In-Depth with Richard Dolan: UFO Disclosure, Abductions & more (Pt.1)

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He's the author of the landmark two-volume series, UFOs in the National Security State, as well as the infamous AD After Disclosure and UFOs for the 21st Century Mind, along with Bryce Zabel, of course. Works that have become essential reading for anyone trying to understand how governments, militaries, and intelligence agencies have engaged with the UFO mystery over decades. His approach has always been grounded in rigorous historical fact and research, clear-eyed analysis, and cuts through a lot of noise and speculation to focus on what the evidence actually shows. Beyond his books, he's familiar, faced from countless documentaries, interviews, his own platform, Richard Dolan Members, where all the links are in the description, where he continues to explore both the UFO subject and he also goes a little bit off-piste as well. So I'm going to welcome now to the show, Richard Dolan. Richard, welcome back. Hi, Andy. It's always a pleasure. Thank you for having me here. Very good to have you on, Richard, and genuinely could have you on on a weekly basis for those conversations. But I want to kick off, actually, with your latest venture. In the last couple of months, you joined Need to Know with Bryce Zabel. I just had Bryce on the podcast last month, and he was obviously waxing lyrical, as we say, about you joining. It's a wonderful, I wouldn't say replacement for Ross Coulthard, because it's not a like-for-like substitution, but I love the change of direction. And I think if you're going to change what it was, there's not been many folks better than yourself, Richard, that could have been brought in. How's it been for you joining Bryce with Need to Know and that whole transition? It's really enjoyable. Bryce and I, of course, have a relationship going back more than 15 years. We wrote a book together. So that's something, at least for me, that's a special professional relationship, and I've done that with no other person. I've never co-authored a book with anybody else. So Bryce will always be kind of close to me on that basis. We've shared a lot. The book we wrote, of course, was A.D. After Disclosure. Still, to this day, the only full-length book that I'm aware of that actually tries to analyze the whole process of UFO disclosure and how it might happen. And how it might affect our world. Anyway, I used to follow Ross Coltart with Bryce on Need to Know. I thought it was always a very interesting show. And I was surprised that Ross decided to leave. But looking back, not totally surprised. Ross has a lot going on with News Nation. And there's only so many hours in a day. So Bryce wanted, asked me if I would consider basically replacing Ross's role there. And we both agreed. Like I said, I would be happy to do it. But I can't do a show like that the way Ross did it. Which is, you know, Ross is an excellent journalist. And he is on top of many, if not all, of the latest developments in the UFO community. I'm on top of those developments too. But that's really not my main thing. I'm a historian. I look at the long view of things. I try to look at the philosophy of UFOs, as it were. And I just try to ask those types of questions. So for me, when I'm engaging in a conversation, I don't want to put this in a disparaging way, because it isn't meant that way. But I would not be well served if I were to be chasing headlines in this field all the time. There are people who are excellent at that. And they need to do that, the current news. But that's just not what I've ever wanted to do. I try to look at a different angle of all of this. So when I did this with Bryce, and as we're continuing to do it, we just decided, like, my approach was going to be a little bit more big picture oriented, a little more philosophical. And we'll just see how that works. I think Bryce is very, very happy with that too. We have great conversations. I think we have a nice chemistry and rapport, and it works really well. I thought it worked very well with Ross. But it's true. We just look at this in slightly different, we have very similar perspectives, actually, but we approach it maybe a little differently. So I think that worked just fine. I'm glad I'm doing this with Bryce. Yeah, it's been working out well. And has that relationship, obviously, it's been, like you say, 15 years. You've co-authored with After Disclosure AD. Has that brought on any interest in further projects together outside of Need to Know? I think a lot of folks look at, is there a time to write a second volume of AD After Disclosure? Things are different from when you wrote that first time around. Oh, yeah. Yeah, honestly, that's a book. I look back on that. That was written 15 years ago in a totally different time. World was very different. And it really could benefit from a substantial rewrite, whether by Bryce and me or by someone else who wants to write a book about disclosure. A lot of people can do this. I've thought about it many times. It's not impossible that we will go at it again. The big limitation is probably, I'm going to guess, me. I'm in the midst of a three-volume series on USOs. We can chat about that. I'm just finishing. I'm publishing, in fact, the second volume as we speak. And that should be out soon. The writing's all done. So I've got that, and I just have so many other writing projects that I have on my mind. I keep asking myself, would we ever do a revision of After Disclosure? It would be a good project to do, and I think it could be worthwhile, and it's not impossible. But he and I, we have not talked about that in a little while. We did discuss it. I have a feeling if we got into that conversation, we might just get enough motivation to go on and do a revised version. You never know. Yeah, I think there'd be a lot of appetite for that. And from what people say to me and listeners and viewers, there's definitely that out there. And what we're going to do for this interview, if we want to call it that, Richard, because I've had you on the podcast now a few times. Very fortunately, I appreciate your time. I want to discuss some of what's happening right now. And you mentioned you're a historian. You're great at looking back. The bigger picture, the philosophy, like you mentioned, of this topic is so varied. But there's a lot to talk about right now. So what I'm going to do is split it into two halves, where the listeners will get the second half, where I've got a whole plethora of questions for you. But I want to dig into your thoughts right now. Because like you say, in 15 years since that last book happened, so much has changed. And I wonder, this is something that gets brought up often to me. I'm 39 years old, so I'm still relatively young in terms of the UFO topic and what I've seen and what I've heard brought up on the internet, social media. You have a longer view of the UFO topic than me. Have we been here before in terms of where the UFO topic is, the state of play, the way people think about it? And if so, when? And if not, how is it different? Yeah, in some ways, yes, and