S8 Ep32: The US government’s search for alien life with Garrett Graff

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[00:00:32] and intrigue.

[00:00:33] This episode is presented by Matt Fulton and produced by Chris Carr.

[00:00:38] Hello everyone and welcome back to Secrets and Spies.

[00:00:41] On today's episode I'm joined by an investigative journalist bestselling author and Pulitzer prize

[00:00:46] finalist Garrett Graff.

[00:00:48] His latest book UFO, the Inside Story of the US Government Search for Alien Life here

[00:00:53] and out there draws from original archival research, declassified documents and interviews

[00:00:59] with senior intelligence and military officials to explore America's obsession with UFOs

[00:01:04] and the government's decades-long pursuit of answers to the age old question are we

[00:01:09] alone in the universe.

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[00:01:55] Garrett Graff welcome to Secrets and Spies, it's great to have you.

[00:01:59] Thanks so much for having me if this will be fun.

[00:02:00] So before we get started can you tell listeners a little bit about yourself and your previous

[00:02:04] work?

[00:02:05] It's actually quite relevant to talking about this subject which is I am a national security

[00:02:14] writer and historian.

[00:02:15] I've spent the last 20 years or so as a magazine editor and writer in Washington, written

[00:02:25] half dozen histories all of them national security focused or American politics focused on

[00:02:33] the Cold War and nuclear weapons and the war on terror and cyber security.

[00:02:39] My book before this most recent one on UFOs was a history of Watergate that was a finalist

[00:02:46] for the Pulitzer Prize in history last year so I am someone who mostly writes about federal

[00:02:55] law enforcement and intelligence community and American sort of national security history

[00:03:01] which is really how I got interested in the subject in the first place was not as a lifelong

[00:03:09] ufologist or someone who was raised on the ex files and sci-fi novels but as someone

[00:03:17] who noticed a market shift in the way that serious people in Washington were talking seriously

[00:03:26] about UFOs and UAPs in the last five to seven years.

[00:03:32] So your latest book is you started hinted at it's called UFO the inside story of the US

[00:03:36] government search for alien life here and out there a little over a month ago I had

[00:03:43] aerospace historian Peter Merlin on to talk about his like massive history of area 51

[00:03:49] and I started that show with a bit of a disclaimer.

[00:03:53] It's like as soon as you drop that word that name there's like a kind of effect.

[00:03:58] So yeah I started that show with a bit of a disclaimer about what the book is and

[00:04:03] what it isn't and I think that's kind of appropriate here as well so could you tell us like

[00:04:07] what the book is and what it isn't.

[00:04:10] Yeah so this is you know the subtitle of this book is the inside story of the US government

[00:04:17] search alien life here and out there and I tried to weave together two threads that are

[00:04:27] normally treated pretty separately by journalists and historians which is the US militaries hunt

[00:04:36] for UFOs here on earth and the evolving science and astronomy around what people call the

[00:04:45] search for extraterrestrial intelligence steady out across the rest of the universe and normally

[00:04:51] those are treated as like two very different subjects.

[00:04:56] You know you have the wacky UFO crazy lunatic people here and then the serious scientists doing

[00:05:03] serious science work out in the solar system in the galaxy and they're not different subjects

[00:05:13] you know they are very closely related in so far as you know our understanding of the universe

[00:05:22] and the evolving science actually has a lot to contribute to our evolving understanding

[00:05:28] of what the government used to call UFOs and now calls UAPs unidentified anomalous phenomenon

[00:05:34] here on earth actually are going to turn out to be.

[00:05:38] And then you have the super basic question as well of you know whether or not aliens are

[00:05:44] visiting earth has a lot to do with a very basic question of do aliens exist at all and

[00:05:51] those are actually very closely intertwined subjects in a way that I think journalists

[00:05:58] and historians have done a disservice by trying to draw bright lines in the historiography

[00:06:06] between those two.

[00:06:07] So this book goes back across the last 80 years to the dawn of the modern flying saucer

[00:06:15] age which is the summer of 1947 which we can talk about sort of why that's the moment that

[00:06:21] all of this begins and then comes up to present day and the evolving science and the evolving

[00:06:30] military process and US government involvement in the surgery UFOs across those eight decades.

