Stephen Bassett | UAP / UFO Disclosure: Latest News & Recent Hearings

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And as well-versed as we are in the art of propaganda, government corruption, secret keeping, and narrative control, it's gotten very hard to allow ourselves to get excited about the idea of any big important information of any kind coming out. But only the current president and his appointees have been bold enough to promise more transparency on the two biggest secrets of our day. How deep does the Epstein rabbit hole go? And what is the government hiding about UFOs? And while I wouldn't really hold my breath for either, we have every right to not just let such bold claims get glossed over as typical political election season pandering. And maybe a relentless pressure does eventually get us closer to the truth than we were before. But many wonder if the president even can know or reveal the full truth of either of these things. Well, when it comes to UFOs, few have championed the cause for disclosure with more commitment than today's guest, Stephen Bassett, one of the few true UFO activists and the only registered lobbyist for UFO disclosure in Washington. He's also the executive director of the Paradigm Research Group, an organization founded in 1996 to end the government-imposed truth embargo on the issue of UFOs and E.T., and through that organization, he also maintains one of the best online archives for documents, news, and correspondence between high-ranking officials on the UFO subject that I've seen. He's done over 1,500 interviews trying to keep the public pressure and interest on this issue high enough to matter, and was instrumental in the organization of 2013 Citizen Hearings on Disclosure at the National Press Club in Washington. In 2023, he also co-founded the Hollywood Disclosure Alliance, a new media-centered organization working to align filmmakers with true whistleblowers and researchers to try and pry the disclosure door open even further. It's an honor and a pleasure to have him here, the dedicated disclosure demander, UFO truth embargo activist, and thorn-in-the-side of the secret keeper, Stephen Bassett. Welcome to THC. It's a pleasure to be with you. Yes, man. Thank you. And just playing off that intro, what secret do you think matters more to the big machine? All the gory details of the Epstein situation or full UFO disclosure? Would they maybe even sacrifice one to maintain secrecy on the other? Hmm. Now you cut right to the heart of the moment, that's for sure. A couple of clarifications, right? Just so your audience can be cool, right? If they find themselves in the midst of a lot of people into this subject, right? Really serious. We're using UAP. We try to avoid UFO. It means exactly the same thing, but it doesn't have the stigma that the government worked very hard to attach to it. And I am a disclosure activist, not a UFO activist, disclosure activist, because disclosure is the prize that we've been seeking now, indirectly, directly for so many years. The movement that's underway is what I call a truth movement. Every activist movement usually can fall into a couple of categories. The civil rights movement of the, well, it's continuing, but certainly it was one of the great movements in the 20th century. The civil rights movement was a justice movement. And the anti-war movement, it's a little harder to define that, but it involved some truth. It involved some justice. But also it was primarily a matter of ethics, a morality. It was almost like a morality movement. So this is a truth movement. We're trying to get a fundamental truth from the United States government, at least in our country, regarding this matter of a non-human, technologically advanced non-human presence, which I prefer to call extraterrestrial. The government has lied about it. The government lies about a lot of things. Some things are important. Some things are more important. The question is, how is the truth that we are seeking, does it merit an extraordinary level of commitment, sacrifice? How truly important is it? And so forth. And the answer, I think, is now pretty well acknowledged that it is one of the most important, if not the most important truths in the world right now. So that puts it very high up on the scale. So to answer your question, how does it stack up against another truth movement, the movement I don't think is quite the term you want to use, truth issue? And that is the latest scandal du jour, and that is the Epstein scandal. Now, when I got into this field 30 years ago, I absolutely could not have imagined that as we get really close to the finish line on this 80-year movement that goes back to 47, that there would be this other thing kind of cruising along with us, like a sidecar. One of those motorcycle sidecars, you look over to the left, and there's the Epstein scandal right there. You go, what the hell? How did you get in there? What are you doing? Right? I didn't invite you, right? This is a solo gig. But there it is. And this is true of all history, in all of history, in terms of all movements. You are subject to the vicissitudes of history, the tide of history. There's so much else going on that your movement, however important, is going to be subject to that. And if you don't like it, too bad. And you're going to have to navigate that. A classic example, similar to what we're talking now, but on a larger scale, is that the civil rights movement was reaching a kind of major transition point in the 20th century as it approached the 1960s. There was clearly the potential for breakthroughs. As it's getting there, all of a sudden the Vietnam War just rises up, right, in front of it. And so as you're moving 61, 2, 3, 4, and so forth, they're having to compete with the activism opposing that war, which was intense. It was capturing the media. It was major demonstrations. It's about as big as it got as far as my life. I'm not saying anything quite like it. Well, we've got a similar problem here, right? This movement, which is 80 years on and near the finish line, is having to deal with one of the most dangerous wars of the, well, in our time, which is the war in Ukraine with Russia, which has raised the specter of nuclear weapons use more than any other situation prior. The closest we came would have been to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 63, and a huge political upheaval in the United States, which happens. Countries go through this. We're having to deal with that. And then the Epstein scandal, which I'm not going to put at the same level of these other things going on in the world, such as the Ukraine war and so forth. Well, that's my curiosity, is which one, UAP or Epstein, which do you think is a more important secret for the system to maintain? The truth of the extraterrestrial presence is the most important issue in the world today, as far as I'm concerned. And I can make the case for that and always do. So it is absolutely more important. But in terms of the strategy and how we're proceeding and how we can make progress right in the here and now, the Epstein scandal is more important. It's more important than the Ukraine situation. It's more important than a lot of the other craziness that's going on. And why is that? Because disclosure, as I defined it back in 2001, capital D, is the confirmation of this presence by the head of state, which I think most people would prefer would be our head of state. Anything less than that is not disclosure. It's not some pilot coming forward or even an astronaut. That doesn't count. It's got to be the head of state. Because if that takes place, everything else that needs to happen will begin to happen. All right. And that will spread. And you'll have other heads of state following suit. And in a short amount of time, the globe, our world, is going to be engaging this issue in a whole range of ways. And the world is going to come to know it's not alone. All right. Head of state. Got to be that. And it'll almost certainly go with, start with one. Given that, the Epstein scandal apparently is completely involving the president. Well, yeah. And a lot of other people. Yeah, exactly. A lot more than just the president, I think. But what I think is just kind of curious because the president and his appointees, you know, not just the president himself, but the Epstein file and the UFO file. We're very used to politicians just ignoring these things entirely. You know, we've come to terms with that. But when you promise you're going to release the two biggest secrets available, well, I don't know if people are going to go away quietly. And there are some researchers who say there's an overlap between the two because the reason we don't have disclosure is because certain people have been compromised by those who want to keep secrets. And thus, you know, with blackmail, you can keep anything a secret. And there is a curious element to that because it wasn't just politicians. Epstein was very involved in the scientific community. And who knows how deep it goes, really. But it is kind of interesting that there could be an overlap or some blackmail element to keeping people from coming forward. All right. I don't want to give this scandal that much credit. All right. It is it is clearly a monkey wrench thrown into the engine here. And it's and it's an issue and we're going to have to deal with it. But the fundamental issue of disclosure goes all the way back 80 years to 47. It's been an established policy of the United States government that this would be withheld for a very long time. It was a national security matter. A lot of very fine people who were serving us, both in the military and in our intelligence agencies, supported this policy for reasons that can be justified. So I wouldn't give it that much credit. It is a it is a problem now, but I assure you, it doesn't really have anything to do with the government's decision to to still not be willing to end this embargo. What I call the truth embargo. Right. Which means supporting the president to do it. Because, again, it has to come from the president. The president's got to be supported. There has to be a platform established, which has been established. But what it is, is a scandal of this magnitude is literally dominating. Well, it is is dominating a major portion of the media. And it involves key people that would be involved in the disclosure process. And so it is both a distraction. It is a distraction. So in that sense, what do you do? Right. What do you do if you're an activist and you're trying to get that one matter resolved? You're trying to get the president of the United States to confirm this. And it's long overdue. All right. And it's right. We're practically there. We're almost at the finish line. So much has been done. You've heard me talk about that. I'm sure others have. The list of things that have happened in the last seven years that did not happen in the previous 70 is a very long list. We're practically there. But the world's a complicated and a dangerous place. Now, there is a connection, though. There is a connection, and maybe you saw this as well, between the two in a way. One of the reasons we're going through this extremely difficult trying time in American politics, American governance, and so forth, is because trust in government, fundamental trust in government or the United States, right? And it's Republican democracy has fallen to levels which are very much dangerous, if not lethal. Yes. You know, it's like you're going to lose so much blood and then you just die. You still got some blood left, but you're dead. And one of the reasons that the trust has fallen is because of major decisions by the United States government to lie about matters of importance. And generally, those have been previously. We've had major lies associated with wars that most people know about. And