Latest / Safe Aerospace Podcast / Intel Officers Saw a Massive Craft Over Cheyenne Mountain Complex | Caison Best

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Intel Officers Saw a Massive Craft Over Cheyenne Mountain Complex | Caison Best · Safe Aerospace Podcast

• 0:00
  We got what arguably be one of the biggest briefs of anybody's career at the time.
• 0:04
  And it was, hey, you know, the invasion is happening in February of 22.
• 0:09
  As has been previously reported, all of the red balloons were up.
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  We knew that it was going down.
• 0:14
  The reason why
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  I remember that day of this brief was because it's tied to the UAP experience.
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  The group that you guys are responsible for is invading another country, right?
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  This is a Super Bowl that we never imagined would ever be a Super Bowl.
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  As I'm sure you have experience.
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  No fighter pilot wants to sit on the boat.
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  No person in our shoes wants to be back home.
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  And so it was a wild time.
• 0:47
  Case.
• 0:48
  And best everyone.
• 0:49
  Welcome back to the Safe Aerospace Podcast.
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  Thanks for joining.
• 0:52
  Joined today by Case and Best, a friend colleague in the UAP
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  space, a veteran like myself.
• 0:59
  You know he has his own UAP experience that we'll talk about here in a minute.
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  But he's also been someone that has not just been
• 1:08
  a witness but has gone through the reporting process
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  starting what year when we first report the arrow.
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  Oh my gosh, I think I was just getting out.
• 1:17
  So it must have been 2020.
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  320 23.0 report to the FBI and eventually joined
• 1:24
  Americans for Safe Aerospace as our intake lead with our reports.
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  And I'm sure some of our listeners
• 1:29
  will recognize your name and potentially voice,
• 1:32
  and hopefully they have good things to report. No.
• 1:35
  But Carson did a fantastic job bringing in and managing
• 1:39
  a lot of the workflow, and I had to start focusing on some other activities.
• 1:43
  Well thank you.
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  That's the first compliment I've gotten from you.
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  So and, you know, before I turn the ball over to you,
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  you know, a lot of the today is the 13th of June.
• 1:52
  It's a Saturday.
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  Yesterday the DoD released their third tranche of UAP reports.
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  And as we've been perusing that here today, Farrow Space,
• 2:00
  a number of those reports are reports that we received first
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  and ultimately with the witnesses permission brought forward
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  to various groups, including the FBI.
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  And you were responsible for doing that for some of the cases.
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  So you've been involved in this for quite some time.
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  So it's great to finally actually sit down and talk to you on camera.
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  So thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me.
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  You know, I think I've been very lucky in life
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  to have a lot of heroes along the way, and you are one of them.
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  And so it's cool to call you a friend as well.
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  And thanks for rolling the red carpet out for me today.
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  It was a blast.
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  Yeah, I'm excited for after this as well.
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  So yes, I am trying to motivate him to move down to Austin
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  so we can continue to work together. So we'll see.
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  We'll see if this this whole ploy works.
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  So let's let's start early on.
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  Let's let's talk about your military service.
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  Kind of let people understand what you did.
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  Yeah I'll share a little bit I think in my some of my prior life
• 2:56
  decisions will make a little more sense just with some of my background.
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  I grew up in a very nice family, playing high level tennis as a kid
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  in Middle Tennessee.
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  So I had a good gig going and lived by myself
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  in South Florida for a couple of years in the end of high school.
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  And I'll share that because it gets into how I made kind of
• 3:17
  like the first big split in my life, and I was just looking for purpose.
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  The military was not on my radar whatsoever.
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  I didn't know what West Point was.
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  I had heard the name and I'd also seen the movie Major Pain.
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  And I figured. Right up there with Top Gun.
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  Unfortunately, I don't agree.
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  But yeah, maybe.
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  And I thought West Point was like a school
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  for delinquent kids where like, troubled kids get sent by their families.
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  And that might be might be true to some degree.
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  Yeah. But I had no clue to was.
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  But I guess through a lot of serendipity, looking for some purpose in my life,
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  like many young men are at that time, the Army sounded like a sweet gig,
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  so jumped with both feet and kind of got onto the track to where we are today.
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  Crazy enough. Awesome.
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  What did you study at West Point?
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  So I was a human geography. Major.
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  Human geography.
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  Yeah, yeah, it's a it's an engineering school, believe it or not.
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  But there's a couple of the softer majors there as well.
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  Well, yeah, there's, there's a spectrum at the, at the academies that come out.
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  Well yeah.
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  Especially, you know, special operations and pilots.
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  You know, I think everyone has an image of what their educational background is.
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  But you get everything from,
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  you know, people with masters in physics to people with degrees in shipbuilding
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  to the proverbial basket weaving and everything in between.
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  You know, at the end of the day, to do those types of job require, you know,
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  the type of education you're getting at the school
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  isn't necessarily preparing you for a stand your career. Right.
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  And the type of skill sets that you need, or go far beyond what you do
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  in the classroom in order to be able to execute those jobs.
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  That's my take on it.
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  No, I think that's a good one.
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  It I did it because I was on a sports team and that takes a lot of work.
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  I wanted to have a high enough class rank to where I could pick
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  whatever I wanted to do in the real army, and I was interested in it.
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  And I figured, like, those are three good enough reasons to justify
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  not actually learning a hard skill, such as engineering or mathematics or physics.
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  And I think it's worked out.
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  It actually helped a lot in
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  in my career, to your point, in ways that I would not have expected it to.
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  We still ultimately ended up at MIT, but we'll get to that in a moment.
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  What happened with that Army career?
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  Let's kind of get into that.
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  Where'd you end up?
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  So I went all in.
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  When I went to West Point,
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  I actually wanted to be a fighter pilot at the Air Force Academy.
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  The only reason I got into school is because of tennis.
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  I did not have the background worthy of going to the West Point, frankly.
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  Otherwise, academically. Elise.
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  At the same time, the Air Force Academy coach was trying to recruit me
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  to play tennis there, and he made a huge mistake
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  by telling me that I was too tall to be a fighter pilot.
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  And, you know, being a 17 year old kid, I was like, hey, this guy's
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  been at the academy for 15 years.
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  He must know what he's talking about.
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  But little did he know, once I heard that you couldn't
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  be strapping yourself to a rocket ship, I was out.
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  And so I pivoted to,
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  okay, well,
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  the hardest thing to be off the ground as a fighter pilot, for my understanding,
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  I might as well just be the hardest thing I can be on the ground.
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  And so that was kind of like my driving arrow.
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  That kind of got me to what I was doing.
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  So I started off as a airborne infantry officer in the 82nd airborne.
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  After a year of training at Fort Benning, doing just the standard pipeline
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  for an infantry officer.
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  So airborne school, infantry officer school, ranger school
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  repellant out of helicopters and then getting shipped off to Fort Bragg.
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  All the fun stuff.
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  Yeah. It was. Fun, I bet.
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  What's that? Fort Bragg?
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  The best way to describe Bragg that people say
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  is, you know, kind of the epicenter for the Army.
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  It's a it's a black hole for airborne special operations.
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  And the what I would argue is kind of the most competent components
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  for those on the ground to include JSOC, Joint
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  Special Operations Command to include colloquially, colloquially,
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  Delta Force, to include Special Operations Command for the Army.
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  So use of SOC and then maybe 82nd airborne,
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  which you know, we were a little bit more regular,
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  but we were right there and it was a cool spot to.
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  Be very cool.
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  And that was like a three year, four year duty there.
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  Yeah.
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  So it was my junior officer time before captain.
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  So it ended up being about three years plus the year of training.
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  Yeah, we'll take us through it.
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  So that's considered a special operations assignment.
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  No, no.
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  So the 82nd would not be.
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  It's just 18th Airborne Corps, regular Army loosely
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  affiliated with the special operations
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  world, pretty much just because of proximity, I see.
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  You know, I would say it's the best of the conventional forces.
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  Okay. Yeah.
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  And people will say that I'm biased,
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  which is completely fair, but I think that's a fair statement.
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  Okay. Very good.
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  So you did that for a few years and then did you deploy it all during that?
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  Yeah.
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  Again, through just extreme serendipity, my brigade in the army was the only
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  infantry brigade that was slated to go to Afghanistan in 2019.
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  So a little bit of context.
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  The war, the writing on the wall was very apparent.
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  Administrations were trying to get out.
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  Obviously a historically difficult event to do.
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  And so we were on the tail end.
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  And then in my brigade of three battalions, my battalion.
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  So my unit that I'm intimately with day to day, was selected to be
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  the only combat battalion in Afghanistan, aside from the Special forces
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  battalion that we were attached with.
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  So the role was called AI Attached Infantry.
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  Really, what we did was we were the ones with the machine guns and kind of doing
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  the grunt work attached to Army Special Forces, who
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  their mission was much more with, like controlling partner forces,
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  dealing with Afghan special operations, trying to get them to fight while we were
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  kind of pulling the security and, you know, doing more basic infantry tasks.
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  Got it.
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  Many firefights out there, or was it too on down?
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  Yeah.
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  So again, just completely through luck, I found myself
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  the executive officer for the Special Operations Task force.
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  I tied to the ISIS mission.
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  So it was called Sota 20.3.
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  I was the XO for the attached infantry and then worked directly alongside an
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  excellent for the Special Forces company that was in charge of Nangarhar province.
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  So the best way to think of it was a completely separate battle
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  away from the Taliban partnered with the Taliban,
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  which is pretty interesting, but like classic special operations.
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  So so we were partnering with the Taliban, providing the Air force
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  as they swept through Nangarhar Valley doing the harder work.
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  And we stopped ISIS
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  from receding into Jalalabad, which was the major population center.
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  It's amazing how fast, you know, foes become allies.
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  It's crazy.
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  I mean, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
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  And that was exactly the case.
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  So the entire country were fighting Taliban and Taliban only,
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  and then in action.
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  And the Bala district and Nangarhar Province, we are partnered with them.
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  Wild. Wow.
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  And a world that I honestly didn't know anything about.
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  I'm just an infantry dude.
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  You know, we don't have clearances, really.
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  We go on missions and we don't really even know, like what?
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  We're there to like, who we're there to capture.
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  Yeah, I come to find out later that it's really nobody that important.
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  But you're really left in the dark.
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  Yeah, but yes, to answer your question, firefights.
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  Living on a combat outpost with 60 other guys.
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  And that's it.
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  Showers every two weeks.
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  The full experience?
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  Yeah, the full experience.
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  That's the right way to say it.
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  Did you get a nice vacation after that or what came next?
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  Covid came next.
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  Yeah.
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  So that the ice mission dried up in October of 19.