[00:06:36] You sort of hinted on this a bit there's I think layers to one's belief in extraterrestrial

[00:06:44] life right and early on in your book there's a pretty good description of just the unfathomable

[00:06:51] vastness of the universe and even our relatively small corner of it looking at that I guess

[00:06:57] given the size of that canvas right what is just the sheer mathematical probability that aliens

[00:07:04] exist somewhere period full stop.

[00:07:06] Yeah, this is actually to me one of the biggest revolutions in human knowledge and understanding

[00:07:13] that we have had in the last quarter century which is as late as the 1990s we did not understand

[00:07:19] that there was a single planet outside of our own solar system and we now understand that effectively

[00:07:27] every star in the universe has planets and a large number not necessarily even a large

[00:07:36] percentage but a large total number of those planets are going to be habitable by something that

[00:07:44] we would recognize as life they're their planets that fall into what scientists called the Goldilocks

[00:07:51] this is something that is you know not too hot not too cold capable of supporting water capable

[00:07:59] of supporting an atmosphere of oxygen and that that number is in the neighborhood of one sects

[00:08:08] Tillion across the universe so that's a billion trillion habitable planets across the universe

[00:08:19] so you can believe that the odds of life are long you can believe that the odds of intelligent life

[00:08:28] are vanishingly small but I think it's really hard to argue that we and life as we know it on

[00:08:38] earth and humans as intelligent life as we know it is a one in sects Tillion chance across the universe

[00:08:46] from there though you get into you know some equally interesting and challenging questions

[00:08:54] about the vast distances of space but then also just how young our own civilization actually is which

[00:09:04] is as we have come to understand the universe and its you know sheer scale and scope and size

[00:09:13] we are a very young civilization on a young planet in a young solar system in a very old

[00:09:24] universe so we are a you know you can measure human civilization in the tens of thousands of years

[00:09:34] earth itself is you know earth and our solar system is on the you know range of four and a half

[00:09:42] billion years old and our universe is about 14 billion and so you're left with the possibility

[00:09:52] that life could be common life could be intelligent life could be very common and we could still

[00:10:00] be functionally alone at this particular moment that the you know it is possible that we have missed

[00:10:10] the other civilizations and intelligent life that would be in our own galactic neighborhood by

[00:10:18] billions of years you know that you could actually you know one of the things that the James Webb

[00:10:22] Space Telescope is doing right now as it rewrites our understanding of space and time

[00:10:30] is it has shown that it has captured galaxies and stars that formed as little as 300 million years

[00:10:40] after the beginning of the universe after the beginning of time so you're one of the strange

[00:10:46] thought experiments that you're left with as you get into the probabilities and possibilities of

[00:10:52] study is that there could have been multi billion year civilizations you know things more advanced

[00:11:01] and more amazing and more on inspiring than anything that we could possibly fathom that we have

[00:11:09] just missed that have come and gone not just once but twice or three times over the course of

[00:11:16] the those 14 billion years even before our solar system even began to gather out of dust.

[00:11:23] So something that really strikes me about this topic is how much humility even is required

[00:11:30] to sort of look at it like you said it's basically it's basically a mathematical certainty that aliens

[00:11:36] will say they exist somewhere and it's possible that it might even be quite common you know alien life

[00:11:43] but the chances that they're here or that we'll ever see them are remotely small and even then like

[00:11:50] if you conceive of a species that could cross interdimensional interstellar distances of space

[00:11:58] and time what that would be to us would be sort of it would be as perceptible to us as like Shakespeare

[00:12:05] would be to a golden retriever. Yeah and and even just what you're talking about there are a bunch of

[00:12:10] things to sort of untangle and unpack from that so let's stick in our dimension as a starting point

[00:12:15] which is the the founders of Senni had something Frank Frank Drake was one of the the founders and he

[00:12:26] came up with something that was called the Drake equation which is this a mathematical equation for

[00:12:34] how common it would be to find intelligent life across the universe and you know it's a very

[00:12:41] predictable series of mathematical variables you know it's how many planets are there on what

[00:12:48] percentage of planets are habitable what percentage of habitable planets develop life what percentage

[00:12:55] of planets that are habitable that develop life develop intelligent life but the only variable

[00:13:02] that ends up really battering is something called L which is the variable that stands for the length

[00:13:11] of time that an intelligent civilization lasts and the whole ballgame is what number L is and if L

[00:13:25] is in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years intelligent life could be incredibly

[00:13:33] common across the universe but basically every civilization would be alone at the moment that it

