[00:01] we have tackled many strange stories on 
60 minutes but perhaps none like this
[00:07] it's the story of the u.s government's grudging 
acknowledgment of unidentified aerial phenomena
[00:13] uap more commonly known as ufos after decades 
of public denial the pentagon now admits
[00:21] there's something out there and the 
u.s senate wants to know what it is
[00:26] the intelligence committee has ordered the 
director of national intelligence and the
[00:31] secretary of defense to deliver a report 
on the mysterious sightings by next month
[00:38] the story will continue in a moment so what 
you're telling me is that ufos unidentified flying
[00:51] objects are real bill i think we're beyond that 
already the government has already stated for the
[00:57] record that they're real i'm not telling you that 
the united states government is telling you that
[01:02] luis elizando spent 20 years running 
military intelligence operations worldwide
[01:07] in afghanistan the middle east and guantanamo 
he hadn't given ufos a second thought until 2008
[01:15] that's when he was asked to join something at 
the pentagon called the advanced aerospace threat
[01:20] identification program or atip the mission of 
atip was quite simple it was to collect and
[01:27] analyze information involving anomalous uh aerial 
vehicles uh what i guess in the vernacular you
[01:32] call them ufos we call them uaps you know 
how this sounds it sounds nutty wacky look
[01:40] bill i'm not i'm not telling you that that it 
doesn't sound wacky what i'm telling you it's real
[01:45] the question is what is it what are its 
intentions what are its capabilities
[01:50] buried away in the pentagon atip was part of a 22 
million dollar program sponsored by then senate
[01:57] majority leader harry reid to investigate ufos 
when elizondo took over in 2010 he focused on
[02:05] the national security implications of unidentified 
aerial phenomena documented by u.s service members
[02:12] imagine a technology that can do six to seven 
hundred g forces that can fly at thirteen thousand
[02:18] miles an hour that it can evade radar and that can 
fly through air and water and possibly space and
[02:27] oh by the way has no obvious signs of propulsion 
no wings no control surfaces and yet still can
[02:32] defy the natural effects of earth's gravity that's 
precisely what we're seeing elizondo tells us atip
[02:38] was a loose-knit mix of scientists electro-optical 
engineers avionics and intelligence experts
[02:45] often working part-time they comb through 
data and records and analyzed videos like this
[02:57] a navy air crew struggles to lock onto
[03:00] a fast-moving object off the 
u.s atlantic coast in 2015.
[03:07] recently released images may not convince ufo 
skeptics but the pentagon admits it doesn't know
[03:13] what in the world this is or this or this so what 
do you say to the skeptics it's refracted light
[03:25] weather balloons a rocket being launched 
venus in some cases there are are simple
[03:32] explanations for what people are witnessing but 
there are some that that are not we're not just
[03:38] simply jumping to a conclusion that's saying 
oh that's a uap out there we're going through
[03:43] our due diligence is it some sort of new type of 
cruise missile technology that china has developed
[03:48] is it some sort of high altitude balloon that's 
conducting reconnaissance ultimately when you
[03:53] have exhausted all those what-ifs and you're 
still left with with the fact that this is in
[03:59] our airspace and it's real that's when it becomes 
compelling and that's when it becomes problematic
[04:06] former navy pilot lieutenant ryan graves 
calls whatever is out there a security risk
[04:12] he told us his f-18 squadron began seeing uaps 
hovering over restricted airspace southeast of
[04:20] virginia beach in 2014 when they updated their 
jets radar making it possible to zero in with
[04:27] infrared targeting cameras so you're seeing it 
both with the radar and with the infrared and that
[04:33] tells you that there is something out there pretty 
hard to spoof that these photographs were taken
[04:40] in 2019 in the same area the pentagon confirms 
these are images of objects it can't identify
[04:48] lieutenant graves told us pilots training off the 
atlantic coast see things like that all the time
[04:55] every day every day for at least a couple years 
wait a minute every day for a couple of years
[05:02] you know i don't see an exhaust pool 
including this one off the coast of
[05:06] jacksonville florida in 2015 captured on a 
targeting camera by members of graves squadron
[05:14] it's rotating oh my gosh
[05:20] they're all going against the wind the wind's 120 
out of the west you can sort of hear a surprise
[05:26] in their voices you certainly can they seem to 
have broke character a bit uh and we're just kind
[05:31] of amazed at what they were seeing what do you 
think when you see something like this this is
[05:36] a difficult one to explain you have rotation you 
have high altitudes you have propulsion right i
[05:42] don't know i don't know what it is frankly he told 
us pilots speculate they are one of three things
[05:49] secret u.s technology an adversary spy vehicle 
or something otherworldly i'd say you know the
[05:57] highest probability is it's a threat observation 
program could it be russian or chinese technology
[06:04] i don't see why not are you alarmed i i 
am worried uh frankly you know if these