certainly, the Vietnam has got to be right up there. There has been a lot of manipulation, and I think, a line from politicians as the election and electoral process has decayed to the point where what you have to go through to just become a representative or a senator or even a president is so massive, requiring billions of dollars to run an election, $20, $30 million to win a House seat, $100 million to win a Senate seat, and so forth. The process is brutal, and so the people that are seeking these jobs are having to push the absolute limits of truth and even confabulate to try to get there. So all of this has undermined trust, but probably history will come to understand that the truth embargo regarding the ET presence, which starts in 47, played a major role. Why? Because for the government to keep the truth embargo in place, it didn't have to just kind of lie once. Like with respect to the Vietnam War, there were a couple of significant lies that made it possible to escalate that war. So they lied. We escalate. That was it. You move forward. But in order to maintain the truth embargo and the ET presence, the government has had to lie every single day since 1947, every single day. Yes. Right? And in other words, why do they have to lie every single day? Because they're lying about something which is evident. It's self-evident. It's in the sky. It's flying around all the time. It's being seen. It's turning up on radar. It's being filmed with cameras in the old days, and now cameras are everywhere. And, of course, the public has engaged it with extensive research. They've come up with documents. They've come up with witness statements. They've analyzed cases and on and on and on, building up this massive trunch of evidence that points to the truth of the matter, which is we have a non-human presence here, almost certainly from other stars, but non-human presence. Now, I'm curious why you make that assumption. What assumption? From other stars. Because, you know, if we're going to say we don't want to use the UFO term, and I don't want to get hung up on terms. We want to use UAP instead of UFO. I would also assume parallel thinking as to we should probably discard extraterrestrial and go with more, like, multidimensional non-human intelligence or something a little broader because it's kind of an esoteric flavor that UAP brings to the new term that is used. And I think that same broader esoteric flavor should be brought to what these beings are because I don't know if they're just humanoid creatures from another distant planet because everyone who says they know the truth about this stuff says that the truth is so epic and so bizarre and so mind-blowing humanity couldn't take it. I think humanity could definitely take some beings on another planet, but it would have to be reality-shattering and very bizarre like these entities are with us all the time or we are on a human energy farm or a prison planet or we're being manipulated somehow and nothing you do matters. You know, it would have to really shake reality to its foundation. I don't think aliens is enough. Okay, look, you've raised a bunch of very interesting points, which I will try to address as best I can. The difference between UFO and UAP is simply a better useful terminology. They mean exactly the same thing. UAP and UFO means exactly the same thing. So the reason we swapped or we tried to move to that language is for the activist movement. In order to try to get the political attention of both the media attention as well as the attention of politics, we had to move away from a term that the government had gone to great length to stigmatize, to demean, to the point literally where they created what I call an intellectual ghetto. So the moment you utter the phrase UFO, you're suddenly labeled, right, based upon all the ridicule that they've heaped on it. And that just makes it harder to proceed. And we don't want to play by the rules the government has set or the game that they're playing. So that is what is there. Absolutely two different things. Now, I mean, the same thing. So when you get to the issue itself, the truth embargo has ensured that with respect to almost any aspect of this reality that we're dealing with is not absolutely certain. They've gone to great lengths to ensure that. Just denying it decade after decade. What are you talking about? There's nothing here. There's nothing there. Whatever ensures you can't get certainty. In other words, they've interfered directly into the scientific process, which hopefully they don't do in other areas of science. Right. So if you're trying to understand, say, quantum mechanics or any other area of physics or science or biology, you have a scientific method, which is the one of the most great inventions of all time, which has allowed us to build a society we have, which is that you go through a process of experiment and repetition and establish that something is true. Because it satisfies repeated efforts and so forth. And once you've established that, you move on to something else and you build a structure of truth. That is, you can rely on so thoroughly that you could actually, using science and engineering, build a rocket that can go to the moon and come back and not just blow up. Right. The scientific method is what built this world. Now, in terms of the understanding and any science with respect to the ET issue, the government has interfered and said, no, no, no, no, you're, you're, you're, it's a waste of time. That's all true. It's not true. Rather, they've done everything to undermine the ability to apply a method that will establish the truth of this matter. And so this is, this is government interference in science. It is not something you want. Every time governments do this, it never ends well. It is a major problem. And so the government is responsible fundamentally for us not being able to get to, how would you say, a almost absolute certainty about any aspect of this. However, 80 years of research has still been done and all of that research, if, if, if you don't have the bias, if you're not buying the government's nonsense and you can look at that research and you can come up with your own assessment. Yeah. And, and many people have people, uh, astronauts, pilots, scientists, and so forth. And so when you, when you go to that point, here's where I'm at and I'm not alone, but again, there are others that think differently. I believe the evidence points to extraterrestrial, meaning from other systems. Okay. Well, what brings you to that conclusion? What evidence that, what, what evidence makes you think they're, they're extraterrestrial? First of all, one, one is that the evidence for the alternatives is very, very thin, very, very thin. All right. I don't know about that. And, and again, I, I, it doesn't, ultimately it doesn't matter in terms of the movement. Where they're from. Um, because ultimately the issue is they're clearly technologically advanced. We have some of that technology. It is being sequestered. We don't have access to it and so forth. And of course we're, we're being denied that they're even here. Right. But if you want to talk about alternatives, one is that they have always been here. They've been living underground for thousands of years and they just come out once in a while, uh, and so forth. And they evolved here. I like that idea. Yeah. Yeah. But it made me feel safer, but the evidence for it is just minuscule. It's just not there. That's fine. I just curious what evidence you look at that makes the case that they are extraterrestrial. Cause I just think, well, I'm getting, this is a tricky one. I got it. You're going to have to give me some time on it. It's just no easy question to answer. I just got a lot of stuff here. I want to get, get, uh, you to, to talk about, but you know, let what we do get to it's a little inhale it down and your audience will be the benefit from that. And what I'm saying is the evidence for the alternatives is very, very thin. And that's important. So if somebody says, wait a minute, they could be living here all along. They call them, I think what do they call them? They call them, um, uh, I don't know what the hell they call it, but they're always been here. The evidence is just not there. The other evidence is they're from other dimensions. Well, that's a cool sci-fi idea. We see it in fiction all the time. It's great. What is the evidence that they're from other dimensions? It's practically, there's nothing right. Except aspects of them are kind of interesting. Maybe they're, you know, they're, they're, they are coming from something right next to us, but the evidence is very, very thin. All right. Now what's the other, oh, and here's the one I love the most, right? They're time travelers. They're from the future. And not only they're from the future, but they're us from the future. Again, evidence for that minuscule. Now here is the problem. If I'm the government and I have been sitting on something of this magnitude, and let's say they're sitting on the fact that they have, there's, there's extraterrestrials that are coming here to engage us in various ways and have a presence here, I am going to be quite happy with every other theory you can come up with. I don't care if you think they're time travelers, go for it, right? Get, you know, write books, go online, talk about it all you want, because it distracts away from the fundamental truth that we're withholding from you. And so people can come up, they can come up with their own opinion about this, and that's fine. But from the standpoint of the activist movement, it doesn't help. That's one thing. The evidence for the alternatives, which are all over the place, and people love it and they're in the movies, is not helping the movement because the likelihood they're true is very small. Now, what about the fundamental truth, which I believe we will learn, is that they are from other star systems? The evidence for that is pretty strong. Here's why, right? In the last, well, in the recent times, we have finally come to understand how big this universe is. It's big beyond imagination. Just our galaxy is big beyond imagination. And we now know that aside from the fact that there's more stars in our galaxy and there are grains of sand on every beach in this world, right? It's hundreds of billions, all right? We have come to understand now, and this is relatively recent, that the vast majority of all of these star systems have planets. And then we've come to understand that a significant percentage of those have planets in an air, in a zone where we call it the life zone, Goldilocks zone, that can maintain both the temperature range and the availability of water, which is pretty essential, we think, to life. It's a vast number. Okay, so the ability of other Earths to exist out there has now been established is virtually a certainty. The idea that given that we are no different in any significant way from other systems throughout a galaxy of hundreds of billions of systems, right, and no different really in any significant way from those that have planets and have planets in a life zone, the idea the only planet in 800 billion star systems that actually develop life is us, is on its face ridiculous. It is absurdist, all right? So once you get there, you go, okay, so clearly there's other life. There's other life in the galaxy. We cannot be the only life planet. All right, then the next question is, is there anything preventing life on another planet from evolving over several billion years to having a technological civilization? I can't think of any, right? Is there something special about us that, like, we're able to build computers, but billions of years of development on another life planet? No way. They're going to never be able to build computers because of some problem? No. Well, and so we have to then accept the fact there's