Jesse Michaels (5:30)

Thank you. Nice to see you all.

Chris Mellon (5:32)

Not only that, but that Kissinger was deeply involved in the flying saucer program, that Kissinger had overseen much of her late husband's work, and that he had even visited their home on occasion. Yes, Henry Kissinger. The same Kissinger that's one of the most influential and controversial figures in the 20th century.

Jesse Michaels (5:51)

We believe that peace is at hand.

Chris Mellon (5:55)

National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Ford. The Harvard academic nuclear strategist. The man who won a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of the Vietnam War, but who is also considered by many a war criminal. That Henry Kissinger. But if Maria Wang's claim was true and Kissinger had worked with her husband before he died in 1960, that would have placed Kissinger at the center of the most secretive program in history before he had even entered public office. That is a huge claim. Is it possible that Henry Kissinger could have been overseeing the legacy UFO program?

Jesse Michaels (6:35)

There is no country in the world where it is conceivable that a man of my origins could be standing here next to the President of the United States.

Chris Mellon (6:48)

To understand that question. To investigate that claim, we need to take a few steps back. Because Kissinger's rise to power and possible involvement in UFOs didn't just come through academia. It started in Germany at the end of the war. In army intelligence.

Jesse Michaels (7:09)

Different parts of the brain have different activities.

Chris Mellon (7:11)

But you know that, don't you? In today's world, staying informed can feel like navigating a maze of headlines, each with its own agenda. That's why I started using Ground News, a tool designed for skeptics and truth seekers. Like many in this community, it's an app and website created by a former NASA engineer to tackle a problem we all face. How the way we consume information can distort our understanding of the world. Ground News brings transparency to the news. It gathers coverage from over 50,000 sources worldwide, organizes stories by topic, and even breaks down the bias and ownership behind each perspective. With features like the Bias Distribution Bar and Factuality Score, it's easy to see how different outlets frame the same story. For example, when I was researching those mysterious drone sightings, Ground News gave me instant access to over 200 articles, helping me uncover every angle from the facts to the spin. For the left from Radar Online, Donald Trump says shoot them down, but on the right, News refers to it as a rogue loose nuke. This just goes to show how different the framing can be based on where you're reading it. So if you're tired of echo chambers and one sided narratives, Ground News is your ultimate tool for staying informed and making better decisions. You can even follow your favorite topics and compare coverage to find the most credible sources. And for a limited time, you can get the same plan I use every day for nearly half the price. Just go to Ground News Jesse Michaels or scan this QR code to save 40% off unlimited access to their vantage plan. Or gift it to someone you know and have more informed discussions and hopefully chill out about those drones. I only promote brands I vet and I think you'll find them just as valuable as I do. Ground News the truth is out there. You just need the right tools to find it. Henry Kissinger was born in 1923 in Germany to a Jewish family and emigrated to the US in 1938 to escape Nazi persecution. A gifted student, he was drafted into the US army during World War II where he fought in major battles, witnessed the liberation of a concentration camp and was recruited into the Counterintelligence Corp, or cic. The cic, essentially the Army's FBI played a key role in post war Europe securing Nazi technology, hunting war criminals and safeguarding military secrets. It was deeply embedded in classified operations including those connected to the Manhattan Project. It's also frequently mentioned in accounts of the Roswell crash and majestic 12 leaks. Kissinger was assigned to denazification efforts in occupied Germany. His ability to communicate with locals and manage post war chaos earned him a reputation for confidence and diplomacy. At just 22, he was entrusted with overseeing the entire town of Bensheim. A role which provided him significant authority. Later he was assigned to work in Oberammergau, A picturesque town in the Bavarian Alps with a lot of hidden significance. Oberammergau happened to be the location of a secret weapons facility that had been dug into the nearby mountains. The Messerschmitt Design Branch had been moved there during the war and they were responsible for developing new jet propelled planes and radio controlled anti aircraft missiles missiles. Henry Kissinger was one of the first officers to occupy the barracks there in 1945. The timing of this assignment places Kissinger right in the middle of what was in the eyes of the U.S. army a treasure trove of Nazi rocket scientists and researchers. Oberammergau was a crucial location for counterintelligence operations and the development of operation Paperclip, the American program which secretly imported from 1500 plus Nazi scientists. In fact, the designer of the V2 rocket and the future head of America's rocket program, Wernher von Braun, had himself been apprehended by the Allies at Oberammergau.

Jesse Michaels (11:23)

You spend most of your time arguing with other people what the more important things are and you don't get a job done.