[06:09] were tactical jets from another country that were 
hanging out up there it would be a massive issue
[06:13] but because it looks slightly different we're 
not willing to actually look at the problem in
[06:17] the face uh we're we're happy to just ignore 
the fact that these are out there watching us
[06:22] every day the government has ignored it at 
least publicly since closing its project
[06:27] blue book investigation in 1969 but that began to 
change after an incident off southern california
[06:34] in 2004 which was documented by radar 
by camera and four naval aviators
[06:40] we spoke to two of them david fravor a graduate of 
the top gun naval flight school and commander of
[06:47] the f-18 squadron on the uss nimitz and flying 
at his wing lieutenant alex dietrich who has
[06:54] never spoken publicly about the encounter i 
never wanted to be on national tv no offense
[07:01] so why are you doing this because i was 
in a government aircraft because i was on
[07:06] the clock and so i feel a responsibility to 
to share what i can and it is unclassified
[07:14] it was november 2004 and the uss nimitz 
carrier strike group was training about
[07:20] 100 miles southwest of san diego for a week 
the advanced new radar on a nearby ship
[07:26] the uss princeton had detected what operators 
called multiple anomalous aerial vehicles over
[07:33] the horizon descending 80 000 feet in less than 
a second on november 14 fravor and dietrich
[07:42] each with a weapon system officer in the back 
seat were diverted to investigate they found an
[07:48] area of roiling white water the size 
of a 737 in an otherwise calm blue sea
[07:55] so as we're looking at this her backseater says 
hey skipper do you and about that got out i said
[08:03] dude do you do you see that thing down there and 
we saw this little white tic-tac-looking object
[08:09] and it's just kind of moving above the 
white water area as dietrich circled above
[08:14] fravor went in for a closer look sort of spiraling 
down the tic-tacs don't point north-south it goes
[08:21] and just turns abruptly and starts mirroring 
me so as i'm coming down it starts coming up
[08:26] so it's it's mimicking your moves yeah it was 
aware we were there he said it was about the
[08:31] size of his f-18 with no markings no wings no 
exhaust plumes too i'll see how close i can get
[08:38] so i go like this and it's climbing still and when 
it gets right in front of me it just disappears
[08:44] disappears disappears like gone it had sped 
off what are you thinking so your mind tries
[08:52] to make sense of it i'm going to categorize 
this as maybe a helicopter or maybe a drone
[08:58] and when it disappeared i mean it was just 
did your backseaters see this too yeah oh yeah
[09:04] there was four of us in the airplanes literally 
watching this thing for roughly about five minutes
[09:08] seconds later the princeton reacquired the 
target 60 miles away another crew managed to
[09:15] briefly lock onto it with a targeting camera 
before it zipped off again you know i think
[09:21] that over beers we've sort of said hey man if 
i saw this solo i don't know that i would have
[09:27] come back and said anything because it sounds so 
crazy when i say it you understand that reaction
[09:32] i do you've had some people tell me you 
know when you say that you can sound crazy
[09:37] i'll be i'm not a ufo guy but from what 
i hear you guys saying there's something
[09:45] yes oh there's there's definitely something 
that i don't know who's building it
[09:49] who's got the technology who's got the brains 
but there's there's something out there that
[09:54] was better in our airplane the air crew filed 
reports then like the mysterious flying object
[10:01] the nimitz encounter disappeared nothing 
was said or done officially for five years
[10:08] 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
[10:20] that information is being backed up on electro 
optical data like gun camera footage and by
[10:24] radar data now to me that's compelling inside the 
pentagon his findings were met with skepticism
[10:31] atip's funding was eliminated in 2012 but elizondo 
says he and a handful of others kept the mission
[10:38] alive until finally frustrated he quit the 
pentagon in 2017 but not before getting these
[10:46] three videos declassified and then things took 
a stranger turn i tried to help my colleague
[10:53] 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
[11:08] 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
[11:19] says he grew concerned nothing was being done 
about uaps so he decided to do something in 2017
[11:27] as a private citizen he surreptitiously acquired 
the three navy videos elizondo had declassified
[11:34] and leaked them to the new york times it's bizarre 
and unfortunate that someone like myself has to do
[11:41] something like that to get a national security 
issue like this on the agenda he joined forces
[11:47] with now civilian lou elizondo and they started 
to tell their story to anybody who would listen
[11:53] to newspapers the history channel to members of 
congress we knew and understood that you had to
[11:59] 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
[13:08] allow the stigma to keep us from having an 
answer to a very fundamental question what do
[13:12] 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
[13:21] 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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