other technological civilizations, and then that brings us to the third and most significant point. If they have developed longer than us, if they have greater technology than us, if they've been around another 2,000 years just beyond where we are, and these days you could say 200 years, is it not possible that they could have found a way to get from one star to another in a way that was workable, all right? And that's a more significant leap, but it is appropriate, right? And so if they have, is there any evidence that they are, in fact, from another star system? Well, how about this? What are the areas of evidence that is not getting the kind of attention in play that other areas of evidence are? And the reason for that is political and is a matter of, is an activist issue, and that is contact. Early on, I think most people understood that if you want to get the attention, even if you're going all the way back to the 50s and 60s, if you want to get attention of the media, scientists, or anything else to this issue, which you believe is valid and important, you need to talk about sightings. You need to talk about landing events. You need to do what MUFON was covering all those years, right? Sighting events, studying them, photographs, whatever, you didn't want to get into contact. And one of the things that maybe made that point strongly was that in the early days, not surprising, the idea of contact came up in what we call the Space Brothers, right? And these are people in the 50s that said they were having contact and they came forward and it did not go well, right? Because nobody knew what the hell they were dealing with. Right. And so it was just crazy. So we had to stay away from that. And we still pretty much have to stay away from that. If you've seen the hearings, if you've seen the statements from members of Congress and so forth, it just isn't mentioned, though recently it's starting to get a little attention. Well, let me actually cut in there, because I do want to talk about what you call a fire hose of information. I agree. There's a lot of stuff that has come out in the recent 12 months that dwarfs anything we heard for the last 10 years, probably. Seven years. Seven years of progress, yeah. Yeah, there's been some progress, sure. But yeah, I just want to remind you or let you know that you're talking to an audience that is made up mostly of people who have been looking at ufology and this question and disclosure for over a decade, probably two. And I think the biggest frustration is that we're sick of being teased. You know, you say the alternatives don't help the movement. What I think doesn't help the movement is the constant teasing. News Nation is responsible for a lot of it. Oh, we're about to drop a bombshell. And then it's, you know, one story of something that happened one time. People have been looking at this, have read thousands of cases of abductees, of sightings, of very, very bizarre things. A little egg-shaped craft isn't going to move the needle. That's not the bombshell that they think it is. Now, I know you got to get people to pay attention to your show. You got to get the numbers up. It's an attention economy, an ad-based economy. I understand. But it's the teasing that has taken a lot of people out of this. You know, your whole thing is as a lobbyist, you're trying to drum up support. You're trying to drum up interest. You're trying to get pressure on the government that's so strong. They must reveal what they know. But there are people who should be on the forefront of that that have given up. Because after two decades of teases, we're just sick of it. And, you know, I don't want to throw you under the bus. But if you look at your own Wikipedia page, it's full of, like, George W. Bush is going to be the disclosure president. Obama's going to be the disclosure president. Biden's going to be the disclosure president. A lot of people are like, stop jerking me around. Stop emotionally manipulating me. And I get it. Maybe it's just, like, your enthusiasm. Maybe it's just your optimism. But I don't think that helps the movement, to have people who are actually interested and engaged. Because some people don't care. But the people who are interested and engaged, to keep having them get rug pulled, makes them just say, you know what? Fuck it. We're probably never going to know. All right. You raised some pretty interesting areas. I'm sorry. I'm fired up. No, you don't have to apologize. If somebody gets into the activist area on major issues, you're going to have to deal with a lot of stuff like this. That's the way it is. Let me tell you, the civil rights movement, you can imagine what those people went through. It was brutal. We want the same thing. You know, we want disclosure. We want the answers. In order to really address this, and by the way, the Wikipedia page that was put up, which I'm going to have to deal with, and I've gotten a little, I've made some progress, but that was put up by a skeptic, one of the group of individuals in Wikipedia, that think this issue is nonsense, and they decided to go proactive. And they tampered with some other sites, and then threw that site up. That's absolute crap. It's ridiculous. It's grotesque, and I'm going to get it fixed. Is it inaccurate? I mean, in 2003, according to the Washington Post, quote, Bassett said, George W. Bush would likely announce aliens are among us by 2005. Two years later, July 2007, disclosure will come within one year. 2015, Obama is likely to be the disclosure president. I know Wikipedia hit pieces are very common. Half the guests I have have Wikipedia hit pieces. So I know that it's maybe not all authentic, but are you saying this is bullshit, that these are not things that you've said previously? No, no, I'm not saying that. Okay. What I'm saying is, is that I've done 1,500 interviews about my work, PRG's work. And so what this guy did is to simply go and look at articles, and if he saw something that he thought could be helpful to the effort to sort of throw some shade, he'd just pick that. Yeah, cherry picked the evidence. I understand. But the larger point that you're making is, well, there's two larger points that you're making. But in terms, let's talk about this thing that he's trying to make the case that I'm constantly saying that there's going to be disclosure tomorrow and whatever. What you will, if you were to go back and read hundreds of these articles and watch hundreds of interviews, what you will see is that I don't do that. I don't predict disclosure is going to happen on June the 5th of such a date, though I have given so many interviews that I might have gone a little too far at some point. And, you know, that's fine. I'm going to apologize. But overall, I don't do that. There are people that are doing that. There's people now that are putting out some statements that something huge is going to happen in 2027 and what have you. They even made sure that I don't do that. Yeah, and I'm not here to give you a bunch of lashes about those kind of things. I'm just curious when you when you say these things that you thought at the time that these previous presidents would be disclosure presidents. I'm curious. It's OK to be wrong, but I'm curious. Did you say those things because you were just maybe overly optimistic or did you say those things because you had insider information and they deceived you? No, I don't. I don't make predictions on insider information either. I don't do that. Again, I look, I'm going to answer your question. This is this is. I'm glad you're getting there. This is a very significant kind of thing that is. I, you know, an activist has to deal with this kind of stuff. It is not is not unusual. And particularly in this issue where the government is essentially trying to undermine and suppress and confuse and distract all the time. Let me tell you, this is not an easy path. I've been in it for 30 years. I can testify to that. So let me see if I can convey to you this. And it's tricky. The movement is and I've come to call it that. I call it the disclosure movement. It is a truth movement. We are trying to get the government to end a huge lie that is with is undermined progress and undermine trust in government. The idea is how do you get that? And it's very similar in some respects to the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement basically had a fundamental goal. We've got to get legal confirmation of our equality. We also need a Voting Rights Act so that we can conduct ourselves like everybody else in this country. And it took them 85 years to get it, right? Starting in Reconstruction. It's not easy. So with respect to getting the government to do something it doesn't want to do, you have got to get a movement together and you've got to keep it together to keep battering the door, right? That the door to their little castle and hitting it and hitting it until you break it down. So those were efforts to create that pressure. In the case of the ET issue, the matter was the government simply will not confirm the ET presence. We have a goal which is to get the president to confirm it. I called that disclosure with a capital D and I think that's kind of become a thing and I'm happy about that. You've actually said every president going back to Truman has known the truth about UFOs. I find that really interesting. I appreciate disclosure with a capital D that a president should come out and really blow the lid off the secret. I know a lot of people who are researchers in this field that they don't think the president even has access to that kind of information. This is a guy who's here every four or eight years and then out the door. It's the generals and the deep corporate world. I mean, what about that claim that they took all this stuff to deep corporate so that it wouldn't, you know, it wouldn't be under the government's purview and that the government, you know, is, you know, subject to certain laws and disclosures that corporations aren't restricted by. Well, that is, that is the case. The truth embargo is built on a very, very sophisticated program in which the vast amounts of classification schema and stovepipe programs protected here and there, parked here, parked there. They spent billions of dollars to set this up. And so all of that is essentially the engagement of this, of our country into this issue. And people have limited access or no access and all that. We know about that. Right. Are we putting pressure on the wrong entity to go at government if they don't have the answer? Well, again, it's one thing to be working on a program or to be spending your entire, your, your job is to deal with the ET issue. That's not what I'm conveying when I talk about the presidents. In other words, you don't, you don't have to be read in. You don't have to be given tour, regular tours of underground facilities to know that there's a presence. All it takes is one person who does, is in the know to let the president know that, yeah, that is real. That doesn't mean you're going to deal with it. Starting right with Truman. Essentially, what did Truman know? All he was told was that, yeah, there's a crash in Roswell. There's a vehicle. There are bodies and they are not human and therefore, what do you want to do? And Truman made the decision to tell Ramey, undo that, change that narrative, which he did right away so that we can then decide how are we going to deal with this? In other words, this, this goes right back in a way, I like to always take things right back to Roswell. It starts in 47, basically. And it's very, very simple. Something crashes. There's, there's beings in the crash. They're not human, right? Therefore, they're from somewhere else. So right at that moment, there might've been moments prior to that. There might've been some people that learned about this prior to Roswell because you've got a crash maybe