Files of the Unexplained (2024) s01e04 Episode Script

[sparse tense music plays]
[man] I got outta bed one morning,
and I couldn't bear weight
on my right leg,
and my knee hurt.
This was in October of 2012.
I told my wife,
"You need to take me to the hospital
so I can get my leg checked out."
The radiologist asked me,
"Have you been in an accident?"
And I said, "No,
I've never had any injury to that knee."
And he says,
"Well, there's an artifact here."
And he put the X-ray up on the light box,
and he pointed it out to me.
Square little structure in my knee,
about the size of a fingernail,
with two wires attached to it.
And I said, "That's inside my leg?"
He said, "Yeah."
"But but you don't have a scar."
[dramatic music plays]
Just the visual of seeing the X-ray
and finding out that it's under my skin
without an explanation
just ramped up my anxiety.
And then I started having nightmares
of something that actually happened
to me decades ago,
a replay of somethin'
that really happened.
While I was in the Air Force,
I went camping with a friend.
- [energy pulses]
- And I'm just having fun.
Until I see these lights
flashing at odd intervals,
and a UFO the size of a Walmart
appears over us.
From dead center of this thing,
there came a milky white light
that took me inside the ship.
And I'm screaming as loud as I can,
and then I was out, unconscious.
I woke up to the flashing
yellow, orange, and white lights
outside the canvas of the tent.
I'm thinkin', "What is this?"
[theme music plays]
[ethereal music plays]
- [woman] Oh my God.
- [man] What is that?
[narrator] Over the years,
countless videos of strange lights
and objects in the sky
have been shared and re-shared
on social media.
But in April of 2023,
Pentagon officials surprised the public
when they announced
they were tracking over 650 reports
of unidentified flying objects and lights,
a drastic increase from recent years.
Many of these reports,
under official investigation,
have been submitted by military personnel.
While the sightings
seem to defy explanation,
some say the government has known more
about these types of events for decades.
[planes whirring]
[man] During World War II, pilots began
to see what they called the Foo Fighters,
sometimes overseas in the Pacific
and European theater.
[theremin music plays]
[narrator] Foo Fighter was the name
given to formations of orange lights
seen moving at high speeds.
[Chris] Things really picked up
in and around Los Alamos, in New Mexico.
Scientists, security personnel,
civilians, military pilots
All kinds of people were seeing
these unidentified flying objects.
So at that point,
the Air Force began to study it.
There was ultimately Project Blue Book.
[narrator] The project had two main goals.
To analyze UFO data,
and determine
if these unidentified objects
were a threat to national security.
So with the public and civilians
reporting these things,
there was a tremendous amount of activity.
[officer] I am here to discuss
so-called flying saucers.
The Air Force interest in this problem
has been to identify anything in the air
that may have the possibility
of threat or menace to the United States.
They amassed over 12,000 sightings,
were unable to explain over 700 of them.
This was becoming
almost national pandemonium.
There were articles
with block letters this big
about UFOs over the capital.
Hundreds of reports
of strange objects in the sky
have been filed with the Air Force.
They ultimately were not able
to resolve this
and wanted to get this off their plate.
So the Air Force commissioned a study
which reached the conclusion
they wanted it to,
that there's nothing of interest here
for science or national security,
even though the data
contradicted that conclusion.
And they walked away from it.
[interviewer] The Air Force
has been accused from time to time
of hiding information about UFO.
What do you have to say to that,
Col. Tacker?
Those charges are absolutely untrue.
[Chris] To this day, people report
a wide range of experiences, interactions.
There are people
that have reported wounds and illnesses
from being in close proximity,
which provides evidence
that they were affected
in some very real way,
as a result of some experience
or encounter that they had.
In 1977, I was a non-commissioned officer.
I was a staff sergeant,
and stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base
in western Missouri.
I was trained as an EMT,
and I worked with my friend Toby.
You know, we socialized together
on the weekends.
And he says, "Hey, I got an idea.
Let's go camping."
[suspenseful music plays]
June 11th, 1977, we exited the base
and drove south.
Toby said, "Well, there's supposed
to be this piece of high ground."
I had never been down there,
and, uh, it was amazing.
