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13:48
Transcript
0:01
we have tackled many strange stories on
60 minutes but perhaps none like this
0:07
it's the story of the u.s government's grudging
acknowledgment of unidentified aerial phenomena
0:13
uap more commonly known as ufos after decades
of public denial the pentagon now admits
0:21
there's something out there and the
u.s senate wants to know what it is
0:26
the intelligence committee has ordered the
director of national intelligence and the
0:31
secretary of defense to deliver a report
on the mysterious sightings by next month
0:38
the story will continue in a moment so what
you're telling me is that ufos unidentified flying
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objects are real bill i think we're beyond that
already the government has already stated for the
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0:57
record that they're real i'm not telling you that
the united states government is telling you that
1:02
luis elizando spent 20 years running
military intelligence operations worldwide
1:07
in afghanistan the middle east and guantanamo
he hadn't given ufos a second thought until 2008
1:15
that's when he was asked to join something at
the pentagon called the advanced aerospace threat
1:20
identification program or atip the mission of
atip was quite simple it was to collect and
1:27
analyze information involving anomalous uh aerial
vehicles uh what i guess in the vernacular you
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call them ufos we call them uaps you know
how this sounds it sounds nutty wacky look
1:40
bill i'm not i'm not telling you that that it
doesn't sound wacky what i'm telling you it's real
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the question is what is it what are its
intentions what are its capabilities
1:50
buried away in the pentagon atip was part of a 22
million dollar program sponsored by then senate
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1:57
majority leader harry reid to investigate ufos
when elizondo took over in 2010 he focused on
2:05
the national security implications of unidentified
aerial phenomena documented by u.s service members
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imagine a technology that can do six to seven
hundred g forces that can fly at thirteen thousand
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miles an hour that it can evade radar and that can
fly through air and water and possibly space and
2:27
oh by the way has no obvious signs of propulsion
no wings no control surfaces and yet still can
2:32
defy the natural effects of earth's gravity that's
precisely what we're seeing elizondo tells us atip
2:38
was a loose-knit mix of scientists electro-optical
engineers avionics and intelligence experts
2:45
often working part-time they comb through
data and records and analyzed videos like this
2:57
a navy air crew struggles to lock onto
3:00
a fast-moving object off the
u.s atlantic coast in 2015.
3:07
recently released images may not convince ufo
skeptics but the pentagon admits it doesn't know
3:13
what in the world this is or this or this so what
do you say to the skeptics it's refracted light
3:25
weather balloons a rocket being launched
venus in some cases there are are simple
3:32
explanations for what people are witnessing but
there are some that that are not we're not just
3:38
simply jumping to a conclusion that's saying
oh that's a uap out there we're going through
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our due diligence is it some sort of new type of
cruise missile technology that china has developed
3:48
is it some sort of high altitude balloon that's
conducting reconnaissance ultimately when you
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have exhausted all those what-ifs and you're
still left with with the fact that this is in
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our airspace and it's real that's when it becomes
compelling and that's when it becomes problematic
4:06
former navy pilot lieutenant ryan graves
calls whatever is out there a security risk
4:12
he told us his f-18 squadron began seeing uaps
hovering over restricted airspace southeast of
4:20
virginia beach in 2014 when they updated their
jets radar making it possible to zero in with
4:27
infrared targeting cameras so you're seeing it
both with the radar and with the infrared and that
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tells you that there is something out there pretty
hard to spoof that these photographs were taken
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in 2019 in the same area the pentagon confirms
these are images of objects it can't identify
4:48
lieutenant graves told us pilots training off the
atlantic coast see things like that all the time
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every day every day for at least a couple years
wait a minute every day for a couple of years
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you know i don't see an exhaust pool
including this one off the coast of
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jacksonville florida in 2015 captured on a
targeting camera by members of graves squadron
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it's rotating oh my gosh
5:20
they're all going against the wind the wind's 120
out of the west you can sort of hear a surprise
5:26
in their voices you certainly can they seem to
have broke character a bit uh and we're just kind
5:31
of amazed at what they were seeing what do you
think when you see something like this this is
5:36
a difficult one to explain you have rotation you
have high altitudes you have propulsion right i
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don't know i don't know what it is frankly he told
us pilots speculate they are one of three things
5:49
secret u.s technology an adversary spy vehicle
or something otherworldly i'd say you know the
5:57
highest probability is it's a threat observation
program could it be russian or chinese technology
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i don't see why not are you alarmed i i
am worried uh frankly you know if these
6:09
were tactical jets from another country that were
hanging out up there it would be a massive issue
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but because it looks slightly different we're
not willing to actually look at the problem in
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the face uh we're we're happy to just ignore
the fact that these are out there watching us
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every day the government has ignored it at
least publicly since closing its project
6:27
blue book investigation in 1969 but that began to
change after an incident off southern california
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in 2004 which was documented by radar
by camera and four naval aviators
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we spoke to two of them david fravor a graduate of
the top gun naval flight school and commander of
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the f-18 squadron on the uss nimitz and flying
at his wing lieutenant alex dietrich who has
6:54
never spoken publicly about the encounter i
never wanted to be on national tv no offense
7:01
so why are you doing this because i was
in a government aircraft because i was on
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the clock and so i feel a responsibility to
to share what i can and it is unclassified
7:14
it was november 2004 and the uss nimitz
carrier strike group was training about
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100 miles southwest of san diego for a week
the advanced new radar on a nearby ship
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the uss princeton had detected what operators
called multiple anomalous aerial vehicles over
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the horizon descending 80 000 feet in less than
