interested in this.
And clearly, though I lost sight
of you know exactly how this
played out, I didn't take
part in subsequent meetings,
but I was very interested to
see that when Hillary Clinton
started talking about this--
which was quite extraordinary
in and of itself, of course--
in the presidential campaign,
she used the same phrase.
And I thought, hey, I did that.
>>NOORY: You got
that in to it now.
>>POPE: And she--
I think it was the "Jimmy Kimmel
Show," a couple of others,
but she actually stopped the
interviewer and said, you know,
there's a new term for this.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- There's a new name.
It's unexplained
aerial phenomenon.
- Unexplained aerial
phenomenon, really?
- Yep, UAP.
That's the latest nomenclature.
- I like the old one.
I like UFO, I don't know why.
[END PLAYBACK]
>>POPE: And as I
say, that's what
I had briefed to
Podesta as being the way
to get this subject viewed in a
more serious, less nuanced way.
>>NOORY: People
were disappointed
that in the debates between
Hillary Clinton and Donald
Trump the issue of these
UFOs or UAPs did not come up.
And they really
wanted the candidates
to be asked those questions.
That was disappointing.
>>POPE: It was.
And it was also
quite surprising.
Hillary Clinton had
talked about this a lot.
And I was surprised.
I thought it was not a
particularly smart move,
because I thought to a whole
bunch of people out there
this might be quite attractive.
Oh, yes, I'm going to
open the UFO files.
I'm going to look into Area 51.
If there's something out there,
I'm going to disclose it.
But to a whole other
group of the population,
I felt this ran the risk of
portraying her as a crazy.
And people would
say, hey, look I'm
interested in the jobs
situation, the economy,
attacks.
>>NOORY: --the economy,
and wars, all this stuff.
>>POPE: All that.
I'm not interested
in little green men.
And I actually thought that
Donald Trump might raise it
unilaterally even if a question
didn't come from the moderator,
he might try and
portray Hillary Clinton
as some kind of nut job
for talking about this.
Now in the end, yes, it was
surprising and disappointing
that it didn't come up.
There was a lot of lobbying.
And people said lobby
all the moderators.
Tell them what
questions you want.
And it was a huge viral campaign
to get this question asked,
but it never came up.
>>NOORY: It never happened.
Now that Donald Trump
is the President,
will we get disclosure
in your opinion?
>>POPE: Well, I think--
I hear people say all the
time, oh, this president
is going to be the
disclosure president,
that president's going to
be the disclosure president.
>>NOORY: And we haven't
had that happen.
>>POPE: Absolutely not.
No.
Since the disclosure movement
really first started--
and I guess you could debate
about how far that goes back--
but we've cycled through
a number of presidents,
and each time certain
people associated with this
say this is the one
and it never happens.
I think hopefully as an
impartial observer on this,
that if ever that
was a president
likely to let the cat out of the
bag, Donald Trump is the one.
I mean he has the advantage of
not being a career politician,
not being hooked
into the system.
And I could just imagine that
if somebody briefs him and says,
Mr. President, here's
the file on the aliens.
He would just come out--
>>NOORY: He'll go public.
He'll tweet it.
>>POPE: He'll tweet it.
He'll tweet it.
Or he'll be at one
of his rallies.
>>NOORY: Aliens exist.
>>POPE: Yeah.
He'll be at one of his rallies.
And when he needs to pull
out some big point to maybe--
if he's dealing
with some scandal,
as inevitably presidents do--
to be able to pull
this out of the bag
and say, by the way, aliens.
I mean that's just massive.
So if ever there was a
president that might do it,
this is the one.
>>NOORY: But will they know?
Will these presidents know?
I mean we assume John F. Kennedy
knew about extraterrestrials.
We think Lyndon Johnson
might have been told.
What about Richard Nixon?
We think he might
have been told.
Reagan, I'm not sure.
Carter wanted answers.
I'm not sure they told him.
I'm not sure they
told Bill Clinton.
I'm not sure they
told the two Bushes.
So what about the
possibilities that they just
won't tell Donald
Trump what's going on?
>>POPE: Well, there are
certainly, of course,
tensions ready between the
intelligence community and--
>>NOORY: This President.
>>POPE: President Trump.
Yeah.
So, it is quite
possible that they
would take a unilateral
decision not to brief him.
However, I have to say that
in one sense I disagree.
And I know you can
list presidents
that you think new and
then some that didn't know.