Chris Mellon (11:31)

He, along with some 400 other scientists had been ordered to relocate to this area by SS General Hans Kammler. Kammler was infamous not only for his role in designing concentration camps, but for overseeing the Nazis most advanced weapons programs. Alongside conventional rocketry and nuclear research, there were persistent rumors of more exotic experiments going on at the time. These experiments involved anti gravity propulsion and flying saucer like craft. Victor Schauberger, an Austrian scientist had allegedly developed a craft with an anti gravity effect that defied conventional physics. According to historian Nick Cook's great book the Hunt for Zero Point. CIC agents interrogated Schauberger for nine months. Fully aware of his most classified work. They reportedly considered his discoveries More important than Nazi nuclear research itself. The technology they secured, Cook suggests, had characteristics of a ufo, a craft that seemingly defied the laws of physics. After the war ended, another Army CIC agent, Neil Gersheimer, tricked Schauberger into signing all of his work over to the United States. The intellectual property around these exotic propulsion principles would end up at Brookhaven National Labs in Long Island. So this would infer that CIC agents of the same organization as Kissinger in the same field of operations, had already gathered the intelligence to understand the secret programs. If the CIC was actively collecting intelligence on this exotic technology, Kissinger would have almost certainly been aware of it. His assignment placed him at the center of the most sensitive intelligence gathering area. His credentials, relocation to Oberammergau, fluency in German, and his prior experience in arresting and questioning ranking Nazis in Bensheim. All of this would lead any reasonable person to believe that Kissinger was at least peripherally involved in managing the transition of these Nazi scientists and their secrets into U.S. custody. Whether Kissinger knew about experimental propulsion or otherworldly technology remains speculative. But there is a distinct possibility that he could have been trusted with interrogating, translating and negotiating these secrets with Nazi scientists as part of their passage to freedom in the United States. All of this, at least, places Kissinger at the crime scene, so to speak. So the question remains, what exactly did Henry Kissinger have to do with UFOs? Henry Kissinger enrolled at Harvard in 1947, balancing the life of a dedicated student with his ongoing ties to the Counterintelligence corps. While his peers saw him as a reclusive bookworm, he remained close with his army colleagues and maintained an interest in intelligence operations. He graduated in 1950. As the Cold War intensified, the Korean War was underway, the Soviets had tested their first atomic bomb and China had fallen to Communism. Harvard played a prominent role in the commingling of the state intelligence community and academia. James Conant, Harvard's president from 1933 to 1955, was a key figure in the Manhattan Project, managing the delicate balance between scientists and the military. A close ally of Oppenheimer's and Vannevar Bush's, he played a central role in shaping America's atomic age, advising the Atomic Energy Commission and the Joint Research Development Board. Conant was second only to Oppenheimer as an advisor to the government on military and civilian applications of nuclear technology. He was a staunch Cold Warrior, setting Harvard's tone as an anti Communist stronghold. Another connection to the hidden UFO history was Harvard's top astronomer, Dr. Donald Menzel. A leading UFO debunker in the 1950s. He insisted that all sightings had natural explanations. But was he hiding something? Recent claims by astrophysicist Dr. Beatrice Villarreal suggest Menzel ordered the destruction of Harvard's astronomical photographic plates taken during the 1952 Washington D.C. uFO flap.

Beatrice Villarreal (15:39)

He suddenly becomes the director of Harvard Observatory and he destroys one third of the photographic plates and, and he doesn't ask, as I understand from the record. He doesn't ask the astronomers to select the plates? No, he asked his secretary to go and throw away one third of the plates. And there's a woman, Dori Toflight, that has been like telling about this story in her memoirs and kind of he started revenging on her later too for as I understood it, for that she tried to protect some of the plates. He also threw away a number of the log books.

Chris Mellon (16:14)