in other ways, absolutely not. There are certain commonalities between this era and certain times of the past. Just for very quick reference. So back in the, even in the late 1940s and in the early 1950s, particularly, there was a kind of crescendo with the flying saucers, as they were called at that time. Lots of sightings, lots of buzz about it in the United States and to a more limited extent elsewhere. But throughout the Western world, there was questions about this. In the U.S., there was the kind of crescendo that happened in the summer of 1952, and people wondered what's happening. It's got a lot of press coverage. And then it just got kind of shut down within the classified world in what we call the Robertson panel. Nothing really happened. It wasn't until the 1960s that the crescendo happened again. This time, it was much more public, much more powerful. It was discussed in Congress for the first time in the mid-1960s. There was a talk that the University of Colorado, which was hired to do a scientific study of UFOs in the late 60s, like all of that was bringing this subject out in the public realm as something to be talked about. The Colorado study basically shut it down in 1968, 69, said there's nothing to this. So again, you had the crescendo and then you had the crash. But then in the 1970s, we had freedom of information laws passed in the U.S. that gave renewed hope that if we just declassified the right document, that could break open the secrecy. And there were a lot of documents that were revealed during that time that did show a UFO reality and a cover-up. But that did not lead to a disclosure either. Through the late 80s, there were more rumors and leaks, whether true or not true, of different types of secret government activities relating to UFOs. By the early 2000s, there was a whole new disclosure effort led by – oh, and I forgot the whole Roswell event really just became very much publicized during the late 80s and 1990s. But that did not lead to anything. And then you have the disclosure movement of the 21st century, people like Dr. Stephen Greer, Steve Bassett, and others were leading that charge, and there were a series of conferences. It's like we've been through this before. There have always been these moments where people have thought if we just present the strongest argument, put it before the public, and get our political leaders to talk about it, we might be able to have a breakthrough. And there have been all of these attempts, some of them just failed outright, others failed partially, had little partial successes here and there, but we've not gotten to a point of disclosure. So now, since 2017, we've had a completely new public conversation on this subject. It's unlike anything that's happened in the past. Why? It's a really good question. This is something that we even talked about in After Disclosure, particularly my line of thought back in earlier decades was, we as a society are more and more getting to a point where it could become unavoidable to talk about this if for no other reason than because of the web and connectivity that we have globally, which is enabling a kind of conversation about the subject to develop and to continue to grow in a way that it could not have done prior to the age of social media and the web itself. So I think that's a different factor, and I actually think that's the foundation of how even the New York Times reported on this in 2017. There is enough of a, I would say, I'm going to call it a dissident movement among certain people close to the seat of power who were not satisfied with UFO secrecy. This, by the way, has always been the case, always been the case. There have always been people in the kind of establishment faction that were not happy with the policy of UFO secrecy. And these individuals, I think, were able to get the New York Times to agree to a story, two stories on this in 2017. And it's opened things up, and it has not fully closed. And now, because this is an age of social media, because this is an age of total connectivity, I think it has encouraged a number of people, we'll call them the whistleblowers now, to start coming forward, to start telling their stories. And I think the real tipping point was when Ross Coulthard interviewed David Grush a couple of years ago. Maybe that would be the tipping point. Grush was such a compelling individual, talking about, first of all, from his position, which was connected with NSA, connected with the UAP task force, connected with very classified positions, and connected with classified oversight through Congress. Grush is someone you just could not dismiss. And he's talking about, yes, we have technology and the biologics, the bodies. So I think that was the turning point in 2023. But it was really just the result of this latest wave of, this latest push, which I think was aided and abetted by the digital era we live in. And I don't think it's going away as easily as the other ones. I had a conversation recently with retired Army Colonel Carl Nell about this. Carl believes that we may be at the end of this disclosure cycle. It's a very interesting thought, and he may be right, but it's not clear to me that we're at the end of a cycle. It is true the UAP Disclosure Act has failed, fundamentally failed, we could say, to be passed in its full form for three years in a row now. And that is not hopeful in that sense. But I don't think we're at the end. And I think the difference now is that the disclosure movement has got a much, a far greater groundswell of support than it's ever had. That is not a trivial thing. And even if it keeps getting shut down in Congress, I don't think we're seeing the end of new leaks, new whistleblowers, and new possibilities to challenge the status quo. I don't think that's going to end. The real question is, can those leaks be strong enough to actually create a major crack in the system that it results in some genuine openness? Grush's revelations didn't do it. And you would think, you would think they would. In fact, let me just close with saying this. When Bryce and I wrote AD After Disclosure in 2010, I think we would have thought, and I think most people would have thought, like if they had been able to hear David Grush's interview all those years in advance, back in 2010 or 2009, I think most people would have thought, good God, this has got to end the secrecy. This is a revelation that is too big to ignore. And yet it didn't happen. Like that did not happen. That is something that really must be studied carefully so that we can understand why did it not happen. Because I strongly believe if that interview had happened 15 years earlier, maybe we would have been wrong then too. But I think most of us would have thought that will cause disclosure. And it didn't. It did not. But nevertheless, the game isn't over either. There will be, I believe, there will be more people like David Grush to come forward. In fact, some have already. Matthew Brown is another person who is, I think, a very powerful whistleblower. And there have been others. And I don't think that that story is over. So Yogi Berra, I think, said, it