My own take is that if the US
government at official level
is privy to this--
and let's not forget the
possibility that this has all
been taken outside of government
and put in the private sector
to make--
>>NOORY: Possible.
>>POPE: Well, makes
congressional oversight
more difficult. Takes it
outside the scope of FOI
which is a big thing.
But let's assume it
is in government.
I mean I think in
that circumstance,
I believe every president
would have to be told.
And here's why.
The president is the
Commander in Chief.
And what if the whole
situation suddenly
moves from being mysterious or
benign or neutral to serious.
The president, as
Commander in Chief
would have to take
instant command decisions
on what the response could be.
And no president could
make those decisions
if they were having
to be briefed
from the very bottom upwards.
So I think it would be incumbent
on the whole apparatus of state
to make sure the president
was prebriefed on this
so that he could make
those decisions instantly
and from an informed position.
>>NOORY: Sounds like the movie
"Independence Day," doesn't it?
>>POPE: Well, yes.
I loved that movie.
And I loved the bit, the
surprise on the president's
face was he finds that out.
>>NOORY: But could we
really defend ourselves
against a hostile
extraterrestrial presence?
>>POPE: I suspect not.
>>NOORY: I agree.
>>POPE: I think
it's one of these--
we can only take an
anthropocentric view
of this phenomenon.
But there are one
or two assumptions
which I think are so fundamental
that they are legitimate.
And one of those assumptions
is that if they come down here,
their technology,
self-evidently is
going to be orders of magnitude
above and beyond anything
we've got.
You could say in human
history, what if--
well, we see the examples of the
time, of course, looking back
through history when
a less technologically
advanced culture meets
a more technologically
advanced culture.
Almost inevitably,
it ends badly.
And certainly there
would be no possibility
in any kind of shooting war.
Now you can get into a debate
about asymmetrical warfare.
But I mean we
wouldn't be dealing--
in any universe 14
billion years old,
the statistical chances of our
coming across a civilization
say 100 years ahead of
us are vanishingly small.
Far more likely we'll be
dealing with civilizations tens,
hundreds of thousands,
millions of years ahead.
And what will their
technology look like?
Well, as Arthur
C. Clarke said, it
will be indistinguishable
from magic.
>>NOORY: Our CIA, Nick, has
released some UFO files,
albeit some of them
are blacked out.
But that's pretty
dramatic isn't it?
>>POPE: Absolutely.
13 million documents, I believe.
And a classic
example, I suspect.
And by the way, I haven't had
a chance to read them all yet.
>>NOORY: No, not all of them.
Knowing you, half of them.
>>POPE: Well, I've skimmed them.
>>NOORY: Are they
are fascinating?
>>POPE: They are.
It's a mixed bag.
As with all government
files, there
are a lot of little
more than letters
from members of the public
and polite kind of three line
responses.
The really interesting
stuff is more the policy
discussions about what
the phenomenon is,
what the implications are from
an intelligence point of view.
But you know, 13
million documents,
I think it's a classic
example of the way
that governments handle this.
They just dump industrial
quantities of this information
in the public domain.
>>NOORY: Good or
bad reports, right?
They're all in there?
>>POPE: They're all in there.
And it's a classic
case of the best place
to hide a book is
in the library.
No one can possibly
go through all that.
>>NOORY: So, you just
put it right out there.
>>POPE: They put it out there
so it's hidden in plain sight.
And what they do-- and
I've done this myself
with the British
government's program.
And even though I'm retired
from the Ministry of Defense,
I'm still involved in
acting as a spokesperson
for this campaign-- very often
I get to pick the cases that I
talk about to the media.
And the government, of course,
wants things highlighted.
And they want certain
things deemphasized.
>>NOORY: Nick, we are in
an amazing time right now.
And we are in the
70th anniversary
of one of the greatest UFO
cases in the United States.
And that was, of
course, Roswell.
With the 70th anniversary.
People are still
talking about this case.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- Something happened near the
town of Roswell, New Mexico.
That event, known as
the Roswell Incident,
has become synonymous
with flying saucer crash,
alien visitation,
government cover up,
or many say a jump to
conclusion and gross distortion
of the fact.
[END PLAYBACK]
>>NOORY: What an amazing case,
Nick, absolutely amazing.
So many witnesses.
Unfortunately, a lot of
them have died by now.
But what do you
think of that case?
>>POPE: Well, there's no
dispute that something crashed.