Adding to the mystery, Menzel was named in the MJ12 documents as part of Truman's top secret UFO research panel in the late 1940s. Now there are definite issues with the MJ12 documents, but there are core truths in those documents that have been corroborated by open source research. More on that later. Another key figure, physicist Louis Branscombe, earned his PhD from Harvard in 1949 and played a crucial role in the 1960s Condon Committee which dismissed UFOs as scientifically insignificant. As director of the National Bureau of Standards, Branscombe allegedly offered committee chair Edward Condon a Help bury the UFO question and get your security clearance back. There was a close relationship between the institutions of state power and Harvard, hidden or not. For Harvard and Kissinger, serving the Cold War machine, whether through the Department of Defense or the CIA, was a patriotic duty. How might this have affected the hidden history? Well, potentially any crash retrievals or advanced physics would have been tightly controlled Under Cold War priorities. Secrecy was not just about preventing public panic. It was also about staying ahead in an existential battle with the Soviet Union. And while the Cold War never erupted into direct global conflict, it was still a war. Millions died in its proxy battles. For those shaping policy, it was just as existential as the fight against Nazis, only now with the added threat of weapons capable of ending civilization itself. For Kissinger, the apocalyptic stakes of the Cold War shaped his early career. Neil Ferguson's great biography highlights his deep interest in psychological warfare, the art of using propaganda, disinformation and psyops to manipulate adversaries and allies alike. In the 1950s this meant undermining the Soviets without direct confrontation. Kissinger didn't just theorize, he put these theories into practice. He authored reports on psychological warfare and with his mentor William Elliott, launched a series of international seminars at Harvard. These gatherings, backed by the intelligence community, aimed to cultivate foreign intellectuals as allies of American influence. At the same time, Kissinger maintained direct ties to the CIA, including contact with its chief, Allen Dulles. So his transition from military intelligence to academia wasn't a break, it was a continuation. But Kissinger's influence extended Beyond Harvard. In 1951, 1952 and again in 1955, he worked as a consultant for the Psychological Strategy Board and its successor, the Operations Coordinating Board. These high level programs launched by Truman were designed to unify psychological warfare efforts across US Agencies. A declassified CIA document reveals the Psychological Strategy Board's core winning hearts and minds through strategic influence. More crucially, it highlights how only a select few were deemed capable of staffing this new psychological warfare oversight body. Whether they were pulled from existing agencies or recruited from outside the government, Kissinger, it seems, was one of them. The Psychological strategy board, or PSB, also has strong connections to the hidden history of UFOs. Philip J. Corso was a member, another CIC agent who went into government. He was on the staff of Eisenhower's National Security Council and eventually became the chief of the Pentagon's Foreign Technology desk in Army Research and Development. Corso went on to claim in his book the Day After Roswell that alien tech had been recovered and reverse engineered from crash retrieval programs. Another PSB figure, Douglas Jackson, was special assistant to the President under Eisenhower. He served as liaison between the CIA and the Pentagon. By 1960, Jackson had moved into publishing, becoming head of Life magazine. After Kennedy was assassinated, Life acquired the Zapruder film, the clearest footage of the assassination. But instead of releasing it in full, they only published black and white stills with certain key frames missing. The moving footage was withheld for over a decade. Jackson himself died not long after. But his past intelligence ties raised serious questions about how the assassination was managed in the media. These examples show how the Psychological Strategy Board's influence could extend beyond psychological warfare into shaping public perception of major historical events. And in Corso's case, how he went from the Army's CIC to a national security position in government to knowledge of the UFO program. The PSB had no shortage of interesting figures. But it just goes to show how connected psychological warfare was to the hidden history of UFOs. This is best shown in a series of declassified CIA documents from 1952. One memo involving CIA Director Walter B. Smith highlights the national security risk posed by flying saucers not just as unknown aerial threats but but as tools that could be exploited by the Soviets to spread hysteria or disrupt air defense systems. The memo states, the flying saucer situation contains two elements of danger which in a situation of international tension have national security implications. These are psychological and air vulnerability. Another document, this time from Smith to the director of the Psychological Strategy Board, notes that over 1500 UFO reports had been logged. 20% remained unexplained, prompting an urgent could these phenomena be controlled, predicted or even used in military or psychological operations? At this point, Henry Kissinger re enters the picture. Around this time he was recruited to produce reports for the army in Korea and Germany. He also became a direct consultant to the head of the Psychological Strategy Board himself, Gordon Gray. Gray was not a minor figure. A former Secretary of the army, he had oversight of psychological warfare strategies across multiple agencies and he later chaired the committee that revoked Oppenheimer's security clearance. He also served as National Security Advisor under Eisenhower. His influence continued for decades, spanning the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford administrations. As a member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Gray was as embedded in the security state as one could be. And perhaps unsurprisingly, he had connections to the ufo. Question is, what is called the Golden Age of General relativity tied to these topics?

Jesse Michaels (22:57)

Well, this explosion, there's a famous series. The author was Talbert.

Chris Mellon (23:04)

What is daddication?

Harold Malmgren (23:05)

The thing that drives me every day as a dad is Dariona. We call him Dae Dae for short. Every day he's hungry for something, whether it's attention, affection, knowledge. And there's this huge responsibility in making sure that when he's no longer under my wing that he's a good person. I want him to be able to sit back one day and go, we worked together. We did a good job.

Chris Mellon (23:26)