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  I did a stint at the Special operations headquarters in Bagram
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  doing kind of more staff work, not combat stuff.
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  Got shipped home.
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  And then the day that we showed up to Fort Bragg on Pope Army Airfield,
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  we got told there's a thing called Covid in your quarantine in.
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  So we did not pass go.
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  We did not get to see our families that were waiting for us after a ten month
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  combat deployment.
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  Brutal.
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  And we went straight into tents in the woods.
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  Brutal. Yeah. Can't even imagine.
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  There were I can't even.
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  Upset was not a word to describe it. That's.
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  I mean, that's bad.
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  I mean, and I you probably could call your wife
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  and I was a call their spouses and explain that.
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  Cancel the party.
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  You know I'm being quarantined for an unknown.
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  They were lined up at the fence
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  at the airfield when we got off the plane, and they could not see us.
• 12:06
  Oh, wow.
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  So it was. It was.
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  It was a rough moment. I bet.
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  But to answer your question, on the vacation part.
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  No, the vacation was quarantined, unfortunately.
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  And. All right, well, keep us going.
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  Where where where were you next?
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  Some of the work that I did in Afghanistan, in that staff role,
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  I was the future operations officer for the Special Operations Task Force.
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  So I was a senior lieutenant in my battalion, the soda.
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  That task force needed a officer.
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  Normally, it'd be a Green Beret Special Forces guy.
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  They were short at the time because of staffing.
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  And so they kind of pulled up.
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  The most senior person who was unemployed and I was unemployed
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  because the battle was over against ISIS, at least on paper.
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  And so I found myself into a world there that was much more compartmentalized.
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  You literally go into a building
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  or compound within a compound, within a compound that was Camp Alpha,
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  the Special Operations Interagency camp on Bagram.
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  And you walk past a fence many times going into the shower, just back and forth
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  for a week as paperwork goes through and you're waiting to get your read ons.
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  And then one day they say, hey, you're good to go.
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  And then you go into a door
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  that you walk past that you never noticed because it was just an industry door.
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  And there was Christmas lights on the other side.
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  And it's a little bit different of an atmosphere.
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  And you get read on to the information that you need to know
• 13:32
  to understand what's actually going on in the country.
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  And that was a very different departure from being in combat, not knowing
• 13:39
  why you're in combat to not in combat and knowing what's actually going on.
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  Funny how that works, Crazy.
• 13:46
  Like, it's it's truly like going down the rabbit hole and Alice in Wonderland.
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  The reason why I shared that is
• 13:55
  that made me recognize that there was a lot
• 13:58
  more going on where previously I was kind of worshiping the combat roles.
• 14:03
  Yeah. No. How much was behind the curtain?
• 14:06
  Yeah, no.
• 14:06
  And I think I'm a person who is fascinated by trying to tether myself
• 14:12
  to reality as much as I can, and it definitely sparked an interest.
• 14:16
  And that led me to,
• 14:18
  I would say, serendipity, but I don't think that's the right word.
• 14:21
  I think there were other forces involved to getting me into a role
• 14:25
  as an intelligence officer, intense special forces group,
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  which was a job that a hundred other people applied for.
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  And for some reason, I got it.
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  And so I made a completely different shift, completely different career change.
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  So out of combat into the darker world.
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  Yeah. And the intelligence world is a beast.
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  And it's a it's not a monolith, and it's extraordinarily
• 14:47
  bloated, like all of the government is to some degree, right?
• 14:51
  Any bureaucracy.
• 14:53
  But there's components of it
• 14:54
  that do some extremely interesting things at extremely high levels.
• 14:57
  And I was lucky enough to find myself in that world.
• 15:02
  And I think Lucky's honestly kind of in the phrase, yeah, yeah.
• 15:05
  Can you share any of the circumstances or.
• 15:08
  Circumstances with getting getting that, that one slot?
• 15:12
  I think it's just more along the lines of like, they're looking for a certain
• 15:15
  a certain people, and certain people have identified who they're looking for.
• 15:20
  And, you know, that's kind of how.
• 15:21
  The the holes of the Swiss cheese lined up enough. Yeah.
• 15:24
  It's like kind of how the world works anyway.
• 15:25
  It's like,
• 15:26
  you know, somebody knows somebody who needs something
• 15:28
  and they might know a guy, I guess. Yeah.
• 15:31
  And where were you locating during this?
• 15:33
  This was at. Bagram, that's all. At Fort Bragg. Fort Bragg?
• 15:36
  Okay. Like when I was out
• 15:37
  processing from infantry to intelligence, that process started.
• 15:41
  And did you stay stay there or did you go off to, like, a new duty station?
• 15:45
  Yeah. So I had to do a year.
• 15:47
  So I did a year for infantry training.
• 15:49
  Now I have to do a year for intelligence training.
• 15:51
  I went to Fort, which at Arizona, Sierra Vista, right on the Mexican border.
• 15:56
  Cool place.
• 15:57
  I enjoyed it much nerdy, so much nerdy nerdy than the world that I, you know.
• 16:03
  Yeah. Yeah, sure. I'm sure. Yeah.
• 16:05
  So it was a complete culture shock.
• 16:07
  Here's a guy with a master infantry badge.
• 16:09
  Arranger, screw arranger. Tab. Sorry.
• 16:12
  Good lord, don't make that mistake.
• 16:14
  And a chip on my shoulder.
• 16:16
  And now I'm in the Army Center of Excellence for intelligence.
• 16:20
  So it was.
• 16:21
  People straight out of school in some cases.
• 16:24
  Yeah.
• 16:24
  And I'm glad it took like we were there for a year, because that probably took me
• 16:27
  that gave me room to like, reorient myself.
• 16:31
  Yeah, yeah.
• 16:32
  Decompress a little bit.
• 16:33
  And then. Then where to?
• 16:36
  Straight to 10th Special Forces Group.
• 16:38
  Yeah. Yeah. For Carson, Colorado.
• 16:40
  Colorado. Yeah.
• 16:41
  And it was a weird time because we're getting out of Afghanistan.
• 16:44
  This is 2021 now, okay?
• 16:47
  We're getting out of Afghanistan.
• 16:50
  We're completely pivoting to near here adversaries.
• 16:53
  And then just like that, I show up and you know,
• 16:57
  the Russia-Ukraine conflict happens.
• 16:59
  And and special forces group again serendipity is the
• 17:03
  the organization in the army that deals with Russian aggression.
• 17:08
  So very busy.
• 17:10
  I will say this.
• 17:11
  You know,
• 17:11
  I've talked to a lot of people who have told me they've joined the military to fly
• 17:16
  and for whatever reason or had the intention to, I got the bug
• 17:19
  and didn't work out, but got to do some free, amazing stuff.
• 17:22
  That makes me very jealous.
• 17:23
  So, you know, I think he had a pretty wild career.
• 17:26
  Hey, I'm jealous of you.
• 17:27
  So it's it's mutual.
• 17:29
  That brings us to a great point in the in the conversation
• 17:33
  where we run into your UAP encounter does do not.
• 17:37
  Here we are.
• 17:38
  Time to get into that. Well. Well executed.
• 17:40
  Where would you like to start?
• 17:42
  Well, where are we?
• 17:43
  And what are you doing and where are you going?
• 17:47
  And what do you see?
• 17:48
  Yeah. Brilliant.
• 17:48
  So this is this is a, this is chronological
• 17:51
  and kind of the very next step in the story that I was just sharing.
• 17:54
  So in February of 22,
• 17:58
  you know, we had been obviously monitoring the build up in the in,
• 18:03
  in or around Ukraine, Belarus, western Russia, in the intelligence world,
• 18:08
  you go off of indicators.
• 18:09
  And in February of 22,
• 18:12
  as has been previously reported, you know, all of the red balloons were up.
• 18:17
  We knew that it was going down on February 15th.
• 18:20
  And the reason why I remember that day of this brief is because
• 18:23
  it's tied to the UAP experience we got would arguably be,
• 18:28
  you know, one of the biggest briefs of anybody's career at the time.
• 18:32
  And it was, hey, you know, we're the invasion is happening.
• 18:36
  The group that you guys are responsible for is invading another country, right?
• 18:40
  Not just like it's a big global. Event, but.
• 18:42
  This is your. Yeah, exactly.
• 18:44
  This is our Super Bowl.
• 18:45
  This is a Super Bowl that we never imagined would ever be a Super Bowl.
• 18:50
  Yeah. Well, you know, and yes.
• 18:53
  And in a world of extraordinarily high testosterone,
• 18:57
  people who want to be doing their job. Yeah, yeah.
• 18:59
  As I'm sure you have experience.
• 19:01
  You know, no fighter pilot wants to sit on the boat.
• 19:04
  No person in our shoes wants to be back home.
• 19:07
  Yeah. And so it was a wild time.
• 19:09
  And I just kind of share that to stress the importance of this brief.
• 19:13
  And this brief was, hey, you know, this is going down.
• 19:17
  I can kind of feel it, honestly.
• 19:19
  Like the energy of just even reminiscing back, back on it.
• 19:23
  And so on the 15th, we on the commander
• 19:26
  of the intelligence detachment for a special forces battalion.
• 19:30
  So I have more than a few dozen people under my command, and we get the word.
• 19:36
  I work in a skiff
• 19:37
  for most of most of my job when we're in garrison and not training.
• 19:42
  And so I get to get the call that, hey, you know yourself,
• 19:46
  your second in command and some of your best analysts
• 19:50
  go up to the group headquarters building at a certain time.
• 19:54
  I think it was 11.
• 19:55
  I think it's 11 in the morning.
• 19:57
  Yeah.
• 19:58
  If I remember correctly, it might have been a weapon,
• 19:59
  30 might have been 1030, but it was late morning,
• 20:03
  you know, go into the group skiff to get this update brief.
• 20:07
  So I, I get my second in command,
• 20:10
  I get two of my better analysts.
• 20:13
  So imagery from satellites,
• 20:16
  and I get one of my all source analysts.
• 20:19
  And so he was like a jack of all trades intelligence guy.
• 20:23
  And you know, it's the best people we have in a group of more than a few dozen.
• 20:29
  And we go up to our group headquarters
• 20:32
  building and it's like maybe a seven, eight minute walk.
• 20:36
  Our battalion headquarters is in a depression.
• 20:38
  So it's like noticeably below.
• 20:40
  And just to orient to Fort Carson,
• 20:44
  you know, it's a major Army facility with wire train area, but to the west,
• 20:49
  directly to the west, across the highway, is shy and mountain space for a space
• 20:54
  which is pretty infamous for like the doomsday bunker, whatever
• 20:57
  goes on in there, nor Add, but it's also a major facility.
• 21:02
  But it's a base underground and under a mountain, right?