We found it right away.
We set up the camp,
and we're chatting back and forth,
and then, uh
[mysterious music plays]
Not only did it get quiet, it got still.
And Toby has his head turned to the left,
which would've been toward the west.
He says, "Hey, Terry,
were those lights there before?"
And I'm like, "What lights?"
You know, we're in the middle of nowhere,
there should be no lights.
So I take a step back.
And on the horizon,
there was a triangle
made of very bright stars.
They were all the same luminosity.
The three stars rotated clockwise
about 120 degrees.
I think that what we were looking at
was a triangular-shaped craft,
and it was clear
that it was coming in our direction.
And this thing did a complete somersault,
and it did that twice.
The exterior of the thing
was about the size of a Walmart,
several stories in height,
and there were windows,
and there was light
pouring out of the windows.
From dead center of this thing,
there came a light
about same diameter as a softball.
And it was a milky white light,
and it landed
square in the middle of our campfire.
[energy pulses]
I don't know how, but Toby and I both
were inside this triangle thing.
Now, I open my eyes and I'm thinkin',
"Am I dreaming?
What is this? What is this place?"
But it felt too real to be a dream.
It wasn't a dream.
I know it wasn't a dream.
I had heard Toby screaming,
'cause I recognized his voice.
But I can't move.
I can't turn my head.
I can't lift a finger.
The only thing I can move is my eyes.
I saw a line of six or seven beings.
They wore tan-colored flight suits
with an orange patch on their shoulder.
The guy in front
was doin' something on a panel.
[beeping]
And they took me down a long corridor
to a white room with a domed ceiling.
And there was
a pretty standard-looking X-ray table.
There were two beings in the room,
and they were seven-foot tall.
I got this clinical, medical vibe
from them.
I didn't think they were gonna kill me.
I thought they might hurt me.
Uh, and they did.
And then, uh, I was out,
in a deep sleep.
And I woke up
to these orange and white flashing lights
outside the canvas of the tent.
So I wake up and I
I kinda don't have my wits about me.
I turn to my friend Toby, and I'm like,
"Toby, what's out there, man?"
He didn't really give me
a coherent answer,
and I was just absolutely terrified.
[gentle intriguing music plays]
It was 45 minutes before dawn,
and we watched this thing take off.
And then we're both sitting in this tent,
still scared to death.
And Toby's like,
"We gotta get outta here."
"Let's make a run for the car."
On our drive back from Devil's Den,
we were both hurting,
and we were both severely dehydrated.
This was right at dawn,
and the light from the morning sunshine
was just killin' my eyes.
I was just terribly photophobic.
When I got home,
I didn't even know what to tell my wife.
I wasn't even sure what had happened.
Both of our wives took us
to Whiteman Air Force Base Hospital
because my wife is like,
"What happened to you?"
I said, "I I don't know."
"I woke up like this."
When the doctors asked me what happened,
I had no idea what to tell them either.
It was difficult
to make sense of it back then.
[ominous tone plays]
I found out that I had
what they call flash burns.
It's a sunburn to the cornea of your eye.
It's the same injury
an arc welder would get
if they didn't wear
that hood with the smoked glass.
It was very painful.
It was treated.
I spent several nights in the hospital.
The doctors kept the lights off
in the room,
and they put this salve in my eyes,
and, uh, came in with an injection for me,
for pain and to help me sleep.
On the third night,
OSI agent,
from the Office of Special Investigations,
came in my room.
And he walked over to my bed
and he put his hand against the door,
and he got down right in my face
and he said,
"Son, I know and you know
you two knuckleheads
stumbled onto something out there,
and I think you know what I mean."
And I didn't know how to answer him.
I had no clue what had happened,
but he knew I saw a spaceship.
[mellow music plays]
[narrator] When Terry is released
from the hospital,
he is given orders
by his commanding officer
to never discuss what happened
that night at Devil's Den with anyone,
and to cease all contact with Toby.
They cut orders for Toby to go to Japan,
and they cut those orders at light speed.
I mean, he was gone in a matter of weeks.
And I was thinkin'
that if I could say goodbye to this guy,
that would kind of give me
some element of closure to this.