that occurred in 33. But in terms of really getting into it, the beginning of it is Roswell. And so that's it. It's very simple. And so Truman knows that. Does he know anything else? No, he doesn't know anything else, but he knows that it's real. All right. And so right there, you have a president in 47 that knows it's true. And so I am suggesting, and I could be wrong because there's really no way to prove this, but I am suggesting that every president going forward at least knew that this was in fact the reality of things. How much more they knew, to what extent that they were briefed, we don't know. I think it will take a long time before we learn these things, but I imagine that every president had a little bit of different access, right? But at minimum, they knew there was an ET presence. And I think we're going to find that other heads of state knew that as well. So that is pretty much a basic statement, okay? President's news. So that's my response to what you just said right there. That's why I made that statement. But again, to get back to this other core thing, which is, it is the activist dilemma. And if you get in activism, this is what you have to deal with. And if you don't want to deal with this, don't do it. And that is this. How do you keep people focused on a very difficult prize, right? Like in the civil rights movement. Decade after decade, when the government is simply pushing back and saying, you ain't going to get that. So if you're trying to get justice as a person of color in the 20th century, you had to push and push and push and the government was pushing back in every way it could. You were up against the state. Most of the time you were up against the entire federal government, but certainly in the southern states, you're up against state segregation laws. It is brutal. And you have to get people to push against that and risk their lives and invest their money, right? So for activism to work, you have got to establish what is the prize? What are we trying to get, right? That is so important that huge numbers of people need to commit to it and support it. And the prize is and the lie about the fact that we're not alone and that there isn't a, quote, technologically advanced non-human presence that we have been engaging within government for decades. All right. That is the goal. All right. The government is spending enormous amounts of money to push back directly against it in ways that they don't even do in other areas. In other words, one of the most extraordinary things about this activist movement that requires a certain level and degree of commitment is the fact that unlike any other movement that I'm aware of in the history of the human race, the major authority basically says everything you're talking about doesn't even exist. The government in the southern stage didn't say, what's segregation? Everybody has access to everything. There's no segregation. There's no injustice here. Why are you spending all this time? Why are you marching? Same thing with the anti-war movement. But the government wasn't saying, why are you marching against the Vietnam War? We have no troops over there. There's no war in Vietnam. That would have been pretty interesting, wouldn't it? In this issue, they're saying everything that you were focused on, MUFON and all these organizations and all the stuff that you're doing and the research and everything else, it's about something that doesn't exist. And that made it unbelievably hard. Okay. It's like when you know your girlfriend is cheating on you, you've got all the evidence but she just won't admit it and you can't let it go until she says the damn words that you did it. Well, that's kind of one way to put it. We know there's smoke here. We want to see the fire and we want the government to admit they did it. But, you know, I'm not going to hold my breath forever but while we still have a little bit of time in the first hour because way more people see the first hour, I thought we'd get to this earlier but I want to talk about what you refer to as the fire hose of content that's coming out right now. Not disclosure with a capital D but whistleblowers and interviews and military guys going on podcasts. I mean, we got Jake Barber, we got Matthew Brown, he's a really interesting one to me. We did have a public hearing in May that didn't get a lot of attention mainstream-wise but I thought it was significant because Dr. Eric Davis was asked by Representative Eric Burlinson of Missouri who is piloting these crafts. That's the meat that I want to know about and he actually said there are four known species operating on Earth. Greys, Nordics, Reptilians, and Insectoids and Burlinson said that he was previously briefed on those races as well. To me, that is pretty bold to be saying at a public hearing though I heard this a decade ago. It's just like, well, what mouth does it come out of? You know, so sometimes I think we put too much emphasis on that it has to come from the top down because it may never but I want you to tell us a little bit about having been in this for so long as long as anybody. What has come out so far this year that has really kept the charge alive because you can get burnout on this issue. What is the most exciting stuff we've heard so far this year? All right. Let's define your fire hose first. I don't call it a fire hose but what I have said is that we hit an inflection point in 2017 and that inflection point you could define it as the emergence of the To the Stars Academy but frankly it was in fact what members of that group did shortly thereafter and that is provide stories that put the New York Times into this issue in a major way and those stories were published in December of 2017. Another tease and fizzle out. No, I would disagree but let me just take a larger point. For the sake of getting to the good stuff. Yeah. So that was the inflection point and from that point forward there has been a study of progress in this issue that we've never seen like we've never seen and it has taken us to where we are right now which is we're closer to disclosure than we've ever been as far as I'm concerned and that's you know we could spend a couple of hours talking about all the reasons for that but nevertheless seven is an extraordinary seven years but let me make one key point. One of the reasons that those gentlemen and one lady came forward as part of the Stew of the Stars Academy one of the reasons that and these people will all their careers was in the military intelligence complex right? They were part of the inside for sure and they come forward some risk retirement now they're not doing this while they're under the payroll of the government you had you had former CIA you know top people and so forth like semi-van whatever one of the reasons they made the decision and came to come forward to do what and launch what has now led to this seven years was all of the effort of all of the researchers and some activists all of the people mostly you know these are basically regular citizens the previous 70 going all the way back to 47 from Keough on forward right? And Heine and McDonnell huge effort for 70 years to try to get to a point where these people who have worked inside the military intelligence community have their credentials could come forward and take this to the next level the sacrifice the crap that they went through the demeaning all of that having to live in the intellectual ghetto that the government has built they made it possible for those people to come forward and so when you talk about you know people getting burned out and they don't like to be teased all I can say is I get it right? but look the people that are upset about being teased are not the ones that have put in the work it took 70 years to get us to that point this is not easy this will be looked at and hit by history is one of the most extraordinary activist movements ever right? that finally led us to a point that is one of the most important events in all of human history and that is disclosure now once we crossed that inflection point things started to pick up and more and more people started getting in and we started to see it expanding we were able to penetrate the media at a level never before finally got the issue right into congress started getting members of congress addressing it speaking publicly we got four tranches of legislation prior to then there had never been a single act of legislation we've had nine or ten hearings most of some of which are briefings but two full-on hearings prior to that we'd only had two small hearings in the 1960s which were really not significant though we're glad we had them took 53 years to get to the next one right 55 so you had four hearings media exploded in the last seven years I have put up on my media archive on my website 7,000 media articles triage from you know small and fluff and stuff you know 7,000 legitimate mainstream media articles in just the last seven years right someone could go read them all and if you start in 2017 and read these articles you can literally see the development of this whole thing coming out of the media itself yes it is an impressive archive I love spending time on the Paradigm Research Group's website I actually have a couple questions about some things I found there but just since the beginning of this year what has disclosure done for you lately what have you been excited by in terms of what has come out we had the hearing in May maybe something there any of the various whistleblowers that are talking now because we know about Grush we know about these things to the Stars Academy this is years ago since the beginning of this year has anything really charged you up that you've heard from a whistleblower oh of course well let's hear that 2025 well we ended 2024 on an interesting note and that was the November 13th hearing that Mace held there was the November 13th hearing and then in May we had the UAP Disclosure Fund held a substantial briefing up on the hill and that is when Eric Davis asked by Eric Burleson about ET types came out right and said it right and so from the standpoint of the history of this issue nobody has ever while sitting in a chair in a House Congressional office building right and not just anybody but somebody with a substantial history and credentials extraterrestrials in this issue in this field having worked for numerous government programs no one had ever turned to a member of Congress and said there are four types of extraterrestrials yeah right and it's on camera being live stream all right in other words if you got into this issue as an activist in 1947 you were going to have to wait 77 years to be in the room and see that happening I understood how important that was other people the people that are new to this issue maybe okay what else you got that's part of the game right if you're trying to get something done in activism you're trying to make progress and as you make progress you're dealing with a population which is increasingly pretty much it's like yeah sure of course right what's the big deal let's get going here right they're new to the thing they don't care about the history what have you got for me today they don't have an appreciation I get it well my point was more to ask you to try to get to the fact that we're talking to a lot of people who have been interested in the past and given up not new to the issue but have been into it and given up and so I'm trying to get you to give us some examples of why they should be reengaged with this issue why this is different this time and let me help you out I mean I do think the four races it's hard to beat that insectoids are out there reptilians are out there you know someone called David Icke obviously he's been talking about that for a long time but Matthew Brown's testimony very very interesting I shouldn't say testimony I should say his interview