• 21:05
  It's often seen the movie is right.
• 21:07
  That's classic, you know, concrete entrance to the side of.
• 21:10
  Yeah, yeah.
• 21:11
  And we have nothing to do with them,
• 21:13
  but we're directly east of them, about six miles away
• 21:16
  from the tip of the mountain to right where the center of our compound is.
• 21:21
  And the Special forces compound is a major facility inside Fort Carson.
• 21:27
  So it's like a compound within a compound with different colored
• 21:30
  roofs, different rules, different world.
• 21:33
  And so we're just walking from my headquarters
• 21:36
  to the main headquarters, and the first thing we have to do
• 21:41
  is get out of our parking lot and take a flight of maybe 40,
• 21:45
  50 steps up a, like the exit of a depression,
• 21:49
  you know, kind of like a I don't even know how, like an embankment.
• 21:52
  Little bank.
• 21:52
  But yeah, it's not a hill because it's not 360, but it's just a flat embankment.
• 21:57
  And so we're all five of us are going up these stairs,
• 22:03
  you know, pretty excited
• 22:04
  thinking about what's going on
• 22:07
  in our job and our career and frankly, our life.
• 22:12
  And we get to the very top of these stairs
• 22:15
  and just naturally in our field of view, just it's there.
• 22:20
  It's like I'm looking at you.
• 22:22
  It's just naturally there.
• 22:24
  Cheyenne Mountain reveals itself as you're going up the stairs
• 22:26
  and over the saddle of Cheyenne Mountain, a little bit
• 22:31
  to the right of where the crazy antenna array is, was an object.
• 22:35
  That was when you saw it.
• 22:37
  It was so shocking that it pretty much sent.
• 22:40
  I can I can speak for myself, sent me into like amount of tunnel vision.
• 22:45
  That was about the same level as like your first firefight
• 22:50
  where you're just locked in because you're trying to process something
• 22:54
  that's so outside your reality
• 22:58
  that it just it captivates your attention.
• 23:01
  You're all looking at this.
• 23:03
  I was looking at it and we're in a little cluster.
• 23:07
  You know, it's five guys on probably two steps of stairs.
• 23:11
  And we're at the top now.
• 23:12
  And and I'm looking at it, somebody says, what the fuck?
• 23:17
  Somebody says,
• 23:20
  you know,
• 23:20
  stuttering how I am a bit like, what is that.
• 23:23
  Clear to you that everyone seeing what you were saying that.
• 23:25
  Yeah. It's just there.
• 23:27
  What? Let's describe it. What it looked like.
• 23:29
  Like an Apple product thousands of years in the future.
• 23:33
  Yeah. You know, like how?
• 23:35
  Like a AirPod case. Just kind of beautiful.
• 23:37
  Like, it's well machined.
• 23:38
  It's well-engineered. It's good plastic.
• 23:41
  Like, the seams are tight, you know, like it's
• 23:44
  it's like a pretty object and it's, like, impressive.
• 23:47
  Just even though it's an everyday
• 23:48
  thing for us, it was like that with thousands of years more impressive.
• 23:52
  It was very large.
• 23:55
  Hard to describe the the size,
• 23:57
  you know, other than the proximity it had over the mountain.
• 24:00
  So we did have the mountain right there is kind of like a gauge.
• 24:03
  And it was pretty apparent that it was pretty much directly over the mountain.
• 24:06
  It was definitely not in front.
• 24:08
  And it was, I would say, certainly like not far behind.
• 24:12
  It was close enough to where you could see that it was three
• 24:15
  dimensional, you know, like a like a ellipsoid, kind of like a blimp.
• 24:21
  And you could see the bottom,
• 24:23
  you know, like you could see that it wasn't just a sticker,
• 24:26
  it wasn't just two dimensional and anything like that.
• 24:29
  Instantly I was processing why it was just perfectly still.
• 24:34
  And like, that's a weird thing to say because, like, this table is still,
• 24:38
  you know, like there's many things in our lives.
• 24:40
  The microphone still, it was like still beyond a level of still
• 24:44
  that I had ever seen as far as, like it just being fixed in a point in
• 24:50
  like not even the sky, but like dimensionality or something like.
• 24:55
  You just.
• 24:55
  Yeah, it's it's right on x y z.
• 24:58
  Yeah, yeah. Scale. It's fixed. Yeah. Fixed.
• 25:00
  Except the body of the object itself, which,
• 25:04
  you know, I hate to throw out a number, but it was hundreds of feet in width.
• 25:08
  If you were, you know, if you were holding your arm out,
• 25:11
  you know, like this, how big in your sight vision was it?
• 25:14
  About half a thumbs length.
• 25:16
  Half a thumb length? Yeah. Six miles away.
• 25:19
  Okay. And you know, we don't know.
• 25:20
  We're making an assumption about how far it is
• 25:23
  based off of your perception of it being over the mountain.
• 25:25
  There's probably some buffer in there, but I'd have to I'd have to do the math or
• 25:29
  see what actually works out to the size, right.
• 25:31
  For the range and all that good stuff to a little trick.
• 25:33
  But, you know, that's something we could figure out.
• 25:35
  And given, you know, I think a pretty rough estimate of the size.
• 25:38
  But this is a pretty large object.
• 25:40
  In relation to the mountain.
• 25:41
  You know, it was probably a few thousand
• 25:42
  feet over it, but still like close enough to where you could tell where it was in,
• 25:47
  in relation to the mountain in the saddle that is Cheyenne.
• 25:51
  It was really large.
• 25:53
  And you've described it in the past
• 25:54
  as almost peanut shaped or been shaped where there's almost an indentation
• 25:58
  on the bottom or it's not wasn't like perfectly flat.
• 26:02
  Right?
• 26:02
  I think the best way to describe it, and this thing is so hard to describe,
• 26:06
  and it's taken me years to honestly, like have the vocabulary
• 26:10
  to give it kind of justice because it was so far out there,
• 26:13
  it did not make like, anything that I could have come up with
• 26:16
  would not have been that, but it was generally ellipsoidal.
• 26:21
  I when I reported to Aero and I reported to the FBI,
• 26:26
  I said it was asymmetric, which is true,
• 26:29
  but it wasn't like fully lopsided or anything like that.
• 26:34
  It was more asymmetric in that.
• 26:37
  And this is a key feature.
• 26:38
  The whole thing was comprised of the same uniform panels,
• 26:42
  and the panels were
• 26:45
  my best guess, all pentagonal, but were all irregular.
• 26:49
  They seemed like they had they all had like a similar area,
• 26:52
  like they weren't different sizes
• 26:53
  and things like that, but they were different shaped.
• 26:55
  But they seemed like there were all pentagons
• 26:58
  and they were just completely across the object, like,
• 27:02
  like I don't see any reason to believe that it wasn't wrapped all the way around,
• 27:06
  didn't see the back side, but like, there was nothing to show that it wasn't
• 27:09
  just this uniform whipsawed of panels.
• 27:14
  So not like panels you'd see, like tiling on a floor.
• 27:16
  Each one had like a different shape, but you had five sides, right?
• 27:19
  So like if a, if a floor or if like the bottom of,
• 27:23
  you know, a space shuttle or something like that is two dimensional.
• 27:27
  It was, it had a texture, it had a pattern to it.
• 27:31
  And that was the thing that I think gave it the most,
• 27:35
  not perception because it was true.
• 27:36
  But like the most asymmetry.
• 27:37
  And the texture was caused by at the intersection of the panels.
• 27:41
  Right? Yes, yes. Yeah.
• 27:42
  The texture was the field of panels themselves.
• 27:45
  They did not overlap like a fish scale or anything like that.
• 27:48
  They were all uniformly seemed.
• 27:51
  It seems like, you know, that at hinges.
• 27:53
  And it was just in
• 27:55
  a, one of the most shocking things about it was just the pattern of them.
• 27:58
  It just did not make sense into my mind.
• 28:01
  Like it looked miraculous that the pattern fit together in a way
• 28:05
  that it was all contained without overlap,
• 28:10
  but it was still so irregular.
• 28:12
  And then the crazy.
• 28:14
  And then even one more level.
• 28:15
  It was ripple.
• 28:18
  It wasn't just stationary as far as like and three dimensional.
• 28:22
  It was like that fourth dimension of movement.
• 28:25
  The panels that.
• 28:27
  Were rippling almost like ripples in a pond,
• 28:30
  but in a geometric way, because it wasn't, you know, a pond ripple all across.
• 28:36
  All across the vehicle.
• 28:37
  Just slowly, casually, you know, like,
• 28:41
  not just like slowly rippling across from, like, disparate points.
• 28:46
  Not a reflection, though.
• 28:47
  It was clear that they were the panels are moving.
• 28:49
  You could see the shadows like of the surface.
• 28:53
  I also said this when I reported it
• 28:54
  like it gave it like a glint or a shimmer, and that kind of went a little too far.
• 28:58
  I think with some of the representations make it look like, you know,
• 29:01
  like crystalline or something. It wasn't that.
• 29:03
  It was. Was it?
• 29:05
  It was like kind of porcelain, definitely all white instead of like,
• 29:10
  no brown in it or anything like it was white porcelain, but that was kind of like
• 29:15
  creamy and translucent,
• 29:19
  almost like if I think the best explanation is
• 29:21
  if you have like really watery milk, if that makes sense.
• 29:25
  It was kind of like that.
• 29:26
  It was like really watery milk with like a little bit of a shimmer
• 29:30
  that was kind of similar to mother of Pearl,
• 29:33
  but not like extreme in the rainbow effects or anything, just like a little.
• 29:37
  More shimmer.
• 29:37
  But but it wasn't outputting any visible light.
• 29:41
  Best you could tell, perhaps reflecting any.
• 29:43
  Or it was reflecting for sure to some degree.
• 29:47
  Because just again,
• 29:49
  I guess into the weather of the day, it was just one of those classic
• 29:53
  perfect Bluebird Colorado Springs days, especially in the winter.
• 29:57
  You know, in the Springs, it'll go from snowing one day to two days later.
• 30:01
  It's 50 degrees.
• 30:02
  Most beautiful blue sky.
• 30:05
  Only the sun out. It was one of those days.
• 30:07
  Not a cloud in the sky.
• 30:08
  So it was plenty sunny and it was pretty close to midday.
• 30:11
  And so they're definitely was a glint.
• 30:14
  But it wasn't like,
• 30:15
  oh, it's going to, you know, refract into your eye and like stun.
• 30:19
  You kind of glint, you know, it was just an object interacting with the sun's rays.
• 30:24
  Could you tell if there was a forward or aft direction to it?
• 30:29
  What do you mean? Like what?
• 30:30
  You know, you see an aircraft, you know where the front is or the back, right?