ain't over till it's over. And I think that's what I think, too. I think this is a process. How it's going to end, when this will take the next step into a kind of a new, more deeper reality of this, I don't know. But I don't think it's over. No, and I'm glad you brought up the end of the disclosure cycle conversation with Carl Nell. It was really interesting. I liked your comeback on it. I got to follow that up with Carl Nell at the Sol Symposium. And he said, similar to, I think, what you came back with, that just because this cycle ends doesn't mean the next cycle isn't far away. And what that cycle looks like might be different. And I think you're completely right that if David Grush had come forward, perhaps even in the late 90s to early 2000s, that's a much bigger or longer lasting impact. Because I think there was an impact, but it was very quick and sudden. And then it went away. There have been other whistleblowers. From what I understand, whistleblowers right now are working together in the background. They're not just floating around doing nothing. And I'm sure that's stuff people will hear about in the near future. I don't know much more than that. I'm not giving anything away. But from what I'm told, there's stuff afoot. People love to hear the coming soon, don't they? But yeah, it's the facts in this case. And I wonder, what will it take then? If Grush 15 years ago was something that really could have broken down the door of secrecy, what will it take now? And I'll segue into the Age of Disclosure documentary comes out on the 21st of November. I really hope that it can move the needle. I don't think it will with the public for multiple reasons. I think given it came out back in March or April at South by Southwest, and the people who saw it, including listeners to this podcast, and I spoke to some of them afterwards, They were very complimentary about the credibility and the weight of the individuals speaking on camera about what they know, what they think, why this is important, why we have to push forward. But I think it's going to be too dry for a general public to hold their attention for 90 minutes, let alone two hours, without any incredible footage or huge revelations. And I think people are so desensitized in 2025 to a lot of things, not just the UFO topic, that I'll put it back to you. What are your thoughts on the Age of Disclosure coming out when it is? And what's it going to take to really move the ball forward? Yeah, I think I agree with probably everything you just said there. I haven't seen it all. I've seen some clips. It looks really good. I'm sure it's excellent. Yeah, that's not going to be the problem. I think the problem, you touched on it. A, the public's become a bit desensitized. B, it's one thing for a documentary like that to have a number of fairly prominent public figures, at least members of Congress and maybe more, to talk about the UFO or UAP subject as reality. So that's all, that's all important. But will there be a smoking gun? I mean, we know that Lekatsky is in there talking about having been in contact with a craft, having touched a craft. I think that's a big part of it, and that's going to be interesting. But will that be enough to move the needle, as you ask? And I think it may not. I mean, it's not impossible, I suppose, but I would be surprised. It's really weird. Our whole society is just radically different in so many ways than it was a full generation ago. And one of those things, and this really is not going to sound complimentary, but I really wonder about our social, societal attention span and our ability actually to hang on to an extended argument. You were kind of hinting at this yourself with something that might be a little bit dry. It's 90 minutes. It requires you to concentrate and focus, maybe not stare at your phone while you're watching the show, like all of these things. And you really wonder, are people even going to be paying attention to this? And will they even care enough to pull themselves away from their latest Instagram feed to watch it? You know, you really have to wonder. It's a different world now. So I don't think it will. I don't think. I mean, there have been a lot of excellent documentaries that have come out over the last several years, several of them by Jane Fox. Truly excellent. And it's, I think, a matter of getting them the kind of public conversation they need and they just don't get. You know, it's a weird thing. All of us who are part of what we can call the alternative media, which is you and me and probably everyone listening, most people. There's this tendency to dismiss the establishment legacy media as irrelevant. But I don't think it's irrelevant. I think it's actually very still relevant, still very powerful and influential. Despite the fact that many people don't watch it anymore. But it is still, it's like our version of what Pravda was for the old Soviet Union. It is still the organ of official truth. And until, I hate to say this, but until the establishment media truly gets on board with these subjects, and they still haven't. They still really haven't. I have a feeling we're not really going to have a national conversation that moves us forward. It's a weird thing to say. Because, well, I want to say, just like anyone else, that the establishment media is completely irrelevant. But I don't think it's irrelevant. It's still quite powerful. And they're just not giving the subject the time of day it deserves. They're really not. I mean, we had the two New York Times articles in 2017. We had a couple of follow-ups in the Times, which were permitted. Nothing since 2020. That's been serious. And where's the establishment television media on this? Basically absent. They're not really covering this in any way beyond kindergarten level. So there's still a lot of resistance. And, you know, I was thinking about my Gresh statement earlier. Like, so what Gresh said in 2023 was very powerful. And, yes, had he been covered like this by a national media in 2010 or earlier, it would have made a big thing. But, of course, he would not have been. Because there were people saying things similar to David Grush for many years. But they were saying them quietly to private researchers who could not get the time of day from the establishment media back then. So the whole thing is just it has clogged up the establishment media has basically caused a roadblock or clogged up the public discussion of this. So it's all over YouTube. It's all over Twitter X. It's all over other forms of media. But it's a crazy thing to say. But it's not being discussed by the major networks in any nation. And I think as a result, it's really not getting the attention it deserves politically. I spoke to a documentary team at the Seoul Symposium. And they are from the UK, a pretty prominent channel. And I've been speaking to them since this summer. They were looking to get in touch with various different people and asked if I could help out with that. And then in speaking to them in person at Seoul, I got to ask them about how they were planning and pitching this documentary on a pretty serious channel. And I was