I decided to swing by Toby's house
to say goodbye to him.
And he comes out of the bedroom,
and his hair is all wonky,
and he's got on a dirty T-shirt.
And he looked up at me
and his eyes are bloodshot,
and I could smell liquor on his breath.
He said, "It happened, didn't it, Terry?"
And I said,
"Yes, my brother, it really happened."
"You're not losin' your mind."
And he said, "Yeah, but why us?"
And I said,
"Man, I don't have a" expletive, "clue."
That was the last time I saw Toby.
Years later,
I found out Toby had passed away.
[ominous music plays]
[narrator] And Terry isn't
the only service member
to conceal the fallout
of a strange encounter.
[Chris] I think probably
most of the people that report this
are probably having sleep paralysis
and things like that.
But there's some cases
where there's enough evidence
that you really do wonder.
In one extraordinary case,
an individual named John Burroughs,
who was an Air Force
security officer in England,
got very close
to a bizarre unidentified flying object
that was in the woods
adjacent to his base.
I was stationed
at at RAF Bentwaters-Woodbridge.
[mellow suspenseful music plays]
The Rendlesham Forest event
took place outside the East Gate
at RAF Woodbridge
on the 26th of December 1980, at 0300.
About three o'clock in the morning
I was ridin' with my supervisor,
and he saw some strange lights in the sky
coming down into the forest.
So a decision was made at that point
to go ahead
and, uh, have a squad investigate
to see if something
crashed into the forest.
So we went ahead and departed the base,
went down into the forest
on a service road,
went as far as we could
before we were blocked by a fence.
Nothin' felt right.
It It was like, uh, the forest itself
had, like, a white light in it.
Within the white light,
there seemed to be an oval-type red ball
with blue lights
and a white light below it.
And eventually, whatever it was
rose up into the trees
and then shot off towards the coast.
Our higher-ups,
they weren't sure what happened.
They told us to go out
to the site in daylight
to take a look around, which we did.
We found some indentations in the ground
and then some damage
to the canopy above us in the forest.
[ethereal music plays]
I wasn't consumed
by this encounter in the forest.
I was just like,
"Well, somethin' happened
and I can't explain it,
and I'm going on with my life."
My life went back to normal.
I did my two years,
and I left Woodbridge Air Force Base.
[Chris] The Air Force
actually classified his records.
We have a very arcane secrecy system,
and different services and organizations
can classify information
at such a high level
that even the chairman
of the Intelligence Committee
is not privy to it.
Sort of smoke and mirrors,
palace of secrets that we have,
that's hard to negotiate
and impedes the flow of information.
They can classify stuff
based off of whatever happened
in a a military operation.
They can deny access to anybody.
That's why I'll never understand
how my name got leaked out,
but somehow some of the people involved,
their names were exposed.
That's when these different people
started trying to track us down,
including CNN.
CNN was doing an investigation.
[narrator] Four years
after the event occurred
at RAF Bentwaters-Woodbridge,
CNN airs their special investigation.
[reporter] This is Woodbridge Airfield,
an American Air Force base
in eastern England.
[engine roars]
[intriguing synth music plays]
[reporter] Woodbridge Field was the site
of something that witnesses say
seemed to be taken from science fiction.
All I can tell you is
at the time the incident became public,
it was done through a memo
for the Ministry of Defense.
It leaked out,
and the Air Force could no longer deny,
neither could the MOD deny,
that something took place.
That was the big story,
aliens were involved
at Bentwaters Air Force Base.
I was approached by CNN,
but I refused to do an interview
because I was asked
to sign certain non-disclosure stuff,
you know, prior to departing,
uh, RA Bentwaters.
[narrator] While others shared
their shocking accounts with CNN
on the condition of anonymity.
But I think I saw a UFO,
some kind of a spaceship
from someplace not of this Earth.
Anything that happens inside the military,
if the press gets involved,
you have to report it
to your chain of command,
and they have to determine
what you can and can't say
and how it's handled.
They knew that the the investigation
was gonna be made public.
I don't know what the Air Force felt,
as far as to how far this would go,
but it clearly it'd gotten more traction
than they were comfortable with.
[narrator] The government uses
the news media to deliver information
to the public on a daily basis.