• 30:33
  Was there any sense of that?
• 30:35
  A potato is not the right word.
• 30:37
  And a blimps not the right word either,
• 30:39
  but like kind of just a ellipsoid in the sky.
• 30:42
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 30:44
  Okay. Great description. Thank you.
• 30:47
  I mean what happened next? I mean you're all looking at it.
• 30:49
  You're hearing your friends next to you.
• 30:51
  What's what's going through what happens here.
• 30:53
  So I do not have a confident gauge on time just because we were locked in.
• 30:59
  And anybody I think almost everybody has had an experience
• 31:02
  where they're tunnel vision, whether it's almost getting a car wreck
• 31:05
  or whatever, like your perception of time is extremely diluted.
• 31:10
  And that was the case.
• 31:11
  I mean, I was it had my attention,
• 31:15
  but enough time elapsed to where,
• 31:17
  like a terse conversation occurred between us of like, do you see that?
• 31:21
  Yeah, I see that.
• 31:22
  What the fuck is that stuttering
• 31:25
  like time elapsed enough for that?
• 31:28
  I don't know, honestly, if it's 10s or if it's three minutes,
• 31:32
  but I think it's probably in that range and I know it's a big range.
• 31:36
  But again, and this is the part that like, is so unsatisfying.
• 31:41
  And it was it was unsatisfying as soon as it happened.
• 31:45
  I can only speak for myself and what other people said at the time.
• 31:50
  But from what I saw, you know, we were on a hill
• 31:54
  in a pretty open fort
• 31:57
  on which is on a guy which is on a hill where you can see,
• 32:01
  like practically to Kansas to the east, Colorado Springs to the north,
• 32:05
  nothing to the south, and Cheyenne Mountain directly to us to the west.
• 32:09
  So you can see everywhere.
• 32:11
  And our our eyes are pretty locked onto this tart, like onto the object target.
• 32:17
  Maybe we had glanced to each other for like a terse word,
• 32:21
  but I was looking at it and it was there.
• 32:25
  And then it wasn't.
• 32:29
  Just blinked, Elk.
• 32:31
  It didn't even see a blink out.
• 32:33
  Yeah, I wish I had seen it do something because there would have been like
• 32:36
  some closure.
• 32:37
  It's like a firefight when, like you don't, it doesn't have a conclusion.
• 32:41
  It's like the worst feeling in the world.
• 32:43
  Like you want a conclusion even if it's not good.
• 32:45
  It was kind of like that where it just was no longer there.
• 32:49
  I can say in enough hindsight, whatever the time was that for it
• 32:54
  to be there and then no longer there, it must have been almost as fast,
• 32:58
  if not faster than like our shutter speed for like our perception or something.
• 33:02
  It was just not there.
• 33:03
  It didn't fade away. It didn't shoot off.
• 33:05
  It didn't fizzle, it didn't dissolve, it didn't blink.
• 33:09
  It didn't pop like a bubble.
• 33:11
  It didn't materialize like an bubble.
• 33:14
  It didn't zip off.
• 33:16
  It just wasn't there.
• 33:18
  We didn't even gasp because there wasn't anything to gasp to.
• 33:23
  But we were like, the next response was like, where?
• 33:26
  Where is it?
• 33:27
  Do you guys not see any more like the conversation we had first
• 33:30
  had of like us confirming that it was there.
• 33:33
  It was an inverse conversation where it was like us confirming that it's not.
• 33:37
  Yeah.
• 33:39
  Which is not fun.
• 33:40
  Yeah.
• 33:40
  And then we start doing the dance, all of us instantaneous, like,
• 33:45
  you know, instinctively looking 360 in this sweet vantage point
• 33:48
  that we're at, and there's just not a cloud in the sky.
• 33:52
  And so we have that experience.
• 33:56
  Well, and somebody goes, it's getting close to this brief,
• 34:00
  and we still have five minutes to walk, and we still have to go
• 34:03
  get signed in in the skiff, which is, you know, a process.
• 34:07
  And we're going to be a little bit late now to the meeting,
• 34:11
  which is like the most important meeting of our careers thus far.
• 34:14
  Or perhaps not.
• 34:15
  Right. Yeah. Yeah.
• 34:17
  Right. Well, so. Boring was a one day.
• 34:20
  And so we, I guess going into that process
• 34:23
  and I can speak for myself, but also asking the question to my guys
• 34:27
  after this hour long brief that was packed, did you all, like, catch
• 34:31
  anything that was said in the most important brief of our of our careers?
• 34:35
  And the answer was, now.
• 34:38
  There are two distracted thinking about what? They just.
• 34:40
  Didn't have a choice.
• 34:41
  Did you guys recollect as a group or perhaps
• 34:44
  one on one with any of the other guys after that?
• 34:48
  Not formally.
• 34:49
  So. It's an interesting look into human psychology as well.
• 34:54
  And I had a peep into that to a great experience
• 34:56
  working with ASA, working with reporters and witnesses as well.
• 35:00
  But everybody had their own different response.
• 35:03
  Right?
• 35:05
  We became
• 35:06
  very, very employed, you know, after that brief.
• 35:11
  So we had a lot to distract us, frankly, which is maybe a good thing.
• 35:14
  But I still took the time to document the best
• 35:18
  that I can as an intelligence officer, what had occurred.
• 35:21
  And in a formal way, just with the understanding
• 35:24
  that, you know, sooner is better than later.
• 35:27
  And I had a couple of the individuals who wanted to participate in that, that,
• 35:32
  you know, I asked everybody personally like, hey, can you just give me some input
• 35:36
  into this PowerPoint that I'm making?
• 35:37
  And I got a couple bits of input.
• 35:40
  Yeah, from two of them and a couple of them, like when I had that
• 35:43
  talk like that question, you know, the next day or two
• 35:47
  after gave me the response of, I don't know what you're talking about
• 35:50
  and I don't want to ever, like, kind of have that question asked me again.
• 35:54
  Well, they just shut it right down.
• 35:56
  Strange. It's strange.
• 35:57
  I mean, so that's how I mean, I've witnessed it myself.
• 36:00
  Of course you have to, obviously, but that is, you know,
• 36:03
  one of the responses that you see sometimes.
• 36:06
  Yeah. And it's it's honestly understandable.
• 36:09
  The people who kind of had that response
• 36:11
  were older in tenure.
• 36:14
  They were more career oriented.
• 36:16
  They had crossed that Rubicon to where it's like, okay, I'm doing this for 20,
• 36:20
  and if I'm doing it for 20, I'm going to go as far as I can.
• 36:24
  And so, like, I can completely sympathize and empathize with that
• 36:27
  response, frankly, you know, there are great people to that.
• 36:31
  I respect a lot.
• 36:32
  I think it was just like, you know, in some ways it's maybe a healthier response.
• 36:37
  Yeah, I won't I won't argue.
• 36:38
  That I'm going to go back to reality. You know.
• 36:40
  My perceived reality anyway.
• 36:43
  The consensus one. Okay.
• 36:46
  Well, so, you know, so what I'm hearing is that you guys just kind of
• 36:49
  all right happened, you know, we got a few inputs.
• 36:52
  Some people didn't want to touch it again.
• 36:53
  Other people provide a little input. What happened?
• 36:55
  What happened there?
• 36:56
  I will say the only other effect is based on our extremely privileged
• 37:01
  access to information and the line of work that we were in.
• 37:06
  We had a lot of
• 37:08
  resources available to where, if you're curious, individual
• 37:12
  who wants to get a little more information about something they may have perceived,
• 37:17
  we had resources, you know, so myself and a couple others in that group,
• 37:22
  after hours, just trying to make sense of what we saw went down some rabbit holes.
• 37:28
  Yeah, yeah.
• 37:29
  Anything fruitful.
• 37:30
  At the time which and that was 22
• 37:34
  a level of fruitfulness where I was much
• 37:37
  more reassured about my experience.
• 37:40
  In what way?
• 37:41
  Much more reassured.
• 37:42
  Reassured that, like, I was very fortunate, frankly.
• 37:46
  And I also can relate to people who saw it by themselves or with one other person,
• 37:51
  if it was just even with my background and,
• 37:55
  you know, trust with information and all sorts of, you know, if it was just me
• 38:00
  or one other person, I might have just completely put it into a recess of my mind
• 38:05
  because it was so far out there, you know, like, what can you do with it?
• 38:10
  It was honestly nice for my perspective
• 38:12
  to see a level of information, and I think I'll leave it at that.
• 38:17
  Plus being with four other very, very vetted people,
• 38:21
  you know, that I wasn't losing it.
• 38:23
  Yeah.
• 38:23
  And I never had doubts before and I don't have doubts after that of that.
• 38:27
  But it was reassuring.
• 38:28
  You know, I will say back in 22
• 38:32
  there was more reassuring information than, you know, 20, 23.
• 38:37
  Yeah. That's post crush.
• 38:39
  Yeah. We have you have your PowerPoint deck.
• 38:41
  You've got your input from the other folks that were there.
• 38:45
  You guys have done a little digging and research and you know.
• 38:49
  Yeah. Helped you understand.
• 38:50
  There was a there there were over a few months.
• 38:52
  What happens next. Where does that deck go?
• 38:55
  Oh, it's a good question.
• 38:56
  So I guess what happens next to stay chronological.
• 38:59
  We are very, very employed during our job.
• 39:02
  You know in Eastern Europe that took the priority all priority frankly.
• 39:08
  You know, and as like a fighter pilot, the profession kind of demands everything.
• 39:12
  And so it takes your entire life.
• 39:14
  And so I've lived that, you know, and frankly,
• 39:17
  that job was about as fascinating as I don't want more fascinating than that.
• 39:23
  You've reached your limit.
• 39:24
  Yeah, I got out because I was like, okay, that's that might be the limit for me.
• 39:29
  I got back, though, for my last deployment, had a exit plan to get out
• 39:35
  and had a little bit of a window as where like, I'm
• 39:39
  how processing out of the Army to where I don't really have a job.
• 39:43
  I've been backfilled, I've trained my backfill.
• 39:45
  I'm just a piece of I'm just a guy on a piece of paper now
• 39:49
  in a skiff, and I reach out to you because I can't honestly remember where.
• 39:55
  Actually, I heard it from you. I.
• 39:58
  And this is kind of like hindsight, so I honestly don't remember, like,
• 40:00
  my full motives, but, like, I think for about a year
• 40:04
  after that experience, I had the feeling of like,
• 40:08
  yes, Cheyenne Mountain has every sensor known to man.
• 40:11
  Yes, they have cameras everywhere.
• 40:13
  Yes, they have to be aware that this is going,
• 40:16
  you know, that this incident occurred.