on a podcast with George Knapp and Jeremy Corbell not exactly testimony but this thing where he's talking about immaculate constellation he does this three-part interview and then afterwards he goes on this Twitter rant at Elon Musk with some really curious imagery now earlier you said the evidence for alternatives to the fact that they're aliens from another planet is thin I'm not so sure it's thin any evidence is thin if you don't look at it but Matthew Brown tweeted these pictures of the Enochian language wheel and the word Logath which refers to the Liber Logath known as the book of the speech of God a magical grimoire received from the Enochian angels that John D. and Edward Kelly were channeling in the 1580s even the name Immaculate Constellation has like a religiosity to it but I would expect someone in your position to want to follow up on that and say why is this guy who George Knapp and Jeremy Corbell have decided is a worthy whistleblower to do a three-part interview with why is he tweeting about grimoires from the 1500s is there a connection it seems like he's suggesting there is but there never seems to be much follow-up on what the hell the Liber Logath is and what the Enochian language is because if there is a relationship let's follow the trail you know this guy laid out the trail I want to know what that's about I mean don't you find that to be pretty captivating okay I have a response for that I want to preface it look if you can try not to interpret my response as arrogance I'm not noted for being arrogant okay I'm pretty easygoing and I respect other people's thinking and views and whatever they want to do with their life and so forth I'm not interested in that stuff it is fine there is there are hundreds and hundreds of threads and more of them developing now because this issue is opening up people are willing to listen to it we've got we've got a massive media engagement with this issue like you wouldn't you can't imagine 40 years ago 50 years ago certainly the podcast revolution has changed that and so the in terms of engaging the issue more people are engaging this issue in more ways by magnitudes than going back in time which means that you've got all kinds of stuff going on stuff turning up here stuff turning up there that's fine right but in terms of the activist movement the activist movement that's what I'm involved in I'm not a researcher I'm an activist the activist movement is not about proving all of the stuff that may turn up or has turned up or anything else that is what I call something for the post-disclosure world in other words in a post-disclosure world when this matter has finally been outed that there is this technologically advanced non-human presence and we do have vehicles and we've done science and everything else and whatever else and the government is able to then allow proper confirmation of key elements of this and it's and the stigma's gone and now the whole world can engage it then people will spend a lot of time trying to sort through everything and say well is that true is that true is this person bogus and whatever and develop what we call a scientific consensus of the truth and the reality of it that's going to happen in the post-disclosure world it cannot happen now and so the goal of this movement is so simple it's not to prove whether something that turned up at skin rock or ranch came out of a portal or didn't come out of a portal I don't care at this point it doesn't matter to me it may matter to other people that are interested in portals and stuff the goal of the movement is simply to get the president of the United States hopefully first but it could not it could be another head of state to simply end this embargo where the governments of the world either directly or by going along take a position as government to their people that this is not real that there is I say real now they've accepted it's real but there is no ET presence or technologically advanced presence and of course that's changing very rapidly we're close I'm not saying we're not making progress but they still haven't done it and that is the goal of this movement and one of the ways that the truth embargo has survived for all these years is that given the fact that the government denies the reality of it it just opens a door for regular citizens to throw anything in there and proceed here and go there and try this and whatever everything is everything is possible right it's like in science if you didn't actually establish a truth of a particular area of science say a certain area of quantum mechanics until then every theory is in play have a theory look at it it hasn't been proved take a shot if we ran science that way we would be living in caves right now and so they have prevented that people are going to do it they're going to pursue all these things because there is the government interference the government is deliberately throwing stuff out it has put out disinformation it's put out individuals with credentials that come forward with nonsense in order to attract attention they undermine the very process of our thinking and so right the goal of this movement is first get that confirmation to get disclosure and then deal with the whole array the massive array of theories and possibilities and so forth coming forward and the movement cannot be distracted by that I'm not going to be distracted by that all right who has the time so that's the difference well fair enough but you know this isn't just anybody this is one of those military whistleblowers that you know you said Matthew Brown's not one of these military whistleblowers I'm not I'm saying it's not a question of who okay I'm just saying this is you know one of the guys in the category that's supposed to matter is insiders speaking out but I agree with you that the government lies and puts people out there and misdirects which brings me to the question of if your main goal is for the president to end the truth embargo how would we be able to guard against a limited hangout operation or a selective disclosure that steers the narrative towards some misdirection is there any safeguard for that or do we just take everything that would come from the president's mouth at face value well first of all we now have such a vast amount of information achieved through the citizen efforts and then the activist movement as well that it's it's very it's going to be very difficult for the government to get too too wild and crazy here they've got huge numbers of people staring at them through a microscope unlike anything the world has ever seen and so if you want to screw around there there's about 10,000 podcasts we'll be happy to take you to task but in other words the government either is going to come forward I say the government we're going to get we're going to get disclosure which essentially is a fundamental truth it's a simple truth they're here they're not here they're here all right now what happens after that in other words say the UAP Disclosure Act which has been resubmitted for the third time passes and we have this whole structure for getting information out and into the public domain as described now you probably are aware of it which is a very important development the UAP Disclosure Act and that starts bringing information out and so forth that's good but if they start to screw with it interfere then our job is to the activist job is to point that out and say well no no that's not good right and the public needs to express their views that's not good and push back if the government let's take the extreme case one of the things that's been out there for years and the government is happy to let that go on is the false flag all right in other words if you're interested in this subject and you believe the ETs are here then you need to know that the government is going to create a false flag they're going to create a holographic saucer that's going to blow up something or they're going to have one of their own captured vehicles or re-engineered vehicles that's going to blow something up they're going to blame it on the extraterrestrials and then we're going to have a new war with them and so forth is that likely? I don't think so but I will say this if some idiot somehow sells that in the Pentagon somehow sells that to the undersecretary of state or something or undersecretary of defense and they start to move in that direction I believe there will be huge impact a pushback within our own national security structure are you out of your mind and if it starts to emerge into the public domain you're going to have the public going what are you talking about? So in other words the activist movement right now is about getting disclosure but there's more to it than that there is going to be plenty of activism needed even after disclosure takes place and I call that the post-disclosure world and there are already organizations that are forming substantive organizations now that you wouldn't have seen years ago that have money and substantial board of directors that are actually coming together to address the post-disclosure world and so what do I mean by post-disclosure activism? In other words in the post-disclosure world now the activism doesn't turn to you've got to you know you must confirm the truth of this so we can all move forward together it's going to be how the information is being dealt with how the government uses this new reality to engage us are they going to manipulate it are they going to screw around with it there's also activism attendant to how the commercial world deals with it right are the defense contractors that have had this information for years trying to exploit it to make money that's inappropriate and so forth but right now right we have a fundamental job that has to get done we have to get the confirmation to the president which in the second hour it gets into Epstein and I'll get into that in the second hour that we have to get that confirmation and the activist movement can't afford the luxury of being distracted off into 400,000 things that are going to turn up right that's fine we're glad that those things are happening but do I know if that witness is legitimate or that witness is legitimate or somebody that's coming up with an interdimensional time travel faring no I'm not time for that can't do it and with respect to the people what is important about Grush in that this is he's not just anybody that came forward he comes forward with a whistleblower account that has substantial backing to it he comes forward under oath in a hearing right the first hearing since 1968 he takes an oath it's under it's being filmed it's in the congress it isn't just a Grush thing it's not just about Grush it's about the entire context of it and so let's just make the clear statement that a lot of these other people that are coming forward are interesting but they haven't given testimony under oath on camera to a committee of congress so that's why Grush is very very important it doesn't mean that some other witnesses is less important it just means that Grush has become a major factor in the activist process because he took the very dangerous and difficult role of being a true whistleblower most of them are not whistleblowers he took the hits he took the threats he came forward he did what he had to do and he is going to be a national hero he should be and so I would single him out that doesn't mean I demean anybody else but he again is someone who doesn't have first hand knowledge he heard from a guy who saw some stuff I like David Grush I like that he came out but when it comes to people who give their testimony to congress they're selected you know a lot of people have great testimony and don't get the opportunity to get that stage so if you were going to try to deceive you would just carefully select people who were outside enough like David Grush is to still not