But certain information
is deliberately withheld from news sources
through non-disclosure agreements
and the classification of sensitive data.
With only partial view of the facts,
it would be impossible
to see the full picture
of what's really going on.
[ethereal music plays]
[Chris] It's hard for people
in the government to talk about this.
There absolutely were cases
where NDAs were signed
and personnel refused
to share information,
even with other
cleared military personnel.
Could people be leery a little bit
about talking about stuff? Sure.
But in reality, you have to follow
the order of the military law
or you would be in trouble,
no matter what the incident is.
[narrator] For decades,
service members like John and Terry
have been forced
to keep their strange encounters secret.
[Terry] Before I saw the X-rays,
it was 2012,
and the incident was 40 years in my past,
and I felt like I was finally
coming to grips with it,
and I knew that I would never tell a soul.
But those X-rays,
when I saw the thing,
it validated for me that these things
had put their hands on me,
and I decided to write this book,
Incident at Devil's Den.
I decided to speak publicly about it.
I was thinkin'
that if enough people talk about it,
it will have some sway on the government
to come clean.
When I started writing my book in 2017,
I wanted to get a copy
of my medical records from 1977.
I did a written request, and, um
I was there six years,
and the packet of stuff I got
was no bigger than that.
My medical records
should've been fatter than that.
I like to say there were holes in this
you could drive a truck through.
So, when I realized
that I really couldn't process this
on my own,
I researched alien implants,
and I came up with Derrel Sims.
[Derrell] I'm a private investigator
in the state of Texas.
I was a former military police officer
and I was in the CIA.
Now I look for physical and medical
evidence of human-alien contact,
and I've been doing
some research myself with implants.
There's a lot we don't know about.
[narrator] Implants are foreign objects
occasionally found
underneath the skin of abductees.
While they largely remain a mystery,
some implant experts believe
they are used to study the human body.
[Derrell] I think
that some of the implants
are designed to monitor bodily functions,
but those rare people that have 'em,
they don't know.
They find 'em accidentally.
[Terry] Who is responsible
for putting this thing in my leg?
You know, I I'm torn
between saying that it was E.T.
or saying that it was my government,
and I think it could've been either.
My thought was
it's a tracking device of some kind.
The whole thing is very unsettling.
I met Terry Lovelace and, uh, just had
a really interesting conversation.
I invited him down to Houston, Texas.
Uh, we've been friends ever since.
- Hey, Terry.
- Derrell, how you doin', Doctor?
- Good to see you.
- Good to see you. Give me a hug.
- Nice. Been a while, buddy. Oh, man.
- Yes, it has. Too long.
- I brought you films
- Ah!
that I don't think you've seen before.
These are 2017,
November 2017, X-rays of my leg.
The X-rays that show the implant.
The problem I'm having,
if it were if it were human tech,
it would be easily discernible.
You'd see it.
[Terry] You know, my question would be,
if this was in my body,
how did it get there
without there being a scar somewhere?
I'm baffled by it.
I contacted a surgeon,
and I sent him copies of my X-rays.
And we talked on the phone,
and I told him,
I said, "I'd like it removed."
So I had planned to go in December.
And then in November,
the thing vanishes.
November 16th, I think,
would've been the morning.
- I I'm goin' from memory here.
- Mm-hmm.
But I woke up and I had a lotta pain
at the top of both of my legs.
And I had puncture wounds
at the top of both of my legs.
I mean, I had the feeling
that they came and got their merchandise.
It's unnerving to know
that something is under your skin,
and then the next thing you know,
it's gone.
So, what problems have you had
getting X-rays, Terry?
Well, you know, I knew that I didn't
wanna go back to the VA hospital.
- [both laugh]
- I knew
- So
- I think we both agree on that.
I decided to go to, uh, a chiropractor
and get the X-rays,
because, uh, I don't
I don't trust the VA.
[tense music plays]
The government does keep medical records
from military personnel.
Terry is a good example.
I don't know
some of these other people personally,
but I can tell you that it's a mess
trying to find medical records
and get help from the VA.
[John] The first issue that I had
was when I got sick.
When I came in the Air Force,
I had a clean bill of health.