• 40:18
  But like, I didn't do my diligence in helping them out.
• 40:23
  Closing the loop wrapped. Yeah.
• 40:25
  And I think for plenty of valid reasons, you know, like,
• 40:28
  you have the ability to rationalize a lot of things.
• 40:32
  That makes sense.
• 40:33
  And I don't feel bad about it, but like, it kind of daughter me a little bit.
• 40:36
  I think that's always a good indicator that there is a whip to close.
• 40:39
  So and I didn't know what to do
• 40:43
  because I'm working in this extremely privileged
• 40:46
  like space with access to insane information,
• 40:49
  and I don't know what to do with with this, aside
• 40:53
  from when I was deployed, the incident occurred and.
• 40:58
  Garage incident. The hearing.
• 41:00
  Yeah, when I was deployed over overseas and that got the interest of
• 41:05
  like my task force,
• 41:08
  you know, so
• 41:10
  aside from that and, you know, having
• 41:13
  kind of an example is not the right word, but like maybe it is
• 41:16
  the right word, like an example of like somebody trying to do the right thing.
• 41:19
  I didn't know what that is.
• 41:21
  I honestly still don't know what that is, but I'm trying.
• 41:24
  I mean, I reached out to you.
• 41:25
  I heard of a guy named Ryan Graves.
• 41:28
  Yeah.
• 41:29
  And,
• 41:30
  you know, just to be clear, obviously, about some of the information he you. No.
• 41:34
  Casey may have rummaging around and knocking there is classified.
• 41:37
  But as I always like to say so doesn't want classified information
• 41:40
  we don't solicit for and I wouldn't ask for it.
• 41:43
  And of course case and didn't provide any to me.
• 41:45
  But we did do have connections at ASU in order
• 41:48
  to work with organizations and executive branch in order to,
• 41:54
  through the right channels, get that information through to people
• 41:57
  that can incorporate into the the corpus of what we're trying to understand here.
• 42:01
  And at the time when you first came forward, the first option for that,
• 42:05
  the really the only option at the time was the ultimate novelty resolution office.
• 42:09
  And this is intended necessarily to to bash the current office, I will say.
• 42:14
  But at first that was kind of the door that was open to receive this information.
• 42:19
  And that's where I recommended you went.
• 42:22
  Yeah.
• 42:22
  And you gave me a nod to a,
• 42:26
  if I remember correctly, the North Comm general order.
• 42:30
  So the commander for North Com had a geo saying if you had.
• 42:34
  Several order. Yeah.
• 42:36
  Thank you.
• 42:37
  If you had seen, if you had like a UAP experience, it's
• 42:40
  your obligation to report it.
• 42:42
  And if I remember correctly
• 42:44
  and he pointed me in that direction and crazy as it is for somebody
• 42:47
  who is looking for shit like that on TS and NSA
• 42:51
  and sipper machines could not find it, apparently it did exist somehow.
• 42:56
  I had you on the current orders within the DoD, right?
• 42:59
  Yeah, you had to have, like a map to find. A thing.
• 43:02
  Yeah, yeah. So not well distributed at the time. Right.
• 43:04
  Which was one of the problems. Right.
• 43:06
  Because, you know, it's all a sudden it's oh error has reporting process now.
• 43:09
  But you know how well promulgated is that right.
• 43:11
  And just because there's been an order issued somewhere in the bowels
• 43:15
  of the Pentagon doesn't necessarily mean that things are now operating smoothly.
• 43:18
  Well, and so, yeah. So you went there.
• 43:21
  We like Sheraton.
• 43:22
  You know about that?
• 43:23
  Yeah. You you pushed me to arrow.
• 43:25
  I was I was eager to be useful
• 43:30
  and I was it you know, I just wanted to be like, hey, maybe.
• 43:33
  I mean, I'm as aware of the importance of Cheyenne Mountain as anybody.
• 43:39
  It was an extreme intrusion into our airspace.
• 43:42
  If it wasn't us, I assumed it wasn't us.
• 43:47
  And I think that's a safe assumption.
• 43:48
  And so I'm just like, hey, I'm here.
• 43:50
  I am to finally be helpful, you know.
• 43:53
  As per this order. Yeah.
• 43:55
  And I think that's a pretty general trend in my career.
• 43:58
  It's trying to be helpful.
• 43:59
  And I reached out to them, provided the
• 44:03
  PowerPoint that I made,
• 44:05
  and had a pretty disappointing experience
• 44:09
  from the start, a uniquely disappointing experience from the start.
• 44:12
  Yeah.
• 44:13
  I don't want to necessarily bash arrow
• 44:16
  too hard, and that's only because at the end of the day,
• 44:20
  they are still the congressional mandated office.
• 44:24
  And for those that perhaps aren't following as closely,
• 44:28
  and we'll talk a little bit more about this,
• 44:29
  you know, Kaysen had an experience that wasn't positive.
• 44:33
  You know, and, you know, we might be able to get into some of the details.
• 44:35
  But generally, you know, at that early stage
• 44:38
  in the organization, they just one didn't have the resources or capabilities
• 44:42
  or seemed like the wherewithal to properly conduct an investigation.
• 44:46
  But it nicely.
• 44:47
  But recently, it seems under the new leadership of John,
• 44:51
  I have personally had positive interactions with him in his office
• 44:54
  since he's taken over.
• 44:56
  And lately it seems that the new congressional member
• 44:59
  or congressional members are now reporting back, perhaps amended fences.
• 45:04
  So I don't want to start slugging in the chest too hard.
• 45:07
  Right.
• 45:07
  And, you know, we're talking maybe about yeah, this is these are early days here.
• 45:11
  You know, you had a bad experience.
• 45:13
  Do you want to add any more color to that?
• 45:15
  I already talked about it and there's not a ton to talk about.
• 45:18
  The first red flag was I've I've worked with almost every organization
• 45:22
  there is in the IC and a lot in the DoD and almost all in special operations.
• 45:26
  And I've never had an overtly unprofessional experience
• 45:30
  in even small things like sending an email to someone.
• 45:33
  But the responses I initially got when I said I had information
• 45:37
  that I wanted to give to them, even the email was just like terse
• 45:41
  type ode, like it was almost like it had been outsourced to like.
• 45:46
  Someone that didn't know this.
• 45:47
  Like the normal protocol, perhaps. Not even that.
• 45:50
  Just like overt, like overt indifference,
• 45:54
  like just overtly unprofessional, where that's not how you would start
• 45:59
  any conversation or engagement or relationship with a organization
• 46:04
  that you haven't touched with and with somebody you don't know.
• 46:07
  And I never had that experience.
• 46:09
  The IC in special operations world is pretty competent, so that was weird.
• 46:14
  They kind of did nothing with the information,
• 46:16
  but I was like, hey, I'm getting out, you know, I'm going to business school.
• 46:19
  I've done my diligence.
• 46:20
  I was okay, honestly, with them not doing much with the information or responding
• 46:26
  or like, yeah, maybe they have, you know, 50 of these a day.
• 46:30
  Like it was possible based on some of the things I'd seen
• 46:34
  that was kind of that for the moment.
• 46:35
  Got out of the Army, went to business school,
• 46:39
  started a completely new life after getting
• 46:42
  back from an early deployment two months later
• 46:45
  and did not think about it, I got a LinkedIn message
• 46:48
  from an individual who said that they were with arrow,
• 46:51
  who was an engineer, obviously a contractor in the organization
• 46:55
  who wanted to have a conversation, did that in a car in Boston.
• 47:00
  The person was very cordial, very nice.
• 47:03
  I had no indicator that there was any malice or miss.
• 47:06
  Intent seemed to be trying their best, but it was also very obvious
• 47:10
  that they did not have professional experience in doing witness interviews or
• 47:16
  casing or, you know, knowing how to diligently collect information.
• 47:22
  And it was 15 minute conversation on a cell phone and that was that.
• 47:26
  Like, all right, I did my diligence again for the second time.
• 47:29
  Whatever. Fruit service, no big deal.
• 47:31
  And then, frankly, then in the event that I still don't understand
• 47:36
  kind of happen where a couple months later, no interaction out of the blue,
• 47:41
  I get an email on my MIT
• 47:45
  provided email address, if I remember correctly, from the director
• 47:50
  deputy director of arrow, a few officers from Air Force,
• 47:55
  a few officers from Air Force Special Investigations,
• 47:59
  a pretty large list of people with something along the lines saying, Mr.
• 48:03
  Best, we think we may have found what you and your peers saw.
• 48:08
  Is this a picture of what you saw?
• 48:11
  And it was a aerostat balloon.
• 48:15
  Classic balloon strikes again, man.
• 48:18
  And you can probably tell I shouldn't have taken it personally.
• 48:24
  And I don't a lot, but I do a little, you know,
• 48:28
  because it takes something to, you know, put yourself on a limb to some degree
• 48:33
  to give information about a UFO incident
• 48:37
  while you're in the intelligence community.
• 48:39
  Like that takes some level of courage, I think.
• 48:42
  And for that to be like the conclusion after,
• 48:46
  frankly, a very unimpressive experience.
• 48:50
  I mean, they sent some sort of message, you know.
• 48:53
  Yeah. It was not a peated or an arrow stat.
• 48:56
  Yeah.
• 48:56
  And so, you know, for people who might not be familiar with these,
• 48:59
  these are tethered balloons, typically with what looked like
• 49:02
  little wings in the back to kind of keep them stabilized.
• 49:04
  They look a lot like balloons.
• 49:06
  And they are yeah, they are balloons and they they just hang on a thread and,
• 49:11
  you know, they provide surveillance and things of like, like that on borders.
• 49:15
  Yeah. I think they're very big. I've, I've stood next to them.
• 49:17
  Yeah I've flown past them. I've seen them in there.
• 49:20
  You know,
• 49:21
  I think most people that have done anything
• 49:23
  operationally military in the Middle East
• 49:25
  is probably familiar with what they look like.
• 49:27
  Or on the Mexican American border.
• 49:29
  They're floating around there too. Yeah. They are.
• 49:30
  Yeah, they're in Key West as well.
• 49:32
  So anyway, something you know, just as kind of summarize here,
• 49:36
  they basically after
• 49:38
  what from your assessment was a very low quality investigation, came up
• 49:42
  with the lowest common denominator thing that they could use to dismiss the.
• 49:45
  Case that was the most publicly broadcasted internally,
• 49:49
  like, you know, for the biggest audience with the most important people.
• 49:52
  Oh, yeah. Exactly.
• 49:53
  No experience with. Yeah.
• 49:55
  So yeah, this is them, you know, including the witness, you know,
• 49:58
  in front of their bosses, I guess.
• 50:00
  Right or the right people that.