[00:13:41] exists that you would be sort of functionally alone at that moment of time because any other

[00:13:50] civilization that existed at that moment would be so far away you would never know and you wouldn't

[00:13:58] last long enough to end up having contact with those civilizations however far away they were

[00:14:05] if L is in the millions or hundreds of millions or billions of years you know our universe probably

[00:14:13] teams with life an intelligent life and one of the weirdness one of the weird things as you begin to

[00:14:21] understand this world is exactly as you are saying it's also possible that our universe teams with

[00:14:29] life and we don't recognize it because Hollywood has given us what are effectively sort of three broad

[00:14:40] scenarios of that first contact problem you know sort of the first moment that we discover

[00:14:47] a alien civilization and they are all unambiguous and clear um you know you have the independence day

[00:15:00] flying saucer over the White House take me to your leader uh I'm here for friendship or to invade

[00:15:07] you and harvest you uh your organs for food or energy you have the jody foster contact

[00:15:18] radio message from outer space and then you have the et stranded traveler situation probably all

[00:15:27] three of those are totally wrong about what our what our first contact would actually be because

[00:15:33] they are all human centric in a way that presuppose anyone would be interested in our existence and

[00:15:42] would bother discovering us and coming here whereas there is plenty of evidence as you say

[00:15:50] that any civilization that has mastered interstellar space uh interstellar space travel would

[00:15:58] you know be exploring outer space and might stumble upon earth but is unlikely to have noticed our

[00:16:08] existence given how new we are and that aliens if they happen to be visiting earth

[00:16:18] are more likely to be treating it like we would treat a rest area on the Jersey Turd Pike as in

[00:16:24] as a place to stop over on the way from one interesting place to another Carl Sagan when uh you know

[00:16:33] the famous astronomer of the 20th century he was simultaneously the biggest skeptic that UFOs

[00:16:40] represented aliens visiting earth while also being the primary driver and enthusiast for the search

[00:16:50] for extraterrestrial intelligence across the rest of the universe and his argument was never that

[00:16:57] aliens don't visit earth his it his argument was statistically based on the Drake equation based

[00:17:05] on what we know about the vastness of space you would only expect an alien civilization to pass

[00:17:11] by earth every hundred thousand or two hundred thousand years and so it's not that aliens don't

[00:17:17] visit earth it's that that weird thing that you saw out your window last Tuesday afternoon is

[00:17:23] unlikely statistically to be the one time in these two hundred thousand years that an alien happened

[00:17:29] to pop by now now one of the parts of that is again any civilization that has mastered interstellar

[00:17:38] space travel is probably traveling at a fraction of the speed of light not necessarily a large fraction

[00:17:46] but a meaningful fraction of the speed of light we don't have a single piece of technology on earth

[00:17:53] in human existence right now that would notice or be able to detect and identify something moving

[00:18:01] through our solar system at a fraction of the speed of light so one of the weirder thought experiments

[00:18:08] of this is that our solar system could be getting crossed by alien spacecraft almost every day

[00:18:17] maybe a couple of times a year maybe a couple of times a decade you know maybe once or twice

[00:18:23] a century and we wouldn't have any idea about it and we wouldn't be able to see it and that in fact

[00:18:29] when and if we ever actually do detect something coming through our solar system our first contact

[00:18:37] is probably going to be something much more mysterious and much more ambiguous that is not human

[00:18:43] centric and not earth centric which is to say we're likely to see a old space probe or a piece of a

[00:18:51] wreckage of spacecraft or sort of something floating through our solar system the sort of rough

[00:18:58] equivalent of an empty plastic bag blowing through our cosmic backyard where we look up one day

[00:19:07] and catch something you know photographically at least that and say you know well that empty

[00:19:14] plastic bag isn't from our Walmart like who's Walmart did that come from and we're going to

[00:19:20] you know know that there's an intelligent civilization out there but not necessarily be able to know

[00:19:26] like does it still exist is it close by is it friend or foe you know sort of any of the details

[00:19:33] that you would sort of want to know about a you know potential other civilization and then in your

[00:19:40] last in your question there you also hinted to me at one of the like other weird bits of this whole

[00:19:48] saga which is there's a lot of interesting stuff we don't know yet about the universe that

[00:19:57] we should be very humble about and that the answer is probably going to be that the world in the