That's the incredible
thing about this.
People that are not familiar
say, oh, well the military
would deny that, wouldn't they?
But that's the point.
They didn't.
>>NOORY: In the beginning, they
said it was a downed flying
saucer, right?
>>POPE: Absolutely.
It was the military themselves
that put out, or caused
to be put out, a press release.
And they used the
phrase flying disk.
They said we have recovered--
there had been these
so-called flying disk
sightings in the US,
and indeed, worldwide.
>>NOORY: The Foo Fighters.
>>POPE: The Foo Fighters.
But particularly, then,
Kenneth Arnold's sighting of 9,
I think, disk-shaped craft.
>>NOORY: Prior to Roswell.
>>POPE: Absolutely.
And so the military
said, well, you
know this mystery, all
these flying disks,
we have got one of them.
So we, the US army,
as it was time
had recovered one
of these craft.
>>NOORY: It was even on the
radio, local Roswell radio,
from that press release.
But then the military recanted.
Why?
>>POPE: Well, within 24
hours, yes, absolutely.
There was a 180 degree turn.
And the military said we've
made a terrible mistake,
it was just a weather balloon.
Well, wait a minute.
The 509th Bomb Group which
was based at Roswell,
and it was the
intelligence officer there,
Jesse Marcel, who was
involved in the recovery.
The 509th bomb group was
the only atomic bomb capable
squadron anywhere in
the world at the time.
So it was the elite
military unit.
These people were
the best of the best.
And if ever there were a
bunch of people less likely
to misidentify a
weather balloon--
which is something they were
perfectly familiar with,
they were launched all
the time in the area--
it was these people.
>>NOORY: We both knew
the late Jesse Marcel,
Jr, the son of Jesse Marcel
who carted this and flew
this material, these
craft, to Wright-Patterson.
And he would always tell us that
his father told him there was
something very unusual here.
It was an amazing story.
>>POPE: Well, I remember
him saying that--
I think he was nine years
old at the time, something
like that-- and with
tears in his eyes
as he retold the story, he
said that his father came back,
woke the family up.
And said I won't be
able to keep this,
but I want you to see this,
because everything that I knew,
everything that I
believed, has changed.
And he pulls out this piece of--
it's now kind of cold memory
metal.
>>NOORY: You crunch it and it
goes right back to its form,
right?
>>POPE: Yes.
And the family watched
with amazement.
And the following day, of
course, Jesse Marcel Sr.
had to take that
back to the military.
Now, I think that particularly
if there was a crash
and there's debris, which
people of course talk about,
I think that someone somewhere
still has a piece of this.
I mean I think
it's human nature.
People like souvenirs.
People want to hold
on to something,
particularly if it it's
a paradigm shifting,
world view changing thing.
And I've teamed up with the
local newspaper, "The Roswell
Daily Record," and
we have a campaign--
not aimed at the UFO
community, but aimed
at the citizens of Roswell.
And my idea is this--
>>NOORY: To get somebody to
come forward who may be alive?
>>POPE: To get someone
to come forward.
But even more than
that, going back
to the idea that people
like souvenirs and mementos,
I've said to people and I've
written an editorial which
I was told was the most viewed
editorial in the history
of the "Roswell Daily Record--"
>>NOORY: It was.
>>POPE: Well, and I
said search your houses.
Local people, go
into your attics--
>>NOORY: Somebody has something.
>>POPE: Yeah.
Look at the little box of
trinkets on the mantel piece.
Go up and open the chest of your
father's or your grandfather's
military service records.
Go through it.
And if you find in there
a strange piece of metal,
give us a call.
>>NOORY: Have you changed
your views on Roswell
over the years?
>>POPE: Well, I think at first
I was quite skeptical of this.
But I come back to
the point that there's
no smoke without fire.
And an awful lot of these
witnesses had nothing to gain,
and arguably a heck
of a lot to lose.
>>NOORY: They made no money.
It was nothing.
>>POPE: No.
These people weren't
speaking out for money.
I don't think any
of them ever got
that paid more than a
taxi fare to a TV studio
or something like that.
But, of course, the reputational
damage that sometimes people
get from speaking out about
this subject where still there's
this unfair perception
with large parts
of the media and the public
that these are crazy people.
So these witnesses
put a lot on the line
by telling their stories.
>>NOORY: What
about the mortician
who talked about they asked
him for small little caskets?
I mean, my god, how do you
make something like that up?