really confirm or deny very much and be vague enough to be able to control the narrative even still which is what I think kind of happens there you know and I just wanted to throw this out because you know you said that you're an activist not a researcher I respect that that's fine we all have a role to play but isn't it only by doing the deep dive into the full scope of that research that you can even assess if official disclosure is truthful or deceptive isn't it isn't it having the the knowledge of the greater corpus of ufology and high strangeness and interactions and abductees isn't it knowing all that stuff the barometer by which you can actually assess that if the president is being truthful if you were to get your disclosure moment that you seek you have to know that other stuff to even properly assess the disclosure okay look we need to do more interviews because you are one of the few people that I have interviewed with now and I've done a lot it really pushes and tries to get into stuff and bring up the issues in an intense way I love this we need to do more of this and let me acknowledge this is not a simple subject right and so I need to be grilled like this more it will sharpen me up because I'm getting of an age where it's a little harder to stay sharp all the time now let me answer your question the understanding what we what the understanding that we do have of this phenomena comes from the work of hundreds and hundreds of well maybe thousands of people who have done research over the last 70 years and so as we try to address it it's not like well you know you've got to know everything that all of these thousands of people have done you know and you have to be no no you rely on that research right that research in other words I try to assess the research has been done what's helpful what's not helpful as I consider the activist process but overall that research has been done and it's pretty good but the government denies the issue so so what okay but I get the point the thing that I think is important to convey about David Grush is of course as I indicated the fact who he was and so forth the fact that he testified before Congress under oath with respect to the fundamental story is this David Grush was working for Arrow and I think carried over to the task force that was his job he was involved in dealing with this issue assigned to do that as part of the organization set up by the way which is very significant right another example of how extraordinary the progress we've made in the last seven years and so while he is in that capacity he is appropriately contacted by people who are first hand to this issue inside and given information is pretty striking pretty astounding and he then conveyed that information on to I believe it was some of the Senate intel staff which as you know they were involved in legislation so forth well and good but he started having a problem there were those apparently that were not happy about that he starts getting harassed possibly even early threats we don't know all the details one day they'll come out and so he's not happy about this and so he he did what you're supposed to do he took this matter to the inspector general of the intelligence whose job is to deal specifically with these kinds of things and other matters and so he had to go to the inspector general's office and say okay this is what I provided this is the information I provided I'm getting these kinds of problems I'm being harassed I need to this addressed so what people can show up with all kinds of claims does that mean they're going to get redress well when he walked in the door he had the previous and first inspector general intelligence McCullough Charles McCullough as his representative that's how significant that was and so not surprisingly he got redress in other words there was an attempt to stop that harassment now here is what's very important for that to happen right he had to give all that information to the inspector general exactly what he was told the same information that he then revealed with limitations and maybe more because under oath there were things still he was limited in saying in that hearing but not limited in terms of dealing with the inspector general of the intelligence committee and so he provided all that information and that had to be verified and so I'm going to suggest right that the inspector general's office had to go to those first-hand witnesses and confirm that they had told him this and then the inspector general's office then decides okay right you you deserve to dress a redress somebody doesn't like the fact that that extraordinary information came to you and you passed it on appropriately too bad and so he got redressed but it wasn't enough this is a big deal as I think people can understand anybody that knows anything about this issue knows that what grush did at that particular time when he came forward on June the 5th of 2013 with the interview with Ross Colthart followed with an article in the debrief that that was a true whistleblower event the most significant one in the history of this issue it changed everything and led ultimately to that hearing and so the inspector general has the first-hand information from those people that contacted grush all right so this isn't just second-hand stuff some guy deciding yeah you know I think I'm gonna you know I think I know something I'm gonna pass it on no and so all of that confirms grush is the major witness here he did he did he did a wonderful very important thing he is a hero right and he triggered a lot what he triggered was pushback yes I would not denigrate grush because you can't control what experiences you have and don't have it's not grush's fault but I'm saying people who've been looking at this for decades are a little sick of being hyped up to hear from just another person who never saw an alien and never saw a craft he hasn't seen anything it's not his fault you can't control what you can see I'm just saying there are people who have seen bodies they say people who have seen crafts there's probably a million witnesses that are regular citizen experiencers of pretty regular frequency sometimes we don't get them in front of government we get the guy who heard from someone else I'm not saying it's his fault because again you can't control what you experience but you have to understand the frustration from people who are getting excited about such things only to hear oh here's another guy did you see a body well no did you see a craft well no did you see any tech that would be non-human well no I didn't but I know a guy who did well where the fuck is that guy get that guy in the room you know I'm it's not your fault either but this is the frustration that we have like life is short I'm 40 years old now I've been looking at this stuff since the third grade I'm gonna die in a couple decades and I don't know how much further we'll be you got to feel the same way you spent your whole life on this look no I haven't I've spent 30 years look the people that want this and want that all I can say is get involved get into this do what you can do join the activist movement support some of the organizations whatever that's what you want go get it right but it's easy to demand hey I want it this way I want it that way why aren't you doing this I want to give it serve it up I want dinner I want to be I want to be served at 7am I want a certain kind of meal whatever the hell no I I get it they're frustrated I can't invest much in that all right the government wants them to be frustrated it's gone to great lengths to frustrate the hell out of them but let me get back to crush he's not just somebody right I'm saying that we know enough to know that what he came forward was second-hand testimony that was confirmed by high-level people in the intelligence community that talked to the first-hand people now yeah we would love to have those first-hand people working on the craft right that initially approached grush to come in and testify under oath but we also kind of know why that can happen right now and so again again people look look well let me go further let's don't talk about the the disaffected public that is tired of getting pieces of this information and wants it now but some of which have never invested one minute of their life and trying to get this done okay it's out of our hands Stephen it's out of our hands like so many issues you vote for one guy on the left or the right team red team blue but it's really out of our hands but I appreciate your dedication to the issue I hope we are near the finish line I hope being near the finish line doesn't mean another decade I hope it really means this presidency this is it you know we can't keep kicking the can down the road but either way let the people know what links you might want to give them what they can do if you want to mobilize them in any kind of way to move the needle on this thing and we'll call it in I could do 20 minutes on that but let me say this there are key organizations that need support particularly if you happen to be if you got into crypto early okay which I completely missed I assure you New Paradigm Institute it's a frontline activist organization now it's gotten some good funding it needs a lot more Danny Shan has been in this issue a long time New Paradigm Institute dot org support it the soul foundation is a scientific think tank founded by Gary Nolan a really great guy they are doing important things support the the soul foundation dot org check it out the you that UAP disclosure fund and the disclosure the disclosure there's three organizations that just merged right to pursue this issue particularly the political realm and they're operating now the three are operating under two two two names UAP disclosure fund is the nonprofit and I think UAP disclosure action fund is the 501c4 check that out UAP disclosure fund dot org I think you can immediately find that very important MUFON is is taking a bigger role and is is is embracing this situation now moving from I guess it's pure research status into activism they even hired a lobbying firm MUFON definitely support it if you can paradigm research group converted to a 501c3 uh non-profit uh last year so I'm now non-profit 501c3 paradigm research group dot org I'm looking for funding to hold the next X conference after 15 years so love to see some funding for that I need about 20,000 to actually trigger the the process and select the dates you've got the Hollywood disclosure alliance which is now about a year a little over a year old it's now got 220 members and it's all about trying to help make the content that's going to come out uh funded well-funded and and accurate and try to get the UAP world together with the film big shots so you can make the content and get a story right so that's something worth supporting it's also a 501c3 non-profit hollywood disclosure alliance dot org and this is just some right there's just so many uh things that are coming out and developing right now uh that could use your support it's not hard to find them just go online um but mostly support the members of congress that have done what almost few have ever done is take the issue on head head on speak to it and that's Burchett Burleson Mace Luna Moskowitz Schumer Chillebrand Warner Rounds these and there are a few others go out of your way to support these people they have done something that other members of congress simply wouldn't do Stephen Schiff tried to do something god bless them but they have taken it to another level uh and they're not it's not an easy road for them they're not it's not like everything is a great now that they've addressed this issue but nevertheless they have and they're sticking to it this is the kind of leadership we need from both sides of the aisle ready to take on an issue of this power and importance and not worry about