[00:20:05] universe is a much weirder place than we give it credit for and so when you get into what are

[00:20:12] UFOs what are you ap's the answer I think some some chunk of the answer is going to end up being

[00:20:20] physics that we don't get understand and that we sort of like to think that we understand the world

[00:20:27] we like to think that we understand physics but Harvard astronomy chair Abbey Loeb points out

[00:20:32] you know last last January the world's oldest woman died she was a French nun she was 118 years old

[00:20:43] and in her lifetime humans learned everything that we know about relativity and quantum physics

[00:20:51] so imagine what we could learn or will learn about physics in the next hundred in the next 500 the

[00:21:02] next thousand the next two thousand or ten thousand years and that the answer there could be

[00:21:08] incredibly weird stuff you know it could be as you sort of hand wave that interdimensional

[00:21:15] travel it could be parallel universes it could be time travel from the past or future I mean things

[00:21:21] that would be to us as weird and as interesting as the answer being extraterrestrials visiting

[00:21:30] earth but still not be aliens and I think that the thing that people get stuck on in the world of

[00:21:40] ufology that I really tried to navigate around and through in this book is most people come at this

[00:21:51] subject either as sort of true believers like UFOs equal aliens or total skeptics and that the

[00:22:00] truth to be most likely involves holding a lot of contradictory views at once which is aliens almost

[00:22:11] certainly exist they're probably too far away for us to know UFOs probably are not aliens but the

[00:22:20] answer to what UFOs could be is almost certainly things that will blow our mind that we don't yet

[00:22:30] understand one of my takeaways from this book I think there's been a thought in in my generation you

[00:22:35] know that one of the big things that could happen in our lifetime is that you know well actually

[00:22:40] like encounter one of these races I don't think that's very likely at all based on the reasons

[00:22:45] you just said I also sort of what I took away from this book was that in the infinitesimally small

[00:22:53] chance that that happens I don't think anyone who's alive on this planet right now wants to be like

[00:22:57] I think of like you know what happened to like indigenous groups in the Americas when the European

[00:23:02] showed up why would that be any different for us yeah so I think I think you're right I think the

[00:23:07] challenge is we're almost even if we get some sort of contact with with aliens or with another

[00:23:17] intelligent civilization um or what sort of people like to now call NHIs non human intelligences

[00:23:25] it might be you know it might be sort of so mysterious and ambiguous that it's not quite the

[00:23:33] revolution in human knowledge and experience that we think it is you know that we sort of

[00:23:39] you know I think we have this idea in our society that like you know the aliens are going to land

[00:23:45] on the White House lawn and it's going to change everything and you know then they'll either come

[00:23:53] and invade us or you know we'll enter into uh you know some sort of long-term economic trading status

[00:24:01] with them where like we're giving them iPads and you know they're giving us ray guns and you know blah blah blah

[00:24:07] blah and I think the most likely scenario is uh we're gonna end up seeing as I said some piece of

[00:24:14] space trap that we're going to and I think the chances of that in our lifetime or human existence

[00:24:24] broadly speaking seem very high to me you know I don't know what the exact probability or chances are

[00:24:32] but like there's a lot of stuff out there that we are only beginning to realize that we should be

[00:24:39] looking for that again you know you go back a decade and we had never seen a interstellar object

[00:24:48] you know we had never detected something coming from outside of our solar system and passing through

[00:24:58] our solar system and you know in the last 50 years like we've sent four interstellar objects out into

[00:25:07] space as humans and in the last decade we've started to detect actually a lot of interstellar

[00:25:15] objects crossing through our solar system beginning in 2017 with an object called the Mua Mua which

[00:25:22] was at that moment the first ever detected interstellar object in the time since we have seen you know

[00:25:29] like maybe not quite once a year but we've we've begun to realize that they are more common than

[00:25:36] we thought so I think as it technology advances as we better understand what to be looking for

[00:25:43] you know we might be against find that there's all sorts of evidence of alien civilizations crossing

[00:25:50] our solar system it's just not stuff coming and visiting earth per se because they're aliens

[00:25:58] interested in visiting humans and so one of my questions that I was left with at this project

[00:26:07] was what if we sort of discover aliens exist but then like it doesn't actually change that much

[00:26:15] for humans on earth that like yeah it like there's sort of a different version of this where

[00:26:21] you know scientists you know detect next year that they're you know there's an empty spacecraft