>>POPE: It's bizarre.
I never met him.
I think Glenn Dennis, wasn't it?
>>NOORY: Glenn Dennis.
>>POPE: Yeah I never met him.
But I heard that story.
I mean again, why would you
want child-sized coffins?
I mean, again, if
there's the slightest
chance that any of this is
true, it's no good saying,
oh, but this is 70 years old.
I mean I've changed
my mind on this, yes.
I was criticized a few
years ago because I
said Roswell's / I said 70
years on, time to move on.
I was wrong.
Of course I was wrong.
Thinking about it now, the
point is that length of time
doesn't matter.
If there is some smoking gun
piece of evidence out there,
it that doesn't matter whether
it comes out 70 years or 69.
So I freely admit that I was
wrong to say Roswell was dead.
I think it is in many senses
almost ground zero for ufology.
>>NOORY: Can we realistically
go back and investigate
a 70-year-old case?
>>POPE: There are some
things we can't do.
I accept the point that--
like any cop will tell you.
If you don't crack a case maybe
within the first 48 hours,
your chances of doing
so decline rapidly.
In the medical
community, you'll hear
this phrase about the golden
hour, I think they use.
And generally speaking
with the passage of time,
memories fail, things,
recollections are lost.
Evidence, it can't be secured.
But I come back to the
point that if there
is a piece of this memory
metal or some other smoking gun
piece of evidence, a document,
a film, a photograph, whatever
it may be.
Then even though it's difficult
to investigate something 70
years on, it's not impossible.
I mean look,
historians all the time
are uncovering new
records for example
about the First and
the Second World War.
We don't say to
those historians,
oh the passage of time makes
this a pointless pursuit.
No.
Absolutely not.
>>NOORY: When I was
a young boy, Nick,
my mother brought home a
magazine from "Look" magazine
that had the story of the
Barney and Betty Hill case.
John Fuller wrote the book
"The Interrupted Journey."
But it had to do with
this New Hampshire
couple that claimed
that they were
abducted by extraterrestrials.
It was an amazing story.
I could not put
the magazine down.
I was just a little kid.
I vowed at that
moment I wanted to go
into broadcasting to investigate
these kinds of stories.
I was just fascinated by it.
Later on in life as a
21-year-old radio reporter
in Detroit, Michigan,
I had the opportunity
to interview their psychologist
and psychiatrist Dr. Benjamin
Simon.
Called him up.
And I said this is George
Noory, I work at WCAR radio
here in Detroit.
Can we do this interview?
And he said, absolutely.
And I recorded it.
I can't find the tape,
Nick, it's too old.
It was 1971 when I did
the interview with him.
But I asked him
specifically, I said,
were they telling you the truth
about their abduction case?
And we can get into that
case in a second with you.
And he said I don't know.
But I'll tell you this,
they weren't lying.
Whatever happened to them--
and he hypnotized them
both separately and they
both had the same story,
which was unusual--
he said whatever
happened to them,
they believe it to be true.
And that was the major story.
It's an amazing case.
>>POPE: Yeah.
Absolutely.
Incredible.
I never met Barney who died,
I think, many, many years ago.
But I did have the
opportunity in the '90s--
and I think she's now past, too.
>>NOORY: They're both dead.
>>POPE: Yes.
But I had the opportunity
to meet Betty Hill.
And my goodness, what a
down to earth, but still
sort of a feisty character.
>>NOORY: When you met Betty,
we've got a clip of her
that you've got to see.
And then we'll talk
more about her.
Betty Hill was an
amazing person.
>>POPE: Absolutely.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- And at that point, it left
the top of the mountain,
came up over the highway and
stopped in mid-air directly
in front of us, maybe
about 50 feet in the sky.
So, Barney got out with the
binoculars in an attempt
to identify the craft.
And when he looked up,
he saw a circular window
with the white light behind it.
And he saw these men standing
behind the window looking down
at him.
And at that point, the
craft began to descend.
And he became frightened.
Ran back to the car,
saying he thought they
were trying to capture him.
So we got in the car and
we went speeding down
the highway to avoid capture.
And as we're driving
along, there's
beeping sounds that
sounds like something was
hitting the trunk of the car.
And the car vibrated.
And then we drove along
for about another 30 miles.
And Barney turned
off onto a side road.
And here were there group of men
he'd seen on the craft standing
in the middle of this
road blocking our way.