That's dedication. Find out more@fatherhood.gov brought to you by the U.S. department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Ansel Talbert wrote an article for the New York Herald Tribune in November of 1955 while Gray was president of the University of North Carolina. The article's title, Conquest of Gravity Aim of Top Scientists in United States. It details the efforts of numerous universities, companies, top physicists and documents their prospects for studying and controlling gravity. A discovery which is of quote unquote, tremendous import to the field of aircraft design. It also states that a proposal to establish an Institute of Pure Physics at the University of North Carolina to carry on theoretical research on gravity had been sanctioned by the Board of trustees which had the final approval of Dr. Gordon Gray in 1956. This Institute of Field Physics at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill holds what's known as the Chapel Hill Conference convening all of the world's top theoretical physicists to discuss gravity. This conference is sponsored by Wright Airfield. The head of the Institute of Field Physics Agnew Bonsen is also funding mid century inventor Thomas Townsend Brown who is claiming to get successful positive results on gravity manipulation experiments. Gray was also named as one of the advisors on the top secret research and development organization established by Truman. As it appears in the leaked Majestic 12 documentation. His deep ties to the military, psychological warfare, government and academia on top of this link to gravity research this makes a very plausible case that he would have been read into high level UFO programs. So remember these are the circles that Kissinger was moving in while he was still a graduate student. He wasn't just another Harvard intellectual. He was corresponding with CIA director Alan Dulles, consulting with Gordon Gray at the Psychological Strategy Board and networking with the power brokers shaping Cold War intelligence. All of this on top of his CIC work in Germany managing the transition of Nazi scientists and possibly their exotic propulsion research. And once kissinger got his Ph.D. these ties were developed further in tandem with his academic development. In 1955 Kissinger started to write critically of Eisenhower's nuclear strategy of massive retaliation. It was the threat of responding to an attack, conventional or nuclear, with an immediate all out nuclear barrage. Kissinger claimed this was outdated now that the Soviets maintained their own substantial nuclear arsenal. He argued that the United States should be ready to fight limited localized nuclear wars. His writing was noticed and he was invited by McGeorge Bundy, a colleague and professor at Harvard at this time to work with the Council on Foreign Relations. The cfr, a private organization tied to elite circles of business, government and academia was a crucible for Cold War policy. Much like a think tank, it served as a discussion club of the most powerful and successful leaders and well connected figures of foreign affairs. Walter Isaacson's biography of Kissinger describes the most exalted enterprises of the CFR to be the so called study groups where around a dozen or so distinguished individuals and wise men met regularly over the course of 12 months to explore a particular subject in depth. Each group had a study director, usually an up and coming academic who would collate their discussions into something that may or may not be disseminated to government or the public. For example, McGeorge Bundy was a part of a study group in the late 1940s that examined Marshall Plan aid to Europe. Some of its members should sound familiar. Eisenhower, before his presidency was involved, along with future CIA director Allen Dulles and future CIA Deputy Director Richard M. Bissell. Also contributing was George F. Kennan, just after writing his famous long telegram under the pen name X which shaped Cold War policy of containing Soviet communism. So the who's who of international diplomacy flick, open your modern history of the United States and these guys are all over. And as far as the hidden UFO history goes, aside from the obvious links to someone like Eisenhower and the possible Majestic 12 advisory board, you've also got Richard Bissell, who spearheaded developments in American reconnaissance aircraft like the U2 and its successor, the SR71. He knew his way around Area 51 and he was famously named by Presidential Advisor Harold Malmgren as being the person who had briefed Malmgren on other world technologies. He said, there are things you need to know. In 1955, Kissinger was invited to direct a Council on Foreign Relations study group on nuclear war and foreign policy. He was briefed by Robert Oppenheimer himself and instructed to turn the findings into a book. The group was chaired by Gordon Dean, former head of the Atomic Energy Commission and included top military officials, government insiders and scientists. The resulting book, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, was a breakthrough. Oppenheimer called it extraordinarily well informed and it launched Kissinger into the public eye. By the end of the decade, he was advising the Joint Chiefs of Staff in making regular TV appearances as a nuclear strategy expert. Before the book was even published, Kissinger had been pulled into even more elite circles. He was approached by one of the most powerful names in America, Nelson Rockefeller. At the time, Rockefeller was serving as an advisor to President Eisenhower, tasked with countering Soviet influence in psychological warfare and beyond. After Stalin's death in 1953, US officials worried about a Soviet peace offensive aimed at undermining US military power, sowing discord among allies and backing revolutionary movements in the developing world. Rockefeller's job was to counter this, this and he formed his own expert panel to strategize for the President. Kissinger was brought in alongside military leaders, academics and