whether it's going to be a problem for their political career and they're doing the job we need more members of congress to join them I think that'll happen and understand that all of this progress we have made in the last seven years is during one of the most difficult political eras in this country one of the most intense political battles contentious partisan times of our history some people say it's unprecedented instead in spite of all of that none of which really has anything to do with the UAP issue this issue is continued to advance year to year to year and so I'm suggesting that people that are frustrated and tired of being teased or upset because you know this witness is not getting enough attention or why is this fraud out there focus on the progress that we've made focus on how much has been accomplished and know that all this other stuff will get sorted out if we can just get into the post-disclosure world where all of the restraints are pretty much off and the truth now has a full field of play and that will make it easier on all of us though I know that the controversy is good for the podcasters and that's fine with me because I totally support the podcast world I assure you right on well hell of a pitch I'm sorry if I was a little heated up today I just this thing I've been listening to it forever and I just want more and I know you're not the guy who's responsible it doesn't all lay at your feet I can't hold you responsible for disclosure not happening but let's be a little more measured about the hype you know I just I want it to be accurate this time because I'm not going to get burned again but I appreciate your time and your dedication thanks for spending the afternoon with me and take care I enjoy it let's do this again I love this okay all right another one in the bag and this one with a legend in the disclosure space Stephen Bassett and don't worry don't worry I have calmed down now but I get it yeah I was fired up during that and the thing is I very much enjoyed Stephen Bassett's work over the years I've listened to so many interviews I encourage him on his mission but after we got about 30 minutes in and I looked at the clock and looked at my outline I thought man I'm really gonna have to get him to try to answer some of these questions a bit more directly or never gonna get through even a quarter of the stuff on this outline and you know I had a good path planned through several different aspects I definitely wanted him specifically to talk about for your sake so I try not to over plan but man he was just taking the scenic route on getting to answering some of those first few things that I asked and maybe the Epstein file analogy wasn't the best to come out of the gate with but I thought it was a fairly simple question and it's actually kind of deep when you start to think about it what really would they rather reveal if they had to reveal one what is a bigger threat to the system itself depends on what you think is in those files right both both files so I guess it's kind of an interesting one but for a guy who's done as many interviews as Stephen has I just thought it was a unique way to jump into things and I think I still do I just didn't expect it to be a recurring theme and obviously I laid a lot of my ufology frustrations at Stephen's feet which isn't really fair at all it's a mixed bag really because it's obviously not Stephen's fault that we don't know more about UFOs or UAPs I mean and government's involvement in the whole thing overall clearly he has nothing to do with why there's such a frustrating crawl of information but he does bear some responsibility for the overhyping and the repeatedly over optimistic predictions and declarations that he's made I understand the need to drum up support and interest like I said those who were interested or have been interested early have gotten sick of the false promises and being strung along and it's a fine line though I guess between generating interest in something and keeping that interest alive when there's just so much competition for the public's attention and overhyping something that just ends with more disappointment and people checking out obviously that's counterproductive to the mission it's really probably really hard to thread that needle so I understand that even if it didn't sound like I did when we were getting into it I do think Stephen is a character though I appreciate his intention but I just figured he would maybe have more to say about the phenomenon itself or you know what we have heard the details from the whistleblowers that have come out and how to assess them with the corpus of material that we have learned about for many years I don't know but if your primary goal is capital D disclosure then I think you probably should do a little more independent research that you have an idea of what they even have to disclose but he's certainly dedicated he's done a great job archiving a lot of great UFO history stuff when it comes to the Lawrence Rockefeller saga in particular I did think it was interesting to see that photo and be able to ask him about it directly even though I'm probably a little more skeptical of it than almost everyone I've asked about it I still don't really have a strong opinion on Lawrence Rockefeller I default to sketchy but I've heard many times that he was the good Rockefeller like Stephen said and it is totally possible I don't exactly like guilty by association arguments right let's judge each person based on what they did not what family they were born into but even according to his Wikipedia it says Lawrence Rockefeller was an American businessman financier philanthropist and conservationalist and he was the third son and fourth child of John D Rockefeller jr as a trustee of the Rockefeller brothers fund he provided venture capital for Intel and Apple and many other successful tech startups he was known for his involvement in wilderness protection ecology and protection of wildlife his crusade was establishing a conservation ethic and he was declared America's leading conservationist by Lady Bird Johnson in 1937 he inherited his grandfather's seat on the New York Stock Exchange he served as the founding trustee of the Rockefeller brothers fund for 42 years from its inception in 1940 to 1982 during this time he also served as president and later chairman of the group for 22 years longer than any other leader in the fund's history he was also the founding trustee of the Rockefeller family fund from 1967 to 77 through his resort management company Rocca or rock resorts Inc Rockefeller opened environmentally focused hotels at Caneel Bay and St. John the Virgin Islands some properties of which were later turned out or turned over to the Virgin Islands National Park but also Virgin Gorda on the British Virgin Islands and Hawaii contributing to the movement now known as eco tourism well it's a nice thought that it was just about getting people out in nature I wonder what the locals and all those scenarios thought about building giant resorts on their land I don't know maybe they loved it so I don't know he just doesn't seem entirely different than the rest of the clan he was the guy on the on the Rockefeller brothers fund for over 40 years whatever but in the time since we recorded this and the time it's going out there has been a an okay sized development I'm not going to start over hyping things now saying a big development but Senator Luna was on the Joe Rogan experience talking about UFOs again she's seen pictures but that's it to me that's just not enough to be doing interviews about at least bring the pictures if you're able to talk about them and you've had these briefs on them and stuff you know are we are we doing this thing or not basically you know I'm getting fired up again but I was talking to Isaac Weishaupt about this interview and I did not pay much attention to it barely skimmed it try to just try to just look at highlights of what was talked about well Isaac said she mentions Inakian so now I have to go back she says it a couple of times apparently and Joe just glosses over it so I have to go see what she was trying to get into that he didn't take the bait for but it is funny that I started with the Epstein UFO dichotomy because she's supposedly in charge of both files as Stephen said and of course Rogan talks about Epstein on almost every episode except the one where he's talking to someone who actually is supposedly involved in assessing the case to some degree or something a lot of posturing going on about that file but there was also all this stuff with Chuck Schumer last year all this posturing and I had it in my notes but I just didn't get to bring it up but Chuck Schumer put out some tweets in December of 2023 that said House Republicans are trying to kill the Senate's bipartisan measure to increase transparency around UAPs the measure I'm championing with Senator rounds would create a board always creating a board or a committee or something but they would create a board to work through the declassification of government records on UAPs we will keep working to get this done he says and I checked he hasn't tweeted about anything like this he hasn't used the term UAP or UFO since December 2023 feels like the Epstein thing when the heat is on one party the other party pretends that they're doing all they can to reveal it and they're being blocked by the other side it's like a little game they play where they don't really ever talk about it when they're in charge but when they don't have the means to do anything then they grandstand about saying how we got to get this out and we would do it if we could but we know that's all bullshit another thing Stephen Bassett has commented on a lot that we didn't get into the show was the Jersey drones he's convinced they were non-human and I was on the side of them just being some kind of covert mission but totally human because from what I heard they did use FAA light signals that were recognizable and common in that industry and it was just some classified thing but he thinks they were non-human that's also popular when it comes to what people are saying but Tulsi Gabbard gave an interview where she said that she still has a lot of questions about those drones but she did confirm that to her knowledge they weren't just over in New Jersey in that region but all over the country and if the national intelligence director still has questions it sounds like we do have a shadow government or breakaway civilization or she's being coy about it but that's what I think has happened with a lot of this administration they talked so tough on the podcast circuit made a lot of bold claims and now that they're in the position they're like well I mean you know I said I would do this thing but it's complicated guys it's complicated yeah funny how that works out but I think the disappointment is at an all-time high because the claims and promises were so bold again like if presidential nominees and candidates just basically ignore these things well we've gotten used to that but the bold promises is where it's like hold on now anyway yes I know I was a bit tough on Steven but I started by giving him all the room in the world to make his point and eventually I just had to shorten things up especially in the plus show I know I know I kind of lost it but aren't you guys also annoyed with all the we're almost to the finish line talk because it doesn't seem to ever really get to any kind of finish line the smallest micro movements are gushed over way more than they should be but I guess Steven is doing all he can do and I thank him for his service it is not his fault if you like the first free hour and are curious to see where things were going in the second hour we talked about various other distractions that might be getting in the way of UAP disclosure activism and public engagement why they're crucial