[END PLAYBACK]
>>NOORY: Look at her face, Nick.
That woman is not lying.
>>POPE: No.
No.
You can have a debate
about the extent
to which her memory
might have been
skewed by regression hypnosis.
And that's a whole other debate.
But no.
From that clip and from
having met her personally,
sat down in a
restaurant with her,
spent the whole
evening chatting,
I have no doubt, like you,
that she was telling the truth
as she perceived it.
>>NOORY: As she perceived it.
That's exactly what psychiatrist
Benjamin Simon said.
That she was telling the
truth based on what she thinks
she saw.
Because I wanted him,
Nick, at that age
as I was interviewing him, I
wanted him to tell me they're
lying.
Or I found out in hypnosis that
they're making the story up.
But he couldn't say that.
>>POPE: No.
I mean that would have
been a big story for you.
You would have uncovered
a long running fraud.
But you didn't.
And I think it's a classic case.
I mean one point about
it-- which I think is often
overlooked, people kind of
nervous about talking about it
for understandable reasons--
but Betty was white.
Barney was black.
Now for a mixed race
couple to put their heads
above the parapet,
put themselves
into the public eye in
1961 in New Hampshire.
>>NOORY: That was unheard of.
>>POPE: Yeah.
That was not something
that you would want to do.
You would not want
the attention.
I think they were
putting themselves
in a difficult, possibly
even dangerous, situation.
>>NOORY: Absolutely.
It could have been a
dangerous situation.
>>POPE: This was, yeah,
very different days.
And I think that is another
reason that, to me, why I say,
these people were not
attention seekers.
My goodness, they
would have been well
advised I think to keep
quiet, keep their heads down.
>>NOORY: I used to
think could this
have been some kind
of military operation
and that the people that
they saw standing by the road
weren't extraterrestrials
but military people.
And I keep coming back
to no, something dramatic
happened to these
people in an era
where extraterrestrials
abducted humans in huge numbers,
not just bought
Barney and Betty Hill.
That seems to have slowed
down a little bit now.
Don't you think?
The abductions like that?
>>POPE: It does.
And it's quite interesting
to speculate why.
I think there are three
different ideas that
come to my mind.
Firstly, some of
the true believers
would say, well, there
was a program of some sort
that the extraterrestrials
were carrying out
and now that program is
reaching its conclusion.
>>NOORY: They've
got their results.
They're done.
>>POPE: They've got
what they needed,
which is kind of interesting
and a little bit scary
and disconcerting itself.
Because it makes you wonder
well, when that stage finishes,
what's coming next?
>>NOORY: Exactly.
Exactly.
>>POPE: If I was a little
bit more skeptical though,
I would say--
>>NOORY: Like David Jacobs.
>>POPE: Well, yeah, I think yes.
And that is some
deeply scary territory.
But if I was being
more skeptical,
I would say that the
three big name abduction
researchers in the
'80s and the '90s
were Dave Jacobs, who
you've just mentioned,
Bud Hopkins, and John Mack.
>>NOORY: That's right.
And he's gone too.
>>POPE: And that's my point.
I wonder, I wonder,
with my skeptical hat
on, whether the tragic
death of these two figures--
of Bud Hopkins and John Mack--
has meant that people don't
have really the outlet
that they used to.
They don't have
these prolific two
individuals as spokespeople.
So I wonder if people are
still having these experiences
in the same sorts of
numbers, but in the absence
of Mack and Hopkins, they
don't really have the outlet
that they used to.
So that's my skeptical theory.
>>NOORY: I think
it's slowed down,
because of vehicles like my
radio show "Coast to Coast."
I think more people
would be calling, talking
about their abduction cases.
I've seen that over
the last 14 years,
Nick, slow down
considerably, too.
There's another
case I want to talk
with you about which was in your
neck of the woods in England.
Of course, Rendlesham Forest.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- As I started to get
up off the ground,
what formed was the silhouette
of a triangular craft
that was probably about
20 feet in front of me.
I was just totally
perplexed by it.
As I walked up
closer to it, I could
feel electricity jumping,
like on my clothing and skin
and hair.
They looked like black
glasses, very shiny.
But in the actual skin of
this craft, running through it
was different colors.
There would be globs of
whatever, blue or orange.
I was looking for crew
compartments, intake, exhausts.
It wasn't aerodynamic.
I mean, it had no flaps.
It didn't have anything that
normal aircraft would have.