[00:26:30] floating through our solar system and you know we got some like grainy pictures of it and we can

[00:26:36] sort of determine the rough like size and shape of it you know and we're able to sort of like

[00:26:41] generally narrow down its trajectory to say like it came from this corner of outer space like

[00:26:47] that's a couple of weeks of really fascinating headlines and you know amazing panels at the

[00:26:55] Aspen ideas forum and you know at the Munich security conference and things like that and that's

[00:27:02] sort of like everyone's just gonna go back to their daily life and they're gonna be like there's

[00:27:05] a bunch of stuff here on earth that we need to sort out now to me the like hope and optimism

[00:27:11] of setty is like just imagine all of the stuff we still have to learn about our universe like

[00:27:17] imagine all of the crazy things that we can learn if we get another 10,000 years of human history

[00:27:26] to explore and so to me I think that there is to me there's like this thing that like you look

[00:27:35] around the planet right now and like there's a lot of reasons to believe that like humans don't get

[00:27:40] another thousand years that we you know that maybe we don't get another hundred years like there's

[00:27:46] a lot of reasons a lot of days to feel like we don't get another 10 or 20 years and like to me

[00:27:52] like the like I look at these these questions of interstellar exploration and advancing science

[00:28:02] and advancing physics and I'm like man like we should get our act together here on earth and like

[00:28:08] take care of what we have because like we are protecting all of the future generations of human

[00:28:16] knowledge and human exploration um and there's that there's a great book about this if your listeners

[00:28:21] are interested after after reading my book which is um Toby or uh book The Pressapist which dives into

[00:28:28] some of these questions about like what the rest of human civilization could be like. Your book

[00:28:34] opens at the beginning of the modern fascination with impossible counters with UFOs right after

[00:28:41] World War II because you should have briefly described that moment for us. Yeah so the modern flying

[00:28:46] saucer era begins in the summer of 1947 and it begins in the shadow of the Cold War. June 1947

[00:28:55] there's a Idaho businessman named Kenneth Arnold who is flying his plane across the Pacific

[00:29:02] northwest near the cascades and he spots nine saucer shaped objects moving at what he says are

[00:29:11] tremendous speed. He lands tells some friends about this they tell the media the media picks this up

[00:29:18] and it becomes really the moment that flying saucers emerge in American popular culture and

[00:29:25] popular media and that summer kicks off sightings all across the country of these flying saucers

[00:29:31] across 34 states up into Canada almost every single day that summer people in the United States

[00:29:39] are spotting these flying saucers they're running stories on the front page of the newspapers

[00:29:44] day after day. There are grainy photographs of flying saucers getting published in in newspapers

[00:29:52] along the way that the Roswell crash happens that summer as part of all of this and is sort of

[00:29:59] quickly forgotten at that moment against the broader backdrop of this summer flying saucers

[00:30:04] and the government really goes into a panic and it goes into a panic not because anyone thinks

[00:30:09] that these are aliens because in that first summer no one really is saying that these are aliens.

[00:30:15] What the government is concerned about is that these are secret Soviet spacecraft being built by

[00:30:24] kid-depth Nazi rocket scientists because what is the United States doing in the summer of 47?

[00:30:30] We are building early secret spacecraft and rockets with we would use a word different than

[00:30:38] kid-depth. We would say that we had provided unique and interesting employment opportunities to

[00:30:43] former Nazi rocket scientists to Operation Paperclip. Operation Paperclip to avoid being tried

[00:30:50] for war crimes and executed in exchange for coming to Los Alamos and the White Sands proving grounds

[00:30:59] and helping us build the next generation of V2 rockets. So the government is afraid, again not

[00:31:04] that these are aliens but it's that the Soviet Union has cracked the code of flying saucer spacecraft

[00:31:14] ahead of us. And so the government goes into this early Cold War panic about what flying saucers

[00:31:24] and it kicks off the beginning of what is recognizable still to us today of this self-perpetuating cycle

[00:31:37] of public sightings fueling national security interest that fuels Hollywood pop culture imagination

[00:31:46] that then fuels more public sightings which then fuels new national security panics on and on

[00:31:53] up to the present day. We're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back with more.

[00:32:16] When you think of fascists, Germany's Adolf Hitler and Italy's Benito Mussolini come to mind.

[00:32:27] But what about those who embraced fascism in the United States?