• 50:02
  You know. But it was it was a long list of them.
• 50:04
  Yeah. Okay.
• 50:06
  I keep saying this, but what's next. Right.
• 50:07
  I mean, this is pretty chronological story. It's pretty neat. So.
• 50:10
  And, you know, just because you skipped over a little bit, you're now
• 50:12
  MIT's business school, your Massachusetts.
• 50:14
  We actually don't live too far.
• 50:15
  I'm in New Hampshire.
• 50:17
  You come and visit once, you're twice went for your diet.
• 50:21
  Yes, sir.
• 50:21
  Oh, we are now in Austin, and I intend to get you here as well. But.
• 50:26
  Yeah. What?
• 50:27
  What do we do next? Who in this space? Yeah.
• 50:30
  I mean, we said, who else might be interested in this information?
• 50:33
  Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was all you.
• 50:35
  You should be talking about that.
• 50:36
  Well, okay, maybe I'll bring this up.
• 50:38
  So, you know, without getting into too much detail.
• 50:42
  So I have spoken about this publicly.
• 50:44
  There was a small group within the FBI that wanted to investigate UAP,
• 50:49
  in my opinion, earnestly, you know, the whole the whole
• 50:53
  whole bucket of what might UAP be?
• 50:55
  Not necessarily just like a clever way of doing counter UAV.
• 50:59
  You know, they were truly interested in all aspects of it.
• 51:02
  And it was a relatively small group.
• 51:04
  And we knew the cases.
• 51:06
  You know, some of the cases that we had
• 51:08
  were impactful to representative Congress and different committees.
• 51:11
  We were hoping for them to be useful at Aero,
• 51:14
  but at least at this current time, they didn't seem to have the
• 51:18
  operational capability to do that job very well.
• 51:21
  And I said, well, you know, the FBI has a lot of experience with these cases.
• 51:26
  If our witnesses are okay with it, then, you know,
• 51:28
  perhaps by ingesting this information through there,
• 51:31
  they can pull the information through the networks
• 51:34
  that they have available to them, such as Far data, etc., etc.
• 51:38
  that would do all the investigative work that I think people were expecting
• 51:42
  Aero to do, but weren't necessarily staffed or experienced to do so.
• 51:46
  And so we asked our witnesses and many in fact, most of them agreed to
• 51:49
  have that conversation.
• 51:51
  And you were one of those people.
• 51:53
  You want to talk about that experience?
• 51:54
  Sure. Yeah. So this must have been
• 51:57
  of 24 when that conversation was had, because I was getting ready to go
• 52:01
  to my summer internship in New York City, and I just shared that for the context.
• 52:05
  So, yeah, I start that conversation with the Bureau.
• 52:10
  They want to start it off with a field interview.
• 52:13
  We said it to be done in New York City, where I'm located over the summer,
• 52:18
  go into the bureau building, do the interview.
• 52:21
  It was, you know, you can just tell, like,
• 52:25
  I don't know what the intent of it was.
• 52:27
  I still don't fully know the intent, but like, at least they were trying,
• 52:31
  you know, which is a good start. Yeah, yeah.
• 52:33
  And I was just there, frankly,
• 52:35
  for the exact same reason of, like, I don't see any downside.
• 52:38
  I'm confident in what we saw.
• 52:41
  I'm not worried about my reputation in this day and age.
• 52:45
  Frankly, thanks to some people like you, there's no downside.
• 52:49
  Like, let's give it a shot.
• 52:50
  And the experience was certainly better than arrow.
• 52:54
  Yeah, there weren't any negatives about it.
• 52:56
  And I didn't know certainly what the intent of it was back then.
• 52:59
  And I still don't fully know now, but like at least they treated you respectfully.
• 53:03
  And so it was a good experience.
• 53:04
  You know, I spoke with a forensic artist.
• 53:08
  She tried her best to paint something.
• 53:11
  That is, I still have hard time visualizing.
• 53:15
  And I saw it,
• 53:17
  you know, so, like, it's not perfect, but, like, better than I could do.
• 53:20
  That's for damn sure.
• 53:23
  Yeah.
• 53:23
  So that was kind of the start of that experience.
• 53:25
  I don't know.
• 53:27
  100% either.
• 53:28
  Exactly what the overall goal, I would say of the FBI as they see it is.
• 53:33
  Right.
• 53:34
  But I will say the effect that it's had is that it's provided,
• 53:38
  you know, a stream of highly investigated and processed information,
• 53:44
  not just within the FBI, but to Congress, who they have been briefing
• 53:49
  both the House and the Senate, as well as working with the white House.
• 53:53
  And I understand, you know, the leadership of the FBI.
• 53:56
  Well, let me let me say this first.
• 53:58
  You know, that that that I think, you know, that's the impact that we've had.
• 54:02
  And that small group has grown, to my understanding, to to a larger group
• 54:06
  that is, is moving forward in a pretty big way.
• 54:10
  And I think more to follow on that in the future.
• 54:12
  But by provided, you know, if you will, a little good old fashioned
• 54:15
  interagency competition that I think finally, you know the truth.
• 54:19
  You know, at least the data is jostling now in between in between that a bit.
• 54:22
  Right. And it's. Always good to have that.
• 54:25
  It's always good to have competition.
• 54:26
  This is America, is it not? Right,
• 54:29
  this capitalism.
• 54:30
  You better run on the ground with a rifle.
• 54:32
  You've got to see behind the curtain.
• 54:34
  On the Intel side, you had fun of college, you've gone to MIT,
• 54:37
  you've seen a UAP, you've a part of the FBI and arrow.
• 54:41
  Pretty full experience.
• 54:42
  And eventually, after a lot of this, we asked you to join ASA as a volunteer.
• 54:47
  And, you know, had you leading our report intake process
• 54:50
  for a while, and I'm sure that maybe even another whole podcast.
• 54:54
  But let's.
• 54:56
  Talk for. Shift a little bit maybe to that. Right.
• 54:58
  So you had you had all these experiences and.
• 55:01
  Oh, actually, before we get into that, I just want to put maybe a bow on on your,
• 55:05
  your case. Right.
• 55:06
  And so again today is June 13th.
• 55:09
  Yesterday the DoD released their third tranche of UAP files.
• 55:13
  And your case is in there I believe it was retweeted by the white House.
• 55:18
  I thought it was interesting.
• 55:19
  And there's a few files in there.
• 55:21
  And there's both the Aero report from when you reported the arrow.
• 55:25
  There's also the FBI report in there for when you report to the FBI.
• 55:30
  I would encourage folks to perhaps read both of those and see,
• 55:33
  you know, how Aero assessed your report and their conclusions, perhaps,
• 55:39
  or what their thoughts were versus the FBI's presentation of the data.
• 55:43
  So you don't have really believe anything we're saying.
• 55:45
  You can kind of go read those right now because these have now
• 55:48
  come out the other side, which is, you know, I don't think
• 55:51
  either of us are expected to be in this position here,
• 55:53
  though I hope was retweeting your UAP experience a few years ago.
• 55:56
  So I haven't. Thought about it.
• 55:57
  And the sketch of that case and mentioned is in those files as well.
• 56:01
  So you could see what what they came up with there.
• 56:04
  Yeah, I'm not sure if they released it too,
• 56:05
  but I think it's one of my counterparts as well.
• 56:08
  Yeah, yeah. Might have some files in there too.
• 56:09
  And there's a number of cases from the last trance.
• 56:11
  Yeah from Aza and I actually some are I'm sure you've processed,
• 56:15
  but either way you came out of Aza.
• 56:17
  You want to talk about that experience at all or any interesting cases.
• 56:21
  Or maybe you've maybe you've discovered this is all bunk.
• 56:24
  I don't know, you tell me what. What do you want to talk about?
• 56:26
  You're opening up a big can of worms.
• 56:29
  Well, thank you for again for giving me the the leash
• 56:33
  and to to take a shot on me
• 56:36
  with starting to help out with the witness reporting better.
• 56:40
  You guys had obviously done a lot of groundwork, and I was there
• 56:44
  to just add on as far
• 56:47
  as this topic goes and as far as like the digestibility
• 56:52
  required to absorb the information that we're talking about with non-human
• 56:57
  intelligence and UAP and, and hyper advanced technology
• 57:01
  and all sorts of things that I just so fully understand
• 57:04
  and sympathize with people who have trouble grasping at.
• 57:08
  Or choose a two to doubt, Sorry.
• 57:10
  Or just like, I'll just tune that out because that's too much for me to, yeah,
• 57:14
  give to many ways. That breaks my worldview. And.
• 57:17
  Yeah.
• 57:17
  Fair enough, because I have had three kind of spheres
• 57:23
  of experience to like, confirm not fully what's going on, but like, well beyond.
• 57:28
  There's something there.
• 57:30
  Okay. Three. What were those? I might guess two.
• 57:32
  But I mean, my the fact that we saw
• 57:35
  a UAP in broad daylight personally, the exposure I had to certain information
• 57:41
  while in the position that I was in, in the military
• 57:45
  and then being in this position with ASA,
• 57:48
  you know, a couple years later, like it's pretty cool seeing some very credible
• 57:53
  individuals provide accounts and things to back it up
• 57:58
  and have those conversations with whether a pilot or school teacher
• 58:03
  in Oklahoma, you know, like the the thing that it makes everybody the same.
• 58:08
  As far as the witness to Assa is that they were looking up at the sky
• 58:11
  and saw something in the sky themselves or on the ground.
• 58:15
  It was a great experience because like, even from like a psychological standpoint,
• 58:19
  you got to just see the full gambit of people and almost solely
• 58:24
  positive experiences in that position so we can talk about anything.
• 58:27
  What maybe big picture.
• 58:29
  I mean, did you learn from that position or access to that data?
• 58:33
  You know, there's a huge category of sightings that get just dismissed
• 58:39
  because they just don't fit enough of the bill.
• 58:42
  They're not weird enough. No.
• 58:44
  It's like I can't confirm this to enough degree,
• 58:48
  and that degree is so high that if anything doesn't meet
• 58:53
  that bar, I'm just going to say it didn't happen and completely dismiss it.
• 58:57
  Like, I'll just it's like the
• 59:00
  like, I never saw it.
• 59:02
  Yeah.
• 59:03
  You know, and we have a lot of reports and a lot of those reports
• 59:06
  I would not say or high confidence or can be co-operated
• 59:10
  or I have high certainty that occurred or at least occurred in some fashion.
• 59:15
  But like there's that middle ground
• 59:17
  and there's a lot of them and it paints a picture too.
• 59:22
  Yeah.