looking, you're not going to go with the X-Files music and the Little Green Men CGI and the Flying Saucers. And they were like, well, we're going to kick off with that probably. But what we want to do is then take the audience on our journey. And I was like, if you really feel you have to. But I think this is part of the issue that if you ask 99% of the general public, take two minutes and write down for me. What does your average UFO documentary look like? I think they would all draw something pretty similar in terms of a plan. You know, X-Files music, you know, Little Green Men. See some clips, some of them good, some of them not so good. Some talking heads, some people who come across partially crazy. And then it ends with, who knows, you know, is there something out there? And I was like, I think there's an appetite for something a little bit different. And like you say, there are some very good documentaries, especially from James Fox out there already. James has his documentary, Moment of Contact, New Revelations, extended edition coming out in the coming weeks. He obviously has just done an interview with Ross Coulter, where he has a doctor that he has spoken to now on camera, who has said, and this was all in the News Nation clip, that he was face-to-face with this alien being, with a teardrop head, teardrop eyes, unequivocally an alien entity, for up to four minutes. And that's out there. And if that's not grabbing public attention, what is going to? Exactly. People will watch it and go, oh, wow, isn't that cool? Like, and then swipe to the next video. And that's a big issue for me. Yeah, you mentioned British media, and I know you're over in the UK there, but I just have to say, British media has been some of the worst anywhere in covering this subject. Yeah. I mean, beyond bad, cringe bad. But, you know, all British media is in bed with British intelligence, and it serves an agenda. I don't think there's any debate about that or any controversy. So that is what they do, and that's what they've always done. They're worse than the U.S. media, which is bad. U.S. media is terrible on this. But I have to say, it's even worse in the United Kingdom. But, yeah, the thing is, until this subject, it's a weird thing. I mean, we say we don't need establishment media, but I've come to believe that many people, maybe most people, instinctively still, people can disagree here in the comments below. So I would like to hear some other opinions I'm going to read. But I think that large, most people still take their cue from what they will perceive as authority. And when it's on television news, that has the ring of government authority. It really does when you really think about it. Certainly BBC, but certainly the U.S. major is the same thing. And so it's like when you hear something in the establishment media, it's basically this is what the government considers to be important. It's a weird thing. America's media was never supposed to be that way, but it clearly is. But I think people still look to that for cues. And until they get it, I don't really know how it's going to change. The UAP Disclosure Transparency Movement, this is something I said to Carl in our discussion on this. I think they have to make inroads into the establishment media, which is like as hard as making inroads into the CIA. It's not easy. But I think it's actually got to be a strategy moving forward on this. I've not spoken to you since the hearings happened a couple of months ago now. And for me, in the last couple of years, you've had those initial hearings, the Bray and Moultrie hearing with Gillibrand. And we then segued into the Grush hearing with Fravor and Graves, which probably was the pinnacle for me of anything we've had in terms of hearings. And I feel the most recent hearing was better than the previous one with Elizondo, Schellenberger, Gold, etc. But the big issue for me, and I'd love your take on the video that was shown compared to the testimony, because I was actually quite impressed with the testimony from Wiggins, Knapp, Nusitelli and Borland. And I feel that video really took away from it. And there's still a lot of debate online. I don't feel that video showed anything anomalous at all, other than a military test of a missile with no warhead going through likely a target balloon or drone. And it just shows for me how easy you can distract even the UFO, UAP community by giving them something. And it's like pigeons will fight amongst themselves. And I'm including myself in that because so many folks had so many different opinions. And it took away from the testimony. And all I saw, especially in U.S. media, was people showing that video and talking about that video. And the testimony just completely fell by the wayside. And do you think that's a deliberate tactic that's used? Yes, yeah, I do. I think that's always been a tactic that establishment media has always used to kneecap or disable stories that they don't want to have credibility. You find the weakest link, then you just hammer away at that. So that's an old game. And yeah, I think the video was a weak link. I agree with you. I'm trying to remember the specifics. It was presented as something that I think was studied or determined to be a UAP. Am I wrong? I think that's what it is. No, no, you're right. So it's almost similar to how when Fravor came out and talked about the Tic Tac encounter, you had all kinds of people and skeptics saying the same thing about those videos that were released, that that didn't say anything. It was ridiculous. But the thing that made that strong then and now to me is you had Fravor's testimony itself, which I think is you can't really dismiss. And same thing with the testimony at the hearings. I think, you know, the fact that that video came out as in the context as a UAP encounter, that doesn't prove it's a UAP, I admit. But I guess I'm not familiar with any debunking takedowns of that video as prosaic. And maybe that's just my fault that I haven't kind of gotten on top of that. But I mean, we're always aware there's always pros and cons on these videos anytime they come out. The most important thing in that hearing, well, there are quite a few, but I will just say the one that I think is the most low-hanging fruit that we must follow up on is once again, we hear about this contact between Lockheed Martin, the CIA, and Robert Bigelow's Bigelow Advanced Aerospace Systems Company, which we heard yet again about the failed transfer of UAP craft technology from Lockheed Martin to Bigelow that was stopped twice by a CIA officer by the name of Glenn Gaffney. Now, to me, we've been hearing about this story for several years. I think it's got some legs. We don't have proof, but there are people that could be subpoenaed to offer testimony. Robert Bigelow, for instance. Glenn Gaffney, for instance. Luis Elizondo, for instance. Luis Elizondo was involved. He was there on the scene during this. He was with Robert Bigelow's company. And even Mike Gold, who was at the previous hearing that you mentioned, he had a connection to this at the time. All of these, and I have no doubt if they were interviewed, they