private sector figures. The group first met at Quantico, Virginia to draft reports for Eisenhower. This was Kissinger's first collaboration with Rockefeller, but far from his last. Two years later he would serve as the Director for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Special Studies Project, a panel on US International security objectives and and strategy that included Edward Teller. Kissinger and Teller would work closely together on a number of occasions afterwards. Teller was key to the Manhattan Project. He was the inventor of the hydrogen bomb and was named in a document written by Australian nuclear physicist Harry Turner. This report on behalf of Australian intelligence aimed to investigate what the US had been studying when it came to UFOs. Nobody in conventional national security circles circles disputes this report. It's deemed valid as a very real document. And Harry Turner definitely led all nuclear efforts for the Australian Joint Intelligence Organization, which is basically Australia's CIA. Turner stated that Edward Teller was working with others on the objective to control gravity. So we have yet another close associate of Kissinger being implicated in the hidden history of science and perhaps tech behind UFOs. By the late 1950s, Kissinger was a tenured Harvard professor, a trusted advisor to the military and government, and a rising public intellectual. But his official assent leaves room for this hidden history to press against it. Just recall Maria Wing's claim that her husband had worked directly under Kissinger, who was in some capacity involved in the UFO program by this time. This is tangential, but there is at least one document I was able to find that connects Kissinger to the world of crash retrieval. Hey guys, I want to tell you about my new favorite piece of apparel. These are called the perfect jeans. They're literally the perfect jeans. I used to wear jeans all the time and they're kind of rough and not super stretchy or breathable. These are extremely comfortable. They work in casual environments, they work in work settings. They come in six different sizes from 26 inches to 50 inches. And they're all around just amazing. For a limited time, our listeners get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at ThePerfectGene NYC. Again, that's ThePerfectGene NYC. Or just Google the perfect gene. Use code Jesse15 for that 15% off. Again, that's code Jesse15. That's 15% off for new customers at ThePerfectGene NYC. After purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that we sent you. Fuck your khakis. Get the perfect gene. A redacted history of Sandia Laboratories in New Mexico notes that Don Cotter, who was later a Nixon Administration advisor on atomic Energy and assistant to the Secretary of Defense, while Cotter had been promoted in 1961 to oversee advanced research at Kirtland Air Force Base. As part of his work, Cotter organized interdisciplinary seminars featuring noted international experts and specialists. One of them, Henry Kissinger. We also know that in 1962, as part of the Bluegill Triple prime test in the Pacific. One detonation reportedly downed a ufo. Kraft was then recovered and sent to the Albuquerque Operations Office, which oversaw Los Alamos in Sandia Labs at Kirtland Air Force Base. Who was in charge of that office? Lawrence Preston Geiss, better known as Jeff Bezos. Maternal grandfather who also worked for the Atomic Energy Commission. Harold Malmgram was Presidential Advisor for JFK at the time. And he was in charge of White House efforts around this Bluegill Triple prime test. And in the Navy deck logs of the ships associated with the Bluegill Triple prime test, you can see that anomalous debris came out of the plume of this blast and was recovered. The anomalous debris was then sent to New Mexico to be taken charge of by Lawrence Preston Geiss. So given that Harold Malmgren was in charge of the nuclear test for the White House, he decided to scope things out with Lawrence Preston Geiss. According to Malmgren, Geiss was directly involved in reverse engineering recovered craft in this exact period. So Malgr. Malmgrim went to go meet Geis in New Mexico. And according to Malmgren's tweets, Geis was directly involved in reverse engineering recovered craft in this exact period. So another UFO crash retrieval is tied to Sandia Labs, where Dr. Wang worked and where Kissinger is connected. But the questions still exist. Was Kissinger aware of any active UFO programs? Was he actively managing them? At this point, discussing whether Kissinger was involved in a UFO program inevitably leads us to the leaked documents that have pointed to the existence of the Majestic 12. Now, I know some of you might already have strong opinions about the MJ12 docs, but I just want to remind viewers that it's not just one thing. It's a collection of over 3000 pages from different eras leaked over decades. Yes, some of these could be forgeries. Some of these could be purposeful misinformation, part of a limited hangout strategy. But that doesn't make the whole thing invalid. If we can sift through the evidence, you can find some really significant details and other details that are corroborated by open source research. Take, for example, a leaked MJ12 document from 1995, recently discussed by Ross Coulthard on NewsNation with former Australian intelligence officer Jeff Cruikshank. It details a top secret request from President John F. Kennedy to CIA Director Allen Dulles on June 28, 1961. In it, JFK asks for a review of MJ12 intelligence operations as they relate to Cold War psychological warfare. Skeptics might dismiss this, but here's where it gets interesting. A document was released in the 2022 JFK files, revealing Dulles had actually scheduled something very interesting for that day, something completely unknown to the public in 1995. The document showed two meetings between Dulles and JFK on June 28, 1961, a fact that would have been impossible for. For a forger to predict decades earlier upon release of the MJ12 documents.