[00:32:33] He was thought by some to be truly man he hoped to lead a fascist movement that would

[00:32:39] alive not to journey. He was inarguably the greatest anti-Semitic propaganda in the history of the world.

[00:32:48] They would have an insurrection, they would take over the capital building, they would take over

[00:32:53] the White House. They felt that the majority of Americans would follow them.

[00:33:02] This podcast will take a deep dive into characters that both fostered and fought against

[00:33:08] American autocracy in the past century. We told me that this guy says one more thing,

[00:33:14] I'm ready to jump up there and punch him in the face and just take him out.

[00:33:19] This is Star Spangled Fascism hosted by Bradley W. Hart.

[00:33:24] Hey this is Rachel Maddo from MSNBC. Congratulations on Star Spangled Fascism so looking forward

[00:33:32] to this podcast. Bradley, this is going to be fantastic.

[00:33:48] As you said the sort of hunt for alien life developed over those following decades

[00:33:52] in fits and starts through various academic and privately funded projects and endeavors some

[00:33:59] of which with government involvement. Your book goes into detail about a lot of these events over

[00:34:05] the following years, Roswell project, Blue Book, all that stuff. Based on your research for the book

[00:34:11] if there's one incident over this time that makes you sit up and think if any of these are real

[00:34:17] it's this one. Is there any story like that? Yeah so I think that there's a category of stories

[00:34:25] that feel interesting to me which there are over the years a handful not hundreds but scores maybe

[00:34:34] dozens of credible witnesses who have encounters and experiences where there is at least circumstantial

[00:34:47] evidence that backs up their experience that come from totally ordinary backgrounds and go on to

[00:34:55] have totally ordinary lives. And what I mean by that are witnesses who are not previously prone to

[00:35:06] UFO beliefs and people who do not go on to say and from then on the alien came by every Thursday

[00:35:16] afternoon and had tea with me which like is a specific sort of breed and thread of witnesses that you

[00:35:23] see particularly in the 1950s and 1960s in a group that's known as the contactees sort of people

[00:35:31] who come forward and are like I was contacted by this alien who told me that humans should live in

[00:35:38] peaceful coexistence and he wanted me to spread his message to the people on earth and avoid nuclear

[00:35:46] war and the alien comes back every you know every couple of months and checks on how we're doing. So

[00:35:53] these credible witnesses to me are people like Lonnie Zamora which is a case that I talk about in

[00:36:01] the book from 1964 where he's a local secoro new mexico police officer who is chasing a

[00:36:10] speeder on the way out of town in the desert when he hears an explosion and looks out into the

[00:36:20] desert and sees what he thinks is an overturned car. He abandons the pursuit of the speeder and begins

[00:36:27] driving through the desert towards this overturned vehicle. As he gets closer he describes it as a

[00:36:34] football shaped white object there are two figures outside of it that get into the craft and

[00:36:41] the craft takes off. Now something happened to Lonnie Zamora in that desert that day in 1964

[00:36:49] that there was a new mexico state trooper who showed up just a couple of minutes later on the scene

[00:36:56] who saw him shake it up and traumatized by whatever the thing was that he saw. The FBI responds

[00:37:02] and interviews him, the military responds and interviews him they find some circumstantial physical

[00:37:08] evidence that there was something in the desert at the spot that he identified as the landing

[00:37:16] zone of this craft. And then Lonnie Zamora goes on and leads a totally normal life for the rest

[00:37:22] of his life like he just goes back to being a small town cop never tries to monetize this you

[00:37:29] know doesn't write a tell all book doesn't try to get on the talk shows you know doesn't become

[00:37:34] the 1960s equivalent of a reality TV star or you know open his cameo account or anything like that.

[00:37:42] And there are other people like him over the years you know much more recently and much

[00:37:50] more sort of relevantly to our current discussion you know you've had this series of navy fighter

[00:37:56] pilots come forward in the last decade to talk about encounters that they have had that are backed

[00:38:04] up by video by radar by you know mechanical evidence and technological evidence that something happened

[00:38:14] to them. These are the flying tic tac. Yeah, the flying the you know the tic tac encounter the

[00:38:19] gimbal the flair you know people like Ryan Graves and David Traver and you know again these are

[00:38:28] credible witnesses and not just and not people who have a reason to come forward to report a UFO

[00:38:37] encounter. And in fact have a lot of reasons going against them about why they shouldn't be the