would be able to come up with yet more names who had connections. To me, that is an incredibly potentially powerful story that is just sitting there right in front of us begging for a hearing. And then there were other stories and things that came out during that last hearing of a couple of months ago, which I agree were very compelling and very powerful. And yes, got no attention, no attention, while everyone was running in circles around the video. Was it a hellfire missile? What the hell was it? And what was this object? And back and forth. It's almost as if all people can really discuss are pictures and not words. They can't discuss text anymore. Again, I think that speaks to the point we're making around people's attention span, that you can watch that video over and over and over again in the space of 20 seconds and swipe off when you're ready to move on to something else. And it's much easier than focusing in on George Knapp's multiple name drops and the cases he talked about or Dylan Borland's case and going back to it and really paying attention to what's being said, how it's said, the tone of voice, the afflictions in a voice. I don't think that the general public have that interest. Borland, I'm sorry for interrupting you. Let me just say this one thing. I think Borland was the big surprise of that hearing for me and probably for a lot of people. And I just want to say again, he came across, I think, in a very powerful, very credible way. And I thought the account of his sighting was quite compelling. And the story of how he argues he was persecuted as a result of what he knew and has said, I think, is also compelling. His emotions came out and I think that affected a lot of people. Absolutely. And you mentioned, obviously, George Knapp brought up Glenn Gaffney. That's a name that's been mentioned multiple times in this topic in relation to it. Dick Cheney has just passed away in the last couple of days. As we record this, he is, again, someone else who has been named as a real gatekeeper in terms of the UFO subject, do you feel with the passing of some of the old guard, like a Mr. Dick Cheney, that frees up any room for progress in terms of real disclosure? Or is it like, you know, the old Hydra, you cut one snake's head off and two spring up? Yeah, I think it's the latter. Many years ago, I had a conversation with one individual. I shouldn't mention his name, but he's known. And in the late 90s, he had very good access to a lot of individuals who were prominent within the military, the intelligence, and in the UFO field. Anyway, I remember him saying to me that he actually had an insight into how the kind of international aspect of the cover-up was working. And what he discovered, this is his own take, was that the older generation were more in favor of liberalizing things and moving toward a disclosure. And the younger generations were less in favor of that. And his understanding was that because they had not made all the money that they wanted to make on this. The older people were a little more reflective and thought, well, we'll let go on this. So I don't really think it's necessarily a case that the young generation is always the ones who are idealistic. And I mean, it can be that way, but I'm not sure it has to be that way. And even, I don't even know how accurate this person's information to me was at the time, but I was willing to accept that he might have had a good perspective on it. With Cheney, I mean, Cheney, of course, is a classic manager of the U.S. empire. He was one of the key operational managers of the U.S. western empire when he was in power and influence during the 70s and 80s and 90s and 2000. He goes back to the mid-70s. He was friends with Donald Rumsfeld back in 1975. They both were powerful back then. So Cheney has a long history in managing the empire. So someone like that would absolutely not be in favor of any kind of disclosure. In fact, Grant Cameron, excellent longtime researcher about all of this, looked at U.S. presidential policy, talked about a time he was able to call in on a talk radio show in the early Bush years when Dick Cheney was vice president and actually got Cheney to talk about UFO disclosure. And Cheney just said, I wish I could remember this exactly, but it was to the effect of, well, that's not something we discussed, but if it were, I wouldn't be able to talk about it. But there is a lot of talk about Cheney even earlier when he was at the Bush White House, the Bush senior White House, a secretary of defense, stopping dead in its tracks, being dead set against any kind of UFO disclosure. The story goes that as the Soviet Union was in the process of dissolving in the very early 90s, there were discussions within the U.S. White House at that time as to whether or not a UFO disclosure was warranted. You know, it's the end of the Cold War. Maybe the reasons for this secrecy can go away. And as the account goes, Cheney was dead set against that. He was probably the leader of the anti-disclosure movement. If it's true, I think it certainly could be true. I mean, it strikes me as plausible. We don't have proof. So will there be change? There's always change. Our society is always in the process of change. The UFO disclosure situation is the closest thing that I can think of to describing the statement of the irresistible force versus the immovable object. You know, secrecy is that immovable object. There is just no logic by which those who are in true possession of this secret could want to reveal it. There's too much power. And there's too much, from their point of view, risk of instability. But it is an irresistible force, nonetheless, because it is just not going away. There's truth in here, a lot of truth to the UFO reality. And it's just becoming impossible to ignore. So how this is going to play out is really the question. You've got the old guard that is still clearly not interested in giving any kind of opportunity for this to move forward. I think what you're looking at, especially within the U.S., is a real power struggle on this matter. There are forces. You had people in Congress in the last hearing referring to this indirectly, like mysterious forces that are blocking progress on this. Who are these mysterious forces? I don't even know if the members of Congress truly know. But there is power and influence behind the members of Congress, behind the White House, in any era, and behind the military-industrial complex in any era. And I think they just do not want this to go forward. So how... You're looking at an empire, the U.S. Western Empire, that, especially for the last three years, is showing real fractures that were not necessarily openly visible prior to, say, 2022. I'm speaking of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which has shown a lot of fissures in the Western alliance. Serious, serious structural problems. And so you're looking at an empire that is showing signs of serious weakness and cracking in various ways. And I think that can create a sense of desperation and a hardening of positions among those in power. And don't think it doesn't affect the UFO system and problem. I