Jesse Michaels (35:51)

So there's a document in the MJ12 files, these very disputed MJ12 files, which has that date of 28 June, 1961, correct? Yep, that's correct. And that's the date of a meeting between the CIA Director Allen Dulles and President John F. Kennedy twice. No, nobody, nobody knew about that meeting until that diary was declassified in 2022. That's correct.

Chris Mellon (36:23)

This isn't the only MJ12 document with verifiable details. Others contain obscure, hard to fake markings in marginalia that experts have analyzed as authentic. This is similar to the Bob Lazar story, which I have reported on ad nauseam. If it weren't for Bob Lazar, we might still not know that Area 5051 exists. But there are a lot of reasons to believe that aspects of the Bob Lazar story were pushed out as passage material. Let's get Back to the MJ12. For the sake of those watching that might be new to this topic, let's quickly sketch out a picture of what the MJ12 is allegedly. The Majestic 12 was a secret committee formed by President Truman in 1947 to handle the extraterrestrial issue. It included top scientists, military leaders and government officials. Figures like Vannevar Bush, Gordon Gray, Donald Menzel, and even Eisenhower. All names we've already discussed. But regardless of the reliability of any one document, consider the bigger picture. MJ12 was supposed to have been created at the same time the Truman administration was facing an entirely new existential nuclear weapons. The atomic bomb changed the course of history. It reshaped humanity's relationship with extinction itself. There was a pre nuclear world and a post nuclear world. So how did the government respond? By forming classified interdisciplinary groups to study the issue, advise the military and government, and develop strategies for managing the risks of this new era. Okay, that seems pretty logical. Now you, if, if anything truly extraordinary happened at, say, Roswell, what would you expect the government to do? Well, you'd probably expect them to establish a classified interdisciplinary team to research the phenomenon, its implications, learn what they could about any strategic advantages, and decide what, if anything, the public should know about the topic Whether or not it was called MJ12, the idea that a structure structured oversight body existed is entirely consistent with how the US government responded to other world changing events. And other documents on top of Dulles schedule like the Eisenhower brief have been fully verified by open source research. And that brings us back to Kissinger. If such a program existed and if it evolved over the decades from how it was supposedly set up in the 1940s, how would somebody like Kissinger fit in? Kissinger's early career placed him in positions that directly intersected with the roles described in the MJ12 documents. His time within the counterintelligence corps during and after World War II positioned him within an intelligence network that was deeply involved in early crash retrievals and the exploitation of Nazi scientific expertise through programs like operation paperclip. Leaked MJ 12 memos from the 1940s reference CIC involvement in UFO investigations including Roswell. When Kissinger returned to Harvard at the end of the war, it's plausible that he did so with intelligence ties and some knowledge of secret technology programs. If Kissinger's connection to MJ12 deepened, it likely happened in the mid-1950s when his role shifted from academia to directly shaping government government policy. His invitation to the Council on Foreign Relations Study Group on Nuclear Strategy placed him alongside figures like Robert Oppenheimer and Gordon Dean, key players in both nuclear policy and potentially the UFO issue. For Kissinger to be included in these discussions, he would have needed a high security clearance. Could the UFO question have been part of their classified deliberations? While there's no direct proof, the overlap of names between the CFO study groups and MJ12 suggest they operated in adjacent circles. Kissinger's role in Nelson Rockefeller's Special Studies project further cemented his position. Rockefeller, an eisenhower advisor, led U.S. efforts to counter Soviet influence through strategic initiatives. This think tank included many figures from Kissinger's CFR group, creating potential crossovers between official policy and classified programs. We must assume that Rockefeller had some connection to mj12 by this point too. In fact, Detlev Bronck, who is the president of the Rockefeller foundation, was named as one of the Majestic 12. And this whole suggestion is not that the MJ12 was a static organization. It may have evolved in this period from a small Truman era committee to a more structured program under Eisenhower. And elite think tanks like these may have served as its intellectual and strategic backbone. This also raises the question, was this the moment private industry was let in on the secret? By the late 1950s, the US government was increasingly outsourcing classified research to private aerospace and defense contractors. If MJ12 or its successor wanted to study and reverse engineer UFO materials while avoiding congressional oversight, compartmentalizing the work within private corporations would have been the ideal method. This shift would implicate Kissinger throughout his close ties to Rockefeller, both in think tanks and on his presidential campaigns. Many of the Special Studies Project's key recommendations were integrated into Eisenhower's policies, appearing in his 1958 State of the Union address. Yet much of its classified output remains locked in Rockefeller's archive center. Depending on where you look, you'll find different claims about Kissinger's involvement. Some argue that he was bought by the Rockefellers early on, particularly through a grant he received while earning his PhD and that his Harvard career was merely a cover for deeper intelligence work, advising MJ12 through a specialized think tank known as Pi40. Others suggest that MJ12 and Pi40 were interchangeable names for the same group, which evolved over decades but remain embedded in the US national security structure. Even if we stay skeptical about the MJ12 documents themselves, the broader logic of their existence makes sense within Cold War power structures. If a secret UFO study group existed, whether called MJ12 or something else, Kissinger's career trajectory places him squarely within the network of individuals likely to have been involved. Before making any definitive claims about kissinger's role in MJ12 or the UFO program, one thing is before he ever entered a presidential administration, he operated operated within a deeply secretive strata of power. His rise to one of the highest positions in the country may not be unconnected to the relationships he had built since his time as a CIC agent. In the 1960 election, John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Richard Nixon. While Kissinger is now mainly associated with Nixon's legacy, it is often overlooked that he also worked under Kennedy. Kennedy's administration was filled with elite thinkers from different political and industry backgrounds, including several who had worked on Rockefeller's Special Studies project. Like Kissinger, despite working on Rockefeller's presidential run, writing speeches and giving advice, he had been approached by the Kennedy team in 1958 to discuss Long range problems and weapons evaluation. Officially, he was consulting the White House on nuclear weapons in Germany. But he remained close to Rockefeller, seeing him as a future presidential contender. The rest of his time was spent teaching at Harvard. It was in this period that he cemented his staunch anti communist stance. As Neil Ferguson recounts, Kissinger saw nuclear weapons not as a curse, but as a potential safeguard for civilization. His view was that tactical nuclear weapons could and should be used to Deter communism. This willingness to prioritize strategic concerns over morality characterized his entire approach to global global problems. If he applied the same logic to UFOs, he may have viewed them as another stabilizing element that required secrecy and control. It was also during this period in Kennedy's presidency that the Cold War had reached a boiling point. The Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961 led to the ousting of CIA Director Allen Dulles and Deputy Director Richard Bissell. Bissell notably, didn't fade into obscurity. This was. This raises a How many others, sidelined from their official positions, continued to operate within the hidden world of UFO programs? In Bissell's case, the rumor was he left work at the CIA on Friday and on Monday he returned because he was too indispensable to certain activities he was involved in. It was just two months after the Bay of Pigs in June of 1961 that Kennedy requested a full briefing on MJ12 activities from the head of the CIA, specifically with respect to their role in Cold War psychological warfare. This was before Dulles was dismissed, which occurred in November. Did JFK's decision to clean house at the CIA overlap with an inquisition into the activities of the MJ12? What did Kennedy find out? And what impact would this have had on his life?

Jesse Michaels (45:22)

The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society. And we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.