[00:38:44] people coming forward to talk about their UFO encounter you know if you are a navy fighter pilot

[00:38:50] or Navy aviator like there are a lot of reasons that you don't want to be the person coming back to

[00:38:55] the aircraft carrier and being like oh man you would believe the UFO that I had a dog fight with today

[00:39:01] like that's the type of thing that like gets you carried off in a straight jacket and never

[00:39:05] lets you fly again. And so for these people to come forward to testify about what they've seen

[00:39:10] for there to be evidence that backs up their encounter you know this really makes me feel like

[00:39:16] there are witnesses like this that are worth listening to who point to the idea that like UFOs

[00:39:25] or something which again gets it sort of the contradictory challenge of this which is like you

[00:39:31] can say like something happened to Lonnie's more in the desert that day you know something happened

[00:39:37] to Ryan Graves and David Traver and the you know the other navy fighter pilots. And the answer

[00:39:43] doesn't have to be that it's UFOs from Alpha Centauri happening to buzz the USS Nimitz you know it can

[00:39:50] be a lot of interesting and weird stuff and still not be aliens. There's so much about these

[00:39:57] individual stories and stuff that I would I would love to unpack with you and there's so much in

[00:40:02] the book for listeners to discover to one of the really interesting aspects of this book that

[00:40:09] with the time that we have left I definitely want to make sure that we get into talks about

[00:40:13] the conspiracy theory culture around UFOs and how in a way the current kind of

[00:40:20] casualness that the country looks at conspiracies and it's it's distrust in government and public

[00:40:29] institutions like a week ago there's that poll that like one in five Americans believe that Taylor

[00:40:34] Swift is part of a sia up to rig the Super Bowl and and reelect Joe Biden because

[00:40:40] which is true I was it I was in that meeting with the Illuminati. Yeah it was it was it was a really fun

[00:40:46] plan and like all the props to dark Brandon for pulling it off. I just didn't get invited to the

[00:40:51] Super Bowl watch party at like Raven Rock which I was really mad about that anyway so talk us

[00:40:58] through a bit about how how that kind of conspiracy culture began in the UFO movement and a

[00:41:03] character in particular Bill Cooper. Yeah so this this to me was one of the most interesting

[00:41:08] parts of this book project which as I said at the start the book before this that I worked on

[00:41:15] was a history of watergate and in a very weird and unexpected way the second half of my UFO book

[00:41:23] is a actually really good sequel to a book on watergate which is it is about the rise the second

[00:41:33] half of the UFO story in the 20th century is the story of the rise of government conspiracy theories

[00:41:40] that unfold in the wake of watergate and the Pentagon papers and Vietnam and the church committee

[00:41:46] and the Pike Committee and you know the the sense this dawning sense in the 1970s that you know

[00:41:54] the government will lie that the government carries out you know dastardly deeds and assassination

[00:42:00] plots and kidnapping plots without telling the American people and you see in the 70s and 80s the

[00:42:08] rise of Roswell really as the defining conspiracy theory you know the idea that the government has

[00:42:19] recovered flying saucers that it's recovered alien bodies you know the more extreme versions of

[00:42:26] this hold that you know the government actually is in contact with alien civilizations that

[00:42:33] you know they've made treaties with alien civilizations you know that the US special forces have done

[00:42:41] battle against alien civilizations in you know the the American Southwest you know there there's sort of

[00:42:49] a lot of layers of this and what you begin to see it and understand is that it's really these

[00:42:57] conspiracies in the 70s and 80s that plant in the American political tradition for the first time

[00:43:05] what we would now call and recognize as the idea of the deep state that there is this you know professional

[00:43:15] government secret hidden away that is working at cross purposes and lying to elected officials

[00:43:27] in the American public and it is hard to think of something that is a bigger secret that the US

[00:43:36] government could be keeping than you know that that it has recovered evidence of aliens that it's

[00:43:42] in contact with aliens the only thing that would come close to equaling that is like you know the idea

[00:43:49] that like Joe Biden is directly talking to God like I mean you're you're talking about like the

[00:43:55] biggest possible secrets that a government could keep from the American people and from humans in

[00:44:03] general and that this group of conspiracists in the 1980s lays that intellectual foundation for

[00:44:11] the idea of the deep state and in many ways some of those figures from the those conspiracies

[00:44:19] in the 70s and 80s become the founding voices of the far right extreme fringe of the 1990s and

[00:44:30] you you mentioned you know one of the main main figures there Bill Cooper who is in the 1980s sort

[00:44:37] of first surfaces as a purported former naval intelligence officer who says that he has seen the

[00:44:47] paperwork about the government's contact with aliens who goes on in the 1990s to found and run one

[00:44:56] of the most popular conservative talk radios shows in the country and has two fans of note.