think it does. So I think you're going to see a greater intransigence versus a greater insistence. And how that's going to end up is really something that we're all going to have to see in real time. I think I was speaking to someone recently, and I can't remember if it was on the podcast or someone else, and we were talking about the idea that toothpaste can't go back into the tube. And, you know, the truth is out there now in some way, shape, or form. And I agree the toothpaste can't go back in the tube. But what I'm reminded of is, I don't know if you watched the Batman movies in the 90s, but Batman Forever with Two-Face at the end of the film. And I think it's long enough that I can... It was with Tommy Lee Jones. And Two-Face flips his coin up to decide whether he's going to do what he's going to do at the end of the film. I wouldn't spoil too much. But Batman just takes out a pouch of coins and throws them all up in the air at the same time. And Two-Face can't find his coin and scrambles for it. And I feel that's all that's happening in terms of the truth being covered up, that you can get things out there, but then the way to mask that is just put so much BS out there that you have to wade through and find, you know, where's the real coin in this? Where's the truth? You don't have to put that... That's an excellent... Yeah, you don't have to put that away. Yeah, it's a great analogy because that's kind of what we are seeing. Years and years ago, I remember talking when I was a brand new person in the UFO community 25 years ago, I had the good fortune to chat about the cover-up with astronaut Edgar Mitchell of Apollo 14. I was able to chat with him about this once in a while. And he said, the thing is that this is a problem that is kind of hidden in plain sight. It's already out there. He said, all the information that people should need is more than available, but it is extremely easy, he pointed out to me at that time to do exactly as you just described, Andy, for lies and disinformation and misdirection to go out there and just to confuse the matter. And it's almost a situation where the government doesn't need to do censorship because they're able to change the conversation, to confuse and muddy the waters. And I think that absolutely is a situation. It's like we have now too much information to process. We don't know how to process at all. And that's just as difficult as not having enough. What for you right now is the biggest misdirection or misstep or misinformation that's out there, do you think? It's a good question. Well, I don't know if I'm giving a good answer here. I think in general we have, all right, so there's the UFO culture and then there's the broader culture. So the broader culture is one in which like, you have to ask yourself seriously, any observing intelligent aliens that are looking at our global culture have got to be wondering how stupid can these humans get? I mean, it's kind of ridiculous. Even entertainment that we consider to be serious level entertainment. I mean, there's so much of it is just propaganda and just nonsense. And then there's just so much terrible stuff. There's a new show on the Kardashians. There's another show on, is it the Mormon Housewives? Like it just gets stupider and stupider. And you just, there's no, like, I really do think it just lowers our discourse so badly. So there's that. But then even with the UFO community, even on YouTube, we're constantly chasing after the next new big thing. And you've got, and this does not include you, and it doesn't include a lot of people, but there are others who I just, you think, you just sense they're so sensationalistic. Everyone wants to get their clicks. Everyone's looking for what is the next new thing that's going to like move us to disclosure. Like everyone wants things now. And this is a long, difficult battle to fight. This is not an easy fight for genuine UFO truth and disclosure is not an easy fight. And I think it's going to take a long time still. And people get impatient. We want results now. We don't want to think that we're fighting against an incredibly sophisticated opponent or adversary that's probably smarter than we are. I'm talking about government intelligence groups to say nothing of the ETs themselves. They also have their own secrecy protocols. So we're dealing with some very formidable opponents if we want UFO truth out there. And I don't know if there's, you know, what's the biggest area of misinformation or disinformation? It comes out periodically. Last summer, the Wall Street Journal put out a couple of articles that were so horrible, so terrible. Yeah. And we don't have to go into the details of it, but you wonder like who the hell was that designed for? Well, I think that was designed for the members of Congress to dissuade them from moving forward on the UAP Disclosure Act. I will bet that that was what it was for. And I think it succeeded. It intimidated anyone who might have been on the fence. So there's always going to be establishment disinformation and misinformation coming out. And it doesn't fool those of us who've been studying this for any period of time, but it's enough to intimidate people who are not conversant with the subject that well. So I don't know if I can have a single answer to your question, but it's something that goes on all the time and it won't stop. We have to expect it to continue. Because this subject is just too disruptive on every level. This is the most disruptive subject I can think of. You made a lot of really interesting points there, Richard, but I'm going to bring in something I was going to ask you about later and we touched on it before I hit record. The whole 3i Atlas situation, I've seen people on various platforms of various different genres create content daily updating us on 3i Atlas. Now, I don't see that there is any content or any substantial information that you could put out daily shows without making things up or being wildly speculative. Yeah. And it's a shame that I think in this, and it's just not to my taste, but there's clearly hundreds of thousands of people who like that kind of stuff. but it's going to come out that this object for me is a comet. It's got some anomalous features, but that's because it's only the third ever interstellar comet that's come in. We're trying to, you know, I use the analogy, I like analogies, people know this, that if you got off a flight, so I landed in Milan last week and if I get off the flight and I see two huge grotesque men massively overweight riding mopeds and I decide based on seeing those two men, everyone in Italy is hugely grotesquely overweight and rides mopeds. That's kind of what a lot of folks are doing with the whole 3i Atlas situation. It's the third of these things. We don't know that this is actually quite common for whatever this object is and where it's come from. I've seen a lot of folks break down quite scientifically even for a layman like me to understand why the object has gathered speed as it's past the sun. It's not heading towards the earth. It's not made any unique moves. It's just the chemical composition of it as to why