You couldn't have gotten in the Air Force
with a heart murmur.
That was one of the disqualifying things.
And then when I got
out of active duty in '88,
I had the e exit physical
showing that I had heart damage.
Eventually, I started havin'
some eye issues
where my eyes were acting up.
And the doctor looked into my eyes,
he said, "Have you been
exposed to radiation?"
And I looked at him
and I said, "Not that I'm aware of."
He goes, "Well, you have
radiation damage in your eyes."
Right after the event, I
I had some issues
where I didn't feel well, but it wasn't
it wasn't at the point where I correlated
not feeling well to the incident.
But after research I did,
it became clear that what we encountered
in Rendlesham caused my injuries.
[narrator] When John Burroughs
requests his medical records
through the Freedom of Information Act,
he is denied.
He is also unable to access
the veteran's benefits he's due.
If your records are classified,
they can't acknowledge other records
that would've supported my claim.
The Air Force decided to not acknowledge
the fact that I was in from '79 to '82.
My name is Cheryl Bennett,
and I was a staff assistant
for Senator John McCain.
I took care of, uh, constituents
that were having problems,
you know, with the VA.
[ethereal music plays]
In August of 2013,
I met John Burroughs
from the US Air Force.
He came in to seek help for his DD-214s
and his medical records.
Everybody has one DD-214
when they get out.
[narrator] A DD-214 form
is issued to service members
who have been honorably discharged
from active duty.
They are used to verify military service
to obtain benefits.
[Cheryl] John never got that when he left.
And then when he finally decided
he needed some medical attention,
that's when this whole problem started.
"Oh no, you "[scoffs]
"You weren't in the military."
I mean, at at a point,
he had to question himself,
"Am I insane? Am I going crazy?"
You know, "Did this really happen
or not happen?"
[John] The Department of Justice
got involved.
Cheryl told me they brought in somebody
with a high clearance to review my stuff,
who couldn't even get access
to my records.
And the fact is,
they couldn't verify anything
other than I was in
at the time I said it happened.
All my stuff was still classified.
[Cheryl] I mean,
when your records are classified,
you're pretty much SOL
because they will not release them to you.
I mean, I even had a letter
sent back to me
from one of the lieutenants
from the Department of Justice
saying that, "I don't care."
"You can't throw
John McCain's name out there."
"It's not gonna get you anywhere."
That pissed me off.
Congress, uh, the CIA, the FBI,
the Department of Justice,
the Department of Defense,
all the higher liaisons
that I was working with,
they were covering up his records,
all of 'em.
[narrator] But for some service members
and officials,
the central issue
isn't government manipulation.
They believe the real problem
is a lack of intelligence.
[mysterious music plays]
[man] I went to school for, uh,
mechanical and aerospace engineering.
And shortly after that, I joined the Navy,
ended up flying the F-18 Super Hornet
off the east coast of Virginia Beach
for a number of years.
So, in 2014, as we were flying around,
we would have these objects
brought on our radar.
We'd have all our sensors on it,
and all those sensors
actually get plumbed into our helmet.
So as we look out into the sky
outside of our cockpit,
it's like a augmented reality.
There's only supposed to be
F-18s out there.
So we'd go out there
and see someone that didn't belong,
that immediately stuck out.
But, okay. That could happen
with commercial air traffic.
But what's unique about these objects
is that they weren't behaving
like aircraft.
They were stationary,
they were at very high or very low speeds,
and they were out there all day,
so who were they?
[narrator] In recent years,
the term UFO,
"Unidentified Flying Object,"
has been replaced with the term UAP,
"Unidentified Aerial Phenomena."
[Ryan] Our culture has had UFO
on our minds for quite some time.
As soon as you say "UFO,"
people immediately think,
"Aliens coming from another place."
So the term has a lot of baggage,
and we needed to get away from that
and find something that was more neutral
and more objective.
"Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon"
acknowledges they may not even be objects.
It could be plasma.
It could be an atmospheric phenomenon.
[gentle intriguing music plays]
[Ryan] Over the course of time,
as we observed these objects,
the only natural conclusion we'd come to
was this was some super top-secret program
that we were just not aware of.