[00:45:05] The first is Tid McVeh who goes on of course to be the bomber behind the attack on the Alfred

[00:45:12] P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City deadliest domestic terror attack yeah on US soil and

[00:45:21] that a couple of months before the attack McVeh and his co-conspirator Terry Nichols actually go out

[00:45:28] to Bill Cooper's compound in Arizona to talk with him about white supremacy and there's sort of

[00:45:37] far right extreme fringe views and then as their party comment to Bill Cooper say watch Oklahoma City

[00:45:47] and you know Bill Cooper is no idea what to make of this and you know just goes back to his normal

[00:45:52] life and then of course the explosion happens and he sort of realizes who the people were that came

[00:45:58] out to visit him. The other person that Bill Cooper influences the 1990s is a young Austin Texas

[00:46:04] public access host named Alex Jones and that Alex Jones goes off to you know lead his own far

[00:46:12] right talk radio shows he and Bill Cooper have a big falling out after 9-11 when Alex Jones embraces

[00:46:20] what we now call 9-11 truth orrisms sort of the 9-11 conspiracy theories and that you know

[00:46:28] Alex Jones really becomes sort of the second generation of these conspiracists and on up through

[00:46:34] birtherism and what we you know now call the big lie around January 6th and so to me one of the like

[00:46:41] most fascinating and unexpected aspects of diving into the history of ufology in the United States is

[00:46:47] realizing that you probably don't get January 6th without the intellectual foundation of

[00:46:55] UFO conspiracies from the 1970s and 1980s now some people when I when I when I say that

[00:47:01] hear me say everyone who believes in UFOs is a far right extremist but that's not at all what

[00:47:08] I'm saying what I'm saying is it is the UFO conspiracies that lay the intellectual foundation

[00:47:16] for the government conspiracies that grow into January 6th.

[00:47:20] Sort of a last thought here because I know we have to wrap up soon. Do you

[00:47:24] I this was a big takeaway from me when I finished the book the other night.

[00:47:27] There's a screaming irony in the sense that like the UFO conspiracy culture that sort of infected

[00:47:36] in a way the rest of society right? I'm thinking of like the L in the Drake equation is perhaps

[00:47:42] the biggest threat to us right now of surviving long enough to encounter one of these alien races

[00:47:48] or being capable of interstellar travel ourselves. I don't know if you have a reaction to that.

[00:47:52] Yeah, it's a fantastic point in your absolutely right that like you know it is the reason

[00:47:57] that we don't survive as a species will end up being you know if it happens you know some combination

[00:48:05] of climate change denialism and you know misinformation and the fall of democracy and you know

[00:48:13] in place of authoritarianism sort of etc etc and also you know part of L is just this question

[00:48:23] of like do humans remain curious about the world beyond them because there's sort of a different

[00:48:30] version of you know humanity's future arc that ends up being like you know the movie idioticracy

[00:48:39] where stagnation where we you know we all sort of become so fascinated by social media and

[00:48:47] alternate reality headsets and video games that we just like don't bother looking up at the stars

[00:48:56] anymore and and that to me is actually like a very dark but very foreseeable potential path

[00:49:04] of the next century yeah thank you for that let's leave listeners with that cuddly thought

[00:49:10] for the day Garrett where can listeners find out more about you in your work so I'm Vermont GMG

[00:49:18] Vermont my initials GMG on Twitter and Instagram and sort of where threads sort of whatever social

[00:49:27] media platform you use I'm Vermont GMG and then Garrett graph.com and the book is UFO the inside story

[00:49:35] of the US government search for alien life here and out there and it's available wherever you like

[00:49:40] to get your books thank you so much for that we'll have links to all of that in the show notes

[00:49:45] definitely go pick up the book guys purchase a fascinating subject that we could talk about for

[00:49:50] so much longer Garrett thanks so much for joining us my pleasure thanks for having me

[00:50:00] thanks for listening this is secrets and spies

[00:51:00] you