it changes colour. Yes, there are some anomalies but that's where science comes in and you study and then you know for the fourth and five iAtlas and six iAtlas and whatever people want to call them. But there's a disappointment for me where even folks involved in the UFO community who are jumping on the sensationalism of the iAtlas you're missing an opportunity to rationally pull people into the topic in the right way to say this object is likely prosaic however we should be studying it and that is Abbey Loeb's ultimate message as much as some of that's been lost in media and sensationalism and headlines. You can get people involved and say what if the next one isn't prosaic? What if the next one turns out to be something interesting? Will we be ready for it? Will we know what to look for? Will we know not to look for? And what we're going to have is in a couple of weeks or months some of these channels who have been really bad for the clickbait stuff will just move on and people will follow the next story like you say that they come up with and that's actually detrimental to me to the UFO topic because what's going to happen for the public anyone who has an eyebrow raised at this whole 3iAtlas situation when they find out it's not an alien spacecraft heading for Earth it's just another example of is it a UFO? No and it's detrimental to the topic and I don't think people either care or realize are doing damage to it short, medium and long term That's a good point I think it's an interesting phenomenon by the way I think I'm very much on the page with Avi Loeb on this the way he talks about it strikes me as very rational very reasonable he's pointed out there are things about this object that do seem very different very unusual and maybe things that you wouldn't necessarily expect from an interstellar object he's pointed out all of these types of things which may have good arguments about them or which may have prosaic explanations as you pointed out one example that I believe I heard from Avi Loeb was that it's coming in on our own ecliptic you know you have the sun and you have the planets and nearly all of the planets follow the same basic ecliptic so the same basic level you don't have them going in all different directions by and large and so this thing's coming in but it seems to me that most astronomical objects might come in on the ecliptic because I'm going to take a guess I could be wrong here that our solar system itself is on the same ecliptic as the galaxy Milky Way galaxy is kind of a flattened disk and maybe maybe there's just more debris that's going to be close to our plane on the galaxy so you might expect an interstellar object coming in on our solar system's ecliptic I could be totally wrong about our solar system's ecliptic being the same as our galaxies but I'm just going to take a guess it's probably similar maybe if I'm wrong someone can tell me in the comments but I guess a galactic eye level because you can see it's within your field of vision as opposed to it being up above or looking down below it's just it's there within a reasonable range yeah essentially yes so I don't know there may be other things about this object that also are they seem strange when you first look at them they may turn out to be totally prosaic interesting but prosaic and that's fine I do agree you know there's this big part of us we want the answer to be anomalous we want it to be alien some people really do I remember back in 2011 so what is that 14 years ago there was a comet known as Elanine that was on approach to earth some people watching this will be like oh god I remember that and that was a whole big thing that built up for like six to eight months of you know we had enough social media even back then that people just really kind of went cuckoo about this one and there were people who were making the claim that Elanine was an alien spaceship and it was an invasion fleet like there were people actually asking me back in 2011 literally Richard should I be worried about Elanine and it just it was just it was the most cringy cultural experience in the UFO community of that year but every year happens and we have something new so I don't think we've gone quite as looney tunes with 3i Atlas as a lot of us a lot of people did with Elanine but we're not done yet either 3i Atlas is still on its approach so we'll see how bad it gets but look it's an interesting thing and I'm I think it should not be dismissed completely as potentially anomalous I have no shame or embarrassment in saying that I think it's possible I would say unlikely but let's just keep our eyes and minds open and study it as you say as it approaches and see what we can learn that's my hope that it captures the imagination of some folks who go oh what if this is something interesting maybe it spurs them on to watch Age of Disclosure maybe they go and find your books maybe they go and find someone's channel they listen to a podcast they buy a magazine and it gets them involved in the topic indirectly and I think that's something that we should be looking for a couple of things Richard though just to finish off before listener questions Eric Eric Davis has just been on a short clip as part of that News Nation interview between Ross Coulter and James Fox and James Fox speaks to Eric Davis who basically says that if the President of the United States would waive all of his NDAs and all his obligations to his security clearances then he would happily come out in front of Congress or whoever and spill the beans on everything he knows regarding reverse engineering programs crash retrieval programs NHI programs and the like and I wonder do you have if someone said to you Richard put together a three or four person panel for the next hearing and we're going to waive all of their NDAs waive all their security clearances who are the three or four people that you would want up there to speak and tell us what they know oh golly well I would like to see help put off be one of those people I would like to this is the people that I know no there are undoubtedly there are people in the inner inner innermost labyrinth yeah and I don't think help put off is in that I could be wrong but I don't think I think he's close closer than most of us will ever get so I would well as I said earlier I would like to see a hearing that features Glenn Gaffney Robert Bigelow and Lou Elizondo again to bring him back and others to discuss this whole potential the story of the transfer failed transfer of what could be tic-tac UFO technology held by Lockheed Martin and it's failure to end up in the hands of Robert Bigelow's company I think that's the whole reason OSAP was started frankly that's what it looks like to me but anyway those people I would say I would love to see how put off be allowed to wave his his NDAs to speak about this in an open way because there's no question in my mind he knows much much more than he's been able to acknowledge publicly even though in the last few years he has he's gone much further farther than he has in the past other people well I think a lot of the the OSAP ATIP crowd I would say Lekatsky I would like