Chris Mellon (45:50)

Perhaps that will be a topic we can touch on another time. But it wasn't long before another crisis emerged. The Berlin standoff. Kissinger found himself sidelined during this crisis, and despite nuclear being one of his areas of expertise, he was scarcely consulted. It wasn't long after that that Kissinger left the White House. At the end of the 1960s, with Kennedy gone, the Johnson administration having run its course, Rockefeller had again run for President. But once again the campaign didn't take and Kissinger was unexpectedly available when Nixon came calling. Despite once calling Nixon the most dangerous candidate, Kissinger accepted the role of National Security Advisor, marking the start of his most infamous chapter. Why was Kissinger Nixon's choice officially? His deep expertise in nuclear strategy and foreign policy made him invaluable. It is often suggested that it was through his associations with MJ12 or an MJ12 like group that Kissinger was considered the perfect person to accompany Nixon into the White House. Was Kissinger brought into the administration because he was the ideal person to oversee another arms race, one hidden from public view? Just as the Cold War saw a nuclear arms race alongside proxy wars, it is plausible that there was also a secret technological arms race focused on reverse engineering UFO technology. If Kissinger's approach to nuclear weapons is was any indication, he would have treated the UFO issue extremely pragmatically, seeing it as a destabilizing factor that had to be carefully managed. His belief in secrecy, careful analysis and psychological warfare would have made him the perfect candidate to control access to such information. It is unlikely that Kissinger saw UFOs as a fantastical anomaly for a man so entrenched in realpolitik. They would have been just another variable, albeit an extraordinary one, in the geopolitical equation. Particularly if he had been aware of their early existence since his early twenties. So what influences might this have had on him? Since he reached the peak of US power in 1969, the Nixon White House was home to scandals, secrets and occasional absurdity. One of the strangest stories tied to Nixon, and one that raises questions about what Kissinger might have been aware of, involves the actor Jackie Gleason, who was famously obsessed with UFOs. He even built his house to resemble a flying saucer. According to Gleeson's ex wife. One night in the 1970s, Nixon, possibly drunk, showed up at the actor's house unannounced and took him to see alien bodies at a secret facility. Gleason, reportedly shaken, shared the story upon returning home, only for it to resurface in the tabloids years later. Its veracity is debatable. Was Nixon bragging to impress his golf buddy, letting off steam? Was it all fake? No one knows. But if Nixon was at all interested in UFOs, his closest advisor, who frequently endured his late night drunken tirades, was surely hearing about it. Kissinger's time in the White House as National security advisor from 1969 to 1975 and secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 gave him immense power over U.S. foreign policy. He shaped Cold War diplomacy, managed Vietnam, and opened relations with China. But what about the hidden UFO history in these years? We have the official record, and then we have what was never meant to be recorded. The Watergate scandal, secret bombings in Southeast Asia, covert operations in Latin America, and whatever was being discussed inside the 303 Committee, the secretive body overseeing CIA missions. But the question will remain. If someone like Kissinger was involved in the MJ12 did this overlap with his duties in the White House in International Relations or with this 303 Committee? The 303 Committee was a secret US interagency group that oversaw all covert operations and Kissinger was involved with it. So how much crossover was there between the official and hidden history when it came to the 303 committee or the 5412 unit which had preceded it or the 40 group which came after it? The names given to the small high level teams that oversaw all covert operations for the US government. Were they as deeply involved in UFOs as some researchers suggest? Officially, these group's members typically included the National Security Advisor, senior officials from the CIA and representatives from the State and Defense Department. Their job was to approve covert actions while shielding the President from direct involvement. Nominally, this separation was ensured to maintain plausible deniability on the part of the President. But this nominal separation at times allowed this group to wield power over the President and to do things without the President's permission. It's easy to think that UFO secrecy would be bound up in these Continuity of Government programs. Which is perhaps why these official names are sometimes said to be interchangeable with MJ12 in the UFO space. Alternatively, could programs like MJ12 have evolved into operations more akin to the CIA's notorious chaos or MK Ultra? Discrete groups acting with autonomy, shielded from higher levels of government oversight. If these secrets ever make it to the archives, we might get a definitive answer. Until then, solid links between Kissinger and UFO programs are rare. But there are a few other breadcrumbs that stand out. Firstly, we have circumstantial evidence of Harold Malmgren brought into the Nixon administration in 1971. Analyst Matthew Pines has suggested that Malmgrim was at times just as influential as Kissinger, almost acting as a check on Kissinger's own power.

Henry Kissinger (51:32)

Harold was self consciously not a self promoter. He was not someone who was looking for the power. He was recognized and his survivability was because he was going to be the guy working behind the scenes, executing, not taking credit, just the guy who would get stuff done, right? And that's what's, you know, whereas Kissinger was the guy who would like, you know, walk over people's necks, right? And but they were in equal positions, right? They were trusted and they were often used by presidents, you know, to check each other. Like Malm Grin was used explicitly by Nixon to check Kissinger in many negotiations to like confirm that Kissinger wasn't going rogue on various things. Things and the whole China thing, the the back channels with the Soviets. Malgren was Nixon's like, you know, confirmation, you know, route, right? Because he didn't fully trust Kissinger to do all this stuff because it was kind of a rogue guy, right? He thought he was the President, right. So Malgren was there to kind of like act as a bit of a. A check.