[END PLAYBACK]
>>NOORY: It's an
amazing story, Nick.
John Burroughs former
US military officer,
he was one of
those who was there
who actually went up and touched
the craft, got sick, I think.
What do you think of that story?
>>POPE: Well, John
Burroughs and Jim Penniston
were probably the
two that got closest.
I think it was Jim who
touched the side of the thing.
John certainly believes
that some health
issues that he had were
attributable to probably
non-ionized radiation.
>>NOORY: Radiation
probably, yea.
>>POPE: And you
know, again, skeptics
find it easy to dismiss all
of this and scoff at it.
But a British
government document
called Project
Condign Study Report--
it's one of the documents
that I mentioned that has
been declassified and released.
It was an intelligence
assessment
of the UFO phenomenon
classified Secret UK Eyes Only.
And one of the
lines in that study
said it might be postulated
that the Rendlesham Forest
incident was an example of
an occasion where witnesses
got too close to a UAP and
were exposed for longer time
periods than normal
to the UAP radiation.
Well, John Burroughs
had an attorney
working on a pro-bono basis,
working with Jim, too.
And the they'd got
nowhere with the VA.
But then, Pat
Frascogna, the lawyer
who had been doing this
work, went to the VA
with this document and said
you denied that my clients were
irradiated.
Here is a Ministry of
Defense Intelligence Study
that might suggest otherwise.
And guess what, they
settled instantly.
Certainly with John.
I think Jim has not
spoken in public
about what his situation is.
So I don't want to go there.
But with John, they
settled in full.
>>NOORY: What do you think
happened there, Nick?
>>POPE: Well, they
clearly encountered
something truly extraordinary.
>>NOORY: In the forest.
>>POPE: In the forest.
In Rendlesham Forest
in December 1980.
Some people say
extraterrestrial.
Others say interdimensional.
Some say time travelers
from the future.
Others say some kind of deep
black government or military.
>>NOORY: Secret operation.
>>POPE: We don't know.
We don't know.
What we do know is that even
those of us who looked at this
and accessed all the files from
within the Ministry of Defense,
found no conventional
explanation.
So if it was some
secret prototype,
spy plane or drone, even us
with high security clearances
in the Ministry of Defense
couldn't get access
to that explanation,
that information,
if it was out there.
Which does suggest, maybe
it was something else.
>>NOORY: Nick, one of the most
amazing aspects of World War
II in the beginning
was the Battle
of Los Angeles where they
saw some kind of an object up
there, shot 2000 shells against
it, heard pinging sounds.
It was an amazing story.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- Anti-aircraft guns went into
action against unidentified
aircraft in the Los Angeles area
shortly after 3:00 AM Pacific
war time this morning.
The anti-aircraft
guns began barking
during a blackout ordered
by the fourth interceptor
command at 2:25 AM.
Concussion of the shells
could be found in downtown Los
Angeles, 15 miles away.
US army planes quickly
took to the dark skies.
But whether they contacted the
object has not been announced.
Army officials say they will
not comment until they receive
a full report of the action.
Although some watchers say
they saw airplanes in the air,
semi official sources
say they probably
were the US Army's pursuit.
Several observers say they saw
one or more planes spotlighted
by 20 or 30 search lights.
The object moved southward,
presumably over Huntington Park
at the western edge of Los
Angeles and on southward
to about Long
Beach on the coast.
[END PLAYBACK]
>>NOORY: What a story, Nick.
And there was incredible
paranoia, people thinking
the Japanese were coming here.
They had sent balloons that
had little bombs on them.
But if this were
a blimp, it would
have been obliterated
by the 2,000 shells
that they shot there,
because some of them
did hit the object.
What do you think
happened there?
>>POPE: Well, I can only
agree with your assessment.
And, of course, that
iconic photograph
is almost the proof of all this.
The searchlights had this thing,
whatever it was, illuminated.
The AAA was going up and
was hitting this thing.
So if it had been a blimp or
balloon, or even an aircraft
from a Japanese carrier,
which is, I think unlikely,
but it would have been, as you
say, shot down, obliterated.
But whatever this was-- and
it's interesting that again
in that clip, we heard
that there were references
to aircraft in the plural seen.
And again, of
course, at the time,
we didn't really
have the language
to talk about anything else
except aircraft and blimps.
But nowadays, or perhaps
shortly after that,
we would have talked about
flying saucers or UFOs and now
UAP, but at the time it was
just aircraft and blimps.