a second on november 14 fravor and dietrich
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each with a weapon system officer in the back
seat were diverted to investigate they found an
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area of roiling white water the size
of a 737 in an otherwise calm blue sea
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so as we're looking at this her backseater says
hey skipper do you and about that got out i said
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dude do you do you see that thing down there and
we saw this little white tic-tac-looking object
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and it's just kind of moving above the
white water area as dietrich circled above
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fravor went in for a closer look sort of spiraling
down the tic-tacs don't point north-south it goes
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and just turns abruptly and starts mirroring
me so as i'm coming down it starts coming up
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so it's it's mimicking your moves yeah it was
aware we were there he said it was about the
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size of his f-18 with no markings no wings no
exhaust plumes too i'll see how close i can get
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so i go like this and it's climbing still and when
it gets right in front of me it just disappears
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disappears disappears like gone it had sped
off what are you thinking so your mind tries
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to make sense of it i'm going to categorize
this as maybe a helicopter or maybe a drone
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and when it disappeared i mean it was just
did your backseaters see this too yeah oh yeah
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there was four of us in the airplanes literally
watching this thing for roughly about five minutes
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seconds later the princeton reacquired the
target 60 miles away another crew managed to
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briefly lock onto it with a targeting camera
before it zipped off again you know i think
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that over beers we've sort of said hey man if
i saw this solo i don't know that i would have
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come back and said anything because it sounds so
crazy when i say it you understand that reaction
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i do you've had some people tell me you
know when you say that you can sound crazy
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i'll be i'm not a ufo guy but from what
i hear you guys saying there's something
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yes oh there's there's definitely something
that i don't know who's building it
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who's got the technology who's got the brains
but there's there's something out there that
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was better in our airplane the air crew filed
reports then like the mysterious flying object
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the nimitz encounter disappeared nothing
was said or done officially for five years
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until lou elizondo came across the story and
investigated we spend millions of dollars in
10:14
training these these pilots and they are seeing
something that they can't explain furthermore
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that information is being backed up on electro
optical data like gun camera footage and by
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radar data now to me that's compelling inside the
pentagon his findings were met with skepticism
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atip's funding was eliminated in 2012 but elizondo
says he and a handful of others kept the mission
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alive until finally frustrated he quit the
pentagon in 2017 but not before getting these
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three videos declassified and then things took
a stranger turn i tried to help my colleague
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lou elizondo elevate the issue in the department
and actually get it to the secretary of defense
10:57
christopher millen served as deputy assistant
secretary of defense for intelligence for
11:02
presidents clinton and george w bush and
had access to top secret government programs
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so it's not us that's one thing we know we know
that i could say that with very high degree of
11:13
confidence in part because of the positions i held
in the department and i know the process mellon
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says he grew concerned nothing was being done
about uaps so he decided to do something in 2017
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as a private citizen he surreptitiously acquired
the three navy videos elizondo had declassified
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and leaked them to the new york times it's bizarre
and unfortunate that someone like myself has to do
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something like that to get a national security
issue like this on the agenda he joined forces
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with now civilian lou elizondo and they started
to tell their story to anybody who would listen
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to newspapers the history channel to members of
congress we knew and understood that you had to
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go to the public get the public interested to
get congress interested to then circle back
12:03
to the defense department and get them to start
taking a look at it and now it is this past august
12:10
the pentagon resurrected atip it's now called the
uap task force service members now are encouraged
12:17
to report strange encounters and the senate
wants answers anything that enters an airspace
12:24
that's not supposed to be there is a threat
after receiving classified briefings on uaps
12:29
senator marco rubio called for a detailed analysis
this past december while he was still head of the
12:36
intelligence committee he asked the director of
national intelligence and the pentagon to present
12:42
congress an unclassified report by next month
this is a bizarre issue the pentagon and other
12:48
branches of the military have a long history of
sort of dismissing this what makes you think that
12:55
this time is going to be different i mean we're
going to find out when we get that report you know
12:59
there's a stigma on capitol hill i mean some of my
colleagues are very interested in this topic and
13:03
some kind of you know giggle when you when
you bring it up but i i don't think we can
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allow the stigma to keep us from having an
answer to a very fundamental question what do
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you want us to do about this i want us to take it
seriously and have a process to take it seriously
13:17
i want us to have a process to analyze the data
every time it comes in that there be a place where
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this is cataloged and constantly analyzed until we
get some answers maybe it has a very simple answer
13:29
maybe it doesn't for more on the nimitz
encounter i felt the vulnerability of
13:39
not having anything to defend ourselves go to
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— end of transcript —
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