Chris Mellon (52:24)

It would certainly make sense then that if Malm Grin had been read into otherworldly technology by Richard Bissell around this time, that if he had seen evidence of the craft down during the Bluegill triple prime explosion that was taken to Los Alamos, then Kissinger, with his deep connections to nuclear strategy and intelligence likely had a similar level of awareness. Then there is the most intriguing clue of all. In January of 1977, just before leaving office, Kissinger sent a Telegram to the U.S. embassy in Ottawa requesting a report on, quote, unquote, possible returned space objects. The subject line, Moondust. Operation Moondust was a cold War era program established by the US Air Force to recover and analyze foreign space debris, including Soviet satellites and other advanced technology. However, declassified documents reveal that moon dust remit extended beyond conventional technology to include unidentified objects. This leads some to speculate that it may have dealt with extraterrestrial materials. Other declassified documents which describe similar circumstances or directly reference moon dust. To add to this mystery, one document describes the recovery of spherical objects in New Zealand farmland. Another details a fireball and subsequent sightings of silent aircraft near a Bolivian crash site. Incredibly, I found one that was sent to Wright Patterson Air Force Base, which discusses a 1957 UFO event in Afghanistan that rivals what reportedly occurred at Roswell. These documents suggest a striking similarity between Moondust's operations and the procedures outlined in MJ12 documents and what we now know about legacy UFO programs. Does Kissinger's telegram prove he was involved? Not exactly, but it confirms he was aware of Moondust and given everything else that he had done until this point. While perhaps this breadcrumb, however meager, is a significant one, Kissinger's role under Nixon is often cited as emblematic of centralized secret governance. Journalist William Shawcross described how Kissinger controlled the National Security Council's processes, funneling decisions through layers of analysis he personally managed. This allowed him to decide what Nixon would review while bypassing bureaucratic dissent. In 1968, before even entering the White House, Kissinger wrote, the only way secrecy can be kept is to exclude from the making of the decisions all those who are theoretically charged with carrying it out. This philosophy, deliberately keeping key decisions out of reach, even from senior military and government figures mirrors the kind of compartmentalization that seems to have governed UFO secrecy. This seems like a direct result of his work for the CIC and for the Psychological Strategy Board and who knows, perhaps for the MJ12. As Marvin and Bernard Kalb suggested in their biography of Kissinger, apparently he had no trouble justifying these kinds of deceptive practices. Kissinger's approach to governance was achieve the objective whatever it takes. Secrecy, deception, even actions that in hindsight many consider criminal. The same logic could have been applied to managing disruptive technology of non human origin. If UFOs posed a cold War threat or advantage, they could have been compartmentalized, controlled and kept out of public reach. And Kissinger would have been in a prime position to oversee such efforts. And his legacy is still visible today. For all the cynicism and warranted criticism surrounding Kissinger's tenure, his realpolitik approach to diplomacy achieved notable successes such as opening relations with China and advancing arms control through the SALT I talks. It would be incredibly interesting from a historical perspective to find out if there was some kind of UFO related impetus or rationale behind some of these moves and in particular if Kid Kissinger was using his knowledge or position within that hidden network to parlay or barter these relations. Due to Kissinger's possible awareness of the UFO issue, he probably would have used this secret knowledge to his advantage when he felt it necessary. And despite the decades of tension and mistrust that came after, Kissinger remains a popular figure in both Beijing and Moscow. He was a longtime confidant of Vladimir Putin. There is a telling exchange between the two from the 90s when in conversation with the future Russian president about their respective backgrounds, Putin told Kissinger he got his start in intelligence. To which Kissinger replied all decent people get their start in intelligence. I did too. In China as well, Kissinger has remained relevant since the 70s. President Xi Jinping described him as an old friend, stating that Sino US relations will always be linked with the name of Henry Kissinger. Both Putin and Xi expressed sincere condolences when Kissinger died at age 100 in November of 2023. Figures like Richard Bissell, who moved from the CIA into private defense, suggest that real secrecy does not end when someone's ties to an administration does. So did Kissinger continue operating in classified spheres even after leaving government? His access to power remained unbroken for decades and he was continually sought out for foreign policy council on China, post 9 11, Iraq and even AI. Was he playing a longer game leveraging hidden knowledge in ways we still don't understand. Modern UFO whistleblower David Grusch has suggested that someone like former Vice President Dick Cheney was a gatekeeper of the UFO program. If such a role exists, it must have been occupied by before Chaney, possibly by another Machiavellian operative, by Kissinger himself. Some figures exist in the public eye, but operate a second life in the shadows. Redacted, classified, denied. It takes a certain kind of person to thrive in that space. Someone ruthless, someone pragmatic, Someone who can manage nuclear strategy, covert wars and morally indefensible decisions, maybe even UFO programs. So whether Kissinger was exactly what Maria Wang described to Bill Steinman on the phone, or I think it's very possible, and it makes you think, does that position still exist? Who is the gatekeeper now? And will we ever know? Until next episode. My name's Jesse Michaels, and this is American Alchemy.

Henry Kissinger (59:05)

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