But people say often,
why don't you UFOs
land on the White House lawn?
Maybe that's the
answer, because they
know that when they come down
we start shooting at them.
>>NOORY: Well, I suspect
though, Nick, that in this case
we know something that hasn't
been revealed to us yet.
If they sent up craft to
find this, they shot at this,
something happened.
I think they know what it is.
But they never told us.
>>POPE: Again, I think it
would require some smoking gun
document to come out of
an archive somewhere.
And that's the great thing
about archival research.
Sometimes, some little
piece of information
comes out that totally
changes people's attitudes
about things.
I mean fairly
recently, I was reading
that an old essay written by
former Prime Minister Winston
Churchill came out which nobody
knew about before in which he
was speculating quite
openly about the possibility
of alien life.
>>NOORY: He was a believer.
>>POPE: Yes, he was.
And there's a couple of
other later documents
which I think pretty
much make that point.
There's a famous
document in which
he asks his scientific
adviser what is
the truth about flying saucers?
What is going on?
Please let me have a report.
>>NOORY: He believed
the universe was so vast
that the probability
was many that we
had extraterrestrial
life out there.
>>POPE: Yes.
And Churchill-- when
one looks back now--
I think Churchill
is clearly a man who
stands with other iconic
figures as somebody ahead
of his time in
many ways in terms
of his thinking
and his world view.
I mean Churchill
knew a thing or two.
>>NOORY: He knew.
There's one more case I want
to talk with you about, Nick.
And that had to do with
the late police officer
Lonnie Zamora from
Socorro, New Mexico, where
he was in his police
cruiser and then saw
something in the desert which
changed his mind forever.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- On April 24, 1964, an
American police officer
named Lonnie Zamora spotted
a strange object streak
through the sky over a highway
outside of Socorro, New Mexico.
The object was between
half a mile to a mile
away shooting off
towards the southwest.
It left a trail of bluish orange
flames and made a roaring noise
as it passed overhead.
Curious as to what it was,
Officer Zamora followed
the object over a steep hill,
catching up with it as it lay
rested on the summit.
What Zamora saw then has never
been adequately explained.
[END PLAYBACK]
>>NOORY: I love this case.
>>POPE: Me, too.
>>NOORY: It is-- and
unfortunately Lonnie has passed
on--
but he left with us an
incredible story, didn't he?
>>POPE: He did.
And again, about the
only place the skeptics
have to go with this is
well, maybe he made it up,
maybe it was to try and generate
some tourism for the town,
or whatever.
But people that
knew Lonnie Zamora--
and I didn't--
>>NOORY: He was a
straight shooter.
>>POPE: Yeah.
Absolutely.
Respected in his local community
and in his local church.
And the last person who
would have ever told a lie
or played some sort
of practical joke
that brought down people
from Washington-- which
is of course what happened.
There there's been
speculation well maybe
the craft was
something associated
with the embryonic
Apollo program.
>>NOORY: I thought maybe it
might have been a lunar module
lander with a couple astronauts
running around on the outside.
But I kind of pooed that away.
>>POPE: Well, I think so, yeah.
I think when you listen to
the story about the exhalation
that this object was capable of,
plus the fact that if that had
been the explanation, now,
the records would be out
and we'd know because
there's nothing secret now
about the early days
of the Apollo program.
>>NOORY: I mean we tested the
lunar module in the desert.
But it didn't go up and
keep going like this did.
So it's an amazing story.
There's another
one more last one.
1997 in Phoenix.
So many people,
thousands of people,
saw what they thought was a
huge triangular shaped object
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- The first thing that struck
me is that they were just
in a v-shaped formation.
Well, it's at night
and guys wouldn't
have been flying in a
v-shape formation, in a Vic.
We'd call it a Vic.
So they wouldn't be in a Vic
and then all of a sudden I
realized wow, I don't
see any navigation lights
or anti-collision lights.
So now I'm looking at five
light passing overhead silently
at a very slow rate.
And it also occurred
to me that they
were flying too slow to stay in
the air if it was an aircraft.
[END PLAYBACK]
>>NOORY: There were all
kinds of stories, Nick,
about what might
have been up there.
But I still think
the most compelling
is that there was an object
maybe about a mile long, huge,
that they saw over
the skies of Phoenix.
>>POPE: I agree.
And certainly I've
spoken to many witnesses
who saw something that night.