• 59:22
  And then when you have that large middle ground, that large pool of data,
• 59:25
  and then you do have some incredible
• 59:29
  occurrences that I personally have been done
• 59:32
  the interviews and taking in the information,
• 59:36
  have high conviction and have good reason for high conviction
• 59:40
  and have been trained on assessing conviction levels.
• 59:43
  Yeah.
• 59:44
  Yeah, for a year plus the job at a high level.
• 59:47
  It paints a picture that observations
• 59:50
  with UAP and likely NE is not that uncommon.
• 59:55
  Like every single person, every single witness that I ever interviewed.
• 59:58
  And it was a lot like would apologize kind of and be like.
• 1:00:03
  Sorry.
• 1:00:04
  I know you can't. I know you can't believe this.
• 1:00:06
  But like, this occurred because everyone thinks because the experience
• 1:00:09
  is so extreme and not talked about, that everybody who's had
• 1:00:13
  the experience thinks that they must be the only one in the world.
• 1:00:17
  And if you're in just like
• 1:00:19
  a hyper privileged position, as I am, to where I get to speak, these people
• 1:00:22
  come to us and you get to speak and interact with them.
• 1:00:26
  You get to know that it's just not.
• 1:00:28
  You get to see the full picture in some way that the individuals can't
• 1:00:32
  because they're all coming to you.
• 1:00:33
  And yeah, I mean, I sometimes have lately been almost just reminiscing on that.
• 1:00:39
  And sometimes, you know, this is just a heart feel, but like,
• 1:00:42
  it's probably as high as 30% of people have had an experience and are not.
• 1:00:48
  People or aviatrix. People in general.
• 1:00:50
  Yeah, people in general, you know, especially, you know,
• 1:00:54
  as I engage with more people here in Austin and elsewhere and the
• 1:00:58
  the temperature is lowering on this, people are more willing to talk about it.
• 1:01:02
  And, you know, it just always talks me just how many people are willing to.
• 1:01:07
  And it's not the only thing in life that's like that.
• 1:01:09
  You know, there's all sorts of things that happen to people
• 1:01:12
  that are far more common than they want.
• 1:01:16
  They are told to believe because it doesn't want to be.
• 1:01:19
  You don't want to talk about it or it's so awful or whatever.
• 1:01:22
  And struggles, abnormal experiences,
• 1:01:26
  which is frankly, kind of like another way to say just like instead of
• 1:01:30
  everybody understands the 1 in 10 because everybody's had 1 in 10 experiences,
• 1:01:35
  everybody understands 1 in 100 experiences because everybody's had them.
• 1:01:39
  And like, it's in the zeitgeist.
• 1:01:41
  When you have a 1 in 1,000,000 experience, there's
• 1:01:44
  still 365 of those every year, right?
• 1:01:49
  Like there's 360 million Americans.
• 1:01:51
  That's still happens.
• 1:01:53
  But then you can't take a 1 in 1,000,000 experience
• 1:01:55
  and then talk about it with your friends.
• 1:01:57
  Yeah. Because it's not in.
• 1:01:59
  Yeah. They don't. Get it.
• 1:02:00
  You can't. Yeah.
• 1:02:01
  Or they choose not to. Right.
• 1:02:03
  Because some people, like I said, you know,
• 1:02:05
  I've had experiences and have chosen to ignore it.
• 1:02:07
  And I mean, some of those are witnesses that have come to us and have said, hey,
• 1:02:10
  you know, I've only told my wife about this, and it happened 30 years ago.
• 1:02:14
  And so they,
• 1:02:15
  you know,
• 1:02:15
  they've self-centered themselves, self nebulosus selves to the information,
• 1:02:20
  either because of their own particular hangups or perhaps
• 1:02:24
  because of the implications socially of how it might be perceived around others.
• 1:02:28
  But at least something I've heard a lot
• 1:02:31
  in witnesses is that they actually feel like
• 1:02:33
  this is a time where this information can actually be useful
• 1:02:36
  and they feel more comfortable coming forward.
• 1:02:38
  And one of the reasons they come to us is so that we can
• 1:02:40
  we can make that data actionable.
• 1:02:42
  Yeah.
• 1:02:42
  I'm not sorry to cut you off there, but that is just a trend that I saw.
• 1:02:47
  That was kind of when I previously said that it was positive, like experience.
• 1:02:51
  I think that's a huge reason why is like almost like most of the interactions
• 1:02:56
  that I had speaking with witnesses is they're just people trying to be helpful.
• 1:02:59
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:00
  And like you said, almost doing it against their better nature.
• 1:03:03
  Right. Having to apologize first for how weird it sounds.
• 1:03:06
  But I'll tell you, it often doesn't sound weird to us.
• 1:03:09
  Know what we heard?
• 1:03:10
  All right, well, what else?
• 1:03:11
  What else have have you learned from that data?
• 1:03:13
  How how detailed do you want to go? I guess.
• 1:03:15
  I do as you like, and I will.
• 1:03:17
  Actually, this is a great time to let people know and ask you.
• 1:03:20
  Kason, we'd like
• 1:03:21
  to provide the opportunity for members to ask you questions as part of an AMA
• 1:03:25
  after this airs, and we put you on the spot right now
• 1:03:28
  and ask you if you'd like to come back remotely to join our members.
• 1:03:32
  Happy for that.
• 1:03:33
  Awesome. Yeah,
• 1:03:33
  because I bet you have a lot of questions if you'd like to be part of that.
• 1:03:37
  We'll do that about a week after this airs and you can go to Safe Space,
• 1:03:41
  sign up to be a member, and you'll be able to join us and ask case
• 1:03:44
  and your questions.
• 1:03:45
  To some, probably some previous witnesses as well, because.
• 1:03:48
  Oh, that'd be great.
• 1:03:49
  Yeah, hopefully we'll have some of them in there as well.
• 1:03:52
  Awesome. So let's hear what else.
• 1:03:54
  What else did you learn from that?
• 1:03:56
  Okay. We got the general atmospherics.
• 1:03:58
  I think there's very valid observers regardless of their credentials.
• 1:04:03
  You know, I you're told to use credentials as a validation method and it is one.
• 1:04:09
  But I think it oftentimes is like a huge hang up
• 1:04:13
  of people self-censoring and gatekeeping because it doesn't fit.
• 1:04:18
  You don't fit the bill.
• 1:04:19
  You're not a police officer, you're not a pilot,
• 1:04:21
  you're not a West Point grad, whatever.
• 1:04:23
  They're still tons of great people who are good at describing what they saw,
• 1:04:27
  who don't necessarily have the accreditations
• 1:04:32
  that are societally determined to be, like, useful.
• 1:04:36
  Yes. Yeah.
• 1:04:37
  Yeah.
• 1:04:37
  For this task or for this task specifically. Yeah.
• 1:04:40
  And but I'll just add one thing
• 1:04:41
  unlocks that I think for us is the fact that when you do have enough data.
• 1:04:45
  Right.
• 1:04:46
  Because at the beginning when you're figuring all this out,
• 1:04:48
  what are you going to write?
• 1:04:49
  How else are you going to operate in this environment?
• 1:04:51
  Right.
• 1:04:51
  When you're going in with very little data and a highly complex
• 1:04:54
  information environment.
• 1:04:55
  And so you do you lean on those crutches, but once you start collecting enough
• 1:04:59
  data, then you can actually pick out the consistencies across cases
• 1:05:02
  that are interesting and important and apply that to people you might not,
• 1:05:06
  you know, you can then say, okay, I need to find these signals,
• 1:05:09
  not necessarily look for people that are the signal.
• 1:05:11
  Perfectly said. Yeah. And that's what I'm trying to do with your questions.
• 1:05:13
  Like I'm trying to go big in the data set and then we can go smaller.
• 1:05:18
  But you're 100% right.
• 1:05:19
  And you don't get there without the high credibility
• 1:05:22
  like perfect cases and things like that, too.
• 1:05:24
  I think to go one level deeper, you know, you get to a point in your conviction,
• 1:05:30
  and there's just a lot to be said about being able to see all this data.
• 1:05:34
  And it's not pretty and it's not easy to digest.
• 1:05:37
  And it requires a trained I frankly, to parse together.
• 1:05:41
  And it requires hundreds of hours before you even start doing interviews
• 1:05:45
  to see the patterns, because it's not it's disparate data.
• 1:05:48
  It is talking about the most fringe thing you can talk about.
• 1:05:52
  And describing things we
• 1:05:53
  potentially don't really have context or words to describe.
• 1:05:56
  If I can't, if I can barely describe the object that I saw with my own eyes,
• 1:05:59
  then like, God help me, you know?
• 1:06:01
  But once you start doing that, what starts getting really interesting is not only
• 1:06:05
  when you have those high conviction cases,
• 1:06:08
  it's when you start having high conviction cases and medium conviction cases
• 1:06:11
  that are saying, describing like the same thing.
• 1:06:16
  You know, it's like if you if you're a murderer and
• 1:06:19
  the cops start saying, hey, there's somebody who looks like this
• 1:06:23
  and it's generally the same person, like, yeah,
• 1:06:26
  and I got to the point in the process to where a few of those just seem
• 1:06:31
  very high conviction that people are describing a object
• 1:06:35
  or series of objects, that the confidence
• 1:06:38
  that that is the case as described.
• 1:06:41
  You know, you have multiple flashlights looking at the elephant
• 1:06:45
  and the same spots of the elephant at the same time.
• 1:06:48
  And, you know, conviction rises. Yep.
• 1:06:50
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:06:52
  Any cases that, you know, they're really drilled down that, you know,
• 1:06:55
  you might consider your favorites if that's the right word to use.
• 1:07:00
  There's
• 1:07:00
  actually quite a few I haven't seen about this in.
• 1:07:03
  A get all the time. But it's like which one? I mean, you know.
• 1:07:06
  I think one that stands out I'll break it down by like category.
• 1:07:09
  I think as far as professionals on the ground, there's a police officer
• 1:07:13
  who has sent, I think, 4 or 5 observations with video
• 1:07:18
  and multiple witnesses, each observation for extended periods of time
• 1:07:23
  over months while they're on shifts,
• 1:07:28
  night shifts as police officers.
• 1:07:30
  That's showing the similar same objects every time.
• 1:07:34
  And that's an object that we have seen more than several
• 1:07:37
  other times throughout reports.
• 1:07:41
  And so that gets pretty exciting when you're just like,
• 1:07:44
  okay, we have enough information here to where it's like,
• 1:07:46
  am I going to convince a skeptic?
• 1:07:48
  No, I'm not trying to convince a skeptic.
• 1:07:50
  I'm trying to convince myself of what's going on.
• 1:07:53
  I'm trying to take in this information and paint a picture for myself.
• 1:07:57
  And then the next step is to try to articulate it to others.
• 1:08:01
  But you start seeing that and you're like, okay, this is a thing.