to see him talking you know I would like I would like to see Putoff Lekatsky Bigelow Glenn Gaffney for starters I don't know that they are the best of the best to talk about the depth of the UAP situation but of the people available right now who seem like they could be pragmatically practically brought before Congress and the public those are some names that spring to mind immediately yeah not unfair and one more thing then Skywatcher is an organization that I think really kicked off 2025 with the News Nation interview Jake Barber coming forward sharing his story in a quite sensational way we then got the longer interview that was like two and a half hours which I think was really important if people took the time to watch that it really fleshed out the story rather than the choppy editing of the 45 minute piece which perhaps moved too quick a pace for a lot of folks to really sink in and then Skywatcher gets announced as an organization they make a big commitment that by the end of the year essentially they're going to be able to I don't want to misquote Jake Barber but essentially that they would have the technology to bring objects in either mentally or via technical equipment and I asked Jake Barber the other week I'm going to stop saying I've been to Sol folks but yeah I asked Jake Barber and he basically said that they're still on track to deliver it might not be by the end of the year exactly but there's no reason with the 10 terabytes of data they're pouring through just now and the peer review process that they can't present something at least tangible and interesting to the public and I wonder what's your take on the Skywatcher story the organization and what they're looking to do I've not been able to understand exactly what they're trying to do honestly and maybe this is my fault so are they trying to vector in craft with a desire to capture them like at times when I hear this discussed that is what it seems like to me and I ask myself how could that be possible it seems like an absurd proposition like I can't think that when Jake Barber talks about this he means to say we're going to fake out these crafts lure them in and then capture them but sometimes that's almost what it sounds like to me so I've got to be missing something here now is it that they think they can bring them in like somehow they have the ability to bring them in you know maybe like Stephen Greer's CE5 protocols maybe this seems to be what it's kind of related to so you can bring them in and coax them into a kind of contact and communication is that what they think that strikes me as nearly as naive as the other outcome so I have to admit I'm unsure about how this whole process even makes sense and then you've got the whole question of the technology that they're using before we started recording we used the phrase dog whistle it's kind of like that but it's really a it does make you think of that like where we've been told that they that their program has a technological means that is nearly foolproof that can bring these craft in what is this so they're working on the patent they want to get the IP on this sure but does can it really exist and how does it exist are aliens that's what they are that easy for us to control we just just blow the whistle and they come and you throw down the net and you got gotcha I don't know if it's that simplistic that they're thinking probably not but I have to confess like I've not really been able to figure out how the system is supposed to work but I don't think that they've been very forthcoming to be fair I don't think that there's been a lot of explanation so it's really quite vague I don't know I don't know what to make of it it strikes me as unrealistic but I'll withhold my judgment because I don't have all the facts I think for me in terms of the dog whistle and how that I like to kind of war game out in my head a little bit and what would actually be happening the idea they're signaling they flick this switch on this box in my head I imagine and aliens get a message on their flying saucer to say oh yep they're shouting on is down there okay whose turn is it to dive down that doesn't make any sense to me however if you go into the right area for example the woods and you use one of those duck whistles or whatnot you can attract the attention of any kind of number of animals different methods perhaps they are summoning something that is more biological in nature but not human and there's plenty of them around they seem to be confident this area is particularly sensitive to these objects so for me maybe as more of a biological organism being summoned and not necessarily a craft of some sort I don't know that would just make more sense to me in terms of a technology because then for me if Richard you discovered tomorrow your own dog whistle technology that you could easily manufacture and send to everyone across the planet if we all flick this on at the same time are 6 billion of these objects going to show up above each of us I don't know how that would work that's a really good question I would think probably not right yeah yeah there's a lot of demonstration that would need to be done by this group and by the tech for I think for more of us to consider it a highly credible methodology to do what they say it's going to do I mean I'm not I'm not trying to throw cold water on it but I just don't know enough to say one way or the other it just strikes me as doesn't strike me as necessarily plausible I would like to learn more yeah and hopefully we do learn more in the coming weeks I think we're in for a lot of news happening which is great for a podcaster of course and for yourself or need to know I think there's going to be a lot to discuss over the next 8-12 weeks even into early 2026 Richard we'll finish up part 1 there if you want to grab a break or a drink or anything we can do otherwise we can carry straight on oh yeah I'm actually I don't think I need a break if you want to take a quick break we can but I'm ready to go no I'm good I'd love to get straight into talking about first off your new volume of your USO's book so folks are leaving us at the end of part one the new episode will be out in a couple of days time with Richard otherwise if you're on any of the paid platforms you'll hear this going straight through That's all for this episode of that UFO podcast thank you so much for listening and watching if you enjoyed the show please follow subscribe and leave a rating or review wherever you get your podcast it really helps others find the show if you're watching on YouTube hit like subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss future episodes you can also support the show directly and get early access add memberships all the links are over at that ufo podcast dot com or in the show description below along with merchandise and more don't forget you can also pick up a copy of my book atlas of unidentified flying objects available now in all good bookstores and through online retailers including Amazon big thank you again to all of you for listening and tuning in until next time keep looking up you never know what you might see