[Chris] Is this a foreign adversary?
Is this Russia or China?
Have they developed a breakthrough
that allows them to operate with impunity
in restricted military airspace?
If these looked like a Russian aircraft
or a Chinese aircraft,
there would be much to-do about this.
Air National Guard'd probably be
brought in. It'd be a major issue.
[narrator] And Ryan would soon witness
the most widely discussed UAP
in recent history.
In January of 2015,
my squadron and I were operating
off of Jacksonville, Florida,
when we captured the gimbal video.
[ominous music plays]
So, we see here,
the aircraft taking this
is at 25,000 feet above the ocean.
Uh, and this object is basically
at the same altitude.
This looks pretty refined
as far as the image goes.
And then we see
the the rotation of the object.
You see, it just rotates like a gimbal.
[narrator] A gimbal is a mechanism
that allows a device to rotate on an axis.
[Ryan] In 2017, I saw
the New York Times article
that came out with the the gimbal video.
I was like, "I was I was there
when that film was taken."
I recognized the voices.
Those are my buddies.
- [man 1] But if there's
- [man 2] Look at that thing!
[man 1] It's rotating.
[narrator] On social media platforms,
the gimbal video reinvigorates
the debate surrounding UAP.
[Chris] After I had left
the Pentagon formally,
I became aware
that we were having violations
of restricted military airspace
on an ongoing basis,
and had been already
for a couple of years,
and nobody was doing anything about it.
[man 1] Wow, man, look at it flying!
[man 2 laughs]
[Ryan] The objects that we were seeing
didn't look or didn't behave
like our threat nations
or our adversaries,
and so it seemed to get ignored
in a way that it otherwise wouldn't
have been ignored.
[narrator] So, is there an unofficial
"Don't ask, don't tell" policy
when it comes to UAP,
or simply a lack of protocol?
There were all kinds of organizations
in the national security community
that were touching parts of this problem,
and none of them had a
a s a place to report this.
And it was at that point
that I really got involved,
uh, ultimately, in a very public way.
[tense music plays]
The Appropriations Committee
was still of the the mindset
that this is, you know, wacky stuff, UFOs.
They were not interested
in supporting anything in this area,
and they didn't have the information yet.
So, my suggestion
was ask for a report, a public report
from the intelligence community
on this issue.
So, that report came out in June of 2021.
[narrator] The preliminary report
says accounts of UAP
generally fall into five main categories.
Airborne Air Clutter,
Natural Atmospheric,
Foreign Adversary Systems,
Classified Developmental Programs,
and Other, the events without explanation.
[dramatic classical music plays]
[Ryan] When the preliminary report
went to Congress,
it was very unique
because it was the first time
that we've ever really
publicly acknowledged, as a military,
that there is this uncertainty there.
[Chris] Someone like Ryan Graves
is also an aerospace engineer,
in addition to being a pilot.
So, when somebody like that
[laughs]tells you that he's seen
one of these things out there,
and seeing 'em on a regular basis,
uh, you can take that to the bank.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
are a potential national security threat.
For too long,
the stigma associated with UAPs
has gotten in the way
of good intelligence analysis.
Pilots avoided reporting,
or were laughed at when they did.
What it's done is validated
the statements of the operators
that were at the very low level.
And it gets just goes to show
the amount of stigmatism
that had to be overcome, right?
We had to go through such extreme lengths
to get that information
from the operators to the decision-makers.
And these reports
are are part of that process.
That's why there is
an All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office
within the Department of Defense now.
That office is now charged
with receiving all information
from all government organizations,
analyzing it,
reviewing all intelligence records
back to World War II,
creating a whistleblower process
where people can come in,
regardless of any NDA they signed,
and talk openly about what they saw
and what they knew.
We didn't win the Cold War
because we were better
at protecting secrets.
We won the Cold War
because we were better
at moving and sharing information.
But I think they've been trying to avoid
anything that would set the press off,
and anything that could be construed
as proof or evidence
that there are craft out there
that might be alien.
[narrator] Though any effort
to downplay the strange events
happening in US airspace
became impossible in February of 2023.
February of 2023, the United States
shot down a number of objects,
four total objects,
over the continental United States.