• 1:08:04
  Yeah.
• 1:08:05
  You've probably talked to folks like I have about how their experiences
• 1:08:09
  have completely,
• 1:08:12
  you know,
• 1:08:13
  maybe we can even lose the quantifier completely, but change their worldview.
• 1:08:17
  Yeah.
• 1:08:18
  And I guess that would be my first question is, do you,
• 1:08:20
  you know, consider yourselves among those people.
• 1:08:22
  And two, do you have any reflections of of
• 1:08:25
  what it's like to engage in that type of conversation with people?
• 1:08:29
  Yeah, it's the first question.
• 1:08:31
  People, I should say people that have had those experiences.
• 1:08:33
  Yeah. Yeah, totally.
• 1:08:34
  I definitely gives you
• 1:08:35
  a level of empathy and sympathy that you otherwise would not have.
• 1:08:38
  Like, obviously. Right.
• 1:08:39
  I was in a position of my life where
• 1:08:44
  there's like a cognitive bias for it, where it's like
• 1:08:47
  the more you know, the less I think you know,
• 1:08:48
  the less you know, the more you think you know.
• 1:08:50
  And I was in a spot of, like,
• 1:08:53
  accomplishment for a poorly
• 1:08:56
  used word and privilege of,
• 1:08:59
  you know, I'm a special operations intelligence officer
• 1:09:02
  doing the biggest mission there is, like, I must know what's up.
• 1:09:07
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:08
  Like who else? Right.
• 1:09:09
  Yeah.
• 1:09:09
  I have a lot of privileged information.
• 1:09:12
  You know, it's just tied to Russia.
• 1:09:13
  But, like, I know what's up. To a large degree, you never.
• 1:09:16
  There's always more to know.
• 1:09:18
  But like, I know what's up.
• 1:09:20
  And then this happens and it's just like,
• 1:09:23
  you know, apparently people have the ability to shut it out.
• 1:09:26
  And that's taken years to process.
• 1:09:29
  And I'm still but like, I think it was largely
• 1:09:33
  a ego reducer for me.
• 1:09:37
  Not saying I don't have one, but like for the better,
• 1:09:41
  you know, of like
• 1:09:43
  you have an instance like that and I've had enough experiences
• 1:09:45
  in my life to know that I don't know what I don't know.
• 1:09:49
  You only have a bubble of knowledge and you can't tell what's beyond the bubble.
• 1:09:53
  And everybody's like that.
• 1:09:55
  And some people are smaller and some people are bigger,
• 1:09:57
  but it's a bubble nonetheless, and you can't cross that Rubicon until you do.
• 1:10:01
  But that experience popped the bubble.
• 1:10:04
  Yeah.
• 1:10:05
  And it's a much more interesting way to live life being like,
• 1:10:10
  I wonder how that works than being like, I've already got figured out.
• 1:10:15
  And it's a somewhat modern phenomenon.
• 1:10:17
  Maybe going back originally to the enlightenment, you know,
• 1:10:20
  the separation of the mystical from the, you know, Newtonian mechanics of how
• 1:10:25
  the world works, the clockwork patterns that determine everything that happens.
• 1:10:30
  And we very much, especially in Western society,
• 1:10:33
  have really focused on or we identify ourselves
• 1:10:38
  with a very rational and materialistic and physical version of the world,
• 1:10:43
  perhaps get these peaks behind, you know, beyond the map a little bit.
• 1:10:47
  It can, you know, cause you to rethink a bit
• 1:10:50
  about how firm your, your understanding of the world is.
• 1:10:53
  And yeah, you know, there's people who have experiences that are very open
• 1:10:57
  to mystical experiences or spirituality and other things.
• 1:11:01
  And for some, you know, it's almost easier to say, well, that's not
• 1:11:05
  you know,
• 1:11:05
  that's just their own belief structures manifesting themselves in some way.
• 1:11:08
  But, you know, we also have, you know, very ardent skeptics and rationalists
• 1:11:13
  who have gone through the experiences and, you know, it has opened up their minds
• 1:11:17
  a bit to, you know, the world not being perhaps as small as they thought it was.
• 1:11:22
  For sure. Yeah.
• 1:11:22
  And I like to think of it kind of as like,
• 1:11:25
  I mean, if the scientific method is a tool, it's a hell of a powerful one.
• 1:11:29
  You know, we have some conductors now.
• 1:11:31
  It's a thing.
• 1:11:33
  We made sand think. Yeah.
• 1:11:35
  I've never heard that before.
• 1:11:36
  That's a good one.
• 1:11:37
  Yeah, but that tool is just that.
• 1:11:40
  It's a tool.
• 1:11:40
  And that tool turned into like, an ideology.
• 1:11:44
  And that ideology turned to a religion over the course of a few centuries.
• 1:11:48
  I like to think that we're now digesting that
• 1:11:52
  into back of what it is, which is a tool, and that's it.
• 1:11:56
  Yeah.
• 1:11:57
  And there's.
• 1:11:58
  A tool for observing a very probably infinitely mysterious universe.
• 1:12:01
  And and the universe, maybe it's not infinitely mysterious.
• 1:12:04
  Maybe it is, but it's damn more
• 1:12:07
  interesting and mysterious than what we think it is in 2026.
• 1:12:12
  Like, give me a break.
• 1:12:14
  We were riding horses and buggies a hundred years ago.
• 1:12:17
  A hundred years is a lifetime and and a half on average.
• 1:12:21
  Like, we don't know what's going on.
• 1:12:24
  And that can be okay.
• 1:12:25
  And that's okay. It's okay, it's okay.
• 1:12:28
  That's that. You know, it's like growing up, right?
• 1:12:30
  And no longer being a kid and realize like, wow,
• 1:12:32
  there's a big world there and it's scary.
• 1:12:34
  And then, you know, you grow up and realize it's okay.
• 1:12:36
  You know, that's just part of it.
• 1:12:37
  It's scary to.
• 1:12:37
  But, you know, well, speaking of scary things,
• 1:12:40
  you know, maybe to finish this off, you've been, you know,
• 1:12:43
  seeing some of these releases and conversations from the white House.
• 1:12:46
  You know, what's going on.
• 1:12:49
  Where where are we going here.
• 1:12:50
  You know, where do you think this conversation goes from here?
• 1:12:54
  Don't put that on me.
• 1:12:55
  You know? Yeah.
• 1:12:56
  People always ask me that.
• 1:12:57
  It's my pleasure to finally get to ask someone else that question.
• 1:13:00
  I don't know what's going on.
• 1:13:01
  I don't have a unfortunately.
• 1:13:03
  Unfortunately, as you can tell anybody who has gone to this far in the podcast,
• 1:13:06
  I, I want to understand reality.
• 1:13:10
  I have spent my career in some ways doing that.
• 1:13:12
  I think I'm still doing that.
• 1:13:14
  I would love to be in a position
• 1:13:18
  of having more impact in this space,
• 1:13:21
  having more privileged information as to what's going on.
• 1:13:24
  I don't I am in the private sector now.
• 1:13:28
  It's all gone.
• 1:13:30
  Like the ability to peer behind the curtain is a ring of power
• 1:13:34
  that is truly addictive, and many people get addicted to it and
• 1:13:38
  I miss it like hell.
• 1:13:40
  So I don't know what's going on.
• 1:13:41
  I only have speculation as far as my stuff goes.
• 1:13:45
  Like we've painted out what happened.
• 1:13:47
  It's it's obviously useful to somebody, or else nobody would have ever heard
• 1:13:51
  about it. In what ways?
• 1:13:53
  Or it's useful, I hope to God that it's for the for the betterment.
• 1:13:59
  I'm. I am also a national security guy.
• 1:14:01
  You don't do the things that I did because you don't believe in,
• 1:14:05
  you know, the ideals of the system and what we should aspire to
• 1:14:10
  and make the sacrifices
• 1:14:14
  to do what I previously did otherwise.
• 1:14:17
  And so I hope that, you know,
• 1:14:19
  it's it's all under control and it's and it's all for the better.
• 1:14:23
  And I can also recognize, you know, that I have some secrets
• 1:14:28
  tied to my normal, normal job
• 1:14:31
  that are negative.
• 1:14:35
  National security is a word that hides
• 1:14:38
  a lot of just overtly evil and detrimental secrets,
• 1:14:42
  and at the same time, root unearthing those detrimental secrets.
• 1:14:47
  You know,
• 1:14:47
  maybe the best thing to do is just stop lying, as opposed
• 1:14:51
  to tell the truth about everything.
• 1:14:53
  And I don't know what this if this is that people talk disclosure.
• 1:14:57
  I don't think much about it.
• 1:14:59
  I don't want to have the government dictate much in my life, especially.
• 1:15:05
  A good way of, yeah, that's a great, great savior.
• 1:15:08
  Having been in it my entire adult life until now,
• 1:15:11
  I've let alone thought,
• 1:15:14
  which they spend a ton of money and effort
• 1:15:17
  and very smart people doing exactly just that.
• 1:15:21
  I say all of that to know, to just say, I don't know, but
• 1:15:24
  it's useful to somebody and I just hope it's for good, frankly.
• 1:15:28
  Yeah. And I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think it was.
• 1:15:30
  You know, thank you for being a great witness for America today.
• 1:15:33
  Farrow's face. Thanks for stepping forward.
• 1:15:36
  You know, there's two flavors of leadership in the military, right?
• 1:15:38
  There's the leadership that, you know, everyone expects you to perform, right.
• 1:15:43
  As, you know, a leader in an office space, right?
• 1:15:45
  Then there's people
• 1:15:46
  who actually go out there and make changes to improve the system.
• 1:15:49
  Right.
• 1:15:49
  You need to be a leader inside the system or outside,
• 1:15:52
  and often the ones outside the system.
• 1:15:53
  The ones actually fix the system. Right.
• 1:15:55
  So thank you for being a leader inside and outside on this topic.
• 1:16:00
  Appreciate that.
• 1:16:00
  Yeah. Thank you.
• 1:16:01
  There's so much more we could talk to you about.
• 1:16:04
  I'm sure.
• 1:16:04
  And I'm sure our members are going
• 1:16:05
  to have a lot of great questions, but I think we'll end it there now.
• 1:16:09
  We'll see you in about a week for those questions.
• 1:16:10
  And if you'd like to join Kaysen and ask some questions,
• 1:16:13
  go to Safe Aerospace or join up to be a member.
• 1:16:15
  And you can help support us both in our mission
• 1:16:19
  by liking and subscribing to this channel so we can continue to produce
• 1:16:23
  awesome content and bring people like Kaysen out to share their story.
• 1:16:27
  All right. Thanks, everyone. Thank Kazan.