to this effort the pros and cons of the current political climate from a disclosure perspective the involvement of congressional members in UAP issues we talked about funny the senators from Florida and Missouri my two common places that are in my history we just need a San Diego representative to get in the mess but yeah apparently they are all being assigned the files of all the things we want to know and it's just right around the corner although saying there are four alien races on the record is pretty bold we heard that years and years and years and years ago but still it's on the record now now and hear me that now I'm sounding like these guys who are celebrating the littlest movements I'm just trying to find some silver lining you know it's been a long time waiting for something to actually move on this anyway sign up for plus support truly independent and ad-free alternative media blah blah blah the higher side chats dot com okay enough qualifying for me let's go to the meetup calendar August 27th we got an event in Black Rock City Nevada at the Moonlight Collective Lounge September 7th LA at the Trails Cafe September 10th Dayton Ohio at the Canal Street Arcade and Deli and then September 15th going back to Gale Brath's Ale House Auckland New Zealand gotta love it great go to higher side meetups dot com for more details or to RSVP or to make your own local event and of course we cannot go until we've talked about the last show this is the one with Soraya Azkath of where did the road go it's been bouncing all over the place but right now I'm looking at a 4.4 a little rough and that's fine I just don't know what percentage of the audience knows of Soraya's show I thought it was higher or how many people have been listening to this type of content you know the paranormal stuff long enough to hear us go back and forth on various names in the field and not need added context because I would assume that is why the ratings are low and some people probably just don't love the paranormal episodes that's fine too I guess there doesn't always have to be a reason it's okay that people just didn't like it and they were not entertained it didn't get anything out of it fair enough but I do feel a kinship with these people who have been riding along with me long enough to now almost be the OGs of this space because the real OGs the ones I consider OGs are dying or they kind of gave it up it is what it is I guess I'm just an old man now along with Soraya and I had a good time I get why it would land in the sure that was fine range but either way we try to dip our toe back into paranormal but it's just one of those things we don't solve it so we can either talk about the subculture itself and the major ideas within it or just get more stories I like doing both but not everyone feels like I do and that's uh basically all we got going on around here thanks for listening join plus if you want more support 15 years of ad and sponsor free uncensored and uninterrupted interviews you know how it goes I'm getting out of here your move disclosure deniers UAP government gatekeepers and truth embargo enforcers your fucking move it's been too long to hurry up and wait some sort of big reveal should have been here by now are they really from space or you're still here I thought we were done well there you have it another great entry into the deep and robust THC archive that goes back over 15 years at this point peruse it all at the higher side chats dot com and take advantage and now that that interview is over and we're winding down I can talk to a bit more casually about what it is we do here because again you just heard or watch the first hour of a two hour interview on a show that has gone to great lengths to stay outside of the ad sponsor monetization model and instead opted to maintain true independence through subscriptions only over time I've done a lot to improve the plus member experience and tried to keep convenience and quality of life in mind which many paid offerings sadly do not do. but let's talk about some of the details that tend to be on people's mind when they consider making the leap so if you are someone who just listens to the audio as the show has been for many years we have the same long running THC plus subscription for eight bucks a month five new shows a month and the full archive no seasons or breaking it up in weird sketchy ways we have a great on-site player with all the bells and whistles you can download full episodes and listen offline and there is a lively comment section and a five star rating system on each episode page so I can see what plus members tend to like best we also found a way around the annoying need to put in your username and password when using the private RSS feed in many of the podcasting apps many of the podcasting apps now we have your subscription data built right into the link on the my account page just copy it and paste it and pretty much any podcasting app and you are done if it ever freezes up on you or stops loading or anything you can even regenerate yourself a new URL on the same my account page it's an upgrade that truly does make it much easier than it used to be and we even take it one step further when you first sign up for a membership we send an email that includes an email that includes that link again you just copy it paste it boom you're in and I know accessing the main show in an ongoing way is really just the only thing 90% of plus members want but if you do get into the website you will find some old bonus episodes and live events on the bonus content page the old cover songs I used to close the show out with as well as some of the new ones I've made recently in categories and threads including the best place to get a guest request to me people ask me about that pretty regularly but how could I not put added weight to plus member recommendations so there you go hint hint now in June of 2025 I made the big leap to video it seemed like that's what a growing number of people wanted but the fear was over being able to deliver episodes in video conveniently behind a paywall because it's a lot more challenging than it is with just audio though we did figure it out although streaming video does have a lot of extra cost to it go figure and that is why we added the new tier of THC plus TV for people who want that video without changing the price for those who don't really care so for 12 bucks a month you can get the full shows in video with captions and a nice word search and all the features of the audio player as well as Android and Apple casting from your phone to TV that's nice I also sweetened the $12 tier with one other important feature that has ongoing cost to keep updated and that's a clip genie archive of all THC episodes going back to the beginning and what clip genie does is allow you to search by any word and be served up all the transcripts of all the episodes that have included that word and a clickable link to start the episode right at that point in the show it's very slick people have asked for transcripts for a long time because episodes are so information dense and this was a way for me to not only provide that but make them all searchable with a system that provides everything a person could want for finding exactly what they're looking for with the hundreds of episodes there are all right so if you think I'm good at what I do and you appreciate the extra effort I make to try to come prepared and lead our guests through the most compelling parts of their work I'm not asking for a handout I'm asking for you to get twice as much of the content you already like for 8 bucks or 12 bucks a month I've used this analogy before but we tip $8 for all sorts of services these days without even thinking about it especially in this new world of the dumb tablet checkouts where they pre highlight 20% and make you feel bad for switching it to anything else and when you tip $8 because someone brought you a sandwich from the back nobody brings you a second sandwich I know ad supported podcasting makes it seem like it should all be free but independence is worth something especially in this counterculture field and there's no way to make a viable career out of it otherwise some people will say well what about value for value but I tried that first and big donations came with aggressive guest suggestions and that just doesn't work for our type of format though it may work for other formats either way the subscription model has not let me down in 15 years and I thank those who sign up and I hope more people do I try to make it worth it as for the typical questions I get that might help you decide or speed up your onboarding usually I get where is the second hour because unlike other shows I don't split each episode into two files because I find that to be inconvenient you've got to find the other one and then load that up and it stops in the middle and you might have to hear two introductions and two wrap-ups it's a little bit clunky but no plus members get the full two-hour conversation just as it was had in a single file I always ask for the promo stuff last so I cut right before that and splice it on to the first hour and that is how the free hour is made and I just strip out the rest so it still sounds pretty whole for free hour listeners as you just heard and I do prefer it that way and when you're logged into the website all the shows magically switch over to the plus shows so it's seamless and that's that seamlessness has caused confusion before but just look at the show length if you're unsure and know that you cannot be logged in and be seeing the free first hour episodes trust me I spared no expense they call me the John Hammond of conspiracy podcasting I don't say that other people say that so yes if you just signed up and you want to go back and listen to older episodes you do have to skip ahead about 50 minutes to hear the new content but once you are a member you'll be much happier with the full show another common question I get asked is if plus members have to listen through the website and of course the answer is no we have that custom tokenized RSS link that works with many of the podcasting apps and the site is built to have some nice tools included to make it easier and more fun to listen but it's not necessary Spotify is the only weird one to get plus on Spotify you must sign up through Patreon because they have a corporate partnership together honestly we know how the game is played I don't have to go too deep into it here but yes major corporations have taken over the internet they get everyone reliant on a handful of convenient platforms and then they push out the controversial content even though I try to stay integrated for your convenience as much as I can but some of that stuff can change at any time and that is why I always prioritize and maintain my own independent website but that's it really I don't want to front load the show with too heavy of a pitch because then it sounds like an ad when I like to say we're ad free sponsorship free and independent is a little more accurate but because the video is complicated some things it just seemed best to run through all of it and slap it at the very end of these episodes so your questions and concerns could be answered and hopefully I've convinced you that it's worth it sign up at the higher side chats.com or write in the show notes or the episode description again we send you that welcome email with the private tokenized RSS link right there so you never have to log into the website if you don't want to and if you sign up for video we are going to be sending the new episode notifications there too where you click the link and it logs you in automatically and you're right there to stream it so I'm doing what I can help me help you double your pleasure double your fun and get twice as much with THC plus and that's all there is there isn't any more