[Chris] There was coverage
in any leading news organization
in the United States.
The Pentagon briefing reporters,
just before we came on the air,
saying they are now tracking
a suspected Chinese spy balloon
hovering over the northern US.
[reporter] For the third day in a row,
and the fourth time in just nine days,
the United States has shot down
an unidentified high-flying object.
They were over Alaska,
Canada's Yukon Territory, and Lake Huron.
This, after a Chinese spy balloon
was shot down more than a week ago
off the coast of South Carolina.
Tonight, the US is still not able to call
the three objects shot down
by the United States
over the course of three days
anything but "objects."
This is completely unprecedented
for a number of reasons.
We were told very clearly
that there was a Chinese spy balloon
that was operating in our vicinity.
And then, in the very same note,
the next three objects we shot down
remain unidentified
and unattributed as well.
[narrator] Given the unanswered questions
surrounding these events,
and the experiences of military members
like Terry, John, and Ryan,
do we even have the capabilities
to know what's really in the skies?
[ominous music plays]
[intriguing music plays]
[Ryan] We just simply don't
have enough data.
At the end of the day, the only way
we're gonna be able to figure it out
is we put energy and attention into it.
Congress recognizes
the subject of UAPs is multifaceted
and requires
a careful data-driven approach.
Today, we are not just debating
the existence of UAPs,
we are deliberating on the principles
that define our republic,
which is a commitment
to transparency and accountability.
We can see that conversation
moving into the public sector.
I think that's gonna be key
to moving the conversation forward
in a open manner.
The American public has a right to learn
about technologies of unknown origins,
non-human intelligence,
and unexplainable phenomena.
Now, the sheer number of reports,
whistleblowers,
and stories
of unidentified anomalous phenomena
should raise real questions.
If you believe we have crashed craft,
as stated earlier,
do we have the bodies of the pilots
who piloted this craft?
As I've stated publicly already
in my NewsNation interview,
uh, biologics came
with some of these recoveries, yeah.
Were they, I guess,
human or non-human biologics?
- Non-human.
- [people chattering excitedly]
[narrator] Many consider these claims
as confirmation of alien life.
News spreads quickly on social media,
where many share
their shock and disbelief.
We can't afford to not know
who's overflying our country.
It's much, much better,
but there's still more progress
that needs to be made.
[brooding music plays]
[Derrell] What do you know now
you didn't know before?
Nothing.
What are you gonna know next month?
Nothing.
What are you gonna know
six months from then? Nothing.
Oh, there'll be a little leak here
and a little leak there.
If that's good enough for ya,
that's all you're gonna get.
Bring a congressional investigation,
and guess what you're gonna get,
another big cover story.
[John] They've acknowledged that there's
stuff they can't, uh, explain totally,
and they're investigating it,
but disclosure
on what it is'll never happen.
I was injured in the line of duty
in Rendlesham Forest,
and eventually the Air Force
and the DOD and the VA agreed
that I was injured in that event.
But they've never publicly
or privately stated
to Cheryl, myself, or anybody else
what exactly happened to me,
what injured me.
[Cheryl] I got that letter saying
that he will never get
his medical records.
John got the same thing, saying, you know,
"You'll get your benefits,
you'll get what you need,
but you'll never get
your medical records, ever."
Now, who does that? Why?
Why are they doing that?
They won't answer you.
So it's still, to me,
an unknown phenomenon.
I think that we have
some kind of alien technology.
We got somethin' that's kept
under lock and key, and outta sight.
The only reason that I can think of
that they couldn't tell us
would be if it's
a matter of national defense,
and maybe it is. I don't know.
But I'd like to know.
[narrator] While we may never know
what is responsible
for the unexplained lights
and objects in the sky,
one thing is certain.
If answers ever do come to light,
they could radically shift
the course of history.
There are so many still-unresolved
questions around this topic.
Is it possible
that we're encountering probes
from a distant civilization?
I don't think we should be surprised
if that proves to be the case.
So, this is something that has
the most profound possible implications,
and it's potentially very upsetting
for many people,
and yet we have
to be faithful to the data,
uh, regardless of where it goes.
That's what we need to do.
[ominous, droning music plays]