Some of those people who I've
met when I've been to Phoenix,
and I've spoken in Phoenix.
I now live in Tucson so it's
an area I'm very familiar with.
>>NOORY: So you're close.
>>POPE: Yes.
And for the skeptics who say
well this was flares dropped
from an aircraft that had come
from Davis-Monthan Air Force
Base land--
>>NOORY: Or Chinese
lanterns, right?
>>POPE: Yeah over the
Barry Goldwater range
and things like that.
Well, one of the
witnesses was the governor
himself Fife Symington--
>>NOORY: At the
time, yes, exactly.
>>POPE: You know if ever
there was someone less
likely to misidentify
flares, it would
be a former military
pilot like Fife.
>>NOORY: Well, you know
he apologized, too.
I was on the "Larry
King Show" with him.
And he admitted
he made a mistake.
Because initially
when this happened,
he had held a news
conference and had
a person in an alien costume
standing next to him.
And he made fun of it.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- And this just goes to show
that you guys are entirely
too serious.
[LAUGHTER]
[END PLAYBACK]
>>NOORY: A couple of years
later, he kind of changed
his tune, and said, I don't
know what this thing was,
but I shouldn't
have made fun of it.
And to me that was
pretty dramatic
for him to basically
apologize for what he did.
>>POPE: Yes.
And I think a lot of people
were very bitter at that.
Yes, as you say, he
got his Chief of Staff
to dress up in a
kind of alien suit
and said I can now tell people--
this was a press conference--
I can now tell people that
the culprit behind these UFO
sightings has been exposed.
And out came the Chief of
Staff dressed as an alien
and everyone laughed.
And he said-- and I've
discussed this with him--
he said the reason
he did that is
he felt he had to do so because
his perception as the governor
was that the local
community was descending
into a state of near
hysteria about this.
Which again just shows you
something about the scale
of these sightings.
And I tell you, for every
witness who's come forward
and given their story, there
are hundreds who haven't.
And I've spoken to people who
said, Nick, this was so close,
I tell you if I'd thrown
a rock up in the air,
I would have hit the
underside of this thing.
>>NOORY: Wow.
Nick, you have
devoted your career
to investigating
this phenomenon.
In your opinion,
what are you chasing?
>>POPE: Well, we
like to label things.
I think it's one of the
things that we humans do.
So we kind of get a
phenomenon like this
and we try and pigeon
hole it and say
extraterrestrial,
interdimensional,
intertemporal, whatever
theory we favor.
I can't help but wonder
whether this is just our own--
it's like if you see a
shadowy figure at the foot
of your bed--
if you're religious,
you might think
it was an angel or a
manifestation of the blessed
Virgin Mary.
If you are a paranormal
investigator,
you might think
of it as a ghost.
If you are a
ufologist, you might
think you were being abducted.
What I'm saying is
that we interpret this
through the lens of our
own cultural background
and our own belief system.
So we pigeonhole
all these things--
aliens, ghosts, angels, demons.
My theory is that these
labels are just very
anthropocentric attempts
to categorize and define
something that may be totally
beyond our comprehension.
>>NOORY: That could be.
When the dust settles,
when the files are read,
what will we have?
>>POPE: Well I
think we will have--
it's what I talk about
as sort of a reverse
of the normal situation.
We'll be able to
say what UFO aren't.
In other words, we'll
be able to look at all
the material in this files.
And we'll say, look the
government itself, governments
all around the
world, have thrown
a huge amount of
resources at this
and still haven't really, I
think, managed to define--
well as I say--
>>NOORY: At least to us.
>>POPE: At least to us.
What we might not be able
to do from all these files
is say, ah, that's the answer.
And indeed there may not
be a single, neat answer
to the whole phenomenon.
There may be lots of
different things going on.
But I think what we will be
able to say, without any doubt,
is that this is not
misidentifications,
this is not hoaxes.
This is not delusions.
Some of it is, of course.
But as I always used to say
at the Ministry of Defense,
the skeptics have to be
right every single day,
but the believers only
have to be right once.
>>NOORY: That's right, Nick.
Thanks for being
on "Beyond Belief."
>>POPE: Thank you.
>>NOORY: We want answers
to this incredible story.
Are we being visited by
extraterrestrial life?
People like Nick
Pope will continue
to investigate to get that
answer, whatever it may be.
I'm George Noory.
And thanks for watching
"Beyond Belief."
[THEME MUSIC]
